Star Citizen Live: Q&A Crafting and Base Building

Hello everybody we're back welcome to another episode of Star Citizen live I'm your host Jared hucke and if you've never seen Star Citizen live before lucky you no uh star STI live is where we take about an hour at the end of our week and invite our developers on uh to answer questions from you the Star Citizen viewer uh backer supporter player all that good stuff on today's show we have some of my favorite people Uh the folks behind the crafting and base Building Systems that were debuted at this year's citizen con crafting your home

presentation so without further Ado because we got a lot of meat to get to in this episode let's introduce Our Guest uh starting with who wants to go first who are you and what do you do Jacob okay looks like it's me yeah um hi I'm Jacob uh senior gameplay programmer on Crafting uh and yeah um I work on all kinds of gameplay systems uh Stuff like life support Salvage are probably the things I'm best known for uh but yeah now now working on Crafting right who's next Luke hey um so my name is Luke

heis uh I'm the lead environment artist on the EU locations team and we are responsible for building uh the beautiful worlds uh that uh the beautiful gameplay systems from the old guys are um you can play in okay and Dean hello hello uh yeah my name is deck I'm a system designer on Base building crafting and ton hi I'm Toren uh lead systems designer for the core Hiller gameplay system design team and what's that do basically that is pillers clearly yeah it's no it's the the now we have the overarching system design team that is

responsible for squadrun and Star Citizen system design team or system designs Yeah that's uh that's my position good for you all right so as we are one to do we put up a spectrum thread earlier this week to collect questions from our Star citizens uh people voted up which ones they wanted to see answered most uh you4 went through the thread and pulled the ones that were most applicable that had answers that are in further stages of planning are ready to share with folks today so if you are wondering as with every episode of Star

Citizen live why Your show or specific or why your episode why your Show episode question why your question uh wasn't picked or what not uh it's simply because we focus on the an on the questions that have answers that are a little further along in the development cycle and stuff like this because we want to make sure that the information we give you is as accurate and corret as possible even though we all know the only constant in game development is Change so with that we're going to jump right in uh you picked a big

one uh to start us off with so we'll just jump right into it uh what can player bases be using used for how will Base building integrate with other gameplay features such as Mining and trading anyone not all at once okay I'll take this one first um yes so this is a big one uh because we really believe that Base building will enable us to to really change the universe the way that Players will interact uh with one another or not want to interact with one another another and it it will become hopefully um more

of the backbone of the game where even if you want to inter interact with it or not it one way or another you are always influenced by the gameplay Loops of Base building so for an example maybe you're just a small Miner and you want to just mine your resources and kind of ship that out and make a make a a nice living out of that Then for you it might actually be good to to have a small little base close by the mining resources to more efficiently do your um your Gathering of your resources

and so on um and the cool thing with Base building is that we're trying to keep the the the possibilities um as open as possible um so that you can actually choose what you want to do with your your bases yourself so maybe you have these weird bases just stucked away in the universe where it's just Like there's no electricity and you just use it to store away some of the the stuff you found in the universe um or maybe it is um more of a a sprawling uh trading hub for you in your organization

or a base just built for um the most efficient refining um uh processes or suchar again the guys know a little bit more about the specific processes but from a visual perspective what we're really trying to do is to just give you a a beautiful base Template that you then can um let your imagination on lose and and kind of use it to way you want to use it as a player even though it might be very different than other players yeah I think you really hit on it there it's it's very much a base

can be used for whatever you want to use it for um that will provide options for you to do all kinds of stuff with it uh and there should be um or as likely to be relevant links into pretty much any kind of gameplay that you can Think of so we're actually adding to that go ahead adding to that it's like it's a growing feature in in addition to what what what we have already right so every every gameplay Loop that we have will be Al so have its representation in the in the not every

but most of the gameplay features that we have will probably have an a representation in the base building aspect and the the bigger our game grows the more features I introduced they will also find a slot in In in the base in your base and so yeah so we're talking about going go ahead I was just going to say even if you don't have your own base it's still impactful because you'll be visiting the other people who have made their bases and using their facilities so even if you're not doing the work it's still an

interesting thing for you to use so we're talking player player housing obviously uh uh refining bases uh fabrication bases for crafting which We'll get into more today uh hunting lodges for people who who want to go out and and and take out the Fawn and stuff uh Logistics you mentioned storage stuff it's basically uh and then it goes on and on and on it's whatever whatever folks want to use their bases for uh there will be some way shape or form to support that in most cases okay cool um one of the big questions that

folks had we're of course on our journey to 4.0 right now uh folks are watching the uh PTU for the next uh wave and release and the eventual uh publication of 4.0 uh the big question I saw probably most commonly after season gone was how does all this work with shards Yep this is a big one indeed I think I saw this asked 20 odd times um so the the plan is that every base every part of land every extraction pot will be visible across all the shards within a region and then a lot of

the functionality of the base will also be Available across all the shards within a region so if I make a pace and I set up a shop people on other shards can come visit and use my shop the exception is going to be raiding and attacking a base this can only occur on A Single Shard and which Shard that is is dynamic based on the rule set the easiest rule is always is the owner online then the raid can only occur on that owner's Shard this means that if I'm on another Shard and I rock

