AMA with David Braben - 15th Dec 2015

[AndyFM]

Are there any plans to add bookmarks to the galaxy map?

Bookmarks are on our list of things we want to add.

Hi David,
What, if any, are the plans for Powerplay in the upcoming season?
Thank you.

Yes. Big plans. Powerplay will be improved to make it more interesting and diverse, and also to involve people that are not supporting the Power.
The other thing we are looking at is relationships between the minor powers and powerplay.

Questions for the AMA...
1. Will we have the ability to get ships delivered to stations. EG: I have a ship at LHS 3447 and want it brought to empire space, say Nehet, at the moment I have buy a cheap crap ship, jump to LHS 3447, sell crap ship and then take the ship I wanted and jump all the way back to Nehet. Is it just me or does this irritate everyone else too? A bit of a waste of time imo (especially when I have more than one ship I want to move).
2. Exploration missions? Yes? No? Preferably yes, please. EG: Jump say 5000ly (could be shorter/longer distance), scan a system (searching for something in particular, earth likes, mining locations...) jump back, turn in mission and profit. Higher reward for longer distance.

1. Yes. It's on the list.
2. We are looking at this sort of thing, using missions and other components.

When will we see Volcanoes & Geysers on existing airless planets ?
How long until Lava & Water worlds for Horizons?

Volcanoes and Geysers bring some life and focus to these worlds - something I'd like to see sooner rather than later.
Water worlds will be in a future season.

Are there any plans for sharing of missions between a wing?

Yes. On our (long) list of things we want to do.

Do you plan on balacing mission rewards for higher ranks? Since day one veteran player feel frustated when doing missions because of the really high difference with other payouts like trading res and now smuggling missions. Is this the intended design, on which missions are only for beginners or do you plan on balance the rewards for higher ranks?
Also still regarding missions that on many perspective is a crucial part of the game, for those that seek to play objective driven, is there a plan on making specific location for each mission, for example, rescueing that pilot at that coordinates on that planet and the poi only appears when you are near that area, same thing for uss in space, is this something we can expect?
Thanks!

TL;DR - Yes.
Missions provide a great structured way to get involved in the game, but there have been continual changes to missions in every release. More is to come, and this includes more complicated situations; some of these are already in 2.0.
Yes, this will come, it is one of the things we have planned.

When multicrew comes out, will that include AI multicrew or will that be introduced at a later date?

Ship-launched fighters will have the option of an AI pilot on your side.
Multicrew is all about playing on a ship with your friends, and doesn't include AI.

Are there any concrete ideas about multicrew? Like different roles etc. I can't imagine what a second pilot could do good in a ship yet.

It is different roles. Each player can act in a different role, and swap these roles.

"the option" means, that we, the players, can mount the fighter too or will it only be AI fighters?

Yes, it will be the player's choice to do either.

Hi Commanders, Frontier Team,
Thank you a lot for this first extension of one of my favorite games.
I've a question for the AMA:
• How do we have access to the official API for replace all alternatives tools ? It would be great to have a full statut without launching the game. I think at our ships informations, assets, balances, reputation, history of planet explored, market information of current station and visited station (price not updated if aran't there).
• What about a Hud editor inside the game ?
• What about a "simulation" with any ship and weapon for testing before buying like in the real life the possibility to test a car before buying it ?
Thank you your work and have a good day

1. We'd love to support this, having seen what people have already done. I'm not sure when it will happen yet.
2. Probably not, though you can already edit the colours in the config file.
3. No - it would require a whole new layer of the game with little real benefit, I'm afraid.

Today in E:D, all rewards and incentives are credits. Some players feel it's alright, others exploit bugs like smuggling. Sir Braben - what are your thoughts on rewards that may not be credits but instead modules or upgrades? Maybe new items?
I think the hunt for the biggest credit per hour has become weary and now that smuggling broke the game making 30% of all players billionaires, maybe it can be a good time to incentivize missions by giving loot / craft related rare materials perhaps!

Non-CR rewards is something we have been looking at.

Greetings Cmdr. Braben!
Any news regarding naming ships? You said it would be possible on kickstarter. There were even interesting ideas about connecting names and reputation on your forum.

It is on the list.

Echoing CMDR grnbrg's post from here:
Is there an ETA on the "Win10/AMD Supercruise bug" (Which is neither Win10 nor AMD specific...) fix? Do they know what code in Elite is causing the drop in framerate? Do they have any feedback from AMD about what it is in newer Win10 drivers that exacerbates the FD problem, creating single digit frame rates? Is there a timeline from either set of developers for when we might see a fix in the two codebases?

Yes, we know this is a frustrating problem for many people with Win 10 and AMD, which affects all recent driver versions (though it is possible to downgrade to 15.6 I think). We understand there is a fix coming in driver version 15.301.
We are trying to get a date from AMD when this fix will go live.

Congratulations on release, Horizons looks great.
Players for a while have had complaints about depth. Are there any plans to add some depth to the game with either story or more complicated gameplay mechanics?

