New interview with the planet content team. Some highlights:
Q: Will pyro have flowing lava fields?
A: Lava is planned. It will probably be added into Pyro sometime after Pyro is released. Lava will probabbly make the deadline for Pyro's release.
Jared interrupts to clarify: "We aren't saying that Pyro is coming this year. We are saying that we are working on it this year. Pryo may or may not have lava at release. It depends on when we release it and how the schedules for the various teams line up."
Q: Will there be explorable oceans? (As in underwater stuff)
A: It is an idea they're interested in but they're not working on it.
Q: Why does only microtech have clouds?
A: Clouds are a time investment (to get them to look right?) and have to happen early on in the development of a new planet. They're working on rolling out clouds on more planets. They want the clouds to feel different depending on the planet.
Q: Are Dense jungle biomes possible with the current tech?
A: No. There are multiple problems. In SC, they have to make things that work from all distances (ie, seeing millions of trees from orbit), but they're working on improving computer performance, which is a big obstacle right now. Good looking, dense forests are a high priority right now.
Q: What happened to touch bending? Ie, binding animation skeletons to plants, so that when you walk through a plant you bend the leaves on it?
A: Still being worked on. This is part of a broader effort to develop vegetation, like vegetation that changes depending on the season of the planet. New tech for vegetation is in development.
Q: Will there be planets with multiple biomes? Planets are diverse as our earth? Oceans and deserts and forests and mountains and swamps on a single planet?
A: It is a goal. We aren't there yet. Still a ways to go. We started with single biome planets. Then with Microtech, we had a two biome planet (tundras and boreal forests). With Pyro, there will be more diversity. We also want to go back and update the older planets.
Q: What is the relationship between roads, rivers, and lava tech?
A: A lot of overlap in the tech. Still lots of development is needed before we get roads to drive on.
Q: What mechanics will encourage us to use ground vehicles over flying around in ships?
A: We want extreme weather conditions to affect ships and encourage the player to land and explore more safely in ground vehicles.
Q: What are the blockers to adding more depth or altitude to planets?
A: There was an interview at Citizencon 2020 that went into this problem at length. We're still trying to address this.
Q: Caves we can fly through?
A: We've talked about it. Going to need more work to make a large cave you can fly through while maintaining visual quality. Not workin on it right now.
Q: Why are trees indestructible? Why does my tank flip over when I drive into a small tree?
A: Limitation of the game where it can't differentiate between small and large sized vehicles, like little golf carts and giant tanks. We are working on addressing this. This is why we try to avoid adding little trees for now.
Q: Will the amount of rocks on moon and planet surfaces be adjusted to make them more traversable by rovers?
A: We went back and redid the old planets and moons to try to make them a little more driveable.
Q: Progress on the Nyx star system?
A: We did lots of work on it. Looks good. Needs a polish pass. Server meshing isn't ready yet so we can't implement Nyx into the game.
Q: Favorite planet/moon in pyro?
Daniel: the one I first worked on, and I like the vibe of it.
Max: Pyro 4, because of how alien it looks and it looks nice.
Sebastian: Pyro 3, because I worked on it and the colors. Pyro 3 is the one from the 2021 Citizencon.
Q: Has there been work on ArcCorp?
A: always on our backlog to prevent it from utterly breaking but we are aware it has fallen behind in quality. ArcCorp breaks the rules of our planet tech and is very difficult to work with and is very easy to break. There will be a day when we come back to ArcCorp.