[Livestreams] Questions and Answers Thread

Paige Harvey

Community Manager
Hello, everyone!

It sometimes happens that during a livestream, our hosts aren't able to get to every question asked. As such, this thread will be updated after Thursday livestreams where questions are asked, aiming to retroactively answer as many questions as we can!

Livestreams and Links
07/09/2017 - PS4 CQC Livestream with Ed Lewis and Lloyd Morgan-Moore. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jEBEaD4Jm9M
14/09/2017 - Thargoid Lore Run and 2.4 Release Date Livestream. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QKOvDNhY40I
21/09/2017 - Let's Play Community Goals with Lead Designer Steve Kirby. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RR-YStEK444
09/11/2017 - Discovery Scanner 1 - Creating a Galaxy with Dr Anthony Ross. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vz3nhCykZNw
16/11/2017 - Beyond - Focused Feedback Crime & Punishment with Sandro Sammarco. https://youtu.be/0545WHDzT7w
 

Paige Harvey

Community Manager
QUESTIONS FROM 07/09/2017 - PS4 CQC Livestream with Ed Lewis and Lloyd Morgan-Moore. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jEBEaD4Jm9M

1. Lloyd says he talks to a lot of people in the company and uses spreadsheets. Can he provide some more insight into what producing in the Games Industry is about?

Production deal with lots of different things on a day to day basis so it’s difficult to really sum up what the role involves. My average day can include (but is not limited to) planning future releases, catching up with members of the team and/or leads to see what state certain features or fixes are in, reviewing and assigning out bugs, ensuring departments have the right resources available to them, liaising with QA, completing the console build submission process, maintaining my areas of bug and task databases and often producing documents to cover any areas above that need to be recorded! There are many more things besides these though, and there’s always something new coming up that needs to be dealt with.

2. Are there any further PS4 specific tweaks coming for Elite Dangerous?

We are always working on making the game experience as good as possible for the players and the PS4 is certainly included in this. There will be small tweaks here and there with each new update. In 2.4 we’ve given you a bit more freedom with how you use head-look with the motion sensor, for example.

3. How does the patching process on PS4
compare to PC?

I don’t have much experience with patching on PC, sadly, so it’s difficult for me to compare the two.

4. Do the performance improvements seen in the PC 2.4 beta apply to consoles? Faster galaxy map for example.

We generally try and keep things like performance improvements the same across all platforms however with the differences in tech and network conditions it’s not always possible to guarantee this.

5. Is there any chance of us getting PSVR?

We have nothing to announce at this point.

6. Will the “Founder or Elite” missions ever get added back into the game?

Nothing to talk about on this right now.

7. Are the devs looking into the PlayStation Camera for Eye Tracking at all?

PlayStation Camera eye tracking is not currently planned however it is something that I’m aware of and I know there are some requests for this feature.

8. Which cupboard is Michael Brookes locked in?

We still haven’t been able to find him… he seems happy though.

QUESTIONS FROM 21/09/2017 - Let's Play Community Goals with Lead Designer Steve Kirby. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RR-YStEK444

Questions about Steve

1. Steve, a question on being a Lead Designer. What do you design, the story, the environment?

Hello, all! I'm the Lead Designer of content and scenarios. This means that I help plan out and create all the scenarios in the game, alongside other members of the team. Essentially, I help make the story work in the game! Things like Thargoid Structures, Megaships, Installations, if you can interact with it I've worked with it.

2. What do you do as a Lead Designer on a typical day at FDEV?

It really depends on the day. It could be looking at and developing new content, reviewing and balancing already implemented content, implementing new content. Really anything!

3. What are you enjoying developing the most as part of 2.4 currently or for after 2.4?

New scenarios for people to discover amidst some stuff that's being announced at FX for after 2.4... No spoilers!

4. Where did you get your Cat shirt?

Qwertee! It also glows in the dark.

5. What's your favourite ship in Elite Dangerous?

My favourite ship at the minute is the Asp Explorer, mine's called the "Wendy Two". Though, the Python is also great fun to fly.

6. What's your favourite sounding ship(s) in Elite Dangerous?

The Viper MK IV engine boost is wonderful, sounds just like a roaring lion!

7. What CG will you be taking part in this week?

Personally, I'll be taking part in the CG for Liz Ryder, but I highly recommend everyone work hard to complete both!

8. What would you have named Ed’s new ship?

Hmmm, either... Ed's Biscuit Barrel or the Obvious Target.

