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

To paraphrase various statements by CR about scale and activities in the PU, systems will be at an unnatural scale (say 1:10 instead of 1:1) and unnaturally full of shit (space will be much denser than reality), but that's because this is a game, not a faithful universe simulation. Space is [I]really fucking huge[/I], and I trust CR to scale it from too-huge-to-understand to still-impressively-gigantohuge-but-practical, because that's [I]more fun[/I]. Install Space Engine or Celestia if you want to explore the majesty of space at full scale. I should also pour just a [I]bit[/I] of cold water on dai: My source on Cutlass demo is [I]Reddit[/I], via a guy claiming to be at the SDCC panel and conversing with CR. There've been other mentions of the gas giant, but I don't believe I've heard anyone from CIG specifically say "Cutlass"--take this grain of salt with your hype. During RtV today the community team refused to spoil any details of the Gamescom announcements because that'd [I]really[/I] piss off CR ("I'd rather not get fired [I]and[/I] murdered"). :bullshit:

[QUOTE=elixwhitetail;48341860]It's also likely 1:10-scale, but honestly, the gas giant is something like 175,000km wide. Are you gonna tell me a 17,500km-wide gas giant isn't going to impress you when, up until now, Arena Commander maps haven't been any larger than 20km cubes? :v:[/QUOTE] the dying star planetoid is probably larger than 17.5k in diameter, I remember back when [url=https://forums.robertsspaceindustries.com/discussion/263986/training-leaving-game-sphere]I accidentally broke out and flew across the area[/url], it was a roughly 135k diameter from one end of the asteroid belt to the other [t]http://i.imgur.com/F8j8Dui.jpg[/t] making it there took a good while, granted it was also hindered by a broken tutorial popup stopping my ship once every 7 seconds [editline]31st July 2015[/editline] also ED's pitfall with 1:1 scale isn't that it's 1:1 scale, it's that they thought it was a great idea to make travelling 90% comprised of "slowing down toward something" with 5% "twirling around a target because I was still going too fast". I want to set a vector and snap out of sublight drive at my location, not 1:1 slow my momentum from 0.2c to 2km/s as I approach a speck of dust. I'd personally LOVE planets to be 1:1 scale when you're in dogfight mode, even if they dumb the scale down once you get to sublight system travel and the like, with zero focus on ED style approach mechanics

[QUOTE=dai;48342052] also ED's pitfall with 1:1 scale isn't that it's 1:1 scale, it's that they thought it was a great idea to make travelling 90% comprised of "slowing down toward something" with 5% "twirling around a target because I was still going too fast". I want to set a vector and snap out of sublight drive at my location, not 1:1 slow my momentum from 0.2c to 2km/s as I approach a speck of dust. I'd personally LOVE planets to be 1:1 scale when you're in dogfight mode, even if they dumb the scale down once you get to sublight system travel and the like, with zero focus on ED style approach mechanics[/QUOTE] This, at least, I completely agree with. Player activity is meant to be focused around stations, resource nodes, and hubs, so you can still have that no matter how realistic your scale is. ED's pitfall is because they've got 400 billion star systems, and thousands of POPULATED systems, meaning that most of the time you simply won't find other players. On the subject of the Dying Star planetoid, I'm still grumpy. The diameter of our moon is 3,400 kilometers. The planetoid in Broken Moon is roughly 100 km across, which is less than 1/10 scale, if you use our moon as a reference (being the fifth largest moon in our solar system, so it isn't exactly small). Still, I'm not going to say Star Citizen is ruined for me based on that... I'm just saying that I'd PREFER the scale to be 1:1

[QUOTE=Why485;48341850]The toilet paper was in such a place that any time you took a shower it would get completely soaked. [img]http://rpgtitles.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/05/091f6_Star_Citizen_Starfarer_Captains_Room_Bathroom_v006.jpg[/img][/QUOTE] Waterproof toilet paper. It's [I]the future[/I]!

I have a tali too, can't wait for A.C. 2.0. Is there any kind of FP drive doc showing who owns what?

[QUOTE=Wazbat;48342205]I have a tali too, can't wait for A.C. 2.0. Is there any kind of FP drive doc showing who owns what?[/QUOTE] Nothing up to date, I suspect.

My biggest concern at the moment with travel in Star Citizen is that it's completely hands off. Once you engage QD, you are locked in your trajectory with no interaction whatsoever. The nighmare scenario of this is that it turns all travel and encounters into basically a JRPG overworld with JRPG random encounters that are out of your control. I want travel to be an active thing that takes interaction and thought. In Freelancer, this meant that you were actively flying through/around asteroid fields, nebula, planets, avoiding incoming police/pirate patrols, flying around hazards such as radiations clouds and so on. You were doing that all yourself, but if you really wanted to and were willing to accept the risk, you could plot a course for the autopilot to fly, set CMs to auto, and then hope for the best while you go to the bathroom. I [I]really[/I] don't want QD travel to be reduced to Pokemon-esque tall grass, and without having any level of interaction while in cruise, I'm not sure how they can avoid that.

