Star Citizen & Squadron 42 Developers Share a Lot of Details About Future Plans, Development, & More

Cloud Imperium Games hosted an AMA on its official forums to celebrate the anniversary of the beginning of the Star Citizen project.

Founder and CEO Chris Roberts, live director Todd Papy, and persistent universe game director Tony Zurovec answered a variety of questions about the present and future of the growing game and its single-player campaign Squadron 42, which just received an update to alpha 3.11.

Below you can check out what they shared.

Chris Roberts

About he way and pace of new information reveals on Squadron 42’s development.

“Tomorrow we’ll be launching the inaugural episode of the “The Briefing Room” a show focused just on Squadron 42, which we are planning to do every quarter (3 months) until Squadron 42 releases, where we will address some of this.

We haven’t been happy with how effectively we’ve been showing progress on Squadron 42, as we felt the previous format didn’t do a good job of all in communicating just how much work is going on. The new roadmap format which we’ve been working towards and on since we announced we would be changing it up will do a much better job in show what people are working on at any given time as opposed to just focusing on deliverable features. I briefly discussed our thinking here.

Squadron 42 is a tricky project to communicate on as we really don’t want to give the experience and story away which can make updating on certain content or features challenging.

We DO give regular updates on Squadron 42, even though we haven’t updated the Squadron 42 Roadmap since the beginning of this year with the monthly reports. The most recent one was earlier this week. We also occasionally have content or feature updates on things that will be in Squadron, as we did with the new Vanduul ships in the Inside Star Citizen Episode: Enemy Mine

We also communicate way more than any other developer or publisher than I am aware of in terms of work and progress on Star Citizen, which is the game “The Pledge” was referring to; We have multiple video shows per week, lore updates, developers regularly engage in the forums, have a weekly newsletter and well as regular monthly reports.

I don’t think the issue is whether we treat our community with respect, as that is core tenet of the entire company, or lack of communication; it’s different people want communication in different forms; some want in depth long talky videos, some want just the sizzle videos with pretty graphics. Some people want huge technical treatises on server meshing and others just want the ELI5 version and finally a lot of people just want to know when a feature or the game will be done.

And I think that’s the crux of the issue; it’s impossible to please all the people all the time, and with a project as complicated as Star Citizen or even Squadron 42 it’s impossible to have iron clad dates due to the huge amount of ongoing R&D.

So yes, I do feel like we have been meeting “The Pledge”.

Does that mean we can’t improve?

No, we can always improve, and if you follow CIG and Star Citizen close enough you will notice that we are always trying new things and tweaking existing processes both in our development approach and structure in how we communicate and share information with all of you. The new Roadmap will be part of this, as will the Briefing Room.”

About death in-game and what has changed since the publishing of “Death of a Spaceman.”

“Later this month there is going to be a Calling All Devs episode on “Death of a Spaceman” with myself and Richard Tyer, Core Gameplay Director (which includes the Actor teams), where we’ll go into the current plans, which you’ start to see the results of mid next year as we begin to bring in Medical gameplay. So watch for that as we’ll go into the current design which is ready for implementation.”

About base building.

“We have some pretty exciting plans on the base building / player settlement front. One of the fall outs of iCache, which we’ve been working on for full persistence of state and location of all dynamic objects in the universe of Star Citizen, is that recording and restoring a building you’ve just constructed is really no different to remembering where you dropped your coffee cup on some distant planet, or which shelf you placed it on in your hab.

Basically, iCache will enable us to allow all of you to settle the stars!

When we first came up with the concept of player built outposts and land claims iCache hadn’t been technically designed, but now we have a system that will have a much higher degree of fidelity in remembering where each building or component is and what state it is in. So rather than just dropping down a singular Outpost, you’ll be able to place down various structures and connect them to things like power generators, turrets, resource collectors, hydroponic domes and so on.

In parallel with this we’ve been working on tools to build settlements or homestead both for our artists / designers (more of a RTS god like view) and players (a first person view).

With this we’ve been rethinking how the Pioneer will work to make her more flexible rather than just spitting out a pre-fabricated outpost we want her to me more of a mobile fabrication facility that would be near your building site. With a Pioneer you’ll be able build these structures without having to ship in the component parts as long as you have a supply of raw materials. You don’t need a Pioneer to build a homestead but if you want to build a decent settlement, or you want to build something relatively quickly as opposed to having to fly in prefabricated components from major landing zones you will want to have a Pioneer, or have a friend or someone that is willing to lend their services to you.

