Star Citizen Megathread v. procedurally-generated deadlines - Games

[QUOTE=NoDachshund;52115565]I thought CIG said it was about a month playtime for a medium sized ship. And that is just the hull, it's probably another month for all the upgrades, tweaks and replacements. That's longer than a World of Tanks peasant grind. And heck look at all the times Wargaming said they will stop selling tanks, or a certain type of tank for various reasons - only to sneak in another sale in a year or two later? Like that brokenly OP E25 tank for £80. I'll be surprised if CIG pull similar shit. Don't get me wrong, I want ship progression to be slow, and I want lower 'tier' ships to be viable and useful enough not to force constant new ship progression, unlike in Elite. [editline]17th April 2017[/editline] sure but I've been waiting every year to see something like that, and every year we see nothing. I'm sure they're working on it, but after all these years they've really got nothing but important, but not ground breaking optimizations in the pipeline? Is this game still several years away from being playable? That is my concern, and I think more backers are going to get disillusioned this year if things don't improve, or improvements are not shown in at least tech videos.[/QUOTE] I don't think SC will go for the absolutely retarded path which elite did when it comes to buying ships. SC already proves that every ship you buy will be kitted out well and usable. The problem with, say, elite, is that you buy the hull and that is it. You are served an utterly crap jump drive, the worst of everything your ship can have, even weapons. Every ship you buy in the game will have the same weapons, and only two of them, the rest you need yourself. To make any ship viable you need to spend at least twice its price just for it to function. Every SC ship works viably upon purchase, the very thought behind this universe is that these are actual companies trying to sell actual ships, so of course they want them to be good. Each SC ship on purchase has a decent bit of everything; good weapons, every weapon slot filled, and good shielding etc. Not to mention that it seems like any additional upgrades will mostly be sidegrades in the way that sure you may get a bigger stronger something but it has a drawback. I think there is no chance that we will see a situation where you need upgrades, tweaks and replacements for your SC ships, because honestly anything close to the elite way of doing it is the irl equivalent of BMW selling a sports car with a lada engine and brakes made outa bread, then telling you to spend twice to 3 times the cost of the car to get a bmw engine and proper brakes. I don't honestly mind it taking a while to farm for big ships in SC as long as it is a reasonable grind, not filled with "gotcha" moments which sets you back far, which, considering the game has an insurance system, i find may not be the case as long as it is priced well. As long as trading will be as viable as bounty hunting, and that we won't have the elite situation where you only really wanna do bounty hunting, combat zoning or planetary scann missions to get cash, then it should be all good in my books. [B]especially[/B] if two or more people can actually cooperate on earning the money needed.

By the same token I hope you are able to meaningfully tune your ship in SC -- not to such a degree that the stock ship is worthless by comparison, but maybe if you take the time to understand all the variables you can squeeze that extra little bit of performance out of each subsystem without too much in the way of downsides -- just like tuning cars and aircraft in real life.

