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

[QUOTE=jonoPorter;47183860]I should buy this and at the same time I shouldn't.[/QUOTE] Its only practical for organizations, same as the Reclaimer.

I wouldn't think twice about the spinning cargo pods if it were any other game. In fact if it was in EVE online or something I'd probably think it was cool, but because Star Citizen is trying to be more realistic it bothers me somewhat. [QUOTE=Sgt Doom;47184991]If it's not an American paedophile, then I dunno.[/QUOTE] It's a bit of word play.

[QUOTE=nightlord;47184243]The Orion looks nice but i don't really like the rotating cargo modules. Is there a point to having those rotate?[/QUOTE] So all the rocks are pushed to the back of the container?

[QUOTE=FlakAttack;47184724]Not sure why the Orion's cargo containers rotate but whatever. Mining sounds really interesting though. I'm glad they've found a way to make it challenging (as opposed to EVEry other game...)[/QUOTE] Unpopular opinion but if Elite: Dangerous mining is anything to go by I much prefer the passive EVE style. If you are doing a monotonous grind, might as well automate it as much as possible. That said, a bittersweet update. As always it seems they are putting al ot of thought and imagination into game concepts and it all sounds very impressive on paper, but from what I can tell their design seems much more ship based rather than equipment based. Seems you will need a dedicated mining ship and won't be able to slap a laser and scanner on any old boat. Atleast you can fill key positions with NPCs. I imagine bringing a random group together to mine would be incredibly frustrating.

I would hope that, by post-beta launch, or soon after, there'll be mining modules you can fit onto individual ships, so that you have a Freelancer with mining lasers on it instead of guns. Then you've got a Connie with a tractor beam fitted to the back, and someone on the Connie controls the beams to scoop stuff into the hangar bay. Or a larger cargo hauler, whatever it might be, fitted the same way. The Orion's just an all-in-one industrial-class solution. Also, don't forget the wave 4 concept of the Terrapin, the heavily-armoured mining [I]starter ship[/I]. CR said not to count the other starters out, meaning we'll likely see them eventually, because the votes were for which ships go into the ship pipeline right now, not now and then nothing forever. I suspect, now, that it's heavily-armoured so that while you're in the ass of the ship at the mining laser turret, pulling rocks in as they pop off, if shit goes down and the asteroid starts exploding, you don't blow up while you're running to your pilot's chair to GTFO.

[QUOTE=Raidyr;47187743]That said, a bittersweet update. As always it seems they are putting al ot of thought and imagination into game concepts and it all sounds very impressive on paper, but from what I can tell their design seems much more ship based rather than equipment based. Seems you will need a dedicated mining ship and won't be able to slap a laser and scanner on any old boat. Atleast you can fill key positions with NPCs. I imagine bringing a random group together to mine would be incredibly frustrating.[/QUOTE] An interesting point. It seems Star Citizen has some ships that are generalists and some that are very specialized, but some roles can only be done by specialists. Admittedly it sounds logical and realistic, I just hope it doesn't negatively impact gameplay.

[QUOTE=elixwhitetail;47187792] Also, don't forget the wave 4 concept of the Terrapin, the heavily-armoured mining [I]starter ship[/I]. [/QUOTE] Didn't realize the Terrapin was a mining ship, well hopefully that means they are looking at some variant of solo mining in a smaller ship without having to hire too much crew (preferably any). [QUOTE=FlakAttack;47187823]An interesting point. It seems Star Citizen has some ships that are generalists and some that are very specialized, but some roles can only be done by specialists. Admittedly it sounds logical and realistic, I just hope it doesn't negatively impact gameplay.[/QUOTE] Oh don't get me wrong the Orion sounds cool as fuck. Imagine mining ops from EVE except every person is actually playing the game and orchestrating their own moves at consoles and shit. [editline]21st February 2015[/editline] Too bad none of my friends want to drink Chris Roberts' Kool Aid :(

