Star Citizen Megathread - Fly FREE thru Dec 14th! Link in OP

[dai]

that's what I was thinking, but we already have the neutrons. Maybe it's the same series of short range hard hitting guns, but because of the size it can't just shoot a bigger blob of neutrons or whatever, requiring a different projectile type

like, the difference between bullets and tank shells

[editline]e[/editline]

and then we have the MaxOx Electron guns. ???

[Why485]

From Freelancer, the only gun types I specifically remember were photon, neutron, and plasma. Mostly because each of them tended to be extremes of one thing or another.

Photon were the closest to Star Wars lasers and had very high projectile speeds and high rates of fire (~500 rpm). Basically the Repeater series in Star Citizen. Plasma I already described before, but they were the heavy hitting and unwieldy guns (~120rpm). Neutron guns were the happy medium between those two extremes, and my favorite guns in the game. They had average rates of fire (~240rpm) and decent speed/range with solid stopping power.

The rest of the projectile types beyond those three just slotted in on the sliding scale of photon to plasma. There were also faction guns that sometimes emphasized one stat over another, like for example one faction's photons might have longer range than average but at the cost of more energy required to fire it. The only really special weapons were the EMP guns which did heavy shield and energy damage, but minimal hull damage. There was also a type damage modifier as certain projectiles were better or worse against certain shields, but they were small and didn't matter too much in an unmodded game.

In Freelancer, the gun types didn't really matter much aside from giving you a general idea of what its stats were and what the bullet tended to look like. It was all arbitrary and had next to no basis in reality. I'm not expecting Star Citizen to be all that different. I doubt projectile types will matter too much beyond just creating simple visual and stat archetypes.

[dai]

so Freelancer to SC, it sounds like:

photon = (laser?) repeaters
plasma = neutron guns
neutron = laser cannons (feels and looks the most 'star wars' to me)
emp = distortion cannons

and yeah, I expect (besides EMP/DIST) there won't be many differences between types of energy weapons other than visual flair and easily telling if they're rapidfire/shortrange/heavy hitting/etc. I'd bet it may be important to figure out a ship's fighting capacity/engagement style with a short glance at stats instead of having to dig into its stats

[Mbbird]

Are laser weapons ever going to be renamed to what they actually are in the canon? (plasma)

[TheKingofBees]

IIRC the electron gun in privateer was a longer range, faster firing, lower damage version of the neutron gun.

[QUOTE=Mbbird;48607796]Are laser weapons ever going to be renamed to what they actually are in the canon? (plasma)[/QUOTE]

they explained it in the lore somewhat (albeit for a single manufacturer and line of gun), they're supposed to be fictional representations of quantum cascade lasers.
[URL="https://robertsspaceindustries.com/comm-link/spectrum-dispatch/13152-Hurston-Dynamics"]Hurston Dynamics[/URL]
[QUOTE] Quantum cascade lasers fire electromagnetic bolts that convert any material contacted into plasma, giving it a reasonable “bite” that is useful in most space combat encounters... Many corporations produce cheap quantum cascade lasers, mostly based on Hurston’s technologies, the Hurston name continues to convey a strong cachet.[/QUOTE]

so i think pretty much every "laser" we see is is based on QCL, as for what they could be related to IRL... maybe an atom laser?

[elix]

[video=youtube;aiIMvQeHToQ]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aiIMvQeHToQ[/video]
[QUOTE]01:19 – Intro
02:45 – Nyx Landing Zone Preview (the same one we've seen before)
07:05 – News From Around the Verse
16:07 – Interview with Todd Papy
23:28 – Behind The Scenes of the Social Module
32:46 – SHIP SHAPE - Reliant whiteboxing and animation
36:26 – MVP
37:08 – Art Sneak Peek - concept art of a fashionable female NPC[/QUOTE]

Herald and Reliant are going to be flyable soon, woo! Probably not before multicrew unless they're initially "single-crew" like the other semi-multicrew ships in-game, but still :dance:

Also, that Foundry 42 guy's t-shirt has a Royal Canadian Air Force roundel logo on it. I wonder if it was a gift from any of the visiting BHVR guys who're there for the UI summit. [IMG]http://fi.somethingawful.com/images/smilies/emot-canada.gif[/IMG]

Mwahaha, [URL="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aiIMvQeHToQ&t=911"]hacking into a ship and venting its atmosphere[/URL]. Fuck yes, EWAR and hacking going to be awesome!