[QUOTE=Why485;48342229]My biggest concern at the moment with travel in Star Citizen is that it's completely hands off. Once you engage QD, you are locked in your trajectory with no interaction whatsoever. The nighmare scenario of this is that it turns all travel and encounters into basically a JRPG overworld with JRPG random encounters that are out of your control. I want travel to be an active thing that takes interaction and thought. In Freelancer, this meant that you were actively flying through/around asteroid fields, nebula, planets, avoiding incoming police/pirate patrols, flying around hazards such as radiations clouds and so on. You were doing that all yourself, but if you really wanted to you could plot a course for the autopilot to fly, set CMs to auto, and then hope for the best while you go to the bathroom. I [I]really[/I] don't want QD travel to be reduced to Pokemon-esque tall grass, and without having any level of interaction while in cruise, I'm not sure how they can avoid that.[/QUOTE] Ugh, is that what they've said it's going to be? Gross. That's no better than EVE. [editline]31st July 2015[/editline] ED's supercruise was a fantastic idea, why can't they do that for SC? Just without all the interminable deceleration while closing on a target, and auto-drop when within range of said target.

[QUOTE=dai;48342052]also ED's pitfall with 1:1 scale isn't that it's 1:1 scale, it's that they thought it was a great idea to make travelling 90% comprised of "slowing down toward something" with 5% "twirling around a target because I was still going too fast". I want to set a vector and snap out of sublight drive at my location, not 1:1 slow my momentum from 0.2c to 2km/s as I approach a speck of dust. I'd personally LOVE planets to be 1:1 scale when you're in dogfight mode, even if they dumb the scale down once you get to sublight system travel and the like, with zero focus on ED style approach mechanics[/QUOTE] You will be very pleased to hear that [URL="https://forums.robertsspaceindustries.com/discussion/comment/5336120/#Comment_5336120"]it's been confirmed in the forums that you drop out of Q-Drive at 0m/s.[/URL] [QUOTE]Let me check... Looks like you'll continue on your last heading while the drive spools up since it draws all power that would go to engines and weapons, but you drop out of QTravel at 0m/s[/QUOTE] Last word that I've heard is that pretty much any obstacle other than ambient hydrogen and dust is going to drop you out of Q-Drive. However, this doesn't have to mean it devolves into JRPG random encounter hell. Q-Drive isn't a high-speed form of linear travel (you don't accelerate an Aurora from 175m/s to 0.2c in a straight line and live to slow down), it's a handwavey EVE point-to-point warp system, but with the mechanic of interrupting if you are going to fly through debris instead of just wormholing you through it like EVE does. This ties into the exploration mechanic and finding uncharted things, although space is really huge and I imagine that'll allow for clear lines of sight in much of the sky. I figure the lanes between major jump points are going to be clear, but if you've been scanning down anomalous sensor detections across a system and then decide to go home from the far end of a dull but untouched belt, you're probably charting a jump between two points that nobody's ever specifically run before. And, I've been thinking that it's probably a good thing to start a new one and re-survey FPCorp. If nobody else wants to, I suppose I can do it.

Does this mean that you can't choose to just drop out of Q-drive in the middle of nowhere, or else change your course mid-route if you want to stop to see something along the way? Won't that essentially make 90% of the space in star systems basically inaccessible?

I don't know how it's going to be implemented, we'll see soon. I imagine you'll be able to set the endpoint to be any arbitrary position, but if anything interrupts you between then, you stop early in order to manually navigate around the obstacle before jumping back into QD to your original destination (if the encounter did not change your priorities).

This I didn't know. I hope they reconsider the idea, but I'll wait and see how well it works before I condemn it. I'm just not very happy with the idea overall - I'd imagined Quantum Drive being handled just like Elite's, letting you go anywhere, steer while traveling at QM speeds, and drop out anywhere you liked, even in deep space.

[QUOTE=archangel125;48342248]ED's supercruise was a fantastic idea, why can't they do that for SC? Just without all the interminable deceleration while closing on a target, and auto-drop when within range of said target.[/QUOTE] Also without the aforementioned "pokemon tall grass" elements ED has. Anywhere you drop out of space in that game has a swarm of npc ships spawn within 30 seconds, also the scale between frameshift mode and sublight mode is a bit off, it's essentially just eve online's grid system except with an all-encompassing cloud of npc ships.

[URL="https://robertsspaceindustries.com/comm-link/transmission/14873-Star-Marine-Status-Update"]FPS status post up.[/URL] Next week's won't be up until Monday because Gamescom. [t]https://robertsspaceindustries.com/media/2kcch7jlidyg0r/source/Cover1.png[/t] [QUOTE]It has been another big week for the Star Marine team! We’ve continued our focus on animation-related issues, as we see getting the unified first/third-person animation as our biggest goal. That’s one of the most important things that will carry over into the rest of Star Citizen, in Arena Commander, the Social Module, Squadron 42 and beyond. Other team members are using this time to continue perfecting other systems, including weapons and the general design of the Gold Horizon level. You can find details on our progress and ongoing blockers below. [URL="https://player.vimeo.com/video/135086893"][B]We’ve also included an updated video showing the recent lighting changes to the Gold Horizon level[/B][/URL]; it should show off the changes a little better than last week. Enjoy![/QUOTE]

[QUOTE=Techbot;48339927]hmm [t]http://3kv.in/~techbot/ShareX/2015/07/31/19-01_64.png[/t][/QUOTE] OH. My installer probably looks the way it does because my System Locale is set to Japan, for purposes of running weeb games without the program being an giant mess of UTF errors. [QUOTE=elixwhitetail;48341282]No, but it unlocks using as much bandwidth as you have. May not be a particular issue in [IMG]http://facepunch.com/fp/flags/us.png[/IMG], but someone posted a screenshot to Reddit of pulling down the PTU at 72MB/s.][/QUOTE] I gagged on my pizza when I saw my patcher going at 3MB/s, it was pretty damn amazing. If it was like this during my uni holidays I probably would have spent hours spacepunching with you guys.

[QUOTE=Mattk50;48343893]Also without the aforementioned "pokemon tall grass" elements ED has. Anywhere you drop out of space in that game has a swarm of npc ships spawn within 30 seconds, also the scale between frameshift mode and sublight mode is a bit off, it's essentially just eve online's grid system except with an all-encompassing cloud of npc ships.[/QUOTE] Hang on a tick, that's not true at all. I've dropped out of Supercruise in space in the middle of populated systems and just sat there for hours.

[QUOTE=archangel125;48345103]Hang on a tick, that's not true at all. I've dropped out of Supercruise in space in the middle of populated systems and just sat there for hours.[/QUOTE] this wasnt the case last time i played, you could go to the black hole in the center of the galaxy and drop out of supercruise and a bunch of crap would spawn around you. it can take like 5m or so for stuff to spawn though. Also they still spawn USS everywhere and anywhere right?

[QUOTE=Mattk50;48345342]this wasnt the case last time i played, you could go to the black hole in the center of the galaxy and drop out of supercruise and a bunch of crap would spawn around you. it can take like 5m or so for stuff to spawn though. Also they still spawn USS everywhere and anywhere right?[/QUOTE] There are still a lot of USS, but you're usually not disturbed by dropping out of Supercruise now.

[QUOTE=archangel125;48342307]Won't that essentially make 90% of the space in star systems basically inaccessible?[/QUOTE] Yeah and? There's [i]nothing there[/i], especially if the scale is anything like what you want it to be. Space is immense, and pretty boring. I come down on the side of shrinking it down for purposes of a game, but we'll see

[IMG]https://i.imgur.com/PJgpw88.png[/IMG] Okay, so the limited ship sales will be going on [I]during[/I] the Gamescom event, both on-site and online. I'm passing this info on because, even though I doubt anyone's going to be taking advantage of this, paging [B]Viper123_SWE[/B], your opportunity to buy a Carrack is coming for a very limited time. As in, the sale will only run 6-8 hours, evening European time (exact schedule TBA), on the 7th. No Vanguard sales, but the Retaliator will be in store, and it'll be ready when multicrew drops, if you want to sate yourself until the Vanguard comes up and you can melt the Tali. Or you could buy no additional ships, that's cool too. Up to you. [URL="http://facepunch.com/showthread.php?t=1446574&p=48176956&viewfull=1#post48176956"]I just remember.[/URL]

[t]http://3kv.in/~techbot/ShareX/2015/08/01/10-01_64.jpg[/t] this is what the ticket mentioned looks like.

[quote]The following ships will be available for purchase from representatives on site, and will come with a physical ‘ship registration’ certificate suitable for framing. (Please note that store credit cannot applied to purchases made on-site.) Aegis Retaliator Anvil Carrack Drake Caterpillar RSI Orion Aegis Reclaimer Khartu-al (Xi’an Scout) Banu Merchantman[/quote] steam summer sale got nothin' on internet spaceships

