Star Citizen: What Org Changes Should Be Made for 1.0?

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CIG is making a list of what will, and won't be in Star Citizen 1.0
I discuss org capabilities that should be on the list and what should wait.
0:00 Introduction
0:45 What Time Frame is '1.0'?
1:35 What Might Shard Sizes Be Then?
1:57 Implication of Shard Sizes
2:31 The Need For 3 Types of Shards
3:39 Sponsor Message
5:20 The Problem With Too-Large Orgs
5:43 A Per-Shard Cap
6:37 Org Fleets, Teasuries, and Hangars.
6:57 Org Fleets and Shards
7:32 People are a Problem
8:07 Is There a Reason to Have Org Fleets at All?
8:32 My 1.0 Suggestion
9:19 Go Whole Hog for 1.X?
9:50 Give-Aways
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[@sc_cintara]

CIG already have a way to move ships and items between shards; it is in-game right now. It is based on the concept of "stowing". You "stow" an item or ship whenever you store it in an inventory or a hangar. You "unstow" when you spawn an item. As long as an item is "unstowed" (i.e. spawned), it stays there, however all "stowed" items can be spawned in any shard you like.

[@sc_cintara]

BTW, the idea of dynamic server meshing is to allow fully horizontal server-meshing. That means that they can join any number of servers together into a single shard. Even the replication layer is horizontally scaled. That means that there is no upper limit to server shard size (as long as Amazon can deliver enough servers). A shard will be essentially infinite in size, you can have all orgs of any size in a single shard.

[@tree0311]

Yeah I don't think we will have a shard pop limit, but how they will prevent excessive concentration of people will be a challenge. Part of the Static Server Meshing tests will be to see how many concurrent connections between clients and connected dedicated game servers a single Replication Layer (Replicant) can handle before they spin up an more just like they spin up more servers.

[@ForgeofAule]

A planet like Pandora from avatar would be neat, I hope we see some more exotic flora and fauna!

[@Verinia]

You are the best in the biz, Ray. At opening Pandora's box with thoughtful commentary on the game's future!

[@cyberiusprime4855]

Excellent topic of discussion here, and I like your thinking on how to mitigate the potential chaos this Pandora's Box will bring with it. I hope CIG is listening!

[@Shika_95]

Thanks for video ! Hope we will get someday pandora box !

[@sc_cintara]

Having local continental shards will be important for those that require good ping at all times, i.e. people that often play during their region's off-peak times and don't have many international friends. For international orgs however, which I suspect are most of them, global shards become very important. It has to be global to allow sharing org resources among international org members as well as for playing together internationally. One idea for a global shard while still keeping pings reasonable is to take advantage of the global Amazon network to move the shard state around the world in time with the sun; i.e. a "follow-the-sun" shard. This will give everyone optimal ping in the global shard during prime-time for your region and still allows you to play with all the org resources during your local off-peak time, though at worse ping because the shard has moved on to a different continent.

[@ph11p3540]

My greatest concern with org management features is, Org institutional hierarchy. THis will insured that pooled ships to be lent out are captained by trusted players or players appropriate to their career paths. I do not want to captain a capital ship but industrial ships because that is what I am grooming myself for. Three also needs localized hierarchal channels in game VOIP since all we have are general, party and ship channels. For org strategic logistics we need intershard transport ships. These are ships and people that travel on long ranged ships from one trade hub to another trade hub. The hubs do add a time penalty factor to prevent players and their goods flooding a shard at any time to distort the economy or operational level advantage for that hour

[@stormwolf3255]

Loaning ships to your org (either free or for a percentage of profit) seems a sensible way to go. The key thing with orgs as you said is there's no one size fits all solution, so having in game options on to configure your particular guild rules (e.g. paying dues) and ranks seems like the best approach. Org / people management is a tricky business and can open a Pandora's box of woes if there isn't enough flexibility.

[@RaysGuide]

Calculating percentage of actual profit would be a nightmare.