Questions about Elite Dangerous

1. Will there be a chance at peaceful Thargoid contact?

All interactions between Thargoids and Humanity have the potential to be peaceful. What you do when faced with a Thargoid may very well determine its outcome, though of course, we can't know exactly what an alien will do.

2. Will we be getting coloured HUDS for Consoles?

At this point in time, we have nothing to announce regarding HUD customisation and we do not expect this to be available in the foreseeable future. The HUD colour is tied into many other visual aspects of the game making it difficult to amend without issue.

3. Are we going to get a new official full timeline for Elite Dangerous universe?

It's something we're looking into! In terms of the future of the game, there'll be more information available at Frontier Expo next month.

4. What future proofing do the PS4 save files have when Sony discontinues the PS4?

We've heard nothing about the PS4 being discontinued anytime soon, however, we would happily look into options should this come to pass.

5. What happens if CG fails?

Currently, this CG cannot fail as it has reached Tier One. Theoretically, if no-one were to contribute to the CG then the new tech would still be developed, however, it would only be available at specific Engineer bases and in small quantities. As higher tiers are reached, you can expect to find the new tech available in a growing number of locations in larger quantities!

QUESTIONS FROM 09/11/2017 - Discovery Scanner 1 - Creating a Galaxy with Dr Anthony Ross. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RR-YStEK444

1) Is “The Bulge” what is referred to in game as The Bubble?

The galactic bulge, or galactic core, is the blob-shaped region of stars in the centre of the Milky Way. It is a separate thing from The Bubble, which is the region of human-inhabited space around Sol.

2) Why did Elite Dangerous decide to use light-years and not parsecs in-game?

I don't believe there was a specific reason why. The original Elite and its sequels also used light years for interstellar distances, and it is nice to be consistent.

3) Does the game allow for any catastrophes? Novae, rogue-planet ejection or capture, system collision?

During the generation stage, rogue-planet events and collisions are taken into account. However, these are historical and not visual effects. When you arrive in the system, you only see the results of those effects on the resulting stable system.

4) When do we get to hear about what is coming next for Stellar Forge? Like comets, flyable gas giants, etc.

Oh, yeah, that's scheduled for MMPPPPPPH (Ant gets dragged away by Zac). Ahem, hm, apologies, but I can't really talk about that at the moment.

5) Why does Elite Dangerous only use circular orbits? Are elliptical orbits too complicated?

Elite Dangerous does use elliptical orbits. The inclination, periapsis, longitude of ascending node, semi-major axis and eccentricity information is all tracked.

6) There are some planets in the game that look like they would be torn apart by tidal forces. Did you say you actually simulate this? What means those close planets are actually possible?

There are some bodies which may be near the mathematical limit of that collection of matter being clumped together. However, we don't currently have the rendering feature to display what the surfaces of those look like or how you would interact with them. In reality, you may see a distorted molten mess.

7) The in-system barycentre-orbital distribution in the game is quite vast, given the limited observed bodies (just Pluto/Charon). Is that likely true to life?

The distant orbits which are created should follow Kepler's laws of planetary motion and classical (non-relativistic) orbital calculations. The resulting hierarchies of orbits should be feasible, but it will be very interesting to see what comes from the future of orbital mechanics analyses and exo-planet searches.

8) Is there anything orbiting within Lagrange Points at all in Elite?

There is a section of code running capture interactions in the virtual protoplanetary disk which can place bodies into the L4 and L5 Lagrange points. I believe this ends up being mostly asteroid clusters, but I have not had a look at them in a while.

9) Have you ever forgot the location of a special feature, that could be found by a player?

If I did, I have forgotten what it was. Sorry :( I did once make the galaxy produce Mr. Braben's face in stars as a test for being able to inject very bright O class stars, but that was removed pre-pre-pre Alpha.

10) How close is this identifier system to any existing official naming or identifier protocols currently used by scientists? Like, could we input future data we collect in real life into Elite?

Each generated body needs a unique identifier, but also any "authored" body, say from the stellar catalogs. Authored bodies, however, have their information pre-calculated, so only do partial proc-gen at most. The system is sensitive to adding new authored bodies to the system, as it could displace the identifier of other proc-gen bodies, changing the galaxy. It is possible to make changes, but we must be careful about it.

11) Why aren't there dark regions on the other side of the galaxy?

Do you mean lower density regions between the spiral arms? If you could please forward on an X,Y,Z sector location (as seen from the Galaxy Map grid lines) I could have a closer look and confirm. Depending on where exactly you are on that side, there are still under-dense regions, but there may also be some bleed through from the galactic bulge data placing more matter in that region that immediately appears from the image in the Galaxy Map.

