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Relay Replay: Jan 22 - 26th Written Sunday 28th of January 2018 at 09:06am by Shiver_Bathory

Erris and Shiver go over the week's news in Star Citizen


Q: What’s up with the F8 Lightning?

A: You don’t get the F8 Lightning until Squadron 42 is out.  Basically the way it works, there are a few ships where, if you make it far enough in Squadron 42 that you can fly those ships, then you get a badge in the PU to be able to buy those ships in-game with UEC.


As a thank you to the backers who have supported at a very high level, they get the F8 Lightning outright once Squadron 42 is out.

To be clear, this is the F8C that people can acquire.  Not the F8A which is what you fly in Squadron.  The F8C has civilian equipment while the F8A has military equipment.


Q: Will Squadron 42 let the player be a female character?

A: Absolutely. 100%.  As they are still working on animations, they only wanted to use one skeleton/character (the male) so that they don’t need to fix the animations on both.  Once the animations are finalized, they will create the full animation set for the Female.  Characters are fully customizable and your character will carry across into the PU.


Q: What are the thoughts on the perks that can be transferred from Squadron 42 into the PU?

A: You will unlock badges in Squadron 42 which will allow you to get certain things in the PU.  Through relationships in Squadron 42 you can unlock missions and content in the PU.  There may also be a Veteran’s group in the PU which will give you missions if you completed Squadron 42.

There will also be specific areas for UEE service members.  This will also carry over to other groups - there will be specific areas for the Merchant’s Guild for example.  This will work similarly for Organizations.


Q: The recent monthly report saw a slight redesign of the Vanduul Blade which also carried through to some other Vanduul ships.  Will this redesign affect the Vanduul Glaive or Scythe currently in the game?

A: Probably not very much. Bringing the style of the Vanduul ships closer to Glaive and Scythe.  They needed to do some redesign on the Vanduul fleet for performance reasons, reducing the bony look of some of the ships.


Q: Will Squadron 42 have different endings?  If so, will the different endings have an effect on your character in the PU?

A: It will affect your character in terms of what they’ve earned.  The concept is that as you play Squadron 42, it fills out your journal.  The things you do unlock things in the PU.

There is only one successful ending to Squadron, the others being dying or getting thrown in the brig.

You can play Star Citizen while playing Squadron 42.  As you get to certain points in Squadron, you will unlock things in the PU.

There are some optional unlocks in Squadron 42, so whether they’re available to you in the PU entirely depends on whether you unlocked them in Squadron.


Q: What are your plans for future chapters of Squadron 42 and their tie-in with the persistent universe?

A: Squadron 42 is a trilogy, a three game arc and the events of the entire trilogy will be set before the setting for the persistent universe.  Episode 2 and 3 will add unlockable content to the PU similar to Episode 1.

Episode 2 and 3 are starting to be fleshed out.  Performance capture for Episode 2 and 3 will likely be filmed back-to-back.

Episode 2 and 3 will happen a lot quicker than Episode 1 due to all of the foundational tech work needed for the first episode.


Q: Head tracking - TrackIR and Tobii and like that - will that be implemented for Squadron 42?

A: Pretty confident yes.  There was a version of Tobii and head tracking already working but unsure if currently working.

Goal is to have head tracking working, as well as Faceware.

Star Citizen should be VR friendly as well, such as diegetic UI.  The current holdback there is that there is still so much base level work going on on the engine - including the Vulkan/DX12 refactor.  Lots of optimisation.

Once the base level engine stuff is finished, VR support will be added.

Further on, look will be able to be disconnected from aiming.


Q: Will the Coil be in the PU?

A: Yes, the Coil will be in the PU.  Odin will be in the PU.

Have to get the Jump Points in to the PU to allow you to get there.

You will be able to visit some of the locations from Squadron 42.


Q: Will Squadron 42 include a difficulty option?

A: Yes, definitely.  It’s not going to be too easy though.


Q: Character customisation in Squadron 42?  Is it the same system in Squadron 42 as in the PU?

A: It will be the same system for Squadron 42 as the PU.  The system for Star Citizen Alpha 3.1 will be pretty basic, switching between heads, hair, eye and skin colour.

The final system will have full options including facial morphing.  This system will be in both Squadron 42 and Star Citizen.