[@stormwolf3255]

@@RaysGuide hmm... depends how you do it - if it's a 'flat percentage' of each contract fulfilled using that ship specifically then it wouldn't be too bad (I was thinking more like how ships crews were paid prize money 'shares' in the age if sail, with the master getting a larger share). Basically, you put your ship in harms way for the benefit of the org in general then you're entitled to a larger slice of the pie ;)

[@Makanikeiki]

@@RaysGuide it could be baked into the "rental" is that while you have the ship a designated percentage of your credits earned is sent to the org, player that owns the ship or both. i.e. I am letting you use my Hull D for one day you give me 3% of all credits earned and 1% goes to the org.

[@sc_cintara]

@@RaysGuide CIG can easily pull a flat "tax" out of all your earnings (not profit, just all your earnings) and give it to your org. An org can easily do a flat fee, even without help from CIG, but as with all fees, those will be more expensive for the poor earners than for the rich earners. Not all orgs will want to use a tax-system and different orgs will have different levels, but doing the calculation is easy and useful to many. It isn't for all but it is far better than nothing so it is a good starting point.

[@Extrasolar_XSLR]

Gotta say: I would be really entertained to see a crossover between Ray's Guide and @ToBinge 's Pandora's Cubicle. I have no idea what would happen, but now that the idea has been put into my head I can't help but imagine it would be guaranteed to be amazing.

[@Makanikeiki]

Even if organizational ship rentals open a pandoras box. You know what else was contained in the box hope...I am really hopeful that they do it in a constructive way that benefits the players, organizations, and members who donated their ships to be rented.

[@kevinm3751]

I am left setting here shaking my head about this server issue and shards. We are in a day and age where cloud computing is a real thing and has been fleshed out and it just works! Yet they are stuck thinking like its 1990 and all we have is bare bone servers with limited resources. Fact is if the game was being developed to work in the cloud infrastructure it would not be worried about spooling up and down servers because the cloud does not work that way! it is based on resources and limits. When the limits go up, more hardware resources are automatically added to ensure the performance never suffers regardless of load. When a resource is not needed it is simply removed, and being someone that has been doing this for a few years now I can say it works flawlessly and given they are using Amazon, this should be a no brainier since Amazon has a massive cloud infrastructure! Not only that their cloud services are some of the cheapest on the planet.

[@krisghoststar]

The other thing about orgs and numbers allowed per server is you can join up to ten at present. The Pandora element is; A few of my friends are in 2. It's so we can arrange small red v blue events. If both of them are on which one does it count myself and several others as belonging to?

[@craxsdep7197]

For now, we just have to wait and see how in the future the org will function, until then we can only speculate how the Pandora effect will happen.

[@omegatheta1701]

well that was a real pandoras video, ya know... i persronally would like to see orgs expanded in a few ways myself. i imagine a world where we have different orgs that specialize, and my personal favorite idea is the idea of a "grey org" that operates openly both in and outside of "Controlled space" but more to the point, i think your idea for how an org fleet could work would be pretty good though, as an expansion (and pending the base building becoming a reality) i think that allowing an org to build up a base of operations (be that a planetary one or mayhaps a ship like the Kracken or BMM one day) and letting that serve as the internal point of contact. i dunno really how it would work in detail but it feels kinda nice to me.

[@Bogie-AGB]

I do really like your videos. Its like Im ready to open Pandora's Box when I click on your link.

[@luukkramer]

As a former Eve player, orgs really are pandora's box. I agree with your cap of a quarter of a shards population being the max for an org. I'm just hoping CIG will actually try to make orgs fun outside of pvp content. I've always thought that orgs should have divisions. That way a single division could have a base on for example the eu shard and a division could be on a US shard. They could have seperate inventories and treasuries managed by a handfull of overarching leaders. They could then play together on events but not be constrained by the 'not a single server' problem SC has compared to Eve.

[@51ghardy]

There are so many situations that can affect Pandoras Box. I am in a huge league, but I see your point about one league dominating the server. Its easy to work around though

[@SolaAesir]

I think you're missing a couple of things. One is that a player can be a member (even was encouraged to be a member) of multiple orgs. That's a whole other Pandora's box to address and really makes your shard limits untenable. The other is that sharding technology is made to scale horizontally. There may be continental servers to deal with ping issues, but the shards should just get smaller and smaller until they're handling the correct number of people in a given area for the entire regional server.

