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

Go to your [URL="https://robertsspaceindustries.com/account/settings"]My Account[/URL], and then click on the rsi.com/citizens/YOUblabla URL under "URL" for your community profile settings. The stuff that comes up on that URL is public, while your My RSI stuff is private.

lets not do the whole 'post your citizen number' thing again this time aye guys?

My point in posting my number, specifically, is that by the tme I get to play, it'll probably be off PTU after weeks of testing. Totally excited for that. :downs: Who knows how many people they'll be inviting in at what intervals, though, so it might go faster than expected.

well there will be livestreams and uploads on youtube

[url]https://robertsspaceindustries.com/comm-link/transmission/14758-Monthly-Report-May[/url] [QUOTE]For Squadron 42 we now have text-to-speech in place which is highly useful for prototyping conversations as more dialogue gets added to these levels. [/QUOTE] They better bloody keep it so we can do this while spaceraiding [video=youtube;nzKWbpSNkmk]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nzKWbpSNkmk[/video]

the tts engine is in the leak as well, it's just that normal annoying female voice, but then there is this [t]http://3kv.in/~techbot/ShareX/2015/06/07-16_27.png[/t] hmm [editline]6th June 2015[/editline] [url]https://www.cereproc.com/de[/url] you can try it on the top of the webpage, seems really good.