[QUOTE=Grenadiac;52116306]By the same token I hope you are able to meaningfully tune your ship in SC -- not to such a degree that the stock ship is worthless by comparison, but maybe if you take the time to understand all the variables you can squeeze that extra little bit of performance out of each subsystem without too much in the way of downsides -- just like tuning cars and aircraft in real life.[/QUOTE] This has been promised for a good while, and the player interaction overhaul shown on the last AtV directly supports such gameplay by making individual buttons in the cockpit targetable things. [t]https://robertsspaceindustries.com/media/1syjyjviodgzwr/source/Interaction_system_2.jpg[/t] Yesterday, [URL="https://robertsspaceindustries.com/comm-link//15842-Letter-From-The-Chairman-The-Road-Ahead"]CR published a Chairman Letter about 3.0 and the road ahead.[/URL] [QUOTE]With the debut of 3.0 at the end of June we’re starting with the three Moons around Crusader; Cellin, Yela and Daymar. In addition, we’re hoping to also get the Planet-like Asteroid Delamar and its landing zone Levski in as a “Stretch” goal. Then as we move through the year the universe will expand to include all the main landing zones for Stanton. We had originally hoped to deliver most of the Stanton Landing Zones with the first release of Planetary Tech, but that proved optimistic once the talented team at Behaviour, who had built ArcCorp, Levski, Grim HEX and had begun work on the remaining landing zones of Stanton, moved off Star Citizen and onto another Behaviour project in December. We had been steadily shifting our reliance away from external resources and we felt it would be unfair to block them from the opportunity to work on their own game. Unfortunately, replacing an Environment team of over 20 is no small task, which has set back the progress we had originally planned to make on the landing zones of Stanton. As of today, we have just abut replaced the team with internal hires and we are continuing to hire additional environment artists as fast as we can find ones that meet our quality bar. The Environment Team is now some 37 artists strong, so long term we feel we are better situated to deliver the vast amount of locations that Star Citizen and Squadron 42 needs. Rather than make everyone wait for the landing zones to all be completed we decided the best course of action would be to get the Planetary Tech and the other improvements in everyone’s hands as soon as possible. Our goal for 3.0 is to again do what we found so valuable when building Arena Commander: involve the community as soon as possible. More than any other process, it is YOUR feedback that helps further Star Citizen’s development… which means that we need you on our moons with this next release.[/QUOTE] Oh look, after all this it was a content pipeline slowdown (caused by Behaviour transitioning to making their own game instead of building more of SC's environmental set decor) that caused 3.0 to have to slim back the available content. They're pushing the featureset ahead of the content pipeline instead of delaying it longer, which was exactly my rationale for not being that upset by the planets sliding back a bit. [QUOTE]Our plan is to have two more releases in the LIVE branch of Star Citizen this year after 3.0 that fill out the Stanton System beyond what we outlined last year.[/QUOTE] I see this as "one more release to live this year and then PTU to the next in late January" but we'll see. [editline]17th April 2017[/editline] [QUOTE=ulvemann43;52115980]The problem with, say, elite, is that you buy the hull and that is it. You are served an utterly crap jump drive, the worst of everything your ship can have, even weapons. Every ship you buy in the game will have the same weapons, and only two of them, the rest you need yourself. To make any ship viable you need to spend at least twice its price just for it to function. Every SC ship works viably upon purchase, the very thought behind this universe is that these are actual companies trying to sell actual ships, so of course they want them to be good. Each SC ship on purchase has a decent bit of everything; good weapons, every weapon slot filled, and good shielding etc. Not to mention that it seems like any additional upgrades will mostly be sidegrades in the way that sure you may get a bigger stronger something but it has a drawback. I think there is no chance that we will see a situation where you need upgrades, tweaks and replacements for your SC ships, because honestly anything close to the elite way of doing it is the irl equivalent of BMW selling a sports car with a lada engine and brakes made outa bread, then telling you to spend twice to 3 times the cost of the car to get a bmw engine and proper brakes.[/QUOTE] The upgrade ladder in the 'verse is actually said to be somewhat large. However, minmaxing isn't to be that easy, as you first have to find the places that make the best components (some shop in some filthy-ass colony backwater may have a master weapons tuner who sells modified versions of mass drivers with 10% better RoF or something). The result is intended to provide variety and progression, not an Elite-style perpetual credit grind. However, we'll see what CIG comes up with.

[QUOTE=elixwhitetail;52116457] The upgrade ladder in the 'verse is actually said to be somewhat large. However, minmaxing isn't to be that easy, as you first have to find the places that make the best components (some shop in some filthy-ass colony backwater may have a master weapons tuner who sells modified versions of mass drivers with 10% better RoF or something). The result is intended to provide variety and progression, not an Elite-style perpetual credit grind. However, we'll see what CIG comes up with.[/QUOTE] I hope it won't be too large, i like the thought of buying a ship without too many mandatory additions and modifications, like in elite. I hope they can do it well in the end.