up with a gun and I shoot the Base it'll prompt me you'll have to change shard in order to attack the space um obviously as shards increased we see this less and less but the advantage of that is that you you'll never be in the scenario where your Shard you're not able to defend your base you'll always be able to defend your base in this scenario and if you're offline or there's a representation of your base in another Shard it's basically just a visual replica in those Places yeah but people can also still use it

so the shops will still be functioning that kind of thing it's just when it comes to attacking it all has to occur on A Single Shard interesting and I can already see half the comments already in response to that answer I there's a there's still a road ahead between now and the release of of Base building and crafting I promise you we will re revisit this topic uh with more and more context on how that will work As server Mission comes in line and the technology continues to evolve um as with everything there's a plan

today as the technology progresses that may change or evolve over time but that's the current uh implementation that we're working towards and you can guarantee we'll be talking about it again between now and the release uh what will this look like in well this so this is just a followup so so how will this look like in terms of Offline rating and base defenses is there any aspect of this if I just don't log in is my stuff just always safe is there is there some Decay timer is there some danger how how do you

get rid of old decrepit bases that are just abandoned yeah so if you are in the scenario where your base is in a lawless area and you haven't secured the uh the planetary Shield Tech from the previous we previous week's station Warfare um then you are open to be raided whether You're online or offline you can create your own defenses to deter that you will be able to create your own shielding which forces them into a ground assault walls to delay the ground assault turrets and such and then it could be the case where they're

raiding the base and they don't actually know what's what's available to loot they don't know what's in your storage so it would be wise to occasionally take your valuables out of the Lawless area and haul them Back to a more safer spot like Tera or stanson but if you find yourself open like that you can be raided okay uh I like how these first questions are all about how do I destroy and and and pillage other people's bases not about how do I live my life in these bases how do these bases make my life

better and more enjoyable the first questions WRA the B are how do I take it away from somebody else great we spent so much love and work in Order to make the most beautiful bases and now we're talking all about just getting rid of it great yeah and that's of course like I said the Lawless systems like pyro and stuff now we did introduce and you just mentioned the idea of planetary Shields how uh what's our current think what's our current plan for how those will work in high security systems versus low security systems yes

so that the plan is with planeter Shield Tech that if you have it Your base is immune to attack your stuff can stolen and there's actually two layers of shielding going on here you have a air Shield which prevents bombardments and then you also have a basically it hugs the building so even if you go through the shield with a tank and try and shoot the building directly it still won't take damage so you really are you're very very very safe when it comes to P Shield T okay and that and that's the same for

if I if I build it Out in the fields of HST or if I put it on somewhere in pyro and I have the credits to maintain the shield correct yep gotcha okay uh will mining extractors and other processors automatically eject boxes allowing anyone to just tractor them away or will we have to eject them by hand all right uh I'll take I'll take this one but um there's a few things here so there's lots of different Crafting machines uh that do their processes a little differently uh but most of them will have an internal

buffer that lets them hold the results of their process until you're ready to pick them up that being said you can also have them uh directly put stuff in boxes as soon as it's ready uh but if you're worried about people nicking it you don't need to be so concerned uh because they'll be subject to the same sort of permissions as anything else in Your base so that's like you um the mag lock that stops people stealing your chair will also stop them stealing your cargo boxes uh unless they have permission to move them they'll

be mag locked to the output grid and we'll get into the mag locks here in a little bit Yeah there also there's uh going to be some machines that will be able to send their crafting results directly to your location storage uh whether that be your hanger or a freight elevator or Something so there there'll be options right there there was a mention that says kind of of like an underground uh Transit System and stuff that that that allows certain buildings to connect with other buildings underground even if you don't see them connected above ground

yeah fre elevator n work yeah yeah um hey a mining question uh will underground deposits respawn over time and how is the overall Rarity of Minerals accounted for in the economy uh short answer yes uh so they will respawn but uh it is very unlikely uh that they will respawn on the land plot that you already have so if you already have a base you already extracted it every every mineral that was below your extractor it's very unlikely that uh the the deposit will respawn so uh what we want to see there is players more

moving around in their bases and basically going through new to New locations and actually grabbing new resources and to answer the the economy part of the question yes that is a a huge undertaking that we have to go through here and that is like uh like we really have to get certain resources out of the system and the system being our game and that means that we uh as the system design team and everyone working on that uh we really have to work closely with the economy team and uh make sure that like even everything

that We pull out of the system is Meaningful and then we create certain values for certain resources because we really want to have like a player driven economy and we want to have a healthy in-game economy that is driven by our game and uh it's a it's a challenge uh but we are uh we are definitely motivated to to resolve that and get that like in a in a really good State you you me so what go ahead what you're talking about there is like the concept of resource sources and Syns cuz uh having your

extra ractor on your base is a source of resources until it's depleted but then we need to make sure that there's also syns in for that resource in various gameplay Loops so that you don't just well just have inflation essentially of uh just a buildup of resources you can't do anything with so yeah that'll be a very careful Balancing Act yeah interesting in the answer you you mentioned something that I think maybe not a lot Of folks have considered this idea of having multiple or mobile bases uh obviously you know folks with the land claims