From the monthly report: [QUOTE]On of the ships coming down the pipeline is the Crusader Industries Genesis Starliner. The Starliner is a big ship, being a bit larger than a 747. This ship is unique in that it is one of the first Passenger ships tackled by the Star Citizen team. With it being the first ship of its kind, it has made us question our designs within regards to passengers in space. For instance, some of the questions still being answered is passenger capacity, safety of those passengers, and max flight times. The exterior concept is in a solid place, but the interior concepts are still being worked on. We are really excited to show you all what we have come up with. Soon, the Starliner will sail the stars with you at its helm, or as a passenger on your way to that vacation spot you wanted to check out.[/QUOTE] Here comes the Starliner, aww yes. I'm hoping there will be org meeting rooms, because if I'm going to sit around for 25 minutes on a passenger line to be a space tourist (implied to be a real activity in the PU by the above text and the Meridian Transit stuff on AtV), it'd be more awesome to have a few orgmates to be tourists with me. Might even make new friends while on board. Even intrigue! You're a bounty hunter and you're playing The Ship: Ultra HD Edition. Someone on board, NPC or player, is your target, and you want to find them without causing a big stir. Pure speculation by me, but in theory, in a consistent PU, you'd be able to hack the ship from within to drop its shields or engines for your buddies to ambush and disable it. Over 19,000 Reliants sold makes me happy, but I wonder how many of those will actually still be Reliants and weren't just purchased to be LTI upgrade tokens in ship form. I'm keeping mine. Also, three cheers for the damage tech devs (including the Bugsmasher), this is fucking brilliant with awesome unexpected outcomes: [QUOTE]Ali Brown, Okka Kyaw, Geoff Birch, and Mark Abent all helped to create our new Damage Shader and Squib tech that allowed for the destruction of our newest ships without the high resource cost. But even as we accomplished this great feat of optimization, our Designers were planning new gameplay mechanics such as Debris Salvage and Ship Repair, each of which adds costs to the overall processing demands of our ship model. The real enemy of performance in Star Citizen with so many high-fidelity assets being rendered is “Draw Calls”. For those unfamiliar, Draw Calls are the amount of render passes on each piece of geometry to create the final image. If your spaceship hull has Diffuse, Specular and Normal textures, then that would equate to 3 draw calls. And if your ship is divided into a 50 pieces, that would be 50 × 3 = 150 draw calls. And add some high-quality self-shadowing, and you can double 150 to a huge 300 Draw Calls! Our ships being rendered with PBR (Physically Based Rendering), with the Damage Shader, Paint Variations and Decals requiring more like 15-30 draw calls per piece. So, to optimize Draw Calls, we needed to reduce the number of separate pieces. But, this means, to be truly optimized we would need to have fewer animated pieces and fewer debris break off of the ship! Quite a conundrum because we want those things! In speaking with Ali about these optimization issues, he suggested a new debris approach that we’ve have now been investigating. Instead of cutting the ship into separate, damageable areas and breaking debris off of the ship, he suggested we could hide parts of the ship using the Damage Shader and spawn Debris that would then fly away from the ship. This new approach still looks like debris is blown off of the ship, but allows us to reduce the number of ship hull meshes which also reduces draw calls significantly. [B]And furthermore, this solution allows us to create debris that will contain Salvageable Components! So, that gun you just shot off that Cutlass in the PU? It’s yours now. You’re welcome.[/B][/QUOTE] We've taken your ordinary regular procedural damage model and turbocharged it with debrisjaculations! [QUOTE]Radar 2.0 work has been completed. Anything can be registered to be shown on the radar so long as there is a matching IRadarObject struct. What this means in laymen’s terms is that as long as an item/object has the proper information in it, that object will be picked up and displayed on the radar based off its physical properties. Yes, we can even give EMP grenades an EM signature and have it show up on the radar if your radar is configured to detect EM. We’ve also made it so that radars are capable of filtering for any kind of signature type and detected objects now have an instance of them created. The creation of this instance allows for us to do things like stutter position updates and/or show decay/falloff without affecting the actual detected object. This lets Design and Art do cool and interesting things to the instance version that is displayed without breaking the underlying logic that drives the radar/signature. As part of this we’ve also improved the performance of occlusion checks. Last but not least we’ve added support for “decibels” as a new signature type. While on foot in Star Citizen your radar can display audio from the surrounding environment such as footsteps and weapons fire. These events are now properly hooked up into the signature system so that your footsteps and weapons fire creates “decibels” which are scanned for and displayed by the player radar. You’ll see this debuting with the FPS.[/QUOTE] Oh fuck yes. Also, [URL="http://imperialnews.network/2015/06/reverse-the-verse-ep50/"]RtV happened[/URL], and there was lots of silly nonsense, but some interesting tidbits. The Reliant sales numbers got me thinking. I have an idea involving a 'news van' Reliant and a racing team doing acrobatics and formation flying -- especially if the pilots are in Xi'An Scouts or m50s. I want to highlight how awesome Star Citizen is: Assuming the news van gameplay is as substantive as any other profession's (as far as hooking into the rest of the universe) and particularly important/popular footage and events go into the Galactapedia as permanent lore content, [B]this is entirely doable[/B] and CR may or may not have even thought of it yet. We could have an acrobatics team and do live shows in space. :dance: The in-universe tag line could be, "All stunts performed in [U]uninsured[/U] ships!" [sp]even if they all actually have LTI[/sp] I really hope they don't drop the ball on player journalism, and if they're serious about it it needs to be working before launch so the game can be documented from the beginning. Ideally some prototype would be playable as of the patch where wipes are over and the 'Verse is starting for real, or as soon as possible after that, to allow players to document the game as soon as blowing up/dying means something permanent. I [I]really[/I] hope there's functional journalism gameplay at least by the time Operation Pitchfork happens, because you'll have the most well-documented virtual suicide mission in MMO history. If Operation Pitchfork still goes off as planned at the end of beta, having player journalism wired into the actual in-game media will be the best marketing Star Citizen could ever hope to launch with. EVE Online grabs gaming headlines for a day or two whenever something really big and organized goes down. Star Citizen's player-contributed footage of the battle would look like EVE's [B]trailers[/B], except even more realistic because the player-flown ships will be, duh, player-controlled and not scripted, and the AI will be scripted but dynamically responsive to the clusterfuck of player threats. And there'd be so much of it, both in-game and the output from streamers in all sorts of ships and roles -- including Vanduul sympathizers and opportunistic pirates PVPing the weak and alone. It would basically be permanently documenting the actual war the backers had with the Vanduul in lore, and I think that's fucking amazing. ...I need to invent a time machine, because I have more hype than I can hold at once, and this stuff's still a long ways off.

[QUOTE=Techbot;47889369]the tts engine is in the leak as well, it's just that normal annoying female voice, but then there is this [t]http://3kv.in/~techbot/ShareX/2015/06/07-16_27.png[/t] hmm [editline]6th June 2015[/editline] [url]https://www.cereproc.com/de[/url] you can try it on the top of the webpage, seems really good.[/QUOTE] holy shit those scottish voices are pretty good. the dodo one sounds like a stoner though.

[video=youtube;Gf31MzNgnNk]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gf31MzNgnNk[/video] I know it's basically criticizing the entire game and staff but this is just too hilarious not to post.