As far as I understand it, the ladder's supposed to provide variability and flexibility for roles, so it's less that the shit tier stock weapon does 1X damage and the top tier stuff, where a weapon's worth more than the entire ship hull it's attached to, does some shit like 6X damage, and more that an upgraded weapon will have a superior cooling profile (longer to overheat), or superior rate of fire, or ammo count before reload, or range, or some other stat. In Elite, this is handled by Engineers RNG, at this point. With SC, it seems like it'll be more of knowing that this-and-this back alley on Magnus is a place where, at night, you can go to this black market and buy K&W laser repeaters for fighter sizes with superior signature reduction for your stealth M50 build. That [I]could[/I] still turn into a broken grind ladder, but I'm hoping they have more sense than that.

[QUOTE=elixwhitetail;52116943]As far as I understand it, the ladder's supposed to provide variability and flexibility for roles, so it's less that the shit tier stock weapon does 1X damage and the top tier stuff, where a weapon's worth more than the entire ship hull it's attached to, does some shit like 6X damage, and more that an upgraded weapon will have a superior cooling profile (longer to overheat), or superior rate of fire, or ammo count before reload, or range, or some other stat. In Elite, this is handled by Engineers RNG, at this point. With SC, it seems like it'll be more of knowing that this-and-this back alley on Magnus is a place where, at night, you can go to this black market and buy K&W laser repeaters for fighter sizes with superior signature reduction for your stealth M50 build. That [I]could[/I] still turn into a broken grind ladder, but I'm hoping they have more sense than that.[/QUOTE] As long as it won't feel mandatory i won't mind it. But i do like the sound of that.

The way SC's upgrading was discussed is that you aren't going to be buying new hulls and new models of superhornets, you're going to be buying new parts for your ships. The main progression comes from buying/finding better gear in-game, either through the markets or via that secret blackmarket dealer you randomly found in low-sec space. It's also the main reason why LTI is nowhere near as important as people think it is, LTI just covers your hull, not the shit in it or on it (which will likely far exceed the price of the ship at higher-level meta) What elix said above is also likely true, but its also equally probable that the extremely expensive (and meta) alien tech will be a huge investment for a huge boost if you can make it count, as in not die the day you buy it. The system sounds to me like a very soft version of EvE, where you don't want to fly something you aren't ok with losing.

Has it been said if there's any costs associated with owning a ship, or repairs required after general use and not just actual damage? Would you want to change ships eventually for the same reason you don't buy a third-hand Mercedes?

[url]https://youtu.be/Uhra2SETLNs?t=19m24s[/url] There has been theory crafting that things do wear down over time, and ships do use consumable resources over time, and hangers, insurances, crew are supposed to have continual costs or something. But I'm not sure how much will make it in. Its very easy to say things, but its hard to actually of them. I know things are going to look visibly worn or dirty over time via shaders, and that's been demonstrated in the ATV.

As long as the rings at Olisar start spinning again (in the right direction) I'm happy. Although I was really looking forward to Crusader for 3.0, looks like it gives us a reason to revisit it early next year.

[URL="https://robertsspaceindustries.com/comm-link/citizens/15844-This-Week-In-Star-Citizen"]This week's schedule is up.[/URL] The schedule is predictable, with Loremaker's on Wednesday. Pretty average and mundane week until Friday: [QUOTE]And in case you missed it, the price for our next concept ship, the Banu Defender was announced over the weekend in the Ship Prices announcement thread. It’s $185 dollars, and the ship and the Banu race will be revealed to the world on Friday.[/QUOTE]

Part II of Operation: Combined Arms is out! (That's the fan film I voice acted in, playing the character Sergeant Robert Brooks of the UEE Marine Corps) [media]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m33HxJVJxeM[/media] Lemme know what you think!