Thanks!
There are a lot of mechanics in there already, but they are not all so easy to find, and there is a lot more in Horizons already, with more to come.
In terms of story, we are evolving our storytelling, and there is a lot more of this to come.
On your other point, complication does not always add depth - it can add frustration too. We have a large number of players, and it is incredible how differently many people play the game.

One big question - are there any plans to let players mine planets? It would bring a whole new set of equipment to the game: seismic scanners, mining vehicles, have your mates help patrol the area, buy sentries etc...

There will be more things for players to do on the surface.
It is one of the areas we are looking at now.

Are there plans to mesh persistent NPCs with power play? One thing you could do is have Powers (Like President Hudson, Emperor Arissa, or Prime Minister Mahon) actually appear on missions. You could do that by putting them on a capital ship and make it part of the mission to defend them or force them to retreat. They would never die (since capital ships aren't actually destroyed)

Yes - nice idea.

Hi David,
1. We've been seeing some good improvements to the NPC Combat AI this last year - are you still planning to keep improving the NPC AI?
2. Are there still plans to make Anarchy and lawless systems more dangerous with perhaps greater rewards?
Thanks.

Hi,
1. Yes - NPC AI is continuing to improve all the time.
2. It's a balancing thing, but I agree they could be a bit tougher.

Any plans on increasing persistance in ED? (there was quite a popular post with some ideas, not sure if anyone at FDev has seen it:https://www.reddit.com/r/EliteDangerous/comments/3vqwxm/elite_dangerous_desperately_needs_persistence/)

Character persistence is something we want to make more of.

David, if you had never gotten into game design or if Elite had flopped back in 1984 what do you think would be doing with your life today?

Not sure - probably a research scientist. I studied Natural Sciences at Cambridge (mainly Physics), and Electrical Sciences in my final year, then Computer Science as a post-grad. I was also interested in Astronomy.
Elite was already out and successful before I finished even my Natural Sciences degree, so in a slightly bizarre way my University work flipped places to be a 'hobby', which was really great. It meant I enjoyed it all the more.

Hi David,
What are your thoughts about bringing a rich sci-fi "story mode" to Elite? Or perhaps something akin to GTA V's "heists". As a game designer do you think it's possible to create a procedurally generated yet engaging storyline that uses the existing Elite galaxy as a backdrop?
Loving your work.

We're looking at more story elements now, and how players can get involved.
All 'procedural' means really is following a process. I did a TED talk about this a couple of years ago:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GEVutbSqBI0
So think of it more as a blend of hand-authored material in a process-driven setting.

will we get anything from playing beta like choose the save,, or is that a no,, people have said beta gets wiped,,

I'm afraid beta gets wiped.
To quote Michael "What happens in beta stays in beta"...
The primary issue is people get access to loads of high value ships and that would destabilise the main game, and would also have a whiff of pay-to-win given people have paid for beta access.

When I think of exploration missions, I think
1. Try to find a water world with rings
2. Find a black hole
3. find a binary system
4. Find a terraformable planet
5. Discover a new system
etc etc obviously more rare things equal higher rewards but then you actually have to go out searching and exploring and it makes sense "lore wise" because factions would be interested in finding certain things, and then when you land in a binary system for example it would be exciting, you'd feel more like you found/discovered something.

1. Yes. It's on the list.
2. We are looking at this sort of thing, using missions and other components.

Hey David, thanks for doing the AMA !
• Will the Season 2 updates follow a similar pattern to Season 1 where each update brought new ships ? (But throwing in SRVs into the equation too)
• Will each Season 2 update be of similar scope in content ? Or will there be some much larger than others ? If so for the latter part, is 2.0 one of the bigger ones ?
• Are there plans on making things more "human" any time soon ? Such as voice acting, of course the face creator for NPCs has already been confirmed.
• And finally, the whole sock thing still haunts me to this day, with my 517th sock bot mention as I write this, I already know how the community feels about it, but each sock mention only makes me curious as to know what you, the devs (and especially the CEO himself), feels about it ?

Thanks!
1. It will be a similar pattern, though there will be fewer ships this year, which will be more gameplay-focussed.
2. They will vary, as they did in Season 1, and also some people see different features as more important than others.
3. We are looking at things that will help with this during Season 2.
4. Yes, sorry for the socks appearing on the store too...! Personally, I did think it was funny - the timing of your statement and our announcement...

Hello David! The game is awesome and have had some great experiences playing. Is there any news on a linux version in the pipeline? No longer have windows pc and suffering from withdrawals. Thanks and keep up the good work. Looking forward to horizons

I'm afraid there are no plans for this at the moment.

Any plans for "looking for group" feature in game for active search online/group while in game?

We are planning a revamp of our community site to allow searching and better connection of players to group.

[Gregster]

Thanks for that and some great points and answers there. Good to see that they do listen to the community and hope to see a few of these implimented soon