[QUOTE=Hyzo;47893587][video=youtube;Gf31MzNgnNk]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gf31MzNgnNk[/video] I know it's basically criticizing the entire game and staff but this is just too hilarious not to post.[/QUOTE] He's not wrong though, they seemingly keep underestimating the time it will take to make this game. And usually its just a single dev or person saying "we'd like to release this around this time" and everyone goes hogwild with RELEASE CONFIRMED. It might be for the best if they just keep sharing content and avoid any mention of deadlines

They generally have stopped giving deadlines except for when they have a firm date. The only firm dates we have, at this point, are events (like Gamescom) that have dates carved in stone, and Squadron 42 and PU alpha being by the end of this year. FPS could be on PTU for the initial rounds of testing waves by the end of the month, or possibly July. Planetside depends on the same networking groundwork being done as fps, and even moreso, and nobody's mumbling about deadlines for it these days because fps is coming out first to blaze the trail. AC2.0 ETA is entirely MIA at this point. They're working on the local physics grid tech right now, so progress is definitely being made, and the Connie and Freelancer are getting reworks...so I imagine multicrew's not coming out until at least one of the two is ready. I don't think Squadron 42's going to be finished for the end of the year, unless it's released with insufficient time to properly QA and fix to meet promises, like AC1.0 and the smoking ruins of the matchmaking server they had at the time. However, I'm confident that it'll make for a great release in Spring 2016, along with the PU. CR has the money to keep SC in development until it's ready. Something to keep in mind is that, even before the PU itself launches, planetside can/will babystep its way into becoming the PU by evolving the experience to taking off and flying in a space instance that has jump points to other systems containing the other landing zones. Better version of the leaked Connie rework tour. [video=youtube;GLG_dJ6kSf0]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GLG_dJ6kSf0[/video]

[QUOTE=elixwhitetail;47883067] Also, AtV, 26:15 - Travis states that fps access is going to be a phased rollout based on your citizen number, with invites to fps PTU access going out in waves from the earliest up. [IMG]http://i.imgur.com/5rttO7a.png[/IMG] [I]fuuuuuuuuucccckkkk me[/I][/QUOTE] Nice, im # 46432.

[QUOTE=assassin_Raptor;47902796]Nice, im # 46432.[/QUOTE] [img]http://i.imgur.com/7UOHWDy.jpg[/img] Despite this, I think getting it a bit later is for the better seeing how it's probably going to come out unoptimized and buggy as hell probably.

Let's not start this shit again.

I'm [sp2]#5T0P[/sp2]

[URL="https://forums.robertsspaceindustries.com/discussion/267087/comm-link-schedule-for-the-week-of-june-8th"]Says the Lesnick,[/URL] [QUOTE]Here's the content schedule for this week. I'm sorry for the tease on Friday; we'd like to show off the next flyable ship in Arena Commander (which will patch in at the same time as Arena Commander) and that's where that'll go if we have footage ready. Tuesday, June 9th - Meet the Devs: The Shermanator Wednesday, June 10th - Vault Update - CitizenCon Details & Ticket Sale (1 PM Pacific) Thursday, June 11th - Around the Verse: Episode 48 Friday, June 12th - Reverse the Verse - [REDACTED][/QUOTE] 10 for the Monday: [video=youtube;TLE_cqaY1iI]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TLE_cqaY1iI[/video] [QUOTE]0:24 – Angle of impact in damage system 2:19 – Shielding weapon mounts 4:21 – Ship Role modification 5:55 – Small ship flight model changes ahead? 8:48 – Volumetric handling of ore and fuel 10:42 – Bigger shields on bigger ships? 12:25 – “The Calculator” 15:15 – Seat roles in multicrew 16:47 – Foregoing offensive for all defensive approach? 18:32 – Mix and Match armor pieces[/QUOTE] So what do we think the new flyable ship is? I'm guessing it's the P-52 Merlin, the Connie's snubnose launch. That's the only non-multicrew ship in [URL="https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1TZgzbirTbLMj9oLJlMKYpefDo4cL430UQfmhy2HyUJU/edit#gid=0"]the spreadsheet[/URL] that's at the hangar ready stage, and it was mentioned about a month back on RtV. I don't think it's the Herald, since it's not even hangar-ready yet and it's had work stop and start on it as other priorities have come up according to AtV/RtV statements. They can't have AC2.0 and multicrew ready this soon, and they can't be announcing multicrew this far out, so I expect there'll be a 1.1.4 patch to add more to AC before Star Marine (although nothng stops the fps module from being live on the PTU by then if the timing happens that way). Reddit thinks it's the Scythe, for those 300 or so owners who pledged out the ass that one time. Also, CitizenCon tickets are going to sell fast, and CitCon's going to be in the UK this year, so if you intend on going don't miss that Wednesday sale. [editline]8th June 2015[/editline] [URL="https://www.reddit.com/r/starcitizen/comments/3932ss/fps_module_rollout_will_go_in_pretty_large_batches/"]So it turns out the phased rollout for the fps on PTU is going to be fairly generous:[/URL] [IMG]https://s3.amazonaws.com/fotor.cdn/share.url/400ffe0383c9463ca7dee859eb8f635b.png[/IMG]