[t]http://i.imgur.com/aruVqrh.png[/t]
Actual CIG employee x-ray up there.

[ithon]

I can't do it, I can't listen to the empire report at normal speed!!!!

[elix]

[t]https://i.imgur.com/phwNfnT.jpg[/t]
Spread the word. There's another public freefly code, DRAGONCON2015 for, big surprise, Dragon*Con, since Ben and Sandi and a few others have panels there. [URL="https://robertsspaceindustries.com/promotions/dragonconflyfree2015"]The code's redeemed here.[/URL] You [I]may[/I] have a chance for a 15% discount on starter packages, although the chances of getting this discount are much higher if you are not already a backer. The freefly is good until September 14th.

Remember, it'll give you the red X and tell you that you need to enter the code, but the next step will get a green checkmark and say that your account's activated AC for a week - including new accounts, so assure your friends on this weird little bug if you get people to sign up to try it out. Also, [B]IT DOES NOT INCLUDE ACCESS TO ARCCORP.[/B] It specifically states that it activates the Arena Commander module, and that's deliberate because, to paraphrase what Ben said on an RtV (but relating to fps, not planetside, back when fps was still expected to be first), backers paid for it so they get first dibs over free demo accounts, and since planetside's still [I]very[/I] new, the same policy clearly applies here.

Highlights from [URL="http://imperialnews.network/2015/09/reverse-verse-episode-61/"]INN's summary of RtV[/URL]:
- The MISC Reliant is in whitebox (finalizing mesh detail, but untextured), and the "flying in about two weeks" comment from RtV was for [I]internal[/I] flyability, not ready for release
- The new Community Hub was shown off, and [URL="https://imgur.com/a/RoYwk"]INN has a gallery of screengrabs[/URL]. They still have the list of people who were in invite waves 1 and 2 of the recent 1.2 PTU and they're going to roll out access to the community hub with those two waves to smoke test the feature before going live to everyone, starting next Tuesday (the 8th, since the 7th is a holiday in the US and that includes CIG USA).
- The Issue Council (public bug tracker) is separate from the Community Hub and the final release candidate is being tested heavily, "could go live any day now". One day we'll just go to the RSI site and it'll be there.
- Caterpillar's now in the hands of Randy, the guy who worked on the Genesis Starliner (and who looks like Vin Diesel), and he was super-excited to be tasked with working on it. No ETA as usual.
- [B]Arena Commander in 1.2 has 1.1.5's rapid TTK unbalance[/B] because some of the balance changes between 1.1.5 and 1.1.6 didn't make it into the merge to 1.2 and some poor fuck on the coding team in CIG LA gets to go manually track down missing merges. Expect a patch to push us back to 1.1.6-level TTK when that's done.
- [URL="https://www.reddit.com/r/starcitizen/comments/3jeefn/star_citizen_devops_amaa_live_now/"]The devops team did an AMA[/URL], with a bunch of interesting results, including [URL="https://i.imgur.com/2qHbi0Z.png"]a graph of the population percentages of each ship that joined matches in 1.1.5[/URL] as well as [URL="http://imgur.com/a/8xzO1"]this dependency graph[/URL] (page 1 of 10 is below) of [I]some[/I] of the commits for the big merge between the fps and GameDev branches:
[t]https://i.imgur.com/aBVkOsi.jpg[/t]
- Zane is working on the 3xx series HUDs while in the UK; the 3xx series' HUDs can be expected to change "a lot" to get up to spec with the latest ship build standards.
- Ben's dance will be a dance emote in social if they can talk Ben into it.
[IMG]https://i.imgur.com/wAKSrGe.gif[/IMG]

FPS status post and August monthly report, along with Vanguard Q&A #2 are due later today.

[Mai]

what ship(s) does the code give, and is it locked to singleplayer ff/vs?

[elix]

It doesn't specify what ships are unlocked; count on it being locked to offline as usual. Free trials don't get to rack up Google Cloud Compute usage charges.