It's also possible that the Terrapin's ore collection will be done from the front, and the heavy armour is so that fragments that you're not paying attention to (since nobody's on dedicated chunk tractor duty, just you multitasking with both mining and tractor beams) don't wreck your shit five minutes into solo mining from random fragment bumps. [QUOTE=Raidyr;47187900]Too bad none of my friends want to drink Chris Roberts' Kool Aid :([/QUOTE] Just wait until more of the modules fall into place and some crazy shit happens live on-stream on rigs powerful enough to show the game off without it being a slideshow. When the cinematic camera option's in and people master it, you're gonna see some rad machinima shit that makes the cryengine work with SC assets that people are doing look like ass (and some of it is decent).

Does it work like taking a demo in Source Engine games? As in you save it and later you can load up the entire thing again to fiddle with it, reverse shit, look at stuff from different angles etc.

Cryengine can do that, but playback is in the Cryengine environment, which means it's not useful to someone who doesn't have the paid SDK or a version of the client built to allow demo playback. I imagine there'll eventually be something like that accessible to players, especially since mod tools are going to be released (why not have a TF2-style demo playback editor since you're packaging everything else for content creation?). What I meant is more adding a spectator cam option that has different presets and freecam. You basically have a restricted version of this when you die in AC, before you respawn. Mouse3-clicking (you [I]may[/I] need to turn on "cinematic camera" in the options - no idea what it actually does right now) should allow you to rotate the camera around when following ships. Wheel to zoom in and out within limits.

[QUOTE=Raidyr;47187743]Unpopular opinion but if Elite: Dangerous mining is anything to go by I much prefer the passive EVE style. If you are doing a monotonous grind, might as well automate it as much as possible. [/QUOTE] The biggest problem with Elite's mining is just how much of a [I]pain in the ass[/I] it is. You gotta shoot an asteroid until a rock chip goes flying off, then you have to align with the rock and thread the needle to put it in your cargo hold. It's slow as fuck. If it's like X3 where you blast a rock into small, static rocks and then just plow into them/scoop them up in a NOT TINY cargo hatch, it won't be too bad.

[QUOTE=Saber15;47188871]The biggest problem with Elite's mining is just how much of a [I]pain in the ass[/I] it is. You gotta shoot an asteroid until a rock chip goes flying off, then you have to align with the rock and thread the needle to put it in your cargo hold. It's slow as fuck. If it's like X3 where you blast a rock into small, static rocks and then just plow into them/scoop them up in a NOT TINY cargo hatch, it won't be too bad.[/QUOTE] You forgot refinery micromanagement. It's honestly terrible, and this is coming from a long time EVE miner.

Well, the FPcorp now has an Orion. :v: It's the lifetime insurance that breaks me.

[QUOTE=ubersoldier;47189463]Well, the FPcorp now has an Orion. :v: It's the lifetime insurance that breaks me.[/QUOTE] I'll take an engineering slot. I'm trained in repairing gravity generators and stomping zombie babies. Will take pay in medkits.

[QUOTE=elixwhitetail;47188528]It's also possible that the Terrapin's ore collection will be done from the front, and the heavy armour is so that fragments that you're not paying attention to (since nobody's on dedicated chunk tractor duty, just you multitasking with both mining and tractor beams) don't wreck your shit five minutes into solo mining from random fragment bumps. Just wait until more of the modules fall into place and some crazy shit happens live on-stream on rigs powerful enough to show the game off without it being a slideshow. When the cinematic camera option's in and people master it, you're gonna see some rad machinima shit that makes the cryengine work with SC assets that people are doing look like ass (and some of it is decent).[/QUOTE] Given my own plans for my voice-acted machinima, I'm very, very excited to hear about the possibility - however remote - that there'll be playback.

[QUOTE=ubersoldier;47189463]Well, the FPcorp now has an Orion. :v: It's the lifetime insurance that breaks me.[/QUOTE] Sign me up for general dickwad manager on the ship. Because someone is going to have to manage all these dickwads to do the right job at mining, and I've got laser whips. 2+2 = profit with no expense

I wonder how effective those drills would be on an idris...