[@tripperdan]

Dealing with Orgs and the demand of supporting an org with all their different needs is most certainly opening Pandora's box. Great idea of the cap on a shard until someone can offer a better solution.

[@morgandyoung]

Interesting shard ideas. All that Pandora has left is hopium: the stuff of SC dreams.

[@marcjensen9080]

I'm guessing CIG will be heading into this armed with a lot of knowledge gleaned from the likes of Elite Dangerous and will be actively avoiding opening Pandora's Box. The permission system would be the easy part I imagine. A ship (or facility?) owner would have ultimate authority and should be able to designate and adjust ranks to anyone on the ship, with higher crew roles also being able to designate roles for those lower in the pecking order. I think the bigger issue might become the issue of pooled resources - who should pay what into where, and who controls how those resources are allocated. That could a fun task to work out.

[@3769Chris]

With the new water effects in 3.23 I agree with @ForgeofAule that a Pandora like planet would be amazing. I wonder if we will ever get the opportunity to go native and have mounts.

[@Tsudico]

Perhaps the reason Org 2.0 hasn't seen the light of day is the complexity of a permission system that they will need. It isn't just about having permissions for friend, party, and/or Org because players can be a part of multiple Orgs at the same time which further complicates things. CIG needs to have a permission system that works across ships and hangars at the very least if not including a permission system for inventory (freight and item bank). The larger an Org gets, the more likely that security issues will develop because no permission system will be able to prevent all attack vectors.

[@sc_cintara]

There are a lot of things that Org2.0 can do even with just a simple permission system (just tag people to give them permission to do things). The permission system is important, but it shouldn't hold up everything else that orgs need.

[@TheInsaneupsdriver]

If one of them have a crime stat, they all get "pulled over" and questioned when they bump into security. this should be part of a Org Rep system.

[@thomasherr5821]

The whole Pandora's Box argument would definitely take on a new face/catagory when basebuilding also happens. Who "owns" it? What kind of rules could govern org "owned" land and or space? Could those rules be imposed on non-org members if so what kind of ramifications would they have?

[@TheHoedeni]

It is the Pandora box that you opened 😉

[@inkwell3019]

Trying for a single global shard would definitely open Pandora's Box

[@four8998]

god, ive been thinking about joining an org lately cause, yaaayyyy friends. now you got me thinking i should remain a solo player. nah this game is better with others, but damn thats an overwhelming amount of stuff they'll have to work on. i hope they can get server meshing sorted by the end of the year as itll open up a ton of development options for CIG

[@darkfae2002]

Pandora's box does contain the main ingredient for hopium

[@1aatlas]

The lid was closed before hope escaped.

[@thx1137]

LOL. As an Australian that obviously often plays at 220 to 240 pings and me nor the orgs have issues then, I think it is funny that it is considered such a blocker. Of course, any decent games puts in ping mitigations and SC is no different. I expect that's why we've never had problems no matter what's said here.

[@MagicM03]

It maybe Pandora's Box but it's also something CIG are going to have to solve, preferably sooner rather than later.

[@Britich]

Pandoras box was closed before hope could escape, always find that weird.

[@Aero_Yuki]

CIG is going to have to open Pandora's box eventually when it comes to org dynamics, and it's a shame that we've gotten this far into the development of Star Citizen without really any official discussion on the in-game functionality of orgs. Specifically, they will need to sort out how joint-ownership will work (if at all) for org money, loot, ships, bases, etc. such that multicrew org gameplay (e.g. crewing a Javelin or a battlegroup) is not prohibitively complicated but still offers asset protections for org members if and when there are... complications with members and/or leadership.

[@Merciful_Angel]

I think Star Citizen is a game of emergent mechanics and opportunities, so we should be used to opening Pandora's box every time we ask for any major changes.

[@justinsandock]

As for opening Pandora's Box, I believe the Org Pseudo Characters need the ability to actually own ships, hangers, and assets. I like your idea of players lending assets to Orgs but they should also be able to transfer full ownership. And Orgs can purchase assets. I'm drawn to SC for the economy and Organizations need the ability to own assets for a robust economy and this should start at 1.0 launch.

