10 For The Chairman: Episode 78

*https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ciCNkp20O7w*

Mar 7, 2016 *(Transcript provided by SomethingJones)*

**Q: Are there any plans to streamline patch sizes?**

A: So yes absolutely we have a plan in fact I sat down ah earlier this week which would be the previous week to you seeing this cos we're recording this on Friday and you um watch us on Monday, ehm but ehmmmm yeah I think we have a really aahhh cool plan that's very configured to ah our new development paradigm ah, you know, ah, not saying new for us but sort of the new paradigm of what WE'RE doing which is constantly ehm, you know, building, testing, DEPLOYING ah both internally and then externally to, ah, you know, you guys in the community ahm first level and so the um public test universe the PTU and then of course the... live and so, you know we need a solution that we can be... BUILDING rapidly and iterating rapidly and getting to as efficiently as possible and our current one is not the best, cos it has the sort of big monolithic pack files, each pack file... is... two gigs, and there's quite a few of 'em, and if one file changes in it you have to build the whole pack file and the way our... BUILD SYSTEM works and all the DATA is we have to rebuild all the DATA, ah, into the pack files right now, ah ...

**Q: Aside from shopkeepers, quest-givers and other NPCs considered essential in other games, are NPCs in a given area going to be generated randomly based on the current environment and the parameters set in the area?**

A: (looks worried) So what's gonna happen is... the... we have a universe simulation that runs on a separate server, and that's much more a sort of... BIG PICTURE simulation, think of it like, I dunno, a... a... CIVILIZATION game or something like that, sort of a slower turn based game and that actually is simulating the universe, what all the NPCs are doing sort of on a macro basis, who's trading with WHAT, what's producing WHAT, what goods are needed WHERE, where pirates are attacking and so the general outcomes of those results are all happening on the universe simulation in its own process... and then that's getting trickled down into the local game servers that are all the players, i.e. you guys are attaching to and playing in, and... and... the... the... SNAPSHOT of what's happening on the universe server is then sort of carried across the game server so what would happen is for instance... ah you know, if you were down on ah ah a PLANET it would say "OK well you know ah, this planet is a MINING planet and ah, you know, so, I will generate, ah, you know, and the population is \*this\* size... ah... therefore ah you know we'll probably populate the landing area with X number of NPCs, OF the X number of NPCs... 60% of them will be MINERS, and we'll have, you know, LAW ENFORCEMENT and you know, and we'll have some service workers like in the bars and stuff like that, and it will all be sort of generated by, ah... the... DATA that... is pushed down or pulled down from the universe server and so ......

**Q: Within the context of fantasy space flight ... Should there be an advantage to getting on your target's 'six' and staying there, or is that pretty much negated by 6DOF flight?**

A: I will say that in all circumstances even with, you know, six degrees of freedom and the ability to, ah, you know, do lateral and horizontal and... ah... you know... vertical, sort of em, strafing, ah, as well as sort of, ah, you know, change your orientation and maybe not your velocity vector, ah, which is sort of the decoupled stuff, um, always getting on, ah, you know, getting BEHIND someone, or in their BLIND SIDE is a bit of an advantage, now the difference, in, ah, our system and flight model if you're a good pilot, is you'll be able to get out of that situation, you'll have more OPTIONS than you do in regular atmospheric, ah, you know air combat manoeuvring, but, em, you know, obviously you wanna get BEHIND someone because, you know, ah they can't bring their gun... you know, most guns are forward facing also visibility's usually forward facing so you know OUTSIDE OF the bigger ships with turrets then you know, ah, getting behind, ah, people or someone in a dogfight is usually, ah, it will give you an edge and advantage even if they can recover from it... ah, quicker than they can in, ah, you know, traditional, you know, ah, CURRENT DAY, atmospheric, ah, air combat.

**Q: We already have a flyable Constellation and a flyable P-52 Merlin. How far are we from a workable tech for docking and undocking? Is this something we can expect in the near future or is this a functionality planned further down the line?**

A: Yeah ah you know I really wanna actually get the fifty... P52 and the Constellation, ah, to WORK together cos they're, they're MEANT to... to... work together, it is probably something we will ah, start to work on with ah, Craig after... Craig Gransell who's done the sort of landing system, he's still got some... landing system stuff that he's wrapping up for Squadron FORTY TWO and some... enhancements for Star Citizen and that, this will probably be the next... TASK to get this working it's not THAT difficult, I mean basically you just kinda wanna get... it's just like the landing system really you get in a certain area and then you say Ok... DOCK and then we'll just sorta bring you in and CONNECT you and the Merlin will be attached to the Constellation and then, hopefully you can get out and you should just be able to enter into the... back of the Constellation so ah, I do wanna (incoherent mumble) cos it's ah, NOT... that difficult technically to get working it's really just people have had a whole bunch of other things they're working on first, ah for instance you know we... ah... you know... HAVEN'T SHOWN IT YET, but you know we have an IDRIS FLYING AROUND and you can land inside it and take off inside it and, em, walk around it and it's pretty cool so um, ah, that was sort of the higher priority and we've still got some stuff to do on the bigger ships in terms of ah....