and we'll talk about the land claims in a bit you know you build your home you might you might stake out your home this this this this is where I I I store my stuff and I decorate and all that stuff but for industrial purposes uh while you could certainly build that location up then go out gather stuff bring it back there is a game playay Style where you then instead create smaller mobile bases and move and move them around to as as you need to stuff like this yeah so you can still have your

your your static home base with your like first extractor but at some point your deposit just runs empty and that like you can still leave the extractor there if you like the look of it but then like if you still like the the area and you don't want to move away you can just like disassemble the the Extractor and then like decide to okay let's buy a new plot or let's move to a new plot and actually find another resource there so um yeah I think that leads into our to stay stay I think that

leads into our next question really well uh can we deconstruct buildings and how is this done uh yes you can destruct you can destruct the deconstruct your building um so there it is like like uh you would construct it There's the construction AR mode so uh you will make use of the drones the drones then will disassemble the the building and if you have a freight elevator they will automatically put uh the material that they gather from the disassembling process onto the freight elevator um you will get some of the material back that you invested

in building but we will like because like it's it's it's just a it's a gameplay mechanic but it also makes sense right In the disassembling process you will not get one to one what you invested there is a loss of material in there every video game economy in the world has to have syns resource syns My worry is that you know like like Ikea furniture once you take that thing apart does it does it go back together the same way function course um so we've talked a lot about B I guess actually the the beauty

of that is that It doesn't have to go back the same way once you take it apart you can use those materials to make something else out of it once your extract is dried up you know make something else instead enough uh so let's talk about making stuff we've done a lot of Base building stuff here uh let's do some crafting um how does crafting change existing Gathering methods such as Mining and Salvage yeah that is a bigger topic Because um yeah so the the tldr or the short version is the mining that we have

right now will change more drastically uh again and we will revisit like other Gathering methods that we have like we have mining we have Salvage and Salvage will also get like a nice little treat but uh let's start with mining so um on the mining side we we um basically have to because of the quality that we add to the the the mines that you will now find um we talked about that and we Considered that okay with the mining system right now where we have multiple resources per rock that doesn't make any sense because

you might want to look for quality instead of finding like a specific resource so we want to make it easier for the player to actually look for the specific resources they need for the crafting processes so we will basically split up or we break out the the randomness in the mbls that we currently have but have bespoke minable So we will find the Copper Rock the iron Rock the uh titanium titanium rock thank you like I was like yeah um so the titanium Rock and because what you're looking for is a better quality there right

so you will still look for like the titanium rock that basically fits like the has the perfect quality but you don't have to look for a rock that contains uh titanium anymore interesting and uh here We also want to emphasize or we want to utilize uh the new plan attch that was also talked about at citizen con where we want to make use of the the biomes that we get through those and then have like more meaningfully placed uh minerals on the planet so you will find certain materials more likely at a Riverside or in

a certain biome versus uh in in other biomes so we are really looking forward to get more control over that so uh yeah we are internally quite Excited about that and um yeah and additionally on the mining so we now talked about like the the the minerals themselves we will also be more concrete on the mables that you find based on the profession that you picked so if you are a ship Miner you will find ship mining deposits if you are an FPS Miner you will only find FPS MBL and and if you are ground

vehicle Miner you will find ground vehicle resources and if you f if you want to Use your ground extraction tool in your base you will find specific materials there so what I'm saying here is that we don't have the shared minerals anymore that we currently have between FPS and ground vehicle mining we will have the hard Cuts so everything you will find FPS in fps mining you will only find an FPS mining everything ground ground vehicle mining only there only ship mining only there so this we will have a clearer separation so that we can

Actually encourage the different game Loop gameplay Loops a bit more effectively yeah I'm really looking forward to that that it'll mean that whichever kind of mining profession you choose to do you'll have some valuable unique materials that you can only get with that profession it's going to be a lot more different materials as well yeah the amount of materials that we will um yeah and you're can be sure you'll be sure That between ISC andal we'll definitely cover that in the future I'm I'm I really like of everything you just said and it all sounds

great I like this idea of of moving them to the biomes and and and making them biome specific and stuff because while scanning will always be a part of of the star ssen experience and that will continue to evolve and get better that this idea that someone who is experienced and someone who is knowledgeable can just you know fly over You know do low flying you know o over the surface of a planet and and use it like okay no that's an area I'm looking for where titanium is and I know titanium spawns in in

areas that look like this and easily spot that and stuff like this it's you know be low flying can evolve to being surveying in a manner of speaking for the people also easier to to find the minerals right right now you are like like uh I yeah you like little shout out to to red Monster but you you use like mining Guides Online for example to know exactly where you have to go to actually find what you are looking for and with this we want to make it more accessible that you it's logical way you

find certain things and then it's also clearer in the sense of because it's just one thing that you will find there right so hopefully that or like our goal is to make it more accessible and not that like accessible in the sense of People that are new to the game are also more attracted to the gameplay Loop but we still want to keep the expert uh gameplay to it um absolutely yeah um easy to learn difficult to master yes um there there's the the thing that I I mentioned at the beginning that uh Salvage will