12) Will Nebulas one day resemble the Hubble painted shot?

One of the common discussions on the dev floor is about the level of visual exaggeration we portray to the players. For example, most nebula images you can see are false colour ones of non-visible EM wavelengths. Do we make radiowaves visible in-game to reflect these beautiful photographs? Do we go the realistic route of showing these hydrogen clouds as greyish, slightly greenish diffuse blobs? No promises, no guarantees, nothing to announce at this time, but I am always interested in potential improvements to the rendering of stellar bodies and phenomena.

13) Does the planet surface rendering use adaptive subdivision when making the hills and craters of the planets?

Currently, the subdivisions are in smaller patches with the same amount of points in the same square arrangement. This is used, rather than non-uniform dynamic tessellation, because in our system it allows a much faster and economical generation of both render and physics meshes. We blend between detail levels of patches though, to smoothly transition from low to high vertex density.

14) Have you thought about creating permanent, full textures for popular planets that get loaded frequently?

Such large texture collections would take up a lot of graphics memory. I understand and sympathize with some of the popping that users have been experiencing, but using up that available memory would mean that other textures in the game would pop quite a bit worse.

15) How come some stars are older than the Universe in Elite Dangerous?

The oldest stars in the real Milky Way can tend towards 13,800,000,000 years. The sectors themselves have a maximum average age of 12,810,000,000 years. Unfortunately, though, there is a small, rare, bug in resolving the range of ages across a few sectors, and there have been a few cases of the stated age if a star being around 18 billion years. Yup, that's an oopsie. Bluntly fixing this will upset some generation and alter the galaxy, so a careful approach is needed for fixing this one up. It's my list of work to address, apologies for the delay.

16) Does ED generate hidden geometry?

The word "patch" in this answer refers to a square of terrain. For planets? The base patches on the faces of those cubes that become the planets are always there, as the data might be needed at any moment if one is traveling fast enough. The finer detailed patches are only generated when it's reasonable for the game to expect you to need that information, depending on your altitude and speed. There might be patch information which would be beyond the horizon and so not needed for rendering in this frame. In this case, the patch is culled from the list of things to render, reducing the work on the GPU.

17) Why are there regions of stars near the core where there are defined lines of difference... i.e. one side dense star field
other side hardly any stars at all?

A good question; I do see the reddit posts about this one fairly frequently. There are some sectors which have a large density gradient between them. One sector is over a threshold for generating stars of the size that its layer looks after. The neighboring sector may be just underneath this threshold. As this neighbor doesn't create any systems, it donates its mass to all its child sectors and so creates many bodies. The first sector has made some heavier stars, so donates a lesser amount of leftover mass. The result is that there is an overpopulated sector and an underpopulated sector. Not all cases of this happening were smoothed out before the initial release of Elite: Dangerous, and making any alterations now would upset the proc-gen of the entire Galaxy.
We are aware of it and are still mulling over which direction to take this in.

18) Do you have anything to say on the real life discovery of Trappist-1, with it being so close to the system which the Forge created?

"Well done StellarForge!"? :) Also, "Well done astrophysics and astronomy researchers! You rock!"

19) I'd love to know how you integrate the catalogued star systems (stuff we see from earth)!

We created a compiler that analyzed the contents of the Hipparcos and Gleise stellar catalogs of the time and created stellar forge system entries from the details. Some entries had the full details of the star, others only the brightness, colour and direction of the star, and others somewhere in between. This compiler would take the available data and fill in the gaps using the same calculations that would be used for proc-gen systems. It would also assign BodyAddress identifiers based on the sector they would be found in. When creating a sector in StellarForge, these "authored" systems are loaded in first, their pre-compiled data taking place of generated results. The authored system also take away the mass designated to the sector, like a generated system would.

The proc-gen systems are created later with the leftover mass. The game then treats the authored and the proc-gen systems identically. As for the contents of the star systems, we have other game data resources which Mike Brookes organised which link to a system for full or partially pre-made system layouts.

20) Will we be getting those high mountains and deep ravines back at some point?

The crazy ravines and mountains (mostly on "Rocky Ice" planets) were quite striking, yes. Unfortunately, they were also causing issues in the creation and handling of the physics mesh that you would drive on (or fly into if distracted). The errors that would be encountered were severe enough to cause a crash (this was seen in public as us pre-emptively kicking you to the main menu on approach to the planet). Removing the crazy examples of ravines/ridges was necessary to:

· allow the creation of physics patches
· not be entirely scientifically inaccurate
· avoid terrain which was sharp enough to look really unpleasantly jagged on VR setting.

