Backstage - OOC Forums
General Discussion => The Speakeasy: OOG/Off-topic Discussion => Topic started by: Seriphyn on 13 Oct 2012, 15:20
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http://starcitizen.robertsspaceindustries.com/
Behold, Star Citizen, a single-player and massively-multiplayer online space sim "that'll have everything that made Wing Commander, Privateer, and Freelancer great".
Crowdsourcing target is $2 million. Already past $500k, started a few days ago.
Check out this videos. One thing is full avatar control, walking around the ship, then running/climbing into your cockpit. It's all in the 11 minute video there.
Won't see this til the end of 2014 at least, but something to look forward to.
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Well, it seems I've found our Eve replacement if CCP doesn't cough up some veteran content soon.
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Well, it seems I've found our Eve replacement if CCP doesn't cough up some veteran content soon.
This.
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Combine that with Infinity damnit :eek:
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Well, it seems I've found our Eve replacement if CCP doesn't cough up some veteran content soon.
This.
I was thinking this. An actual space sim MMO. EVE isn't really...a space sim. It's just a non-standard MMO in a space setting. I also much prefer the 'space pilot' angle than the whole demigod thing.
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The demigod thing wasn't in the picture originally.
Player propaganda brought it into CCPs marketing which kind of skewed the whole thing...
But, hell yeah, proper space exploration and pew pew.
Been waiting for that since Elite.
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Looks interesting, but there is a considerable amount of skepticism around as to whether they can actually produce what they are promising. So I'll remain cautiously hopeful until I can actually see they are making what they said they would :)
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I donated $10,000.
What? No, I already told you, the house burnt down because I left the toaster on! Ask the insurance people!
You're the insurance people?
... I'd like to call my lawyer.
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I will be watching this development closely and will fund when I know more about the potential output. If all goes well, I'd hope that they have an economic system at least as complex as eve's.
If that happens, I'd be happy to help form a market savvy core to an organised, mature backstage community effort.
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Having spent a good portion of my childhood wrapped around a joystick blasting Kilrathi on my 486, reading all the Wing Commander novels, etc.....I will be watching this one closely.
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The idea of a real 'space sim' MMO where you have groups of players filling different roles on a team, say gunners on your ship, flying a capital ship, flying fighter escorts, etc, all in real-time in the same environment...
fills me with such complete joy.
This is the immersive space-sim we've all been dreaming of so many years.
The technology is finally getting to the point where we can have these 'overarching' games that all inhabit the same sphere.
People flying fighters with joysticks.
'Captains' steering these slow and massive ships into positions, wwII style battleship fights
First-person boarding actions and combat
Deep space exploration
All in one. Want so much.
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My main concern with this game is that I havent been able to find any mention of the actual servers and hardware that will be powering the MMO.
Anyone seen anything addressing their ideas for that?
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He's looking at only 60-100 on grid at the same time, which makes this MUCH more reasonable hardware wise.
Repeat, they aren't aiming for eve-style shenanigans, more like 'directed' instanced fights where the server might pair you up with a pirate group or something if you are both flying in the same direction and force an encounter.
http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2012/10/16/star-citizens-big-influences-demons-souls-real-life/
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I donated $10,000.
What? No, I already told you, the house burnt down because I left the toaster on! Ask the insurance people!
You're the insurance people?
... I'd like to call my lawyer.
I resent this unlawful accusation about the integrity of toaster kind.
It was the blender who started the fire.
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I donated $10,000.
What? No, I already told you, the house burnt down because I left the toaster on! Ask the insurance people!
You're the insurance people?
... I'd like to call my lawyer.
I resent this unlawful accusation about the integrity of toaster kind.
It was the blender who started the fire.
Don't forget the waffle iron, who provided the fuel... :eek:
*Shadowmelds and vanishes*
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This is a big deal, they've reached more than $4 million in crowd funding.
This game is happening.
http://games.slashdot.org/story/12/11/17/1656236/star-citizen-takes-the-crowdfunding-crown-raising-more-than-4m
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\o/
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4.8 mil so far, their site is getting so much traffic that it crashed again. They might actually hit that 5.5 mil mark. So far, I'm only in for the freelancer, but very very tempted to grab an extra ship or two.
Wishing i'd gotten my MWO refund so I could dump it in here, but who knows, maybe MWO will turn out to be worth it.
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Will the ships offered here be available to everybody once the game is released or are they unique models for backers ?
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Will the ships offered here be available to everybody once the game is released or are they unique models for backers ?
the V-something fighter ($300) is only for backers, the rest will be available in game for in game currency. Getting them now includes lifetime insurance (so you'll always have them) and titles and stuff. But mostly isn't just an excuse to throw money at them and get something shiny back.
I may have spent more on this than I should have. Oh well.
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So the funding campaign just ended. Their original target was 2 mil.
Instead, they just blew the old crowdfunding record (4.2 mil) out of the water and set a new one at $6,228,368 .
This game is gonna happen. Fuck yes.
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Oh ok. Well I guess I will have an insured Aurora noob thing that will probably cost almost no ingame money anyway. :P
But I backed the project in the early hours so fuck yeah.
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So we'll have this and Elite to look forward to. I think Elite will have lesser production values but still more is better. Elite will rely on procedural generation and will have open world as singleplayer, while Star Citizen will only have 60 system open world (with more added) on multiplayer.
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Well... this could mean I never need to think about coming back to Eve for my spacing fix. It could also mean I devote my entire life to the game in turn. Of course, they could catastrophically fail as well. Like a friend of mine wrote regarding this, there are two tragedies in life: 1) not getting what you want and 2) getting what you want.
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Necroing the shit out of this because the hangar module is supposed to launch today. Lots of progress has been made on the game, the various videos they've released look really slick.
I'm feeling very optimistic about it. Can it be 2015 yet?
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Is very sad that I did not hear of this till...well now.
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Been living under a rock? :P
Yeah, lots of awesome going on. CR saw how much money they were raising and decided to scap plans to get outside investment. Instead they're going to try to raise the entire $25 million or so that they need via crowdfunding. They hit $16 mil last week and are well on their way to 17 already. Kinda scary.
This is setting itself up to be the biggest, most massive disappointment in the history of gaming if it doesn't work out. Hell, even if it does work out, it will almost certainly fall short of the hype.
None the less, I'm excited (and significantly poorer as a result). The devs seem highly competent and very good at communicating with the community.
Contrast this with, say, PGI, and lol.
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Yeah...just checked out the site and looked around at stuff and I may have...purchased a package.
It does look quite cool.
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Let me know if you're interested in getting LTI on that package.
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This is setting itself up to be the biggest, most massive disappointment in the history of gaming if it doesn't work out. Hell, even if it does work out, it will almost certainly fall short of the hype.
sadly it will
Roberts spent a fortune on WC3 and WC4, and even if both games were regarded as ground breaking (in technology terms) many WC-fans regard them as less succesful than the first 2 in the series.
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Wouldn't surprise me if that's part of why he decided to spend their money rather than his own on the new game :)
On the other hand, the rage when this fails to live up to its messianic expectations will be incredible.
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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7aMhLfygCOk
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lol DO NOT TOUCH THE SHIT.
Also, all of the ships are eventually going to be available for purchase once ingame right ? No unique collector-only thingy ?
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Also, all of the ships are eventually going to be available for purchase once ingame right ? No unique collector-only thingy ?
Believe so.
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So, a couple small updates. The hangar is out. It's gorgeous. The modders have already figured out how to tweak settings, get rid of silly atmospheric effects, etc. A few of them pulled the ships out of the data files and loaded them into CryEngine3 editors where they could see what they look like in better lighting.
And no one is surprised, and CIG has basically said that they expected this and don't mind. The only real guideline they've stated is that they'd prefer people not make and release anything that really sucks and might tarnish the brand.
There was also a bit of a kerfluffle over the openning of the cash shop, and CIG came back a day later with an excellent response and explanation of what they were thinking, etc. So overall, life is good.
Oh, and a few people are reporting issues with their GTX 590s catching fire in the hangar due to lack of proper safeguards. The hangar module is pre-pre-pre-alpha and is therefor poorly optimized. I get 15-20 fps using one HD 6950, 30-40 using two (max graphics settings) so no problems here, but it reminded me of Incarna melting a few people's gpus (Kyoko maybe?).
And now we wait for the dogfighting module in december and watch the absurd rate at which CIG is crowdfunding this game.
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I may have purchased one of the packages earlier last week :eek:
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There was also a bit of a kerfluffle over the openning of the cash shop, and CIG came back a day later with an excellent response and explanation of what they were thinking, etc. So overall, life is good.
Do you have any link about that ? Unlike you I have not followed that particular thing...
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There was also a bit of a kerfluffle over the openning of the cash shop, and CIG came back a day later with an excellent response and explanation of what they were thinking, etc. So overall, life is good.
Do you have any link about that ? Unlike you I have not followed that particular thing...
Sadly I can't get to their website right now. Their response is up on the front page at robertsspaceindusties.com under the $17 million heading.
What happened went something like this:
Hangar launches on Thursday night. Servers suffer, so shock there.
Voyager Direct (helpfully shortened to VD) launches over the weekend with items for purchase. Items are bought with UEC (united earth credits), a few of which are given out to backers so they can check it out. More credits can be purchased at a rate of $1 for 1000 UEC. Most of the items in the store are cosmetic and cost about 5k UEC, everyone has been given 7k. So far this is fine.
Problems: Weapons are also available, ranging from 8k to 12k. Purchases are non-refundable. This leads people to think that they have to pay more money in order to get the weapons that they are supposed to be testing (since this is an alpha), and that any money they spend now will be permanent (which is strange, since this is alpha/beta and usually stuff like that gets reset any time there are major content patches, game release, etc). Also, the hangar buggy which we had thought would be included in the larger hangars costs 20k UEC, meaning you have to pay another $13 for it.
This causes fairly strong knee-jerk reactions, accusations of cash-grabbing, etc. I too was a little irked by it, but mostly by the permanence of decisions made during alpha testing. And by the lack of a buggy in my deluxe hangar.
CIG says "woah there, that's not what we meant, hang on," and then lays out a more complete explanation: They don't actually need us to buy anything for testing, as all the functionality involved can be tested simply by swapping weapons around the ships we have (which causes lols as those weapons are designed for the ships they come stock on and have clipping issues on other ships). And the prices in the store might be a little high ($5 for a poster).
And, most importantly to me at least, there are going to be ways to earn more credits in-game during the alpha (particularly the dogfighting) so you don't have to shell out RL monies to get stuff in the store.
So overall the launch didn't go quite as smoothly as would have been hoped, but they responded quite well and fears of a cash grab have been largely calmed. They are planning to leave in the ability to buy credits with $$ as a way to support the game once it has launched, but they'll be limiting how much you can buy so that it doesn't become imbalancing.
I may have purchased one of the packages earlier last week :eek:
Let me know if you want to get lifetime insurance on your ship. LTI probably won't be quite as good as it sounds since it could really break the economy, but it'll still be handy for making sure you don't end up without a ship.
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Thanks.
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I may have purchased one of the packages earlier last week :eek:
Let me know if you want to get lifetime insurance on your ship. LTI probably won't be quite as good as it sounds since it could really break the economy, but it'll still be handy for making sure you don't end up without a ship.
Hmm, that sounds like something to look at.
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Bumping because they just blew through $25 mil and holy fuckballs. Seriously, what the fuck. When will it stop?
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Silas Vitalia has been registered.
I would like very much to join up with some of you peoples and shoot other peoples.
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Bumping because they just blew through $25 mil and holy fuckballs. Seriously, what the fuck. When will it stop?
25 million is NOT an enormous budget. Not for AAA, anyway. Quarter of a billion is an enormous budget.
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While it looks interesting, I won't be holding my breath. Might take a look when it's actually released, but this has my cynical alarms buzzing.
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While it looks interesting, I won't be holding my breath. Might take a look when it's actually released, but this has my cynical alarms buzzing.
Cynical alarms should def be set to yellow alert, but some of these features and ideas are scratching several burning itches that Eve continues to refuse to address:
1. Getting out of my fucking ship
2. going to places where other pilots are, talking to them in third person
3. Groups of people running a spaceship together, be it piloting, manning gun turrets, or launching defense fighters against enemies
4. Shooting each other with skill-based gameplay (being a good pilot is important, aiming/ hitting what you aim for is important)
5. Boarding other ships, shooting occupants, stealing said ship.
6. Actual smuggling and nefarious activities
7. NPCs that are killable and single-use
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While it looks interesting, I won't be holding my breath. Might take a look when it's actually released, but this has my cynical alarms buzzing.
Cynical alarms should def be set to yellow alert, but some of these features and ideas are scratching several burning itches that Eve continues to refuse to address:
1. Getting out of my fucking ship
2. going to places where other pilots are, talking to them in third person
3. Groups of people running a spaceship together, be it piloting, manning gun turrets, or launching defense fighters against enemies
4. Shooting each other with skill-based gameplay (being a good pilot is important, aiming/ hitting what you aim for is important)
5. Boarding other ships, shooting occupants, stealing said ship.
6. Actual smuggling and nefarious activities
7. NPCs that are killable and single-use
These all sound gorgeous, I'll admit. Any word on control system? Only space sim I've seriously got on with was Freelancer due to its oh-so-wonderful flight controls. Maybe I've just never had a good joystick, but I've always found those irritatingly lacking in precision for real dogfighting - while trying to use mouse and keyboard screws any kind of serious maneuvers.
Mind you, I'm a capital pilot at heart. Flying itty bitty fighters has never really been up my alley.
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I'm still getting familiar with the IP and the game.
So the ships have actual different thrusters for each vector to control pitch/yaw all those goodies.
As far as I can tell flight controls for the fighters will be optional 'fly by wire' which means you push the stick and the thrusters fire to do the maneuver you want (like most space combat sims), or you can actually firel them manually to pull off more insane things.
No idea how larger ships that need many people will be piloted
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Bumping because they just blew through $25 mil and holy fuckballs. Seriously, what the fuck. When will it stop?
25 million is NOT an enormous budget. Not for AAA, anyway. Quarter of a billion is an enormous budget.
No, but raising $25 mil from crowdfunding rather than traditional investors/publishers is ridiculous. Whether they can accomplish everything they have planned within that budget remains to be seen, but unless they stop the crowdfunding, they'll probably clear 50 mil before this hits beta next summer.
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$30 million bump.
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That vid (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X_5x2o_Q15Y) was probably one of the most informative I have seen. Very interesting.
There are a lot of others in the same vein.
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Live Presentation earlier for PAX.
Much demo. Much shiny first person. Also much crash but *alpha*
http://www.incgamers.com/2014/04/star-citizen-dogfighting-module-details-revealed-full-report
fast forward to 1:06
I WILL GREET YOU ALL ON THE OTHER SIDE WHEN YOU JOIN ME.
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The 20 million dollar hype train got me to sign up with RSI, then I found the ships I wanted cost $150-$250 which forced me to put the game right back down.
I suppose if I compared it to the amount spent on EVE over the years versus the level of entertainment gained, it might seem like a better investment, but it's a big buy-in for a game that is still essentially a question mark.
Looks very nice though. That crash at 1:07:40. :lol:
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Live Presentation earlier for PAX.
Much demo. Much shiny first person. Also much crash but *alpha*
http://www.incgamers.com/2014/04/star-citizen-dogfighting-module-details-revealed-full-report
fast forward to 1:06
I WILL GREET YOU ALL ON THE OTHER SIDE WHEN YOU JOIN ME.
I look forward to shooting you down in the DFM.
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Live Presentation earlier for PAX.
Much demo. Much shiny first person. Also much crash but *alpha*
http://www.incgamers.com/2014/04/star-citizen-dogfighting-module-details-revealed-full-report
fast forward to 1:06
I WILL GREET YOU ALL ON THE OTHER SIDE WHEN YOU JOIN ME.
I look forward to shooting you down in the DFM.
Aww, here I was hoping for a fresh start with all my eve IC frenemies :)
I'm planning on signing up with Koronakesh and some other Eve ex-pats and other Proper Villians (RP Pirates with impeccable manners :P )
Would def love to hook up with you on DFM though!
*checks bank acct, ponders purchasing flight stick *
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Live Presentation earlier for PAX.
Much demo. Much shiny first person. Also much crash but *alpha*
http://www.incgamers.com/2014/04/star-citizen-dogfighting-module-details-revealed-full-report
fast forward to 1:06
I WILL GREET YOU ALL ON THE OTHER SIDE WHEN YOU JOIN ME.
Can I be your space biatch once there ?
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Live Presentation earlier for PAX.
Much demo. Much shiny first person. Also much crash but *alpha*
http://www.incgamers.com/2014/04/star-citizen-dogfighting-module-details-revealed-full-report
fast forward to 1:06
I WILL GREET YOU ALL ON THE OTHER SIDE WHEN YOU JOIN ME.
Can I be your space biatch once there ?
No, but you can join our group and be one of us :)
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Live Presentation earlier for PAX.
Much demo. Much shiny first person. Also much crash but *alpha*
http://www.incgamers.com/2014/04/star-citizen-dogfighting-module-details-revealed-full-report
fast forward to 1:06
I WILL GREET YOU ALL ON THE OTHER SIDE WHEN YOU JOIN ME.
Can I be your space biatch once there ?
No, but you can join our group and be one of us :)
How can you turn down such a generous offer, it is beyond me.
:yar:
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Aww, here I was hoping for a fresh start with all my eve IC frenemies :)
I'm planning on signing up with Koronakesh and some other Eve ex-pats and other Proper Villians (RP Pirates with impeccable manners :P )
Would def love to hook up with you on DFM though!
Well, that is up in the air! It will depend on if your group and mine (CLX) are enemies or allies once the PU comes out. :D
But DFM is 4 fite.
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I am still undecided what I will be/who I will hang out with in Star Citizen. I do know that I'd like to be captain of or an officer on a big space ship fighting for spacejustice.
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Depending on my future work schedule I plan on playing this quite a bit.
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I look forward to fucking your shits up in Star Citizen.
I hope ransoming will be viable in this game, proper space piracy. That fine thing that no longer exists in EVE.
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I am still undecided what I will be/who I will hang out with in Star Citizen. I do know that I'd like to be captain of or an officer on a big space ship fighting for spacejustice.
Captain Fabulous Hair o7
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(https://i.imgur.com/GAn9H5V.gif)
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Live Presentation earlier for PAX.
Much demo. Much shiny first person. Also much crash but *alpha*
http://www.incgamers.com/2014/04/star-citizen-dogfighting-module-details-revealed-full-report
fast forward to 1:06
I WILL GREET YOU ALL ON THE OTHER SIDE WHEN YOU JOIN ME.
You know, I'd pondered trying to unload the stuff I'd purchased and see how much of the grand i'd blown on this game I could recoup. I'm still strongly considering that, but for now it looks like this game might be worth it. Maybe.
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So Ive heard that 41 million has been tossed by nerds into this game and there isn't much to show for it but for increasing kickstarter goals where they get an extra one million dollars to add like a single system to the game.
How true is this?
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It looks absolutely stunning, but what I see in all the vids is just promises of awesome gameplay and lots of extremely bland and sad "action".
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-ZN0vQFNE2o&feature=player_detailpage#t=250
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-ZN0vQFNE2o&feature=player_detailpage#t=834
sneaky edit:
More intense dogfighting: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hlg8pmM13gg&feature=player_detailpage#t=288
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Yeah it's a bit "early" to tell for now, i'm reserving my final judgement for when the game will be in a more advanced state. We will be able to judge a bit more when we will have that dogfight module released. And they should probably improve over the feedback they should get, or I hope so.
But tbh i'm more interested in all the awesome promises they did for the MMO part, and for now, yeah, it's just what's planned in terms of design, but that's a layer they are not working on yet for now, just informally.
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So Ive heard that 41 million has been tossed by nerds into this game and there isn't much to show for it but for increasing kickstarter goals where they get an extra one million dollars to add like a single system to the game.
How true is this?
Mostly true, yeah. Game development takes time, and CIG is making a point to lay good groundwork to build on rather than wasting time on giving stuff to customers quickly that won't be part of the final game.
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The developers are still unfortunately at the point of 'promising the sky' and not yet having had to deliver.
To me it looks like the 'kernel' of what they are doing so far, the world building, the game engine, the scope of game play they want to accomplish, all sound nearly too good to be true.
The devil's in the details, though.
As we all know from years of Eve, how the powers that be decide to balance ships, game play, and what exactly you can get away with can turn 'sandbox' into 'barely playable unbalanced wtf.'
Even if the game falls far, far short...the simple fact that one of the main game tenants is that you can have a multi player crewed ship and fly the space lanes hauling or pirating or exploring, moving around the inside of your ship, manning turrets and ship systems as a group, and then docking up and doing the 'space bar' thing in third person with your friends, means it's already giving me from the start things that I've wanted from Eve for the entire time I played.
That they are planning to introduce FPS combat for ship boarding and piracy just makes my pea brain explode with possibilities. Ambushing a cargo hauler or military ship, disabling it, and landing a boarding party and giving them what-for with a blaster and stealing their cargo and zooming off and then landing and selling the stolen goods at some seedy space station cantina avoiding the police the whole time? I'm effing sold on that.
It's the 'full service' space MMO in theory.
But devil's in the details.
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So Ive heard that 41 million has been tossed by nerds into this game and there isn't much to show for it but for increasing kickstarter goals where they get an extra one million dollars to add like a single system to the game.
How true is this?
It's not vaporware yet, but still more of a slight wet mist that might turn into a snowstorm. Or nothing.
The game designer has a very good track record and they are building it all from scratch in house. Like a lot of stuff in the creative fields sometimes 90% of the work has NOTHING to show for it until it's much more complete.
I've worked on plenty of projects that are completely front loaded, where it looks awful and you have nothing to show your client for the early stages, and then as you move on a flood of good things will happen.
Or crash and burn *shrug *
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I saw some encouraging news a couple months ago (can't find it now because of my work blocking RSI's site, dammit) about them partnering with another developer to share technologie.
The short version was that another small, crowdfunded game was working with the same engine (cryengine 3 I think?) and had made a pretty cool character creator. So CIG approached them and said "We think that's awesome and would love to learn more about how you did it and we've been doing all this cool stuff with cryengine that we can share." And the end result was an agreement to share technology.
And I think that's fucking awesome, and probably wouldn't happen if either of these companies was owned by a major publisher. So while I might be apprehensive about the amount of cash I've dropped and may not get a good return on, I'm feeling pretty good about the impact that this will have on the games industry.
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What makes them not having a lot of things to show is basically that they are creating everything from scratch. Someone doing a sequel or a new game based on the same engine that was already used for other projects can quickly show something new as a showcase, even without the slightest scrap of gameplay. In a few months, have a few artists work on something and you will have something to show.
But when you are doing all from scratch, well, you can't.
Even if the game falls far, far short...the simple fact that one of the main game tenants is that you can have a multi player crewed ship and fly the space lanes hauling or pirating or exploring, moving around the inside of your ship, manning turrets and ship systems as a group, and then docking up and doing the 'space bar' thing in third person with your friends, means it's already giving me from the start things that I've wanted from Eve for the entire time I played.
That they are planning to introduce FPS combat for ship boarding and piracy just makes my pea brain explode with possibilities. Ambushing a cargo hauler or military ship, disabling it, and landing a boarding party and giving them what-for with a blaster and stealing their cargo and zooming off and then landing and selling the stolen goods at some seedy space station cantina avoiding the police the whole time? I'm effing sold on that.
That made me think of SWG as a MMO. SWG was a rather crappy game and has always been, especially balance wise. Pvp was retarded because of that, and the combat system overall was completely obnoxious/bland. So yeah, pretty crappy bar its excellent crafting system.
What made the game last so long was firstly yeah, the licence itself, but also the sandbox. Not a sandbox totally like eve of course, but with a lot of stuff focused around social activities with tons of game tools to serve that. It made players feel incredibly at home with a lot of toys to play, from housing to event props and player owned towns. Imo, that's what kept the community on that game for a few years. A bit second lifey, yeah, but it worked well.
I think that a lot of developpers often completely overlook those things in MMOs : make the player feel at home and accommodate all his bunch of friends so that they can do stuff together, whatever they want, and you will keep him for long.
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One thing I was thinking about, was that with all the special ships and doodads for kickstarter backers and all that, and with so many kickstarter backers, that it might end up that anyone who comes to the game if it reaches release, would end up in the minority, and recruitment and retention of new players could be a problem.
I.e. you have 2 classes of star citizen, as it were:
Those who backed it, and have bonus doodads.
And those who don't.
So it might end up as something that isn't particularly appealing for people who weren't in on it from the start, and ends up with a player attrition problem.
Like, say 1million people backed it on kickstarter, and have special doodads. That's 1m players with bonuses over any potential new players. What is the total potential audience for the game ? What's in it for a new player, to start at a disadvantage compared to almost everyone else ?
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I am not sure that there is any special doodads. At least in terms of pay to win. They might just start with more stuff perfectly accessible to everyone.
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One thing I was thinking about, was that with all the special ships and doodads for kickstarter backers and all that, and with so many kickstarter backers, that it might end up that anyone who comes to the game if it reaches release, would end up in the minority, and recruitment and retention of new players could be a problem.
I.e. you have 2 classes of star citizen, as it were:
Those who backed it, and have bonus doodads.
And those who don't.
So it might end up as something that isn't particularly appealing for people who weren't in on it from the start, and ends up with a player attrition problem.
Like, say 1million people backed it on kickstarter, and have special doodads. That's 1m players with bonuses over any potential new players. What is the total potential audience for the game ? What's in it for a new player, to start at a disadvantage compared to almost everyone else ?
The doodads aren't generally exclusive stuff; it'd be like starting eve with a few plex instead of grinding isk for your first cruiser. What we don't know is the in-game value and how long of a head start it equals.
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I believe Roberts has said that mostly everything will be acquirable through in-game play and is not exclusive. I think the only thing that is actually exclusive for backers is the life-time insurance for the ships they purchased... which would be like if in EVE every time you lost your cruiser you'd get a new one (without fittings). Everyone in SC can get that insurance with in-game credits, but normal players have to renew it every six months while the LTIers don't. Nice, but hardly game breaking.
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I believe Roberts has said that mostly everything will be acquirable through in-game play and is not exclusive. I think the only thing that is actually exclusive for backers is the life-time insurance for the ships they purchased... which would be like if in EVE every time you lost your cruiser you'd get a new one (without fittings). Everyone in SC can get that insurance with in-game credits, but normal players have to renew it every six months while the LTIers don't. Nice, but hardly game breaking.
Temporary insurance (3-6 months for most packages).
https://robertsspaceindustries.com/pledge/single-ship-packages
handy ship comparison chart https://robertsspaceindustries.com/ship-specs
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It is now only 3-6 month insurance on pledges, which to my understanding is the standard insurance that players will be able to purchase in-game with credits. But people who backed early have life-time insurance, which can no longer be acquired (LTI pledges were stopped back sometime last year).
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It is now only 3-6 month insurance on pledges, which to my understanding is the standard insurance that players will be able to purchase in-game with credits. But people who backed early have life-time insurance, which can no longer be acquired (LTI pledges were stopped back sometime last year).
Interesting!
.....More space booty for my mates and I ! :yar:
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yeah, LTI ended back in November, I think - and didn't really put an end to the fundraising. However, LTI transfers with ships, so I might be able to offload a couple and make a profit. Maybe. Nothing like the $1500 that the Van-Duul ships were fetching a while back.
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What ? You mean that you actually have to pledge/buy the ship now for the LTI to apply once ingame ? :bash:
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What ? You mean that you actually have to pledge/buy the ship now for the LTI to apply once ingame ? :bash:
... huh? Not sure what you're talking about.
If you pledged before November, you get the ship with an LTI insurance when the game launches.
If you pledged after November, you get the ship but only a 3/6-month insurance when the game launches.
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If everyone would have to start EVE anew I'm sure a few PLEX as advantage wouldn't ever be a sizeable advantage. Also having a lot of cash and a good reputation doesn't translate to automatic success (Hello 3DRealms). But we'll see how this game develops. I'm just wary of shelling money, especially such obscene amounts, if all that is available right now is an unexciting, if visually stunning tech demo and a lot of promises.
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I said it once and I'll say it again. Until they actually have a working game to show for all this money I'm not going to spend any of my own on it.
Sent from my SAMSUNG-SM-G900A using Tapatalk
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I said it once and I'll say it again. Until they actually have a working game to show for all this money I'm not going to spend any of my own on it.
Sent from my SAMSUNG-SM-G900A using Tapatalk
basically me, tl;dr
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I said it once and I'll say it again. Until they actually have a working game to show for all this money I'm not going to spend any of my own on it.
Sent from my SAMSUNG-SM-G900A using Tapatalk
basically me, tl;dr
+1.
No money from me until we have at minimum a confirmed release date, and preferably a functioning beta.
Piecemeal/module-by-module is cool for prototyping. I want to see all of those modules working as one unit (for some acceptably loose beta-testing definition of 'working') before I slap some bills on the table.
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If everyone would have to start EVE anew I'm sure a few PLEX as advantage wouldn't ever be a sizeable advantage. Also having a lot of cash and a good reputation doesn't translate to automatic success (Hello 3DRealms). But we'll see how this game develops. I'm just wary of shelling money, especially such obscene amounts, if all that is available right now is an unexciting, if visually stunning tech demo and a lot of promises.
It's only obscene if you buy the bigger pledges. The cheapest pledge is about what you'd expect for a new computer game, and then consider that there will be no monthly fee and you get special features as well (like soundtracks). At least for the $40-$75 pledges I see as nothing more than pre-ordering + guaranteed alpha/beta access + special edition features.
And as long as the DFM is good then I'll see that as worth my investment even if the other promises aren't met. Getting a good space flight sim to replace JtL is what me and my fellow JtL expatriates have been looking for and DFM looks like it will accomplish that at the very least.
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What ? You mean that you actually have to pledge/buy the ship now for the LTI to apply once ingame ? :bash:
... huh? Not sure what you're talking about.
If you pledged before November, you get the ship with an LTI insurance when the game launches.
If you pledged after November, you get the ship but only a 3/6-month insurance when the game launches.
So that LTI is tied to the pledged ship and not to the account ? That is very, very ambiguous on the account page.
Edit : nvm, looks clearer now. They change their website layout every month... Lifetime insurance on my Aurora only wut
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I said it once and I'll say it again. Until they actually have a working game to show for all this money I'm not going to spend any of my own on it.
Sent from my SAMSUNG-SM-G900A using Tapatalk
basically me, tl;dr
+1.
No money from me until we have at minimum a confirmed release date, and preferably a functioning beta.
Piecemeal/module-by-module is cool for prototyping. I want to see all of those modules working as one unit (for some acceptably loose beta-testing definition of 'working') before I slap some bills on the table.
That's one way of putting it. Which means that you are probably not going to support any kickstarting campaign anytime soon, for that it is exactly what it is here.
If you don't want to spend money because you get sold/enticed by a demo and a few engaging ideas, then the concept of kickstarting sure isn't going to work.
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What ? You mean that you actually have to pledge/buy the ship now for the LTI to apply once ingame ? :bash:
... huh? Not sure what you're talking about.
If you pledged before November, you get the ship with an LTI insurance when the game launches.
If you pledged after November, you get the ship but only a 3/6-month insurance when the game launches.
So that LTI is tied to the pledged ship and not to the account ? That is very, very ambiguous on the account page.
Edit : nvm, looks clearer now. They change their website layout every month... Lifetime insurance on my Aurora only wut
Oh, well yes, that's been the case from the start. The LTI only applies to the ship you purchased with it, it's not a 'token' that can apply to anything you want. People who wanted LTI on multiple ships bought multiple LTI pledges.
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I'm just saying it doesn't cost a million bucks to develop a single star system in a space-based game unless the system you have to do so is woefully and comically inefficient. I just wonder why people are still tossing these guys all of their money with nothing really to show for it.
Kickstarter is at least a little bit about investment, with the only major difference being that the guy on the other hand has no legal obligation to provide you with anything. I'd be at least a little bit wary.
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I said it once and I'll say it again. Until they actually have a working game to show for all this money I'm not going to spend any of my own on it.
Sent from my SAMSUNG-SM-G900A using Tapatalk
basically me, tl;dr
+1.
No money from me until we have at minimum a confirmed release date, and preferably a functioning beta.
Piecemeal/module-by-module is cool for prototyping. I want to see all of those modules working as one unit (for some acceptably loose beta-testing definition of 'working') before I slap some bills on the table.
That's one way of putting it. Which means that you are probably not going to support any kickstarting campaign anytime soon, for that it is exactly what it is here.
If you don't want to spend money because you get sold/enticed by a demo and a few engaging ideas, then the concept of kickstarting sure isn't going to work.
I'm neither stupid nor overflowing with spare cash that I can just piss into the wind on a gamble based on some guy's previous track record, so, more or less this, yes. A shiny demo reel and a bunch of fluffed-up ideas won't sell me on a game to the point I'd throw money down, ever. Kickstarter smells like a giant scam machine to me in most cases, especially where game development is concerned. I know enough about the games industry to know it's volatile enough that it's a bad idea even with such a fancy name pulling the strings.
If I'm going to put money down on a game before it's released, it's going to be because I have a guarantee that I'm actually going to get a game for my money - I'm okay with preordering something once it has a release date since at that point I am pretty much guaranteed a product in my hands, regardless of its quality. But not something that doesn't have a release date, let alone anything tangible that I can put my hands on to try before I buy.
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I'm just saying it doesn't cost a million bucks to develop a single star system in a space-based game unless the system you have to do so is woefully and comically inefficient. I just wonder why people are still tossing these guys all of their money with nothing really to show for it.
Kickstarter is at least a little bit about investment, with the only major difference being that the guy on the other hand has no legal obligation to provide you with anything. I'd be at least a little bit wary.
What does cost a million (or more) is to actually develop your engine and game system, even if you use an already existing core like CryEngine. Maybe are you saying that they should have done so on their old previous engines, like freelancer ?
What takes time is not to design a few ingame art assets as I said above, it's to develop the tools to put them on screen and the tools to make them work, even without much of game mechanics behind. And that's what they have done for now, nothing less, nothing more. They have a functioning core based on CryEngine with spaceships shooting at each other and a tech demo of their destructible spaceship parts (which already hints at at least some mechanics already in place) and a hangar that is nothing more than a showcase of the first art assets they just had to put in the game engine proper.
You do not design a space system for the first month, then another one the second month of development, and a third one the next few months... I'm afraid it doesn't work like that, only for art assets at best. For programming it's purely iterative with layer after layer of game functionalities. And you need a good chunk of those for your first star system to be demo-able.
And yes, better to be wary with something like kickstarter, like any investor should be wary on what he invests. I also heard that kickstarter themselves really made their rules more strict to prevent abuses and exploits like it has happened already ? Didn't find the time to inquire about it yet...
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The problem is that if the developer wanted to, he could simply just stop development tomorrow and walk away with all the money that is remaining.
And my comments was referring to specifically that. His last few stretch goals have been to add more systems. "Give me an extra million and I will add another system to the game".. A game which hasn't even produced a workable demo to show off, and which crashed at PAX. his response to that was to say, simply, "Why dont you try showing a pre-alpha version of a game at a major event and tell me how that goes?"
Why is he showing pre-alpha versions of the game at major shows in the first place?!?
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Why is he showing pre-alpha versions of the game at major shows in the first place?!?
"THERE IS A GAME HERE I PROMISE LOOK AT ALL THIS WORK WE'VE DONE PLEASE KEEP FEEDING US MONEY"
But seriously, good luck to them. I hope they make a fun game. I'm paying them nothing till they actually have a game.
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Some people might like that they are being so open about the development process and not scared to show off things in an unruly and buggy state.
It's been the exact opposite of CCP wall of silence, I find it refreshing.
This is a passion project for Roberts; he's not taking the money and running. Regardless of legal fine print if he just closed all the development studios and fired the few hundred people working on the game, there would be so many backer lawsuits he'd be in court forever and a pariah among his community.
I'm almost positive the game will not deliver on all of the many lofty promises, but it will deliver on enough of the basic ones as to be worth my time.
The problem will be refinement, refinement, refinement. These competitive games are extremely dependent on balancing and play testing to get it right and not an unbalanced shit show. What I'm worried about is a slow turnaround for balance issues and we end up with some 'pulse laser armageddon with 8 heat sinks' type of thing going on that never gets fixed.
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The problem is that if the developer wanted to, he could simply just stop development tomorrow and walk away with all the money that is remaining.
They already do that in the industry, except it's the publisher that takes all the remaining money. If the backers had a way to do the same too when a game doesn't pass a deadline or show any progress, I wouldn't complain.
And my comments was referring to specifically that. His last few stretch goals have been to add more systems. "Give me an extra million and I will add another system to the game".. A game which hasn't even produced a workable demo to show off, and which crashed at PAX. his response to that was to say, simply, "Why dont you try showing a pre-alpha version of a game at a major event and tell me how that goes?"
Why is he showing pre-alpha versions of the game at major shows in the first place?!?
Because otherwise he would be accused of the exact same thing you are already accusing him of doing : "for what are we paying if you have nothing to show ? You scammer"
In his shoes... Be damned in either way.
And the hype and amounts involved in his game specifically make that all of this suddenly becomes an extremely important matter.
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I don't have a problem supporting a game being funded by Kickstarter. what I'm worried about is that chris Roberts has a track record of not delivering on his promises, and he's already crashed and burned once before. Look up the development history of Freelancer.
Chris Roberts is not the God of game development that people seem to think he is. I'm not saying I refuse to back star citizen early what I'm saying is that I am not willing to back star citizen right now. They have not convinced me they are worth it.
Sent from my SAMSUNG-SM-G900A using Tapatalk
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There was a sale on joysticks at my local MicroCenter... got this for $29.99 USD, and it's a steal as the stick is pretty good quality!
http://www.thrustmaster.com/products/tflight-hotas-x
Multiplayer demo should be out in a few weeks. I'm going to wait for my guinea pigs, er.... friends who have already backed, to tell me how it is before I spend anything.
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Read some pretty interesting stuff from some of the dev Q and A on the SC forums...
1. EVA/ Boarding. They are going for a very 'seamless' approach to this sort of thing. So technically if you've disabled an enemy ship and you are in a solo-pilot vessel you could pull up next to the disabled ship and just EVA over there and blast yourself in the enemy ship. The dev said there would be several disadvantages to this, namely it would take a lot longer, and your pilot EVA suit isn't exactly designed for hauling weapons and explosives. He compared this to using one of the more 'dedicated' boarding ships with appropriate docking collars and hull-cutting equipment, where instead you've got 5 or 6 'marines' kitted up with assault rifles and armor, you latch on to the ship and get your crew in before the victims have time to prepare their own defenses.
They are aiming for a steep risk/reward for this sort of activity, they don't want this to be grand theft auto in space. IE if you screw up the 'victims' can just as easily steal your ship and kill you.
2. Ship systems/ subsystems. Where you shoot people matters, you can destroy engines, weapons, shields, etc. You can hit this stuff manually but if you have the appropriate sensor packages installed on your ship you can determine these things easier. Also plenty of neut/nos type of weapons are planned for destabilizing enemy power. Tons of small details like if you drain an enemy ship, they will have some battery power but if you drain it completely even the lights will turn off.
3. On the larger ships you will be able to walk around, etc, during dogfights. Think Millenium falcon running to man the turrets, etc.
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A good catchup of April's activity by the developers....
https://robertsspaceindustries.com/comm-link/transmission/13848-Monthly-Report-April-2014
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Rubber firmly hitting the road in two weeks: https://robertsspaceindustries.com/comm-link/transmission/13883-Arena-Commander-Weekly-Report-May-12-16
Multiplayer demo featuring many of the core pvp mechanics will be released. We'll see how it goes! Awful bitterness or sweet deliciousness.
(http://37.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m33v3aUpCE1qlzduwo1_500.gif)
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Rubber firmly hitting the road in two weeks: https://robertsspaceindustries.com/comm-link/transmission/13883-Arena-Commander-Weekly-Report-May-12-16
Multiplayer demo featuring many of the core pvp mechanics will be released. We'll see how it goes! Awful bitterness or sweet deliciousness.
(http://37.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m33v3aUpCE1qlzduwo1_500.gif)
Let's hope it isn't as disappointing as TESO!
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Exciting times ahead, and largely due to Kickstarter. We're going from a situation where the space sim genre was dead (s'why I ended up trying Eve back in 2004: I was craving something like Elite) apart from the somewhat impenetrable X games and Eve to a situation where we're looking forward to a positive glut of space sims: Elite 4, Star Citizen, Limit Theory all immediately come to mind, as well as stuff like Kerbal Space Program.
I certainly understand why people are reluctant to front cash for games development, given that there is a decent chance of that shiny game in prospect being vapourware. Still, pledging money via Kickstarter is an investment, and all investments carry risk. Personally, I have spare disposable income and I'm quite happy to risk small sums if it means things I like the look of might exist. I only ever back things where I get the finished product in return, and I accept that some projects might fail.
Having said that, I didn't back Star Citizen. I backed Limit Theory instead, and as far as I can see, that's coming along very nicely. Will it be a fun game? I don't know, but the I felt that the passion of its creator alone was worth investing in.
