This week's question for Wingman:  Will pilots have some way of protecting themselves from their own crew.

A: Yes, but it probably won't be a door that pops down.

Some disappointment was mentioned in chat to this answer.  Some people feel the idea of quick mutiny should be encouraged and not restricted.  So, here's my take:

• Wingman's answer doesn't mean that mutiny won't be possible.  It just means that pilots will have 'some' protection.  So, it will be more effort, but we'll have to wait to see how much.  Personally, I'd like to see it rare and a somewhat special effort.
• If pilots don't have something to protect themselves from their crew while flying, then you'd see an entire class of players focused on this game element.  Why bother going through the time and danger of a boarding action when capturing is as easy as talking some newbie into letting you help him man a turret?
• Without some protection, guilds would likely have to be super selective of players.  Pirates will already have this problem during boarding actions (the first to sit gets the ship mechanic), but having this issue all the time would just be nerve wracking and not much fun.

-Kinshadow

Another question for Wingman this last week.  This time I asked about asteroid bases!  To sum it up:

Q: When we find an asteroid base in the persistent universe, can we install mods on it to hide it from other players?

Wingman's Answer (paraphrased):  No, we want as much player conflict as possible. So, you can't install stealth mods, but you can install weapons, etc. to defend it.

Despite it being a 'no', Wingman's answer is still very encouraging for the game.  The team is obviously focused on encouraging player interaction in the persistent universe and thinking along those lines when planning these elements.  The re-confirmation that we will be able to take over and install mods on asteroid bases is encouraging as we know this crowdfunding stretch goal hasn't been defeatured and is in the dev consciousness.

Does the answer tell us anything else?  Actually, yes, it means that solo players are now less likely to hold asteroid bases since they will have to be actively protected and visible targets to other players and guilds.

I think we need a lot more info on things like base weapon lethality, defense effectiveness, and repair features before we'll know the real effort needed to hold the installations.  Those kind of things will likely need to be balanced in the PU Beta next year.  

Also, some other items to ponder will be access control and 'friend or foe' determination   How do you grant friends / guild members permission to use and defend your base?  Such dynamics will be pivotal for how used the base will be and how easy it is to defend when the owner is offline.

-Kinshadow

Back in January, we had a quick discussion article on pirate role playing and the character archetypes this conjures to mind.  In it, I pointed out the absurdity of talking like an Elizabethan era Caribbean pirate while flying a spaceship in the 30th century.  Obviously, if space pirates talked in a specific manner, it probably wouldn't be like the romanticized sailors or yore.

Last week, Dave Haddock posted another great entry in his ongoing Writer’s Guide to explain some of the Cathcart dialect and pirate terminology we’ve seen in some of his stories.  While, the introduction of a SciFi thieves’ cant in the Star Citizen universe was something I craved, the terminology mentioned and the Creole-accent basis initially put me off a bit.  Some forum posts have rebelled a bit in these aesthetics and I can’t blame them.

This weekend, I tried to get some fiction writing in and, of course, my next short story includes Cathcart and Spyder as settings.  I looked at my base dialog and thought, “How am I going to make this work?”.  The terminology that Dave has given us and the accent itself just didn’t seem to work.  I wasn’t feeling the odd contractions and the slang origins seemed stretched thin and anachronistic at the same time.  AntiLaz?  Too obscur.  Dingo? Too randomly Australian (especially in Creole).  This is an intentional mix of ignorance driven slang mixed with an accent that exudes ‘backwoods’ and used by people that have command over technology and science that is beyond our comprehension.  Even if you limit the usage to the most ignorant and assume the tech is so easy to use that language doesn’t matter, the pirate ranks must be filled with those who maintain and understand the technology enough to build and maintain Spyder itself.  Spyder residents crave imported entertainment from the UEE.  Why would they talk like this?

Then, I thought more about it.  Dave’s examples, as he points out, are just examples.  The language is WAY bigger than this.  Likely so big that fiction authors can probably just make up words that fit the general theme without any worries of clobbering continuity.  On top of this, this terminology is ‘meant’ to be impenetrable to outsiders (the point of a thieves’’ cant).  It is both a mark of pride (a self identification as a ‘pirate’) and a form of cryptology among the speakers.  When you think about the speech, you have to think about it not as a modern backwoods drawl, but as an evolution of street slang mixed with complexity of any engineering discipline.  Take the innate need for words that technology requires to adequately describe and operate and layer on a obfuscation meant to make it even less discernible.

As an author, this is all likely a good thing.  I can make the speech easy or hard to understand, obscuring techno-babble that other SciFi battles.  I can give my pirate characters a bit of freedom and color without stressing the consistency or even the minor tech implications.  Most of the time, the pirates themselves aren’t stupid and can speak as clear or obfuscated as they desire to non-pirates or the readers.  

For role players in the game, it may be a little harder.  We just don’t have enough terminology and auditory cues in our mind’s ear to get a hang of it yet.  In-game, such usage will likely come through emulation of the fiction (plus voice actors) and the NPCs they interact with so we’ll have to see how that pans out.

So, all you scrum, I’ve bought the new Cathcart lore and I’ll see if I can help flesh out this dingo.  The Creole part will probably still take a bit to get used to though.

-Kinshadow

A couple weeks back, I got pretty sick and was laid up for a bit (I'm still a spot under the weather)  so the DC updates have been a lax.  I even missed posting my last Hanger question here.  So, to rectify this,  without further ado, here's the video.  WM's answer was basically 'no' so I'll just post the question.  If you have a chance, check out Logante's video in the same theme.  

By the way, Dr. Hawk's question was actually meant for the week before, which is the reason is seemed out of place next to my earlier video.