There also used to be a few cases of a bug in the noise graph allowing the occasional mountain taller than a planet sustain, taking into account material properties and gravitation. These were just reduced to the maximally supported mountain height for the planet. We want to keep working on the planets and deliver improvements. Official people will say official things when the official time is upon us. For now, the short-term work involves revisiting the planet colouration, as per the keynote from FX2017 :)

21) How close was the old Elite 2/3 system generation compared to Stellar Forge? Are there any notable changes compared to David Braben's original take on it or was he pretty close?

Mr. Braben worked very closely with the team to help ensure the approach was consistent but building upon his systems and that StellarForge covered any additions that were wished for at the time of Frontier and First Encounters. The maths behind the coarse level details of the models of stellar and planetary formation have not changed drastically since the 1990s, and so many calculations would be similar. What has changed is the understanding of things like how common binary pairs are and other statistical particulars.

22) Where does the initial mass component to a galactic sector come from? Real life observation, procedural generation or guess work?

Real life observations give us the approximate mass of the entire galaxy. There are various papers out there, some looking at the orbital velocities of globular clusters in the galactic halo, some trying to count types of stars in a region and extrapolate that across whole arms, some measuring the speed of stars at different orbital radii away from the core. The value we used was taken as an average from available research papers at the time. Observations of our and other spiral galaxies gives us a good idea of the distributions of that mass in 3d space.

23) How does star system naming work?

The unique identifier is transformed into a name. The sector address is encoded into a proc-gen "stellar catalog" name. The sector layer can be encoded in a single letter. Some of the numbers refer to the system within the sector at that layer.

Questions from 16/11/2017 - Beyond - Focused Feedback Crime & Punishment with Sandro Sammarco. https://youtu.be/0545WHDzT7w

1) Will warnings be issued instead of bounties for friendly fire on NPC ships? Will this prevent security ships from killing you for hitting them with a stray bullet?

If we go with the proposed system, the threshold for friendly fire will be increased which means that sec ships are less likely to attack you, unless you direct fire on them! We will look to include a new low-level fine for friendly fire as we currently know it, so players would no longer be hit with a bounty for a stray bullet.

2) Can we find out what the next Focus Forum will be about?

You can indeed! We are aiming for the next Focused Forum to be about Engineering, however, this is subject to change, so please do not submit any posts regarding Engineering at this time.

3) What are the current thoughts on the maximum player claimable bounty?

The current maximum player claimable bounty is 1,000,000, but we’re open to discussing how this could be enhanced! Leave a comment in the focused forum if you have some ideas on how this could be done.

4) Could you add fines based on the wealth of the player to make that more punishing? Perhaps increasing based on amount of credits and crime severity? Bounties could be a percentage of your credit balance so that players with multiple billions still feel it.

This is both an interesting and valid idea; however, we’ve no plans to include scalable “punishments” at this time. The goal of this rework is not to punish players with large amounts of credits, but to ensure there is an appropriate level of penalty for crime in the game.

5) Could there be bounty hunting missions to hunt down wanted CMDRs?

It’s a great idea, however, it would require a lot of networking wizardry so, at the moment, it’s not something we’re considering.

6) Is there any chance we could bribe security?

Being able to bribe Sys-Sec would add a really nice finesse to the game, however, we’d like to make sure the rules and mechanics work smoothly first. We may consider this at a later date.

7) Would you be transported to a prison ship every time you die with a bounty? Regardless of how you die?

No, definitely not Your bounty would have to be detected and you’d need to be wanted in the jurisdiction, to ensure you’d go to appropriate prison. If the bounty isn’t detected, then the death would be treated as normal.

8) Will there be an escalating penalty for repeat offenders?

So, as with interstellar bounties, there will be escalation. High-level bounties will ensure that you get the fastest, toughest security responses so there is a higher risk of being killed if you are a repeat offender.

9) How about the inclusion of a Pilots Federation insurance that covers clean ships if they are ganked?

We won’t be looking to include any new forms of insurance, however, the concept of some of the victims rebuy cost being removed and added to the killer’s bounty is very cool! No guarantees of course, but we’ll feed this one back and take a look at it.

10) Regarding Anarchy systems, will "criminals" be able to freely transfer ships and modules?

Nope! “If you can’t do the time, don’t do the crime!” We want to prevent criminals from dodging consequences.