[QUOTE=Korro Bravin;47190397]I wonder how effective those drills would be on an idris...[/QUOTE] I'm going to guess not very.

Trying to justify buying the mining platform. Believe it or not, one of my favourite thing about EVE: Online was just mining Veldspar with my friends and getting drunk whilst doing it. Now I can have said friends on my ship and we can all drunkenly mine! But as was posted before -- the fact that those modules rotate; yeah, they look neat; but there is zero practical purpose for them to do so. I mean; it'd make sense *IF* they had another module counter-rotating... but even then; if one of those modules weighed more than the other, it would throw the CoG off balance... I'd kinda prefer them to not rotate... Or maybe have the ship look like those Homeworld miners or something; with a large integrated/detachable ore bay. [thumb]http://fc09.deviantart.net/fs6/i/2005/023/c/c/Taiidan_Resource_Collector_by_Enterprise_E.jpg[/thumb] [thumb]http://media.moddb.com/images/mods/1/19/18530/ss00184.jpg[/thumb] Or something along the lines of this: [thumb]http://web.ccpgamescdn.com/newssystem/media/63965/1/EVE_Online_Retribution_OREFrigate.jpg[/thumb] The StarCitizen Mining Ship is a grand design; don't get me wrong... but I somehow feel like it could be 'better'. The ship just seems to lack... character?

[QUOTE=Don Merino;47184323]Because that was totally what the guy in the thread was suggesting. I mean, the story is of questionable quality, but I don't see how "Heavily implying child rape" in a backstory and "introducing child characters for players to rape" are even comparable, and you're implying they're the same thing.[/QUOTE] Yeah, going to have to bring this up again. How far would you take censorship? Introducing an adult character (Or finding one dead) who you learn was abused as a child is too R-rated for a game like Star Citizen? I disagree. You may as well have no death and no crime at all if you're going to go that far.

[QUOTE=Suitcase;47191617] [thumb]http://fc09.deviantart.net/fs6/i/2005/023/c/c/Taiidan_Resource_Collector_by_Enterprise_E.jpg[/thumb] [thumb]http://media.moddb.com/images/mods/1/19/18530/ss00184.jpg[/thumb] Or something along the lines of this: [thumb]http://web.ccpgamescdn.com/newssystem/media/63965/1/EVE_Online_Retribution_OREFrigate.jpg[/thumb] The StarCitizen Mining Ship is a grand design; don't get me wrong... but I somehow feel like it could be 'better'. The ship just seems to lack... character?[/QUOTE] Yeah, and the flying connex boxes you posted have heaps of character.

[QUOTE=archangel125;47192724]Yeah, going to have to bring this up again. How far would you take censorship? Introducing an adult character (Or finding one dead) who you learn was abused as a child is too R-rated for a game like Star Citizen? I disagree. You may as well have no death and no crime at all if you're going to go that far.[/QUOTE] it came across as kind of creepy to me. '...as a sex slave'... 'as you can imagine, he did terrible things'. why do we have to imagine the terrible things? isn't it already implied what a horrible pirate scumbag might do to a slave woman? I mean, why even have the plot point in general? she's dead anyway, there's no redemption, no explanation from her viewpoint that you can empathize with. the encounter would play out exactly the same with some random no-name male slave, except that you don't find them wearing 'a skimpy prostitute outfit'. [editline]23rd February 2015[/editline] remember this is coming from the community that has suggested sex/rape/sex slaves should be in the game