get also uh a little revisit and uh something that I'm really happy and excited to tell you is uh we will have some time to revisit it and what we will do there is I think something that a lot of people already expected or for the initial release and that is in regards to the construction material that you actually get from uh munching uh from from structural Salvage from structural Salvage thank you um uh that that is that uh basically the ships uh are made out of certain components and uh once you basically gather them

through that you will have those materials and then there will be Processes to separate them but this is something that is still still being decided of what way we want to go down there now and the thing I I really like about this is that it ties it into the uh dismantle side of crafting that if you dismantle something you'll get back some of what it's made of same thing with Salvage your your ship just kind of becomes a portable dismantling fabricator thing that's that's very cool and you're right that is something That's been asked

for uh for some time this idea that you know if if I'm looking for you know if I'm trying to craft my own spacecraft and I I I need holes I need materials you know for the hole I can go and do Hull scraping and gather some of the materials that I need for that you know it's it's it's thematically uh similar um yeah but as as an additional note there so there will be some material matal that you won't get back so like in the crafting Process right so you will use some materials in

the crafting process that are like let's say um volatile or um like in some way exclusive so if you would then uh structural Salvage your your recently crafted vehicle you might get some of the material not back at all like if for example bad example but for an example if you used antimatter uh in the crafting process you won't get that back you will just get back uh aluminum or copper and stuff like that but those Exclusive materials you won't get back in the reverse process of crafting gotcha um I'm just happy I got you

to say munching again um while we're still on Crafting here uh will there be limited use blueprints yes uh in in short yes um we're going to be supporting both finite use blueprints so like you get it you can only use it nend times uh and then also blueprints that have a cool down in between uses so you can only use it you Know periodically um it's just to give us some extra ways to balance and and limit certain things but uh we're not giving any examples of that at this point yeah um I I

I was there on on a Hy server Star Wars Galaxies when it launched cornering the market on cat dragon pearls and just ripping out so many items so many weapons and stuff so many armors uh to Corner the market before anybody else could catch up so it's nice to know that there are going To be limits on some of the more interesting things can you trade blueprints um yes and no so uh we mentioned at siton that uh the blueprints are awarded to your character essentially to your character's virtual blueprint Library uh so if you

get directly credited a blueprint from a mission or a reputation reward or something then it's it's bound to your character um you Can't trade it but there will be some gameplay where you find blueprints on a data pad and that uh data pad data pad can be traded uh before you uh read the data off it once it's been downloaded though uh it's it's gone it's it's uh a onetime download essentially so uh if you've already found this blueprint uh and you find another uh blueprint of it in a Loot Crate somewhere you can give

it to your friend but once they've downloaded it the data padge is dead Okay um and eventually when we have a more robust trading system I can see that being a hot commodity on the on whatever our version of an auction house will be um can we use stolen materials to craft absolutely the crafter doesn't care about about the legality of anything I mean heck you can probably uh steal an item dismantle it into parts and make a whole new thing out of it so seems Seems like a good way to get rid Evidence yeah

actually that is the recommended Loop if you if you steal an item right so because items have an ownership Associated to them and either you somehow get rid of the ownership marking and replace it or you go the easy way and just disassemble it and craft the item yourself because you don't have to hunt down the materials or not as much materials because again not the one to one ratio if you disassemble okay uh yeah but I do like the idea of Nicking someone's entire spaceship and dis deconstructing it and then making some other out

of it y um Luke we'll go back to base building for a bit how customizable will these things be in terms of materials colors shapes yeah like we discussed earlier we really want to make sure that players are able to kind of make um uh make the base their own and to also use the base for whatever um new systems or existing systems that we have out there and Gameplay Loops right so for an example a hunter Lodge you might want to tint it in a specific way with the buildings and so on so that

it Blends nicely into the environment so that it doesn't stand out or get any attention of other bypassers flying by where if you're building more of a trading Hub we want you to be able to kind of um like again tint the buildings maybe put logos on the sites um and really kind of advertise like a this is my location come here trade um And yeah really uh have different uh ways of of integrated we have a lot of beautiful planets that have very different biomes and colors and structures and we just want to make

sure that we are um providing a nice pallet of different um uh tints and customizables to kind of um make it fit within every biome every planet where you want to build your base um something that we showed in Base building as well uh again uh that a lot of people caught Up on is that um a major well majority or a large portion of the buildings will also be able to be connected uh one another so we're looking at um we have generic buildings and then the player can decide what they want to do

within that building or how they want to tint it and then those can be connected to corridors and and other buildings and Link together or to a hanger and you can build your own little infrastructure with that um well I think it's really uh We're really excited to kind of see what players are are going to do with those uh options and um and I know this first version of Base building we're talking about uses what we refer to as the high-tech aesthetic um this next question is looking way out but we'll ask it um

will there be different styles of structure in the future uh they give examples like a shanty town or even alien influence Buildings yeah so there's um indeed with the introduction of Base building there's a lot of possibilities out there for us um for now we're very focused on uh on establish establishing this high-tech uh visual very well um we want to um we have a a specific set in mind in which we want to release with um after that like we've always already or Dean discussed in his presentation in citizen con and already hinted at

is that there is more functionality to come That we also want to look at like for example branching and trading and so on um and after that it's really going to be a question about what kind of do we want to expand the the current Hightech set with new functionality or do we want to start building a new set with a new aesthetic but that is something that will um we first want to see how players are going to react to the initial set and then from there we'll make informed decisions based on the The