11) What about a pirate station? A station in which being a wanted criminal would be a passport to dock. So there is a safe place for RP's?

While it’s a cool concept, the game fundamentally doesn’t work this way as criminality is morally a grey area. If you annoy the Federation, you’re liked by the Empire and visa versa.

12) Is there not a risk of people using the prison ship system as a means for transport around the bubble even if the distance is fairly low?

There is a slight risk, but seeing as you technically have to pay for it and cannot choose the destination, which will be short range, there’s no real benefit.

13) Sandro, why do you hate Princess Aisling Duval?

She’s a bubblegum princess, and part of the empire! Whilst I appreciate her anti-slavery stance, she’s simply a celebrity princess and part of a tyrannical regime. Join the federation, people.

14) Will ramming ships have consequences now?

We may be looking at working ramming consequences into a karma system, as we’ve previously discussed. However as part of the Crime and Punishment updates, we’ll look to see if there are tweaks we can do to (for example) speed/momentum checks to reduce the use of ramming as an exploit.

15) Could system authority vehicles have flashing lights on them for visibility?

That’s a question for the art team, so we’ll pass the feedback along. Sandy likes the idea though!

16) What effect will this new Crime and Punishment system have on Reputation?

We don’t envisage there being any major changes to Rep, it’ll fluctuate as it currently does.

17) Will it be possible to "capture" wanted NPCs pilots instead of killing them?

As an idea for wanted NPC’s idea it’s awesome! Though for wanted players it’d be problematic as you being able to capture a player could require a whole new game loop.

18) What about having a kill warrant jammer?

Cool idea! We’ve nothing to say at this time but we’ll feed it back.

19) Will insurance on Cargo ever be implemented?

It’s an interesting idea which we may consider for the future, however, we’ve nothing to discuss right now.

20) A galaxy map filter showing where I'm wanted or have a bounty would be great!

That would be awesome, though it technically would be very difficult to implement due to how the galaxy map is propagated. It would likely result in longer loading times which ideally we would avoid.

21) Has Multicrew been considered in the Crime and Punishment update?

Yep! We are actually currently considering how we would like Multicrew to work in terms of C&P. One thing we’re looking at is making sure multicrew members are unable to avoid penalties if taking part in criminal activity. We’d love to receive your feedback in the Focused Feedback forum on this.

22) What are your current feelings on SDC’s C&P proposal?

We’ve nothing to say on it right now, but we will be properly reading through it, taking on the feedback and responding to it within the Focused Forum area!

QUESTIONS FROM 16/01/2018 - Content Recap - Beyond Chapter One Livestream - Part 1 Recap https://gaming.youtube.com/watch?v=4ocPr8DlBQs

We'd also like to thank everyone for their questions during the stream, and we've included all the questions which we could answer in regard to the content covered in the Part 1 livestream.

A big thanks to the team for providing these insights!

CRIME AND PUNISHMENT

How does this affect pirates and what’s the point of being a pirate?
The cost of piracy and smuggling are not increasing substantially, only the 'murder' crime is being boosted.
We have also added the megaship interactions that will offer new gameplay options for pirates. You can read about new megaship interactions here or watch the livestream here to find out more.



Can markets be updated to attract people to anarchy systems for bigger profits, encouraging more risk for everyone involved?
This already happens, to a degree, but we will look into increasing this.


What is going to happen to things like smuggling, spec-ops, pirating, and anything else that gives you bounties? Are we going to have a viable 'pirate route' for credits and reputation?
The crime segment of this update is focusing on ensuring consequences for crime are appropriate. In addition, having crimes attached to ships gives you more options when deciding how to deal with your criminal status.


If one CMDR pirates another CMDR with limpets (not even shooting them) will they now suffer under the new mechanic? Are they going to lose access to Starport services as well?
Strictly regarding piracy, they will not suffer any more than they do now. Black markets are always available at ports, even when with anonymous access.


Are services restricted in Anarchy Starports?
Services are restricted at ports located in jurisdictions where your ship is wanted. Anarchy jurisdictions recognize no crimes, so will never be restricted. No authority ships, including ATR, are available in Anarchy jurisdictions.


How do these changes work for PVE?
The changes to the crime system apply to PvE and PvP equally.


How will these changes affect accidental fire charges?
The threshold for accidental fire becoming a crime is increasing, allowing more damage to occur before triggering. There will be a new crime of accidental weapon discharge that triggers at the current threshold, but this will only result in a fine.