I've added my own scenario at long last to your thread, Elix. I know it's much later than I promised, but I wanted time to think about it. Let me know how you like it: [quote][B]Class: [/B] Special [B]Ship: [/B] Cutlass Blue, "The Capitalist", stock exterior. [B]Registered owner:[/B] No IFF ping, registration markings falsified. Contact matches no known registration numbers in UEE-controlled space. [B]Damage/Scenario: [/B] The ship is found in the Corel system, smashed into and stuck firmly on the surface of an asteroid in one of the more dense areas of a belt cluster. Its location is not far away from a major thoroughfare. A large hull breach from the collision has vented all the atmosphere on the ship, and the power plant, severely damaged, has long since died. The ship's pilot is nowhere to be found. There is no gravity on the ship, and in the holding cells float bodies, asphyxiated and frozen in the vacuum. These bodies are all human, composing primarily of women and children. All of them wear overalls, bear electronic tags, are restrained with heavy, crudely-forged manacles, and are wearing shock collars. Nearby is found a strange device that, upon closer inspection, appears to be a highly unusual distress beacon. It seems to be gyroscope-stabilized, and operates with a focused burst transmission - virtually undetectable by other ships in-system, sending a finely focused and very brief beam of encrypted data at random intervals towards a remote point of unknown significance in the same system. Salvageable components include weapons mounted on the dorsal turret, a pressure suit from one of two lockers in the rear of the ship (The other one missing) and the two thrusters on the Cutlass that were not destroyed in the collision. [B]Backstory:[/B] The ship is owned and operated by a large, low-profile slaver ring based in the Nul system. [I]The Capitalist[/I], carrying its product, had presumably been trying to enter Banu space, its pilot choosing to route through an asteroid belt cluster to avoid scans by system security. It had met with an accident, and the pilot had either escaped, or was lost while trying to escape. If the player opts to follow the burst transmission beam on the distress beacon, he or she will discover an unmarked signal relay satellite, likely owned by the slaving ring, that is capable of launching low-signature messenger drones. These will navigate jump-points into neighboring systems and transmit the message to another relay satellite therein. The slaving organization had set these up along their most frequent trade routes in locations unlikely to be discovered by system security, in order to establish a line of communication, and provide support for their operations. Following this trail, the player will eventually discover the slaving ring's base of operations in Nul. Given the likelihood of living slaves on board the station, the player, if choosing to attack, must bring a boarding team, infiltrate on foot and shut down the operation. Choosing to free the slaves and report the incident to the UEE will grant the player a considerable amount of faction reputation with the United Empire of Earth, and humanitarian organizations operating in UEE space. It will, however, also carry the risk of becoming a target for black market bounties. Alternatively, the player can choose to kill the existing slavers, seize their product, and sell it him/herself.[/quote] Beyond the registration markings being falsified and the strange distress beacon, the reason I insisted the cargo of the ship be primarily women and children is so that even the dullest players would stop and go "Hang on, something's not right here. This is no bounty hunter's ship."

[QUOTE=krail9;47193178]it came across as kind of creepy to me. '...as a sex slave'... 'as you can imagine, he did terrible things'. why do we have to imagine the terrible things? isn't it already implied what a horrible pirate scumbag might do to a slave woman? I mean, why even have the plot point in general? she's dead anyway, there's no redemption, no explanation from her viewpoint that you can empathize with. the encounter would play out exactly the same with some random no-name male slave, except that you don't find them wearing 'a skimpy prostitute outfit'. [editline]23rd February 2015[/editline] remember this is coming from the community that has suggested sex/rape/sex slaves should be in the game[/QUOTE] I agree that it came off creepy, but why shouldn't a dead NPC have a back story? It can help flesh out the universe and make it more interesting. Giving a dead NPC some characterization reinforces the idea that they were once a living human being and not just a fleshy loot container spawned for you to make some money.

[QUOTE=krail9;47193178]it came across as kind of creepy to me. '...as a sex slave'... 'as you can imagine, he did terrible things'. why do we have to imagine the terrible things? isn't it already implied what a horrible pirate scumbag might do to a slave woman? I mean, why even have the plot point in general? she's dead anyway, there's no redemption, no explanation from her viewpoint that you can empathize with. the encounter would play out exactly the same with some random no-name male slave, except that you don't find them wearing 'a skimpy prostitute outfit'. [editline]23rd February 2015[/editline] remember this is coming from the community that has suggested sex/rape/sex slaves should be in the game[/QUOTE] Fair point, I'm not going to deny that it was definitely... off.

