How Will Explorers Make Money in Star Citizen? | Citizen Central Podcast

Exploration in space games can come in many different shapes and sizes, but Star Citizen has never comprehensively defined all the parts of its own version. I wanted to discuss the things we know, the things CIG has hinted at, and what the community has speculated may be included. For this talk, I brought together members of the community from touring, industrial surveying, deep space exploration, and org-based gameplay to discuss their own perspectives. This is a speculation-heavy discussion, but you’ll find a good amount of CIG-sourced info about the gameplay as well. Hope you enjoy it! | Ft. (Ft. King Dimitrius, Lord Skippy, RedMonsterSC, EagleStellarAlliance)
Today's Guests
LordSkippy
KZbin: / @thelordskippy
Verse Guide: verseguide.com/
RedMonster
KZbin: / @redmonstersc Twitch: / redmonstersc
King Dimitrius
KZbin: / @kingdimitrius6309
EagleStellarAlliance
Spectrum: robertsspaceindustries.com/co...
ToC:
00:00 Introductions
08:00 What is Exploration to You?
30:10 Deep Space Exploration
40:00 General Exploration & Data Running
54:50 Cartography & Maps
59:30 Is There Enough Exploration Content?
01:06:00 How Do Explorers Make Money?
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[@HawkesGaming]

No joke. I used to spend days researching everywhere you could mine and with what tools you would use every patch. After Red Monster came out they are my total go to guys for information. The sheer volume of time they save me creating videos is freaking ridiculous.

[@RedMonsterSC]

Thanks for the kind praise!

[@Valkyani]

Cornerstone compendium, verse guide and item searcher are one of those essential tools. Thanks for your effort guys.

[@stevewest5397]

Give us fun things to do in ships when we're in a really long quantum jump. Playing cards, simple board games, etc. Give us a reason to sit around the galley table on a big ship while the ship is travelling.

[@gizmo104drives7]

Would be really cool to sink a few whiskeys and make bad gambling decisions lol

[@bloodstoneoperator5372]

This is a great subject to have a conversation about. I would love to see another episode of this w guests that are not so industrially centered. Let’s talk to people who know the lore, that are story tellers, that are creative that may be able to generate ideas that CIGA could run with and implement.

[@benmaier7232]

CIG could add something other than Comets that passes trough the local star system like like a wreck or an artifact. I'd really like to know how the telescope array of the endeavor is supposed to work/integrate in the exploration system

[@Tentacl]

I'm always scared because exploration is the most romantic aspect of spce to me, and one of the main reasons I was attracted by SC back on kickstarter. But I trully have o idea how it could be as cool as I imagine without being completely hand crafted.

[@R1PPA-C]

This is one of the reasons I first bought elite dangerous, the exploration part of it was huge, unfortunately that's one mechanic in SC we'll never see

[@Tentacl]

@@R1PPA-C I actually own Elite (bough in some Steam promo) but barely played it, is exploration cool there? Interesting...

[@R1PPA-C]

@@Tentacl yeah, I haven't played it for years... apparently it's changed heaps, but when it first came out the whole galaxy wasn't mapped, and to find new systems you literally would have to look out of your side windows and manually look for stars that were moving at different speeds to the others whilst travelling multiple xC it was pretty a pretty neat game mechanic. This is well before they had planet side mechanics and fps

[@eartheater3956]

This is what I see as exploration. Lots of SC players will say that exploration is already in game, but I disagree. I would consider it sight seeing. The finding/mapping of ore and other resources is, like the one dude said, surveying. In my mind, exploration in a space game is finding new unknown planets or maybe objects in unknown areas. Even if SC does manage to put in these things, they would be in such few numbers, only a few sweaty players will have a chance to be the first. That's if they aren't data mined first.

[@R1PPA-C]

@@eartheater3956 absolutely... it would be impossible for them to add the amount of systems needed for true exploration as CIG seem to want to inhabit or have built objects in every system. But they could include a procedural side to the game like elite did, just an absolute shed load of systems with randomly generated sets of stars / planets / astroid fields in unknown locations, kind of how they procedurally built area 18. It wouldn't take a great deal of resources from servers as they'd be comparatively void of players / objects. If elite managed to map out our whole galaxy back when with hardly any issues on server requirements I'm sure CIG could add the same but scaled down with the amount of server throughput they're gonna need when server meshing and live hits

[@magvad6472]