The military ships are on sale again

Nice, I got promoted to "Banned Member" :v:

I just checked, and at some point Jono changed my rank to Moderator. You're all getting fucking banned right now $10 RSI gift cards will sate my wrath for a while [video=youtube;FV8CGSTE-e0]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FV8CGSTE-e0[/video] Also, in forum posts, Ben again confirms that CIG would like to eventually come out with an fps-only package that doesn't include a ship or AC access, but there are no solid plans yet, especially not before fps is actually out and off the PTU for backers to play. There is also not going to be any way to buy instant access to the fps module when they begin the by-citizen-number rollout, it's strictly by number. I'm really excited to see the concept for the Genesis Starliner, although I'm 99% sure I'll be passing on the concept sale because I'd have to melt things with LTI that I want to keep, so in-the-PU it is for me. I want to just have nights where I grab a bunch of you FPCorp jerks and we figure out what planets we haven't visited yet, and then we roll the dice and all go buy tickets on a public starliner flight to wherever came up and have a great time together being belligerent, drunken tourists. In the subscribers-only forum's thread about the Genesis Starliner, there's this post from [URL="https://forums.robertsspaceindustries.com/discussion/comment/5155963/#Comment_5155963"]Disco Leako,[/URL] [sp2]okay, that's mean[/sp2] [QUOTE]This is an important "world building" ship. Of all the NPCs in the galaxy, many (if not most) of them probably won't own their own spaceships. And from a player perspective, I'm excited about the emergent gameplay this type of ship and vocation may invite. I'm looking forward to it in the Persistent Universe.[/QUOTE]

[URL="https://robertsspaceindustries.com/comm-link/transmission/14768-RSVP-For-CitizenCon-2015"]CitizenCon tickets are up[/URL] and there are <230 left, if anyone's planning a visit to the UK later this year. Also, [URL="https://robertsspaceindustries.com/comm-link/spectrum-dispatch/14766-B0otyCall-A-Score-To-Settle"]new lorepost mentions Joker Beacon Bombs[/URL], bombs that are rigged to send decoy distress signals and then do horrible things to would-be rescuers (or predators). Be wary, S&R crews.

[QUOTE=elixwhitetail;47926138][URL="https://robertsspaceindustries.com/comm-link/transmission/14768-RSVP-For-CitizenCon-2015"]CitizenCon tickets are up[/URL] and there are <230 left, if anyone's planning a visit to the UK later this year. Also, [URL="https://robertsspaceindustries.com/comm-link/spectrum-dispatch/14766-B0otyCall-A-Score-To-Settle"]new lorepost mentions Joker Beacon Bombs[/URL], bombs that are rigged to send decoy distress signals and then do horrible things to would-be rescuers (or predators). Be wary, S&R crews.[/QUOTE] [quote]B0otyCall’s back to roast, toast and boast to all of you loathsome lawbreakers. This is your main man, Jester. Here, as always, to guide the gluttonous, encourage the corrupt, and support all you sleazy scavs on the trail of fame and fortune. How was that for an intro, ZigZag? “Professional” enough for you … you slander-slinging skag? If you haven’t noticed, this show isn’t exactly “official.” Comm me complaints all you want. Nothing’s changing. The signal’s always gonna suck. So get used to it or get bent. And my voice? Good to know it annoys you. No one’s forcing you to listen to this. If I was forcing you to do anything, you’d know it. Anyways, that’s enough time wasted on a fool. Let’s get the show going with today’s Threatdown![/quote] that was [i]painful[/i] white bread writing [editline]e[/editline] someone on reddit pointed [url=http://store.madcatz.com/categories/farm-sim/Saitek-Farming-Simulator-Vehicle-Side-Panel-for-PC-and-Mac.html]this[/url] out as a potential peripheral for SC. It's being billed directly as a farm simulator console but the device is entirely nondescript and would be suited for a lot of uses [t]http://i.imgur.com/khyKMWK.png[/t]