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Exciting times ahead, and largely due to Kickstarter. We're going from a situation where the space sim genre was dead (s'why I ended up trying Eve back in 2004: I was craving something like Elite) apart from the somewhat impenetrable X games and Eve to a situation where we're looking forward to a positive glut of space sims: Elite 4, Star Citizen, Limit Theory all immediately come to mind, as well as stuff like Kerbal Space Program.
I certainly understand why people are reluctant to front cash for games development, given that there is a decent chance of that shiny game in prospect being vapourware. Still, pledging money via Kickstarter is an investment, and all investments carry risk. Personally, I have spare disposable income and I'm quite happy to risk small sums if it means things I like the look of might exist. I only ever back things where I get the finished product in return, and I accept that some projects might fail.
Having said that, I didn't back Star Citizen. I backed Limit Theory instead, and as far as I can see, that's coming along very nicely. Will it be a fun game? I don't know, but the I felt that the passion of its creator alone was worth investing in.
(http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-wGd2NtdnflY/UQ5C3j9bXOI/AAAAAAAAI9U/ErAkjFd5KBY/s1600/citizen-kane-clapping.jpg)
Kickstarter allows games to move outside of the corporate developer system, and that's more than enough for my money.
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V.08 of the first multiplayer alpha was just pushed back a few days, so they missed their big internal deadline for today.
It certainly has the appearance of a legitimate delay, but then again maybe Roberts wants a few more days in the Caribbean counting his giant stacks of money :P
I'll do a writeup as soon as its released and I've taken some ships for a spin!
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Doesn't bother me too much since my net is over cap for this month so I won't be able to DL until June anyway.
Though yet another delay is certainly not a positive thing for their reputation.
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Doesn't bother me too much since my net is over cap for this month so I won't be able to DL until June anyway.
Though yet another delay is certainly not a positive thing for their reputation.
Ironically the same week they passed $44 million in pledge money. It's like the more delays and fails the more people open their wallets.
I need to start a kickstarter, damnit.
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The smug radiating off Mittens.com is palpable.
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Doesn't bother me too much since my net is over cap for this month so I won't be able to DL until June anyway.
Though yet another delay is certainly not a positive thing for their reputation.
Ironically the same week they passed $44 million in pledge money. It's like the more delays and fails the more people open their wallets.
I need to start a kickstarter, damnit.
Gee.
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From my end of things, I'm watching SC closely but not making any certain decisions yet. I've not donated anything and don't intend to until I can make a valid judgement on the ultimate fate of the game, which essentially means waiting not just for the core components but for the whole game to mature a little bit.
Their concepts look amazing, but (like many others) I am going to hold off on how close they can get the final results to concept (let alone how functional and bug-free it can be done) before I even commit to playing the game, let alone donating early.
Besides, my computer probably couldn't handle it anyway, so early releases don't help me much anyhow. :P
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SC folks on pins and needles at the multiplayer demo (that was supposed to be out last week) was pushed back a few days and we are waiting for it to be uploaded so we can download it....
Long story short us backers should be pew-pewing each other probably in the next 24 hours with some reasonable certainty.
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SC folks on pins and needles at the multiplayer demo (that was supposed to be out last week) was pushed back a few days and we are waiting for it to be uploaded so we can download it....
Long story short us backers should be pew-pewing each other probably in the next 24 hours with some reasonable certainty.
For your sakes, I hope so.. but this all sort of reminds me of this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yop62wQH498
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We've gone another day with a delay, so I made this Hitler Meme video and uploaded it to the SC forums and chatrooms.
Very, very good times followed :P
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mtHg4oRvVVU
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Heh, one of my org-members posted a link to it on our shoutbox. I also sent you a wave on the RSI board.
And ugh, apparently AC is a 10gig download. >.<
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Will there be Kilrathi?
Looking at SC though I can probably see it occupying the same gaming slot as I have set for WoT and in future probably World of Warships. Casual pew pew in another game when Eve begins to shit me immensely. It doesn't really strike me as open world as other MMO's though.
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Will there be Kilrathi?
Looking at SC though I can probably see it occupying the same gaming slot as I have set for WoT and in future probably World of Warships. Casual pew pew in another game when Eve begins to shit me immensely. It doesn't really strike me as open world as other MMO's though.
Elite Dangerous is doing the same job for me, but if Star Citizen delivers, it will most likely fill that similar niche very nicely.
E:D has pretty much replaced pvp for me atm, though EVE still offers a lot of the macro-scale industry I enjoy in my games. I needed more variety in my gaming anyhow!
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If it can deliver as much as War Thunder delivered to me in terms of played hours, couldn't ask for anything better... I hope their simulation will be up to the challenge.
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Also is it just me or does Chris Roberts strike anyone else as having some kind of messiah complex to save PC gaming?
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I'm not sure if it's Roberts who does or just his staff/fans.
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It's Out! 10 gigs. And someone has to go to work.... Will be very interested to check this out after I get home tonight.
In the mean time, launch trailer!
Hasn't been optimized and the framerate / fx still look early but that looks fuuun
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aWD97jYEaDU
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I will note with some small satisfaction that mittens' propaganda hole website seems much slower to report on the demo release than they were on the demo delay.
Heh.
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Plenty of videos being uploaded here's a good place to start:
http://youtu.be/PNDCJcM-qxg?t=1m46s
I will try and do some FRAPS tonight if possible.
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Good to hear that they FINALLY RELEASED THE DAMNED THING.
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Plenty of videos being uploaded here's a good place to start:
http://youtu.be/PNDCJcM-qxg?t=1m46s
I will try and do some FRAPS tonight if possible.
How was it? I confess to being curious.
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It's fairly stable for a pre-alpha build, and it requires the player to RTFM (https://robertsspaceindustries.com/media/dpd639fngtcakr/source/Arena-Commander-Pilots-Guide-V0-8.pdf). The controls are causing space sim purists to kick up a huge fuss because a) Keyboard+Mouse and Controller have become the most optimal ways to play the game whereas joystick and HOTAS support isn't officially in yet and b) many of the weapons are Gimballed with an "auto-aiming" feature within a small space as long as the player is aiming at the target ship.
This is despite Chris Roberts mentioning repeatedly that Star Citizen is meant to be a spiritual successor to Freelancer and wants to make the game as accessible as possible to anyone without making it a Call of Duty in space.
I personally was close to asking for a refund because of the endless delays, but I'm willing to give them a chance for now. To be honest, the current release of Elite: Dangerous's alpha looks far more promising than Star Citizen at the present time, but competition is always a fantastic thing for the renaissance of PC space sims.
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It's a promising start, if they deal with some horrendous first steps it will be on the way to a fun space pew pew game
-controls are HYPER sensitive right now. There's no distinction between 'adjust your course slightly' and 'do a 180' so trying to line up shots with delicate adjustments is typically an exercise in futility. Especially with a joystick. The joystick mapping was awful and I had to load a custom xml file to fix a yaw/roll bug.
The engine is very good, but the gfx need some work (weapons graphics, explosions, shields, HUD, etc). I see a lot of potential but right now they need to clean it all up, make them more distinct. The ships don't feel 'heavy' and real, they feel like they are kind of skating around.
I think in time as they refine this will all be fantastic, but it definitely doesn't feel 'right' yet in the cockpit game play wise. For me at least.
The 'immersion' factor is very very high though. Walking up to your ship, getting in the cockpit, flipping on the controls all seamlessly from first person view I have to admit is very, very cool. They've done an amazing job of really putting you in the cockpit. The ambience, and the voice assistance are really damn cool this early on.
here's a good video showing the pew pew (not mine)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pKlE3-5_77Y
this guy using keyboard mouse looks like for sure
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They've been releasing in-fiction 'commercials' for the various ships.
This one is made to be like an American 'pickup truck' commercial and its hilarious:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vO7RxsZpcKc
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They've upped the multiplayer demo invites to the first 60,000 backers, hopefully they'll get up to me soon (I'm in the 200,000s... boo).
Game engine/dogfighting continues to get polished and things are starting to look very nice indeed.
Here's a new little video about one of the personal hangars people will be using:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kU9kVyG6QWQ
My pirate lair awaits!
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#37019
huehuehueh
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#37019
huehuehueh
Jealous :P
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Well if I could I would give you my access since i'm not really interested in testing products in such an alpha state tbh. :/
Looking at vids on youtube is enough to me for now. Not a huge fan of being part of betas, and even less alphas... That's not the real things, and it spoils the pleasure of the release.
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Well if I could I would give you my access since i'm not really interested in testing products in such an alpha state tbh. :/
Looking at vids on youtube is enough to me for now. Not a huge fan of being part of betas, and even less alphas... That's not the real things, and it spoils the pleasure of the release.
Perhaps true, but CIG have been awfully receptive and are reading all of the forum comments concerning shaping the game mechanics and balancing so far. They are being imo surprisingly responsive to early criticism and requests to tweak controls, etc.
But yes still very early days and still quite rough.
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too much early access leads to being a bittervet before the game even launches, lol /o\
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too much early access leads to being a bittervet before the game even launches, lol /o\
Very true, and guessing on the amount of extreme butthurt on the Star Citizen forums debating things that haven't even been developed or tested yet it's going to be an interesting ride.
Example, they put up a lot of 'temporary' stats for lots of ships in the game that haven't been built yet. Class 'x' shields or type 'x' weapons or engines, whatever. Even though no one has flown those ships there's always ridiculous threadnaughts about a certain ship being obsolete or useless based on exactly zero information. "SUCH AND SUCH SHIP HAS CLASS SUPERFUN ENGINES AND OBVIOUSLY WAS A WASTE OF MY MONEY SINCE THIS OTHER SHIP HAS SIZE 4 HARDPOINTS RAAAAGE"
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Pretty sure I got my email inviting me to the multiplayer alpha.
Haven't touched it because Space Engineers just came and ate me. Seriously.
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ex5jBQtS13w
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Fucking intense. Also showcased the core gameplay quite nicely. :lol:
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TROLLLLLLS :P
That video didn't show Chris Roberts escaping to the Bahamas on his personal crowdfunded yacht full of money and laughing at all of us :P
I remain faithful, shit is going to be awesome, all the haters will eat crow, a new glorious age of space-RP will begin, with legit third person doings, multi-crewed ships, and fun adventures for all.
Just about everything I always wanted to do in EVE I'm going to be able to do in this game. I wish the IP was a little more grand, interesting, and less 'space pulp' but I'll take what I can get at this point.
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Just about everything I always wanted to do in EVE I'm going to be able to do in this game. I wish the IP was a little more grand, interesting, and less 'space pulp' but I'll take what I can get at this point.
You might be interested in this (http://seldoncrisis.com/).
Currently it's little more than an idea with some 3d models attached. The idea looks interesting however, and it's made by current and ex-Eve players with the express intention of making good on every promise CCP ever made that they then failed to go through with. Oh, and Roc Weiler is doing the soundtrack.
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"After many battles and hours, wasted in open space fighting with enemies of his Motherland, Ivan suddenly understand that he achieve nothing worth in his life. As the last enemy mothership was destroyed, he found himself in thousands miles away from his allies. He monitor slowly fleeing past his glass cabine impacts and gibs of most biggest machine he ever fight or see. Radio keep silence and only few stars enlighten his way, but he don't want to follow this way back to his boring life: there is nothing stayed in past but crappy TV programs and old sofa. No wife, no kids, no parents. He spent his whole life to fight the enemy, to safe people on his own planet. He defend motherland and he know motherland will never forgot him. As the last enemy mothership was destroyed, he died inside. He step in outer space and off his suit tracking beacon. For everyone, Ivan just a legend, who sacrifice his life to save his Motherland. For Ivan, he was just a coward, who run away from his fate."
For a yuotube comment, that was a surprisingly interesting and emotionally involving story.
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Just about everything I always wanted to do in EVE I'm going to be able to do in this game. I wish the IP was a little more grand, interesting, and less 'space pulp' but I'll take what I can get at this point.
You might be interested in this (http://seldoncrisis.com/).
Currently it's little more than an idea with some 3d models attached. The idea looks interesting however, and it's made by current and ex-Eve players with the express intention of making good on every promise CCP ever made that they then failed to go through with. Oh, and Roc Weiler is doing the soundtrack.
Seeing the artworks and 3D models, they could just rip the Eve IP altogether for what it's worth. Seriously, bad props for their art direction. Nothing new.
Not like everything is pink tainted in Star Citizen as well either, ofc...
/cynical
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Unfortunately most of the ship designs so in Star Citizen really just don't 'wow' me aesthetically. They mostly all look too utilitarian and 'practical' for my tastes. Some are beautiful, but most aren't. Eve ships (used to) have visual flair and personality. Star citizen's entire IP just looks a bit 'practical' to me overall. I like a bit more grimdark or space opera.
But on the one hand I really, really have to appreciate the ridiculous level of detail and 'usability' that has to go into each ship. These are fully designed inside and out, each workstation, bridge, door handle, table, everything. Some of these ships are going to be kilometers long and host hundreds of player avatars, and you will be able to run from one end to the other (or take the elevator), use a computer on the bridge or look at the holographic tactical battle display, and then travel to the damn hangar if you want, jump in your space fighter, launch outside the ship, and shoot people. Or you as an aggressor will disable the ship, dock alongside with a cutting docking collar, grab your guns, board the ship, shoot the peoples inside, and rob them/steal their ship, explode it from within.
Bonus: Also the big ships are persistent. No logging your titan off. You actually need a ton of people to keep a ship like that going.
Bonus: SPACE HULK. You're an explorer? Find a persistent, abandoned ship or station? Grab your guns/friends. Clear it out. Repair it. Own it.
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Bonus: SPACE HULK. You're an explorer? Find a persistent, abandoned ship or station? Grab your guns/friends. Clear it out. Repair it. Own it.
Will it have foul xenos trying to eat/impregnate your face?
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Bonus: SPACE HULK. You're an explorer? Find a persistent, abandoned ship or station? Grab your guns/friends. Clear it out. Repair it. Own it.
Will it have foul xenos trying to eat/impregnate your face?
Xenos yes. Eating your face yes. Not sure about impregnating :P
But they definitely want room for different 'genres' of gameplay. So for those sorts of scenarios it's more of a first person shooter / ALIENS sort of action thing. Fixing up derelict ships and repairing stations would be more tradesperson/crafting, as you have to ship in the parts, etc along with repairs.
They have been talking about a lot of the missions/etc mixing gameplay types. So maybe unloading your cargo from your ship in a bad part of town you get jumped by a bunch of criminals and you have to blast your way out han solo style, that kind of thing.
Of course much talk still, but it's coming along. Linking one of the galleries showing them modeling the interior of one of the larger ships. Absolutely worth flipping through the 70 or 80 screenshots as they develop and refine the thing.
https://robertsspaceindustries.com/comm-link/engineering/13881-WIP-Idris
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Nice video of some of the planetside environments in progress.
I can almost hear my eve Avatar clawing at the captain's quarters locked exit.
https://robertsspaceindustries.com/comm-link/transmission/14039-Inside-CIG-Planetside-Art-Review
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Petitioning to rename the thread "Star Citizen: All The Money In The World".
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Petitioning to rename the thread "Star Citizen: All The Money In The World".
Seriously though, good lord $48.6 million today.
The thing that will be interesting is that they have so many different studios working on different material, and things will really start coming together in the months ahead. the FPS mechanics, the player universe back end, ships ships and more ships, and etc.
They are also running a full mocap filming studio with actors and all the goodies for the single player campaign
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Petitioning to rename the thread "Star Citizen: All The Money In The World".
Be careful what you wish for. I might choose to be a dick and go with "the New Bernie Madoff" instead.
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Ouuuu
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Petitioning to rename the thread "Star Citizen: All The Money In The World".
Seriously though, good lord $48.6 million today.
The thing that will be interesting is that they have so many different studios working on different material, and things will really start coming together in the months ahead. the FPS mechanics, the player universe back end, ships ships and more ships, and etc.
They are also running a full mocap filming studio with actors and all the goodies for the single player campaign
Unless those studios flake, or are mismanaged, or the code doesn't quite fit together, or everything ends up being disjointed. Or the game doesn't quite come together the way it was promised to ALA Spore.
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It's almost as if you wished to see that coming true.
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I see way too much of a Chris Roberts cult in the people who are following this game, and not enough skepticism. So yeah, I do.
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We will add your hate to the pile, good Tiberius :)
There's plenty about the gameplay I actively dislike in this early stage; I'm trying to be reasonably objective.
Fact is they have been 1000% more transparent and engaged with community input before the game has even launched than CCP has ever managed to be. CCP has always given the impression of a mountain to struggle against for criticism and relationship with its own community. Considering the last couple of insider revelations on ccp conduct we know this to be true.
With CIG there is very little of the 'fuck you pay me' attitude that CCP oozes from many pores over many of the last years, and much more 'here's what we are working on, here's what's not going so well, we are reading all your suggestions and making adjustments as we go, and you vote for what the features will be' sort of attitude.
Absolutely no guarantees they will deliver on lofty goals, and they've fallen behind on many of them as the production moves. The inclusive and positive attitude is everything though, and one of the reasons they keep making money hand over fist.
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Objective comment: Third person animation is bad, enviroment showcased looks nice but is only one kind of enviroment (hello captains quarters).
Subjective comment: I'll buy a game when it's released, making deciions based on the amount of conent that's being released, not on the content that's being promised or ~theoretically possible~. If we went by that we'd have all of that in EVE by now.
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Objective comment: Third person animation is bad, enviroment showcased looks nice but is only one kind of enviroment (hello captains quarters).
Subjective comment: I'll buy a game when it's released, making deciions based on the amount of conent that's being released, not on the content that's being promised or ~theoretically possible~. If we went by that we'd have all of that in EVE by now.
They've shown a lot of other environments but most have been 'interior' spaceship sorts of hangars and facilities, not a lot of good material yet for planetside and things looking different than 'generic' sci fi future-y locales. we'll see.
I was already hooked on eve and drinking gallons of ccp koolaide, so they got 10x the money out of me I've given to star citizen. I'm already getting more for my money so far on this investment :P
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Any game ever: What they do not show in teasers, WiPs, trailers and documentaries does not exist and is slated for "the future, when we have time(which we don't have)".
It's still a lot of time until 2016, so let's judge what's being shipped then, and not what's being promised. It all sounds so nice on paper.
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Well, that's the difference between buying a game and investing in its developement. If you buy, you get what you buy, if you invest, you give money so that people can make good on their promises (hopefully). <,<
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Any game ever: What they do not show in teasers, WiPs, trailers and documentaries does not exist and is slated for "the future, when we have time(which we don't have)".
wat
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What they do not show in their promo material doesn't exist. So take a good look at what they show, because there's a high chance that this exactly is what you'll get. Their Ship models are insanely detailed, so there'll be a very limited (flyable/enterable) selection available. The same goes for planet and station environments, which will be pretty, functional and small.
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What they do not show in their promo material doesn't exist.
How do you know that? Or don't you know but it's merely by rule of thumb that you assume?
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What they do not show in their promo material doesn't exist. So take a good look at what they show, because there's a high chance that this exactly is what you'll get. Their Ship models are insanely detailed, so there'll be a very limited (flyable/enterable) selection available. The same goes for planet and station environments, which will be pretty, functional and small.
The hate is strong with this one!
A huge portion of the ship lineup has already been modeled in detail and animated for the crytek engine, and you can explore them in your personal hangar right now. That means you can run around in them as we speak, if you purchase them they appear in your hangar and you can do all the things with them in first person/third person. If my count is right that is I think 10 fully modeled ships with variants for many out of the current lineup of 25 or so player-piloted ships. Not bad. Mind you some of these ships will be half a kilometer and larger with fully modeled interiors and working parts, etc. It's a lot do to.
The rest are being worked on, and the ones that are 'in the hangar' but not yer flyable for multiplayer are in the pipe for the next few patches. The ships that are modeled but not in multiplayer are currently getting all the passes for 'damage states' and all the varieties of different pieces being blown apart. One of the other programming difficulties is basically mating the two 'instances' of the ship simultaneously: the first person experience in the ship, say getting out of the pilot seat and walking around, manning a turret or station, etc, and then the 'space' instance of that ship flying around.
Perhaps you could clarify a bit more on what you mean by a limited selection of flyable/enterable? You can of course contrast with how many ships in EVE are enterable/exitable in first person :P
The station and planet environments will probably be modular and be expanded/added as things are finished. Remember that the interiors of these ships are also doubling for FPS combat levels as well. You're probably right about them being a bit 'smaller' but more detailed.
I'm not expecting anything from them that they aren't talking about and showing WIP of along the way.
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What they do not show in their promo material doesn't exist. So take a good look at what they show, because there's a high chance that this exactly is what you'll get.
In "any game ever" ? Or just in Star Citizen ?
Either way, in the first case I have difficulties to believe that you are telling me that with a straight face, and in the second, well, I don't work for Cloud Imperium obviously, and their business model isn't exactly what i'm used to, so I couldn't tell eventually. Since they seem to be very transparent about everything, even in pre alpha state, perhaps that you are right.
Their Ship models are insanely detailed, so there'll be a very limited (flyable/enterable) selection available. The same goes for planet and station environments, which will be pretty, functional and small.
That's a reasonable assumption to make. I am not sure what to see what is your point/issue ? That they have so much money atm that they should do more ? I hope they will, yes.
I also hope they will add many things, especially planets and locations, but also various and diverse ships, detailed and rich, unlike what Eve has to offer.
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I also hope they will add many things, especially planets and locations, but also various and diverse ships, detailed and rich, unlike what Eve has to offer.
Here's the current ship lineup...
https://robertsspaceindustries.com/ship-specs
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I disagree with the viability of the dream as it's advertised by fans - super sandbox universe with hundreds of explorable ships etc -
therefore I hate. There's little to explain about what I said, really.
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Fans gonna fan, haters gonna hate.
Why would viability even come to mind when it comes to groupies and their deification of Chris Roberts ? Is there any of those here ?
I also hope they will add many things, especially planets and locations, but also various and diverse ships, detailed and rich, unlike what Eve has to offer.
Here's the current ship lineup...
https://robertsspaceindustries.com/ship-specs
That's a good number for me. They are adding some more every few months. It all depends on the way they prove to be diverse and all.
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Star Citizen concept artists got some 'splainin to do!!
Looks like some of them took a few, uh, 'influences' from pappa sansha's Nightmare battleships
https://robertsspaceindustries.com/comm-link/transmission/14045-Galactic-Guide-Rihlah-System
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PERMADEATH.
I forgot to bring up this discussion point. Star Citizen will feature permadeath for player characters, and all named NPCs as well. Basically if you see Jamyl Sarum in space and you can actually kill them, they are dead in the player universe forever. They are going to use this as a mechanic to build players reputations and infamy since things like this will be one time occurrences.
Gameplay wise each character will have a certain number of 'lives' if you don't eject in time or make it back to a medical bay after being shot during a boarding action combat, etc. You'll be incapacitated and be picked up by say an npc medical crew to be revived planetside somewhere, using one of your 'lives.' After a limited number of these should you do something risky and again fail to avoid injury, your player character will be dead forever. You can visit certain facilities and underworld contacts to regenerate some of your 'lives' with cybernetic enhancements and repairs, but they will be costly.
After permadeath the account holder will then have to make a new character that will be an offspring/family member of the previous character, who inherits all of their property, etc. So after S. Vitalia gets exploded one too many times, she's gone forever and S. Vitalia the II is the next one you can control.
This has some major RP implications of course. Those who will be PVPing or doing dangerous activity might have a difficult time spending much time character building and RP if the character might be gone forever soon.
I haven't decided yet how this will impact me, I might perhaps make a more 'generic' character that's part of a larger clan of criminals like the Corleone family, so if you shoot and kill Vito then you'll still have Michael to deal with tomorrow.
What say you?
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There is no way this will be abused.
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After permadeath the account holder will then have to make a new character that will be an offspring/family member of the previous character, who inherits all of their property, etc. [...]
This has some major RP implications of course. Those who will be PVPing or doing dangerous activity might have a difficult time spending much time character building and RP if the character might be gone forever soon.
"I am a scion of a long, long, long, loooong line of space pirates.."
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Permadeath. Having played a fair amount of CP2020 in my youth, the idea of disposable grindhouse characters (a la pirates) in the SC setting is not unappealing. I concede the point that, based on that experience, there is little to no room for development or narrative parallel to those characters.
Moving the possessions of the decedent to their beneficiary does seem to lessen the 'consequence' of a nasty, brutish, and short life of privateering.
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I haven't decided yet how this will impact me, I might perhaps make a more 'generic' character that's part of a larger clan of criminals like the Corleone family, so if you shoot and kill Vito then you'll still have Michael to deal with tomorrow.
What say you?
First thing that comes to mind is The Metabarons (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metabarons).
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The idea is not without merit. I'll hold off on a more final response until I can see how long the margin for 'saving yourself' is - i.e., is it like EVE where you have a fraction of a second to warp your pod away, or is escape a reasonably simple effort for all but the most daring risk-takers? That difference will have deep implications for how people react to this.
It seems that escape will have to be reasonably easy unless you take enormous risks; otherwise, the 'reputation' and 'notoriety' that they want players and characters to accrue will quickly become meaningless as character turnover increases.
Roleplaywise, again, if escape is hard enough that your character simply won't survive long I foresee people rapidly creating excuses to continue using their roleplayed characters under different names ("Oh, I did survive; I'm just using a false license to get around the silly paperwork of having to get myself declared not-dead").
Game mechanics wise - well, the transfer of materials makes me raise an eyebrow. Again, it suggests to me that permadeath will be rare enough to make people seriously upset if they loose their long-accrued hoards. I have to ask, though - are they intending SC to have any kind of levelling or skill-training system? Even if you get your shinies back, will you loose some sort of progress?
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I found it a really good thing to do a few months ago when I saw the vid about it I linked somewhere above. It was more or less how I would have done it myself, but I also would think that a more logical/rational way of dealing with it instead of lives would prove better : if you are killed and your side dominates the field, then they can rescue you in space (or just be dicks and leave you to your death), but if you happen to be on the losing side, then if they start looking for your pod/dude in spacesuit then you might be screwed if you can hide behind that asteroid.
It could be even funnier if you were actually asked to create a dynasty/family/corporation/entity of people and then the ebil twirling mustache piwates that shot you down could ransom your current pilot to your dynasty/whatever.
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Game mechanics:
Fly your ship, pew pew/ whatever. If you eject, much like eve ejecting. You will be EVA in a space suit and can be shot. If you fail to eject or are shot while EVA, you lose one of your 'lives' let's pretend you have 5. Lose all 5 and permadeath. Spend credits/black market to replenish your 'lives'.
There is no skill training or leveling up. Its up to your equipment and crew. NPC crew can be hired and they will improve over time. Equipment for ships makes you better like in eve. You can also buy things like g suits to pull more gs before blacking out.
There is also going to be a lot of 'black market' gameplay. Info running, identity faking, hacking, etc
Well. In theory.
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That's pretty much what I was figuring. I guess my question was more, when you eject, are you instantly targetable by people like in EVE? If so, then yeah - people are going to be roleplaying around this mechanic from day 1.
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I'm not sure if EVA people will show up on your radar (or if it has to be tuned or kitted to detect non-ships). The information suites available in cockpit are a work in progress, very different from the eve overview where you can instantly see how many ships on grid and what type/distance/speed/whatever. Eve has its own flavor because every ship on grid basically has the same information on every other ship on grid, every eve pilot is their own information center.
Right now in SC it's more like, well, wing commander. You kind of see someone on your visual screen, scan them to 'dock' them in your computer to keep track of, and then after they've been scanned you can quickly change targets. Non scanned ships show up on the radar but you don't get rich info on their status.
I think they are aiming more for only certain specific electronics packages and ships to be catered to high end informational/grid awareness. IE Fighters fight, scouts scout, and the command and control ships get the overall strategy picture. First person flying makes it very very difficult to have situation awareness, and imo the current radar sphere on the cockpit is crappy and generally useless.
Anyway if you are running a command and control ship you'll likely have the full scanning package and dedicated software to direct people to doing things. On the larger capital ships they will have full holo tables in first person view that you can use to give orders to wings/fleet members, etc, with ship stations that will have gameplay directed at managing these things.
What they are going for is to split up the main ship functions to different stations to give all the crew something to do. You can technically run the ship from a single seat but you'll be spending all your time switching between information screens and managing power levels, etc that you will be much less efficient at it than just flying your ship and having your buddy manage the power grid.
They've got a (probably over)complicated heat and data system for all the ship parts and weapons, basically like a heat/info pipe for each subsystem (dozens of thrusters, weapons, main engines, etc), and they have actual routes through the ship, so if x part gets blown off then things can get screwed up.
My problem with the game right now is that combat is way, way, way too fast in my opinion. IE damage is too high and hit points are too low. In my opinion it's dumb to have all these different ship systems and ability to shape your energy output if you die in a handful of shots.
They only have the smallest and fastest ships available now but it's more like frigate combat in eve if each frigate was shooting like a destroyer's worth of damage and accuracy. You go down in a volley or two, or maybe one missile and change.
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Battle Report:
So after some new patch issues I've finally been admitted into the multiplayer test arenas -
The game is much, much more smooth and continues to add polish to everything.
I'm currently using a HOTAS Joystick along with my keyboard, they have not implemented user keybinding just yet without jumping through a lot of hoops.
So, multiplayer right now is FFA, Team deathmatch, and 'captuer the flag,' most of my time spent in team deathmatch. No pre-made teams yet so you get random people.
The goods:
-It's mostly super fun, they've really tightened up the joystick inputs so you aren't constantly oversteering, it was atrocious before.
-I feel like they've increased ship HP, you do have enough time/HP to take a few shots before dying so you can adjust/evade. This was one of my primary earlier criticisms that you basically exploded after a few well placed shots. Weapons have been re-balanced. It's more 'oh im being shot, let me try and not die' instead of the old version 'oh im being sho- *explode*
-Dogfighting is pretty fun. The flight mechanics are very complicated, as you can switch between 'fly by wire' like an airplane, where you point the nose in a direction and you go in that direction, all the way to pure newtonian, where you fly in a vector and can rotate 360 on that vector until you apply thrust in a new direction. Think 'star wars' fighters vs babylon 5 Starfuries. You have settings in-between that make you more like a 'drifter' which is a nice sweet spot for me personally so far. Let's you 'strafe' around asteroids and turn 180 and shoot people before your main engine kicks in and you shoot off on a new direction.
Balance will be a huge issue because the tougher ships can do a 'sit and spin' turret in space sometimes with the more fragile ships and there's not much you can do about it vs better pilots. I'm in the super fast/lightly armored ship, so if I'm chasing a big heavy fighter I can blast him for quite a while before he explodes...so he can flip his axis and keep flying away from me and just blast me to shreds before I can get away.
Right now it looks like all things being equal if you have a lot of speed you want to spread the map out. You can use the agility/speed of the faster ships to run away, pick a good vector, zoom in and blast them, and then keep speeding right by if you can. I think in the open world game the faster ships will do very, very well blasting at range and staying away from the big gunboats.
Negatives
-Game is still unstable/crashy
-Respawn distance is infuriating. Like rage-inducing infuriating. Currently more often than not they will respawn you right in the middle of the enemy team, directly in front of their guns. Basically donating free kills to the other team. I almost rage quit a few times because it happened like 10 times in a row.
If you are in a more fragile ship it's even more rage because you are being shot literally 2 seconds after respawning, before your HUD is even finished loading. They need to 3x or 4x the spawn distance from any enemies.
Anyway right now they only have 3 single-seater ships everyone is using, the entry level do-it-all (poorly), the fast/light fighter and the slow/heavy fighter. Soon they'll be adding all the different flavors of lots of ships. I don't own any of the current lineup so they give you a loaner for the current multiplayer. I own the multi-crew 'pirate' gunboat which will be very interesting once it gets going.
Anyway overall I've found myself with the same level of excitement/adrenaline as a good eve PVP fight which is fantastic for me. I think combat in the MMO universe will be very tense and tactical, and I can't wait.
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So it's all random for now, but can you still group up with people and find random matches as well ?
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So it's all random for now, but can you still group up with people and find random matches as well ?
Not yet, they are still coding a lobby system for grouping up before matches. First to team up before matches, and then for the 'first person' hangar lobby to get all your friends on your ship (gunner, etc) before matchmaking
100% random now, private matches soon though
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Also, on ships, I understand that they lend the 3 base ships for now (Aurora, Jumpworks and Anvil ?) but when there will be more added, only those 3 will still be accessible to people that own no ships ?
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Also, on ships, I understand that they lend the 3 base ships for now (Aurora, Jumpworks and Anvil ?) but when there will be more added, only those 3 will still be accessible to people that own no ships ?
Aurora, 300i, Hornet
They aren't so much 'base ships', just the first 3 finished modeling/polishing to use for multiplayer.
You can't play at all though unless you buy a ship, the Aurora is currently the most 'starter' of the three with the cheapest game package.
If you bought something bigger/fancier they let you use one of those three as a 'loaner' until yours is finished and in-game
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Ah I see. I wonder how much money they need though. Don't they have enough already ?
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Ah I see. I wonder how much money they need though. Don't they have enough already ?
From what I've gathered the excess money is being used as a slush fund for when schedules get tight. CR has basically stated they can use the extra money to expand development teams as big as they need to.
The MMO is also not a subscription model, once you buy in you get access forever, similar to things like Guild Wars.
Also they will probably hit $50 million this week. Insane!
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Live Stream from Gamescom in Germany in a few hours: some announcements/trailers to come
https://robertsspaceindustries.com/
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"And lo... the seventh seal was broken, and hell was loosed upon the Earth"
$50 Million crowdfunding has been reached.
Prepare thyselves!
Some good stuff at the presentation yesterday, they are releasing a demo of the 'racing' mode in two weeks, sort of using your ships for mario-kart atmospheric racing:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7hN-0TrdUR0
I love that this is all part of one big game. The gameplay looked fun, but of course just a single track and not much else for it right now. The best player racers in the persistent universe are going to get sponsorship from the in-fiction companies and stuff, which just sounds super neat.
There's a lot of neat RP opportunities with this game, as so much of the gameplay will not be centered around pew pew.
They also released the latest in-fiction "commercial" for one of the larger ships, which focuses more on exploration and hauling than combat.
Much RP opportunities here, flying around with your buddies on the same ship, scanning planets, discovering new life forms!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zG-82TakEqk
and the page showing the variants of the ship here:
https://robertsspaceindustries.com/comm-link/transmission/14080-The-2945-RSI-Constellation-Lineup
Still my absolute favorite 'commcercial' has been for the Freelancer class, which is making fun of American pickup truck commercials. Brilliant:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vO7RxsZpcKc
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Some good stuff at the presentation yesterday, they are releasing a demo of the 'racing' mode in two weeks, sort of using your ships for mario-kart atmospheric racing:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7hN-0TrdUR0
I love that this is all part of one big game. The gameplay looked fun, but of course just a single track and not much else for it right now. The best player racers in the persistent universe are going to get sponsorship from the in-fiction companies and stuff, which just sounds super neat.
FFS, CCP won't even create Checkpoint mobile structures, or allow for medals that you can give to none-corpmembers. Ché may be in the wrong game.
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Some good stuff at the presentation yesterday, they are releasing a demo of the 'racing' mode in two weeks, sort of using your ships for mario-kart atmospheric racing:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7hN-0TrdUR0
I love that this is all part of one big game. The gameplay looked fun, but of course just a single track and not much else for it right now. The best player racers in the persistent universe are going to get sponsorship from the in-fiction companies and stuff, which just sounds super neat.
FFS, CCP won't even create Checkpoint mobile structures, or allow for medals that you can give to none-corpmembers. Ché may be in the wrong game.
They ran an early playable version of one of the multi-crew ships, all in engine.
Ship gets attacked, run to the turret millenium falcon style, blast the enemies and save your crew: this is all in-game demo here, still looks rough but the concept is gold. The game play itself doesn't look that exciting yet but this will be damned interesting when more people and multiple ships are involved, let alone the larger ships that are kilometers long and full of player fighters.
Oh another thing they've been talking about, you'll be able to 'hire' NPC's to help man your larger ships or to fly escort in their own ships.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qL1RXbZLHAI
They will also have create-able 'missions' for corps/others so there's a lot of RP sandboxing to happen here.
I'm just absolutely giddy with the possibilities of linking up with my friends on our own little adventure game and having adventures in the 'verse
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FFS space op authors should seriously stop with all those flashy coloured space backgrounds. We are not flying in the clouds, we are flying in the deep dark cold void of space... Old scify was ten times better for that. :/
The gameplay looked fun, but of course just a single track and not much else for it right now. The best player racers in the persistent universe are going to get sponsorship from the in-fiction companies and stuff, which just sounds super neat.
Yes, it sounds neat, but you are aware there is no gameplay shown here right ? It's only scripted or hand moved ships and then added into a montage with nice backgrounds like it is done for cinema or tv.
It's a showcase of what they would like to do, much like Eve future vision was in its time.
They also released the latest in-fiction "commercial" for one of the larger ships, which focuses more on exploration and hauling than combat.
Much RP opportunities here, flying around with your buddies on the same ship, scanning planets, discovering new life forms!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zG-82TakEqk
So we will be able to play good white conquistadors bringing civilization to primitive alien species ? :P
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Sorry I didn't link the racing game play,
they demo'd on stage with 4 players:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ThfNFKxUn24
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Ah now we are talking ! :P
The only thing that annoys me is that we don't seem to see other players on each screen... Are they not shown yet (like they all are running the same level at the same time but still not linked together ?), or are the distances too huge to see anything smaller than the environment ?
Edit : watched a bit of team deathmatch, and as long as you get your targeting cross near the target all the guns are automatically following it ? That sucks :ugh:
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Edit : watched a bit of team deathmatch, and as long as you get your targeting cross near the target all the guns are automatically following it ? That sucks :ugh:
Here's the thing with weapon tracking:
You can go one of two ways in how you design the damage model. Either you can go for high damage low accuracy, and require making perfect snap shots to eliminate your opponent. Or you can go for low damage high accuracy, where you need more consistent fire over a longer stretch.
The former is something that is often complained about by non-experienced players, as it gives them next-to-no time to react to oncoming fire and they feel they couldn't do anything to protect themselves (they could, of course, through better spatial awareness, but that's something you develop with time). This increases the learning curve, and tends to result in few players actually sticking with the game as they get very frustrated. This damage model caused huge issues in JtL on SWG in terms of encouraging new pilots, leaving us with very little new blood (it didn't help that the net code was awful. This is also something important to consider when choosing damage model, and something I see Star Citizen is having issues with too in its MP, lots of 'warping' around). Many people who might have otherwise been interested in it gave up because they "died too fast" and "couldn't hit anything."
The latter method, low damage with high accuracy, tends to feel limiting and disrupts the flow of combat, preventing extreme manuevers and thus making you more exposed to the enemy's wingmen (you see this in SC videos, where the pilot flies straight and level to score multiple consecutive shots on their target), but it also gives newer players a bit more leeway in being able to respond. They will at least know they are being shot at before they die, instead of just exploding out of hand.
From what I have heard, Star Citizen is going in general with the low damage/high accuracy model. They want ships to be able to take a bit of damage. When you have this kind of system, you will absolutely need at least some minor weapon tracking. This is because properly-designed flight systems are not snap-movement like in an FPS, you cannot instantaneously correct if you miss a shot. Ships have inertia and drag and so making minor corrections for accuracy tends to result in you constantly overshooting. This is fine when you only need to land one or two big hits to win, but when you have to land a lot of smaller ones it makes the fight take ages and never go anywhere.
Now, personally, I prefer systems with no weapon tracking and high alpha damage. I find this is a bit more immersive. However I can respect the way Star Citizen is going as long as they don't go too far in the other direction (where it becomes impossible to shoot down good pilots because you will never keep them in your sights long enough to deal enough consistent damage to destroy them). And from what I hear, they are offering options in this area. I think I recall reading that you can reduce or turn off the weapon tracking if you like, and that the weapons themselves are designed with different tracking ranges (smaller damage weapons will start tracking the enemy as long as your crosshair is somewhere near them, higher damage ones require you to be very precise. O field of fire vs o field of fire). That's actually the primary reason I went with the Avenger, as I recall it was stated that its high damage nose gun has little to no tracking and the ship is basically designed as a jouster and marksman, flying really fast but having low maneuverability and dealing precise high-damage shots. Very much appeals to my preferred flight style in SWG, where the ship I flew was so big that it could absolutely not afford to spend any protracted time at slower speeds (totes plugging myself (http://vimeo.com/66952764). Though that video actually is relevent to this post since if you compare it to a SC video (eg this one (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RmVmPJ4nuEY)) it clearly demonstrates the benefits/issues of the high damage/low accuracy model vs the low damage/high accuracy model).
It should also be noted that weapon tracking does not automatically give perfect accuracy. In fact, in high degree turns there is a likelihood that the tracking will actually cause you to miss all of your shots because they are shooting at where the target was instead of where it is going to be. This depends on how robust the tracking system is, though--I haven't played SC yet so I don't know. EVE is a good example of a game with a very defined tracking model, as there is no manual aiming so hits are all done through the tracking calculations.