Players Reactions love to hear it um we mentioned the mag locking at citizen Con in earlier today so I want to get to this uh I've seen a lot of questions and you've got one here uh how will be how will we be able to decorate our homes in in a way that there isn't physics Jank just all over the place yeah that's um I I can yeah I understand what a question comes from um yes so one of the options that we will have with um decorative er uh the the Mode in which you

get to decorate your place is that you'll be able to kind of Mac lock your furniture into place and therefore only you or certain people with the right credentials are allowed to move uh the position of that uh that object um in the future there will be ways uh to disable the mech loock I believe but I'll have to look at Declan about this depend on security and yeah out in the future yeah that's a again for the Initial release we were still focusing on just uh letting you build your bases and then in a

future patch we're going to um we will uh start to really go into like uh PVP and um and then the the mech locking discussion will definitely be address there as well uh for now we just want to make sure that that people get to create their bases and that they um they have a a possibility to just um have a little bit of a safeguard with the the beautiful things that they've Collected over the universe and how they want to put them down and um one of the the IDS that we were also playing

with and we'll hope that uh maybe some players are daring enough to to try it out is perhaps have a um a ship trading base and where you have your uh specific show room ships uh there or something uh but uh yeah you need to be daring that they're not getting nicked I guess or yeah again s for the future as well I'm sure they'll also maglock boxes together To make the ugliest structures that we've ever seen before so we can look forward to that don't give them any idas we're Made Beautiful art for the

you don't need to give people ideas I already know what the first base built is going to look like and I can't say it I am sure will be the most magnificent base ever built I have high trust in the community uh and in case anybody's new to video games uh the acronym is called TTP and uh we'll see how long that is it's my last show of the year right yeah it is um can you work together to create a base uh can you work together to create a base uh or can you charge

a fee for using a base of services uh yes yes um again we're trying to make it very Dynamic and open so that different bases uh can cater to different players and different player experiences so you'll be able to build um small bases and maybe even slightly Larger bases but it might take a while by yourself and then of course you can just team up and you can together with a front really quickly build a a smaller base or really start to try uh to uh literally take things to the moon in the future um

but you'll be able to build larger structures uh will be recommended to do that in in groups I think I saw some people discussing whether they would be able to sell services on their base though That's yeah I think that's that'll be pretty cool that you can build up some infrastructure and uh have people pay to use it okay when you say self services my mind went to a different place what are you talking about I'm talking about you know I've built some really high tier crafting machines and uh I'm just going to let people

come to my base and craft stuff with the with the best machines yeah that's definitely What I was thinking it's definitely what were you thinking I'm thinking let's move to the next question uh I'm I'm just very excited to just like I I used to be a little bit of a miner myself and I can't wait for people just to kind of figure out like oh I got my little little base here I'm mining my own uh resources and now I'm going to start shipping it to like Dean's base who is all his base is

all about refining for an example and I Go and I use his Services there and I get my my valuables refined and then I'll sell it at Jacob who is building his base and then over the weeks and months that I'm I'm playing my Loop and doing my Adventures I can actually see Jacob's base expanding and I can see how my involvement has a has a tangible impact in the UN iverse you've also made some money which is quite good true and maybe even made some friends meet new people by selling Them stuff um next

question uh can you spawn in your base or group bed log group bed log now we're back to the services I was thinking about uh yeah yes but uh so so you need the the you need the prop building for that so um right now the intention is that if you have a med bed or if you have an Hospital area in your base um you can use the imprint system there and then use this as your your Gathering Point as the Group okay Dean hello sit up okay yeah bases in caves or asteroids uh

I would like to apologize to all the Goblins out there but it's not the road map right now okay we had to get to at least one question where it wasn't something we were doing uh let's see um can we start a build using our drones from something like the Starlancer then leave yeah again a yes answer yes you can um so once you set the the the building in motion um you can can go on carry on lock off and uh the Drone will basically do its its job and while you're offline and uh

if the build finishes uh the Drone will then try to get back to its host or its Mothership and if the mother ship or the the host is not around anymore it will self-destruct and uh Yeah you need to get a new drone afterwards and but uh you will get a replacement by if you used your your star laner for example by simply repairing the star lenser and then you get it replaced by this process okay I'm I'm gonna ask a question here because I'm thinking about this obviously either with the time it takes to

build a base is not going to be instantaneous and we're not going to talk about the time now that'll be a Thing that's determined over play testing and further development and stuff but in that time with your drone swirling around round or whatever what happens when people try to park their Idis right where you're trying to build a base like you've started it was a it was a flat parcel of land you've started the process it was yours and then you started it you've set your drones like you said you've logged out and five minutes

after you log out somebody Parks Their address there so still yeah that that in short that's not going to be possible because there's um I think we we mentioned it briefly in the sacon presentation that it's a physicalized hologram uh that the the intended place of a building uh will be physically barrier um I don't know if you want to call it a force field or something but just yeah um you can't park there because it's under construction gotcha yeah correct that's Cool I think I missed that um let's go all the way to the