We’re very excited about the gameplay that all of this will provide and can’t wait to see what kind of player settlements sprout up over the huge amount of land area the game has. We will need iCache in and working well before we will see this in the game, so expect to see some updates on this later next year.”

Todd Papy

About NPC crew gameplay.

“First steps are building out the player functionality to those roles (Captain, Engineer, etc) similar to pilots and turret gunners. We currently have some of those AI functions, like flying the ship, but we would still need to build the “glue” for AI, like what they do off duty. The capt/owner of the ship will need a way to set what roles he wants the NPCs to do. The Capt will also need a way to interface with the AI to tell them what they want them to do, like fly to a set location or attack a certain target.

We are still planning to allow players to take remote control of the NPCs.”

About the evolution of the process to create new star systems in the game.

“We are not ready to go full bore on all of the systems. We are building up the tools, knowledge, and people power to be able to deliver the systems quicker.

Can’t talk about tools? That is what allows us to build faster and faster as they get refined! That is how we have adjusted building a moon in year to building one in 2 weeks. We have the same goals for Space stations.

A lot of time and work goes into building up the asset packs. Once we have the assets built we can put locations and planets together fairly quick. Putting gameplay hooks into the locations will take time to place and make locations feel special. Obviously the quality and detail level of the solar systems that were initially planned in the very beginning of crowd funding has drastically changed over production of SC. Once we realized the detail level that we could go into with the planets and the landing zones, we wanted to push the limit of fidelity. Comparing SC to the Privateer/Freelancer systems, you are getting exponential amount of gameplay and detail on each planet and moon.

We are trying to build up the team to deliver solar systems in one drop vs the iterative approach that we are currently doing in Stanton.”

About ship computers and the blades that could be installed in them.

“Here is some things that have been discussed that are being thought of for hardware (new blade) or software (loaded on computer or blade), these would be types of ideas that we would bring online over time:”

• Missile Defense System (Combat) – Automatically fires correct countermeasures to avoid being hit by missiles
• Encryption/Decryption Blade (Data Runner) – Able to keep data encrypted to prevent theft and also provides the means to attempt to decrypt data.
• Emissions Controller (Combat) – Allows the pilot to set strict limits on emission production, providing additional warnings and shutting down unnecessary systems automatically.
• Offensive E-War Blade (Combat) – Enhances existing offensive e-war capability, could speed up or strengthen offensive programs/viruses or offer new ones to run.
• Defensive E-War Blade (Combat) – Enhances existing defensive e-war capability, grants further protection and reduces potency of offensive programs.
• Mining Blade (Mining) – Speeds up mining scans and provides additional information (pinpointing pockets of ore, mineral density etc.)
• Salvage Database (Salvaging) – Speeds up scanning wrecks and provides additional information (pinpoints valuable ship items, shows materials contained within wrecks etc.)
• Criminal Database (Bounty Hunter) – Provides a list of known criminals or unlawful activity and the ability to accept bounties to track them down and bring them to justice.
• “Hit List” (Pirate) – Similar to the criminal database but to be used by criminals. Bad people can view and accept contracts to take care of people.
• Enhanced Route Navigation (Trade / Exploration) – Essentially enhanced starmap/navigation options. Lets the pilot know how dangerous the route is that they are taking, enables them to pick routes based on speed, safety or avoiding certain areas.
• Trade Database (Trade) – Allows traders to view buy/sell prices in different places in the universe while on the move, rather than having to be at a trade station.
• Shield Management Blade (Combat) – Provides advanced shield control options to allow finer control.
• Stellar Charting System (Exploration / General) – Makes it easier to discover jump points if/when they move elsewhere, possibly also makes jump travel easier.
• Item Lock Blade (Combat) – Further enhances the targeting system to allow the pilot to lock onto specific parts of the ship, so they are able to take out individual systems.
• Cargo Manifest Masker (Smuggling) – Disguises the items in your cargo manifest to allow you to hide contraband from initial ship scans.
• Internal Security System (Larger ships) – Provides internal ship info, positions of lifeforms aboard the ship and the ability to lock/unlock individual doors.
• Drone Management Blade (Larger ships) – Allows ships to control on-board drones.