**Q: So the Endeavour has bio domes. What will be the point of farming? And will there be bacon farming?**

A: Well the point of farming will be... ah, you know, the BIO DOMES will allow you to grow, ah, agriculture, you know, crops, ah, and you'll be able to... SELL those, probably for a premium so the idea will be, the Bio Domes in the Endeavour are sort of growing things that you couldn't normally necessarily grow on a planet, and you can maybe sell for a premium, whatever it would be, ah, I'm sure lotsa people will go "SPACE WEED!" but um, you know there'll be plenty of other things too, ahaha, um, so... you know it's, it's ah, it's a sort of farming mechanic, so you'd have that in, ah, you know you'd have that in space, you'd maintain it like perhaps you know, you have to take the... your ship would have to be a certain distance from the local system STAR or, you know you'd have to tend, fend for it make sure it's... ah, you know GROWN in, you know, like, perhaps the lower gravity setup makes you able to grow a better strain of... whatever it will be, WHEAT etc ah, so there you go

**Q: You've talked about consulting linguists for alien languages, are you talking to exobiologists, exoplanetologists and exo-climatologists for direction and help in designing the ecosystems and climates of alien planets?**

A: That's a good question, ehhh... I... we do... we have done a certain amount of, ah, working with a local school, here, in LA actually, ah so at UCLA we've been dealing with some sort of astrophysicists and, and their ILK in ah terms of ah, laying out our star systems and what kind of planets will be what distance from the stars and... that sort of direc... you know, that sort of dictates um, the type of, ah, planet and you know to a certain extent what we do is we say "well we want this kind of planet", and then we talk to, um, you know the folks that really know and say "so what situation could we potentially get this planet in" and "WELL maybe it needs to be this distance, this many AU from the STAR and DA-DA-DA" and, and so that's sort of how we on a macro side been doing the star system map, and some of that will filter in to the PROCEDURAL TECH ah but it's still early days on um (looks at question) the... you know, kinda figuring out the ecosystem of the planets and the weather patterns and all the rest of the stuff, so I mean I would guess that we would tend to go a little bit more towards a DESIGNED approach where like, you know it's like, take a view, take a look at HOTH it's a, you know it's an ICE PLANET, and it's COOL, but it, you know, IS THE WHOLE PLANET COVERED IN SNOW?

Or is it, you know, I mean it certainly looks like it when you watch the movie... ah... would that be realistic, would there ever be life on a planet like that? Maybe, maybe not I don't know but, you know, it's... you sort of very much define the planets like you know, you have, using my Star Wars reference here but you know, HOTH is the ICE PLANET and you know, TATTOONYEN... TATTOO... TATTOO-EE-IN is like the DESERT PLANET you know and so, and you got... ah you go to the eh DAH-GO-BAH system and that's all like this swampy jungle thing, and you know very much in Star Wars they sort of focus the planets to sort of feel like... it's a TYPE it's a JUNGLE or it's a.... ICE PLANET or it's a DESERT PLANET um, so, eh we'll probably do a little bit of that.

So there you go that's the end of my uh ANSWERS, eh, for Ten For The Chairman thank you guys for listening, hopefully some of the answers were.... informative or useful for you guys so thank you to all the subscribers that enable us to put together content like this and all the other stuff that we do, ah, here at, ah, for Star Citizen at Roberts Space Industries, and um... thank you to all the backers cos without all you guys contributing and supporting the project, ah, we wouldn't be where we are now, it's.... PRETTY MONUMENTAL ah but it's enabling us to build something that I don't think anyone would have ever conceived you could build and certainly no publisher would have ever dreamed of doing, ah we aren't there yet! But we're getting there I think you can sort of see the progress, ah, you know there's more and more features and gameplay coming along the line on STAR CITIZEN ALPHA you know TWO POINT X LIVE as we go, and this year there'll be a lot of stuff that comes online that I think will really sort of add to the experience but even right now in sort of TWO POINT ONE... now... TWO POINT TWO there's just... there's a lot of COOL IMMERSION GAMEPLAY that's happening and there'll be more of that happening and uh... you know I think we're building something that long term's gonna be...well it's the game I wanna play and I think the game I hope a lot of you guys wanna play.