[Techbot]

went ahead and tried to extract some sounds sadly I couldn't get all of them but I put music that's new for me on here

[url]http://3kv.in/~techbot/public/Star%20Citizen/Unreleased%20Music/[/url]

also wtf is this

[vid]http://3kv.in/~techbot/public/Star%20Citizen/Unreleased%20Music/769662459.ogg[/vid]

[editline]5th September 2015[/editline]

there we go managed to extract all of the sounds

[editline]5th September 2015[/editline]

oh look found the bar music

[vid]http://3kv.in/~techbot/ShareX/2015/09/05/253616448.ogg[/vid]

[dai]

[QUOTE=Techbot;48620106]but I put music that's new for me on here[/QUOTE]

99453880 sick
151997569 is definitely the music that plays during the current tutorial
228040045 sounds like a slightly fast synthetic instrument version of the launcher theme. diet theme
253153912 is that same theme but sad and empty
278849886 is that same theme if it was the opening to a disney movie
373103941 tense empty space
632363281 new(?) racing music
641991080 feels like a more energetic sequel to the tutorial music, fitting for a victorious return from major mission
707105505 sad music, similar violins to the tutorial style songs, likely story stuff
750317798 short tense violin string
769662459 ~secret fantasies~ gonna bet this is playing on a radio somewhere as a joke. I'm hoping they do a lot of varied commercial junk like that, it's kind of weird (even though it was in a ship dealership) that all I was hearing was existing ship commercial audio

[Techbot]

I'm still uploading btw

[editline]5th September 2015[/editline]

what could this be?

[vid]http://3kv.in/~techbot/ShareX/2015/09/05/607985110.ogg[/vid]

[krail]

same hot date sample found here [url]https://soundcloud.com/dj-nick-irwin-1/01-1900-hot-date[/url] which just adds more questions than answers tbh

[Techbot]

I think this is the quantumdrive sound when you exit it

[vid]http://3kv.in/~techbot/ShareX/2015/09/05/210400594.ogg[/vid]

[editline]5th September 2015[/editline]

and more sq42 audiofiles, but I won't upload them.

[editline]5th September 2015[/editline]

what ship ui this this?

[vid]http://3kv.in/~techbot/ShareX/2015/09/05/1062838110.ogg[/vid]

[dai]

that long static one could be a loop of radio interference, or the background noise in quantum or warp

[QUOTE=Techbot;48620394]what ship ui this this?

[vid]http://3kv.in/~techbot/ShareX/2015/09/05/1062838110.ogg[/vid][/QUOTE]

it sounds more friendly/personable, wouldn't be surprised if that's the starliner

[Techbot]

[sp]sounds like there will be a TV or something http://3kv.in/~techbot/ShareX/2015/09/05/99677840.ogg[/sp]

[editline]5th September 2015[/editline]

[sp]also there are a lot of sounds of your ship ui glitching out, they sound awesome[/sp]

[editline]5th September 2015[/editline]

there are like 4k+ voice lines (including ship voices and all)

[editline]5th September 2015[/editline]

I just noticed, they actually played the g-loc bar songs at gamescom :v:

[dai]

apparently retaliator is getting another interior pass "to deal with space efficiency", lots of rejoicing going on. The whole current "tube full of hallways" thing has been scrutinized to hell in back by 3/4ths the tali owners posting in their related threads

in other news, someone noticed a new header image, hmmm

[t]https://robertsspaceindustries.com/media/07xts6zwymd9cr/post_section_header/Shipbattle_landofeather_v5_plainv2.jpg[/t]

"Shipbattle_LandOf_Eather"

[Capgun]

[QUOTE=dai;48621399]apparently retaliator is getting another interior pass "to deal with space efficiency", lots of rejoicing going on. The whole current "tube full of hallways" thing has been scrutinized to hell in back by 3/4ths the tali owners posting in their related threads

in other news, someone noticed a new header image, hmmm

[t]https://robertsspaceindustries.com/media/07xts6zwymd9cr/post_section_header/Shipbattle_landofeather_v5_plainv2.jpg[/t]

"Shipbattle_LandOf_Eather"[/QUOTE]

Good to hear. As much as I love the Tali, it's current interior is weak compared to the concept art for it.