[@dawnphantom2439]

First and foremost the most simple thing they said they would eventually do, which is the full implementation of Spectrum into the game as a social platform. This alone would enable the game to acknowledge Orgs/Guilds and potentially allow their respective chats to be accessible so you could post guild updates, have chats with others in the guild, etc. Second, instead of party members accessing hangars, designate a guild hangar. In this hangar everyone can put what they want in it from, ships, vehicles, etc for all guild members to access and would be something the guild sets up so it's not available by default. Perhaps this hangar costs UEC and perhaps. Third, Guild Housing. Much like player housing, a place where the guild can purchase an office space/flat on an Orison platform, New Babbage/ArcCorp/Lorville blocks that can service their guild. These would be more specious accommodations and likewise, more expensive than normal player housing for individual players or small groups. I definitely think they'll have to open the Pandora's box at some point, and hopefully now that they know how meshing works, it's sooner rather than later. I'm not sure how much longer i'm willing to wait.

[@velocitymg]

To add to that, you could also add guild club rooms like chairman’s club that all members and invited guests can enter

[@Kurisu2019]

If they had a moon/planet like Pandora from Avatar, I would be amazed.

[@rickshaw3397]

Snhu was my college!

[@sirbilliam9081]

Opening the Pandora’s box of collective ownership would be a no go for CIG, fewer ship sales.

[@brentmellinger]

Here's another of Pandora's boxes: How do org members using an org ship pay the org? Taxes on revenue? Thats fair on, say, most missions, but then you get to cargo trading, mining, salvage...

[@FuzeeSC]

Chris Roberts knowingly opened Pandora's box a long time ago. Still wondering what else might come out along the journey ...

[@aaronpaul5990]

The whole concept of a org is a pondoras box no matter how you open it. I so hope that they dont opent he box of org owned paid ships. Yes it will make life harder for the org if the access to spawn a ship is bound to one member but i dont want to imagine the nightmare that shared ownership and or shared access would bring. And if you can shared access to a ship with an org what happens if you leave the org? What happens with org property if the org disbands? What happens with org land if the org disbands or the one who did the buying of that land leaves? What happens with the stuff that is stored on that land? These are questions that have to be answered before the system is put in place and that will have no answere that will statify everybody.

[@mattp1337]

I think they'll find ways to make shard populations arbitrarily large, though continental is still the likely to keep average ping within acceptable limits. At least, that's the Pandora's Box I hope they manage to stuff us all into. You rule of no more than 25% of a shard being one org's members won't be necessary, IMO, though it's still a perfectly reasonable rule.

[@Lord_Retrospect]

I only now just realized the euphemism Pandora's box is to represent. Oh sweet innocence

[@RaysGuide]

I aim to educate.

[@pablofiasco2]

heh, you know, one way they could potentially avoid a pandora box situation? "there are only 4 regions, all the shards are meshed together as giant clusters, there are no seperate shards to worry about" .....probably unfeasible, but damn it would be cool to hop on to teh North America Star Citizen Cluster and go, yay, there are 60,000 players are currently!

[@RaysGuide]

And then somebody would say let's all get together for a group photo

[@pablofiasco2]

@@RaysGuide lol, yeah yeah, shatter my dreams with logic :P

[@brendenramsey3989]

For CIG, adding gameplay content is like opening pandoras box so they just wont do it.

[@biochron]

So many open issues still persist, it could get worse than Pandora's box.

[@mike_d_melb_music_fan5229]

I'm just gonna put this out there...what if they followed a second life model ? Sold shards to private owners, and they leased to orgs or base occupiers ?

[@rensolsen4400]

This game is Pandora's collection of boxes :D

[@Azreal15]

It might indeed, open Pandora’s box.🇺🇦🇭🇹🇵🇸

[@FumoffuWins]

Pandora, I don’t know if org ships will be a good idea due to the fact you have to balance duping and who controls the rentals

[@erickruller4266]

You know, they may just decide not to open Pandora's box at all given the potential headaches. 🙂

[@rttakezo2000]

Pandora or Schrödinger; best leave both boxes unopened.