My issue with the development cycle now is that...well...at current rates, there will be no "exploration". There will be content updates that drop an asset they will show off in ads and marketing to death. We will get ISC walkthroughs of it and sneak peeks and a whole bunch of stuff that will more or less "do the exploring for the player". We'll see the asset trickle in from Evo with a person showing every detail of it. At least, Exploration won't be for US at the cutting edge of the games development. We won't get surprises. We will get ads. New players 10 years from now who haven't even see a trailer? They will get surprises, they will get exploration in a more truer sense as long as they aren't looking for spoilers. And it's fine, I guess, we can just try to avoid that marketing and that content, but it's very invasive and you can't take back seeing somehting you didn't want to see until you were in game. Especially when we get ISCs that tell you every detail about something before we get it because they need material to market. But it's just sad to know that, at least given the way CIG has treated the game thus far, there hasn't really been anything to find that we haven't already known was going to be there and what it looked like in fairly substantial detail. Like there will never be a "hidden jumppoint" in this game. They will just "unlock the jumppoint we know is there to be used" Maybe as they get more assets in game there will be less of that, but with datamining I just don't really see there ever being a moment of TRUE exploration for this game. They can find the cave locations, they can find where the outposts are, and so on. So like, even if they dropped a jumppoint that led into unsettled space infinitely, in the vein of NMS....nothing would ever actually be novel unless you just locked yourself in a dark room and never let anyone in the community talk to you. ___ My point being, I think exploration in this game just can't actually be "FINDING" anything. It's going to have to be more in the vein of cargo and survival in the sense that they need to make space more hostile to ships without there being combat (because if exploration is just another combat heavy loop the game will feel flat). They need things for us to bring back whether it be data caches or objects like Hadesian artifact. The only way "finding" things works in this game is pure RNG which would, in essence, rip any sense of agency away from the player and instead they'd just have to look outside the game to find where they need to start gambling for a chance at getting to some item or object that's floating in space and will show up 1 in 5000 scans. My MAIN desire for Exploration is a path where I have to get out of my ship and step onto a planet or float in space regularly...not to go pick up 500 scu of cargo, but to just ride around or walk around in an area to pick up small packet data samples or to scan, etc. Things that give us more tactile interactions with the planets that they've put so much time into to make beautiful, yet have nothing on 99.99999% of them. Because outside of being a space mechanic where I just go from planet to planet fixing up generators and power grids and turning on comm arrays and so on...exploration for me sounds appealing because it gets me out into the procedural mesh of the game where it will feel more personal as each vista doesn't necessarily have to have been truly experienced before. There is just so much space, so having things out there worth finding...such as a rare flower that we need to keep cool in our ship until it gets back to the buyer? Like that sounds cool, and right now the game just has no gameplay for rovers or hoverbikes or really any of the millions of miles of land that's just flora right now.

[@HappyHungrySleepy23]

Finding and selling location data for industrial players is going to be huge for exploration. I think they should make alien artifacts valuable in some way, maybe for crafting. Make certain gems that you find in caves worth good money. For jump gates, maybe they could have a timed random spawn of a gate. The gate could last for like 2 weeks or something and selling the data could be useful for smugglers or cargo haulers

[@benmaier7232]

I'm also interested how to trade location information. Will it be stored unreadable in game and therefore not multiply-able and therefore better sell-able?

[@TacticalBeard]

Honestly every time I play SC I’m impressed with what I see visually…. It’s just the current star map and navigation modes are so not user friendly and combine that with the bugs and 30ks I just simply don’t explore things and only focus on getting my current objective done as fast as possible before something breaks 😅. In the new update the new star map is really going to open up a lot for me

[@soeveth]

In my perfect dream of SC I see exploration as the foundation of most other professions. I dont think there should be random missions at least high level stuff without someone finding it first and selling the data. There no HH to salvage? well guess I better get my scanning ships looking for wrecks. My org needs a supply of unatainium but theres none on the market better send the scouts out looking for it. Make it an auction style bidding so the market can semi regulate its self.

[@Sentrix141]

Great topic and something as a bonafide Wanderer i am excited about. Really well balanced tomato from your guests. Maybe i should consider a org at some point and stop being a complete loner🤔

[@blackdreamhunk3413]

I s the 890 jump still an exploration ship as advertised?

[@boukm3n]

Usually planets have places to jump to on the planet. It would be cool when more systems emerge for us to discover and sell new jump points on the planets or moons. So every piece of intel would become something worth paying for

[@noideas439]

Maybe you could build some infrastructure on the ground that allows for direct QT?

[@Jeremy_Walker]

Exploring is looking to be tough if they do all the mechanics with multicrew ships.

[@Nahuman]

Just as a heads-up, Red Monsters channel links in the dooblydoo are a bit wonky.

[@SpaceTomatoToo]

Thanks!

[@Swill880]

It’s fun spitballing these ideas but is any of this actually realistic? It makes sense and seems doable but the struggle with implementing current gameplay alongside the implementation of new tech makes me worry that they will t get anywhere near this. Chris is human and will eventually say “good enough.” I feel like this type of stuff would be another decade and will SC be relevant enough for them to continue work for that many years?

[@RicoZaid_]

Exploration will be gathering dynamically generated data, which is also a commodity. It will not be discovering anything "new", The systems are too small and there are too many players to have "new" things.

[@hephaestion12]

I started watching this being like oof this is cringe never going to make a game out of this stuff..... Then i got excited 😂 let me explore for mineables and abandoned ships and stuff

[@ThatGuyKazz]

sorry but the idea that "some people won't want to fly them selves out there" is peak copium... Like I am sorry but this is a video game nobody should be so risk adverse that they would be "unwilling to take the risk themselves" sorry but that is just a dumb take.

[@ObiWeebKenobi]

It's true, I don't know what to tell you, plenty of people want to experience Star Citizen but aren't good enough at flying or want to focus on other forms of gameplay such as engineering, FPS, etc.

[@TheJack4000111]

Looks like a square to me.