end here where can Space Station be built and will there be smaller scale stations for smaller groups so there isn't plans at the moment for small scale space stations and there will be some limitations on when you can build a space station um but you're not limited to just in orbit around the planet you can build it way out in the depths of space and have it Well hidden uh for whatever you want to hide it for um yeah so yeah largely anywhere but there will be limitations yeah I I want to I want to

clarify uh when he says that there no plans for a smaller scale station he's talking about the physical the physicality of it right now it's like we're we're building towards our first physical space stations and those are the ones we're building to as far as how many people it will take to build that one size space Station and expand and stuff that is also a thing we have ideas we have plans we have intentions right now but these are things that will continue to evolve as we get closer to the the actual implementation of this

feature uh it's it's one of those things where and if you've watched star live ISC listen to any of these developer interviews for any am of time uh this is a con this is one of the only constants uh besides change and that's that we have to remain Open to better ideas more ideas different ideas uh different discoveries about what the tech will allow us and stuff like this what's actually fun we may have this idea that it takes this much then we find out well you know this this is actually where where it's fun

and stuff so uh as far when you say that there's no plans for a smaller space station that is that is a physicality thing and not a comment on the amount of people Necessary to build one uh that is something that's going to be developed through a whole bunch of testing with you guys and our guys so uh let's move on if you if you pledge for a ship will you receive a blueprint to craft it if if you buy a from the digler can you make more no no you cannot um pledging a ship

does not give you the blueprint to craft it you got to earn that like everybody else um but it gives You the ship and you can you can use the ship uh like I said at siton though once you've got a ship however you got it whether you pledged for it or got it in game or or nicked it or something um you will be able to upgrade it so even though you can't frft directly make a brand new high tier ship you can upgrade the one that you pledged for um for in-game materials and

research and all that but yeah you'll be able to uh do that to ensure your vehicle has the the Best stats that you want for it okay and you just butted up against one of the other big questions that a lot of folks had after that presentation uh WTF the upgrade system how does this work what what what are tier one 2 3 four five is it is it the same thing for every ship is it different for every ship is it is it customizable like I seem to think you you just hinted at there

uh how are we expecting this tier system to work Keeping in mind there's still lots of development between now and its implementation yes absolutely um but I'll talk about the current plans uh so first of all there's different kinds of blueprint and the most of them will be upgradeable through through research um different kinds of blueprint will get different benefits from researching them so like a refining blueprint uh will get more efficient uh so you get a better yield of refined goods for raw input um Or like a repair blueprint might be able to repair

a little bit more effectively stuff like that um but the one that everyone's probably asking about is the creation blueprint which lets you make new stuff uh and higher tier one of those will let you craft the higher tier of the relevant item so let's say you've already got the tier one blueprint for a gun and it has stats like fire rate and recoil you'll be able to see on the Crafting UI the stat range for those stat types and the exact value that you get when you actually make the gun will be dependent on

the quality of the resources that you put in when you upgrade the blueprint to tier two you'll get the tier you'll see the tier 2 version of the gun and those stat ranges will be shifted so uh it'll you know have a higher top end and a higher low end as well it'll be on average better um but the actual number That you get is still dependent on the quality of the materials you put in um of course you know the higher tier uh blueprints also need you to bring more advanced materials to them um

and yeah related to that is that These Blueprints have aspects we call them uh it's kind of like parts of the product so like the barrel of a gun or the the grip of the gun or something like that uh which will influence different stats uh of the item so the if you put Materials into the grip part of the gun um the quality of those materials might impact the recoil but it's not going to impact to the rate of fire um uh and this becomes especially interesting for the very highest tier of of creation

blueprints because then you'll get a choice of what materials to put in to certain aspects and based on the choice you make you it will influence different stats so you might be able to choose between improving The Recoil or the Reload speed depending on which material you put in interesting um yeah and then I guess the only other kind of blueprint that's interesting for upgrade is the upgrade blueprint itself um because research and upgrade blueprints are not quite the same thing um but if you use an upgrade blueprint to increase the tier of an existing

item uh none of the existing stats or materials on that item matter anymore it's just the new materials that you put in or the upgrade Will affect the St and the important reason for this is so that whether you craft an item straight at tier three or craft it at tier one and then upgrade to tier two and then upgrade to tier three the resulting item will be the same if you use the same materials so so you can skip a step if you need if if you have the blueprint you have yeah if you

have the creation blueprint you can Skip and you skip straight to whatever tier you want the upgrade basically only exists If you already have the item and you don't want to spend all of the resources to make a whole another copy of it you just want to spend the smaller amount of resources necessary to turn it into the higher tier one and and that upgrade blueprint I assume one of the ingredients is the original item oh yes yes and so and so you were speaking uh you're speaking primarily of of guns and items but the

but this system uh one would assume is also Applicable to the ship as well yep absolutely not only ships also ship components it's like something that we really want to make sure is that you like we don't want you to go through the process of because you crafted your tier one item you then have to disassemble it to just craft a tier 2 item right so that there's like nonsense so we really want to enable players to have their item and then use the upgrade to Actually still have the item but then the better version