[@hix420]

Pandora unboxing video LOL xD

[@jch1386]

The "Fleet hangar" is a logistical nightmare, I imagine. Loaning a ship out on one shard, is it blocked out on all shards? Could people trick the system and claim a ship on two shards at the same time? Pandora might not know just how devious gamers can be these days!

[@Power5]

CIG opens Pandora's box every patch. I do not understand why there would be a limit to the size of a single shard. If there is server meshing, it should not matter where a player is since there could be servers from australia meshing with a server located in New York. If there are 6 dozen players all coming together in Pyro to have a PvP mega battle, the dynamic meshing would transfer to a central server location from all the players. So 5 people from Australia, 27 people in USA, and 10 people in south america. The server would then mesh everyone to a server located in egypt or something. As close to the mid point of all the players. It would never be perfect but it would try to level the ping between the players. If the dynamic meshing is good enough, this should be possible. Until we see what they can do with server meshing, it is still unknown.

[@RaysGuide]

Not how server meshing works. Ultimately what makes Server meshing work is the replication layer, which is one per shard and must be colocated in the same facility with the Simulation Servers.

[@SpaceMike3]

Good lord I'm so glad I'm not running an org. It looks like it's going to get very complicated. I imagine when they release server meshing and open it to the hoards it'll be like opening Pandoras box. All hell will break loose

[@FrazzleCat]

Now I kind of want to make a new unboxing channel and call myself Pandora but I'm certain, even without checking, that someone has already done this. In so far as orgs are concerned I tend to fly solo, but the possibility of orgs taking over a server could effect loners like myself.🤔 I do wonder how CIG will approach this possibility.

[@Verinia]

I'm mostly solo, too, but I can't wait for this. I am really excited about the dynamic, MMO gameplay. If an Org takes over an area, that'll be gameplay for the rest of us to either enter at own risk, or avoid. Bring on the turf wars! I'll wait on the outskirts in the cockpit of my Vulture.

[@FrazzleCat]

@@Verinia Pros and cons, really. They couldn't do much in high sec areas, but you enter anywhere outside of the newbie zone and they could just KoS everyone to be twats. Ultimately it'll depend on CIG's rules, the tools available and what have you. I'd be fine with a system being org-owned or such, at least once we have more than the 3 to 7 starting systems.

[@StarCitizenSpeakeasy]

there will be one shard per continent.

[@FeathersMcClaw]

I don’t see a full year of marketing for SQ42. I believe marketing campaigns like this are usually about 6 months.

[@RaysGuide]

I mostly see one year's of presales.

[@Adam-vo6yl]

That's a lot of stuff in Pandora's box

[@dbulford21]

Pandora's box

[@cuzant]

AI software can help in timeline.

[@locantos]

Pandora

[@ViniciusConsorte]

Pandora's box has been opened for SC a long time ago with every new promisse that you could not even deliver the previous one... Persistent Hangars Full Persistence with millions of garbage itens that we dont need, you cannot persist every piece of garbage or corpses ( they already despawn corpses) so, why keep a lot of disposable stuff to just strain the servers that are already bad at minute 0 they spool up. Modularity was promissed when? 10 years ago? They keep pushing more ships instead of bringing all that already exist up to standard and making a game..... 200+ vehicles is fine for a game to start, you can puch fancy vehicles later on..... NPCs that stand on chairs while the promisse is npcs that will do even engineering, i cant imagine chair standing dumb npcs fixing a ship, they can barely walk straight. Really hope they manage to deliver a good product im a lot of money IN, but there is really a need for a wakeup call and STOP promissing new fancy things while the BASICS dont work.

[@profdecoy]

I don't think org ownership is as bad as pandora's box. I do agree it is a complex problem, but don't think it's insurmountable.

[@ryeaye2278]

Why’s is everyone saying pandora?

[@DaringDan]

CIG's encouragement of multiple accounts via the referral program is gonna be really gross post 1.0. Org infiltration etc. Mark my words: Absolute cesspool.