Anyway, yeah. Weapon tracking is not a casual/easy-mode mechanic, don't assume that just because a game has it that makes it a bad game. Weapon tracking in these kind of games is a method of achieving a desired damage model where the damage threshold for destruction does not necessitate extreme levels of direct damage.
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Weapon assisted targeting is a bad mechanism to me period. I don't find it gratifying nor even less fun to see the computer kill the enemy for me. I am not talking about low damage or high damage models, i'm talking about assisted targeting systems. The only weapon where I can see an interest with such a system is for non instantaneous weapons like missiles who will need a lock to work, and that the target has a chance to avoid. I don't want to see my skill dampened by mechanics allowing someone with no skill to beat my higher skill, and I wouldn't want to win against someone with better skill just because the program did it for me.
Now then, if they plan to add various levels of assisted targeting depending on the power of the weapon you use, that might be better, though I don't like it either. It will just mean that the higher the damage output is, the more they will be used by good players, where low damage easy weapons will be used by low skill players. It kills diversity in terms of weapons to instead push that diversity not between weapons and various gameplays anymore, but between player skills.
I still think that weapon automated tracking is just an artificial crutch to fix what the gamedesigners couldn't : to achieve a desired damage model. Rework flying models and targeting systems accordingly instead, the result will prove to be much neater.
Games like War Thunder do it perfectly right and are incredibly addictive since they also offer various gamemodes aimed at different kind of players : casual (arcade mode), players concerned about immersion and realism (realistic), and players concerned about full simulation (simulator). Don't get me wrong, as much as I really enjoy and admire the experience I can get in realistic modes, I spend most of my time on arcade mode where the most fun can be achieved, and that without any damn assisted weapon targeting. You missed your target because you didn't handle or plan your plane inertia and approach correctly ? Well too bad, that's where skill comes into play. And even with all the fun this gamemode offers, good or bad players get shot again and again and again, the only difference is the kill/death ratio, while in realistic mode, good pilots almost never get killed, except by good pilots, because well, it's realistic, and that's something I like too. But automated targeting ? Duh.
Also, small 7mm MGs who do low damage and tend more to cripple over time rather than kill (unless very lucky), are also the most accurate and have the less curved trajectory in that game. Above, 12mm will offer greater firepower for a lower fire rate and accuracy. And 20mm canons and above will prove to be very different kinds of weapons you generally use at point blank since otherwise they are of no use. All of those do not need automated targeting to achieve a desired damage model. They just offer diversity and a complete arsenal that brings different pros and cons to be used correctly in various different situations. They do not serve as a crutch to new players, and they do not spend their diversity into differences of skill, but into differences of gameplay.
If they are scared to scare novices out of the game like Eve tends to do, which I fully agree, then they can perfectly offer various levels of matchmaking, layered experience zones, etc. It works well.
Also, JtL seems to have changed a lot. When I played that broken thing, the gameplay was so dumb and simple that you just had to have a better PYR agility module than your opponent to win, since all decent weapons meant a direct kill at the first hit. That was a complete joke.
Edit : no, I will never assume that just because of it will prove to be a bad game, or just prove to be worse than without. It is just a matter of tastes and some people will probably greatly enjoy it.
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If they are scared to scare novices out of the game like Eve tends to do, which I fully agree, then they can perfectly offer various levels of matchmaking, layered experience zones, etc. It works well.
Ugh, please no more matchmaking and layered zones and what not. Them implementing any at all is already really quite silly and is the thing about SC that annoys me the most, as it destroys real dynamic gameplay. An EVE-like system with higher to lower security zones would have been a much better direction to go, rather than "I want to avoid all PvP, so I'll just set my PvP option to zero so I only get ambushed by NPC pirates while hauling!" Ugh. Gives me flashbacks to Pirates of the Burning Sea when, "There is no crying in the red circle," got patched into, "There are only smiles in the red circle! Don't worry about piracy in a game about pirates, traders!"
Also, JtL seems to have changed a lot. When I played that broken thing, the gameplay was so dumb and simple that you just had to have a better PYR agility module than your opponent to win, since all decent weapons meant a direct kill at the first hit. That was a complete joke.
Actually, it barely changed at all. That was one of the biggest problems with it as the developers ignored it for years--major JtL bugs would remain unfixed for half a decade, for example, if they were fixed at all. But as far as flight model goes, what you're seeing there is the same JtL that you played.
And what you're showing here is precisely the point I was making about certain damage models discouraging new players. With the damage model that SWG had, where it was very high damage with no assisted targeting, new players came under the assumption that they could not compete because they were so quickly destroyed by a single shot from the enemy's weapon, and couldn't hit anything themselves. They felt powerless and didn't know what they did wrong, which made them tend to blame the equipment rather than their own abilities (while equipment was certainly a factor, that's like saying that using officer mods on a pvp ship in EVE will guarantee that you win. Everyone here knows that isn't the case). The reality was that with the right choices and an understanding that those weapons were only dangerous if they could hit you (and thus that speed, size, and active evasion were vastly more important for defense than armor or shields), you could achieve success even with weaker equipment. When I started flying, higher PYR was at the time considered the be-all-end-all, but I and a few other bomber pilots deliberately said "fuck you" to them and favored a jousting speedy flight style, which ended up revolutionizing the standard loadout for larger ships and bombers and made higher speed lower YPR the go-to for those ships. It largely discredited the PYR-is-everything belief as an interceptor with a super high YPR engine couldn't do anything against a bomber that refused to engage in a turning fight with it; the interceptor's engine's lower speed meant that the bomber was the one dictating the range of the engagement. Sound familiar? People often say that games like EVE and flight sims have nothing in common, but many of the same tactics and strategies apply in both. You maximize what your ship is good at, and avoid fights that it is bad at. In JtL, as in EVE, you wanted to be the one to dictate range, you wanted to increase your own angular velocity while limiting your opponent's, missiles countered those high-transversal opponents that couldn't be easily hit by turret weapons, you slingshotted enemies that were otherwise difficult to get into a vulnerable position (in JtL we called it the pancake turn or the joust), and higher quality equipment helped but didn't make you a god (choosing the wrong type of equipment for your ship, however, would ruin your chances. Like EVE, you can't just throw everything and the kitchen sink on it and expect to do well). The main difference between the two games is really just that one had 0% aiming assist and the other has 100% aiming assist (and one had 100% manual flying and the other has 30% manual flying <.<).
What JtL needed, while perhaps not aiming assist (though a high accuracy/speed low damage weapon type would have been nice, both for newer players and old ones), was definitely more attention to the new pilot experience. They did nothing to teach or prepare new pilots for the PvP environment (with the biggest flaw being nothing that taught players how to use droid commands, which were the JtL equivalent of Overheating and even more important there than it is in EVE), resulting in players giving up when they tried and felt like they couldn't compete.
Back to the pros and cons of aiming assist. It is a fallacy to say that they are skill-less, or are 'just the computer killing your enemy for you'. Again, you're considering the aiming assist separately of the damage model, which is inappropriate. A good aiming assist system is absolutely based on the damage potential of the weapon. In games where good aiming assist exists, higher values are reserved for lower damage weapons while higher damage weapons have reduced or no aiming assist (in Halo, for example, the sniper rifle has a 1 degree auto-aim range, requiring it to be basically on the ball, while the needler, a weapon with very weak individual shots but high damage if all hit, has a 7 degree. Other weapons fall between those two). As such, the idea of an aiming assist is that it lets you apply a level of damage consistent to that of a large single shot, but over a slightly longer period of time. Thus, instead of being a binary hit or miss, it becomes a 'hit for full, hit for some, or hit for none'. Hits become graduated. It is, in essence, a DoT, which requires the player to keep their targeting cursor in a defined, if relaxed, area of space to deal full damage. This is a different sort of skill, but still skill. It is a skill in that in order for you to deal damage to your opponent, you must present yourself as a target to the target or their wingmen. Without aiming assist (and with a corresponding increase in damage-per-shot), a pilot can keep at constant movement, relying on snap shots. This makes it much more difficult to hit them. Using the JtL example, this allowed good interceptor pilots to sometimes survive for 20 minutes or more against a dozen pilots while still scoring some kills, because all they had to do was get a few good snap shots in during their evasive manuevers. With a weapon with high aiming assist but low damage, to kill something, you must line up, set up your shot, and hold it there for a few moments, exposing yourself to anyone nearby. In essence, with an aiming assist damage model weapon, scoring kills requires you to make a risk-vs-reward assessment. Can you afford to sit there, in a straight line, to deal your damage? This is the same assessment you make with missiles, though missiles trade partial damage while locking for a full, guaranteed damage if the lock is achieved.
Ultimately though the big benefit of aiming assist damage models is that it gives newer players (or even just less precise players, IE people with disabilities) the ability to feel like they are competing even if they're still ultimately dying. They still hit a few times, which gives them the feel of having some kind of agency. They might still "suck", but they accomplished something. And in low damage with aiming assist models they know they're being shot at and can react to it before they actually die. That's an option not afforded to them in high damage no assist games where they will die in one or two shots and where spatial awareness and proactive evasion are the keys to survival, both things that are not easily learned due to being skills that are built on reflex and instinct--it is like muscle memory. This is a difficult thing to learn without an instructor. Most players don't have that, and so feel they can't compete and thus quit.
That's really what it comes down to, proaction versus reaction. In a game with high damage and no aiming assist, it favors pro-active skills which thus benefits experienced players and hurts newer players as they don't have the pro-active "muscle memory" and can't react because they're already dead. In a game with lower damage and aiming assist, it can accomodate reaction instead of just proaction.
Now aside from aiming assist, there are other mechanics that gives the same potential. That would be refire rate and spread. Machine guns with extremely low damage but high rate of fire fulfill the same purpose as aiming assist in allowing a player to hit otherwise difficult targets with minimal effort. Shotgun-type weapons are similar, basically being high alpha versions of the machine gun.
I don't consider either of those options to be either superior or inferior to aiming assist. They are all good options. All are quite realistic for the setting of the game (aiming assist being targeting computers with automated weapon mounts), and all fulfill the same necessary function.
Now then, if they plan to add various levels of assisted targeting depending on the power of the weapon you use, that might be better, though I don't like it either. It will just mean that the higher the damage output is, the more they will be used by good players, where low damage easy weapons will be used by low skill players. It kills diversity in terms of weapons to instead push that diversity not between weapons and various gameplays anymore, but between player skills.
I see it offering quite a bit of diversity, actually.
Yes it is likely that higher skilled players will gravitate to the high damage low tracking weapons, while newer players are likely to stick with the lower damage high tracking ones. That's a good thing. It gives newer players something that makes them feel like they're competing, while offering something with greater power for when they decide to try taking the training wheels off.
However, this doesn't render those lower damage weapons useless. They are not 'newb-only' weapon choices. Those low damage high tracking weapons will be the go-to weapon even for vets for fighting small, highly evasive ships. This is called 'counter play', and is the same reason why missiles are very important. Yadda yadda "but if I'm highly skilled I should be dodge/evade everything!", I've heard that argument a million times by people upset that there was something to actually counter the powerful tool they themselves were utilizing (a super small, evasive, and fast interceptor in this case, that without proper counter can be virtually impossible to destroy). A highly evasive interceptor is built around evading fire. To have proper counter play, there needs to be weapons that can counter extreme evasion. In JtL, that was missiles. Missiles couldn't be evaded, but they could be chaffed. Once the interceptor ran out of chaff, or if they were too slow on their chaff, they were completely at the mercy of the missiles. In a game that has weapons with tracking capability, those weapons will be the counter to difficult-to-hit opponents. Of course, any ship that loads up the low damage high tracking weapon to counter evasion-tanking ships will become vulnerable to ships equipped with the high power low tracking weapons, because the ship with the low damage high tracking weapon has to line up in a straight line and maintain that for a lengthy time to deal damage--which makes it the perfect victim for the high damage low tracking weapon, which no longer has to worry about making deflection shots and can unleash its full damage potential against that ship.
That is diversity.
Some good videos to watch on this topic are here (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EitZRLt2G3w&index=27&list=PLhyKYa0YJ_5BkTruCmaBBZ8z6cP9KzPiX) and here (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BRBcjsOt0_g&list=PLhyKYa0YJ_5BkTruCmaBBZ8z6cP9KzPiX&index=28).
And I'm afraid I can't compare with War Thunder as I haven't played it.
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What i'm seeing is not that high damage being the problem, but a very basic and limited gameplay, mostly tied to flight models that remain too basic and oriented only on a handful of stats, if not just 2 main ones : agility and damage, or speed and damage. Whatever. SWG combat has always been a laughable joke, either in space or on ground.
Anyway I understand better the model you present. It sounds rather good actually. If that is what they plan to do, of course.
Their flight models (the other most important thing) look promising and complex enough (unlike JtL). Whatever the weapon and damage models involved, that's what will bring tactical depth and tactical positioning important, as well as flying skills.
If they are scared to scare novices out of the game like Eve tends to do, which I fully agree, then they can perfectly offer various levels of matchmaking, layered experience zones, etc. It works well.
Ugh, please no more matchmaking and layered zones and what not. Them implementing any at all is already really quite silly and is the thing about SC that annoys me the most, as it destroys real dynamic gameplay. An EVE-like system with higher to lower security zones would have been a much better direction to go, rather than "I want to avoid all PvP, so I'll just set my PvP option to zero so I only get ambushed by NPC pirates while hauling!" Ugh. Gives me flashbacks to Pirates of the Burning Sea when, "There is no crying in the red circle," got patched into, "There are only smiles in the red circle! Don't worry about piracy in a game about pirates, traders!"
Mh, no you are right actually. I don't know why I mentionned those since I don't like them much either. I was maybe more thinking about something like... a tutorial zone, mostly. Which squadron 42 is supposed to be anyway right ? It should teach you the game, and by that I mean extensively, minus the multiplayer part. Not like Eve laughable tutorials. Something that should ask players a bit of skill and whatnot to finish the solo game before entering the multiplayer game.
And if they add the possibility to bypass the solo part to directly jump into the multiplayer part (they said only for vets before iirc, but they can change their mind), then it would be on the player to put the blame if he doesn't know how to fly his ship.
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Lots of good points! Let me talk about how some of these currently work:
Tracking:
Gun weapons right now are either 'gimbal' mounted or 'straight' shooting: The 'gimbal' weapons if you have the target within your circular retical will track within the retical. You still have to maneuver to get the target inside your circle, but then the auto tracking will help. Gimbals for different ships will have different tracking rates, you will be able to modify your ships tracking computer, etc to affect these stats.
The gimbal mounted tracking assist weapons tend to be the 'high frequency / low damage' ammunition. Good to help you finish off someone or help strip shields but they don't have the punch or the range for most of your work.
The 'straight' weapons function like you'd expect, you have to lead your shots and don't get much help. These tend to be your high damage weapons.
They are trying to find a comfortable balance between both of these, and how effective to make the tracking. They are likely going to give a 'small' assist for the straight shooters to help focus your fire a bit, and will continue to adjust the gimbal trackers.
Oculus Rift people can have all their gimbal weapons tracked to their line of sight, so you can fly straight, look to the right, and your gimbal weapons will auto-track wherever you point your head. VERY COOL.
Damage Model
Shields and Armor. Weapons are into two different camps, some do more damage on shields and some do more damage on armor. Some weaopns will travel through shields at a higher rate to strike armor directly, etc. Lots of variety.
Shields will eventually be adjustable with modules to focus on higher recharge rates or overall higher buffer, similar to eve. Right now they are working on overall strength, recharge rate, all that stuff. The next patch will give us a lot more flexibility on energy management, so directing your power output to say, the rear shields and engines instead of weapons, etc. There are weapons being worked on that are also more 'disruptive' similar to a sort of neut gun that damages ship systems, etc.
Missiles will primarily be Infrared, Image Recogniction, and Friend or Foe. You have several different types of countermeasures to use as well, so launching a flare against an image recognition missile won't do you much good. In current patch only heat-seaking missiles are available, but you can still shoot off a chaff and get nailed by them.
Larger capital ships will essentially be invulnerable to fighter-sized weapons, you will have to either use other capital ship weapons (long-axis railguns, etc), or bomber-carried torpedoes, which of course they have special ships for. Basically they are treating it like a WW2 battleship game in space, the carriers launch fighters and bombers, etc.
If you are commanding a destroyer or a frigate you could kit your capital ship to pew pew up close like old ships of the line, or more stand offish, etc.
Also all ships are fully destructible, so you can lose specific parts of ships, thrusters, weapons, etc, changing how the ship performs, where it's center of gravity is, and how it maneuvers. Highly important for disabling larger ships later on, you can actually blow off the thrusters to disable them, or shoot the wapons, etc.
Flight Model
It's a full 'newtonian' flight model, meaning if you turn off your computer-assisted flight controls, you will fly in a straight line until you apply thrust in another direction. All of the ships have something like 8-16 manuevering thrusters aside from the rear thrusters, (that can be destroyed) So if you remember shows like 'Babylon 5' you can absolutely fly your ship like a starfury if you choose to. The ship computer can be set to fly more like an airplane, where you point the nose where you want and the ship figures out how to fire the manuevering thrusters to point you in that direction. It's sort of a slider, so I often fly with it 'half off' meaning you can do more of a 'drift' turn, that is fly in a direction, change directions while maintaining your original vector for a bit, and then push off with full thrusters in that direction. You take G-forces like a real ship, if you leave the G-limiter on you never have to worry about it, but you can turn it off for tighter turns and you start to black out if you push it too hard.
They are adding in updated 6dof (6 degrees of freedom) for the next patch, meaning basically 6 direction 'strafing' whenever you want. so to make it easy to change your z-axis, things like that. They are also doubling flight speeds for the next patch, which will change combat quite a bit. They are adding 'afterburners' for the manuevering thrusters so you can make tighter turns. With the speed being doubled they are making sure to tell you that it will be much, much harder to turn going full speed, so not to be raging on the forums when all of the sudden going full speed means you can't turn fast.
PVP/New Player stuff
A long topic, but basically similar to eve they will have areas where misbehavior is severely punished, and they will have areas where it is not. They do not have a CONCORD mentality though, so if you shoot someone in high security space you are extremely likely to be seen as they have high military police presence and constant monitoring.
In the less patrolled areas, the developer attitude is more that if no one sees you commit a crime, then there's no evidence. IE you don't take a security hit for blasting someone if there's no evidence. It would be on them to seek retribution.
They are also really trying to make it 'immersive' in the sense that unless you have the proper scanning equipment or whatever, you probably won't even be able to tell if you are shooting at an NPC or a human player. They aren't planning on an icon above that random ship displaying your name and announcing who you are. Don't like the way they look? GTFO.
Keep in mind though that PVP is not the only focus of this game, they are spending equal time developing full careers for trading, hauling, exploration, mining, all the goodies. Since there are no 'skillpoints' it's more up to your equipment and interest, not if you have the 4 years in the game to sit in the ship. If you've got the ship you can fly it.
There's no subscription either, it's like guild wars 2. You buy the squadron 42 single player game, and you get MMO access forever. After you make it through squadron 42 (depending on your choices), you'll start in the appropriate area and be off.
They will have cash for credits (similar to plex), for busy adults without the time to spend 20 hours a week doing things.
They are 'trying' however (and this never works), to insist that you won't consider the missions and adventuring as 'grinding' though.
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Thank you for all the info, it's very informative.
But what do you mean by the faster you go, the less you turn ? It is logical to expect that you turn the same, but the curve of your turn will be sensitively bigger since you go faster, thus making your turn less tight. Or do they mean it's like in old sims like X-Wing where going at 1/3 of your max velocity means that you are also more agile ?
Oculus Rift people can have all their gimbal weapons tracked to their line of sight, so you can fly straight, look to the right, and your gimbal weapons will auto-track wherever you point your head. VERY COOL.
If you don't have Oculus Rift, you are screwed ?
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I mean it's harder to change your vector the more velocity you have. You can rotate your ship just as fast no matter the velocity, but if you are going very fast it takes much longer to change vectors because you have to counter all of that velocity before going another way.
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If you have a rift yes you will have an advantage, but you would have one anyway just by being able to look around your surroundings easier. You can turn on mouse look but hard to do that and fly at same time. Remember though only some of the ships are fighters. Many more are large ships where you will control from a bridge like star trek with a helmsman and bridge crew and someone down in engineering, etc
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Did Saede forget to tell Ché something :?:
(http://i62.tinypic.com/2i7wr5k.jpg)
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What's that Che? I don't get it?
Also here's a fun little multiplayer video some guys put together.
Not too bad for version 0.8 of the game mode :) Version 1.0 with all the matchmaking and private /custom matches should be out in about two months.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-LLKqyfHhNo
Hopefully when we get some real spectator/camera controls the nice videos will start comin!
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Will we be able to gang up with people in v1 ?
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Will we be able to gang up with people in v1 ?
You can do that in about a week with 0.9, they will have 'match codes' you can use to send invites to your friends for team deathmatch, battle royal, or co-op vs waves of npc enemies.
About two months after that they'll have a real lobby system
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Yay nice, so I might be able to be your space biatch :yar:
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Yay nice, so I might be able to be your space biatch :yar:
Hah we'll see.
I will definitely need a co-pilot and also a dedicated turret gunner on my pirate ship though! https://robertsspaceindustries.com/pledge/ships/drake-cutlass/Cutlass
If you do sign up let me know I'll get you into Koro and I's group of piwates.
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Mm, cutlass.
Definitely want to get one of those when the full game comes out. Bit too expensive for me to pay for with real money.
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Mm, cutlass.
Definitely want to get one of those when the full game comes out. Bit too expensive for me to pay for with real money.
Will really come down to how they will balance things.
The Cutlass currently looks like the equivalent of an old Minmatar Typhoon in Eve: a million ways to fit and fly the thing depending on what you want.
Right now in the 'unbalanced' multiplayer I'm handedly getting my ass kicked on the regular by the Hornet, which is sort of a close range brawler with lower top speed but superior acceleration.
I've got this crappy 'loaner' 300i until they get the Cutlass in game.
The 300i is faster top speed than the hornet, but not fast enough to get away before often dying. Also much lower weapons and much, much weaker shields/armor. So you can zoom in, pew pew the hornets, but can be difficult to get away or to do enough damage on a run to be worth it.
With the 'newtonian' flight models, it also happens often that I'll have a perfect bead on a hornet, get in on them blap blap blap, they'll shrug it off, flip on their axis (while flying backwards), and spray me to death with a face full of pew pew.
I think once they start doing 'balanced' matches with similar team compositions it will be fine. Right now teams are random and there's no limits, so you can basically get 4 Eve Punishers vs 4 Omens, which is fail before the match starts.
I'd also add once you can play with your friends and properly coordinate, things will vastly improve. Being able to coordinate attacks with faster ships will make the 300i much more competitive. Because right now 1v1 it's completely outclassed, but a pair of them could make short work of a lot of things.
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Yay nice, so I might be able to be your space biatch :yar:
Hah we'll see.
I will definitely need a co-pilot and also a dedicated turret gunner on my pirate ship though! https://robertsspaceindustries.com/pledge/ships/drake-cutlass/Cutlass
If you do sign up let me know I'll get you into Koro and I's group of piwates.
What's the job of the co pilot exactly ?
Punching it like chewie ?
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Yay nice, so I might be able to be your space biatch :yar:
Hah we'll see.
I will definitely need a co-pilot and also a dedicated turret gunner on my pirate ship though! https://robertsspaceindustries.com/pledge/ships/drake-cutlass/Cutlass
If you do sign up let me know I'll get you into Koro and I's group of piwates.
What's the job of the co pilot exactly ?
Punching it like chewie ?
Hah! Well there is a lot of ship functionality that is difficult to do while flying, they are trying to work a ui system where you can allocate ship systems to different bridge stations or copilot seats. So it could be anything from changing the power distribution (full power to shields!) To managing the scanning equipment to hacking enemy systems to who knows what.
They've said it before that although you might technically be able to do many of these things from a single seat you would be incredibly innefective vs a crewed ship splitting up the work.
Also the more people on board, the more bodies to give weapons to when you board the enemy ship!
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A0grZDNdUYY (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A0grZDNdUYY)
12:00 Ships interiors (Firefly anyone ?)
17:00 Old hangars (old vids) -> interesting info as they are moving away from that model and using instead modular (lego) rooms from different manufacturers that will expand adapting to your needs and choice of aesthetics, and also tied to your location in the universe.
20:00 The aforementioned new 4 hangars types
36:00 Races (again) -> Murray cup happening on various planets and racetracks over each season. Hints to racer profession.
39:00 Races ingame multiplayer demo
54:00 Multicrew vid live
57:00 Boarding ops
All in all I rather like their small crafts designs, albeit very uh... trite SF USAF look, it works well and they each have a strong visual identity (Hornet, Jumpdrive, etc). At least for their iconic ships. I'm kinda meh towards their bigger crafts though and some of the others, like the Idris especially, etc. I don't know but I don't feel them the same way. They do not seem to have a coherent shape at all, they do not seem iconic.
Still very unhappy with their space backgrounds. It's like Eve. It's not space, it's subaquatic nebulae everywhere. I like nebulae but if they are gonna put us right inside nebulae every time... ugh. Edit : the Arena Commander environment is pitch black, which is nice though. Hope they keep it that way at most places.
Also, Chris voice really sounds like a cartoon voice :P
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I have yet another stupid question, please bear with me : what is the use for UEE credits right now ? I see you can purchase hangar decorations and stuff (that I understand what purpose it serves...), but also weapon systems... ? Does it mean you can replace or upgrade the ones on your ship right now, or is it just for 'later' ? I am confused and seem to have a lot of credits piling up doing nothing...
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I have yet another stupid question, please bear with me : what is the use for UEE credits right now ? I see you can purchase hangar decorations and stuff (that I understand what purpose it serves...), but also weapon systems... ? Does it mean you can replace or upgrade the ones on your ship right now, or is it just for 'later' ? I am confused and seem to have a lot of credits piling up doing nothing...
You joined?! Yay!
UEE credits are ISK, you'll use it for everything in game.
If you buy the weapons available now, you can see them in the firing range on the hangar, and then install them on your ships for use in Arena Commander.
I wouldn't buy any of them yet, I think they will be much cheaper in-game and there aren't very many finished weapons yet.
UEE you will use for in-game currency and also for 'vanity' items like aquariums in your hangar space towels. or the little truck to drive around in your hangar, etc.
What package did you purchase?
I've been having much, much better luck lately in multiplayer, finally getting the hang of the stupid 300i and my K/D rate is improving to non-embarrassing levels.
Basically it's not a dogfighter, if you get into 1v1 loop of death with a capable hornet pilot you will die. It's more of an opportunity ship, you wait until other people are engaged and you swoop in and blast them drive by, and just keep on going. They won't chase you too far, you can wait until they move on and try it again.
I often play more of the 'tank' classes in much of my games so it's been very difficult for me not to run in LEEROY JENKINS when I see people dogfighting, because every single time you do that with the 300i you die very, very quickly.
Also unfortunately many of the maneuvering thrusters are in the nose of the ship, so when you take a lot of damage front-on you can lose a lot of your steering.
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Of course I joined. I joined back in October 2012 in the first backing weeks when they tried to reach 2M $. I'm glad I did somehow, considering all the bonuses I'm getting out of it, like the lifetime insurance on one ship, and something like 14k UEE stockpiling with various veteran bonuses. I even have that Star Citizen shirt that costed so much money because of shipping fees :/
Well at least for the rest that's one of the very few cases where i'm glad the dollar isn't worth shit since i'm paying like 75% of the USD price.
Yeah I understood the UEE were the ingame money, wasn't really sure what was their use currently (except for vanity items). So you can buy weapons and put them on your ship and they work in the Arena Commander module ? Are they more powerful than other weapons ? Are they different ?
I bought the Scout LTI package long ago, I think it gives me an Aurora MR. Which I have upgraded to an Origin 325a because their prices are damn expensive (abusive I might say, we are not cows to be milked...) and it was kindof cheap to do so, especially again since the USD isn't worth anything. For once online games allow us to go through stuff like paypal and pay the REAL amount of money instead of abusive prices worth way more for us than americans...
But yeah i'm not upgrading anymore to stuff like the Hornet or whatever, considering that it's just pure monetary theft.
I find it a bit stupid that the 300i isn't faster than the hornet... Well anyway for hit and run I will have no problem with it, I think. If that's similar to boom and zooming, I guess...
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Something to keep in mind is that the prices for ship packages do not represent the actual monetary value of those ships. Instead of viewing it as 'buy ship', it should be viewed as 'donate money'. The ship is the 'thank you for donating' gift.
You'll be able to much more easily get the ships when the game launches. Donate as much as you feel you want to put in to help the game, anything you get for those donations is just a bonus.
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Real quick:
Yes weapons you buy are different/more powerful, or allow you to stack the better guns together in groups (say 3x Omnisky VI's for the 300i instead of 2x)
300 has much much higher -top speed- than hornet (total max velocity), hornet has better acceleration (turning, getting to its lower top speed). Hornet is only available dedicated dogfighter. 300i is a 'touring' ship, can haul cargo, scout, and carry a passenger, and travel much, much farther than Hornet (fuel capacity).
Not a good 1v1 in arena commander, basically, but try hauling cargo and a guest 5 system with a hornet you can't.
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Got it, so boom and zoom with the 300i and turn & burn with the hornet.
The annoying thing with their ship spec page on their website is that while it's really nice to have all the technical names for every component of every ship for immersion, there is no way to see the real power (speed, etc) of everyone of them except for shields... :/
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Only the 300i - and not the 325a - is flyable right now, right ?
Also I think I may have a bugged game or an input compatibility issue (may be tied to keyboard language) where some commands do not seem to respond, and others I have yet to find (like de locking the G-lock or comstat for example, i'm only able to decouple).
Not able to use the fitting screen either, activating and deactivating it works, but once inside, can't do nothing. No command seems to do anything.
Also, it's pure newtonian physics but you still can't go above some max speed ?
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What's that Che? I don't get it?
Probably because you're not Saede. :P
Ché plans to build a race track in Origin (https://wiki.eveonline.com/en/wiki/Origin).
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Only the 300i - and not the 325a - is flyable right now, right ?
Also I think I may have a bugged game or an input compatibility issue (may be tied to keyboard language) where some commands do not seem to respond, and others I have yet to find (like de locking the G-lock or comstat for example, i'm only able to decouple).
Not able to use the fitting screen either, activating and deactivating it works, but once inside, can't do nothing. No command seems to do anything.
Also, it's pure newtonian physics but you still can't go above some max speed ?
Yea only the base 300i, the 325 will be much meaner
They set a top speed because it would probably be game-breaking the other way. You'd just go to the edge of the map and build up 10km/s speed and drive-by everyone and repeat :P Trying to strike a balance between 'fun' space combat and full simulation.
"Control+Capslock" for comstab/glock toggle.
The documentation is HORRIBLE for cockpit commands and how to fly right now. They need to get to work on a tutorial for new pilots asap. It's EVE-level learning curve cliff for how to fly the damn ship right now :P
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What's that Che? I don't get it?
Probably because you're not Saede. :P
Ché plans to build a race track in Origin (https://wiki.eveonline.com/en/wiki/Origin).
Nice! The race mode should be out this weekend, I'll try and get some FRAPS!
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Yeah from what I have experienced the flight model is very good and extremely fun/pleasuring to fly, even with only half of my commands ready. Really nice if they keep it that way.
The buttons for my HOTAS do not seem to work for most of them though (like 80%). And the second state (pressed at 100%) of my main firing button is used by the game to switch cameras... Which makes it more or less unplayable for now in multi. :/
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Yeah from what I have experienced the flight model is very good and extremely fun/pleasuring to fly, even with only half of my commands ready. Really nice if they keep it that way.
The buttons for my HOTAS do not seem to work for most of them though (like 80%). And the second state (pressed at 100%) of my main firing button is used by the game to switch cameras... Which makes it more or less unplayable for now in multi. :/
Yea short of loading your own custom XML, next patch will have player key-mapping and should solve a lot of this.
I had to load an XML because the game was automatically set for some reason for flightstick left-right to 'roll' instead of 'yaw'. was unplayable until I remapped.
They really have done a -fantastic- job tightening the controls since first release.
The first version you barely touched the stick and you were turning 180 degrees, made it impossible to track targets. Now the dead zone and aiming is much, much better.
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Ah lol yes I forgot that roll thing instead of yaw. Annoying as hell.
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Monthly progress report for August: https://robertsspaceindustries.com/comm-link/transmission/14126-Monthly-Report-August
FPS module should be demod at PAX Australia!
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New Commercial:
TOP GEAR PARODY. SO MUCH WIN
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_SpsjUHj_II
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And the big .9 patch today:
new racing mode
new ships
new hangars
private multiplayer matches
leaderboards
mucho mas:
https://robertsspaceindustries.com/comm-link/transmission/14143-Arena-Commander-V09-Released
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Fixed Weapons and Convergence
With the introduction of the Lead Target Indicator we’ve also introduced fixed weapons and fixed weapon convergence. Now class one weapon mounts are properly fixed forward and no longer gimbal. They do however now automatically converge based on your range to the target lead indicator to ensure that if you line up your gun cross properly, you won’t miss.
There you go, Lyn. :P
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Yeah but still gimbal weapons left and I still just can't like that at all. Automatic convergence is already annoying, but I guess I can live with it.
I honestly kind of appreciate gimbal weapons as a matter of lore, feel and universe, after all when you see how modern combat helicopters can fire in all directions with gimbal mounted weapons and all... but in terms of gameplay I really don't like them and that game will have a very hard time convincing me otherwise. They should just keep them for bigger ships with crews and turrets. :/
I tried their flight model though, and it's rather nice. But if I just have to put my target in the crosshair to hit, that's not much fun to me. I guess i'm too used to really complex simulations now. The only thing that is really complex in Star Citizen is their flight model (which I love), and their need for two more pairs of arms and tentacles to actually use your gimbal weapons while piloting while using your occulus rift (which I really hate, I want piloting and aiming skill, not multitasking headaches, and their game looks extremely micro intensive, without counting all the things that seem to require 10 hands at a time).
This has to be a contentious issue on their forums as well no ?
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TOP GEAR PARODY. SO MUCH WIN
8)
Must...resist...temptation.
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TOP GEAR PARODY. SO MUCH WIN
8)
Must...resist...temptation.
All the win... in the wuurld?
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A good posting of current in-game music.
http://youtu.be/ukCbpWHBMG0?t=20m15s
Definitely going for the 'heroic space opera symphony' sound but some of this does tug the appropriate emotional levers to the imagination of doing daring adventures in space.
I prefer EVE's soundscapes but this symphony stuff does smell appropriately of pulp space opera!
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Eve lacked music like that (or of another style) that was appropriated for action packed sequences. It was very underwhelming when fighting. I liked Eve ambiant musical tracks, but not in tense situations that called for something closer to that.
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New ship for sale today: The Reclaimer
Dedicated salvage vessel, I'm glad the aesthetics are appropriately gritty and grimdark :)
https://robertsspaceindustries.com/comm-link/transmission/14171-Concept-Sale-Unveiling-The-Aegis-Reclaimer
It's a big one, and should be a lot of fun to enter a debris field, EVA in a mining pod and cut salvage away to be hauled in.
Going to be a lot of non-pvp in this game!
(https://robertsspaceindustries.com/media/627hob4lwqt3xr/source/Image002.jpg)
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More purdy artwork showing the design process for the 'constellation' which is the 'millenium falcon' stand-in. Small crew, good for exploring, hauling, etc.
https://robertsspaceindustries.com/comm-link/transmission/14201-WIP-Constellation-Variants
Big announcements coming in a few days with the citizencon and pax australia, I believe we'll finally get the Cutlass commercial and variants, and some MUCH needed patches for arena commander
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New ship for sale today: The Reclaimer
Dedicated salvage vessel, I'm glad the aesthetics are appropriately gritty and grimdark :)
https://robertsspaceindustries.com/comm-link/transmission/14171-Concept-Sale-Unveiling-The-Aegis-Reclaimer
It's a big one, and should be a lot of fun to enter a debris field, EVA in a mining pod and cut salvage away to be hauled in.
Going to be a lot of non-pvp in this game!
(https://robertsspaceindustries.com/media/627hob4lwqt3xr/source/Image002.jpg)
Can I outfit half that ship with guns?
Will it come with a free Xenomorph?
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Just read the latest backers email about the research/hospital/black market drug fabrication ship.
Needless to say; Squeeeeeeeeeeeee!
:D :D
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Just read the latest backers email about the research/hospital/black market drug fabrication ship.
Needless to say; Squeeeeeeeeeeeee!
:D :D
Indeed! I think they really are putting their development time on the ship types people vote for. For the rest of you, the last few stretch goals were voted on by the backers, and instead of a combat ship, a hospital/science/research vessel won by a huge margin.
They really are making a huge effort for half of the game to have nothing to do with pew pew.
I'm also really interested in the hacking/info courier ships. The game play ideas for hacking sound really cool...
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Can I outfit half that ship with guns?
Will it come with a free Xenomorph?
Confirmed xenomorphs and derelict capital ships/stations to 'clear.'
One of big game play scenarios:
Find derelict ship/station.
Dock, get out of ship. Explore/purge location of xenos ala 'aliens' or 'space hulk' via FPS play.
Repair station with friends (repair or haul in new equipment with cargo ships).
Activate station/tow ship back to civilization.
Profit?
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Can I outfit half that ship with guns?
Will it come with a free Xenomorph?
Confirmed xenomorphs and derelict capital ships/stations to 'clear.'
One of big game play scenarios:
Find derelict ship/station.
Dock, get out of ship. Explore/purge location of xenos ala 'aliens' or 'space hulk' via FPS play.
Repair station with friends (repair or haul in new equipment with cargo ships).
Activate station/tow ship back to civilization.
Profit?
Must have stowaway Xenos in ship murdering crew and much screaming and hapless wild gun-firing or it doesn't count.
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Sexy new Cutlass.
Upgraded to the military 'blue' version with the blackbeard pirate skin.
BRING IT.
https://robertsspaceindustries.com/comm-link/transmission/14200-Unshackled-The-Drake-Cutlass
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An important part from tonight's presentation:
The first time they've really shown a planetside environment in-engine in much detail, going from your ship to landing to walking around...
http://youtu.be/0audNed_88o?t=1h50m47s
my gpu is going to cry, time to build new pc next year....
Seriously though, that's a hell of a lot of detail for the planetside environments. I wished so much for this for EVE ;(
Vaporware my ass.
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Just saw the video advertising the Cutlass on Reddit. It looked awesome and all but it got me slightly concerned too.
There are so many videos now advertising Star Citizen, from Top Gear etc through this Cute Lass (hue hue hue) thing along with a fuckton of concept videos etc. I know he's raking in the dosh like you wouldn't believe but is he really prioritizing the money spending right? A project that has such lofty ambitions as Star Citizen when it comes to graphics, gameplay, ship variety, world building, etc etc etc is going to cost a fuckton of money before it's done. It's going to require a seriously enormous amount of work, polishing, testing, more work, more testing, tweaking, fixing, FUCK WE BROKE IT WAT DO, scrapping broken bit because we can't fix it, replace with something else, more testing, polishing the bits so they fit together better and fuck it you know what I mean.
Is spending so much money, resources and man-hours on more advertising while he's still so far from completion a good idea? On the one hand it might bring in more dosh for development, but does the resources/money spent on these trailers really pay off in sales given that most of us who have fallen for the advertising have already spent as much as we're willing to until the game is released?
The extravaganza on display just worries me a little, given how it might affect the end product.
Be more conservative with your money please. Hype train isn't going to die if you space out the vidyas, man.
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I thought they were already ten million in the hole? No idea where I heard that, though.
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The CGI commercial crew is I think all of three or four people. The Dev team is about 350 people total, spread out across three full development studios in USA and UK. With full complements of programmers, artists ,etc. They even have a full mo-cap studio they've been using for a month or two now to record all of the skeletal animation for the actors for the single player campaign.
They've raised about $56 million USD and counting. Sometimes the 'are you spending the money wisely' thing comes up, but I don't have any concerns. Every time they do a new CGI commercial that takes a few guys a few weeks to do a trailer they raise another $1 million in good press. Every time they announce a new ship for sale, another million.
PAX Australia will be a big show for them, they will be debuting the FPS portion of the game. FPS is hard to get right. They are doing more of a Rainbow 6 tactical gameplay though, since there is no respawning. You have to be careful. If you fire a grenade inside a ship you boarded and blow a hole in the cockpit, well good luck trying to fly that ship home after you clear it.
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Another weekend, another $2 million in pledges.
Good Lord.
I've upgraded to the new pew pew version of the Cutlass, but I think they did a shite job with the variants...
I do have a 'pirate' black skin to use on the ship though, not this blue nonsense...
https://robertsspaceindustries.com/comm-link/transmission/14200-Unshackled-The-Drake-Cutlass
My ship also comes with police batons and restraints..... you know.... for legal policing and not pirating...
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Nice little dogfighting video.