[URL="https://robertsspaceindustries.com/comm-link/spectrum-dispatch/15850-DataCache-Nemesis"]This week's lorepost is about hacking an anti-Tevarin hate group[/URL] and finding out that there is a concentrated effort to destroy all traces of the old Tevarin religion. [video=youtube;k0a37ivWgtI]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k0a37ivWgtI[/video] [video=youtube;rFe8EDC_J24]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rFe8EDC_J24[/video]

[QUOTE=elixwhitetail;52127598][URL="https://robertsspaceindustries.com/comm-link/spectrum-dispatch/15850-DataCache-Nemesis"]This week's lorepost is about hacking an anti-Tevarin hate group[/URL] and finding out that there is a concentrated effort to destroy all traces of the old Tevarin religion. [video=youtube;rFe8EDC_J24]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rFe8EDC_J24[/video][/QUOTE] I'm sorry but I'm having all sorts of BAD community memories right now

[video=youtube;4RLYch3lxVk]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4RLYch3lxVk[/video] The Banu culture is pretty interesting. The Banu Defender looks cool, but it's going on my "in the PU" list.

The Aurora update is fantastic! I'm so happy with how the past like, 4 or 5 weeks of ATV content has been.

Banu shit looks awesome, as well as their personalities. Kind of really liking the look of them and their ships too, couldn't help but think they look like Groot from Guardians of the Galaxy, just shiny. So glad the new Aurora looks less like shit too. Now, a lot of people seem to think Crusader is going to be landable/have landing zones come 3.0, but Crusader and gas giant tech isn't until 3.2. Did CIG say something different or are people just not reading stuff?

They're probably confusing Crusader with Stanton in general. Which, to be fair, the "server" you're joining ingame is called Crusader.

[url=https://robertsspaceindustries.com/comm-link/transmission/15862-Banu-Defender]jpeg hot[/url] [url=https://robertsspaceindustries.com/media/ril9i7tljzccgr/source/Banu-Pamphlet.pdf]off[/url] [url=https://robertsspaceindustries.com/media/q47zalzz81ml4r/source/Banu-Defender.pdf] the presses[/url]

Boy the Banu look stupid.

Well he's not wrong. It's like they took a person, made them purple, and gave them a forehead made of hyper-nostrils. It's not necessarily bad, just more uninspired generic sci-fi art like most of star citizen. Defender looks damn good when landed though. This one can go on the pretty ships list.

It could be worse, it could be Mass Effect the Enchiladas.

[QUOTE=Squeegy Mackoy;52135972]Well he's not wrong. It's like they took a person, made them purple, and gave them a forehead made of hyper-nostrils. It's not necessarily bad, just more uninspired generic sci-fi art like most of star citizen.[/QUOTE] To make a lot of sci-fi work you've kinda' got to have the races as some sort of humanoid figure resembling a person. Giant squid race that has tentacles wouldn't have ships flyable by humans, so you've either got people yelling "I wanna fly this alien ship!", or people yelling "it doesn't make sense that i can fly this alien ship if the aliens that made it have 12 arms!" I wouldn't say it's 100% original and new (see my above comment regarding Groot) but from what they've got to work with I reckon they have put together a pretty nice alien race so far. I think the real standout will be a lot of the architecture and culture that comes along with the aliens, particularly the level of depth we're going to get with them.

Gosh i want the defender, that lifetime insurance. But it's the one month when i can't afford it, blah. It and the merchantman look so good.

