Hi Chris,

I know many people will be looking to buy a HOTAS controller for this game specifically, myself included. I was wondering if you would consider designing an "official" HOTAS for Star Citizen in collaboration with a peripheral manufacturer.

The main reason I would like to see this is because of a few things you have stated about gameplay already. If I was to manage power on my ship bewteen shields, weapons and engines, the easiest way I could think of would be some kind of slider, rather than having to find hotkeys on my keyboard or mapping it to an unmarked button on an existing HOTAS. you also mentions fly by wire can be de-activated, but how could you manage that many indiviual thrusters on a traditional HOTAS? 

Hawken and MWO have "official" controllers, I think Star Citizen deserves one too.

Hi Chris,

Which views will there be for ships and  boarding?

Will there be available third person view without HUD and with free camera to make screenshots? Will there be third person turret view like was in Freelancer to shoot enemies on your tail with turret on Hornet? Will cockpit view have any adantages? Will there be first person view without cockpit for people who will have their own cockpit with MFDs from Saitek?

Will there be both first person view and third person view during boarding or only one and which?

Originally posted by Weretigar

Originally posted by scottns
Will there be bigger fighters/ships with crews so someone can fly, some else on guns, someone else running repairs/sheilds, etc?

This TIMES 1000000. Seriously I want to know the awnsere to this question more then anything. 

Also In bigger ships can you design the interior like SWG on the Nova or the mining vessal? That would be super sweet if I could design the barracks on a flagship. 

Yes for example Constellation (one of the pledge ships) is for up to 4 people, one will fly Constellation, one its small fighter P52, two can man turrets. There will be many bigger ships for more people. If you are alone NPCs should help you

About multiplayer, instancing, read this:

https://www.robertsspaceindustries.com/chris-roberts-on-multiplayer-single-player-and-instancing/

+ there are some comments from Christopher Roberts

How will you handle people playing together with different friends, given that travel time across the galaxy will be several hours (according to the last interview) - To clarify a bit: I have friends that will probably play a lot MORE than me, and in so doing is likely to travel further and faster than me, and others that will play a lot LESS than me, and will be likely to hang around a few core systems a lot longer than me.

Will you allow multiple characters per account so that I can leave one character behind in the core systems piloting an Aurora so that I can play with those of my friends that are exploring more slowly than me while my "main" character heads out into the uncharted reaches of the galaxy in search of new jump-points and systems? Or do we need to use multi-crew ships to be able to play with friends that are "falling behind" in their travels?

Have you read The Reality Disfunction by Peter F. Hamilton?

I highly recommend this to whoever will be working on lore/story etc.

Is it an mmorpg or not, Definitively.

Originally posted by Weretigar

Originally posted by scottns
Will there be bigger fighters/ships with crews so someone can fly, some else on guns, someone else running repairs/sheilds, etc?

This TIMES 1000000. Seriously I want to know the awnsere to this question more then anything. 

Also In bigger ships can you design the interior like SWG on the Nova or the mining vessal? That would be super sweet if I could design the barracks on a flagship. 

Multiplayer ships, yes; interioir design, not yet

double posted

--Answering questions the community knows the answers to already--

Will there be bigger fighters/ships with crews so someone can fly, some else on guns, someone else running repairs/sheilds, etc?

A: Yes

How many people per server are we looking at for the persistant universe? 40? 100? 200? 1000+?

A: There is only 1 persistant Universe server.

Instancing? A: Yes

Sharding? A: No

How many players per instance? A: 50-100, no specifics yet, awaiting results of testing.

How will players be chosen to share same instance. A: It is an extremely complex system as described. taking into account your PvP/PvE preferences, any persons of interest you have marked, your friends list, and random people.

Also wondering about pirating npc ships and whether it will be possible to hijack npc frieghters/fighters or only other players ships. And if they plan on keeping the requirement that only ships larger than 2-crew can be hijacked. How would you hijack a vaduul fighter then? without boarding?

A: Definitely possible to Hijack NPCs, that would be the only way to obtain many of the ships, i.e. Carriers, alien vessels. Vanduul fighters would be obtained by boarding and taking over a Vanduul carrier full of fighters.

Is boarding only available in space?  Will ship raiding also be available on planets or docking stations?

A: Capturable Smuggler Asteroid Bases have been assured

How big will the game world be? Can this be explained in terms of time, speed, distance also?

A: 100 systems at launch, it would take ~30 minutes to travel from one system to another if you encounters absolutely 0 resistance (which will never happen). So...Big

Question: what are the mechanics that determine a ship's maximum velocity?

A: Mass vs Thrust, they will be implementing a max speed to keep the "dogfighting" style of combat.

Planet landing. Will it be cinematic, animation/script or “minigame”

A: Cinematic

Will there be a "space garage" where we can park and admire our spaceship collection?

A: Yes

Can we establish a homebase that we can operate from?

A: So far as we know, yes

Will there be non-combative roles like mechanic, researcher, scientist and medics that can work on a space station or planet?

A: there will be many non-cambat roles, the rest I don't know

Is it an mmorpg or not, Definitively.

A: It is a hybrid, more like Battlefield than WoW

Do we know what the specs are going to be for the PC.

We got an idea on when the testing is going to start..

Are the player roles going to be a single-player only or can we mix the players roles when we wish to.     EX.  Find a Carrier that we want to capture, I call a dew friends to see if they want in on taking it ...    if so can we all join an Instance in taking it.

Will there be boarding combat on the larger ships we attack, or will it be space only.

I have a question:

There were some polls on the SC forum about the PvP-PvE slider and people worried about two (or possibly more) difficulty settings in ONE persistent universe due to people being able to switch their PvP/PvE settings.

Each poll turned out, there are only 17-18% players who are strict non-PvPers, so is this slider really necessary and not bringing more troubles than advantages?

e.g. when I´m going on a trade route, I´m turning off PvP to make the route easier, not to run into player ships to lose my cargo.

 Altough I like PvP I have a disadvantage compared to the strict Non-PvPers who are going the safe route without PvP, earning more money by only fighting easy NPC ships, not risiking to lose their ships-

With this slider will the result be that no one with precious cargo will ever set to PvP and keep the PvE setting?

bottom line, please don´t make this a carebear game just to cater to an 18% minority of the player base!!

Originally posted by scottns
Will there be bigger fighters/ships with crews so someone can fly, some else on guns, someone else running repairs/sheilds, etc?

Answer is Yes, its a known information.

Originally posted by Butch808
How many people per server are we looking at for the persistant universe? 40? 100? 200? 1000+?

 

RSI server(s) will be able to handle hundreds of thousands of players and even millions, but you wont be able to see them all. There will be some resource distribution that will limit the number of players you can see in your vicinity to promote 'lag free' gameplay.

I guess I'll ask my own question instead of answering already answered questions :P.

Can we get more information on private server content? What will we be getting in a "package" with private server? Say I fire up my private server, will I have my own latest version of persistent universe of Star Citizen or will it be like a "starting package" with a few sectors to mod to your liking? I am asking this because I've never seen a game developer giving their online game to players to be ran on private servers. Think of Blizzard giving players an opportunity to run WoW on player's own private server, or CCP giving players an option to run EVE Online on player's own server. Does it make sense?

QUESTION FOR CHRIS:

"Duel-style combat with simulated damage?"

There will be many squadrons that will be coordinating their activities in the game, like sharpening their piloting & combat skills as a team. One way to hone your combat skills is through mock combat, however, putting your own ship in actual "real" jeopardy might be a serious downer!

Do you have any plans for some sort of dueling system, whereas if two or more pilots (possibly a whole squadron, even) choose to engage in a mock battle in space, their weapons will go into a severely low-power mode, and our flight computers will track virtual damage?

This way a squadron can form teams to compete against each other, as an exercise, without risk. This is what every branch of every military has always done throughout history. It would seem to make sense to have some sort of mock-combat capability right inside this game for similar reasons.

Of course, there would also need to be a Cancel option to return your weapons & "damaged" equipment back to full power status if you’re actually preyed upon by real enemies during one of these mock battles! 

Well, Chris, what do you think?

QUESTION FOR CHRIS:

Just how does will the cargo hold in Constellation work?   (i.e. How will we be able to get to the cockpit of our P52 fighter when the cargo hold is full?  

How do you access the sleeping area or the lavatory when you have a full cargo hold?  How do we load and off-load cargo when we have a P52 on board, does the P52 have to be jetisoned out of the bottom first in order to unload the cargo?)

QUESTION FOR CHRIS:

What's your vision on the type of PvE content that will be offered in the open world outside of the Squadron 42 military campaign?

You've used the word "sandbox" to describe the persistant universe quite a bit, which had me wondering about the balance between open-endedness and scripted quest content when you're in the "privateer" portion of the game beyond Squadron 42.  Will there be roughly an equal split between Squadron 42 military vs. the privateer stuff of scripted/narrative quest content?  That is, will there be a full "Freelancer" style campaign waiting for you after your'e done with Squadron 42?

QUESTION FOR CHRIS ROBERTS

May you ask him, what exacly Auto-Pilot will be?

• A "cinematic" auto-pilot:

The Auto-pilot will put you in your destination "instantly", by any mens. Can be a video or a real-time cut scene engine. What it really does is pick you from A and put you in B. You can think of warp-drive from EVE or Auto-Pilot from Wing Commander 3

• A "guide" auto-pilot.

The Auto-pilot will fly, by itself, the ship at the same speed what we would fly. The auto-pilot just will do things automatically. You can think of Auto-pilot from EVE.

-------

What Chris Roberts mean when he said: "You'll taken 30 min to cross a entire star system" ?

Which concept will be for travel inside a star system:

The First Concept

From what I understand of this note is you can go wherever you want to go in the star system manually.

The Second Concept

The star system will be divided in many instances, you can go to these instances using auto-pilot or manually.
Nothing stops you from going straight from one end to another

The Third Concept

The star system will be divided in many instances, you can't go to another instance without auto-pilot.
You can auto-pilot from initial instance (where you are) to instance where is the "exit" jump gate.

If you guys ask him this, we'll appreciate. The Forum thread about it have enough people interested and debating about it.

http://www.robertsspaceindustries.com/forum/showthread.php?13078-How-do-you-think-star-system-exploration-will-be