It will be in-game.  Part of your journey in Squadron 42 will include choosing what your face looks like and your gender.


Q: How will death affect the campaign?

A: If you die, you have to return to your last save point.  Save points won’t be as frequent as Call of Duty, for example.  There needs to be weight to success or failure.


Q: What part, of any, of Squadron 42 will be cooperative?

A: There will be no cooperative story campaign.  As you progress through Squadron, some of the big battles will be able to be played separately from the campaign as cooperative battles.


Q: A majority of the website is new now.  Are there plans to revamp the other sections of the site, like the store, throughout the year?

A: Yes, the release that just occurred was just phase 1 of the release.

The main idea behind the current release was to separate out the Introduction to Star Citizen and Squadron 42 sections from the RSI/development side.

Thought was to do a better job of introducing new people to the game.  Community has been doing a great job of this, and now CIG is trying to improve as well.


Q: We just released a public roadmap for Star Citizen.  Will there be a roadmap for Squadron 42 at some point in the future?

A: There will be at some point in the future.

Hull C is missing from Star Citizen roadmap because of a technical issue with the expanding/contracting of the ship and there is currently no resource attached to fix this, though it will definitely be fixed.

Development is much more date-based now, and they have changed teams to be more agile-based for feature development.

Public roadmap for PU is driven directly by the internal project management software, JIRA.  Will be updated weekly.

More things will be added to the roadmap as they get more of JIRA prepared.

Back to Squadron 42, exactly the same process is being used.  Yes, the roadmap will be made available for Squadron.  If you look on the site there is a Star Citizen logo on the left side of the roadmap and a Squadron 42 one will be added there.

Once the tasks and epochs for Squadron 42 are cleaned up, ready to go and they’ve decided how to organize it, it will be published.


Q: Will we see any more big name actors in Squadron 42 that aren’t announced yet?

A: Yes.


Q: Is Squadron turning out how you expected it to back in 2012?

A: It’s so much bigger and cooler and better.  It has a much greater ability to evoke emotional attachment than expected.

Initially it was expected that they would have to hide loading screens with cinematics and such.  That has all gone away and everything is seamless.

Every character you see has a full story arc.  Whether you want to explore them or not is up to you, but the option is there.

Hopefully we’ll be able to create an emotional impact that is either unique or very rare in the entirety of gaming.


Q: Can we expect first person combat throughout Squadron 42?

A: Yes, throughout. This has always been the dream and if I were to do another Wing Commander, it would be done this way as well.

There is plenty of ship combat and plenty of FPS, probably 50/50.


Q: Will Squadron 42 be available in other languages, besides English?

A: Yes.  Captions and voice for some.  Captions only for some.  This will be done near the end.  Will probably cover at least English, German, French, Italian, and Spanish.


Q: Can we see our characters speak in 3rd person or will we be restricted only to 1st person?

A: Hasn’t been decided yet. They have the ability to do either and fully captured the performance of the actor who played the player.

All cinematics are live so you can change your perspective.  There will be a cinematic mode but you can also just cut back to your own view.

If you are disobedient (remember, you’re in the military), you can get thrown in the brig.


New website was launched with a new roadmap

The following are selected highlights from the upcoming schedule. This schedule can and will change at any given moment so it is not written as a definitive reference guide

Q1 2018 - 3.1First release of character customisation

Ship damage overhaul

Reclaimer, Terrapin, Razor and Cyclone release

Network Bind Culling tech

Q2 2018 - 3.2

Player service beacons (Distress, refuel, repair etc)

Mining prospecting, extraction, refining and selling

Salvage scanning, extraction, processing and selling

Allowing players to leave their ship and repair the outside of it

Wear and tear

600i, Hurricane, Eclipse, Mustang rework, Avenger and Vanduul Blade

Q3 2018 - 3.3

Hurston planet, Lorville landing zone and rest stop release

Repair ships functionality

Constellation Phoenix, Hammerhead, Cyclone variants

Object container streaming

FoIP integration

Q4 2018 - 3.4

Female player characters

ArcCorp planets, Area 18

Land claim, register and mission creation around player land claims

300i redux, Hawk, Reliant variants, Freelancer variants and Constellation Taurus

AI work and performance optimisation is ongoing throughout


Director of EU Operations