[@velocitymg]

All accounts that have 0 in game hours and nil pledges should be deleted automatically every 6 months

[@SpaceMike3]

Could you explain that a bit please. I don't think I'm getting it

[@DaringDan]

@@SpaceMike3 The referral program has encouraged a lot of players to have multiple accounts. That means people will place characters in orgs. You go to crew your big ship, they join and mid mission start killing people and their buddies come in. Imagine spending a grand or more on a ship and setting up a crew for an hour or two to have it ruined by something like that. There's no planning for something like that and the multiple accounts thing really flies in the face of the ethos of the game. CIG made a huge mistake with the referral program in terms of how easily abusable it will be. The other issue is criminals if they get caught don't have to worry about prison. They jump on another account and go after the person who sent them there.

[@AuricNova]

I think the very concept of SC is just Pandora's Box.

[@RaysGuide]

Could well be right there.

[@dasofdoom]

my wife wouldn't like it if i opened pandora's box ;) real talk though, your idea is silly and overly complex.. think about the order that this is delivered, org hangars wont come until we get personal hangars, those will come with t0 of permissions, which is tied to the party system for now they already said that permissions will come in the future that will allow for access to each others hangars when we are offline how this will be handled is still to be seen, but at a guess i would imagine that meshed servers would mean that there is only one copy of that hangar, and if you are on shard a, but im on shard b, then you should be forced over to shard a to access my hangar... the org system will just be an extension of that, but ii would imagine that there would be the need for dynamic meshing to prevent the need for shards, only regional shards. except it just gives the org leader (or the account in the hotseat) two hangars, his personal one and the org hangar. with regards to ships and ledgers, those are simple, only one person can spawn them at a time, fix the insurance system so you cant claim ships you left somewhere (instead you can take a taxi to your lost ship)

[@RaysGuide]

I don't know but it sounds like you say my idea is overly complex, and then describe an even more complex system full of 'we'll see...' and forcing people onto shards, a shard that might not even have extra slots available.

[@Temprasphere]

No one wants to be Pandora. Org tools should start simple. If there is an external tool that does the job, no need to re make it. Maybe add linking tools

[@RaysGuide]

external tools will not solve org hangars and org fleets on multiple shards.

[@Temprasphere]

Correct. Orgs could just have a common account shared between flag members who contain the ships. Which brings handing of keys to ships around tools

[@dennisgoedbloed1287]

Who is this Pandora?!

[@RicoZaid_]

CiG just loses money with org ships. They wouldn't do it.

[@atmclick]

A lot of people have suggested letting people in the same org access the personal hangars of other members as default, but adjusting permissions could be a pain for a lot of players in a massive org with a lot of people they don't know or necessarily trust with that level of access. Could lead to a bit of a Pandora's box situation if they give sweeping personal hangars access to org members instead of just party members, but I'm sure CIG will manage it all well enough

[@RaysGuide]

Yes I would definitely let everyone into my org by default. Org hangars should be a communal hangout, not letting everyone into your personal space by default.

[@andyandreson3989]

Org drama. Every ship owned by an org should be named Pandora.

[@WookieeRage]

I agree. Pandora would make a great name.

[@Crittek]

Imagine thinking this long and hard to just say a bunch of stupid shit.

[@RaysGuide]

How like did it take you to think of that comment?

[@hiphopgrinch]

This guy thinking orgs will be in 1.0... 😂😂😂

[@RaysGuide]

Well, technically they already exist but with limited features. Bear in mind I say right from the start my earliest expected time frame for 1.0 is fall of 2027

[@franknitty69]

I think for ships, if a permissions are given to multiple players (friends or org), once it is retrieved, another player regardless of shard, cannot retrieve it until it’s stored. This way you don’t require an org ‘account’. Just the owner of the ships and permissions that can be granted to other players. And the owner can revoke the permissions which will store the ship and yeet all players aboard to the last landing zone.

[@RaysGuide]

but a problem is persistence. Sure I could give people in my org access to my ship but if it disappears when I leave the game and they can't return to it unless I am there first it really doesn't let it function a a ship for the whole group to use.

[@truther6616]

I have pandoras box in my bathroom!

[@raychesney1518]

pandora

[@ArcaneDgR]

o7 ... 🫡