[QUOTE=Jester]that's enough time wasted on [B]fluff[/B][/QUOTE] Say what you really mean, Jester, you're on unauthorized fucking comms. [video=youtube;UJSx3qvlM2w]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UJSx3qvlM2w[/video] It's a special AtV today, as it's the first anniversary of the show. [QUOTE]0:00 – One Year ATV Retrospective [I]by years1hundred, Imagine trailer guy[/I] 4:30 – News with Ben Lesnick 8:38 – News from Around The Verse 16:21 – Subscriber’s Corner with Alexis Lesnick 22:10 – Interview with Senior Producer Eric Davis 26:25 – Ship Shape with Lisa Ohanian 30:42 – Which Glitch? with Austin QA 34:37 – Sneak Peek (the current revision of the animation of the Gold Horizon gravity generator being spun up and shut down, in the map with zero-gravity physics kicking in))[/QUOTE] As Ben says in the news, CitizenCon tickets are sold out. Also, CR's got one more month of SQ42 cinematic shooting left. The Bugsmasher is working on code to have Cryengine only load shit when your client cares about it, which should massively help load time -- but is probably going to open the door to a wonderous universe of Cryengine streaming issues. This month's subscriber flair is an Aegis Avenger ship model. Also, [URL="https://forums.robertsspaceindustries.com/discussion/comment/5165928#Comment_5165928"]from the forums, two CIG devs confirm[/URL] that the P2P functionality of the launcher was removed because of [URL="http://www.law360.com/articles/570507/amazon-blizzard-accused-of-violating-networking-patents"]a patent troll currently suing Blizzard, Amazon, and others over using basically the same thing[/URL]. It doesn't seem like CIG is involved in the suit (Toast would've disclosed if CIG was actively fighting any court battles, even if it just slipped out on RtV sometime) but instead pulled the bittorrent peer swarm function out preemptively to prevent it. Given that it'd be a waste of money and patent trolls are cunts who exist only to sue and would eventually find CIG, it sucks but I agree with this move until the mess is cleaned up.

was looking through the new wwise audio files and found some new music but first here are some old ones too in case you haven't heard them yet [URL]http://3kv.in/~techbot/public/Star Citizen/Unreleased Music/[/URL] and here are the new ones I found [vid]http://3kv.in/~techbot/ShareX/2015/06/641991080.ogg[/vid] [vid]http://3kv.in/~techbot/ShareX/2015/06/632363281.ogg[/vid] and then I also found the main theme [vid]http://3kv.in/~techbot/ShareX/2015/06/Star%20Citizen%20Main%20Theme.ogg[/vid] [editline]12th June 2015[/editline] also, by the looks of it some sq42 dialogues. [editline]12th June 2015[/editline] oh dang I'm late, someone already extracted it two weeks ago. [editline]12th June 2015[/editline] oh and by the way, the Main Theme is just a midi version from 2012 according to Pedro also this: "The music was a simple internal sketch, like first hours work, far away from final state" (still sounds awesome though.)

[URL="https://robertsspaceindustries.com/comm-link/transmission/14773-Preview-Flying-The-Scythe"]A video of the player-flyable Scythe's been posted.[/URL] Important to note that the Scythe requires the fps module because it uses updated animation code that's in that branch but not the 1.2.x public branch. It won't/can't be flyable until Star Marine is live. [URL="https://robertsspaceindustries.com/comm-link/transmission/14774-Classified-Report-Vanduul-Bomber-Identified"]A few teaser shots of the Vanduul Void bomber have also been posted.[/URL] [t]https://robertsspaceindustries.com/media/6ebeie4h5m7ver/source/ScreenShot0005.jpg[/t] [t]https://robertsspaceindustries.com/media/86hx4ui6ukeqhr/source/ScreenShot0012.jpg[/t]