Coming along nicely. I'm imagining not too far from now when the larger ships and capital ships start being introduced, will add such a nice bit of scale to the battles.
The cockpits are feeling really nice, but more work to do on the HUD. They are reworking the current awful target lead indicator, which is bugged and also looks terrible :)
This guy is in the 'hornet' which is sort of the uber-military fighter. Any of the other ships you can use right now, if you get shot like that you explode instantly.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yIsSubzhMRw
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Cinematics and looks : nice.
Flight model : nice.
Target shooting, positionning, and tactical options : do not appear to me, not convinced at all. Just looks like fire spamming fest atm.
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Cinematics and looks : nice.
Flight model : nice.
Target shooting, positionning, and tactical options : do not appear to me, not convinced at all. Just looks like fire spamming fest atm.
Agree with you all the way.
I think the big, slow ships will start adding the more interesting elements though.
The larger ships are going to have point defenses, lots of turrets, and the largest ones the lovely huge spinal mounted railguns and the like for cap ship fights.
Going to be big and brutal and beautiful.
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Yes maybe but it doesn't solve the problem at the dogfight level...
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Yes maybe but it doesn't solve the problem at the dogfight level...
I think a few things will get better and a few I'm not so sure...
The HUD is being worked on, especially the targeting and 'lead' indicator where to aim your shots. It's completely broken for some ships right now and it doesn't work very well. It didn't matter so much on the older version because if you were close enough your weapon mounts would gimbal a bit and make the shot closer.
The fire spamming is more a result of the weapons that particular ship was using, it's loaded up with rapid fire / chaingun sorts of things which are very good right now. The other ships have different weapons and the slow fire ones are awful right now. The damage is fantastic but with the targeting system broken you can't actually hit anything, and the 'bolts' travel too slow.
Upcoming soon they are going to get a lot more weapon options for us, along with the different missile types (IR, Heat, Radar, dumbfire) so the different countermeasure selection will be important. It will really change gameplay because right now the heat seeking missiles are useless because everyone just spams flare countermeasures, and the fastest ships are never in front of you enough to use them.
With dumbfire missiles you wont even need a lock, and you can shotgun in front of you when they try to joust you and be wrecked.
I think up around the same time they will start implementing the electronic signature aspects of the ships, so your power levels and what you have active and the ship type will start mattering for locking on and even detection at all. You'll be able to power down and avoid emissions detection, that sort of thing (at least some ships with the right modifications).
Big few weeks coming up they have a huge presentation for PAX AUS which will let us see the FPS game play for the first time. I don't have high hopes for it as its sort of my least interested part of the game, but we'll see.
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Ok, it should make it a bit better that's sure.
My main gripe is that there is still no positioning tactical gameplay involved. People are always in a position to fire. Always.
Their gameplay seems to be centered around skill at multitasking rather than actually being a good pilot. That's what repulses me.
Edit : to be clearer on what I mean, I expected a gameplay where you actually have to get on your opponent's tail (or its variation in a Newtonian vacuum, true, physics are different), but I mean that metaphorically. That you actually have to work to position yourself into the killing position, to plan your approach carefully, to be the more clever in the position you will get at the start of the fight. And when you eventually manage to lock up your opponent and have it right into your targeting indicator, you can eventually unload all your weapons. You would have to work to get that far though. And for now I just feel by watching those videos that the gameplay directly jumps to the last step : shoot shoot shoot shoot shoot until the guy is dead. Maybe their ships are too agile in the current state, also. Way too much.
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I think some of the ships have entirely too high rotation velocity.
The problem with the Newtonian model is that you dont really get any 'dogfighting' since you can just pivot regardless of your travel vector.
Someone on your tail? Rotate while flying backwards and pew them.
This is very different from the 'airplanes in space' model that most space piloting games use, where you have the gameplay you described Lyn.
I wish it were a little more of that model than the full-blown newtonian stuff. It's too easy for the slower/heavy shielded ships to just ignore things on their tail and pivot to face them and blast them to ruin.
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That's why I said in a more metaphorical sense. It's interesting to see a genuine newtonian model for a change. But they also removed all the tactical possibilities of usual airplane dogfighting without adding anything to replace what is lost.
When you are fired at by someone you shouldn't be capable of suddenly rotating that fast and giving him the middle finger.
Honestly I don't know if they can really circumvent that or not. If it will be as fun as a classic airplane dogfighting or not to me. Will see.
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Then you add transversal. Don't get locked into going straight for your target. Fire, change angles, he suddenly has to lead his target when he swivels around, you can do the same and "slide" at an angle to keep him in your sights, quick burn to change your trajectory again, "slide" and swivel again and so on and so on.
Of course, I'm saying this with exactly zero playtime, so I'm just working off of the old Tachyon: The Fringe flight model which sounds rather similar.
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Miz is correct, you can dial in some 'slide' to your maneuvering thrusters, so when you change direction you continue on your vector for a bit longer.
You can switch between 'airplane' style, completely newtonian, and halfway. You can combine this with turning your safetey on and off for g-force limiter, so you can pull off some pretty wild slide/spin moves
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Yes. Though the real issue is the agility of ships, even with a targeting changing position every second and so transversal (making the aim indicator probably moving all around btw), it might transform into the only solution being to spray the area randomly and hope for a bullet to hit. Especially if some projectiles are slow.
I get your point, it is interesting in itself, but it doesn't solve the main problem which is being able to constantly point your target with impunity.
Also, there is another issue I have noticed when I tried to fly in alone mode : when going full newtonian without any device like occulus rift it's extremely hard to see where you are going. Even with such devices I bet you will not last much longer without crashing into an asteroid. Maps have those everywhere.
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Yeah, things are still a little rough. Part of the reason that it looks so easy to target people, though, is that people fly straight. Guns have high rates of fire and high muzzle velocities, making it fairly easy to hit anything that flies in a straight line. This will get tweaked in balancing - high ROF weapons will end up having problems overheating, limiting how long you can hold the trigger down.
So far, I've only seen three ships with any regularity: The Hornet, the 300-series, and the M50.
The hornet is the heavy fighter. It doesn't turn fast, has lots of guns and lots of armor and shields. It survives by being tough and dishing out a lot of damage, but it doesn't maneuver terribly well so it ends up looking like it's easy to shoot.
The M50 is small and insanely fast with a really weak weapons compliment. It survives by being really freaking hard to hit. If you look up any of the videos by good M50 pilots, they're ridiculous. Any time they get shot at, they just turn a bit to one side and then stomp on the throttle and they're gone. Ditto with missiles, they are too fast and maneuverable to get hit right now.
The 300-series ends up getting the short end of the stick, lacking the Hornet's armor and weapons and the M50's speed, it falls in the middle where it really struggles. It hits harder than the M50 but doesn't have enough speed or armor to survive on either.
If you're looking for a flight model more similar to aircraft dogfighting, what I've seen of Elite: Dangerous should be appealing. The ships turn a lot slower, resulting in more strategic combat where a smaller, lighter ship can stay out of the firing arc of a bigger, more powerful ship.
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So the FPS team is doing a reddit AMA today, very, very cool stuff.
Here's a great quote:
"A Persistent Universe experience. I'm a stealthy, solo player. I find a wrecked ship, i know scavengers will be around soon. I find a crate and put myself in it. I let the scavengers take the crate and put me in their ship. When i'm on their ship, some time later, i get out of the crate. Very quietly, i rummage around and find some goodies i like. I steal those... now i can either - A) Jump out the airlock and call a ride or B) go to their engine room and self destruct their ship or C) quietly hunt and execute the entire staff and take their ship.... or Z) they could have scanned the crate properly before loading it, blasted it with their ship and me with it...."
Now that is some damned sandbox gameplay right there, folks.
http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/2k7kuu/we_are_the_star_citizen_fps_team_ask_us_anything/
FPS module demo'd this weekend coming up at PAX Australia, and out early next year.
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NICE got a dev response during the AMA:
Kedhrin
Posted: 2:05PM
Silas Vitalia | Silas_Vitalia said:
[source]
Are there any plans for 'armored' suits or heavily cyberized options?
Not quite 'Titanfall' sized but something you'd maybe bring one or two along with for a major boarding op?
yes we actually have our own TITAN armor :) its a lot smaller though, about 8 feet talk, like minimech.
SO MUCH WIN
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So the FPS team is doing a reddit AMA today, very, very cool stuff.
Here's a great quote:
"A Persistent Universe experience. I'm a stealthy, solo player. I find a wrecked ship, i know scavengers will be around soon. I find a crate and put myself in it. I let the scavengers take the crate and put me in their ship. When i'm on their ship, some time later, i get out of the crate. Very quietly, i rummage around and find some goodies i like. I steal those... now i can either - A) Jump out the airlock and call a ride or B) go to their engine room and self destruct their ship or C) quietly hunt and execute the entire staff and take their ship.... or Z) they could have scanned the crate properly before loading it, blasted it with their ship and me with it...."
Now that is some damned sandbox gameplay right there, folks.
http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/2k7kuu/we_are_the_star_citizen_fps_team_ask_us_anything/
FPS module demo'd this weekend coming up at PAX Australia, and out early next year.
Until this is actually demonstrated with the game engine then it's all just words. Don't get too excited about it. It is common for sandboxes to promise the world and then deliver a decidedly less complete experience.
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I don't like mechs :/
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Until this is actually demonstrated with the game engine then it's all just words. Don't get too excited about it. It is common for sandboxes to promise the world and then deliver a decidedly less complete experience.
And more to the point, played live instead of being some silly pre-rendered video.
I was going to say something along the lines of "same shit, different company" but you've put it a bit more nicely.
Really, all I see is a giant Kool-Aid man with Chris Roberts' face on it and a bunch of people shoving their heads in and slurping like they'll never drink again in their lives.
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Until this is actually demonstrated with the game engine then it's all just words. Don't get too excited about it. It is common for sandboxes to promise the world and then deliver a decidedly less complete experience.
And more to the point, played live instead of being some silly pre-rendered video.
I was going to say something along the lines of "same shit, different company" but you've put it a bit more nicely.
Really, all I see is a giant Kool-Aid man with Chris Roberts' face on it and a bunch of people shoving their heads in and slurping like they'll never drink again in their lives.
Live demos for fps module next weekend at a PAX austria, will be out for multiplayer alpha early next year.
No koolaide, its a real thing.
I remember hearing so much about vaporware but I can log in right now and pew pew in my spaceship in a pretty polished build any time I like .
:P
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Actually I'd add that just about all of the keynotes they've done have been live- crashes and bugs and all. They usually roll out the latest build/feature on stage and play it live while streaming.
It doesn't always go well but the star citizen events are not like e3 with a fake controller and prerecorded gameplay being faked.
One of the more popular sc memes is from just that, during the very first live demo of the PvP flying the demo crashed on stage while Roberts was playing, and during the live stream to boot. His immortal comments to thousands of players "THIS IS BULLSHIT!"
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I'm not a naysayer for SC as a whole, seeing as I'm a backer. I just don't believe in getting hyped on words after both SWG and EVE promised a lot of really cool immersion stuff only to not deliver on any of them.
I'm expecting Star Citizen to end up being an MMO flight sim with some of the immersive sandbox things it's offered, but stuff as specific and intricate as what you quoted above sounds quite unlikely to me.
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I'm not a naysayer for SC as a whole, seeing as I'm a backer. I just don't believe in getting hyped on words after both SWG and EVE promised a lot of really cool immersion stuff only to not deliver on any of them.
I'm expecting Star Citizen to end up being an MMO flight sim with some of the immersive sandbox things it's offered, but stuff as specific and intricate as what you quoted above sounds quite unlikely to me.
Not you, morwen hath drunk the hatoraide :)
I don't find that scenario far fetched. The ama was pretty illuminating.
Long and short of it, its more Rainbow 6, tactical, high stakes no respawns sort of thing, no third person.
Also just because it was hilarious..
(http://i.imgur.com/TSdkdmh.jpg)
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"Hatorade"? Hardly. I've seen the sun and stars be promised only to turn out to be a dinky-ass lightbulb often enough.
I just know better than to treat these oh-so-grand visions as nothing more than PR and wild fantasy until I see an actual release date for a final product. The same treatment that I would give to any game developer making these kinds of claims - it's just magnified in SC's case because I see a lot more people blubbering "b-b-b-but it's gonna be perfect and awesome!" over it in the face of any valid criticism (such as the "pay" model going on right now and crowdfunding methodology in general, or the fact that all that money sure didn't get any deadlines met - as an example, wasn't that dogfighting module more than half a year late when they finally had something to demo, let alone give to people?) than I do for other games right now. Also, it's the only one with an utterly retarded amount of money thrown at it with, frankly, very little tangible things to show for it.
I don't see any of this as healthy for the game industry when high-profile names get involved. Kickstarters and crowdfunding, early access, all of that shit is fine for small entities. But don't try making me swallow the pill that says it's a great thing for big companies and famous names - I'll spit it right out into your eye, because the big wigs have a pretty nasty habit of being about as reliable as a broken clock.
Am I interested in SC? Sort of. It's a space game and I've grown up on them, more or less.
But I'm really not interested in paying to beta-test something, let alone something I have concerns it may not ever see the light of day.
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Mmmm, hatorade...
All of this, really. I'll wait and see with some slight hopes for it, but the hypetrain is not matching what we actually are seeing here.
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I think anything that can break the big publisher stranglehold on content, game design, microtransactions, dlc, is a good one.
This will be a good (or cautionary tale) for future development. I just know they are employing a few hundred people now that don't have to answer to a huge corporate behemoth. It might just be the party line, but all of the designers and programmers seem to really like working in an environment where they have the time and resources to do good work. The guy running the game still stays late to write code himself, its just a very different model for production. I can't imagine that sort of environment at ea.
If it doesnt work he'll never work again though. The studio behind planetary anhillation stupidly tried a new game kick starter before pa was polished, they got nailed for it. The kick starter for human resources was boycotted by many RTS players and rightly so. The one from the pirannah mwo people was awful as well and didn't get far.
Sc is often behind schedule but they are also frankly the most open studio I've seen in a long time. They put out so much content to the backers its easy to keep track of what's going on and where they are. Here's a nice new blog on the ship pipeline https://robertsspaceindustries.com/comm-link/transmission/14244-How-Ideas-Take-Flight-The-Star-Citizen-Ship-Pipeline
which they go into a bit more detail on this week's 'around the verse'
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DQs2b8KtXJ4
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FPS demo this past weekend!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cir3w-wIx9U&app=desktop
I'm not terribly into fps but this looks pretty sharp for their "alpha" playing live. The character models look a bit too skatey on the ground like dust for my taste but we'll see. Its all very dark but I think an aesthetic improvent over much of star citizens very bland looking IP IMO.
Still off to a great start! Not a bad product for $45 you get the full single player campaign with like 40 flying/fps missions and lifetime mmo access.
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Well if they can pull that right in the squadron 42 game alternating between space sim and space FPS, it can definitely add up seriously to diversity of missions. And can also bring up a lot of immersive opportunities for the MMO part as well. Props for the zero G action as well.
My only two gripes with that at the moment is that :
- I hate FPSes. xD
- We get shown a lot of modules and stuff, and it's good, but we still don't have any clue at all on what we will be able to do exactly, and what will be the actual gameplay wrapping all of that together. Sometimes it just feels like they don't have a clue themselves.
Note : I suppose those rifles shown here have no recoil whatsoever right ?
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I think the idea Lyn is for all of it to be seamless/one game. So fly around, pew pew, explore/trade/whatever, and its all the same engine when you get out of the pilot seat in your ship. The fps 'module' will be the sisi for first person combat gameplay just like the arena commander for spaceship pew pew.
They are going to do a lot of scenarios for them, to work out certain things, like capture the cap ship PvP or escort the freighter PvP.
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Yes I guess but it doesn't really tell us what the game will be about. They told us a lot of stuff on death/permadeath and that was awesome and much appreciated info.
I would like to know what the economy will be, what there is actually to do ingame (exploration, combat, or whatever, is too vague and doesn't mean anything), what you will be able to do once planetside or docked, how you can buy (sell ?) spaceships, items, what do they intended to do exactly with their hauler/industrial ships, etc. So many questions like that.
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Looks buggy with some odd physics going on. Shouldn't be too hard to fix.
Also, this is what DUST should have had since the beginning! Fighting in stations! And hopefully, fighting in supercapitals!
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Looks buggy with some odd physics going on. Shouldn't be too hard to fix.
Also, this is what DUST should have had since the beginning! Fighting in stations! And hopefully, fighting in supercapitals!
This is a star citizen thing. People on the outside pewpewing a way for the fps people to do boarding actions. The people on the ship sealing bulkheads, turning off gravity/whatever they can
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The list of gaming friends I would ever trust to pilot my ship during a boarding exercise is like, two.
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The list of gaming friends I would ever trust to pilot my ship during a boarding exercise is like, two.
A fighter jockey's life is for you!
But you are right. You just can't trust random strangers on the internet. They have a talent in mucking things up.
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Better start hiring those expensive NPC crews for your ships.
Oh! Oh! Almost forgot. You can hire NPCs to fly your OTHER ships at the same time. To escort yourself, or be on your wing. Very neat.
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So you can be an internet space fleet all by yourself ? :lol:
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Awesome article about damage states and how your player characters will be injuired and deal with permadeath situations:
https://robertsspaceindustries.com/comm-link/engineering/14318-Design-Healing-Your-Spacemen
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Heh nice.
I already see ransom potential out of this.
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Sweet.
"He's worse than dead...his brains are missing!"*
*Maybe not entirely appropiate, but I don't care.
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Do you like spending your real world money for digital spaceships?
Here's a huge anniversary sale this week only: overpriced things GALORE.
$2500 will get you one of a limit 200 count capital ships tho...
https://robertsspaceindustries.com/comm-link/transmission/14314-Star-Citizen-Anniversary-Sale
They made another $1,000,000 in about 24 hours with this craziness.
I'm shakin' my head but impressed at same time.
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Jesus.
Reading that felt like listening to a used car salesman huck his wares.
I mean, more power to 'em, but $2,500? Yeah. That's a bit pants-on-head. As impressed as I am that they're managing to milk their community this thoroughly, I'm also increasingly sure I won't touch that game with a ten foot pole.
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I've spent the price of a game. Playing the arena commander module alone felt fun. I'll be interested if it reaches fruition.
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Have not pledged anything to date, resisting temptation. I kinda want to snap up one of the M50s for some racing in the future; early xmas pressie to myself. My wallet will hate me :bash:
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Jesus.
Reading that felt like listening to a used car salesman huck his wares.
I mean, more power to 'em, but $2,500? Yeah. That's a bit pants-on-head. As impressed as I am that they're managing to milk their community this thoroughly, I'm also increasingly sure I won't touch that game with a ten foot pole.
Never underestimate the power of gamers to spend hard $$ on in game items.
They are taking a less 'hardcore' approach in that they really want you to have more of a connection with your ship, and the insurance/etc options are set up so that it's not as soul-crushing as an EVE ship loss at high levels.
Being able to see your ship inside and out and fly it around with your friends and have adventures is a powerful magnet for this kind of cash.
There's lots of 'guilds' from other games pooling money and buying the big ships to have as their mobile headquarters and such.
Interestingly they are making clear to point out that all of these ships will be available in game for in game currency and the purchase price of the game is for funding development. You aren't 'buying a ship' so much as donating that money to the game and getting a reward.
IE the ship that costs $100 won't cost whatever $100 of game currency ends up being worth after game launch. I think they are aiming for something like a week or two of grinding to get into most ships.
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Have not pledged anything to date, resisting temptation. I kinda want to snap up one of the M50s for some racing in the future; early xmas pressie to myself. My wallet will hate me :bash:
I can confirm the absolute most fun I've had in the demo so far was when they let everyone fly M50's for a week. This coming from someone who hates fast ships and prefers big lumbering death machines.
The ship does no damage with any of the currently available weapons, it's extremely hard to hurt anything you shoot at, but you feel absolutely invincible. The thing is on rails, turns on a dime, blazing top speed. You really feel like an agile gazelle against the lumbering lions in multiplayer. Juking back and forth its nearly impossible to be shot, you can even outrun missiles sometimes.
Some of the best pilots are flying M50s and I think they are going to be real trouble in wolf packs.
After they release more of the shotgun type weapons though this will tone down as the best way to kill an M50 is just to be in something slow and wait for them to come to you instead of trying to dogfight them. They have to get close to hurt you and if you are patient enough you can blap them on the way in.
If you are purely into racing also look at the 350R, which has the highest top speed but turns like a turd. I think once you get used to 'drifting' with the sliding back end of it you can beat m50's consistently on the race tracks.
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Can confirm, M50s are awesome fun to fly. Killing them isn't as hard as people make it out to be - a hornet with full power to shields angled towards the M50 essentially can't be killed. M50s die as soon as anyone manages to land a few good hits.
But god damn that speed is fun.
re: $2,500 javelin. People have spent some ridiculous amounts of cash on this game. I know of at least one person who's dropped $20,000 and isn't the highest spender (although he might be close). Disposable income + game that offers to scratch that itch = $$$$$
There's a pole on the concierge forum asking how many people there are planning to get one, and at last check it was in the neighborhood of 150 people who had confirmed that they were planning to try to get one.
So I expect that batch of 200 to sell out pretty easy. I'm hoping to offload a couple ships via grey market to pick up the Carrack next week.
Anyone in the market for an LTI caterpillar or hornet tracker package?
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This Month's Monthly Report:
https://robertsspaceindustries.com/comm-link/transmission/14345-Monthly-Report-November
Some good stuff here, this is the last monthly report before (Hopefully) Arena Commander 1.0, which will have several more ships, a lobby system, and more.
Well based on their track record I'll tell you how awesome it is next July. :P
Still excited though
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A big release of drawings and in-engine locations: Please take a look they have a TON of images on the link. The last few are in-game already so very promising.
[spoiler]http://imgur.com/a/fVqgN
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As someone who has often complained about the generic 'feel' of much of the Star Citizen IP I'm very happy with the variety of locations and aesthetics I'm seeing here.
Some of these are very very good.
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IIRC, they broke 66 mil in funding last night, raising something like 4 mil in the last two weeks.
Feeling excited again, I'll probably waste some time in AC again soon. My wife convinced me to leave the new HOTAS in the box until I get done with classes for the semester - only another week!
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IIRC, they broke 66 mil in funding last night, raising something like 4 mil in the last two weeks.
Feeling excited again, I'll probably waste some time in AC again soon. My wife convinced me to leave the new HOTAS in the box until I get done with classes for the semester - only another week!
Nice ;) What'd you get? I got a very inespensive thrustmaster hotas X or whatever for like $40 or something crazy, works just fine.
Problem with AC right now is the key binding options are still a bit limited IIRC? Once they started tracking stats and I only had the gimped 300i 'trainer' to fly I stopped doing multiplayer; was tired of being thrown into matches and constantly dying to broken and unfair mechanics.
After Cutlass launches in a few weeks (my purchased ship) I'll start spending real time in multiplayer and learning it's ins and outs.
See you in there soon I hope on the lobby system!
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I picked up the warthog while it was on sale on amazon. Ofc, now I'm kicking myself for not waiting another couple weeks and getting the warthog + a good pair of pedals on newegg for another $40. Whoops.
This is why it's bad for me to have disposable income.
I actually haven't flown the 300i in AC, (I think I melted mine at one point in favor of a hornet?) only flown the M50 (sex in ship form) and Hornet (boring little brick).
I will defo be playing, currently hanging out with the FHC bittervet crew.
As for keybindings, they've gotten better about letting you reset controls in the game. It's also possible to do custom xml files to make things work, but I haven't messed with that yet.
I actually haven't done multiplayer yet, just didn't feel like it (and the balance is terrible). Instead I've been racing against myself and shooting scythes. Drop me a line if you want to beat up some vandul bastards :twisted:
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300i stock is complete, utter garbage.
It's what they give you for your Cutlass right now temporarily.
It's too slow to avoid getting shot like the M50
It's too low damage to make up for that by killing things.
It's too weak to trade shots with anything not an m50.
I look forward to murdering these in my Cutlass, I hate this ship more than anything.
Let's hook up after 1.0 patch when we get lobbies!
Yes balance is awful, they will eventually do alliance tournament point systems for e-sporting
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Huge design document out today about ship crews and what you'll be doing as crew members. Very neat, and surprisingly detailed.
https://robertsspaceindustries.com/comm-link/transmission/14354-Letter-From-The-Chairman-Multi-Crew-Ship-Systems
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Someone managed to smuggle out an early version of one of the larger 'salvage' ships and get the model imported into cryengine.
Very neat!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hVDYDl3hLfg
This ship def has more of an appropriately 'grimdark' gritty salvage vessel vibe, I like it.
Best part about these larger ships though is that it's all modeled for human scale, so you'll get to experience it in first person, flying around, crewing it with friends, etc.
Also regarding ships, they are doing something similar to Eve in that each 'faction' has their own distinct design philosophy and characteristics. In this case it's each 'manufacturer' that puts it's own spin on things.
Unlike EVE they aren't doing a lot of the same ship by all the different manufacturers (like each eve faction has 1 of every ship class), more that some manufacturers build heavy fighters, some build traders, etc.
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Seems they've accepted a limited number of people to test what's being called PTU 1.0 (public test universe), which certainly makes it sound like we're going to see Arena Commander 1.0 launch this weekend. Reports from people in it (taken from reddit because I can't get to RSI's website from work) suggest that it's freaking awesome. People are flying the Avenger and Cutlass and saying that they are awesome fun.
So I need the next 7-8 hours to go by as quickly as possible so I can go home.
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Livestream in few hours!
I'm always hesitant to believe things on reddit but will take a look!
*Edit* Looks legit.
Praise be on to CR, our overhyped, dark lord.
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Silas, please edit your post with all the pics in them and toss them in a spoiler tag, this page is killing me to load.
:)
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Silas, please edit your post with all the pics in them and toss them in a spoiler tag, this page is killing me to load.
:)
Thy will be done.
Thee of little patience to be bestowed upon the glory of holy Star Citizen images. Slowly, painfully. Repeatedly.
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livestream is up and running (http://www.twitch.tv/StarCitizen). cool stuff going on, new pics from the escort carrier, AC 1.0 coming either tonight or tomorrow.
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Fun new trailer!
https://youtube.com/watch?v=lJJ9TcGxhNY
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Arena commander 1.0 is out, now has 16 ships with a lot of other improvements, working lobby, blah blah blah.
Aaaaaand it's a 20GB download. Damn.
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20 Gb ? What are they putting inside that thing ? It's just a pvp module...
I don't even want to imagine the size of the whole game package... :|
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20 Gb ? What are they putting inside that thing ? It's just a pvp module...
I don't even want to imagine the size of the whole game package... :|
Needs Its Own Fucking Hard Drive Citizen.
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I think the way they tell it it's just not 'optimized' or something or other, these are fast beta builds they just sort of compile and release to the wild after they check out for bugs. :(
I've got like 3 hours left to go on my download hehe....
This is a major big patch though as mentioned above; ships are up to like 16, and they've got the ship signature and emissions systems going, which handles how well targeting and missiles work (how they acquire and maintain locks, etc) and you can manipulate your signature to avoid those things.
Lobby system, friends lists, all that jazz for proper team pew pew as well.
I'm trying to plan out an optimal time to upgrade my hardware for the game's release, I can play it now in space with decent framerates but it's not too hot for the fps interior portions.... will come a point soon where I won't have the hardware to run the beta modules but will still be too far away from main release to upgrade.... decisions decisions!
New commercial for one of the new ship 'manufacturers' as well. I'm starting to like these more and more as they are kind of replicating the eve racial factions but with ship manufacturing megacorps each with their own 'flavor'
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BR07oZC0QHU
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20 Gb ? What are they putting inside that thing ? It's just a pvp module...
I don't even want to imagine the size of the whole game package... :|
Most of the space in large game downloads are art assets, and given the absurd amount of detail that goes into every ship, that's probably the cause. It also doesn't appear to be keeping anything left over from the previous builds (makes sense since it's going from version 0.9.2.2 to 1.0), which means you're getting the same 20 GB download regardless of what you had previously. I found this out because the download got borked by a computer crash and I had to uninstall and reinstall from scratch.
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Black Screen of death bug. Can't get past the launcher :(
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Huge size of death release. Can't get past the download. :P
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Black Screen of death bug. Can't get past the launcher :(
Yeah, it's a little buggy at the moment. i'm enjoying elite in the meantime.
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Nice little new trailer for the Arena Commander 1.0 release
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NrrvPBrm03w pew pew pew pew pew
I think the ships are looking great but the weapons are looking terrible to me still.
Vaporware my ass!
1.01 should be out this week I think, tones down the OP missiles and fixing more ship bugs.
BTW iirc current schedule:
Spring 15: FPS Module launches
Summer 15: Multicrew ships
Fall 15: Single Player campaign episode 1
Winter 15: PU demo
16: Full release
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lfpaOIRl7hM
Background:
Instead of stargates your ships will enter 'jump points' which are little warp tunnels to other solar systems. They will have openings of certain sizes, so you can't take a capital ship through a small one, etc. They are setting these up strategically so smaller ships can take certain shortcuts to other systems that larger ships can't, to make for different sorts of strategic play. The idea to have certain routes that say only an info runner or a small hauler can use, to make it worthwhile to still fly those ships instead of a massive space tanker for trading, etc.
The smaller jump points will be 'live' in that you actually have to pilot your ship through the tunnel avoiding obstacles. The larger ones you only have to fly through once and then you can autopilot through the maelstrom.
Part of the exploration content will be (similar to Eve wormholes), scanning these routes out and mapping them to sell the information to traders and haulers.
Finding good routes and keeping them secret will also very much be a thing.
Map screen progress: Not much different than EVE here except for the zooming in for missions, etc
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=raErhW-lwpo&x-yt-ts=1421914688&x-yt-cl=84503534
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Neat video about space cargo. So you actually have the items in a container on a ship, you can move around, take things out, etc. Very neat.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a5Z4YJVmbJ4&list=PL8dQr8ffc03dJ3eLGPfBMmkCOXJlGoOpV&feature=share
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Vaporware my ass!
That's a nice techdemo. One could even call it a proof of concept. It is still not a game, despite the progress made.
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Vaporware my ass!
That's a nice techdemo. One could even call it a proof of concept. It is still not a game, despite the progress made.
It's not a game (yet). But it's getting real close! :)
I can already pewpew and race with other people in a beautiful game engine, and in a few weeks will have multiple player avatars hanging out in my hangar.
The RP potential so high with this game. Tons of locations, bars, plazas, planets, giant ships, with avatars. Things we wanted from EVE ;(
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Vaporware my ass!
That's a nice techdemo. One could even call it a proof of concept. It is still not a game, despite the progress made.
Of course it is not yet.. Do you know a lot of games that are actually games and not bits and modules and tech demos right in the middle of development ? :)
This one even tries to actually have some of its core functiinalities and features already released and working...
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$71 Million today by the way. Sweet Jesus teh monies.
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Of course it is not yet.. Do you know a lot of games that are actually games and not bits and modules and tech demos right in the middle of development ? :)
This one even tries to actually have some of its core functiinalities and features already released and working...
I have seen a LOT of games at a LOT of stages of development before. At Alpha, I'd say, a game really becomes a game and before that it's a slighty worrisome conglomeration of systems at varying stages of development. What concerns me about Star Citizen is that all these little bits and bobs haven't really been put together into a contiguous whole yet.
I'll feel a lot better (perhaps to the point of sinking some cash into it) when they get it running that way.
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E!xactly and since the game is far from being in alpha...
I too though am eager to see where they are going with all those bits... Will see, too early to tell.
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I officially jumped on the crazy train with this game yesterday and bought a constellation package.
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E!xactly and since the game is far from being in alpha...
I too though am eager to see where they are going with all those bits... Will see, too early to tell.
Indeed! And you and I are both aware of how many projects not yet at Alpha don't make it to release because of "reasons". Hence my caution! :)
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Reasons most of the time imply a project kill that got deemed 'unsafe' by the publisher :ugh:
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I officially jumped on the crazy train with this game yesterday and bought a constellation package.
Welcome welcome! Tell the others what you think once you've gotten in the hangar and walked around, explored your glorious new ship, and flown a bit against the AI or other players!
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Delicious high def screen caps from the current build we have:
http://m.imgur.com/a/kQYu7
Much high-poly.
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Ok i really want my aegis now.
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Nice design article for the UI / Augmented Reality system in game:
https://robertsspaceindustries.com/comm-link/transmission/14466-Design-MobiGlas
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Is there a way to look at to read ALL ZE LORE ?
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Some of the IP I actually find interesting is the designs for the 'alien' race ships. These are some upcoming Vanduul ships
http://minus.com/mFHIHKxbAEKKU
(http://i4.minus.com/jbonZWCDYiN7Zh.jpg)
(http://i2.minus.com/jsOLZOavIQ79Y.jpg)
(http://i2.minus.com/jUULxHBltK7ms.jpg)
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Reasons most of the time imply a project kill that got deemed 'unsafe' by the publisher :ugh:
Yeah. Diminishing projected ROI due to sales voodoo prognostication. Or sudden realisation that they're sponsoring three nigh-identical releases in the same quarter.
I had one game cancelled because the External Producer had a different vision of the game in his head and had sold THAT vision to his bosses and not the game we were working on and, finally, it had become abundantly clear that what we were delivering wasn't the game he'd been selling.
I understand some games sink because they couldn't deliver too many of their designed features, but everything I worked on delivered all it's core features and we could rework around anything planned that couldn't be delivered.
What were the reasons games YOU were working on were cancelled? Audience participation time!
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Me ? None yet fortunately...
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Fantastic video from one of the 'lesser' ships shredding some people, also using the headtracking IR system for pc. neato!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=opMGRIpUbO8
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I'm downloading the 25Gb... See you in the next life.
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Rad article on shields and shield management. Crew members on shield management are going to be very, very busy. https://robertsspaceindustries.com/comm-link/transmission/14489-Design-Shields-Management
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Not much new on shields to that date, but it's interesting to see that they are considering adding stuff that already works in some other games. Nice shields shader btw.
I like that video (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U2GmLvwtnCk), which talks a lot about the universe (Helios planet is directly taken from Interstellar...).
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Can I get SC handles to invite you people to fly with me?
Add me on RSi website Silas_Vitalia happy to fly with any of you
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You already have mine.
I should really finish downloading the game at some point though...
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My RSC handle is my usual handle : Valence.
I still have to configure my stick though. I'm having difficulties since that hotas doesn't seem to be well recieved by the game and that I don't have any throttle on it... Will have to patch it up as much as I can for now... :/
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How do you add people on the RSI website ? :s
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How do you add people on the RSI website ? :s
Under my RSI on the right side the pulldown box, there's a contacts tab!
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N2K1CH22SF8
Very interesting discussion about the Persistant Universe / NPC / Interaction programming on this video.
Basically:
The back of house server will be running something like 20 million NPCs for the game universe. These will be generating buy orders, sell orders, be pirates, traders, escorts, etc. They run the 'big picture' and generate / seed the game world in this part of the server. The playerbase will represent hopefully about 10% of the game world.
So say NPC #4500 generates a buy order for 100 tons of steel to be shipped from Earth to Terra, either a player or another NPC will pick up that order and run the delivery. If no players are involved then the mission will complete, or roll a dice maybe to see if it intersects with a pirate or whatever. BUT if no players are in that area then it all happens in server and generates the result and related price and market effects.
BUT, if a player happens to be traveling from Earth to Terra along that same vector when the server says this content is happening then the player will encounter the trade ship being attacked by the pirates or whatever. Say you kill the pirates and help the trader, the results are reported to the higher server, and the NPC pirate is now out of the game, so that route becomes safer, etc.
The idea is to let the players have an effect on the overall game world but not to the extent that they can completely crash markets or shut down the game. I'm not sure how I feel about it but it seems like a neat way to work the system.
The other thing discussed is the dynamic mission content, where they will be making a lot of interlocking mission modules that will spool up on the fly based on your actions, and they are including a nemesis type of system from shadows of mordor, so you will have villians to track and hunt down or nemesis that are against you. Missions will be space and FPS, so you don't always have to pew pew them in space, you could maybe kill the evil pirate's escorts and chase him down to a planet and have a gun fight in a dark alley, etc.
They will also scale mission content for the number of players you are with, so that's fun.
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Updated interior pew pew environment #4305
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u3PFlPWqaRQ
GRIMDARKKKKKK.
Still so so on the visual aesthetics for this game, but that's purdy FPS space right there.
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Some of the new ships are winning me over... Mining barge! 150m long with rotating hull sections! https://robertsspaceindustries.com/comm-link/transmission/14518-Rugged-Colossus-Orion-Mining-Platform
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Annnd mining actually looks interesting as hell https://robertsspaceindustries.com/comm-link/transmission/14522-Star-Citizen-Careers-Mining
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I like that ship. I'm still mixed overall on their ship design : some of their small, sleek and streamlined fighters are really nice, some others terribly fail, but I like that ship. It feels a bit ORE-ish though. Also, why are ore containers orbiting around the ship and not habitable sections lol ?
One thing I like with their design ideas is that they often put the emphasis on hiring NPCs, crew, etc. It makes the world around you feel a lot less empty.
I also like all the market and broker aspect of it.
Also like their emphasis on group play, which has been kind of lacking in most recent MMOs where the slogan has always been "you can play solo too if you feel like it", resulting in online solo games (which includes eve online for most of its activities besides high end gameplay, especially when you can own multiple accounts and alts).
Also : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8BE_Ayd5UGo#t=311 (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8BE_Ayd5UGo#t=311)
Note : I bought a mustang btw, and wonder why I got 2 of those for the price of one ... ?
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Not sure if this was posted already. It's apparently from November but I just saw it now.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R4AqSesoQyc
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Yea not a bad preview :)
You'll be pleased to know the FPS will be playable at PAX this weekend, and there will be a lot of new videos from the show.
FPS module should be released very soon, with some fun levels, one of which is a direct 'omage' to Ender's Game 'battle room', a giant 360 zero g battle sphere. They have done a ton of work on 'procedural' fps tech to allow you to hand hold and grip surfaces when approaching from any angle in zero g, along with gameplay to 'spring' push off in another direction after landing. There will be kit of course to have jets on your suit for maneuvering but those will give penalties in other areas. Other kit will eventually include mag-boots, etc.
This will be important because many of the ships and stations to be fought over will have player-controlled defenses such as turning gravity off, sealable bulkheads, security lockdowns, etc.
Expect to be playing this in the next week or two I think at the most :)
(http://star-citizen-news-radio.de/wp-content/uploads/2015/01/Sneak-peek1-770x308.jpg)
(http://www.starcitizen.fr/wp-content/uploads/2015/01/BattleArena_EntranceCloseup_02.jpg)
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good stuff this weekend from PAX EAST presentation:
New destructible ship tech:
http://youtu.be/FSNjPXMMqCE?t=5m47s
Optimized as algorithms now instead of having to do all the different damage states ahead of time for different ship parts. Very cool. It's super nice, so where you get shot up is where it get's shot up on the ship, effecting ship pipelines like fuel, power, etc.
And teh sexeh:
Re-introduction of the very cool long range bomber Retaliator. I am continually impressed with the insane amount of detail and polish put into these things:
All in engine, to better melt your video card.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fxEWc6IvtQc
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They showed off a lot of the personal armor but this one will be where I'm headed. Beefy heavy 'outlaw' variety:
I was hoping a bit less 'tie fighter' and more 'trooper' sort of helmet but we'll see...
(http://img4.hostingpics.net/pics/659771elite3dstarcitizencharacterpose.jpg)
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The bomber details are nice.
I don't like their armor set. It's bland, souless, and trite... better than dust, but trite.
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sbZLbb0_RBI
latest little trailer they showed for SXSW. You'll see more of the mocap work coming along, although an obvious lack of hair on 90% of the npcs (space baldness is a thing).
Anyway coming along nicely. FPS should be in a few weeks, 1.1 patch this week. 'social module' (multiplayer hangars and some of the early planetside areas) next month or so, and the big kahuka holy grail patch of multi-crew combat ships this summer.
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It sure looks pretty and immersive. Good showcase of where they are right now.
In before lag to death when more than 10 characters with 50k tris each will be on the same scene. :lol:
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So far, they've done a pretty good job with LOD stuff. For example, in space, you really don't have too many issues with graphics lag even though there are a dozen ships with a metric fuck-tonne of detail.
Of course, they haven't done anything like this for a the hangar, which can bring my computer to a grinding crawl (which will get even worse when the retaliator shows up). But hopefully they'll include it for the social module.
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So far, they've done a pretty good job with LOD stuff. For example, in space, you really don't have too many issues with graphics lag even though there are a dozen ships with a metric fuck-tonne of detail.
Of course, they haven't done anything like this for a the hangar, which can bring my computer to a grinding crawl (which will get even worse when the retaliator shows up). But hopefully they'll include it for the social module.
The hangar thing is indeed an issue, but it just hasn't been redone. I forget the specific issue but it's something like hangar incorrectly forcing GPU to process EVERYTHING and not just what you see.... = meltdown.
Same thing in AC with Cutlass. Enters match drops framerate for everyone..
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There's been a lot of stealth patching going on and some new abilities people have been digging up.
So they've added functionality now where you can get out of your ship on some maps and ping at them with a handgun, and combined with a friend flying the ship you get out of, starting to get all of the pieces in place.
https://gfycat.com/TameDisguisedDevilfish
When they release all the mod tools, going to be so much awesome fan movies.
Maybe some ambitious nerds will import Eve ship models into the SC engine / characters and we'll get the eve movies we've always wanted :)
1.1 Patch should be out today, which along with another new ship will release the 'REC' rental system.
Basically for Star Citizen's SISI/Arcade mode, you can earn points and use them to try out any weapons or ships rather than buying them in the 'real' game world.
Points are cross-module, so if you earn points in the FPS arena or the spaceship pew pew arena, you can apply them to either.
Upcoming FPS modes:, and someone can correct me if I'm missing some?
Counterstrike Style 8v8 (I think or was it 16v16?) rounds with one life each, you die and you wait until next round
Capture the Flag?
Ender's Game zero-G battle arena, exactly the same as enders game, laser pistols to freeze limbs and you win by elimination or crossing the opponent's gate. Super fun.
Regular respawn deathmatch I think?
Upcoming AC 2.0 mode
'Capture the IDRIS' which will finally marry the FPS and Spaceship pew pew, two teams fight and defend a capital ship, involving taking the sheilds down, punching holes in the exterior, landing boarding parties, and capturing the hull on foot.
Capture the IDRIS is sort of the holy grail of sci fi games for me, combining huge fleet pew pew and ground pounders working in tandem.
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I.
Am.
So.
Excited.
About.
This.
My only concern with this, is if I will actually play the game, or end up doing the equivalent in hangar ship spinning as I did in Eve. Furthermore, with permadeath, it may be difficult to get any RPing in.
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We will see how long you can reasonably stick to one character before permadying... I guess we will have to adapt RP towards more disposable characters.
Which is good and bad at the same time, since it asks for a lot of efforts into creating new, interesting one, and forces you to trash character concepts that you may have cared a lot about over time...
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but... I like my character...
:(
So, who all is playing SC right now?
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Over on the star citizen RP forums, about 50% people were just talking about rerolling their same characters if they permadie, since there's no stats to distinguish them.
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Over on the star citizen RP forums, about 50% people were just talking about rerolling their same characters if they permadie, since there's no stats to distinguish them.
I think I'll approach it from the 'family' sort of thing, with each new character just being part of the clan.
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Over on the star citizen RP forums, about 50% people were just talking about rerolling their same characters if they permadie, since there's no stats to distinguish them.
Yes, I might do that if a character I really care about emerges somehow.
There is a RP section on their forums ? That's interesting.
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There is a RP section on their forums ? That's interesting.
Not quite. There's been a few unofficial attempts at making roleplay boards, though - That's how it always goes with new MMOs. Different places trying to become -the- roleplay community pre-launch.
http://starcitizen-rp.org/forum/index.php This is the one I meant, and the most successful so far.
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Oooh, you mean a community fansite. Yeah, I bet there are different places already... The tricky part is often to find the good one. Until now I have never really had a choice on the matter since I was not evolving on international boards though. So it was mostly, there is only one to choose from, so if it's shitty, too bad, if it's good, then i'm in... Problem is that most RP communities are often shit. :/
Well i'm rambling anyway, I hope some community will prove to be as good as possible, or like backstage... If that's the case with this one, I would be curious to give it a try.
Also, i'm really surprised that there is still no RP section on the official forum. For most MMOs it's usually part of the standard package...
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It would be cool to have other backstage people for RP or in another RP community for SC.
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https://forums.robertsspaceindustries.com/discussion/245336/the-vanguard
Sexy new ship, long range fighter.
In other news please add me in game Silas_Vitalia as now that multiplayer servers are back up I'm doing a fair bit of pvp and co-op, happy to fly with any of you! Davien is also on board and I'm getting a few other friends :)
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I wonder how that fighter compares in size to, lets say a hornet... I'm not going to say I don't like the astetics of it.
Yeah, add me too, Davien_Kaahtt
I'll gladly fly on any kingdom dweller's wing.
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I am rather curious to learn more on what they really intend by long range and short range ships. I get that it probably is a mirror to WW2 short range (mono engine) vs long range fighters (dual engine), but in terms of SC gameplay ? What will be their strenghts and weaknesses ? How do they differenciate over their short range cousins ? On which kind of situations will short range be better if they can't travel far ? And if you can anyway travel through stargates and find a spaceport, then what is the utility of long range fighters ? Is there a fuel story somewhere hidden there, where you can't fly for long with short range fighters ? Can long range fighters actually use hyperspace without gates ?
On the arena commander thing, maybe i'll try it someday, though I heared that if you don't have a hornet you are pretty much screwed or at a disadvantage ... ? Is the i300 a viable ship now ? Is the Avenger faring any good ? How about the mustang ? I also was not convinced by the weapon and targeting combat gameplay I saw, but I will not judge too quickly and will have to give it a serious try besides doing it in my own corner (and find a decent joystick, because my current hotas has shit egonomics and no throttle :/).
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I am rather curious to learn more on what they really intend by long range and short range ships. I get that it probably is a mirror to WW2 short range (mono engine) vs long range fighters (dual engine), but in terms of SC gameplay ? What will be their strenghts and weaknesses ? How do they differenciate over their short range cousins ? On which kind of situations will short range be better if they can't travel far ?
I'd imagine short range fighters are better defenders and dogfighters. More armor and shields, more weapons at the cost of needing to refuel frequently. The idea being that you can't bring your SuperHornet on a long range roam. Imagine if your battleships could only go 10 or so systems before they needed to refuel, so instead you take battlecruisers or cruisers on a long distance gank gang.
And if you can anyway travel through stargates and find a spaceport, then what is the utility of long range fighters ? Is there a fuel story somewhere hidden there, where you can't fly for long with short range fighters ? Can long range fighters actually use hyperspace without gates ?
Jump points for extra system travel and .2c for inter system travel, if I recall correctly. An eve example would be jumping into your t2 cruiser (long range fighter) because your corp is going on a roam through low/null sec, following the example in my previous paragraph, you can't bring your battleship (short range fighter) with you on your roam. However, if some other corp decides to attack your POS (or whatever) you pull out your battleship and defend with superior offense and defense.
On the arena commander thing, maybe i'll try it someday, though I heared that if you don't have a hornet you are pretty much screwed or at a disadvantage ... ?
Nope.
I caught the bug and have a small fleet. My mustang delta chews up SuperHornets pretty well. Assuming, of course, the pilot of the SH wasn't paying attention, or wants to actually dogfight instead of sit stationary and shoot. In fact, there is so much power on demand in my delta, that if someone isn't paying attention to me, I'll win the fight. However, if someone glares at me sternly, I'll pop. So, you trade off abilities.
Given time, CIG will do a pretty good job of balancing the ships, and it'll come down to personal skill of the pilot over equipment and wallet. Silas and I were talking last night about the promise the cutlas has. I genuinely feel that it will be a monster once multicrew comes out. If a pilot does his job and keeps the top or flanks of the vessel towards the enemy, and the gunner has some mouse talent, I don't think many of the ships in the 'verse could stand against it. Sure, it has a low top speed, but it has some of the greatest maneuverability, shields, armor, and weapon mounts in the game.
Is the i300 a viable ship now ?
Yes.
Well, it was when I was playing with it during the free fly weekend last month. The 325 is nasty and the 350 is insanely fast (and can fit all the equipment of the 325)
Is the Avenger faring any good ?
I have one. I don't like it much. The main gun, the Tigerstrike is a bit underpowered in my mind. Of course, I use a HOTAS, and that ship was really built for mouse/keyboard.
How about the mustang ?
I fly a fruitbat and love the hell out of it. My only issue is that its made out of saran wrap. I had a collision with someone yesterday while dogfighting. I died, my ship got fowled into my target's ship, and he too zero damage from it.
I also was not convinced by the weapon and targeting combat gameplay I saw, but I will not judge too quickly and will have to give it a serious try besides doing it in my own corner (and find a decent joystick, because my current hotas has shit egonomics and no throttle :/).
What do you mean by weapon and targeting combat? Personally, I find its nuances shallow enough to enjoy and deep enough to keep me pushing myself to the limit. I fly an extremely agile fighter, and find myself using the 6df often. If I get into a circle strafe with an enemy, I roll my ship as I'm strafing, as I'm keeping my pips on the hostile ship. Other times, I get enemies to chase me, decouple, pull a Starbuck and fly backwards while putting rounds on them. When they disengage, I recouple, chase them and take them out.
As far as a multiplayer game goes, its a blast... well, when it works. As a single player game, its well worth the money I've put into it. Vanduul swarm (horde mode) is great and it makes you feel pretty epic as you dodge missiles, rocks, and enemy fighters. Murry Cup (racing) is what causes me to boot up the game once a day. I strive harder and harder to shave a few milliseconds off each turn.
Lastly, before anyone gets all pay to win, they just implemented the rental equipment credit system. Each race nets you 2k, each vanduul swarm nets you 15k, and the big money is in pvp in squadron battle and free for all (depending on your kills of course)
If I had the ability to loan you a ship, I'd do it in a heart beat. Let you play a bit, get use to it, earn some REC, then go and rent some other ships. Once you figure out what you like to fly, pledge for it. If you want to drive a slow tanky high dps ship, then get a SuperHornet. If you wanna struggle keeping your pilot conscious from all the insane Gs you pull, get a Mustang or 300 series. If you wanna trade freight, get an Aurora. The options seem endless.
Edit:
Buy a 5 dollar arena commander pass off the store so you can fly during free fly weekends. The gladious starts tomorrow. (the obvious counter to the super hornet. Fast, maneuverable, and still heavily armed)
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Ships will use fuel that depletes over time / range.
Most dedicated fighters are designed for local planet or station defense or to fly out of a nearby carrier. Almost every ship can equip a 'jump drive' (to allow the use the SC equivalent of eve wormholes), but you still use fuel.
Bigger ships can go much further and include things like sleeping areas (to log out in space).
There are dedicated tanker ships (Starfarer) to bring with small fleets to provide fuel as well for super long trips.
Something like a Hornet isn't flying across 8 systems, fighting, and making it home.
These stats are still being determined, and also ship engine parts can be changed and tuned to maximize range or speed or economy, etc.
Join us LYN
Also keep in mind that SC systems are huge, and most of your gameplay will be probably be inside one system instead of across many in a short time.
I think they were aiming for what like 20-30 min at fast travel to cross a system?
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I have one. I don't like it much. The main gun, the Tigerstrike is a bit underpowered in my mind. Of course, I use a HOTAS, and that ship was really built for mouse/keyboard.
Meh, that's shit. I mean, designing ships for a specific type of controls...
I love the look of that ship. I don't want to play mouse keyboard to enjoy the hell out of it... :/
So they will add the gladius in the arena soon ? It looks awesome too. I may have a thing for Aegis fighters...
What do you mean by weapon and targeting combat? Personally, I find its nuances shallow enough to enjoy and deep enough to keep me pushing myself to the limit. I fly an extremely agile fighter, and find myself using the 6df often. If I get into a circle strafe with an enemy, I roll my ship as I'm strafing, as I'm keeping my pips on the hostile ship. Other times, I get enemies to chase me, decouple, pull a Starbuck and fly backwards while putting rounds on them. When they disengage, I recouple, chase them and take them out.
As far as a multiplayer game goes, its a blast... well, when it works. As a single player game, its well worth the money I've put into it. Vanduul swarm (horde mode) is great and it makes you feel pretty epic as you dodge missiles, rocks, and enemy fighters. Murry Cup (racing) is what causes me to boot up the game once a day. I strive harder and harder to shave a few milliseconds off each turn.
Lastly, before anyone gets all pay to win, they just implemented the rental equipment credit system. Each race nets you 2k, each vanduul swarm nets you 15k, and the big money is in pvp in squadron battle and free for all (depending on your kills of course)
If I had the ability to loan you a ship, I'd do it in a heart beat. Let you play a bit, get use to it, earn some REC, then go and rent some other ships. Once you figure out what you like to fly, pledge for it. If you want to drive a slow tanky high dps ship, then get a SuperHornet. If you wanna struggle keeping your pilot conscious from all the insane Gs you pull, get a Mustang or 300 series. If you wanna trade freight, get an Aurora. The options seem endless.
I wrote somewhere in the thread why I wasn't pleased by what I saw in the combat gameplay, but that thread is huge now...
Well, to put it simply, I really love their flight models. It's incredibly swoon to fly.
I hate their weapon design. In 1 word : gimbal. I so fucking hate the concept in itself that... well. Nope. Just nope. I also hated the auto targeting system with your weapons actually mobile through your gimbal system to shoot directly at the target. It just feels dumbed down. I want actual shooting to be part of the thing. I hate it the same way I would hate auto targeting in FPS (I don't like FPS anyway :p). But what really bothered me was when I was told that you have gimbal weapons with little power but that can keep on a target and keep hitting it with a good accuracy whatever it takes, vs bigger slow firing guns without much gimbal targeting. This, basically, I don't want. Ever. Period. :P
Also, weapon accuracy. Every damn projectile seems to fly the same exact path. So it hits most of the time.
Well yeah, ofc it's the future and we have pretty tools that do the work for us. I'm just a big war thunder fan and think that game nailed it perfectly right.
I am keeping good hopes in their flight model to provide a lot of tactical depth and positioning !
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Meh, that's shit. I mean, designing ships for a specific type of controls...
I love the look of that ship. I don't want to play mouse keyboard to enjoy the hell out of it... :/
The main gun is gimbeled and the individual bullet damage is low. I have found its easier to aim the gun with a mouse. I don't really like the mouse, so I don't use the ship. Everything is still in flux--buffs and nerfs, ect...
As for the look. You like the space penguin, huh? I was excited about some of the concept art... the main gun looking like a gau-8 and it having a second seat, sadly, it didn't make the cut, so I'm holding out to see what sorts of variants they have in mind.
So they will add the gladius in the arena soon ? It looks awesome too. I may have a thing for Aegis fighters...
Its in the arena now. I got royally pwnd by one last night. Its much faster then my delta, and actually armored. I'm thinking of CCUing my avenger for one and putting to rest my warthog fantasy.
I hate their weapon design. In 1 word : gimbal. I so fucking hate the concept in itself that... well. Nope. Just nope. I also hated the auto targeting system with your weapons actually mobile through your gimbal system to shoot directly at the target. It just feels dumbed down. I want actual shooting to be part of the thing. I hate it the same way I would hate auto targeting in FPS (I don't like FPS anyway :p). But what really bothered me was when I was told that you have gimbal weapons with little power but that can keep on a target and keep hitting it with a good accuracy whatever it takes, vs bigger slow firing guns without much gimbal targeting. This, basically, I don't want. Ever. Period. :P
I think you are confusing SC with Elite Dangerous. There isn't any sort of auto targeting. They just had a massive gimbal change where you loose one size of weapon by equipping a gimbal. If you want to equip larger guns, you have to strip the gimbal. I'm hoping they let me pull the chin turret off my delta so I can put a larger repeater on it.
Also, weapon accuracy. Every damn projectile seems to fly the same exact path. So it hits most of the time.
Different guns have different projectile speeds. Projectiles are typically slower then 'laser' weapons. You have to line up your shots and actually get behind your target for all your shots to hit.
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I never played ED. I was just told it was that way somewhere in that thread. That there was a targeting help. And iirc there were vids where it actually was targeting help with the crosshair, as long as you kept firing in a certain area around the target, it targeted it.
Maybe they removed it ?
Also, what I don't like with their weapons is the RL copycats, like the tri mass driver canons, which are just a rip off of a M-61 Vulcan... Yay A-10. Are we playing a space opera or a cheesy top gun version ? :bash:
Edit : how can you get a mustang delta ? It's not available. Same for the i350...
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I never played ED. I was just told it was that way somewhere in that thread. That there was a targeting help. And iirc there were vids where it actually was targeting help with the crosshair, as long as you kept firing in a certain area around the target, it targeted it.
Maybe they removed it ?
I'm pretty sure they removed it. There isn't any targeting help. ESP (the only thing I can think of) will slow down your joystick/mouse movements to allow greater precision, but it can be disabled. For you to land a hit, you actually have to put the cross-hairs on the target. If you are bad at it, you buy repeaters. if you are good at it, you buy sledge IIs
Also, what I don't like with their weapons is the RL copycats, like the tri mass driver canons, which are just a rip off of a M-61 Vulcan... Yay A-10. Are we playing a space opera or a cheesy top gun version ? :bash:
What, like the tigerstrike? I wish there were an A-10 analogue in this game. As it stands everything looks like space jets, and I don't much care for the aesthetics. 'course, I'm caldari by eve birth... no aesthetics, just stats.
Honestly, I hope they impliment some beam laser turrets at some point. I'd love to go all hiigaran gunship on these fools.
Edit : how can you get a mustang delta ? It's not available. Same for the i350...
They are for sale at special times, like the anniversary sale or ship line sales during free flight weekends. Or, you can luck out on the gray market...
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Yea the main bone people have right now is trying to balance mouse/keyboard flying (like Warthunder), vs joystick flying (like a flight sim).
It's getting better and the solution right now is to lower the weapon size for gimbaled weapons that can move independent of where your ship is pointing.
So a mouse player with higher accuracy can move a targeting reticle with the mouse without moving the ship. Highly accurate. The penalty is you have to have -1 weapon size for any weapon mounted on an independent gimbal.
To balance this joystick pilots who have to point the ship in the direction they shoot with fixed weapons (unless using like an oculus connected to their gimbals), get to use the full size fixed weapon.
Weapon damage, weapon types, shields, armor, etc are all still in high state of flux so every patch introduces a current new flavor of the month overpowered setup to be eventually nerfed down to a reasonable level.
For example in an earlier patch the Hornets or Mustangs had invulnerable portions of the ship cockpits that would receive 0 damage no matter what.
Or before the weapon rebalancing some ships could just stack like 6x of the most unbalanced guns and obliterate anything.
Right now there's a gun that is sized too low (size one), that has ridiculous unbalanced stats, so people are mono-boating with this thing and one-shotting anything they can hit.
The thing to keep in mind is right now basically all we are fighting each other with is single-seat fighters. In a month or two they will have the larger 'millenium falcon' sized multi-crew ships with people using the manned turrets and larger guns and beefier stats.
I expect the game to change dramatically once the formerly overpowered fighters start dropping like flies to coordinated turret fire.
In before 'death blossom' of a few turreted ships get back to back and pick a heading and just start shredding anything on approach :)
The thing also is that 'arena commander' right now is a glorified cage match in a small arena with no objectives except kill. The space-superiority fighters will always dominate this.
Once we get the 'scenario' arena commander maps where you have to say, escort a corvette or capture something on the ground the game will open up to real tactics and coordination with mixed ships.
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Well anyway I looked up some arena commander vids and I think I am full of prejudices. It certainly looks better than it was, and better than what I understood or what I was told.
I would also love beam turrets. The main issue I have at the moment is mostly mimetic : not enough omph with the FX, 'splosions, and especially more critically the feedback that an enemy is hit. It doesn't seem to show very clearly. Even worse when they are dead : you only know it because it stops showing on the targeting UI...
@Silas : War Thunder can be flown with a joystick too, and joystick is mandatory in simulator battles because there is no assist from the system to fly your thing, which allows keyboard and mouses to be used on other modes (arcade and realistic). Otherwise, it is rather foolish to use a joystick on modes where keyboard and mouse is allowed.
From the sound of it anyway, I will probably not go for gimbal weapons since I will try to use a joystick anyway.
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ok .... very sexy.
[spoiler](https://robertsspaceindustries.com/media/lkljfqam5arhur/source/Vanguard_landed.jpg)[/spoiler]
https://robertsspaceindustries.com/comm-link/transmission/14623-Relentless-Predator-The-Aegis-Vanguard
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*Danger Zone plays in the background*
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Interesting. It looks like similar to the purpose of the assault gunboat in starwars. Long range patrol and hard hitting power. Well protected and not very nimble.
I wonder however that as they says this aegis design is based on bomber purposes, then, where are all the missiles ? Torpedoes ? Actual bombs ? I guess it was designed first to be bombing capable, but never really got there ?
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*Danger Zone plays in the background*
kala...
...Kala...
...KALA!!!
daaanja zone!
Interesting. It looks like similar to the purpose of the assault gunboat in starwars. Long range patrol and hard hitting power. Well protected and not very nimble.
Its growing on me. the p38 is one of my favorite WWII aircraft, and this ship embodies a futuristic version of it. Its the size of an Ageis redeemer though... I think if I had a ship that big, I'd rather have a gunship then deep space fighter... I doono, we'll see.
I wonder however that as they says this aegis design is based on bomber purposes, then, where are all the missiles ?
Internal
Torpedoes ?
Internal
Actual bombs ?
Internal
I guess it was designed first to be bombing capable, but never really got there ?
according to the concept art, it can hold two or four medium torpedoes. Also, check out the animations on the announce page. it shows the ordnance bays opening up. My concern is its speed vs maneuverability. Will it fly like a P38 doing its high speed boom and zoom, or will it be a long distance space cow *looks at Silas' cutlas*
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I don't know, I saw only 2 missiles listed on the specs so I got confused...
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I don't know, I saw only 2 missiles listed on the specs so I got confused...
https://youtu.be/kIJq9qi0i48
This video goes and explores the holotable model which shows missiles and torpedoes in internal bays.
Its neat.
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Ok, so i'm kind of in a dilemna right now...
I inherited from a hotas warthog a while back, which works awesomely and is probably the best joystick ever (bare the weird buttons but well), but I got no throttle addon, and no pedal rudder either.
What I am wondering is that this stick is really designed for flight hardcore sims and my main issue with it is that it doesn't have a z roll axis, which is a real hindrance and asks for a rudder. My other concern is if the throttle is really ergonomic and suited to the game or not.
So, should I also get a throttle (maybe another brand if this one is not suited ?), and a rudder and roll with that ? Sounds heavily intensive and costly.
Or should I sell/get rid of the warthog and get another stick ? Either a hotas with z axis directly in the stick like a Saitek, or a non hotas stick like the T-16000 ? Is it better to go for a hotas since it may provide a lot of supplemental buttons and stuff and you do not have to reach for your keyboard ?
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I think the best thing would be for you to try and fly with the current stick and see how you like it.
Rotating the stick to roll is very, very nice on mine, and I've got one of the cheapest HOTAS out there. (Thrustmaster HOTAS X)
Just see how you like it flying solo and adjust from there. With the throttle you get enough extra buttons that you don't really need to use a keyboard very often, but I imagine with just a stick you'd be short.
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Ok, so i'm kind of in a dilemna right now...
I inherited from a hotas warthog a while back, which works awesomely and is probably the best joystick ever (bare the weird buttons but well),
Noice!
but I got no throttle addon, and no pedal rudder either.
Put the stick between your legs (giggity) and use a keyboard for your left hand. Fingers at WSAD. Map yaw to X (as its way more important then rolling in space) and use the already mapped Q and E keys for roll.
What I am wondering is that this stick is really designed for flight hardcore sims and my main issue with it is that it doesn't have a z roll axis, which is a real hindrance and asks for a rudder. My other concern is if the throttle is really ergonomic and suited to the game or not.
Yes.
Absolutely yes.
I have an X55 (don't judge, it was super insanely cheap) and the throttle is a Godsend. Being able to dynamicly adjust speed and heading is brilliant. If a hostile is on my tail, I can decouple, fly around an asteroid while pointing the nose of my ship at my target. When he comes around the asteroid, he'll get a face full of laser and rocket fire. With practice, I could do that with a keyboard, but it doesn't have the same... Feel. HOTAS allows for a much more immersive experence, IMHO.
So, should I also get a throttle (maybe another brand if this one is not suited ?), and a rudder and roll with that ? Sounds heavily intensive and costly.
Should you? First pledge. If you like the game, then slowly invest in a throttle... then rudder pedals. (Birfday is coming up real soon, I'ma gonna treat myself to some pedals)
Or should I sell/get rid of the warthog and get another stick ? Either a hotas with z axis directly in the stick like a Saitek, or a non hotas stick like the T-16000 ?
As previously stated, I have an x55. If you want a slightly shittier experience, then get what I have. Buttons randomly press, there is a large deadzone that needs to be fixed in the software, and customer service is easily the worst I've ever experienced. If this weren't a Christmas present, I'd take it back and get a warthog.
Is it better to go for a hotas since it may provide a lot of supplemental buttons and stuff and you do not have to reach for your keyboard ?
Yes..?
I've got a nice setup, but I'm in the process of building a sort of cockpit. I'm going to have a U-shaped tray that goes over my lap, divided into five positions. The far left will house my rudder, the middle will have my joystick, and the far right will have the mouse. Between the joystick, mouse, and throttle will be one of these. http://www.thehumansolution.com/kinesis-freestyle.html?gdftrk=gdfV2929_a_7c132_a_7c5187_a_7cKIN700&gclid=CL-S_4eegsQCFZLm7AodYwkAjw
When they start to support it, I'm going to pick up VR of some sort... After a month or two, y'all will see me on the news... Gamer dies in home made simulator from malnutrition.
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Ah, thanks for the advices.
I already invested in the game through pledge (in fact, I am one of the early backers, have a LTI package and something like pledger #30.000). That's why i'm considering my joystick options.
Maybe i'll try what you say first. Keyboard with Q/E for strafing, and A/D for rolling, or something.
Honestly, the thing that any stick would highly benefit from would be an analog tiny stick like they have on gamepads. You know, for gimbal stuff and things like that. Not like i'm gonna use gimbals anyway... :P
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Already backed? Dude, add me to your contacts list.
Davien_Kaahtt
I need more folks to fly around with, but I don't like organizations... Ask Silas-- It took drastic measures to bring me into the KPV
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I need to download the whole game again... They keep making us download it from scratch with their major patches... It takes me days. I can dl like 5Gb per night... :/
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Another question : where can I find good guides or descriptions for weapons, and even ships ? But especially weapons.
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https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1hpZDxqXlXp2gbLXMkiMGbOCzMwoxj7mGu72w3MofmxQ/htmlview?sle=true#gid=781668465
All the stats laid out in black and white. Repeaters are great if you are shooting something fast, or a terrible shot.
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Probably stupid question but... what's the point of high damage low rof weapons since repeaters seem to deal even more dps overall ?
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Probably stupid question but... what's the point of high damage low rof weapons since repeaters seem to deal even more dps overall ?
The damage is so high that if you are a good shot you only have to hit them once. With mouse/Keyboard you can do this regularly. Think of it like eve artillery alpha strike.
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Ok I see...
There seems to be a lot of heated discussions around M/K vs Stick on the forums. I can understand why tbh.
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Wait till multicrew. Your pilot would want a stick and throttle while your gunner would want a mouse and keyboard. A stick and throttle pilot can out fly a mouse and keyboard pilot (look at racing) but a mouse and keyboard can out shoot the stick and throttle pilot. Mix them and you'll have an unstoppable force.
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Yes i'm with you on that, but currently it's weird to see that 80% of the leaderboard is... M/K... For dogfighters.
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Not weird.
Do you remember back when the xbox360 came out, and microsoft was touting the "Games for Windows" campaign? Basically you could play on your 360 against/with PC players. What they found out, was that the mouse is a much more precise aiming tool then--well--pretty much anything. Even with a bit of auto aim, PC players were owning the 360 players so hard, that it wasn't fun.
Simply put, there are very few Human Interface Devices that are as accurate at a mouse.
Of course, a mouse and keyboard doesn't give you nearly the same feeling of flight as a joystick, throttle, and pedal set. Furthermore, I'd like to see a mouse and keyboard user navigate as well as a HOTAS user. To the best of my knowledge, all top racers are HOTAS users. I guess what I'm saying is, gunnery works much better with a mouse and keyboard, while navigation works better with a HOTAS. Mix the two in 2.0, and you'll be a force to be reckoned with.
Speaking of, I'll need some turret gunners for my Tali...
And a terrible pun for a ship name...
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I didn't intend weird like that. :P
Weird in the sense that in terms of gamedesign, it's weird. I'm not sure to like the fact that M/K users have an advantage over me and my stick when piloting a starfighter. I definitely understand and support M/K for turrets and point defense systems though.
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I didn't intend weird like that. :P
Weird in the sense that in terms of gamedesign, it's weird. I'm not sure to like the fact that M/K users have an advantage over me and my stick when piloting a starfighter. I definitely understand and support M/K for turrets and point defense systems though.
Yea it's tricky. The thing is something huge like 75 or 80% probably of the players aren't using expensive HOTAS, they are using M/Keyboard.
I have confidence that the 'real' game, when they get to the MMO portion, will start to favor people who can fly their ships better. It's hard to hide your ship behind an asteroid with a mouse and keyboard, it's hard to maneuver your ship into the turret blindspot behind a large ship with a mouse / keyboard, etc.
Like Davien says, I think there might be a lot of auto-sorting, where joystick pilots are in demand to fly the medium sized ships, and mouse/keyboard crew members are in demand to help defend them and for boarding actions.
On the larger ships you'll actually have a dedicated first-person crew station responsible for setting course and engaging engines, etc, along with another station for astronavigation, for plotting waypoints and navigation.
They talked about a neat mockup a while back where the navigator plots the intended course on his map screen that will show up as an Augmented Reality 'track' on the viewscreen for the ship pilot to follow like a race course.
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Also this is in-game, that's all in engine and you can fly around it right now. That's gorgeous.
http://imgur.com/cKeNIue
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Let's hope it ends up that way.
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Dem high rez images.
Although why do space pilot suits have to have all the goddamn glowing lights on them? Still wow.
http://imgur.com/a/k7IRI
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Also development report for March: https://robertsspaceindustries.com/comm-link/transmission/14640-Monthly-Report-March
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I'm a bit sad I missed both the i350 and the other racer exclusive offers...
Anyway, for the report... Didn't read everything, it's a huge wall of text... Even to my standards.
My main grief with the game besides gimbals and the obligatory use of them ingame (with gimbal slots), is the FX actually. Stuff like missiles look damn fine, dust clouds and particles too, but the cinematics of ship exploding, and just generally, the shit you fire with your weapons, looks rather lame/vapid/trite (pick the one you like the most). It lacks the "omph" I would expect, especially SFX wise. I want to hear my engines roar, my weapons crackle, my cockpit being filled up with smoke when I take too many hits on the hull... I want to feel the battle more.
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100% agree on the weapons FX and sounds. They look and sound terrible IMO. I don't get that feeling of immensely powerful guns and appropriate visual effects.
One possibility is that we are only seeing 1/3 of the weapons, and only the small ones so far? Maybe they want all the fighter weapons to sound small so when we use the large cruiser and capital ship guns you can really see / hear it? Wishfull thinking.
Engine sounds are ok for me, especially when a ship passes close by and you hear the engine next to you (space magic). But yea I want more/different sounds for all of them.
They also removed the overly sexy female CPU voice from the Origin ships, I think there were some complaints... "Origin Jumpworks....at your service"
I do like my more matter of fact female Jarvis in my Drake Cutlass.
"Target Destroyed. Congratulations"
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I'm more concerned about playable content, optimization and bugfixing. The SFX part isn't very high in my list of priorities.
Still though, the SFX could use some work. If RSI could poach whomever did the sound design for Destiny, that would be neat.
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I'm more concerned about playable content, optimization and bugfixing. The SFX part isn't very high in my list of priorities.
Still though, the SFX could use some work. If RSI could poach whomever did the sound design for Destiny, that would be neat.
Indeed sir!
Although on an unrelated note is anyone else excited that they are using Andy Serkis' Imaginarium for all the mocap work?
They are shooting all of the actors for Episode one of S42 over the next two months or so, some of the mocap rigs look insane that they have been developing!
http://www.theimaginariumstudios.com/
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Well if they can pull out something as best as the last Quantic Dreams games or even better, I certainly won't complain, it should probe to be amazing. A huge slap in your face, a bit like at every new final fantasy. The kind of when you just look at what is on your screen and just go "wow, just wow".
100% agree on the weapons FX and sounds. They look and sound terrible IMO. I don't get that feeling of immensely powerful guns and appropriate visual effects.
One possibility is that we are only seeing 1/3 of the weapons, and only the small ones so far? Maybe they want all the fighter weapons to sound small so when we use the large cruiser and capital ship guns you can really see / hear it? Wishfull thinking.
Engine sounds are ok for me, especially when a ship passes close by and you hear the engine next to you (space magic). But yea I want more/different sounds for all of them.
They also removed the overly sexy female CPU voice from the Origin ships, I think there were some complaints... "Origin Jumpworks....at your service"
I do like my more matter of fact female Jarvis in my Drake Cutlass.
"Target Destroyed. Congratulations"
Well I do think that SFX for small guns can be good or bad too. Those ones are not impressive. They are like lame pew pew sounds you make with your mouth for some of the worst of them. I mean, if they want to differentiate between small and big, it's not really a matter of doing the small ones sound lame and the huge ones sound awesome. It's a matter of turning the small ones high pitched and the huge ones low pitched.
Ben Burt's SFX for star wars blasters are amazing, and those are still very small arms SFX... That's what I would like to hear. Of course i'm not asking for Ben Burt level of quality lol, but it couldn't do any bad to the game immersion to have better SFX.
As for the engine sounds, I like the effects we get when other ships pass nearby (even if it sounds stupid yeah but whatever, it's not a realistic game or there would be no sound except the sound of your engines and UI...). But what I don't feel is the SFX of your OWN engines. Elite does it right imo, you really hear your engines roaring every time you adjust your throttle, and the sound they make in transitions between warp/hyperspace and real space is awesome.
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So THIS happened.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LSZDzIPOf7o&index=9&list=PLIlq56TiPswkuNbIrj51sNEo7tBLlnhwf
TLDR they've sneaked a full sized large ship into the test server multiplayer (Constellation, a touch bigger than a Millenium Falcon) . It doesn't work yet, but you can EVA around the inside (no gravity) and mag-boot along the outside.
Rudimentary manned turrets are also in for SH, Gladiator, and Cutlass.
TLDR for you non SC folks, they just started putting the multi-crew ships into the test server, which is a huge deal for most of us.
Also note the early version of the zero g 'hand hold' animations we'll get the real ones for FPS in a week or two.
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New images for the AR system:
https://imgur.com/a/UQ2oN
Also you get your own 'sims' condo/hangar you can add residential modules on. RP going to be so rad in our own locations.
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Gotta love the placeholder text in the AR.
PEW PEW
Zapper
Tiny Zapper
Pewmaster
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Those are official names.
If you donate to the kickstarter you can get the long term insurance PEWMASTER, which will be released in alpha in 2049
:)
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Official... names ? Seriously ?
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Having spent some time thinking up character ideas and consuming most of the lore, I have to say what really puts me off getting heart-and-soul invested in the idea of this game is that the setting is so... Vanilla. It barely even feels like sci-fi. It's like someone mixed Star Wars and Firefly together while removing most of the elements of both that made them distinctive and interesting. And I don't even like those worlds much to begin with!
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I love those but I agree, their universe is a bit... bland. I actually think all the vapid stuff comes from bad battlestar galactica vibes... Well at least, that's what i'm disliking a lot. Star Wars and firefly inspirations are mostly about multicrew, freelance captains and the likes...
Even if bonus point for them, the human Imperium and humans in general are space assholes, which is interesting at least. Factions are not black and white.
Though i'm not discouraged. It's also up to the player to make the best of it. Especially now, there is not much in terms of lore except the storyline pieces of text right ? There is a lot left to create...
Edit : I mean, what I like is the human scale of the universe. You play your little pilot trying to live his/her life, form crews or a small startup mining company... But it's always at the scale of your bare hands. It's immersive. Even with a bland lore, there may be a lot to do around that to balance it.
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Actually, there's bucketloads of set in stone lore.
https://robertsspaceindustries.com/comm-link?series=writers-guide
https://robertsspaceindustries.com/comm-link?series=news-update
https://robertsspaceindustries.com/comm-link?series=galactic-guide
Bucketloads, and all generic and bland as hell.
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Even if bonus point for them, the human Imperium and humans in general are space assholes, which is interesting at least. Factions are not black and white.
My whole life, I've observed that terrorist insurgents are murderous assholes. Just once I'd like the Imperium to be a generally benevolent force for order and good and the rebels to be selfish anarchists.
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A lot of the IP you all have correctly identified as 'bland' and sort of a very generic space mashup of other IPs. Totally agree on this, for about 50% of the ships and locations and 'tone' of the game, I'm very bored and maybe actively dislike the aesthetic. There's no 'EPIC' or 'space opera' in most of what they show, just you doing your thing as a peon.
That being said I have started to notice lately as more images are released that things are getting deeper and a -lot- of the player universe will be more diverse than we've seen.
If you want to do your blade runner thing there are whole rainy planets with cyberpunk aesthetics and dark alleys full of criminals and hacking to do.
If you want to do your 'Aliens' marine thing there are dark and derelict space stations to cleanse of bugs and repair
If you want your space opera there's giant fleet fights with alien ships (that look cool)
Then there's a ton of the 'generic' future-tech look that I'm hating as well :/
My point is there's going to be a lot of variety for our aesthetics, which might be neat. Or might be terribad.
Look here for cool/creepy alien ship aesthetics:
http://minus.com/mFHIHKxbAEKKU
Look here for 'aliens' industrial sci fi:
(http://massiveheadcanon.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/01/starcitizen-reclaimer-1038x576.jpg)
Generic Cyberpunk
(https://robertsspaceindustries.com/media/6i7m97fo1mm7ar/post_section_header/BHVR.jpg)
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Even if bonus point for them, the human Imperium and humans in general are space assholes, which is interesting at least. Factions are not black and white.
My whole life, I've observed that terrorist insurgents are murderous assholes. Just once I'd like the Imperium to be a generally benevolent force for order and good and the rebels to be selfish anarchists.
I meant, towards other races. Not much rebels in SC... Citizens are perfect little caldari patriots.
Ofc, it takes a lot of vibes from Ender and... Starship Troopers...
Nah, it's not unique per se. Not even good. What is good is the how humanity behaved everytime they met an alien race, which is, neither bad, nor good. Just assholish.
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It's not the aesthetic that I'm overly concerned about - Though I am concerned about it. I find CR's obsession with Space Planes obnoxious, and the general retrofuture thing dull and done to death. But what bothers me most is how shallow and uninteresting the world is thematically. Eve's setting has a lot of interesting ideas that tap into longstanding cyberpunk themes - Exploring how future technology/transhumanity can foster intense class disparity rather then enriching the life of the average person, how capitalism can make monsters out of people, and so on. Plus stuff more unique to it like the reconciliation of religion with future society, the clash of tradition versus modernism that underlines a lot of conflicts in the setting etc. And that's on top of the already pretty deep (for a video game) political drama, which still beats out basically every other MMO at it's core even though CCP has mishandled it repeatedly.
Star Citizen has basically none of that. You can tell they haven't really wrote the world to be something compelling to ponder - The theme of the world appears to be, "Wow, space is so amazing and magical! We're going to have such adventures!"
Eve's setting is based on actual sci-fi ideas. Star Citizen's appears to be based based primarily on wish fulfillment.
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It's not the aesthetic that I'm overly concerned about - Though I am concerned about it. I find CR's obsession with Space Planes obnoxious, and the general retrofuture thing dull and done to death. But what bothers me most is how shallow and uninteresting the world is thematically. Eve's setting has a lot of interesting ideas that tap into longstanding cyberpunk themes - Exploring how future technology/transhumanity can foster intense class disparity rather then enriching the life of the average person, how capitalism can make monsters out of people, and so on. Plus stuff more unique to it like the reconciliation of religion with future society, the clash of tradition versus modernism that underlines a lot of conflicts in the setting etc. And that's on top of the already pretty deep (for a video game) political drama, which still beats out basically every other MMO at it's core even though CCP has mishandled it repeatedly.
Star Citizen has basically none of that. You can tell they haven't really wrote the world to be something compelling to ponder - The theme of the world appears to be, "Wow, space is so amazing and magical! We're going to have such adventures!"
Eve's setting is based on actual sci-fi ideas. Star Citizen's appears to be based based primarily on wish fulfillment.
You've summed it up perfectly, and I agree!
Star Citizen / Wing Commander have always been thematically very shallow. It's basically pulp WW2 pew pew with a space setting. Fighters and bombers and space 'naval' ships with a future sci fi skin.
This is great if you want to be a privateer space trucker or a navy pilot and pew pew the alien hordes, less great if you want to be a cyber-futurist dealing with existential issues.
The frustrating irony for me is that EVE, with it's ridiculously poor UI and zero RP assistance in game client, provided years of great imaginings for me.
Star Citizen is going to have all of the immersive RP things; avatars, custom locations by players, multi crew ships, bars, lounges, space luxury yachts, blah blah blah, but with a mediocre setting.
I really don't know if one is better than the other.
I know that in EVE telling a good story together was wonderful and challenging, I think in Star Citizen the stories are going to be a bit more down to earth mundane but beautiful to see.
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The thing, though, it that - Though at this point it's unlikely - Eve could one day have all those positive features as well, and have the compelling story. The game does seem to be slowly moving in the right direction in terms of design over the past year, and the lead designer is actively talking about how she wants a return to the golden days of the mid-2000s with the setting. So, for me, there's just enough hope that I struggle to abandon it completely in favour of something that, despite having a bunch of cool surface-level stuff, is at it's core less interesting.
Because no matter how awsome Star Citizen plays or looks, it's a certainty that it's setting or general atmosphere isn't going to change. CR loves the kinda thing he's doing now. Investing in it out and out as a Space MMO to obsess over for years feels like having to settle for less for less.
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I guess... the game is what you make of it.
I started Eve in 2004. by around 2006, my computer couldn't handle the game very well, and I turned to autopilot space trucking and a bunch of roleplay to keep myself happy. Eve, for me, turned into an expensive chat room. As fun as Eve was for me, almost none of it was because of actual game play.
What Roberts is doing with SC is bringing back the epic space shooter, and adding to it many of the amazing immersive things Eve promised, but failed to deliver a decade into its existence. Sure, the art directing is weak, and yeah, the back story is generic, but guys... Spaceships!
How many of you dreamed of being Kirk, Spock, Scotty, etc? Whom of you can say you don't secretly want to be Adama or Starbuck? Yes, right now its WWII pewpew fluf, but in a year or less, it will be so much more. At some point, it will be whatever you want it to be. If you want to sit in a fourm and roleplay, by all means, please do. If you want to jump in the commander station or one of the turrets of my bomber while I make a run on a hardened target, more power to you.
This game, even in its infancy, brings me back to my childhood. The utter joy experienced behind a flight stick combating the evil Kilrathi, or the Shivans. Trucking loads of luxury foods to New Detroit, or shooting gate hackers in liberty space. Setting off from Arth to discover the secret between the galactic supernova. I'm not saying that SC will be the be-all end-all videogame, but bit by bit, its becoming the game I've always wanted. Perhaps in a few years, they'll have a large, procedurally generated universe, with planetary exploration, but for right now, considering its *just* a dogfighting engine, I am content.
Eve, as a game, became too expensive and too boring for me. I'm not saying you should leave her for SC, I'm saying give SC a few hours of your time. Don't worry about coming up with a back story and character--Just jump in and have fun... I'll save a seat for ya'll.
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How many of you dreamed of being Kirk, Spock, Scotty, etc? Whom of you can say you don't secretly want to be Adama or Starbuck?
I can barely concieve of something I want less in my MMO or roleplay experience then emulating characters from mainstream fiction, to be honest.
Pitches for games that consist of, "Now you can be just like X in X!" are the best possible way to send me running for the hills. I've never seen one that sells itself based on nostalgia and cool flashy things rather then their own distinctiveness and substance that have worked out for me in the long term.
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How many of you dreamed of being Kirk, Spock, Scotty, etc? Whom of you can say you don't secretly want to be Adama or Starbuck
That's the problem. I dislike Star Trek generally and I hate BSG - even if like a lot of people I got hooked by the series... To the point of sighing in frustration when I saw what probably is the biggest bullshity and vapid end I have ever seen. To then slowly realizing that BSG is nothing more than drama with crocodile tears and poorly executed reflections on religion and stuff with a convoluted plot that went nowhere because the writers didn't foresee at first where they wanted it to go..
Well no, I agree with Gwen. It bothered me a lot a few months ago, and got on the back of my mind for a moment lately because I got excited by the gameplay and what it is promising to be, but... Well yeah.
You see, the thing is that it brings me back to my childhood and the countless hours I have spent on the old space sims too. But I never played wing commander. I played the X-Wing and Tie-Fighter series, and then XWA.
Those had great stories, great universe, and great plot. Especially the last one.
Which makes me say though that even with pulp and bland elements in the lore, I think you can still as a roleplayer play on a few facets of the lore that are actually interesting, and/or make them so. I was for example thinking about all the Star Wars lore, be it novels, comics, films, video games, etc. Considering that they tried to cater to the biggest audience possible through all their products, well, the produced a lot of shit as well as a few gems, and most of those stories were completely different in their feel as well as the universe that was presented, even if it shared the same base universe. Just, the one that comes to my mind right now is a comics (Knight of the Old Republic, though not the KOTOR of the old Tales of the Jedi, but the new one with Zayne Carrick), which managed to create a vastly unique perspective on the universe which is what i'm looking for in every setting that often deals with the pulp quite heavily.
I mean, seriously, the base universe of the first star wars trilogy is a bit weird and not very interesting at first (bare the rusted WW2/fantasy anachronism in space), I mean, with space wizards and all. Yet that first saga manages to tell a powerful story.
Well, that's my hope, but mhh.. Yeah, that's just that. A dream.
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The thing for me though is that this is the game that I've always wanted, since I was a little kid and first played Xwing or Wing Commander and then first person shooters.
I wanted some sort of unbelievable game where I could fly a fighter, then board another ship and pew pew, or be a captain on a bridge of a huge ship in an epic battle.
I'm willing to put up with the terrible IP to do those things at this point.
Also interestingly enough, some of the early 'wing commander' novels were actually pretty damn good.
Highly, highly recommend 'fleet action' by William R. Forstchen and 'End Run' as well for about perfect pulp ww2 in space fleet novels.
http://www.amazon.com/End-Wing-Commander-William-Forstchen/dp/067172200X
http://www.amazon.com/Fleet-Action-Commander-William-Forstchen/dp/0671722115/ref=pd_sim_b_1/177-7137769-9378224?ie=UTF8&refRID=10KE8T7K6Q372MEQ7KBK
Lyn I'm sorry you never got Wing Commander, at the time it was just lightyears ahead of other games. Interactive, cut scenes, story driven campaigns, it was just the best thing ever. And the damn technical manual that came with the game was just so rad. Even if the IP was not. :)
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I don't care much tbh. Wing Commander may have been a precursor, but it paved the way for X-Wing (2 years later only) and Tie Fighter, and then the glorious XWA, so.. And believe me, I have spent hours, years on those as a kid. Even if I actually never finished the two first ones, because they were fucking hardcore (especially X-Wing). I kept playing them again and again. And the IP was still amazing and not tainted by the prelogy yet and all the bullshit that followed. The only things that existed at that time were Zahn's novels and Tales of the Jedi...
Also, it was a time when Lucasarts still actually cared about the games they made. Not only I had the game manuals (old game manuals, the manuals that were already like 50 pages long), but also the little novellas they cared to write and include within the box. They were delicately crafted by what clearly were fans of the lore, presenting everything : a lot of pieces on the lore of the rebellion or the empire, their organization, technical sheet for ships, and little stories. I sitll have them, even if they are literally falling apart. They were like my scriptures when I was a kid because I didn't have the more complete tabletop sourcebooks where they got all their inspiration... What makes me say they cared, it's not so much that since a lot of games had a lot of written stuff included (like the first homeworld, dat huge lorebook), but the little survey that was inserted in the books. The survey was actually asking the players to send it back to them with their answers, asking things like if they liked the story, if they liked the fact that they included a lot of expanded universe references for their fans, if they wanted to see more of that in their future games...
But i'm rambling.
Maybe as backer we could actually go to CIG and tells them what annoys us with the story. We backed their project, and there sure wasnt any lore back then when I did. Not in the first weeks. I never asked for that shit they are serving up. I mean, i'm not actually expecting them to change it, and not a lot more to flesh it out more with deeper stuff, but well... One can only try and it costs nothing.
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I don't care much tbh. Wing Commander may have been a precursor, but it paved the way for X-Wing (2 years later only) and Tie Fighter, and then the glorious XWA, so.. And believe me, I have spent hours, years on those as a kid. Even if I actually never finished the two first ones, because they were fucking hardcore (especially X-Wing). I kept playing them again and again. And the IP was still amazing and not tainted by the prelogy yet and all the bullshit that followed. The only things that existed at that time were Zahn's novels and Tales of the Jedi...
Also, it was a time when Lucasarts still actually cared about the games they made. Not only I had the game manuals (old game manuals, the manuals that were already like 50 pages long), but also the little novellas they cared to write and include within the box. They were delicately crafted by what clearly were fans of the lore, presenting everything : a lot of pieces on the lore of the rebellion or the empire, their organization, technical sheet for ships, and little stories. I sitll have them, even if they are literally falling apart. They were like my scriptures when I was a kid because I didn't have the more complete tabletop sourcebooks where they got all their inspiration... What makes me say they cared, it's not so much that since a lot of games had a lot of written stuff included (like the first homeworld, dat huge lorebook), but the little survey that was inserted in the books. The survey was actually asking the players to send it back to them with their answers, asking things like if they liked the story, if they liked the fact that they included a lot of expanded universe references for their fans, if they wanted to see more of that in their future games...
But i'm rambling.
Maybe as backer we could actually go to CIG and tells them what annoys us with the story. We backed their project, and there sure wasnt any lore back then when I did. Not in the first weeks. I never asked for that shit they are serving up. I mean, i'm not actually expecting them to change it, and not a lot more to flesh it out more with deeper stuff, but well... One can only try and it costs nothing.
There's nothing to stop you from going to CIG's forums and ask them about it. They have a dedicated thread which devs frequent and actually answer questions.
https://forums.robertsspaceindustries.com/discussion/95618/star-citizen-lore#latest
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That'd be exciting. "Guys, why'd you phone in the writing and backstory?"
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I've not been keeping track of lore development. What's happened?
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I should clarify that I don't think the lore is terrible. It's mostly inoffensive. It's just really unimaginative. Space America has to deal with Space Seperatists in an allegory for Space Rome while setting stays as far away from any sort of compelling Sci Fi concept (AI, Transhumanism, Aliens that aren't just basically humans in masks) as possible, etc.
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Yes, exactly.
In any case i'm waiting a lot for Squadron 42 alpha, that should theorically offer a better snapshot of what the feel and the lore really will be. Even now it's rather hard to tell, we may have a certain amount of lore datadump, but we still haven't obviously any hint on the script, scenario, atmosphere, and where they want to go with all that...
I don't care much tbh. Wing Commander may have been a precursor, but it paved the way for X-Wing (2 years later only) and Tie Fighter, and then the glorious XWA, so.. And believe me, I have spent hours, years on those as a kid. Even if I actually never finished the two first ones, because they were fucking hardcore (especially X-Wing). I kept playing them again and again. And the IP was still amazing and not tainted by the prelogy yet and all the bullshit that followed. The only things that existed at that time were Zahn's novels and Tales of the Jedi...
Also, it was a time when Lucasarts still actually cared about the games they made. Not only I had the game manuals (old game manuals, the manuals that were already like 50 pages long), but also the little novellas they cared to write and include within the box. They were delicately crafted by what clearly were fans of the lore, presenting everything : a lot of pieces on the lore of the rebellion or the empire, their organization, technical sheet for ships, and little stories. I sitll have them, even if they are literally falling apart. They were like my scriptures when I was a kid because I didn't have the more complete tabletop sourcebooks where they got all their inspiration... What makes me say they cared, it's not so much that since a lot of games had a lot of written stuff included (like the first homeworld, dat huge lorebook), but the little survey that was inserted in the books. The survey was actually asking the players to send it back to them with their answers, asking things like if they liked the story, if they liked the fact that they included a lot of expanded universe references for their fans, if they wanted to see more of that in their future games...
But i'm rambling.
Maybe as backer we could actually go to CIG and tells them what annoys us with the story. We backed their project, and there sure wasnt any lore back then when I did. Not in the first weeks. I never asked for that shit they are serving up. I mean, i'm not actually expecting them to change it, and not a lot more to flesh it out more with deeper stuff, but well... One can only try and it costs nothing.
There's nothing to stop you from going to CIG's forums and ask them about it. They have a dedicated thread which devs frequent and actually answer questions.
https://forums.robertsspaceindustries.com/discussion/95618/star-citizen-lore#latest
The thing is... I'm still trying to wrap my head around how... well... to ask the question without coming confrontational. :P
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In any case i'm waiting a lot for Squadron 42 alpha, that should theorically offer a better snapshot of what the feel and the lore really will be. Even now it's rather hard to tell, we may have a certain amount of lore datadump, but we still haven't obviously any hint on the script, scenario, atmosphere, and where they want to go with all that...
Actually, Chris Roberts got drunk and spoiled the entire plot.
http://www.blastr.com/2015-3-18/creator-chris-roberts-talks-star-citizen-ambitious-space-sim-steroids
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The worse thing with him is that he got it right when he says everything passes through a believable world and immersion, and then presents his supposedly living and inspiring worlds... He thinks right but has awfully trite/bland tastes.
( And hiring top cinema concept artists ? Plu-ease....)
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( And hiring top cinema concept artists ? Plu-ease....)
Well, they did get the guy who did the computer interface in the Iron Man movies to do the UI for SC...
And Gwen, I remember when you were defending SC's lore to me when I was complaining about it. Apparently you've come around. :P
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The worse thing with him is that he got it right when he says everything passes through a believable world and immersion, and then presents his supposedly living and inspiring worlds... He thinks right but has awfully trite/bland tastes.
( And hiring top cinema concept artists ? Plu-ease....)
In terms of establishing a believable world and coming up with a feel for it though, I think Chris Roberts nailed it pretty well with the ship commercials. The Mustang commercial felt like a Ford Mustang one, the 300i series felt like a Ferrari/McClaren one, and the Freelancer was basically a Dodge truck commercial.
If I'm to speculate, Chris Roberts probably wants to cut down on the outlandish bits in the game world so keep a broad appeal, and let the players come up with the stories for themselves. We can probably hope for a Herko Kerghans figure to emerge from that community.
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Herko Kerghans figure to emerge from that community.
The Herko we deserve.
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And Gwen, I remember when you were defending SC's lore to me when I was complaining about it. Apparently you've come around. :P
We~el, technically, the reasons I don't like SCs setting are pretty different from the ones you offered. You said that there were a lack of distinguishable factions, which isn't true - There are quite a lot of them. They're just all really dull and unremarkable. You also said the setting was a copy of Roman history, which they've actually gone out of their way to avoid overdoing! For instance, they changed the name of the governing body from the "Senate" to "Congress". You see? Inspirational.
In terms of establishing a believable world and coming up with a feel for it though, I think Chris Roberts nailed it pretty well with the ship commercials. The Mustang commercial felt like a Ford Mustang one, the 300i series felt like a Ferrari/McClaren one, and the Freelancer was basically a Dodge truck commercial.
If I'm to speculate, Chris Roberts probably wants to cut down on the outlandish bits in the game world so keep a broad appeal, and let the players come up with the stories for themselves. We can probably hope for a Herko Kerghans figure to emerge from that community.
Chris Roberts has explicitly said he based all the commercials off real life ones, which doesn't exactly strike me as a great sign. Making a believeable sci fi setting and aping the real world as much as possible are almost contradictory in terms - After all, the definition of speculative fiction is that it has to be kinda, y'know, speculative - And I was disapointed to see him resort to a simple appeal to familiarity and nostalgia with the ship commercials when they could have been a platform for some legitimate worldbuilding. They were good advertising for a tongue-in-cheek game I might have a good time in for a few weeks (and I'm sure they'll attract a bunch of fans in the mainstream), but not an immersive universe where I'd be roleplaying for years.
Because making a game a lot like the real world does not make it is a good roleplay setting. After all, I can already roleplay in the real world for free!
And in my experience, if you cut off the outlandish (read: interesting) elements of a setting in order to appease everyone, roleplayers aren't going to magically fill the gap with their own creativity. Roleplayers are inspired and drawn to worlds that will reward their investments in them. It is a struggle to follow a line that the creators don't. That's why you tend to find lots of navel-gazing in settings like Eve or TSW, which have a lot of thought put into them, and not so much in stuff like WoW.
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I'll put a possible counter argument that in some ways,
it might be more fun RP wise to just be, a regular human type smuggler or pirate or truck driver in the future than billionaire-immortal-demigods with a case of ennui.
I'm not sure though. We'll see!
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I'll put a possible counter argument that in some ways,
it might be more fun RP wise to just be, a regular human type smuggler or pirate or truck driver in the future than billionaire-immortal-demigods with a case of ennui.
I'm not sure though. We'll see!
Well, don't get me wrong, here. I've got nothing against roleplaying a regular human. Playing a regular human can be really great - So long as the backdrop is distinctive and interesting, and subsequently puts regular humanity in interesting situations.
I'd love to play a regular human in the Eve universe, for example. However, CCP apparantly can't maintain an erection unless it's constantly stoking the power fantasies of it's playerbase, so that's not paticularly likely to happen.
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I'll put a possible counter argument that in some ways,
it might be more fun RP wise to just be, a regular human type smuggler or pirate or truck driver in the future than billionaire-immortal-demigods with a case of ennui.
I'm not sure though. We'll see!
Well, don't get me wrong, here. I've got nothing against roleplaying a regular human. Playing a regular human can be really great - So long as the backdrop is distinctive and interesting, and subsequently puts regular humanity in interesting situations.
I'd love to play a regular human in the Eve universe, for example. However, CCP apparantly can't maintain an erection unless it's constantly stoking the power fantasies of it's playerbase, so that's not paticularly likely to happen.
I would like to play a baseliner in the Eve Universe. It will be definitely cyberpunk genre with a serious case of spaaaace.
Why doesn't CCP fund a TRPG about being a baseliner in the Eve Universe? The DM is the capsuleer and he is out to make the baseliner miserable, and the miserable has to do stuff to suffer less.
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Those commercials are the exact reflection of their marketing policy and what they try to cater in terms of audience. They want to aim for the most players possible, and a very wide audience. They also make the choice to base their marketing media on real life examples and inspirations, that should be clearly identifiable so that players think "OMG I know this ! It's a like that truck commercial I saw on TV, it really feels palatable and real !". It sure speaks thousand times more than the "you are a demigod in an egg piloting starships of apocalypse and never get out of your wetgrave", to the average joe.
That sucks, but I understand what makes them do so. I just wish they did more than just carbon copycats though, because copycats as said above, are always a bland version of the original. Even when taken into a mish mash of copycats like SC is.
I'll put a possible counter argument that in some ways,
it might be more fun RP wise to just be, a regular human type smuggler or pirate or truck driver in the future than billionaire-immortal-demigods with a case of ennui.
I'm not sure though. We'll see!
That's the only thing that attracts me more with SC's setting than Eve's. I like the demi god idea of Eve, but there is a point where it just doens't work with what players do ingame and how they act. And i'm a bit tired of it anyway, getting back to normal humans feel like... really good.
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I'm drawn to SC because of what the game (still hypothetically) would allow me to do based on the options presented. I started off thinking I could be a close support fighter pilot, only to realize in Arena Commander that I'm an absolute shitshow compared to the nerds who have been exclusively playing Falcon 3.0 for 10 years.
Now, in the group I hang with in SC I've registered myself as a Starfarer pilot (to haul fuel and refuel the hotshots) and to be a Marine, and my contributions will be just as valued (if not more) because I'd be filling a niche which few people are gunning for. It's a lot like Eve in that respect, except it doesn't have a crappy console shooter.
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Yes, I think a lot of us are attracted by the game precisely because of all of this.
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https://forums.robertsspaceindustries.com/categories/star-citizen-role-play
RP forums activate!
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Ok,
All I gotta say is I joined a free-flight (sort of an open world game session you can fly around with no enemies and just practice landing and zooming around) session with a friend last night, and we had an awesome time.
Landing on the space landing platform, figuring out how to get in and out of our ships, EVAing over to the partner's ship through space, amazing visuals like, my ship piloted by my friend hovering above the landing platform, i jump off of the platform and EVA towards the ship in zero G, and then he spins the ship on its axis so the 'top' of the ship is pointing down towards the landing platform, then getting into the turret, flying around and pew pewing other people. Also lots of hijinks and laughter with the game bugs, some unexpected self-destruct sequences blowing up people on the landing platform, it was all super, super awesome. Even got surprised walking back to my loading ramp of my Cutlass by someone who had boarded my ship (with no ill intent just poking around), and I reflexively pulled out my handgun and popped him without even thinking.
It's still buggy as hell, but good lord that was fun.
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Much happening:
Design post for 'cargo interaction.' Instead of just using a menue to load x tons of tungsten on your ship, there will be a pretty high level of actually loading the ship with cranes or personally putting things in containers.
https://robertsspaceindustries.com/comm-link/engineering/14677-Design-Cargo-Interaction
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New ship line released, and $80million reached yesterday in funding.
https://robertsspaceindustries.com/comm-link/transmission/14661-A-Hull-For-Every-Job-The-MISC-Hull-Series
I hate the look of the MIS ships personally, I like the bulky, ORION, for my space hauling preferences, but still a clever system.
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While I love most of how the actual gameplay looks, I'm getting sort of worried by how much they're fleshing out every little thing, when they should really be focusing on actually making the core game functional. With how much the dates have been pushed back already, it seems like it might suffocate on it's own ambition.
The upper management seems to have a disturbing amount of dreamers versus pragamtists.
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While I love most of how the actual gameplay looks, I'm getting sort of worried by how much they're fleshing out every little thing, when they should really be focusing on actually making the core game functional. With how much the dates have been pushed back already, it seems like it might suffocate on it's own ambition.
The upper management seems to have a disturbing amount of dreamers versus pragamtists.
Can you elaborate? Some of these features are very much 'core game' though?
They've chopped up a lot of things among different studios. So the guys in london are ONLY doing the single player campaign, the guys in Austin are basically ONLY working on the MMO universe and gameplay, the FPS studio is the one working on pew pew on foot, etc. They do have to poach from each other when they have deadline crunshes, but for the most part the guys doing the FPS aren't disturbed by the guys doing ship designs.
But yes they have a lot to do. It's a strange time right now because some of the pieces are really starting to come together but its agonizingly slow.
I would agree they they should STOP making new ships right now. Just stop, and finish working on the backlog they have of 30 ships or whatever that aren't flyable yet. It's getting ridiculous. They have a lot of phase 1 ships that aren't even in the hangar yet to look at.
I understand that every time they announce a new ship they make another $5million or whatever, but they can't make them fast enough to not add more backlog. Finish the existing ships while rest of team finishes the game. Launch the game and keep the ship makers working constantly on new ships and making money for the company there.
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Oh, Iteron series.
I think that's the risk when you don't work for a publisher pushing you with milestones and deadlines, added to the fact that as opposed to most kickstarters where budgets are tight, they literally swim in money right now.
Also, grabbyhands.
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Much happening:
Design post for 'cargo interaction.' Instead of just using a menue to load x tons of tungsten on your ship, there will be a pretty high level of actually loading the ship with cranes or personally putting things in containers.
https://robertsspaceindustries.com/comm-link/engineering/14677-Design-Cargo-Interaction
Forklift simulator in space !
wait, what? :s
that kind of seems a bit, well, how to phrase it.
"I work all day at a warehouse driving a forklift, and in my spare time, I drive a virtual forklift..."
It's work, in a game. Sure, immersion, but still...
that's what loadmasters and other crewmembers are for.
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Well it's good and immersive, but I hope of course that your hired crew will do that for you. I don't see why they wouldn't..
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I think the point is to have the fidelity in there so it's more of a living breathing world. You might not want to load cargo with a crane, but seeing your NPC and station crew in the background loading cargo, packing pallets, that is just pure gold for me.
Also they are doing a lot of this for smuggling purposes. Being able to individually stack your crates or fill one of them with illegal firearms in the back, you can do that.
Also the mass and position of the crates will effect your ship flight model. Stack 100 tons of weight on one far end of the ship and have fun with your new center of mass and thruster output, etc.
It's the kind of shit I want to see in EVE when I dock my freighter or whatever. People loading things, things happening in the background, activity for a living world.
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Neato ship size chart
http://i.imgur.com/6VHThm0.jpg
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While I love most of how the actual gameplay looks, I'm getting sort of worried by how much they're fleshing out every little thing, when they should really be focusing on actually making the core game functional. With how much the dates have been pushed back already, it seems like it might suffocate on it's own ambition.
The upper management seems to have a disturbing amount of dreamers versus pragamtists.
Can you elaborate? Some of these features are very much 'core game' though?
They've chopped up a lot of things among different studios. So the guys in london are ONLY doing the single player campaign, the guys in Austin are basically ONLY working on the MMO universe and gameplay, the FPS studio is the one working on pew pew on foot, etc. They do have to poach from each other when they have deadline crunshes, but for the most part the guys doing the FPS aren't disturbed by the guys doing ship designs.
But yes they have a lot to do. It's a strange time right now because some of the pieces are really starting to come together but its agonizingly slow.
I would agree they they should STOP making new ships right now. Just stop, and finish working on the backlog they have of 30 ships or whatever that aren't flyable yet. It's getting ridiculous. They have a lot of phase 1 ships that aren't even in the hangar yet to look at.
I understand that every time they announce a new ship they make another $5million or whatever, but they can't make them fast enough to not add more backlog. Finish the existing ships while rest of team finishes the game. Launch the game and keep the ship makers working constantly on new ships and making money for the company there.
I meant stuff like this cargo packing thing. Why have such a complex system for it, when a basic interface would suffice just as well? There's no point for all this complexity.
Also, I understand they have promised to stop selling ships when the game has launched.
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Ah yes, very clever... If it means stoping to sell new ships, better financially for them to wait and keep selling ships rather than release the game and continue to work on ships that are not paid for anymore...
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I meant stuff like this cargo packing thing. Why have such a complex system for it, when a basic interface would suffice just as well? There's no point for all this complexity.
Also, I understand they have promised to stop selling ships when the game has launched.
Maybe more like Minecraft, they'll make the sandbox and people will find ways to use the tools? *shrug*
I 100% don't believe they will ever turn off that money faucet. Too lucrative
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Awesome,
our first taste of mission scripting with the new 'tutorial' flight school.
Very cool!
https://youtu.be/g8cpHypave8?t=4m23s
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A lot of memories from old space sims came up suddenly.
I have to admit that I giggled like a kid at the (obvious!) self destruct.
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Sooooo... I'm beginning to come into myself as a fighter pilot.
Several nights ago, I found myself in my mustang delta. The ship is nimble, and dangerous, but the designers gave it layered tissue paper for armor, and saran wrap for a transparent cockpit enclosure. Despite all of the lack of foresight, the designers gave it four weapon mounts and two large rocket pods.
Not as fast, nor as dangerous as any of the main line combat ships, I had to outsmart my targets. Attacking those not paying attention to me, and weaving through asteroids and space debris for those paying attention to me. I ended the night with a neutral K/D ratio. Putting guns on targets already engaged, running from targets engaging me (and causing them to crash into debris on the way to maim me, for which, I receive no points)
Tonight I entered squadron battle (team vs team) in my recently acquired Gladius. Two super hornets spawned on the other side of the arena. They were not as fast or nimble as me, but with more, and much bigger guns. Not being able to engage either of them in a head on fight, and neither of them wanted to play dogfight, so I had to draw them into a pocket of asteroids, where I used their lack of maneuverability and situational awareness to my advantage. Should one of them hit a rock, I'd launch missiles at him while he spun out of control. Should the second one get a firing angle on me, I'd violently change direction, and launch more missiles at him.
After all was said and done, I died four times, got three kills, yet somehow managed to win the points game.
This is seriously the most fun in a spaceship game I've ever had, and I don't know why all of you arn't playing it right now.
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This is seriously the most fun in a spaceship game I've ever had, and I don't know why all of you arn't playing it right now.
Because the severs are down 50% of the time, it's completely unoptimized for any machine that doesn't have RAM leaking out of it's ears, it's near-impossible to actually play with your friends, the flight model routinely glitches out, and even if everything else goes right the balancing is completely screwed, with Superhornets able to kill basically anybody with way less difficulty...?
I mean, I'm not trying to spoil your fun, but let's not drink the cool-aid, here. At present, there are plenty of games you could pick up for less money that would provide a similar and much less buggy experience, even if they didn't look quite as pretty.
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Because the severs are down 50% of the time,
That's hyperbole. I haven't encountered any serious server down time, and I play a few hours a day, nearly every day.
it's completely unoptimized for any machine that doesn't have RAM leaking out of it's ears,
I don't disagree with that. I've got 16g of ram, and I've heard that is a lot.
it's near-impossible to actually play with your friends,
I fly with my friends every night. The only problem we experience is that some times one of us gets dropped during boot up. Exit, rejoin, load, play!
the flight model routinely glitches out,
I pretty much just fly the Mustang series and Gladius, I have no idea how the other ships fly. The only time I have flight glitches is when I loose engines, wings, thrusters due to collisions--with rocks, lasers, and missiles.
and even if everything else goes right the balancing is completely screwed, with Superhornets able to kill basically anybody with way less difficulty...?
I bagged three of them tonight. I've seen the gladiator easily take out super hornets with those absurd size 5 missiles. M50s do a great job of chewing them up, bit by bit as well. Yes, it requires more skill, but I welcome the practice.
Now that you can rent any weapon, or ship, the game is on its way to balance. If you don't like loosing to those Super Hornets, rent one of your own. I can tell you though, it isn't a fun ship to fly. Furthermore, it doesn't stack up to a skilled m50 or gladius pilot. In fact, the top three guys on the battle royale leader board fly ships other then the Super Hornet.
Not perfect, not by any means, but a blast to play none the less.
I mean, I'm not trying to spoil your fun,
Don't hate. ;)
but let's no drink the cool-aid, here.
Why not? Its delicious and sweetened with cane sugar. Fly on my wing and I'll provide the red solo cup.
At present, there are plenty of games you could pick up for less money that would provide a similar and much less buggy experience, even if they didn't look quite as pretty.
I would have to disagree.
I haven't found any great flying/racing games, outside of that arcade game by midway--Hyperdrive? and F-Zero GT.
I got about 10 hours into X rebirth and couldn't continue playing. There wasn't any real art to the dog fighting. No clever maneuvers to cause unattentive enemies to crash into space junk.
Though fun, Ace combat is a bit to arcade-y to keep my attention, and I can't play it with my friends in SPAAAAAAAAAACE
I'd love to play Elite, but everything I've seen of it is so watered down in comparison to star citizen. And the entry fee is 45 bucks.
I guess what I'm saying is, for 5 bucks its a great value (arena commander pass, and free fly weekend. You can still earn REC and your rentals only tick down in time when you use them) Give star citizen a shot every few weeks, they are always upgrading and updating it. And if you still don't like it, you've only lost five bucks.
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I've pledged like $250 to the game, dude. I'm criticizing it not because I don't like it in concept, but because it is seriously kind of crazy to be calling it the best game ever at this point. That kind of culture is what's led to it's staggering and still growing feature-creep that could result in it becoming a mess, like so many other projects that have swallowed their own hype to the point they've drowned on it.
Did you miss the massive server issues that caused like a week of downtime just recently, and the persistant lesser ones that were messing up matches routinely before that? And is still not fully fixed now? Have you not been hearing about the huge netcode issues that are still afflicting a ton of people even at this point? Have you not seen the Youtube videos of peoples ships skirting the edges of asteroids and then crumbling into bits randomly?
There are some serious problems with some of the fundmental aspects of the game that the developers haven't managed to fix in well over a year - And that's worrying, especially since what's currently playable is basically just a tech demo. If they can't get this stuff down in that long in a very small, deathmatch environment, how are they going to make it work out in an MMO? These are questions we should seriously be asking if we ever want to see any sort of actual working product within now and the next 10 years.
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I find your lack of faith...disturbing :yar:
Valid criticism, but I think the truth is somewhere between you and davien.
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Why I am not playing it ? I guess, lack of time, other things to do in that spare time, and also, have to spend a lot of time actually configuring the controllers and the hardware (I can run the game decently, but the cpu/core hardware is still aging), and also if I didn't have to re download 25 Gb of data everytime they update the thing... It takes me 5 full nights to do so.
So usually when I find the time I hop on the game to test a few things, take a look, and that's it. That and their loading times are huuuuge. Maybe the aging core hardware and RAM though, but it was still top end RAM (12Gb), so, a bit disturbing still... That and I run it on a SSD too ! It should load a lot faster, even if I understand that it's cry engine and a resource intensive game...
I have pledged quite a lot (to my standards, like 250-300$ or something, with an early backer pledge as well), so I'm counting a lot on the game and would be rather disappointed if something went wrong with it.
But yeah currently, I really like the flight model (have yet to find glitches but I have only tried it with basic keyboard control, so half tried it would be closer to the truth). I seriously dislike their gimbal things and it really hampers my willingness to hop into pvp games right now. That and the fact that it looks all but balanced (which can be understandable since it's an alpha), but I'm a stick user and will certainly not like the fact that gimbals especially make it a lot easier to people with keyboard and mouse.
That, is the main gripe I have with the game, and since I already have another flight sim that is for now way above SC to my eyes, then I usually use my free time to play War Thunder instead for now.
No gimbals for me, thanks. Unless they downgrade the weapons you can put on gimbals or you can replace them by bigger guns.
Edit : for now i'm a lot more interested in co-op since it doesn't face nearly as much as the same issues I listed above...
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FYI Lyn,
If you use a gimbal you are forced to use -1 size weapon. So a slot for a size 3 gun, if you use a gimbal you can only use size 2.
This will eventually be usefull when they stop making some of the size 1 and 2 weapons the strongest in the game :P
Balancing is always way behind on these releases; they haven't implemented real ship armor yet as a modifier, which will have a completely different role than shields and which weapons effect them. You'll probably be using a combination of ballistic and energy weapons in the final game if you want to be successful. They are also about to implement the 'physics' based weapon modeling, so instead of just saying the Omni 6 does 'x' energy damage, they will give the laser bolt a velocity and a mass, and that will interact with your ship velocity/mass/etc to compute a result. Will be great for modeling damage from ballistics and everything else.
I'd also not worry too much about Arena Commander being impossibly unbalanced, it's a small arena with instant respawning for fighter ships to dogfight, in the MMO you won't get respawns, space is huge, and choosing to fight someone will have consequences.
If you're out in the middle of nowhere exploring in space or mining or whatever, you aren't likely to run into a bunch of tiny fighters far from home who don't have enough fuel to make it home, let alone come after you without support.
This game is going to change fundamentally in a month or two when the bigger ships start being involved. The way ship HP is right now fighters are just going to be shredded by these massive ships draped with large turrets. All these excellent fighter pilots in their tiny ships are going to be obliterated by dedicated ship crews of gunners who know their stuff.
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Oh, I thought the weapon size reduction if you use a gimbal was just an idea they had, and not an actual implemented feature... I also thought gimbal slots were for gimbals and not fixed weapons.
Well that's already better. As long as gimbals don't get the upper hand over the advantage given by fixed weapons, i'm fine (which is not the case atm if size 1 and 2 are the best).
For huge ships with gunners, what you are essentially telling me, is that added to the fact that small fighters range will be very limited, they will also get shredded to pieces by bigger ships ? What's the point of small ships then ?
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Oh, I thought the weapon size reduction if you use a gimbal was just an idea they had, and not an actual implemented feature... I also thought gimbal slots were for gimbals and not fixed weapons.
Well that's already better. As long as gimbals don't get the upper hand over the advantage given by fixed weapons, i'm fine (which is not the case atm if size 1 and 2 are the best).
For huge ships with gunners, what you are essentially telling me, is that added to the fact that small fighters range will be very limited, they will also get shredded to pieces by bigger ships ? What's the point of small ships then ?
It's not quite so straight forward,
What I mean is that very good solo dogfighters that are kicking ass in AC will not necessarily be deadly against larger ships. Right now in AC it is hard to imagine anything else because the fast good fighters often kill everyone.
Fighters are going to be great for a lot of things. Recon, command and control systems (some of the fighters will have dedicated tactical equipment to relay battle info to larger ships), Killing other fighters and defending larger ships from attacks, and escorting bombers especially.
The thing with the turrets is they can still be destroyed, some of them are more point defense for torpedoes, but yes a lot of them will be able to hurt fighters very badly.
If you are launching torpedo ships against a capital ship, you probably still need fighters to kill the bombers, and fighters to kill the fighters protecting the bombers.
If you are under attack by pirates, you can definitely use local fighters to come help, etc.
Ship range we don't know enough about yet, but they've been very vocal about some ship varieties being able to do long range work, compared to many other ships not being able to do so. So something small like a regular Mustang will not be flying across 3 jump points to pew pew your cargo ship, but one based out of a nearby asteroid hangar might be waiting for you when you arrive in system.
I think their sort of rule of thumb design goal was that something like a constellation (a trading/exploring ship roughly about the size of the millenium falcon) would be able to handle 3 or 4 hornet fighters by itself. I think that ship has 3 or 4 turrets.
Based on the size of those guns and how much they currently hurt things in AC that seems about right, if more than one turret got a good bead on you they could pop you pretty fast.
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@ Gwen (and a few of you still reading this thread)
New PTU patch they finally, finally started optimizing load times. So hangar to flying is like 15 seconds on this clip instead of the usual 2 minutes of hell. yay!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f01rly0cGto&feature=youtu.be
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Well, that's fortunate... That's great, I just have to download 1Gb instead of the usual 25...
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The file sizes are absolutely too big they don't spend any time trimming things down. There was some thing a while back about the final game probably being like 100gigs or something. Prepare thy hard drive. I'm going to get a new ssd just for this probably (along with all the other upgrades I need :(
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I meant, I am actually happy this time it's just 1Gb and not the whole 25... And very glad to hear about the loading times, they were hell.
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Some funny recent drama:
One of the pitfalls of open development is that stuff gets out to the public sometimes way before it should...
One of the CIG community guys was showing a picture on the forums and it accidentally showed a tiny portion of URL in the corner of the monitor in the picture.
Turns out the URL was a partial CDN, hosting the entire internal build of the game. Unprotected, open access from outside CDN. So a ton of people very quickly went to the address and snatched up about 40 gigs of game files. All of the in development ships, the current build for the FPS, a ton of stuff!
Big flaming war on the forums about trying to not spread the files, etc, vs people poking around at unreleased game assets, animations, scripts, etc.
It's not a huge deal since all this stuff will be released soon anyway, but what a story :)
http://www.reddit.com/r/starcitizen/comments/36xliv/disco_lando_showing_some_star_marine_stuff/
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pOiLHCpJ39g
Nice little leaked video with the current in progress version of the Augmented Reality heads up display. This will be the 'in game' thing you use for messaging/mail/shopping/inventory management.
They are going to have different models kitted for different things (pew pew, medical, etc) giving you different things to see via your heads up display.
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Annnd your monthly progress report. Snazzy.
https://robertsspaceindustries.com/comm-link/transmission/14758-Monthly-Report-May
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The game engine really does shine at this point, a great look at one of the newer ships in HD
We get a full camera / film making interphase eventually..
Also they are introducing a 'news van' game play component, with dedicated ships designed for broadcasting events. So you and your buddies could totally be the space news team reporting from the front lines. NEAT.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RfYMbvLonro
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Some new things here, our first animatics for some of the player capital ships pew pewing a bit, and a good look at some of the Mocap work going on right now in London:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uXpJmxleflw
I imagine quite a pain in the ass they have to build out 1km worth of interior space on the damn ship for you to walk around :/
(http://i.imgur.com/27dectk.gif)
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CR really has a hardon for BSG...
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CR really has a hardon for BSG...
Not seeing it :P
This is too generic if anything. At least the alien capital and other ships are starting to look really really neat. All knives and asymmetric.
It's very WWII in space right now, but then again so was all of Wing Commander. It's always been my biggest criticism of the game so far is most of the human ships just look -boring-. There's a huge lack of iconic shapes and interesting silhouettes. Most first generation EVE ships were all iconic IMO.
Of course part of that problem is they have to make the whole ship so you can walk and use all the parts inside, so functional rams into 'neat looking' right away.
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I want this to work out so badly...
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Just the pic you linked reminded me of BSG... Though that carrier and the hangars and the pilots and the fighters reminded me of BSG the first time they showed them years ago. It's the perfect ripoff, the battlestar galactica with its lot of vipers...
He also have a hardon for pseudo jet fighters in space too... Not really my thing, although some of them are pretty nice and maybe are the few ones with noticeables shapes as you say (like the Origin, or the iconic hornet... I mean, the hornet almost looks like to be out of another game, more starwars-ey/wing commander).
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My problem is most of the fighters are being designed to look like they have to fly aerodynamically in atmosphere. I don't mind that at all for some of the ships, but most of these ships will be pew pewing in spaaaaaace we don't need aeroplane wings and jet fighter cockpits.
They do a better job with the multi-crew ships, which have artificial gravity and don't look nearly as jet fighter-y.
Also I've noticed a trend that the last few iterations of new ships are indeed getting further and further from the WWII space plane designs. They are outsourcing a lot of the newer ships to contract artists who are putting their own spin on things. We're getting more sci fi weird alien stuff and flat out Robotech stuff, it's just a crazy mishmash of aesthetics, I don't know it it will be a neat living world or a horrible blender of random.
(http://i.imgur.com/ukxX1Fzl.png)
(http://www.semperdanica.dk/images/imported/2014/06/Scout_ship_Variation_05-1.jpg)
(http://massivelyop.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/03/sc-newship-epl-330-860x280.jpg)
(http://i57.servimg.com/u/f57/18/50/50/54/screen43.jpg)
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That last one looks like a Moa.
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That last one looks like a Moa.