Will Starports shoot at us if a wingmate becomes wanted?
They currently don't, and will continue not to.


What happens if you have accidentally forget to turn off 'report crimes against me' off... can we FORGIVE?
Currently, no. The status of your crime reporting software should always be a top priority.


If you shoot a wanted ship before finishing a scan will the fine disappearonce the scan shows the ship as wanted?
No. When you shoot at a ship before scanning it, you are, in the eyes of the law, committing the crime of 'Assault'. Scan before you bam!


What happens if you can't pay the fines at detention centers?
If you can't pay off your legal bill, even by using the 'Creditor's Loan' and selling other ships as collateral you will become bankrupt and must choose the default Sidewinder option.


What if you can't pay at the detention centre? Can we break people out of the detention area?
You can't avoid the law. Legal fees must be paid. It's not currently possible to break people out of the detention area.


Kill Warrant Scanner will reveal the single largest bounty- Can someone explain why is that? Isn't the point of KWS to 'reveal' ALL sins of particular NPC or CMDR across all jurisdictions in the bubble and potentially get a huge variable list of bounties when criminal is destroyed?
The way the KWS worked was incompatible with the new crime system, which is why it had to change it.


If you have a fine/bounty, so have no station facilities, can you still access the Black Market (should there be one) to sell any illegal cargo you have?
Of course. It's the black market, they rely on villains like you.


Will all current bounties (including dormant bounties) and fines beconverted to the new system when the update is released? Will they be cleared before the changes go live?
There will be a one-time amnesty of all crimes when the change goes live.


If a player is murdered and has a full cargo hold of trade goods, is that calculated into the combined murder bounty?
No.


If I rack up huge amounts of fines for looting and pirating NPC ships, what kind of bounty would I get for that?
As long as you didn't kill those ships, the legal costs will not be any more than they currently are. Only the 'murder' crime has seen a significant bounty increase.


Are bounties affected by system states like Anarchy, Corporate, etc?
There is some minor variation based on factions.


Will we now be safe inside Starport docks regardless of scanned bounties or not?
No, the changes do not provide any protection - if you are scanned inside the dock expect to be destroyed.


If I commit a crime (murder) in my Python and then switch ship before I'm a destroyed – on which ship will my bounty be based upon?
The bounty remains with the ship that committed the crime, in this example, the Python. Remember though, the bounty will never expire, you'll have to pay Interstellar Factors to clean the ship or end up getting destroyed in it and pay the legal costs before the bounty is removed.


Why don't you lose bounty when you get destroyed by a bounty hunter?
When a bounty hunter destroys your ship, you will respawn at a detention centre where you will have to pay off your bounty value for the jurisdiction and any other costs, such as rebuy, after which the bounty is removed from your ship. Bounties from other jurisdictions are not removed because the factions are not informed of the kill.


Will there be any indicators for missions that result in gaining bounties? For example, if I receive a 'tip off' to go to a settlement and scan its data points, will it be clear that this mission might result in bounties?
We will be doing our best to ensure any mission in which you may now be asked to perform an illegal action will have a warning.


Are there other ways to get rid of a bounty even if it's a very low bounty?
Interstellar Factors in Low Security and Anarchy systems will be shown on the galaxy map once you have visited a systems and allow you to pay off any fines and bounties.


How are the new changes to bounties going to affect the 'Top 5 Local Bounty Board' and'Crime Report' for systems?
The top five bounties list will remain, and be joined by a top five 'power bounties this cycle' list to help those pledged to powers.


If a wing of commanders attack you but one of the wing doesn't attack (but is hostile toward you), will we get a bounty for attacking them?
Yes. You can only legally attack ships that you know are wanted (i.e. you have scanned them and detected they are wanted anyway, or they have attacked and hit your ship, which makes them wanted and auto scans them for you) in the current jurisdiction.


What would happen if someone sold a module from a 'hot' ship to another player?
It's not possible to sell modules to another player.


Will you be able to transfer ships around anarchy systems if they're 'hot'?
A hot ship can be transferred to any location where it is not wanted. Since anarchies do not recognize crimes, you are always able to transfer hot ships to them.


Is it safe to say that there will be no option for the player in question to simply sell said 'hot' ship, and thus avoid paying the penalties? Can any criminal simply store modules and sell ship hull to fix his record? And will there be a 'wanted' status on ship modules? If your ship becomes 'hot' - is it possible to just change the modules to another ship and avoid the penalties?
Ship can be sold but the interstellar factors take a cut. Any module associated with 'hot' ships are also hot and any module added to the hot ship also become hot. Hot modules cannot be added to a clean ship without paying for them to be cleaned.