I don't really get why there's so much taboo about rape going on in the gaming scene lately, you see that kind of stuff a lot in series and movies already. At what point did rape become more abhorrent than murder in such a way that depicting the latter in its finest details is okay yet any hint towards the former should be prohibited in video games? If we ignore the creepy innuendos of the poster the scene itself doesn't seem too out-of-place and would be a nice change from your average castaway story.

[QUOTE=_Axel;47193523]I don't really get why there's so much taboo about rape going on in the gaming scene lately, you see that kind of stuff a lot in series and movies already. At what point did rape become more abhorrent than murder in such a way that depicting the latter in its finest details is okay yet any hint towards the former should be prohibited in video games? If we ignore the creepy innuendos of the poster the scene itself doesn't seem too out-of-place and would be a nice change from your average castaway story.[/QUOTE] I think there's quite a few reasons rape is so taboo, especially in comparison to killing. For starters there are a lot of situations in which killing is justified or even glorified. For example killing in order to protect one's family is not considered to be reprehensible and to be a soldier and fight for your country has always been glorified and/or honored in some form or another. Death and killing has also been a part of stories for as long as mankind has been around so we're largely numb to the concept of fictional killing. When it comes to rape in video games specifically I think it's partially, because there are still a lot of people out there that don't believe video games can be called an art form (lots of people still around that didn't grow up with them). Many of these people would verbally crucify anyone that would dare cover such a serious matter in something as "childish" as a video game. It also doesn't help that you see people online posting about how they want to see rape in games, not because it would add something to the experience, but because it just happens to be their fetish.

It's not that the character was a sex slave. It's not that the character was presumably raped frequently. It's not even that the backstory contains implications of rape and how dare you. It's that a dead NPC in an otherwise generic wreck but for chrome plating was a 13-year-old sex slave (and then held captive for 10 years) and the poster felt the need to explicitly go out of his way to tell us that, oh yes, the slaver did terrible things to that helpless child on his spaceship where nobody could protect her. That is far more pedocreepy than necessary to tell the story of an escaped sex slave that died from lack of planning. On the official, public-facing, forums. I didn't expect the post to get hidden away from public view entirely, but I think we can all agree that, as written, that post crossed lines it didn't need to cross. And it was the first post from that account. And who knows if that account is someone's sock puppet (which is a big no-no -- you can have multiple game accounts but using more than one forum account to post is prohibited) or something.

[QUOTE=elixwhitetail;47193724]It's not that the character was a sex slave. It's not that the character was presumably raped frequently. It's not even that the backstory contains implications of rape and how dare you. It's that a dead NPC in an otherwise generic wreck but for chrome plating was a 13-year-old sex slave (and then held captive for 10 years) and the poster felt the need to explicitly go out of his way to tell us that, oh yes, the slaver did terrible things to that helpless child on his spaceship where nobody could protect her. That is far more pedocreepy than necessary to tell the story of an escaped sex slave that died from lack of planning. On the official, public-facing, forums. I didn't expect the post to get hidden away from public view entirely, but I think we can all agree that, as written, that post crossed lines it didn't need to cross. And it was the first post from that account. And who knows if that account is someone's sock puppet (which is a big no-no -- you can have multiple game accounts but using more than one forum account to post is prohibited) or something.[/QUOTE] My suggestion was inspired by the general idea, and I tried to uncreepify it and add more depth. Opinions?

[QUOTE=archangel125;47193781]My suggestion was inspired by the general idea, and I tried to uncreepify it and add more depth. Opinions?[/QUOTE] It's a sinister story, but, if I was CIG, I'd call it acceptable for inclusion. It's not like you said there was evidence that the kids had been raped in their cells, or anything. :v: