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[Silas Vitalia]

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.

[Mizhara]

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.

[Jace]

I thought they were already ten million in the hole? No idea where I heard that, though.

[Silas Vitalia]

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. 

[Silas Vitalia]

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...

[Silas Vitalia]

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

[Lyn Farel]

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.

[Silas Vitalia]

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.

[Lyn Farel]

Yes maybe but it doesn't solve the problem at the dogfight level...

[Silas Vitalia]

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.

[Lyn Farel]

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.

[Silas Vitalia]

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.

[Lyn Farel]

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.

[Mizhara]

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.

[Silas Vitalia]

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