What's to stop groups of players simply getting huge bounties and notoriety values, only then to take it in turns destroying each other to obviously not only reset their notoriety, but also claiming nice big inflated bounties? Or, are the claimable bounties (for destroying a CMDR who's wanted) not the same as what's being applied to their rebuy?
The maximum claim for a bounty is still currently one million credits. In this instance, the villain is still going to get landed with eye-watering fees that they will have to pay, assuming they have racked up a lot of murders with a high notoriety. Amount paid by the criminal is not the same as amount claimed by the bounty hunter.


Is there a system in place to stop players intentionally blowing themselves up to reduce notoriety?
You only lose notoriety when your ship is destroyed by authorities or bounty hunters that have detected your bounty. In these cases, you will have to pay legal costs as you will respawn at a detention centre.


Will higher notorious levels increase the value of Black Market goods?
No.


Powerplay

Will we gain Interstellar Bounties when trying to grind out merits?
Powerplay activities will not incur bounties. Instead, they will incur 'Power Bounties'. These can only be detected and claimed by pledged ships, and do not use the criminal flow for respawning, so no additional legal fees are incurred.


Will Powerplay bounties still be active if you defect to another Power?
These bounties will be removed upon defection or leaving Powerplay.


Will attacking hostile Powerplay ships at station be a crime?
Attacking any ship near a Starport is a crime/will trigger a lethal response. This will not change.


What is the rebuy cost for dying in Powerplay-related activities?
There are no additional legal fees when ship destruction occurs due to Powerplay interactions.


What will happen to merits for killing a wanted Powerplay CMDR?
Nothing has changed to the way merits are handed out.


With the introduction of the ATR, how will undermining Powers work?
Because Powerplay activities now use Power bounties which do not involve the authorities, ATR will never be summoned for them.


What does this mean for Powerplay (in regards to ATR) I definitely feel as if ships that are wanted for powerplay purposes should be immuneto the summoning of ATRs. Any input?
This is correct. Ships with Power bounties will not draw the attention of the authorities, including ATR.


WING MISSIONS

Does a wing mission disappear if a wing is disbanded?
In this instance the owner of the mission will still have the active mission, if the wing is reformed then they can share it with their wingmates once more.


Is there a reason why all missions cannot be completed in wings? I feel like this should be player choice, for example, multiple small ships can take a mission that might normally need a single big ship.
It’s a tremendous amount of work, requiring a lot of new functionality (such as the mission depot, partial complete, etc.) and a reworking of almost every mission template in the game. It was only feasible to add wing missions the way we have.


Do you think the introduction of wing missions will allow players to help and mentor newer players better, and aid friends in acquiring bigger ships faster?
It’s a possibility, we will of course be monitoring how the current rules around if and when we pay out rewards are working and if they need changing to maintain the overall balance of the game.


If you complete wing missions alone, will you receive more rewards than if two players completed the wing mission? Is the mission payout going to be split amongst wingmates?
No, the payout isn't split, it's duplicated. Each member of the wing will be viable for the same rewards.


If you leave the wing halfway through a mission: what happens then with completing the mission for each commander?
If you are not part of the wing when the mission completes you will not receive the rewards. Also note that if you have any cargo from that mission by that point, you are eligible to receive a fine.


Will a wing mission fail if everyone else in your wing disconnects?
No, as the owner has the main copy of the mission he can continue to complete it or reform a wing and share it again.


Do I need to be in the same system as my wingmate to share and accept a wing mission?
No.


Will there be wing missions that are harder than standard missions, rather than larger quantity - like "Kill 4 Thargoid Basilisk Interceptors"?
As mentioned on the stream, there are assassination missions that we are hoping fulfil this idea.


Can wing missions be completed solo?
Yes.


Are these wing mission changes also carrying over into non-wing missions? If I'm in a 50T cargo ship, can I grab a 200T cargo mission?
You can accept wing missions and perform them solo. With non-wing missions being linear, the mission depot (for wing missions) treat the mission as a loop and this inclusion changes missions on a fundamental level. So, normal delivery missions with not gain the mission depot at this time.


What happens if a wingmate no longer wants to contribute to the mission and doesn't abandon it?
This is the sort of area where we feel wings will have to police themselves.


Can wings accept multiple missions at the same time?
Each member of the wing can share one mission with their wingmates at a time. A single player may have multiple unshared wing missions. This is something we will be looking at during the beta.