grab dat caterpillar

[QUOTE]Aegis Retaliator - flight-ready as soon as multicrew drops Anvil Carrack - only in concept (likely interior/modularity), but science is being developed by Tony Z and in the Endeavour's science pod modules Drake Caterpillar - getting Foundry 42 love after Gamescom RSI Orion - interior being concepted, mining gameplay not even started beyond the design docs AFAIK, but it's EVE carebear bait Aegis Reclaimer - also nowhere near being priority, but big and expensive Khartu-al (Xi’an Scout) - nearly hangar-ready in Foundry 42's hands Banu Merchantman - still far off, but it's the BMM[/QUOTE] The selection is interesting. I guess they've held the Herald back for a hangar-ready sale in the near-future, and they'll bring back the MIS for short-term sale when multicrew enables 'lancers. Also, they're all [U]multicrew.[/U] Not a single one-seater in the bunch. I feel that multicrew's going to be a major focus of Gamescom, but in addition CR and the producers (and marketing) appear to be that confident about getting multicrew out before/at CitizenCon in October - them's some balls for a company scared to quote deadlines for fear of angry forum threads. BTW, a small detail people might not've put together from the Cat news from RtV. F42's tackling the Cat after a reconcepting and languishing on the back burner while F42 goes apeshit on SQ42. Well, we saw in the leak that there was fucking a lot there already (and the SQ42 stuff was likely out of date by 2+ months for the most part), and now Foundry 42's ship pipeline is able to start working on second-priority things. This suggests that almost all of the "spoiler" SQ42 ships are making their way through the pipeline--remember, SQ42-ready doesn't necessarily mean flight-ready unless the player'll be in a position to fly it. If CIG aren't bullshitting us, and they don't throw another random six-month delay into the works between now and the end of winter, the puzzle pieces are going to come flying together. If CIG pulls everything off mostly as-planned, and it's not a bug-ridden netcode-shitting clusterfuck (equally probable considering they basically live in crunch mode), the next three months are going to shut the doubters the fuck up so hard (except for when they ask where SQ42/the PU is).

no way in hell multicrew is out in october

On the other end of the spectrum, ship flight model and FPS model are the two most basic building blocks of what everything else is going to work with. social, multicrew, ship managing, all that jazz is going to need a solid working base. My guess is they figured out that once that base is in a near finished state they won't have to spend a lot of time making the rest.

[t]http://i.imgur.com/v8D6a3C.jpg[/t] You ok there little buddy?(Sorry for the shitty screenshot) So after downloading 25 gb 3 times I've tried the newest version of Star Citizen and wow did they change the flying a fuckbunch, I had to relearn flying entirely. It's more satisfying on most parts but also a bit more frustrating on other parts. I like it. Definitely flies more like Elite rather than a turret in space, makes it a bit harder to aim for me though and I've gotten worse fps in arena commander but the hangar is actually better.

[QUOTE=Why485;48342229]My biggest concern at the moment with travel in Star Citizen is that it's completely hands off. Once you engage QD, you are locked in your trajectory with no interaction whatsoever. The nighmare scenario of this is that it turns all travel and encounters into basically a JRPG overworld with JRPG random encounters that are out of your control. I want travel to be an active thing that takes interaction and thought. In Freelancer, this meant that you were actively flying through/around asteroid fields, nebula, planets, avoiding incoming police/pirate patrols, flying around hazards such as radiations clouds and so on. You were doing that all yourself, but if you really wanted to and were willing to accept the risk, you could plot a course for the autopilot to fly, set CMs to auto, and then hope for the best while you go to the bathroom. I [I]really[/I] don't want QD travel to be reduced to Pokemon-esque tall grass, and without having any level of interaction while in cruise, I'm not sure how they can avoid that.[/QUOTE] I thought that's how things were going to be, with certain jump points you will be able to make use of with the proper equipment, but other than that you'll have to fly somewhere and hope nothing bad happens on the way. Where have they said you're locked into a trajectory?

[QUOTE=nightlord;48346806]I thought that's how things were going to be, with certain jump points you will be able to make use of with the proper equipment, but other than that you'll have to fly somewhere and hope nothing bad happens on the way. Where have they said you're locked into a trajectory?[/QUOTE] It's been described that way since the very beginning, but like all info on Star Citizen it's scattered to the winds between different interviews, developer forum posts, and off-hand mentions. [editline]1st August 2015[/editline] The very beginning of this is probably the most complete single source of information on the quantum drive. Their lore excuse is that if you tried to turn with the Quantum Drive enabled you'd take a bazillion Gs and would die. [media]https://youtu.be/phq0p-ojxcM[/media]

[QUOTE=nightlord;48346806]I thought that's how things were going to be, with certain jump points you will be able to make use of with the proper equipment, but other than that you'll have to fly somewhere and hope nothing bad happens on the way. Where have they said you're locked into a trajectory?[/QUOTE] Jump points != Quantum Drive Inside Jump Points, you are [I]very much[/I] free-flying through a wormhole that will wormwreck your shit if you crash into the sides. Jump points connect you to different systems. Quantum Drive is in-system fast travel, around 0.2c, and [I]that[/I] is straight-line warping. That's what we're talking about.