of that so extrapolating this out here if you take some if you take something like an aurora we'll start just with a base level here and and you you have now upgraded the hole to stage five or tier five where you've now used specific materials to to customize specific elements and stats of of that hole then you've done the same with the weapons and you've customized the weapons up to Tier five with certain materials to to benefit certain things and you've done the same thing with the components to custom up to tier five to customize

certain uh attributes different you can have an aurora that is dramatically different than David's Aurora or Pete's Aurora or something it's absolutely this is where we start to see uh uh the differential between not just individual ship models but within the ship model itself and when Some decisions are made that affect the Baseline of a ship uh you you know the one that folks uh can can buy in as Mo or whatnot and so this uh those decisions don't happen in a in a vacuum they have to be accounted for also the potential upgrade path

that is coming with crafting and so like this and and if a if a ship has been is in a certain way where you're like well I'm not really a fan of it in its base configuration but through time and Effort on the players paal maybe you can take a ship that you weren't totally happy with and now make it to something that becomes your daily driver yeah this this cools back to the uh heavy balancing effort that toston was talking about earlier uh that one of the big challenges is is going to be um

B you very carefully balancing uh all of the different possibilities that you'll have access to with crafting uh CU instead of just one ship has these Values for these thrusters the you the ship Hull can change uh and the thrusters can change yeah multiple tiers of them quality scaling lots of potential for for variation so yeah um we will be paying very close attention to this you're just creating a whole lot of work for Rich too and his team aren't you yes sorry guys he's going to bust through the wall like the Kool-Aid Man here

in a minute Um all right we've got a little bit more time let's go let's go back to some Base building here um how well will play will bases blend into the surrounding environment I think longtime players can remember that the the first the very first Outpost that Outpost that ever appeared in 3.0 were almost always up on stilts because they couldn't deform the terrain uh how well will our stuff blend in with the terrain yeah so you'll be able to kind Of again with the tinting you'll be able to kind of uh pick certain

tint pallets that work better with the the biomes that they are in located um you can also put buildings around uh trees and stuff if you put the building on top of the trees it will get rid of the trees with with the nice Precision uh placement mode through uh the construction er uh mode you'll be able to to find a nice position uh and to kind of get some trees to Maybe cover a little bit of Your building as well um we'll see how that goes um uh because we also have the construction drones

need to fly in and out so we'll have to um we're taking those things in account but you'll be able to kind of blend it in um pretty well if you want and additionally we'll have some buildings that actually will be able to kind of reduce the signature of your base as well to kind of further kind of hide your base if you want to or In the other way like really make it stand out in the base uh in the environment uh but yes uh the idea is that we will have different tin planets

that fit with the different biomes that can be found on the planets U one would assume there has to be some level of terrain manipulation though is that entirely automated by the system or will any of that be in player control yeah so the idea is that we don't want to fully um allow the players To to customize the terrain to their liking because it would take away from uh the value of scouting for a good location so there will be um uh buildings that will do a very light um uh Trin man manipulation just

to make sure that like the the staircases work and so on um but the majority uh the best solution that we'll provide is is the use of of foundation TS the big concrete slaps that people get to place down and then on those they'll be able To kind of put their buildings uh down and those will deform the terrain so if you have a plot of land that is not particularly flat for you to build connectable buildings then the IDE is that you would put down a foundation uh first and then from there on you'll

be able to uh connect your buildings on top of there um's we can squeeze a couple more in before we're done here uh how will player trading at bases Work all right I suppose there's there's two ways to look at this you've got your seller and the buyer if we look at the seller then you've either acquired your items or you've crafted them and you want to put them up for sale you can do that by placing them in a freight elevator listing them on a connected terminal or make a physical shop and then there'll

be a mobile glass app where you can say hey I have T3 bombs for sale everyone come and crab them Before they're gone and then as the buyer you browse the advertisements on this new trading app go to the base and purchase them or if there is a very particular item that you want you can put in a buy order and you'll say I want this item this many of them these stats deliver it to this location obviously that would cost more because someone has to accept that and then do the uh the delivery but

it means that you get a very particular item that you Want okay so it it sounds like base one one of the major uh uh components of Base building will be this um this next major step forward in player trading uh that folks have been waiting for like right now there's there's there isn't a super easy system for of of I'm going to give you this and you give me you know credits in return uh so it sounds like much most of that comes online for the first time with Base Building yeah and it would

be interesting to see actually the the spread between you know like local shops and people who ban scars make like big Market bases where it's shared and hundreds of people can come and sell their stuff yeah and that's not to say that obviously we' we've got mod Trader app for uh for M Glass and stuff that's not to say that this comes out before that comes out it's just as far as I'm aware speaking in this moment right here It's there's this and I'm not up to date on the release of additional mod Trader apps

so I'm not saying one comes before the other I'm just speaking with what I know last question last question we can let you all enjoy your weekend um when uh when the Pioneer was first introduced in 2017 uh it was in uh alongside it uh was the this idea of land claims uh and for every time the Pioneers come back into the pledge store it's come back alongside uh land claims Uh in this year's IE uh it was brought back to the store without the land claims um that's LED some people to speculate that land

claims are gone or they're not they're not a part of the design anymore um I'm going to say right now they are they are uh let's talk about what our current thinking is what our current plan plan as what our current intention for how land claims are supposed to work and keep in mind that like everything else uh there There's a there's a period of time between now and when this is implemented and we reserve the right to have any better ideas that come along we reserve the right to look at what you've said on

Reddit and spectrum and everywhere else on YouTube comments and have that inspire better ideas so while these things may change let's talk about what the current plan for imp implementation is for land claims yeah so there's a lot here um I'll kind Of walk through just plots of land in general and then we'll talk about how the land kind beacons uh fall into that so when you go to acquire a plot of land to build on there's a couple choices you need to make straight off the bat we have a general plot which allows you

to build anything and then there are prospecting plots which are a little bit smaller they're cheaper and they're more geared towards mining uh you'll see a like a square Layered on the terrain and that's basically your current selected po of land you can grab a face of it make it a rectangle make it a bigger square and this is you selecting the surface area that you want and the cost scales up with the surface area if you were to purchase a 1x1 kilm and then another 1X one kilm it would actually be more expensive because

the cost will take into account the total surface area you own on the planet um where the beacon Comes in is that you kind of skip this initial UE cost for purchasing a plot you just use the beacon and you have your plot of land from then onwards if you bought with U or you used a land claim Beacon there'll be a reoccurring um U tax and if you fail to pay that tax over a period of time you'll begin to lose rights to your base and eventually you'll lose complete ownership of the land complete

own of the building they Could be looted someone else can buy up that area um that's you know it's very important that we avoid this concept of like a dead base we don't want people to be able to just go AFK either for a year even though they stacked up billions in their account we still don't want them to be able to have a a dead base uh we want to free that up for the players in addition to that there will be some limitations where you can buy plots of Land and use beacons we're

going to have for one of a better term National Park both in lawful and Lawless areas and this it's a no build Zone and this allows us to Reserve Land that's pristine for exploration it's pristine for resource Gathering and so on um I think that's oh this is one one other things sorry when you have your plot of land there'll also be an exclusion Zone around it where no one else can buy or build so you can't get boxed in that is A high level summary I suppose of the uh the current plan for land

claims and plots in general gotcha so let me let me see if I understand this to resmar it here so anybody will be able to go and purchase a a plot of land as long as it's available as long as it's not in one of these no-build exclusion zones you reference national parks they're not literal national parks on pyro 3 or whatever but you know areas that are protected for gameplay reasons we have To make sure that there's still plenty of areas to do missions and and and Mina bles and stuff like this so anybody

will be able to buy a plot of land in one of the buildable areas the land claims uh basically are your like like coupon for that it's like you can pay a brand new ueec cost uh to purchase that or if you have a land claim it's like no I already prepaid this is my prepaid voucher and you hand that in and you get the C you get the land claim for that so it's open To everyone one is just a a voucher you've already got that ready for you after that there is a maintenance

cost we talked about money syncs money syns are essential to every video game uh economy that's ever existed so there will be a recurring uh fee if you're not if you don't log in Long uh often enough and again the time period will be things that adjust like everything else in Star Citizen uh if you don't log in enough uh to pay your stuff eventually you'll lose Uh you'll lose a control or ownership of that land and then I assume anybody can do whatever the heck they want with your base and the stuff that you've

you've you've you've put there uh this is really good because like you said back on azi server I had a city on nabo that was still there four years after I stopped playing so um and then yeah and then and then obviously the again reiterating the limitations uh not every single space on The planet will be buildable you're probably not going to be able to put your base right up against the wall of lville for instance there's going to be exclusion zones uh to maintain all the other gameplay elements but we have a lot of

planets and a lot of moons with a lot of surface area and we're making more so yeah that about get it Declan I mean that's about right yeah cool gentlemen that's it thank you so much uh thank you so much for taking time out of Your out of your schedule to to be here with us uh uh it's always a pleasure to to have you on here uh I knew when we were putting together this uh this presentation for citizen con you how excited I was from the first day on like this is this is

um there are jokes on on spectrum and Reddit about how crafting is the answer to everything it's not the answer to everything but it is the next major uh step forward in the evolution of our of our game alongside Base Building where finally for the first time you have a true sense of ownership in the builds in the universe so I'm really excited about both I know a lot of our players are so thank you for your continued work obviously between now and the release we will follow up there will be additional ISC additionals where

where we address the questions that no doubt come up after this episode so so keep them coming uh Torsten uh Jacob uh Luke and Dean thank you so much uh for Your time um this is our last Star Citizen live of the Year folks so thank you so much for tuning in um we have one more episode episod of ISC that airs uh next Thursday it's our standard uh patch report episode where we're going to revisit a bunch of the stuff that are coming online with the upcoming 4.0 and then uh I go on fishing

uh we'll see you back here in 2025 so uh keep your eyes on the robertsspaceindustries.com website for updates on uh 4.0 when it Moves from uh the next into the next wave of p and then its eventual release and uh yeah uh thanks for watching thanks for supporting thanks for letting me do this John you did really well today I can't tell the difference uh be nice to each other we'll see you next year everybody take care all right we're out folks