David Braben Powerplay AMA

[1971efc]

Will Power-aligned CMDRs share private channel(s) and scanner tags or insignia?

what he said

 

[Agrar Therenus]

Will the penalties for betraying factions be serious enough for us to really contemplate not bothering (to betray)?

 

[RGS]

Yes. Other things... ;-)

Fantastic news!

 

[Adept]

David,

Is it possible that Thargoids could ever become a Power?

As somebody very passionate about this, I want to say I hope they will stay very strange, very alien and very dangerous. Not just a quasi-human political block

 

[David Braben]

Hmm...

Since I worked mostly alone during the last months on supporting Alliance Factions within Systems to gain or retain Power (Influence) :

In what respect will Power Play affect personal goals set by individual Players (i.e. at the fringe of space with little Player traffic), for example as to make existing Factions Extend into nearby Systems or i.e. taking Control from another Faction inside a System?

Is that direct/distinct but rather local Faction support something Power Play will scale up? Or is it going to work entirely parallel to such activity, having actually different goals?

You can still flip system ownership like you do now. This is just a new layer above it.

Also, not all systems will be influenced by Powers - especially on the frontier.

 

[Arubeto]

You could start doing this now. We are not resetting the Galaxy or anything, and the current minor factions will carry over.

There is a slight wrinkle in that we are renaming some minor factions to ensure they have unique names. For the most part this is just adding the system name to make it unambiguous.

That's great news! Hopefully it will make it clearer which faction I am going to support when accepting a mission from "Patron's Principles" in Liabeze, then

 

[Obsidian Ant]

Will placement of new stations ever occur automatically and be controlled by the game engine?

 

[knowles2]

Any hints on where we should look for these other non celestial obejcts?

Are they human made?

 

[Cam51]

Will the Powerplay update allow players to form an actual blockade on a rival system/faction? At the moment players can bypass a blockade easily by simply going into solo play.

 

[Winterwalker]

Will alien races be introduced after power play?

Might you consider wierd things like "bee algorithms" for alien species AI in future?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bees_algorithm

 

[PrometheusDarko]

David,

I have two questions, first, as a part of the Missions rework, will we be seeing courier missions and courier components for the Orca and Federal Dropship, or are those still in development at the moment?

Second, you repeatedly mention perks, and I've officially hit over 9,000 on the intrigue scale. Other than discounts, what kinds of perks can we expect? Anything that might alter a bit more how we play? How extensive and unique are these perks? Are they like passive ability boosts such as lower laser temperatures, stronger shields, more engine capacity, etc., or more benign and monetary in nature?

 

[chagnampra]

With the new drones coming into play in 1.3, will mining now become more of a viable role, in comparison with other roles in the game?

 

[Steve50]

Any hints on where we should look for these other non celestial obejcts?

Are they human made?

No hints man, spoils the surprise

 

[Tinman]

Yes. Other things... ;-)

Ah..well...glad I'm just about to max out my Asp then!

 

[David Braben]

Have they always been out there, or are they new additions??? This is important Mr Braben. Very important.

What I had in mind has been there since Wings...

 

[SlackR]

Will we see speech added to 1.3 alongside the excellent portraits? Will the senator ever get a voice?

 

[noodle]

Roads, irrigation....

.... jumpgates. Oh, wait

 

[EdzUp]

Hi David,

Will we be ever be able to make our own powerplay factions with space stations etc?

 

[bossbrigand]

Uhh, let's try this. Question #3.

Any chance we'll be able to change our display names yet or show off faction titles? I didn't realize when picking my name that it'd be shown the way it was.

 

[Brian]

Dear David - Sounds like a news paper agony aunt - Could you please make something that automatically corrects bad spelling and grammar, so that I don't have to cry for the future of the human race every time some kid sends a message through local chat in game?

lots of love,
Brian - CMDR Smokey