[QUOTE=elixwhitetail;47943945][URL="https://robertsspaceindustries.com/comm-link/transmission/14773-Preview-Flying-The-Scythe"]A video of the player-flyable Scythe's been posted.[/URL] Important to note that the Scythe requires the fps module because it uses updated animation code that's in that branch but not the 1.2.x public branch. It won't/can't be flyable until Star Marine is live. [URL="https://robertsspaceindustries.com/comm-link/transmission/14774-Classified-Report-Vanduul-Bomber-Identified"]A few teaser shots of the Vanduul Void bomber have also been posted.[/URL] [t]https://robertsspaceindustries.com/media/6ebeie4h5m7ver/source/ScreenShot0005.jpg[/t] [t]https://robertsspaceindustries.com/media/86hx4ui6ukeqhr/source/ScreenShot0012.jpg[/t][/QUOTE] That thing quite clearly has a business end and it is most certainly something you don't want to be reciving from.

[QUOTE=thisguy123;47944291]That thing quite clearly has a business end and it is most certainly something you don't want to be reciving from.[/QUOTE] Nah, it just wants a hug.

[IMG]http://i.imgur.com/xLBcMAt.png[/IMG] Whoever this mofo is, their character's name better be Mork. [sp]nanu nanu[/sp] [sp]RIP Robin :([/sp] Oh, and we passed $84mil.

[QUOTE=archangel125;47944560]Nah, it just wants a hug.[/QUOTE] Sure the SHIP wants to hug your ship... but then the Vanduul boarding party run down the "love pipes" and suddenly it goes from hug to bad touch REALLY fucking fast.

[QUOTE=thisguy123;47948505]Sure the SHIP wants to hug your ship... but then the Vanduul boarding party run down the "love pipes" and suddenly it goes from hug to bad touch REALLY fucking fast.[/QUOTE] You know, with regards to boarding, and everything really... here's what I've been thinking lately. I don't want to shit on the game - I've sunk over a thousand dollars in it already, after all. And it still represents the absolute best hope I've had for any game in a very long time. But I've spent the last few days playing Elite: Dangerous. And while yeah, I agree that Elite's got a lot of space and almost no content, there are a few things I think Star Citizen could learn from their model. One is modelling ship momentum meaningfully. I don't mean that ships in Star Citizen should yaw at the speed of a snail, that's a dumb idea. I just mean that they should feel like they have some mass to them. Why485 had it right, the Hornet's one of the only ships that actually slides a considerable distance when you turn, and it feels damn good. It's important that maneuvering thrusters aren't quite as powerful as the main thruster. Second, I think they could stand to have a more streamlined in-cockpit interface, similar to Elite's, for advanced module control, status, reputation and power management (though I think that'll probably be in the game later.) Third, I think it's important that shields stop ALL weapon damage, whether projectile or energy based, until they go down. In Elite your shield is your safety buffer. You can happily engage in combat without fear of losing critical components of your ship so long as your shield does not go down. If it does, you start running, because fleeing to fight another day is better than being stranded in the vacuum. In Star Citizen, however, projectile weapons will penetrate shields and damage your ship directly, meaning that you can NEVER engage in combat, even in a huge ship with powerful shields, without risking being stranded in space or being outright destroyed within seconds of being engaged. Finally, Star Citizen stands the best chance of solving the controller disparity if they make gimballed weapons automatically track targets. They don't need to make it as hands-off as it is in Elite: Dangerous, but they SHOULD create something like a thumb-sized aiming circle that, if you hover it over an enemy, automatically makes your gimballed weapons track the enemy within that circle. Subsystem targeting like Elite boasts would also be very cool.

[QUOTE=archangel125;47948586] Third, I think it's important that shields stop ALL weapon damage, whether projectile or energy based, until they go down. In Elite your shield is your safety buffer. You can happily engage in combat without fear of losing critical components of your ship so long as your shield does not go down. If it does, you start running, because fleeing to fight another day is better than being stranded in the vacuum. In Star Citizen, however, projectile weapons will penetrate shields and damage your ship directly, meaning that you can NEVER engage in combat, even in a huge ship with powerful shields, without risking being stranded in space or being outright destroyed within seconds of being engaged. [/QUOTE] I think that normal weapons should have to break through the shields first, but it would be interesting to have weapons or ammunition designed to bypass shields or armor, like the Mass Driver in X3: a weapon with abysmal range and ammo economy but with the power to completely bypass shields.