[elix]

[QUOTE=dai;48621399]"Shipbattle_LandOf_Eather"[/QUOTE]

Shipbattle_landofeather

shipbattle Lando Feather

For Disco Lando and [URL="https://www.youtube.com/user/CorpIncScience/videos"]Fiendishfeather[/URL], as mentioned in the Community section of the monthly report.
[QUOTE=Disco Lando]To that end, I worked with fan content creator FiendishFeather for nearly a month to create the giant banner that hung over the heads of our fans in the venue. Rendered entirely in the game engine, and using 100% Star Citizen Assets as a single scene with zero compositing, it measured out at a whopping 27325×7200 at 100dpi. ... (You can see it in the banner image above this section.)[/QUOTE]

Comm-Link Ketchup
[URL="https://robertsspaceindustries.com/comm-link/transmission/14935-Vanguard-Variant-Q-A-Part-2"]Vanguard Q&A #2[/URL]
[URL="https://robertsspaceindustries.com/comm-link/transmission/14939-Star-Marine-Status-Update"]fps status update[/URL]
[URL="https://robertsspaceindustries.com/comm-link/transmission/14937-Monthly-Studio-Report"]August monthly report[/URL]

[QUOTE=Santa Monica writers]...we’ve been pushing forward on Star Systems, organizing the current star systems and preparing them to be vetted by scientific consultants while delving into the remaining un-lored systems to sketch out their character and how they fit in the universe. This information is important, not just for the Galactapedia, but also for reference by the developers who will be building the actual large-scale game environments for the persistent universe. This kind of data is also one of the many things we do to add deeper simulation elements to the game, instead of just doing things by fiat. While science fiction can of course contain unexplained or strange artifacts and circumstances that add elements of mystery and wonder to your exploration of the universe, we want the rest of it to make enough conventional sense for you to fully immerse yourself in a setting conducive to suspension of disbelief.[/QUOTE]

[QUOTE=Austin QA]QA met the month of August in a full swing crunch for the content we were debuting at Gamescom. Our focus was squarely set on the multi crew functionality. Each day QA would play through the demo in which we were prepping to show off our new features multiple times verifying fixes and reporting new issues. The day would conclude with a play through with the developers in LA. We found this very valuable as the developers’ in depth understanding of their systems helped to identify additional issues. We were incredibly happy with how well received the team’s efforts were at the Gamescom presentation. It was a hard crunch but in the end it was all worth it to see the overwhelming positive feedback from everyone. This has energized us to work even harder to get Social Module, Multi-Crew and Star Marine out to everyone as soon as possible.[/QUOTE]
Well, I guess we know why Chris said nobody on QA had beaten wave 18 of the overhauled Vanduul Swarm; they didn't have any time to in between testing the multicrew demo.

[QUOTE=Austin devops]we began our four month automation project. This project will encompass work from the DevOps team in Germany as well as in Austin, and will cover the four major areas of automation; Perforce Tools, Game Client, Game Server, and Build Server. While we are still at the very beginning of this effort, the road map we have outlined promises to help QA reduce monotonous repetitive testing, ensure that checkins into the branches will not crash the build before they go in, enable engineers to see server load and performance without the need to organize massive playtests, and will fire off an array of build checks at the end of the build creation process.[/QUOTE]
:ok:

[QUOTE=CIG Austin end-of-section]Some features that are in active development at this present moment include improving the chat interface and functionality (hooray for private channels!), adding at LEAST 25 more emotes to choose from (now with audio!), updating the shop facades to make them absolutely unmistakable from across the Area18 courtyard, and something to do with…buggies??[/QUOTE]
Oh shit, either buggies in ArcCorp or the buggy track's coming back. :v:

[QUOTE=Foundry 42 UK]A highlight Q-Drive bug that got fixed along the way was your ship losing control at distances a long way from the origin, it turns out this was due to Cry Engine’s default ocean water level of z = -1000000 being now easily within reach, which would subsequently flood your engine![/QUOTE]
God I love alpha bugs.

F42 UK is also working on a concept for a ship they won't name yet (I'm betting it's the Esperia Prowler, but it could be an unannounced ship for S42 or something), and also this update:
[QUOTE]The environment team has been busy with the map for the Arena Commander 2.0 release for CitizenCon. We have three main stations with interiors whiteboxed out now, along with one planet, three moons, three smaller satellites and a set of small asteroids. We have also been taking a new Low Tech Alpha set up to greybox that will allow us to build our station interiors more sensibly and to a grander scale than originally planned. The last POI to go in will be Asteroid Gainey and its sister set of large asteroids which are currently being prototyped.[/QUOTE]
I am [B]so[/B] ready.