:)
They should have tracked down and found whoever did the first few years of EVE ships, christ those were iconic and wonderful.
Imagine giving those guys millions of poly counts and stupid amount of time to design full sized ships.
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Multi-crew ships look pretty much shit in my opinion...
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Multi-crew ships look pretty much shit in my opinion...
Aww really? I'm really liking a lot of the last round or two, the Orion and Reclaimer specifically:
(http://i.imgur.com/Cobu7lj.gif)
(http://www.otakustudy.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/Image002-1.jpg)
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Yeah, well, those BIG ones are nice.
Not the gunboats, I mean... And definitely not the military capital assets... Yuck.
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God damn it. Spin cancellation: you're doing it wrong. /o\
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God damn it. Spin cancellation: you're doing it wrong. /o\
Physics does not exist in this dojo (only when they want it to).
Those big spinning boxes are cargo containers, they rotate for visual flair, but mostly to rotate a cargo box to the right position to be loaded or unloaded.
They've actually got a pretty neat unified cargo system in the game, with sizes and containers and such. The 'fidelity' is pretty rad; you could open up that crate, physically stuff it full of things in first person view (guns, boxes, people, etc), close it up and put it on the ship for transport. Or for the larger cargo ships use the UI to do mass loading/unloading.
They are making it pretty robust so you are actually physically shipping the stuff from A to B, making a lot of the thieving or space trucker gameplay a bit more immersive.
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On another note I will fully admit I am at the absolute NADIR of excitement for this game. There hasn't been a worthwhile update in mooonths.
With CR in London directing the mocap shoot it looks like he's not around to crack the whip on the updates. The FPS is -several- months behind right now while they are desperately trying to get netcode issues resolved.
I know all the glory is on the way eventually but we really are at the moses in the desert wandering portion of the story right now.
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Updated ship status chart:
They are up to about 100 ships in the pipe, things keep on movin'.
https://forums.robertsspaceindustries.com/discussion/272231/ship-status
Big 10fc today, lots of stufF:
http://imperialnews.network/2015/07/10-chairman-episode-60/
They will have some big stuff for gamescon in Cologne in a few weeks
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Well, judging from that chart, they have not much ready yet...
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Well, judging from that chart, they have not much ready yet...
Patience Padawan :)
Remember even the single seat ships are like 300,000 polys, the capitals are like 8 million. Lots of modeling.
CR doubled down on latest letter, telling anyone criticizing feature creep to take a hike, it was refreshing:
https://robertsspaceindustries.com/comm-link/transmission/14839-Letter-From-The-Chairman
"You all know that already; you’ve lived that. You’ve seen Star Citizen evolve and start to come together. You’ve watched our atoms form molecules, our modules form a real, playable game (that you can boot up and play today!). There are people out there who are going to tell you that this is all a BAD THING. That it’s ‘feature creep’ and we should make a smaller, less impressive game for the sake of having it out more quickly or in order to meet artificial deadlines. Now I’ll answer those claims in one word: Bullshit!
Star Citizen matters BECAUSE it is big, because it is a bold dream. It is something everyone else is scared to try. You didn’t back Star Citizen because you want what you’ve seen before. You’re here and reading this because we are willing to go big, to do the things that terrify publishers. You’ve trusted us with your money so we can build a game, not line our pockets. And we sure as hell didn’t run this campaign so we could put that money in the bank, guarantee ourselves a profit and turn out some flimsy replica of a game I’ve made before. You went all in supporting us and we’ve gone all in making the game. Is Star Citizen today a bigger goal than I imagined in 2012? Absolutely. Is that a bad thing? Absolutely not: it’s the whole damn point."
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Yes, it takes a lot of resources to do all those ships. Believe me, I know more than most people...
That's what annoys me a bit. We already had that conversation above, but they keep adding and adding and adding new ship concepts while not even finishing up the first ones, when they already have a working core of ships and could be focusing on other stuff like world modeling and actually tackling the MMO part of their game.
Who cares if there is 50 less shiney ships for now ? They can add them later...
But it wouldn't bring them the constant flux of money they get from people buying them right now.
No, i'm not spitting on the method used, far from it. But when are they going to end eventually?
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Yes, it takes a lot of resources to do all those ships. Believe me, I know more than most people...
That's what annoys me a bit. We already had that conversation above, but they keep adding and adding and adding new ship concepts while not even finishing up the first ones, when they already have a working core of ships and could be focusing on other stuff like world modeling and actually tackling the MMO part of their game.
Who cares if there is 50 less shiney ships for now ? They can add them later...
But it wouldn't bring them the constant flux of money they get from people buying them right now.
No, i'm not spitting on the method used, far from it. But when are they going to end eventually?
Half agree with you :)
Different people on different groups though, the ship modelers and texturers aren't the same types of employees as the MMO programmers, different studios in different parts of the world.
A lot of the ships are contained in the single player studio who need 'x' ships complete for the single player campaign so those are the priority for them, the multiplayer ships are dragging behind I do agree. It gets annoying when you bought 'x' ship they haven't finished yet and hey NEW SHIP YOU CAN BUY, it gets people frustrated. But they say the concept artist teams are not the modeling teams aka MORE MONIES
So yea they are just generating a huge backlog of ships they have to get to with only x available modelers for it right now. The ship 'pipeline' has been completely reworked though so they are coming out faster than they were, now that they figured out all of the damage systems and weapon sizing standards (the older ships were all custom parts and it took forever).
Most of the single-seat ships are already flyable, many of the multi crew ones will be ready for Arena Commander 2.0 which should be out a few weeks after gamescon.
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I don't think that concept artists are indeed modelers, texturers, or anything 3D related. I get that, but I also know that like all studios they will shift resources as required, meaning 3D artists in our case, and they could perfectly divert a part of them to the MMO part.
Mh, I forgot about the requirements for the single player campaign though... That sounds reasonable and inevitable.
Excuses accepted commander. For now.
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I don't think that concept artists are indeed modelers, texturers, or anything 3D related. I get that, but I also know that like all studios they will shift resources as required, meaning 3D artists in our case, and they could perfectly divert a part of them to the MMO part.
Mh, I forgot about the requirements for the single player campaign though... That sounds reasonable and inevitable.
Excuses accepted commander. For now.
I'm not accepting them!!! We should be critical all the way :)
gamescon is the test. multi crew, 2,700 km arena space with a few planets showing new 64 bit positional tech.
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First big Arena Commander patch in a few months today, some new ships and huge balance pass. HP has been doubled or tripled for most ships, a welcome addition.
https://www.reddit.com/r/starcitizen/comments/3egio2/115_publish_to_live_downtime_at_12pm_cdt5pm_gmt/
UPCOMING:
Gamescon in two weeks:
Multicrew and Large Map Demo - they will be showing a few people flying in a ship together, using warp drive across a system, EVA to derelict ship, powering up derelict ship and flying that one, all on same engine.
Week or two after Gameson: FPS module
Few weeks after that: Multicrew module, finally, finally, finally pew pew each other with multicrew ships, which is the only reason I bought the damned game. Taking FOREVER.
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Nice updates on FPS module, videos below:
https://robertsspaceindustries.com/comm-link/transmission/14857-Star-Marine-Status-Update
https://player.vimeo.com/video/134447800
https://player.vimeo.com/video/134444945
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Hilarious. Absolutely hilarious!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gf31MzNgnNk&feature=youtu.be
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So this happened. https://youtu.be/4xSOzEWsHOs
So impressed. Live demo of the multi-crew gameplay today at Gamescon. Think of the adventures you and your buddies are going to have. Amazing!
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So this happened. https://youtu.be/4xSOzEWsHOs
So impressed. Live demo of the multi-crew gameplay today at Gamescon. Think of the adventures you and your buddies are going to have. Amazing!
http://store.steampowered.com/app/244850/
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What about it?
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That looks shiny and beautiful.
Although their video montage and storyboard is very messed up... I had a hard time getting all the pieces and POVs together and understanding who was who, doing what, and against who... And that corvette cockpit UI looks like a mess taking all screen space...
Now they have the bone and marrow of the system, I really hope they start tacking the MMO part issue. I don't want them to rush it of course, but I see them continuing to add new ship concepts... Start concepting for the MMO part already damnit! So many ship concepts already, the modelers are straggling way behind...
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Now they have the bone and marrow of the system, I really hope they start tacking the MMO part issue. I don't want them to rush it of course, but I see them continuing to add new ship concepts... Start concepting for the MMO part already damnit! So many ship concepts already, the modelers are straggling way behind...
Aye! The first release for the 'mmo' module is next month, will feature the first 'landing area' planetside with a few of the basic mmo interaction setups and I think some rudimentary shops and social areas.
The 'warp speed' you saw in the trailer was a big milestone for them because the whole demo was on one large 'grid' if you will, which is new for them.
Anyway extremely pleased with what is being shown, my only big big doubt right now:
1. Instancing and Latency: There's a lot going on and they haven't really spoken in detail about instance limiting and how they will handle big battles. A lot of people (including me) are going to be disappointed unless they can get a handle on this and get large battles working.
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I don't care at all for large battles, it only leads to eve-like clusterfucks and spilled toyboxes, but I think we already talked about that somewhere else, possibly in this thread... But I can get why people would love to see some in the game. I would personally be fine with up to 20-50 players max, and that would already be something. Or, more precisely, 20-50 ships... Which could include hundreds of players with multicrew.
I also didn't miss and noticed their warp transitions. Curious to see how they will handle interdiction technology (scramblers like in eve, cruise interception like elite, or else...).
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Aye! The first release for the 'mmo' module is next month, will feature the first 'landing area' planetside with a few of the basic mmo interaction setups and I think some rudimentary shops and social areas.
So we should expect it beginning of next year then?
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Aye! The first release for the 'mmo' module is next month, will feature the first 'landing area' planetside with a few of the basic mmo interaction setups and I think some rudimentary shops and social areas.
So we should expect it beginning of next year then?
2025 if we are gracious enough and dump more money on them :p
Admit I've been sceptical of all schedules lately but next month or two will be a lot of big features out.
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I don't care at all for large battles, it only leads to eve-like clusterfucks and spilled toyboxes, but I think we already talked about that somewhere else, possibly in this thread... But I can get why people would love to see some in the game. I would personally be fine with up to 20-50 players max, and that would already be something. Or, more precisely, 20-50 ships... Which could include hundreds of players with multicrew.
I also didn't miss and noticed their warp transitions. Curious to see how they will handle interdiction technology (scramblers like in eve, cruise interception like elite, or else...).
50-100 ships will realisticly be an upper limit I think they've mentioned, depending how the instancing works. After a certain distance you would see a ship on radar but it wouldn't be in your local instance if that makes sense. Sort of zones within zones that you travel through. The people on the deck of your ship in one zone, the ship is another, fighting 10 ships another, the orbit of the planet another, all nested.
Interdiction is more like 'aligning' to warp for the big ships, with a countdown of sorts, and from what they've said a lot of the power management gameplay is useful here, having to choose between more power to engines to gtfo faster or more power to Shields and weapons, etc.
The UI for the engine and shield control is still awful I think..... Their UI has generally been pretty bad so far imo but we'll see!!
ALSO, did you all see the Saitek/Madcatz announcement? They are making some star citizen hotas and keyboards, mouse stuff. Based on the current nice Saitek with like an analog thumbstick and an oled screen on the stick
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I eventually registered on the RP community forum... Not sure where it will lead me, and if I actually will try to participate or just stalk a bit for now...
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I usually shy away from forum RP unless I can do things in-game to effect it, also want to wait until more of the game is fleshed out, but let me know how it goes!
Also Lyn they did demo the 'social module' parts at the presentation, you can find links to the vids here:
https://robertsspaceindustries.com/comm-link/transmission/14891-Gamescom-Wrap-Up
also it will be out this month not next month, hahaha i don't believe it but we'll see :)
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It shows it's still in alpha. Almost no sound, no life, no NPC interaction (which is more problematic for this one if it's supposed to be a social module...).
But the main frame is looking good.
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It shows it's still in alpha. Almost no sound, no life, no NPC interaction (which is more problematic for this one if it's supposed to be a social module...).
But the main frame is looking good.
NPC interaction will probably take a while, that's one of the things they're investing pretty heavily in the tech for. The main goal at the moment is to give people a place to hang out and talk with other players. It will lead into being able to invite people to visit your hangar so you can show off ships and what not.
I've done a pretty good job of not paying much attention to SC for the last several months, but the gamescom videos (and my new video card) have me itching to reinstall and see how it runs.
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The new launcher is finally out, so new patches will only download the 'different' files instead of all 10 gigs over again each patch (finally).
Delete everything and do a clean install though!
'Social' module out before next two weeks
Arena Commander 2.0 and the FPS hopefully right after...
My Cutlass is still a neglected steaming pile of shit until they get a real balance pass and finish reworking it.. :/
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The new launcher is finally out, so new patches will only download the 'different' files instead of all 10 gigs over again each patch (finally).
Delete everything and do a clean install though!
'Social' module out before next two weeks
Arena Commander 2.0 and the FPS hopefully right after...
My Cutlass is still a neglected steaming pile of shit until they get a real balance pass and finish reworking it.. :/
Yeah, it's always going to be a multi-role ship that can't compete terribly well with straight-up fighters. But you can't really transport stolen goods commodities or boarding parties salvage and repair crews in a hornet.
I should take a look at grey market prices and see if it's worth unloading a couple ships, recoup some of my rather exuberant investment in this game.
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First invites are currently going out for the Social module alpha PTU, if you've logged in to AC over the last few days (or soon) you'll be higher on the list.
It's a little demo area of one of the planetside landing zones, about 1/3 of the map they are letting you walk around now, check out some stores, emote etc.
Super early but networking can do about 50 in one instance with plans to upgrade soon etc.
Other landing zones and the rest of this one will be out in a few batches over the next two months or so. This one is one of the corp-worlds i think the next one is the blade-runner/net runner pirate areas.
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Behold! https://youtu.be/7PuTXW1T9f0?t=5m4s
Very much progress!!!!!
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Two things:
Social Module release today for everyone!
Vanguard Variants on sale today as well: The price is a damned insult for a effing FIGHTER. But that is a pretty sexy ship. I like that Aegis is the more 'anime' ship manufacturer that lives in the same universe as all the others.
https://robertsspaceindustries.com/comm-link/transmission/14915-Vanguards-And-Then-There-Were-Three
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I know it's more SC posting today but lots of new stuff released today:
https://robertsspaceindustries.com/comm-link/transmission/14927-Welcome-To-ArcCorp-Star-Citizen-12-Released
and one of the space mining stations good lord this game gonna have legs. That's all in engine but looks very WIP with the textures for the buildings, etc.
https://vimeo.com/137655209
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That landing vid looks nice and all, but I have to admit that I don't have the patience here to read every time their walls of text... Is there anything important of note inside on the persistant world ?
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That landing vid looks nice and all, but I have to admit that I don't have the patience here to read every time their walls of text... Is there anything important of note inside on the persistant world ?
Just outlines the current release and the next few releases for features. This one is sort of bare bones but the next will add more of the elements for the persistant universe.
New nice post today about electronic warfare and signature detection. Looks pretty detailed for players who wish to dedicate the time to scanning and stealth gameplay:
https://robertsspaceindustries.com/comm-link/transmission/14926-Design-Notes-Electronic-Warfare
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Is this a playable game yet? Or will i have more fun playing space barbie and ship spinning in Eve? Genuinely, I'm ignorant as to the state of SC. Exploring its site leads to many pictures of ships, cabins/interiors, fictional background writing, and even lets people subscribe monthly for access to...more information/updates about game development? Is it still just a tech-demo?
https://robertsspaceindustries.com/project-status
Oh. hmm.
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Is this a playable game yet? Or will i have more fun playing space barbie and ship spinning in Eve? Genuinely, I'm ignorant as to the state of SC. Exploring its site leads to many pictures of ships, cabins/interiors, fictional background writing, and even lets people subscribe monthly for access to...more information/updates about game development? Is it still just a tech-demo?
https://robertsspaceindustries.com/project-status
Oh. hmm.
Right now you can fly the dogfighters in the pvp test arena (Arena commander) , and you can run around the alpha of one of the first planetside city locations. I'll post some YouTube links later.
In about 3 weeks they will release the first person shooter pvp, and more importantly the first large free fly solar system, a few million km wide solar system with space stations, points of interest, and lots of pve and pvp, and most importantly the first 'multicrew' ships sort of like the millennium falcon that you can fly and fight in with your friends.
If you get in now you can dogfight and run around planetside, or wait a few weeks to sandbox with people in a huge solar system
Edit: I must apologize for frequent grammar and misspellings as I'm often writing on this site on my phone...
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Is this a playable game yet? Or will i have more fun playing space barbie and ship spinning in Eve? Genuinely, I'm ignorant as to the state of SC. Exploring its site leads to many pictures of ships, cabins/interiors, fictional background writing, and even lets people subscribe monthly for access to...more information/updates about game development? Is it still just a tech-demo?
https://robertsspaceindustries.com/project-status
Oh. hmm.
Right now you can fly the dogfighters in the pvp test arena (Arena commander) , and you can run around the alpha of one of the first planetside city locations. I'll post some YouTube links later.
In about 3 weeks they will release the first person shooter pvp, and more importantly the first large free fly solar system, a few million km wide solar system with space stations, points of interest, and lots of pve and pvp, and most importantly the first 'multicrew' ships sort of like the millennium falcon that you can fly and fight in with your friends.
If you get in now you can dogfight and run around planetside, or wait a few weeks to sandbox with people in a huge solar system
Edit: I must apologize for frequent grammar and misspellings as I'm often writing on this site on my phone...
Interesting. Thank you in advance for any informative videos :)
This coming open solar system, will be astronomically large i take it, supported by multiple servers sans instances a la eve TQ?
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The science ship on sale today, sort of a huge 200m long 'discovery 1' from 2001.
You can fill it with all sorts of bio domes or research stations or telescopes, or outfit it as a hospital, etc. This is part of their effort to start showing more of the non pvp parts of the game.
Be a space farmer, grow plants, etc.
I have to say there is something appealing to the idea of having your crew and exploring deep space and doing botany and research as a group. Neato.
https://robertsspaceindustries.com/comm-link/transmission/14972-Research-Unbound-The-MISC-Endeavor
and, space farming, etc outline of gameplay: https://robertsspaceindustries.com/comm-link/engineering/14974-Design-Science-And-The-Endeavor
(https://robertsspaceindustries.com/media/vh2jbjaom7ys4r/cover/CO_Beauty_BioDomes.jpg)
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Is this a playable game yet? Or will i have more fun playing space barbie and ship spinning in Eve? Genuinely, I'm ignorant as to the state of SC. Exploring its site leads to many pictures of ships, cabins/interiors, fictional background writing, and even lets people subscribe monthly for access to...more information/updates about game development? Is it still just a tech-demo?
https://robertsspaceindustries.com/project-status
Oh. hmm.
Right now you can fly the dogfighters in the pvp test arena (Arena commander) , and you can run around the alpha of one of the first planetside city locations. I'll post some YouTube links later.
In about 3 weeks they will release the first person shooter pvp, and more importantly the first large free fly solar system, a few million km wide solar system with space stations, points of interest, and lots of pve and pvp, and most importantly the first 'multicrew' ships sort of like the millennium falcon that you can fly and fight in with your friends.
If you get in now you can dogfight and run around planetside, or wait a few weeks to sandbox with people in a huge solar system
Edit: I must apologize for frequent grammar and misspellings as I'm often writing on this site on my phone...
Interesting. Thank you in advance for any informative videos :)
This coming open solar system, will be astronomically large i take it, supported by multiple servers sans instances a la eve TQ?
Here's a good run through the first release of one of the landing zones: https://youtu.be/yqCyCPpv1a4?t=9m16s
note of course no npcs, this should be in first person, etc etc but the level of detail is -fantastic-
I'm not sure yet about the instancing for the solar system free-flight mode just yet. It might just be a private server for 20-30 people at a time to start, sort of like the current multiplayer arena matches.
Instancing in general is another huge topic, it won't be 'real' like EVE in what you see is what you get basically.
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Honestly I lost all hope with so called single shard servers and MMOs when it comes to RP. It causes a lot more issues than the pros you get out of it...
Small tight knit RP groups tabletop like work way better. I'm fine with their instancing system, and to hell with galactic wide RP consequences that nobody is going to agree on and have drama around anyway, eventually.
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Honestly I lost all hope with so called single shard servers and MMOs when it comes to RP. It causes a lot more issues than the pros you get out of it...
Small tight knit RP groups tabletop like work way better. I'm fine with their instancing system, and to hell with galactic wide RP consequences that nobody is going to agree on and have drama around anyway, eventually.
Yea I just don't know yet
I think this game might be the ultimate 'low stakes' group rp, from meeting in bars and to overhearing conversations and then going out with you crew to salvage a derelict, etc. Very neat. But yea the instancing will come down to how they do it..
They are doing a 90/10 npc/player split, so 90% of the ships you see will be npc. The idea is to have a busy, full world, but also to specifically prevent the players from ruining the economy or totally controlling certain areas. I dont like a lot of that idea, but then again total player control can go so poorly as an experience as well..
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Honestly I lost all hope with so called single shard servers and MMOs when it comes to RP. It causes a lot more issues than the pros you get out of it...
Small tight knit RP groups tabletop like work way better. I'm fine with their instancing system, and to hell with galactic wide RP consequences that nobody is going to agree on and have drama around anyway, eventually.
Yea I just don't know yet
I think this game might be the ultimate 'low stakes' group rp, from meeting in bars and to overhearing conversations and then going out with you crew to salvage a derelict, etc. Very neat. But yea the instancing will come down to how they do it..
They are doing a 90/10 npc/player split, so 90% of the ships you see will be npc. The idea is to have a busy, full world, but also to specifically prevent the players from ruining the economy or totally controlling certain areas. I dont like a lot of that idea, but then again total player control can go so poorly as an experience as well..
That's the big hurdle/barrier to my considering Star Citizen. It's also why I quit star trek online back when it first came out.
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Honestly I lost all hope with so called single shard servers and MMOs when it comes to RP. It causes a lot more issues than the pros you get out of it...
Small tight knit RP groups tabletop like work way better. I'm fine with their instancing system, and to hell with galactic wide RP consequences that nobody is going to agree on and have drama around anyway, eventually.
Yea I just don't know yet
I think this game might be the ultimate 'low stakes' group rp, from meeting in bars and to overhearing conversations and then going out with you crew to salvage a derelict, etc. Very neat. But yea the instancing will come down to how they do it..
They are doing a 90/10 npc/player split, so 90% of the ships you see will be npc. The idea is to have a busy, full world, but also to specifically prevent the players from ruining the economy or totally controlling certain areas. I dont like a lot of that idea, but then again total player control can go so poorly as an experience as well..
I would actually love that. Like in any kind of tabletop with a good GM, it's full of NPCs, breathing, and living.
Unlike eve, which is totally empty and not immersive.
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I think eve would have benefitted from some more npc flavorings around stations and docks, if only for eye candy? Just to see the little people scurrying around your docked ship loading and repairing would have added so much immersion...
They are doing a fairly complex sort of 'sims' AI giving a few million npcs jobs and tasks (trading, hauling, etc) and letting them be the cogs in the player universe. So when you steal some haulers cargo that will generate a new npc task to deliver the same product or an npc/player bounty mission on you. Supposedly.
A lot of the missions you will get from the standard agents but a lot you will have to overhear convos in bars, etc as chance encounters. They are trying to find ways to encourage players to spend time in the landing zones and not just run to the jobs board, etc... We'll see. One more week for citizencon which will be their biggest set of reveals yet.
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It's not just the lack of NPCs in eve... Artistically, it's static. Nothing moves, nothing happens. Mimetically, it's very poor... and i'm not even talking about their space battles...
I understand though that when they designed the game, they certainly did not have the means nor the budget for a lot of production value but... well. It's just not a game designed around that, basically.
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Honestly I lost all hope with so called single shard servers and MMOs when it comes to RP. It causes a lot more issues than the pros you get out of it...
Small tight knit RP groups tabletop like work way better. I'm fine with their instancing system, and to hell with galactic wide RP consequences that nobody is going to agree on and have drama around anyway, eventually.
There's a lot of sense in the above, except that the Eve community splintered over twenty servers would be so small as to be... well... a twentieth of the size.
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Well yeah, it may well have come a bit harder than I intended... Mostly a cry from the heart...
You just have to take a look at what slack magnified and showed to public: the RP community in Eve doesn't pass a day without someone starting to diss on someone else, be it DK or anyone else. And occasionally (meaning, frequently), a drama starting because someone has either the idea to start a debate and then not being okay at the first sign of other people disagreeing politely...
Eve entertains a shit mentality of pettiness.
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I used to tie myself in knots about that, Lyn. It caused me great angst and I really resented it when people put me on the spot and did anything that might cause me not to be able to be both IC and OOC friends with absolutely all RPers.
I think an RP community will always suffer from the Meta social games, though, simply because a lot of people don't like playing those games for real money but enjoy doing them in places like the Eve community - which is sort of the same reason we play the non-Meta games too, of course. :)
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I used to tie myself in knots about that, Lyn. It caused me great angst and I really resented it when people put me on the spot and did anything that might cause me not to be able to be both IC and OOC friends with absolutely all RPers.
I think an RP community will always suffer from the Meta social games, though, simply because a lot of people don't like playing those games for real money but enjoy doing them in places like the Eve community - which is sort of the same reason we play the non-Meta games too, of course. :)
There's a good part of me that thinks "low stakes" RP where you play a normal human doing human-sized events (dogfighting, shooting people, not being a demigod, maybe just racing your ship in the racing league or growing plants or running your space salvage business) in small groups that don't (and can't) effect THE GALAXY might be just what the doctor ordered.
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Well, you will always find your usual godmodding and mary sue gawking RPers like in most classic MMOs, but at least, you can ignore.
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This is blatant gossip and not much else, but my dad told me that his friend who works at CIG's manchester branch has told him the company is coming apart at the seams. Lots of people quitting and an increasingly hostile atmosphere.
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CIG in general, or the Manchester office in particular ?
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This is blatant gossip and not much else, but my dad told me that his friend who works at CIG's manchester branch has told him the company is coming apart at the seams. Lots of people quitting and an increasingly hostile atmosphere.
Someone linked this on Slack yesterday. I wasn't planning to link it here because it could kinda be viewed as flamebait, but since someone else brought up the CIG atmosphere first I feel less awkward about it. :P
http://www.escapistmagazine.com/articles/view/video-games/features/14715-CIG-Employees-Talk-Star-Citizen-and-the-State-of-the-Company
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CIG in general, or the Manchester office in particular ?
He wasn't super clear? He said that the management had begun acting super strict and the office had a 1600's era witch hunt paranoia vibe going on, but I dunno if that referred to the branch or the whole company.
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This is blatant gossip and not much else, but my dad told me that his friend who works at CIG's manchester branch has told him the company is coming apart at the seams. Lots of people quitting and an increasingly hostile atmosphere.
Someone linked this on Slack yesterday. I wasn't planning to link it here because it could kinda be viewed as flamebait, but since someone else brought up the CIG atmosphere first I feel less awkward about it. :P
http://www.escapistmagazine.com/articles/view/video-games/features/14715-CIG-Employees-Talk-Star-Citizen-and-the-State-of-the-Company
Was going to avoid this, but since it's been linked, here's the full response from CR to the previous Escapist article:
https://robertsspaceindustries.com/comm-link/transmission/14979-Chairmans-Response-To-The-Escapist
And someone did a little digging and found that several of the "anonymous source" quotes used in the escapist piece matched reviews written on glassdoor in the last week, word-for-word.
So yeah, there are rumors going around that CIG is a shitshow, and there's reasons to believe that the rumors are bullshit. Probably a little of column A and a little of column B.
CIG in general, or the Manchester office in particular ?
He wasn't super clear? He said that the management had begun acting super strict and the office had a 1600's era witch hunt paranoia vibe going on, but I dunno if that referred to the branch or the whole company.
This wouldn't be a huge surprise. The people stirring up shit in the news lately are claiming that some of their sources are current employees. So management may be trying to figure out who.
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Yea the escapist 'article' was mostly fantasy quotes from alts of D. Smart.
Some people want this thing to fail so bad it's amazing.
There's plenty of legitimate fuckups from CIG over the last year or two to write about without hardcore muckraking, so this is amusing.
Anyway mic drop in about a week they'll reveal the cast for the single player (Mark Hamil, yay!) and lots of fun actual computer game stuff and not drama.
I'll add that CIG have done a generally -terrible- job of just ignoring the trolling, and are forgetting internet shitheads do not equal majority of their backers and supporters. They've got nearly a million. A MILLION. people signed up and they are being ridiculously butthurt about 5 or 6 people. They forget the #1 rule of not feeding the trolls, responding to idiots only gives idiots more exposure.
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Non drama, here's more info on instancing:
http://www.gamersnexus.net/gg/2119-chris-roberts-on-star-citizen-network-and-render-pipelines
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I'll add that CIG have done a generally -terrible- job of just ignoring the trolling, and are forgetting internet shitheads do not equal majority of their backers and supporters. They've got nearly a million. A MILLION. people signed up and they are being ridiculously butthurt about 5 or 6 people. They forget the #1 rule of not feeding the trolls, responding to idiots only gives idiots more exposure.
I think they actually did a pretty good job of ignoring the crap this summer until it started coming from legit gaming news sites. When it was just DS being a crybaby (who now somehow believes that he has 'staked his career' on being right about CIG going down in flames), CIG didn't say much at all. When it went past that, CR did an interview with Polygon for a decent article. I think the way he went off in response to the Escapist was a little over the top, but given how long it's been building and how personal the attacks have been lately, I can't blame him.
When it's just people stirring shit on the forums, they've done a pretty solid job of ignoring it, issuing bans and walking away. But this shit finally got into the news, and without another really juicy story to talk about, the gaming media has been happily repeating a bunch of unsubstantiated speculation.
Yay for more actual game news, though. And hopefully more to come in the next couple weeks. Might keep me from unloading a few ships to see if I can recoup my investment.
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Yea if you have KOTAKU of all people calling an article shit then you know it must be awful:
https://archive.is/NLgJm
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Official mic drop. Read the lawyer letter:
https://robertsspaceindustries.com/comm-link/transmission/14979-Chairmans-Response-To-The-Escapist
One great point. The hit article claimed they verified the anonymous employees by seeing their ID cards, cig: we don't even have I'd cards, get rekt m8.
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Actually, it's about ethics in video game journalism.
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Actually, it's about ethics in video game journalism.
Never heard of such a thing. ;p
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Official mic drop. Read the lawyer letter:
https://robertsspaceindustries.com/comm-link/transmission/14979-Chairmans-Response-To-The-Escapist
One great point. The hit article claimed they verified the anonymous employees by seeing their ID cards, cig: we don't even have I'd cards, get rekt m8.
Maybe by ID card they don't mean a company passcard but an actual ID card such as passport or drivers license. With that they could then check that the source really is who they claim.
As in the situation that I tell the paper a juicy story and that I'm named Jek.
So journo then checks and confirms that a Jek is working at Space Games inc. In order to validate that I'm not lying I then get to back my claim in being Jek by showing my drivers license or such.
That said I've no dog in this race.
If it turns out to be vaporware or a scam or whatever then that's a pity. I'll not get to play what could be a good game and it'll hurt crowdfunding.
If it turns out that this game is released and of quality then I get to play a good game.
Right now I'm just munching popcorn over all the drama.
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At my former employer, devs did not wear ID, but contractors did. Assuming it isn't total BS, maybe there were a couple disgruntled QA perps?
Just some idle speculation.
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Some great new FX work on ship explosions and damage states.
All in-engine, etc.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=10TAH5LVCow&feature=youtu.be
Saturday is CITIZENCON which will livestream all the goodies. Stay tuned!
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That was one of my biggest gripes in terms of immersion... The lack of explosions and good SFX was ruining a bit the experience...
I'm glad they adressed that.
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Squadron 42 (single player game) cast:
Gary oldman, mark hamil, mark strong, gilian anderson, johns rhys davis, etc
Good. Lord.
http://www.twitch.tv/starcitizen/v/20068257
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HYPE TRAIN BOARDED. GOOD LORD.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SrpeLpQWzTk
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I have to admit that this video made me a bit confused... I am not totally sure what kept happening and what people were doing...
The moves for landing, taking off, and other ship translations looked awfully badly modeled, not very on par with their usual nice flight model... I am not sure what happened there?
Why are they walking totally normally at the beginning when they get out of that station onto the landing pad? Magnetic boots?
Their quantum drive looks awfully like a dumbed down version of cruise from Elite...
They environments overall continue to look really nice all in all though! I like their ring stations, gives a real space vibe overall.
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Almost forgot, here's the Star Map, browser friendly:
https://robertsspaceindustries.com/starmap
TLDR: Similar to EVE's layout, except instead of jump gates you have 'wormholes' from system to system. The difference is that they are small/medium/large so the routes/tactics change depending on ship sizes. IE you could make a smaller cargo ship run faster, or take the long route with a huge cargo hauler, or ambush etc.
Great map though.
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I don't really like their wormhole system... Especially if we have to do again and again that little game where you have to correctly travel through it... It's going to get tedious after the few first ones...
Also for another reason too... Like eve, it's going to create bottlenecks and encourage camping.
Nice map though.
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I don't really like their wormhole system... Especially if we have to do again and again that little game where you have to correctly travel through it... It's going to get tedious after the few first ones...
Also for another reason too... Like eve, it's going to create bottlenecks and encourage camping.
Those are only the 'charted' travel lanes, there is a whole profession for cartography to find limited-use wormholes. You take special ships and find them, and sell the wormhole data to anyone you want, basically. They eventually decay.
The minigame you only have to do when you go through an uncharted wormhole, if you've been through it before it's automatic :)
Also sorry I should mention this, where you enter/exit is sort of randomized over a large area. Think of EVE when you exit a gate you are within X km, but for this you'd be within a few thousand KM of the exit.
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If you don't want to watch the whole presentation here's things chopped up into pieces:
http://massivelyop.com/2015/10/11/mmo-week-in-review-citizencon-2015-and-squadron-42-october-11-2015/
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It's been a while since I've posted anything:
On this week's RTV show (they do a weekly community broadcast with updates from all the development studios) they had a nice tour of one of the ships that's going to be flyable with the next patch in a week or two.
The constellation is sort of the 'poster ship' for the game, one of the mid-level multi crew ships that can be a trader, explorer, etc. Big enough to go on long missions and tough enough to get into trouble, with a crew of about 6 I think.
Anyway some very, very good 3d modeling with this one the attention to detail is quite good. Lighting is still off but it's not done yet :)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SY2ATSVUvxA&feature=youtu.be
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I guess now you can go to space toilet.
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I guess now you can go to space toilet.
UNPARALLELED FIDELITY. FIDELITY. That's Chris Roberts most favoritest word ever, if I hear it one more time from him I'm going to puke
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So, any notion on when this'll go from tech demo to a game yet?
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Like every game, when it's done?
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"every game" doesn't let you buy it, push a fuckton of ships at you at exorbitant prices, and so on. This does. It's marketing its pay store more than any released game I've ever seen.
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It's not like they force you to pay anything though..
I'm not a big fan of their marketing methods, but they seem to bear fruit.
Personally I bought a few ships to support the crowd funding process, what I estimate to be the sum it is worth for me to put into as a financial backup. If it fails, it fails. That's what investment means.
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So, any notion on when this'll go from tech demo to a game yet?
The first release of a sandbox solar system with some missions, space stations, pvp and fps and eva activites etc should be out in a week or two. This will have the first large 'multicrew' ships you can goof off in with your friends.
This solar system will be upgraded as they introduce features (mining, salvage, et ), and also start linking to the planet side landing zones.
I have no idea when the mmo will go live probably in 2089. But this release they are calling 2.0 will have all of the core gameplay and enough to entertain people for a long long time
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TONS of stuff today for the anniversary live stream:
"Crafter's" dream, look at how involved the 'repair' mechanics are! Going to be whole profession for this along with dedicated ships (The Crucible, etc)
https://robertsspaceindustries.com/comm-link/engineering/15062-Ship-Repair-And-Maintenance
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HYPE TRAIN BOARDING.
2.0 is LIVE on the test servers tonight.
So this is all in-game as of tonight: missions, exploration, pvp, etc
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UhksNNhxRjs
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Oh also here's Mark Hamil finally:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZjSXcdvd-ME
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I uh... like the ideas they have for all those repairs/mining/etc stuff, but sometimes I just feel like it's starting to get obnoxiously complex and might eventually detract on fun overall.
I am pretty sure that QA will tell them to slowly dumb it down / simply it a bit, and they will eventually.
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Bad link earlier, just this now:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UhksNNhxRjs
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We about to hit $100 mil, yo.
Anyway here's a little video showing some early 'mission' gameplay in the current sandbox release, one of the basic 'travel to x, pew pew people, EVA and do some first person stuff' sort of gameplay
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bQYL802BSjk
This new build is getting patches every few days, getting much much more stable. I think they are up to 50k testers on their version of SiSi.
Also for kicks here's a great screencap for one of the planetside cities you can run around in right now:
[spoiler](http://img15.hostingpics.net/pics/924918ScreenShot0012.jpg)[/spoiler]
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http://www.yourgameideaistoobig.com/
I ticked the boxes that I thought applied to Star Citizen, it came out with a price tag of over a billion. :eek:
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Holy bejezeballs:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xf4zCCjBwOA
So yea about 40-50k playing this right now on SC's version of SISI. I'ma bit further down the invite list but I should get access pretty soon :)
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On what are based the invites?
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On what are based the invites?
First round is for the most active testers, after that they go by 'citizen number' the order you signed up for the game, they've got like a million people now so it takes a while. usually by time i get the invite they are ready for the public release anyway :{
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Oh right, haha, I haven't check my mail, it's there.
By the time I download it all public release will be here anyway.
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2.0 is live as of last night!
Out and released to all million backers : )
This is 'the big one' for those of us who have been screwing around with all of the different half broken 'modules' the last year or two.
Now you can run around, shoot people, jump in big spaceships with your friends, man crew stations, EVA out of the ships anywhere, run some sample missions, etc etc all in one special 'sandbox' solar system they are using to demo new features as they come online. Yes it has a long way to go but this is frankly pretty amazing tech, with each ship having its own independent physics grid you can walk around in and interacting with other ships in the same game space, it's pretty rad.
Anyway you might see some things on the interwebs about this as it's a big release for the whole project. Also about to hit $100,000,000 in crowdfunding, which is a stupid amount of money. I expect my copy of the game to come on a silver platter carried by a throng of the finest trained Matari for that kind of money :P
https://robertsspaceindustries.com/feature-list
EDIT:
Spent many hours with this tonight. It really was super, super fun. Flying around with people and getting into trouble, all sorts of craziness. But still buggy, crashed out like 5 times.
Examples:
Took my ship to an abandoned space station; instead of parking on the landing pad, I tried to hide my ship on the outside ring of the station. While I was hovering around, unbeknownst to me someone on the station had seen my ship, and was EVAing up to my position. They got the back cargo hatch of my ship open just as I was exiting/glitched out of the front of the cockpit. So I'm floating in space and the ship is spinning, and I notice the guy trying to sneak in, and he notices me, and all of the sudden it's a floating in space pew pew laser / machine gun fight around a spinning spaceship orbiting a derelict space station. I managed to flee down to the landing pad and run away on foot (was outgunned), and then game crashed. booo ;0
I managed to sneak aboard an expensive bomber ship (pilot forgot to close the elevator below the ship), and managed to sneak up behind him in the pilot's chair as he was flying around. Unfortunately he didn't leave the 'weapons off' zone, because in another few km I would have blasted him and taken his expensive ship for a ride ;)
Waking up on the space station orbiting the gas giant, I went to the main computer terminal and ordered my ship prepped for the landing pad, and a nice guy there was going to join me in the turret seat. We get out to the landing pad and a guy with a hijacked alien ship with a giant... blade wing, basically -scooped- up my entire ship and FLUNG it straight into orbit. We could only sit and stare as my ship went tumbling into the distance. Local chat: "sorry, couldn't resist" :P I did manage to follow him later and while he was inside a space station I obliterated his undefended ship on a landing platform.
There's tons of bugs and things like that you wont be able to do in the later game, but right now it's all super fun.
I've had ships leeroy jenkins into my helpless ship on a repair platform, I've had my ship explode when activating the warp drive, all sorts of craziness. but it's an absolute blast having total space sandbox freedom to take your ship anywhere get out of it anywhere, and go from flying to pew pew whenever you want. It's super cool.
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annnd shit just got interesting on today's live stream, they were showing their procedural planetside stuff today, ironically ahead of schedule for once...
very cool at this detail level with no loading screens.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X5XSiww9ZO4&feature=youtu.be
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-yLTm8DZ8s4
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One of the larger fuel tanker pilot-able ships just dropped into people's hangars, it's pretty well done; check the video in 1080 and enjoy the level of detail.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qzFcpQTEVAk
This is the "Starfarer" which is mobile refueling and fuel-hauling centered ship. Take the space gas from A to B, or accompany your small fleet with the space gas to refuel as you explore the far reaches. It's the biggest ship they've finished so far, pretty neat.