Will you be adding in NPC wingmates?
Not at this time, no.


Will we get bigger wings (6 or 8 players) or perhaps have linked wings?
Not at this time, no.


Mission Types:

In the livestream, we saw changes to the way cargo missions work, will these improvements be made for passenger missions? For example, possible bulk passenger routes (like bus routes).
This isn't planned at the current time no.


Will there be wing missions involving data point scanning or destroying generators?
Before deciding on more types of wing missions, we need to see how the current batch of wing missions (in the coming beta) work out. If new types of wing missions become available in the future, we'll definitely let you know.


So, to confirm, it will be possible to spread the load of tonnage between wing ships for a delivery mission?
For a wing delivery mission, yes. For normal delivery missions, no.


Will there be bounty hunting wing missions?
There will be some missions that require a wing to destroy a number of pirates, yes.


Are there mining wing missions?
Not at this time, no.


The 'cargo mission' shown in the livestream:

Will the rewards shown in the livestream be tweaked or are they final?
As mentioned in the stream, we will look at rewards closer and probably during beta.


What if someone dies with the required cargo? Is the mission failed for the entire wing?
This is the exact reason we added the partial complete feature.


Why is there no 'fill all available cargo space' button for cargo hauling wing missions?
The clicker was designed to fill your ship quickly while still allowing finer control over what you're doing.


For the cargo hauling mission shown, will commanders be able to deliver some of the cargo amounts, at a time, until it's all delivered?
Yes.


Any chance we can turn down material mission rewards if we don't carry cargo racks?
The reason we've introduced the mission reward choice feature is so that players can turn down any reward package they don't like.


On completion, if someone is no longer a member of the wing? Do they (still) get a reward?
All members of the wing must be present to receive the reward.


Is the influence reward per commander or a fixed amount that is shared between commanders?
The influence reward is only available to the owner of the mission due to BGS.


If Elite-difficulty missions are chosen and your wing mate has a lesser rank, will they be able to get the wing mission – and if so, will they gain the same amount of reputation from the wing mission?
This is something we will be keeping an eye on during beta as you also have to consider the new reward options (including reputation boost) but currently all players receive the same reward options.


Will wing missions affect rank progression differently?
Reputation is a reward, so will work the same way as standard mission rewards.


Is it correct that wing members can contribute nothing yet still get the rewards?
Yes, this allows wingmates to act as escorts for larger trade ships for example. Forcing players to contribute cargo is something we have avoided for now but will keep an eye on during the beta.
 
No idea why this thread is so quiet but just wanted to say thanks for posting these answers! I know the community often leap in and create these threads themselves but it's brilliant to see an offiicial one and I really hope this trend continues in the future. I missed both the livestreams so a quick catch-up like this is really helpful.

P.S. were these images taken from the Steve Kirby livestream (or are they player generated)? (I found them mentioned tangentially in another thread)

w6l8m5A.png


3gQmH4G.png
If they were from the livestream, could you maybe summarise what was said about them?
 
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Dang, no answer on how Thargoid weaponry effect other commanders! Seems they would be devastating to our conventional ships.
 
Well if you try it, let us know! I guess they're experimental, so maybe we just don't know!

My guess is that the effect will be a bit like what happened in District 9 when the black goo got sprayed into Van De Merwe's face. How cool would it be if you looked down at your avatar after being attacked with these weapons to see a big "prawn" claw where your arm used to be?

41.jpg
[ugh]
 
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I think this thread would better serve its purpose if it were locked such that only FDev employees could post to it.
 
Just viewed last live stream and I notice that Ed and Steve cheat using dev tools to escape the consequences of a gank ( getting set back many ly's from the goal area ); does this mean FD support cheating to avoid consequences?
 

Paige Harvey

Community Manager
Hello WolfStarslayer,

It was unfortunate that Steve was killed, however, he accepted the rebuy and intended to carry on with the stream as planned, very much accepting the "consequences of the gank". Unfortunately, he ended up back in Colonia where he had previously been docked which would have meant the stream would have been cut short should he have remained there, as you can't very well get to Maia in 30 minutes!

Frontier Developments, of course, does not advocate cheating to "avoid consequences", however, we do believe in putting on a good show which would not have been possible otherwise.

I hope this clarifies the situation for you.

Just viewed last live stream and I notice that Ed and Steve cheat using dev tools to escape the consequences of a gank ( getting set back many ly's from the goal area ); does this mean FD support cheating to avoid consequences?
 
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