[QUOTE=F42 Frankfurt]A smaller part of S42’s opening will actually be shown at CitizenCon in October so we are also working hard on the environment for this scene which will also be perfect to show the progress we have made in facial animation quality.[/QUOTE]
oh shit; CIG is not joking around with CitizenCon and SQ42

[t]https://robertsspaceindustries.com/media/sg79fm071bdzvr/source/Micro.jpg[/t] [t]https://robertsspaceindustries.com/media/lzzya8kf2z22dr/source/Austin.jpg[/t]
[I]I am a hologram, AMA[/I]

Oh, and the Dragon*Con shit's happening like, right now.
[t]https://i.imgur.com/S7FPB5o.jpg[/t]

From D*C, fan trailer god years1hundred posted this snapshot of a peek at the MISC Endeavour:
[IMG]https://pbs.twimg.com/media/COLCWTBUEAAM0yQ.jpg:large[/IMG]

[ithon]

For fucks sake, what's with the odd number of rings?

[dai]

[QUOTE=Ithon;48622752]For fucks sake, what's with the odd number of rings?[/QUOTE]

something something magic future tech gravity generators make up for balance and cost less energy than the motors rotating somehow

[Why485]

It's hard to understand why they would even [B]have[/B] rotating rings when there's artificial gravity everywhere, and apparently it's such a cheap thing to run that even emergency power on a Retaliator can fully power the gravity plates.

[dai]

[QUOTE=Why485;48622908]It's hard to understand why they would even [B]have[/B] rotating rings when there's artificial gravity everywhere, and apparently it's such a cheap thing to run that even emergency power on a Retaliator can fully power the gravity plates.[/QUOTE]

for something like the mining platform it makes sense, to let the ore gently 'fall' to the outer end of the bins, but other stuff, not so sure.

Maybe when you want large open atmosphere environments, it makes more sense to have the air in a huge donut where it can circulate all the way around, rather than a long flat hallway where air at either end can stagnate and requires more power to balance out oxygen and pollution levels or whatever

[Saber15]

[QUOTE=dai;48622932]for something like the mining platform it makes sense, to let the ore gently 'fall' to the outer end of the bins, but other stuff, not so sure.

Maybe when you want large open atmosphere environments, it makes more sense to have the air in a huge donut where it can circulate all the way around, rather than a long flat hallway where air at either end can stagnate and requires more power to balance out oxygen and pollution levels or whatever[/QUOTE]

But it's far more expensive - both in cost and maintenance - to create a centrifuge section than it is to have some more air supply and return ducts.

[dai]

[QUOTE=Saber15;48623004]But it's far more expensive - both in cost and maintenance - to create a centrifuge section than it is to have some more air supply and return ducts.[/QUOTE]

barring cost effectiveness, general quality of life maybe

[Saber15]

[QUOTE=dai;48623275]barring cost effectiveness, general quality of life maybe[/QUOTE]

I'm not sure how it scales with size, but on NASA tests they did with microgravity centrifuges (about 3m in diameter iirc) the astronauts would get instant motion sickness when turning around in place inside the centrifuge. There's also the issue of having to design everything to work both under acceleration (when the wall becomes the floor), in zero gravity (when locked in place), and in idle rotation.

Unless there's some weird physiological effects from SC's artificial gravity, the quality of life on a centrifuge is much lower than real gravity.

[Mbbird]

I'm going to go ahead and decide that that effect scales down [I]significantly[/I] with size.

[krail]

it's pretty obvious that the ring isn't living space anyway, it's only connected by struts and doesn't even have much internal volume

[editline]6th September 2015[/editline]

[QUOTE=Mbbird;48623417]I'm going to go ahead and decide that that effect scales down [I]significantly[/I] with size.[/QUOTE]

definitely, at that size your head is experiencing a fraction of the 'gravity' that your feet are

[Korro Bravin]

[QUOTE=Mbbird;48623417]I'm going to go ahead and decide that that effect scales down [I]significantly[/I] with size.[/QUOTE]

Yeah, 3m is tiny for this kind of test