About what’s missing before FPS AI characters can appear on planetary and moon surfaces outside of missions or set locations.

“We need some Planetary Nav Mesh work done, we have a fair amount of it completed. Then once that is done we can start to implement it into missions or random encounters. When that is done AI will be able to transition from Ship to Surface smoothly. This will also open us for building creatures (space cow or larger animals) or boids (very small creatures..frogs, birds) to add extra life.”

About data running and hacking.

“It hasn’t been forgotten, personally it is one of the professions I’m looking forward to the most, we just have some higher priority work that needs to be completed first. We are focused on delivering big physical cargo first.”

About AI characters moving between ships and planets.

“We currently have a few bugs that we need to work out, that will allow AI to path between ships, planetary surfaces, and man made locations.”

About whether rivers are planned or not.

“Yes.”

About the plans to make systemic missions less repetitive and more engaging.

“Doing what we call mission modifiers and leveraging our unique locations.

Take a basic mission of delivering a cargo crate from an outpost to a space station.

Add in one or multiple of these basic modifiers:
-FPS AI that want that crate
-Ship AI that want that crate
-A cargo crate that is volatile
-Pick up is in a hostile location
-Drop off is in a hostile location
-List can go on and on.”

Tony Zurovec

About the milestones left to achieve before dynamic missions can be created.

“One of the larger remaining issues relates to the fact that the current mission UI and associated logic aren’t able to deal with real-time parameters and need to be converted from Flash to Building Blocks.  This is also related to why more Service Beacons haven’t been introduced, as UI development with the old system is far slower than with the new tech.  Quantum is starting to inject some of its simulation data into the back-end services, which the Dynamic Mission Service requires to make these customized missions available, but the first stages involve only a few distinct types of scenarios. 

Dynamic Events, on the other hand, are routed through the same system and are a bit more mature, and the first demonstration of that tech was last Spring’s Fleet Week, which was activated for only a brief period of time and which existed across all servers.  We’re already in the process of constructing more of these dynamic scenarios, some of which are far more sophisticated.”

About stealing cargo from other ships.

“Allowing cargo to be manually extracted from ships is high on our list of priorities and will be possible via the tractor beam, but will also require some revisions to the cargo grid system to make it compatible with local storage and iCache.”

An update on the Quantum technology.

“We’ve spent a lot of time and effort optimizing the simulation and are now doing tests with as many as two million quanta, but it looks like we won’t need more than 100K per system to get the desired effects.  We’ve started to connect some select bits of the simulated data to the backend services that feed the game servers, with things like fuel and repair prices, encounter types and frequencies, and Service Beacons first in line. 

This will have some dramatic effects on the gameplay experience as it’ll mean that previously disparate things like pirate activity, calls for help, and the price of repairs in an area will finally start to feel like they’re all connected.”

About the release of the new system Pyro and server meshing tech.

“Our current plan is to release both Pyro and the server mesh tech at the same time.”

About bounty hunting.

“I’m particularly interested in Bounty Hunting. Right now the missions in this area are predominantly geared towards going somewhere and fighting someone, whereas the major enhancements we’ve got planned will make the hunting aspect a much larger part of the challenge.

This will be the first usage of the Virtual NPC tech that allows characters to go about their lives regardless of whether any players are in the vicinity, and a new UI will allow bounty hunters to register to receive select bits of information to help with pursuing their prey, like feedback from Comm Arrays, ATC controllers, and NPC informants.”

About dynamic events.

“Yes, this is a major area of focus. We call these Dynamic Events and there are multiple ones already in progress, and the plan is to ramp up these efforts even more next year. Fleet Week was triggered via this system – a temporary event that was activated across all of the servers. Going forward, though, you’ll see a lot more sophistication in the events.

Some of these will be triggered systemically and others will be activated by us manually. Most will allow for customization so the amount of variety with even a modest library of such scenarios will be pretty significant. The ultimate plan is to periodically break up the routine with distinct events that serve to draw a lot of players to a common cause, although they might not always be on the same side.”

If you want to learn even more about Star Citizen, Creator Chris Roberts made an extensive statement on the state of development a few weeks ago.

For the sake of full disclosure, the author of this article has been a Star Citizen backer since the original Kickstarter campaign several years ago, so you should keep that in mind while reading.