*EDIT* now with shiny new video, GOOD LORD THAT'S PURDY.
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PRAISE THE SANDWORM
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LIiMqVdbHqo
TLDR1: (no surprises here) single player campaign delayed again. Lulz for days. Other than that things plodding along, lots of new ships, new features, moving right along on MMO front.
TLDR2: The planetary tech is really nice All the things No Man's Sky wasn't. Fly from space to surface to running around and back all seamless, very cool. This vid shows some of the surface level content they are doing. Now this fps stuff isn't particularly good from them or interesting compared to 1000x other games that do it, but having it all in one engine where you can do this stuff and then get in your ship and fly straight up for a few minutes into space and do all the other stuff is pretty neat.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LIiMqVdbHqo
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You ever see the movie Interstellar?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fF4iUpWoMJs&feature=youtu.be
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Hmm...
This game may have caught my attention quite a bit over the holiday period. I've not taken the plunge yet but the temptation is definately building.
I'll wait to see what's available when 3.0 is released before I make any decisions.
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If they ever make it there, since apparently they just changed their game engine again. >_>
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Lumberyard really isn't that big a change. My reservations remain centred on Chris Roberts being big on vision and slow on delivery. However, I am bought in and through some shrewd ebay trading have managed to bulk out my pledge at no extra expense. So the market meta game checks out ;).
Also what's interesting you Bataav? Happy to chat with people who are cautiously looking at this potential title. Also if it does launch I'm happy to help people who want to wait till launch (this would be most sensible IMO - CIG has enough money at this point and we need substance over pledges IMO), to get a leg up using a larger ship (and I hope others are too). So caution and questions are the best thing for this title right now!
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While I was reading about SC over the holiday period I heard about the an engine change, but I'm not at all concerned.
From what I've learned the switch to Lumberyard was a straight forward affair due to its similarity to the previous engine, and there are now a wider range of tools, etc. available for future development, as well as Amazon infrastructure.
Perhaps I'm new enough to following the game, though I've been aware of the title ever since the original fundraiser. My waiting has just begun, and so I've not developed the cynicism or frustrations other may have. Most recently I watched this podcast (https://youtu.be/ijlLPN8V6ZM) which seems to be fairly balanced, the three players involved sharing a balance of enthusiasm and frustration about the pace of development, and what they're able to enjoy right now. Interestingly all three seem to be estimate 3.0 going live around the end of spring.
They also linked this production schedule (https://robertsspaceindustries.com/schedule-report), which looks at the current release detailing what features, etc. were ahead, on, or behind schedule (and by how much), and an intended list of stuff for what's coming soonTM.
In terms of what I'm looking forward to, I think the recovery/salvage/resourcing gameplay along with hauling and trading looks really good. I like the NPC crew idea too for the larger ships, which kind of reminds me of some ideas from another slow moving kickstarter (which seems to have drifted from its original concept) - The Mandate (http://www.mandategame.com/).
I decided to go ahead and register an account, so there's a character waiting with the "Bataav" name, though I've not paid them any money yet for one of the starter packages.
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Seems like a sensible and level way of observing what's going on.
I'll be looking into the grey-trading side of things: smuggling and merchandising from my Merchantman. Though I have developed a love of the arena commander gameplay.
There's a long way to go yet, but I am hoping 3.0 will be followed by SQ42 - Roberts needs to start showing evidence of delivery, not just promise of great things.
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Not a SC dood, but as a neophyte in constructed language this presentation was pretty neat. Hope you investors don't object to the inclusion of such worldbuildiness.
https://youtu.be/4b6tWxM_d0o (https://youtu.be/4b6tWxM_d0o)
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TBH I love it. Good to find out more behind how it's done in the film industry and beyond. Though I must admit to being a bit of a xenophile in this game - I got hold of a Merchantman to sate my need for both aliens and trading.
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QTqjgy3efOY&feature=youtu.be
Been a while so here are latest highlights for current vaporware 3.0 release:
TLDR Still more an assembly of tech demos than a 'game' and they have a lot of work to do on proper gameplay loops and polish, but the underlying tech is quite fantastic, multiple moving physics grids, surface vehicles, capital ship combat with players manning turrets and launching fighters, seamless surface to space to planet to surface gameplay. The 'demo' was buggy and cringe-y in all the ways, but lots of neat stuff as always. Maybe not worth your money right now, but the game will be great someday in 2545.
Highlights:
19:40 RP ALERT
You can use your webcam to capture your face/expressions and voice modulation so everyone else can see your speaking in real time with emoting. Very fucking cool. So they had an asian woman on the webcam and a black male avatar matching her face movements.
This was not one of their better presentations but still some neat things.
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Finally, I can be the Japanese schoolgirl in space I've always wanted to be.
#immersion. #roleplaying.
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Finally my slow-typing hands will no longer delay or cancel my method acting.
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Start this around 13:00
They've got procedural, planetwide cities now, good lord. Even if you don't care about the game this is a very interesting tech demo.
https://youtu.be/mGcG0g7GsOI?t=13m
anyway, do check it. Starting from the city on the surface flying around and going up to the orbital station and looking back down on the planet, that's pretty goddamn great.
Oh and then they fly to the other planet and ride around on a speeder bike. neato.
https://robertsspaceindustries.com/comm-link/citcon-featured-content/16216-CitizenCon-2947-Recap
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Origin is already advertising to draw Star Citizens.
(https://i.imgur.com/XlAmV8B.png)
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What's Origin?
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EA's version of Steam, uplay, etc.
You know, I really can't help but laugh that this thread was started over five years ago.
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Origin is the home system of Alexylva Paradox. :P
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Haha ooooh.
Origin is the in-game fictional software company you use to play the 'arena commander' and 'star marine' deathmatch modes right now. It's a hold over from the first Wing Commander.
5 years, kind of hilarious, what's typical for the big games, 4-6 years dev? Roberts needs an editor and someone to both make and keep deadlines without increasing scope, it's their Achilles heel constantly. I mean all the new shit is cool, but they keep going back and re-doing work to add new features or update gfx, etc....
As it stands right now all of the things you can do won't matter too much with how the game currently plays. We've all played gorgeous games with terrible gameplay and feel, and awful looking games that were brilliant and fun.
I backed the game/bought a package so long ago that the $$ sting wore off.... I remember the last -few- years I kept being like 'ill wait until SC is out to build my new PC' and that was....ancient history and my pc is now a potato.
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3.0 is out
So you can fly to different planets and do missions and surface/space/all sorts of crazy stuff.
https://i.imgur.com/aI4rPqM.gifv
Also here's about an hour of the 'vertical slice' showing the gist of the single player campaign. Mark Hamil, the Onion Knight from Game of Thrones, etc. Neato!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BHR1aEdTA4M
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Vertical Slice was pretty neat, I'm very glad to see old man Hamill back in action of late. The score was also enjoyable, suitable for those long stretches of manual piloting through these stark environments. The mix could use a little work though, since it overwhelmed the dialogue in a few places.
The HUD would take some getting used to. More than a couple times, I was looking for telemetry data and either didn't find it or found it in a sub-optimal position. Then again, I'm not a UI designer. Maybe that layout is super-realistic or something.
It's interesting to see the development cycle roll on. 5+ years has more-or-less become the norm for current-gen RPGs of nominal magnitude. I remember hearing a rumor recently that, by the time that Elder Scrolls VI comes out, it will be more than ten years after Skyrim's debut (citation needed). Reading about the budget of Mass Effect Andromeda seems to put the SC budget in-line with projects of that scale, but the problem as I see it is publishers have moved to the games-as-service model and so they expect consumers to give up the $60 'complete experience', instead counting on whales to spend hundreds or many thousands of dollars on a video game. To me, that's insanity, but it isn't my money to spend.
Likely the market has space for the RSI model to work. Seems plausible. I hope that it succeeds for the people who've invested. What I've watched looks very-well made, though I can't speak to the quality of gameplay. As with Elite, it's probably a lot more fun to play than watch, but maybe I'll catch a twitch stream one of these days.
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The HUD would take some getting used to. More than a couple times, I was looking for telemetry data and either didn't find it or found it in a sub-optimal position. Then again, I'm not a UI designer. Maybe that layout is super-realistic or something.
Right, the 3d-radar and a lot of the combat HUD has been sort of terrible for a long time now. The good news is that they run pretty different HUDs based on ship manufacturer, and there's 7 or 8 different main ship companies in game with different HUD layouts. I'm partial to the Drake Interplanetary HUD, which is a bit more 'no frills.' They all have different AI voices and 'feels', it's neat.
Here's the current ship matrix, which I hadn't checked in a while and is getting pretty damn huge. https://robertsspaceindustries.com/ship-matrix
but the problem as I see it is publishers have moved to the games-as-service model and so they expect consumers to give up the $60 'complete experience', instead counting on whales to spend hundreds or many thousands of dollars on a video game. To me, that's insanity, but it isn't my money to spend.
SC has sort of a 'hybrid' model; you can pay $45 or whatever and just purchase the separate single player game (Squadron 42), think of it as a new single player Wing Commander game. Separately from this you can purchase entry to the MMO "Star Citizen" which is not going to have a monthly subscription. One-time entry fee with the ship package of your choice (and budget). You could buy the smallest intro ship and you get full access to the same MMO that the whales spending $500 are getting.
This is where it gets similar to EVE in that theoretically all items are available for ownership in game with in game currency. You can start small and work (or steal) your way up to the larger ships. This is where 'balancing' and ship prices will sink or swim all this though. The larger ships do not equal 'better' we should say, but much like EVE different ships for different tasks. Similar to EVE they have a size limit on certain wormholes (like eve FW plexes) between systems, and they use fuel for the fast-travel, so you might have a small ship that is superior for short range dogfighting but won't have the legs to chase after another ship across two systems, or you might have a ship that isn't as nimble in a fight but can travel for days without refueling, etc etc.
Likely the market has space for the RSI model to work. Seems plausible. I hope that it succeeds for the people who've invested. What I've watched looks very-well made, though I can't speak to the quality of gameplay. As with Elite, it's probably a lot more fun to play than watch, but maybe I'll catch a twitch stream one of these days.
This is where I'm not sold yet on everything, the sort of emergent MMO gameplay that this engine and game system promises is heavily, heavily dependent on smart people balancing ships, weapons, etc so that it's not a total mess. It's all good to theoretically be able to disable larger ships and board them for FPS piracy but if they don't get the balance right for ship HP and speed etc it's a disaster.
They haven't had time for balancing so it's sort of like this in the test servers right now, some large ships move too quickly or die too fast to make any of that gameplay even worth attempting. The 'emergent' sort of gameplay right now is just nuts though with the release of the planetary surface gameplay and landspeeders and cargo hauling etc in 3.0.
So we'll see!
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I'd also point you all to the reddit on this, lots of great screencaps from the 3.0 multiplayer live server
https://www.reddit.com/r/starcitizen/
(https://i.imgur.com/zHKmtQ2.png)
(https://i.redd.it/nvqnob0t9l701.png)
(https://i.imgur.com/4wQjeVe.jpg)
(https://i.redd.it/q7li28b7qk701.png)
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That last pic made me hope for good things, and... :)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YH3c1QZzRK4
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YES!
Also the fact you can take off right there, point at that planet, and go see it, no loading.
They've done a big push lately trying to show more of the 'homesteading' part of the MMO, where you'll be able to fly off and prospect on planets and claim your own little area to build habitat modules and exploit/do with as you please. Mine, farm, build a research station, who knows. They've got a larger ship called the 'pioneer' (14 player crew) that is specifically for carting around and dropping down these hab modules, pretty neat stuff. Not to be confused with the dedicated exploration vehicles this is for making a go of it out on some planetoid somewhere...
https://robertsspaceindustries.com/comm-link/transmission/16200-Consolidated-Outland-Pioneer
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Well, shit. Almost there, folks.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q5rXhAJcSeQ&t=
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(https://i.imgur.com/sVbywaP.jpg)
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That's hilarious.
ALSO I saw what looks like they snatched up the Venture and made it the Drake salvager?
I haven't been keeping up with SC lately but only read about it because of the massive amount of forum derp from eve and sc people, good grief.
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Yeah, I'm not too worried about the SC development itself (so not buying into that whale farm until it's released and I see what I can get though) but damn their subreddit is a fucking cult. It's Scientology levels of "protect Dear Leader. Crush dissent!" going on there. Criticism is not acceptable.
They have been trying to get /r/eve banned as a 'hate sub' and for brigading. I mean sure, /r/eve hates everything including itself, but there's some very strict definitions of both 'hate sub' and 'brigading' on Reddit, and neither apply at all in this situation.
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I was a frequent poster on the official star citizen forums for a while, until I got a few posts removed and some dev warnings and quickly lost interest.
TLDR many of the star citizen folks are thin-skinned; what would pass for a -mild- "conversation" among eve folks sends them into a fucking quiver of tears and thread reporting. It's hilarious.
Basically I was telling them a sizable number of players coming from EVE, including me, are going to use the fullest extent of the rules to fuck your shit up and pew pew and rob people who do not want to be pew pewed and the tears did flow.
The carebear brigade has really infested quite a lot of the gameplay design since then and they might be slightly toning down some of the damn reasons some of us want to play the game in the first place :P
Miz, consider one of the cheapest 'starter' packages with a basic ship and that comes with lifetime MMO sub and a copy of the single player game, it's already a pretty decent value even for what's currently released and playable. Will probably save you a bit of $$ on release.
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Roughly a full singleplayer game price for one of those intro packs + the singleplayer campaign, from what I can see. 45 buckaroonies for the equivalent of a Newbie Ship and alpha access, and 20 smackers on top of that for the Squadron Life, Universe and Everything pack. Saw no way to get access to the latter without the former.
I'm not entirely sure it's fair to say it's decent value for an unfinished game that is quite a bit away from release, with a megafuckton of optimization still to do, etc, when all together it's five bucks more than... say the cost of an already released MMO without a sub cost like Guild Wars 2 etc, just to stay within the MMO genre.
It's still a little bit in the 'whale' territory, I feel.
And yeah, it's pretty much the same as the Elite: Dangerous crowd in that regard. It's amazing what these people will consider 'griefing' and how they view people that are just playing the damned game by the rules. Given how they can at any moment drop out of the full-multiplayer-deep-end and into solo or private groups, bypassing literally any possible hostilities at will, and there being damn near zero risk of actual asset loss thanks to 95% insurance on ship+fit, it's mindboggling. Eve'd eat these people up within days.
... then again, after I shot up a single structure in Eve, I'm being called a "bully" and worse Out of Character by several members of the RP crowd and supposedly I'm responsible for these people unsubbing from the game. Also, uninstalling Discord, I hear? I want a killmail for that.
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TLDR many of the star citizen folks are thin-skinned; what would pass for a -mild- "conversation" among eve folks sends them into a fucking quiver of tears and thread reporting. It's hilarious.
Basically I was telling them a sizable number of players coming from EVE, including me, are going to use the fullest extent of the rules to fuck your shit up and pew pew and rob people who do not want to be pew pewed and the tears did flow.
The carebear brigade has really infested quite a lot of the gameplay design since then and they might be slightly toning down some of the damn reasons some of us want to play the game in the first place :P
It's basically Pirates of the Burning Sea all over again.
Dev quote: "There is no crying in the red circle." The players proceed to cry a lot in the red circle, and the devs relent and listen to whiners and remove non-consensual gameplay, killing PotBS as an EVE-like.
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I have a sneaking suspicion we'll never actually get an 'Eve-like'. Even Eve's stuffed to the gills with players who'd rather see non-consensual PvP go the way of the Dodo and I suspect the only reason CCP aren't listening is because it's just too entrenched right now. Any new MMO-like isn't going to allow for it, as gaming has changed.
Hell, I've changed. I mean, in Eve I'm all for the horribleness, but in a lot of other games I just aren't that interested in the purer PvP stuff unless it can give a damn good reason for it. In Eve it works, thanks to the way it's integrated into the world by design from the ground up, while in pretty much any other game it feels artificial and "THIS IS THE DESIGNATED PEWPEW PLACE!" or quite simply has no consequence at all besides an infinitesimal repair bill and a few minutes of time lost.
I don't know how well it'd even work in Star Citizen. We'll have to see what kind of consequences death and "respawning" has there, and how well its mechanics are integrated with in-setting realism, consequence and reward.
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SC has talked a big game regarding forms of permadeath and their version of null-sec along the way, and I haven't kept up with how much of that they are walking back. I think the current version is what we'd call game 'death' (being blasted in space or with a gun) will use up one of several 'lives' for your player (you can respawn in a medbay, etc). This is limited and expensive to replenish. Lose all your 'lives' and that character is indeed permadead, and you can reroll a 'relative' to inherit their stuff.
The one thing I saw which would make me punch my monitor is that they were contemplating walking back how if you stole someone's shit, you couldn't keep it forever, IE 99% of what pirates do. I think they've landed at a middle ground where you can keep it but it's basically a 'hot' ship and very expensive to duplicate a fake legal transponder and it won't hold up to close examination/security scans in super high sec, etc.
If they maintain the null areas being like eve null then I'm just gonna stay there and it'll be fine.
My whole, entire point of playing the fucking game is to have a small crew of people interdict your shit, board your shit, kill/capture your crew and ride your shit back to our pirate asteroid base for salvage/sale be home in time for dinner
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TLDR many of the star citizen folks are thin-skinned; what would pass for a -mild- "conversation" among eve folks sends them into a fucking quiver of tears and thread reporting. It's hilarious.
Basically I was telling them a sizable number of players coming from EVE, including me, are going to use the fullest extent of the rules to fuck your shit up and pew pew and rob people who do not want to be pew pewed and the tears did flow.
The carebear brigade has really infested quite a lot of the gameplay design since then and they might be slightly toning down some of the damn reasons some of us want to play the game in the first place :P
It's basically Pirates of the Burning Sea all over again.
Dev quote: "There is no crying in the red circle." The players proceed to cry a lot in the red circle, and the devs relent and listen to whiners and remove non-consensual gameplay, killing PotBS as an EVE-like.
I'm so sorry to hear that, I missed that game entirely :(
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RInkbfjS0MQ
Good tour of one of the more RP-oriented ships, the 600i luxury touring explorer. It's a lounge ship you can also do some exploring with. I just love the attention to detail, check out the bar and observation deck. God would have been nice to have this with our eve characters.
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Lots of cool stuff there. I hope they manage to optimize that game, because it seems like it runs pretty crap even on high end setups.
About that bar thing and Eve characters though... I felt it confirmed to me that set designers in games will never manage to catch up to what the imagination of roleplayers can create in twenty minutes in a text editor. That 'bar' will be the exact same thing across every one of those ship models, and there'll be a very finite upper bound of variation within what the rest of the game will offer in that regard.
Space legs is all well and good but... I don't know, I'll always conjure up vastly more interesting places in my head just from a basic dull location motd in Eve than any modeler/designer will ever put into whatever game we play. I mean, some games will probably be able to do some amazing things, like Cyberpunk 2077 for instance, but they'll be one-offs. They won't be dynamic, redesignable and customizable to any kind of level that can match what a few minutes in the motd editor and /emotes can.
Things like this plops right down into my uncanny valley, where models are just inhuman enough make things feel off, and won't be anywhere near as customizable as a character description and text emotes. And when you combine the two, you get that dissonance between what is clearly there and what demonstrably isn't.
Might of course just be me, but the only games where I really felt immersed in that sort of thing, is where it's singleplayer/scripted as fuck and I'm basically watching a cutscene like the Saint's Row games etc. Vastly customizable character, but let the pros do the animation and interaction, and physical avatars become enjoyable. When you leave it to the player to fiddle with basic emote systems and chat systems etc, it becomes so fucking stilted.
For RP, text based or tabletop remains the best option I feel.
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About that bar thing and Eve characters though... I felt it confirmed to me that set designers in games will never manage to catch up to what the imagination of roleplayers can create in twenty minutes in a text editor. That 'bar' will be the exact same thing across every one of those ship models, and there'll be a very finite upper bound of variation within what the rest of the game will offer in that regard.
See, this is why SWG has yet to be topped. Its fantastic decoration options and later its worldbuilding tools (giving players the ability to spawn basically any game asset wherever they wanted in the world) have yet to be topped by any other game (other games that have included player housing typically use very strict 'placement guidelines' that prevents the creativity of the players from shining). It was basically a 'survival-builder' type of game long before today's proliferation of them.
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And today would be severely hampered by the fact that current fidelity, modeling, resolutions etc means even the smallest of customization things require a lot of dev time. I mean, look at the customization options there was in Conan Exiles. It was a pretty damn solid set of choices, but even at max level and with everything unlocked, it would still be pretty damn barebones in comparison to what we can imagine in a more freeform medium.
Now try a Cyberpunk setting like Eve. It'd be ridiculously difficult to provide customization that could get anywhere near what we do in text.
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For RP, text based or tabletop remains the best option I feel.
/emote lurks in a shadowy corner of the bar, whose interior architecture was that of a stellated dodecagon, such that there were many shadowy corners for the convenience of the patrons, the vast majority of which enjoyed lurking.
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There being at least as many shadowy corners as there are channel guests in a perfectly circular brightly lit room is a given.
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There being at least as many shadowy corners as there are channel guests in a perfectly circular brightly lit room is a given.
I think I remember someone lurking in the shadowy corners, of a venue that used gravity manipulation such that the interior space was the inside of a sphere.
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And today would be severely hampered by the fact that current fidelity, modeling, resolutions etc means even the smallest of customization things require a lot of dev time. I mean, look at the customization options there was in Conan Exiles. It was a pretty damn solid set of choices, but even at max level and with everything unlocked, it would still be pretty damn barebones in comparison to what we can imagine in a more freeform medium.
Now try a Cyberpunk setting like Eve. It'd be ridiculously difficult to provide customization that could get anywhere near what we do in text.
Yeah, sadly. Graphic fidelity is nice, but sometimes lower quality but more content and style is superior. In SWG, literally everything had a model, and everything could be dropped and used as direction. Even random crafting intermediary component #4 had a physical model and could be dropped and rotated at will. Leading to things like this (https://i.imgur.com/mXmmDNR.jpg), or this (https://i.imgur.com/v0FqKrQ.jpg), or this (https://i.imgur.com/HzyGqAb.jpg). It looked kind of janky, and the graphics are pretty bad by today's standards, but you could do virtually anything if you were creative enough.
Conan Exiles had a serious lack of internal decoration items, and annoyingly restrictive placement rules (though less restrictions than something like LotRO or TOR, and with the ability to remove the restrictions with mods). Its building-construction options were pretty fucking ace (https://youtu.be/L0s6tIwRjgY?t=567) though. The insides just were pretty barebones in comparison.
I think I remember someone lurking in the shadowy corners, of a venue that used gravity manipulation such that the interior space was the inside of a sphere.
In a sphere, every part of the wall is a corner! :D
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Character customization is going to be quite uh, robust. Insane amount of options and components for clothing and body mods.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N4H5k5nfJ4Y
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As far as 'personalization' goes they are going to have a large planetside personal/corp outpost component, where you build habitat modules and lego them together however you like. I'm not sure how much you can 'redecorate' but the types you build and what you put in them/configuration will be up to you.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WwqK778j1JY
I think that vid is 6-7 months old but covers the basics. Deep space drug farm? sure! Ore mining and storage? go for it!
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Exellent quick recap of the new stuff, they are getting mining going which is nice
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zRyIonrWSzo
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Yeah seen that stuff and it's honestly not impressive at this point. It's all the same 'prefab' stuff you get in any damn "base/settlement" builder these days as far as customization goes. We've had them underwater (seriously, go play Subnautica. It's fucking amazeballs.), we've had them on land (too many games to count by now, and it's a pretty stock feature. Conan Exiles, Ark, Insert Survival Gaem Here, Fallout 4 (this one's even moddable to ridiculous degrees) and so on), we've had them in space (Astroneer, Space Engineers, fucking No Man's Sky of all things etc etc) and the list goes on.
You know what all of these have in common? A sufficiently limited amount of customization options that you very quickly find that damn near every single base/home/whatever made by players are very much the same as any other made by players, with some differences in layout. The same four-five tables, the same four-five chairs, the same four-five lighting fixtures and so on. Truly unique venues like some zero-grav dance club in a sphere, an underwater dome in a sea of luminous semi-animalistic kelp that dances with the light patterns in the dome lounge, etc etc? Nope, we'll never see that.
Not that players are particularly good at thinking up these places anyway, but that's a whole different problem to tackle.
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QJgzlnUkrbw
go about 8 min, very encouraging re: piracy
basically they are keeping lawless null type zones, doing high risk vs high reward, similar to eve null being where the lucrative resources are. So you can pirate the shit out of people who go to null.
Interesting convo re suicide ganking etc. Basically seems all fair game but they'll ding you if you repeatedly gank one specific person, etc.
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Ah, for the days of grinding my title down to Dread Lady, just before Trammel launched.
Corp Por
*You have gained a little fame.*
*You have lost a lot of karma.*
An Corp
An Ex Por
Corp Por
*You have gained a little fame.*
*You have lost a lot of karma.*
An Corp
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So you can pirate the shit out of people who go to null.
Will still need a wardec mechanic of sorts or it'll be too easy to just "hide in highsec". You seen anything yet about the ability to just drop in and out of populated servers for safety's sake though? It sounds like it'll be very segregated.
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So you can pirate the shit out of people who go to null.
Will still need a wardec mechanic of sorts or it'll be too easy to just "hide in highsec". You seen anything yet about the ability to just drop in and out of populated servers for safety's sake though? It sounds like it'll be very segregated.
You won't have 'manual' control over servers as far as I know. It's all going to be under the hood and they want it all to look as single shard as possible. The server issues are super complicated and i haven't had it quite ironed out lately yet since I'm not up on everything. It's going to be halfway between single shard and multiple instances, basically. IE their big spaceport on Earth or wherever they spent 2 years modeling of course can't handle 10,000 human players (there are only so many landing pads for example) so the server AI will do it's best job to keep you grouped with folks it think should be around you. As you move away from hyper populated areas this will decrease.
Something like 90% of the traffic you see in space will be NPC anyway - it won't be like eve where you have a local and you can see who is around you, they are really going for the first person universe 'immersion' thing for the most part. You see a ship in front of you, you will have no idea if it's humans or npc in control until you hail them or bring someone on board.
In Space Sharding - it's going to be sort of like boxes within boxes of servers. The space around you is sort of invisibly divided up into multiple zones of space and as you fly through and as things get populated they get further subdivided into invisible new servers that get spooled up. the 10 ships pew pewing around you might be on the same 'server' and the 30 in the distance might actually be on a different one but you won't notice.
Large capital ships etc will have their own sort of persistent server bubbles.
To my knowledge there is no 'despawn' mechanic related to combat - if you log out especially during something dangerous your ship is still going to be there much like EVE - although I think it will de-grid after x amount of time. I think the despawn is also related to sec status and size - giant capital ships for example will never despawn (no logging off your supercarrier), and dangerous areas I think you have much fewer recourse as well. IIRC your character might even stay logged even if you log out in these situations - might go take a nap in the bunk of your ship or something so you can still be shot while you leave.
Wardecs and org combat are absolutely a thing. All sorts of merc corps and good/bad/neutral orgs already formed and populated on the forums and some are already on the live servers practicing. One thing that will be nice is they are integrating much of these activities into orgs and solo work. It's going to be way way easier for your 'merc' corp to check the local job board for escort, protection missions etc. and for all the other things, along whit solo work.
They want individuals (human and npc) and groups to easily be able to hire and post job requests for missions and contracts, and for humans and ai to take these jobs. From hiring a crew gunner to hiring a bunch of ships to escort your space hauler. They have spent a lot of time having most of the universe populated by millions of AI that are out there doing their thing; hauling minerals, doing jobs, transporting things, pew pewing, etc totally independent of the human players. If you hit that NPC convoy hauling minerals then those minerals DIDNT get to their destination, prices might go up at their destination site for example - you will absolutely be able to effect things.
They are -really- trying to do 'dynamic' job creation so when you confirm that contract to escort the space trucker it's also maybe generating a 'job' for pirates (ai or human) to try and hit your convoy.
Bonus - much more shades of grey for 'sec status;' for example if you are in pirate location x, they might have different set of laws than pirate group y and what goes in their space, it wont be a universal 1-0 type of rating. Gotta know where you are, what's legal there, and how in you are with the locals.
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.. yeah, that sounds like good things, with the drawbacks of non-optional bearing. I have little to zero interest in shooting an NPC or interacting with them. If only one in ten hostiles are actually interesting targets, that'll be a problem.
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.. yeah, that sounds like good things, with the drawbacks of non-optional bearing. I have little to zero interest in shooting an NPC or interacting with them. If only one in ten hostiles are actually interesting targets, that'll be a problem.
I think they are working on a 'slider' in your options that sets your encounter %, ie you can slide it more towards pvp and humans, without every being able to slide it to 100% or 0%
Having shot at both npcs and humans in space on the test servers earlier on, both are full of idiots and good pilots; you honestly wouldn't know in a lot of cases on some of these ships. but yea they will have to work pretty hard to make it both not obvious and worth your time.
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They have spent a lot of time having most of the universe populated by millions of AI that are out there doing their thing; hauling minerals, doing jobs, transporting things, pew pewing, etc totally independent of the human players.
For some reason, this feels a bit off, like... at that point, why does the game have to be online, except to offload AI actions to a server, rather than running on the player's own PC.
Like, say you go to some star system well away from where the majority of the playerbase operates. And like 99% of the space traffic you see is AI stuff, with the exception of one other player who doesn't speak English, or doesn't share your time zone.
At that point, what is the functional difference between the game, and an offline single-player game ?
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They have spent a lot of time having most of the universe populated by millions of AI that are out there doing their thing; hauling minerals, doing jobs, transporting things, pew pewing, etc totally independent of the human players.
For some reason, this feels a bit off, like... at that point, why does the game have to be online, except to offload AI actions to a server, rather than running on the player's own PC.
Like, say you go to some star system well away from where the majority of the playerbase operates. And like 99% of the space traffic you see is AI stuff, with the exception of one other player who doesn't speak English, or doesn't share your time zone.
At that point, what is the functional difference between the game, and an offline single-player game ?
If I recall one of the early stretch goals they will probably still do is that you can absolutely install a local copy and play it single player offline forever; you wont ever be able to merge your character back with the mmo but you can do this :P
The AI bots I think are there to give some life to the background and also to carry out all of the economy and war stuff. I'm not sure if you saw some of the videos the but the procedural planet stuff is like... city wide coruscant kind of shit on the surface and in space, you just have to have it filled with ships or it will look terrible.
I think they've said you will have a much larger impact on the npc/world economy the less populated an area is, so even if you are goons you will have very little chance of a 'burn jita' thing doing much of anything, but take your org to null sec and kill all of the npc miners you will hit the market hard there and also generate lots of AI npc requests for more minerals and transport jobs, etc.
Who knows though, lots of talk and we haven't seen it working yet.
BTW this AI activity extends planetside to the actual npc avatars, they will be going about their business on the surface doing missions or working bar or running their own little adventures without your interferance. If you wanted to you can hire them to be a co pilot or gunner on your ship or you could hell sign up and join an NPC ship as a crew member.
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https://youtu.be/fs2fpfJd68E
Nothing optimized yet of course but they are getting 50 players grouped up in space and planetside and screwing around at the same time now so that's quite exciting to see. It's still jerky and I really don't think it 'feels' good yet visually or control-wise but neato, what progress.
Also mining is in, that's pretty cool. It's pretty involved as far as scanning and carefully shattering rocks and then scooping up the minerals.
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Squadron 42, Citizencon Trailer. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VppjX4to9s4)
Mother... of... God...
If this ever releases and is playable, it'll all have been worth it.
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Have been super busy gonna check out the recaps and get back here later
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I skipped around on the live stream video, all 10 hours or whatever, not a lot new to see. Some nice new ships, incremental improvements, etc.
Far too little progress these days for me to even bother checking in much anymore, it's just glacial right now.
At least by the time the game actually gets released I can probably just sign up for one of those remote streaming google game services and not have to build a new PC to play it though, hahahah
But yea looks like they dropped a good chunk of that crowdfunding money hiring Mark Hamil and Gillian Anderson and Gary Oldman etc, might be fun :)
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Here's the trimmed-down keynote if you want to see current planetside type missions, with some city and open world gameplay https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PfXB5jnGXBQ
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Dropped money for Squadron 42 (still waiting) and it looks like fun, if Chris Roberts ever manages to finish the game and stop trying to be a director.
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If Sq42 is anything like the rest of it, it still needs some staggering amounts of optimization. It's looking amazing and all, but I am genuinely worried it's going to run like shit even after release.
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Latest PU releases have been running pretty smoothly, although I'm not sure what the player-cap is at right now. They've been adding tons more missions and NPCs and ships for every release. Some of the larger planetary/space installations are being included now which are pretty neat and with a stupid amount of detail and level design. They've switched to a 'quarterly' release schedule for updates instead of making all these random release targets and missing them completely and pissing their rabid fanboys off. The amount of ships they've got now is starting to get intimidating and frankly too much overlapping, and it's hard to see them as anything more than cash-milking at this point but that's how they roll.
They have this habit of having a release coming up, and then pimping out a fancy new ship that's $200 or whatever, making it look super cool and OP to sell a bunch, and then they'll have to dial it back with balance work after they've sold a bunch to keep the train moving. It's gotten quite old. The latest $1,000 or whatever hahahah https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=to1kDbR4L4I
I'm just going to steal one when the game is live, we all need an outlaw ship carrier for the bad neighborhoods :)
I've got 0 worries about single player (Squadron 42) not being silky smooth on release, and I've got 0 worries about small numbers of players in the PU running smooth as they do currently.
Much less confidence in how their server-stacking and spooling up is going to actually work when you've got 100 people or more in these giant ships full of people and pew pew. It really will sink or swim things for multiplayer, right now it's just not there and not ready for large groups.
Once you stop caring about the release date and sip your coffee and just wait for it to be out, it's way more fun :P
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Not going to begrudge anyone their fun at all. Hell, the more people buying in and playtesting everything they can now, the better for those of us waiting for a full release. I wholly endorse it. The singleplayer I'm going to stay hyped for, because it genuinely looks amazing already, but I'm starting to get more and more leery about the multiplayer universe.
I can't quite figure out what you're supposed to do there. It's starting to look like sort of a sandbox, but without all the amazing economy and industry and player markets etc that defines good sandboxes. i.e. Eve. Since you can bypass the entire thing by literally buying ships with real life dollaridoos, the in-game economy will sort of become meaningless, I fear, and thus the sandbox will too.
Ah well, doesn't matter. I'm in it for Sq42.
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Once you stop caring about the release date and sip your coffee and just wait for it to be out, it's way more fun :P
This.
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Not going to begrudge anyone their fun at all. Hell, the more people buying in and playtesting everything they can now, the better for those of us waiting for a full release. I wholly endorse it. The singleplayer I'm going to stay hyped for, because it genuinely looks amazing already, but I'm starting to get more and more leery about the multiplayer universe.
I can't quite figure out what you're supposed to do there. It's starting to look like sort of a sandbox, but without all the amazing economy and industry and player markets etc that defines good sandboxes. i.e. Eve. Since you can bypass the entire thing by literally buying ships with real life dollaridoos, the in-game economy will sort of become meaningless, I fear, and thus the sandbox will too.
Ah well, doesn't matter. I'm in it for Sq42.
Lots to say here! Can speak to some or that stuff when I'm on a real keyboard later.
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I can't quite figure out what you're supposed to do there. It's starting to look like sort of a sandbox, but without all the amazing economy and industry and player markets etc that defines good sandboxes. i.e. Eve. Since you can bypass the entire thing by literally buying ships with real life dollaridoos, the in-game economy will sort of become meaningless, I fear, and thus the sandbox will too.
Heyo! So two main things here with the cash purchasing of game and then the 'sandbox' Player Universe stuff:
$$ Cash $$
The fancy/expensive ships they sell for cash during development are generally 'limited time' sales, as in they are only ever for sale one time, in limited number, and then you can't buy them again for real cash after the sale is over. So some of the big capital ships or the super fancy luxury yachts or whatever that all these whales are buying, you only had a few weeks to buy them before you have to earn them in-game. Imagine a limited edition Eve Titan that you could just buy with cash, or eventually in game earn with ISK (some of the pricier ones you can not earn in game, ever). Some of these ships are also limited in number in-universe, so whatever capital ship yard won't produce another one for sale if there is already a certain number owned by players. I'm not sure if they ever changed it but it was my understanding back when I followed this constantly that all (except for the starter ships) direct ship sales will stop forever once the game launches
Star Citizen game bucks for real bucks
Basically PLEX, you pay real cash and get space credits for your character. This was a big kurfluffle a while back as you can imagine the pay to win implications, I believe the current thinking is they will limit the amount and frequency of what you can buy so you can't just load up and splurge on a titan or whatever, more useful for ship weapons and smaller vessels. But I'm sure they'll see those dollars and rethink it. Remember Star Citizen does NOT have a subscription fee, basically buying SQ42 single player gets you lifetime multiplayer access.
They had some interesting points on this basically saying a lot of older players are not interesting in grinding it out for days to be able to get a slightly larger ship and are happy to spend some money on it.
We should back up just a second though that in this game the larger ships are not always 'better' but more like, different tiers of gameplay and commitment. A difference from EVE would be that in this game you absolutely cannot solo operate a Titan. So even if you -could- get a hold of one by paying cash, the ships needs a player crew to be remotely effective using it, and a dedicated org worth of resources and protection to keep it operating and safe. There's no log-off for the larger ships, they are persistent, so you won't be solo-farming in your supercapitals in Star Citizen. There is however a sweet spot where some ships really just are flat out better for a bit more money and might not need many other people to kick your butt with it. But in general the bigger the ship the more of a headache they are going to be to operate by yourself without spending a bunch on half-assed NPC crews and other resources. Stargates and transit is size-dependent in SC, so larger ships aren't always the best way to get from A to B or the fastest. I think the idea they are going for is you can do most of the same things in a lot of the different tiered ships, but it's way more fun with your friends in the larger ones if that's what you wanna do.
Economy
This will be pretty reactive to players but they are scaling player influence depending on 1.0-0.0. IE if you are mining asteroids in Jita you aren't going to be able to corner the market, and the NPCs are doing most of the big orders in those areas. Out in scary neighborhoods players will make up much more of the manufacturing, mining, and mission creation. You'll also of course make more money hauling goods out to further areas, and generate content for escort type missions and 'raid' missions for both players and NPCs. They are going to have thousands of NPCs running through the economy along the players hauling, mining, selling, attacking, etc, -supposedly- adjusting to what's going on and to keep it interesting for you the player.
All of this is of course a bunch of talk until I really see it working, but the 'theory' is that Space Trucker (player or NPC) agrees to a haul order for 1,000 Veldspar in 0.0 or whatever and wants to haul their goods to sell. They might put out a mission for an escort or crew for the trip. Opportunities for other players or NPCs to work crew on the ship or to escort the hauler through bad neighborhoods. NPC or Players who are into being bad might get a 'tip' on paying for information that a cargo is coming through their area and be able to try and intercept. On with the dynamic content. They will also have lots of 'missions' with more narrative focus ala the quests you might get in WOW or something, with chances for people pro and anti to be a part of the semi-randomized mission tree.
The idea is to pair you up with people you'd want to play and interact with. You'll have a 'slider' and be able to set some odds for % encounters depending on your pvp or skill level. Note that the slider will never be able to be off all the way, and it is useless in the 0.0 type of areas. If you are a carebear that just wants to haul, you are still going to get ambushed in highsec, but you probably aren't going to run into killer death squad pvpers very often. But if you go to null you still get trounced.
Player economic activities include player owned territory on planet surfaces for farming, drug manufacturing, prospecting, mining, running a shop, manufacturing, etc. In space there's hauling, personnel transport, escorting, patrols, defending assets, the usual space pew pew options. In the more lawless areas you can find abandoned starbases to claim, although you have to work with tons of people to get all of the things fixes and operational, and all the usual null bloc activities. It's a pretty good range (SUPPOSEDLY LETS SEE IT IN ACTION).
Wanted to add a quick not on travel and system sizes, they are aiming for it being kind of a pain in the ass to cross multiple systems, some of these are like 30 minutes wide at 'warp' and require multiple stops for refueling along the way. So hauling across several systems or traveling across the galaxy is actually a very long trip that will take most people a few days of play time.
https://robertsspaceindustries.com/starmap if you want to see the current starmap. They are aiming for content-rich systems that you can do plenty of things for a long time without needing to leave. Aiming, of course, we'll see :P
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https://youtu.be/pA6P2WserfU
Had to post, someone having a very good time with the in-game movie camera features. They took the newest planet and large landing zone and did a recreation of a lot of Blade Runner imagery in game (even the eye!).
Quite good, worth a watch. The machinima from this game is going to be great.
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Lots of new stuff in new patch, big pew pew ships, new planets, big cities, etc.
Most important, massive frame rate increases with object-streaming implemented.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SAj7d01_-7c
Worth noting warping across the demo solar system is currently about a 12-minute warp in an average ship