[QUOTE=Lord Hayden;52136216]I think the real standout will be a lot of the architecture and culture that comes along with the aliens, particularly the level of depth we're going to get with them.[/QUOTE] [t]http://i.imgur.com/9ZyJuZt.jpg[/t] And boy is their architecture alien. I think the Banu don't even know how these were built since it's too far out of living memory. I think one of the most interesting thing about the Banu is that they don't really see a point in recording their history. What matters is the now, not what happened five hundred years ago; that's a huge contrast compared to humanity which agonizes constantly about the Messer regime and keeps trying to dig up the buried past to fully understand how they came to be the present-day UEE. The Banu also practice lifelong hyperspecialization, where everyone is raised in life with a specific career and role; if you're raised as a pilot, you are a pilot, someone else raised as a gunner will be your weapons officer. What's interesting is that it is the [I]Banu[/I] who pursue an almost caste-based career system, while the Xi'An have such single-minded purpose but apply it not to citizens but to entire planets, with a given planet being terraformed and dedicated to a single purpose (agriculture, technology production, spiritual preserve, etc.). Both the Xi'An and Banu make for an interesting contrast against the proud, fallen Tevarin warrior race and their lost/actively-being-buried spiritual ideology. Scifi aliens generally mean rubber forehead humans simply because CIG is telling a story/making a game for humans by humans and motion-captured by humans. As Hayden points out, the devs [I]could[/I] make a ship that you need five arms at once to pilot, but we're human and we're used to a two-handed style of interfacing with the world and ships need to match that or else this whole realism aspect goes out the window. Piloting a ship that requires you to do differential calculus in your head in realtime in order to correctly maneuver would be alien as hell, but also nearly impossible and pointless to fly, so there have to be compromises.

Picked up a defender since I had store credit sitting around and I'm still a bit irritated that the KA didn't wind up being the two seater pilot/gunner it was pitched to be. I guess the Defender was their way of delivering on that with an alien ship. The design's pretty nice, all said. I hope Banu weaponry has an exotic look in action like the Xi'An are supposed to. IIRC wasn't the KA supposed to have extremely rapid fire lasers like a minigun?

[QUOTE=Visorak06;52138578]Picked up a defender since I had store credit sitting around and I'm still a bit irritated that the KA didn't wind up being the two seater pilot/gunner it was pitched to be. I guess the Defender was their way of delivering on that with an alien ship. The design's pretty nice, all said. I hope Banu weaponry has an exotic look in action like the Xi'An are supposed to. IIRC wasn't the KA supposed to have extremely rapid fire lasers like a minigun?[/QUOTE] I don't know that it was supposed to have special guns, at least the export version sold to the UEE. But put K&W laser repeaters on it and you've got two gymbaled turrets of pewpewpewpew. Eventually in the PU there should, by all rights, be a way of getting the domestic Xi'An four-turret mount, or a domestic KA, and then you've got a quad-pewpew on gymbals.

[QUOTE=elixwhitetail;52138709]I don't know that it was supposed to have special guns, at least the export version sold to the UEE. But put K&W laser repeaters on it and you've got two gymbaled turrets of pewpewpewpew. Eventually in the PU there should, by all rights, be a way of getting the domestic Xi'An four-turret mount, or a domestic KA, and then you've got a quad-pewpew on gymbals.[/QUOTE] I got confused and remembered this article and for some reason thought it was Xi'an tech they incorporated into the KA, but it looks like it's just hybrid laser tech. [URL="https://robertsspaceindustries.com/comm-link/spectrum-dispatch/14343-Sakura-Sun"]https://robertsspaceindustries.com/comm-link/spectrum-dispatch/14343-Sakura-Sun[/URL]

[QUOTE=Lord Hayden;52136216]To make a lot of sci-fi work you've kinda' got to have the races as some sort of humanoid figure resembling a person. Giant squid race that has tentacles wouldn't have ships flyable by humans, so you've either got people yelling "I wanna fly this alien ship!", or people yelling "it doesn't make sense that i can fly this alien ship if the aliens that made it have 12 arms!" I wouldn't say it's 100% original and new (see my above comment regarding Groot) but from what they've got to work with I reckon they have put together a pretty nice alien race so far. I think the real standout will be a lot of the architecture and culture that comes along with the aliens, particularly the level of depth we're going to get with them.[/QUOTE] I can understand why they'd make them humanoid, but there's one of the pictures of a Banu wearing combat gear that looks straight up like he's trying to be a 21st century infantryman. I think an alien race should have more alien looking armor.

[QUOTE=Dispenser;52139338]I can understand why they'd make them humanoid, but there's one of the pictures of a Banu wearing combat gear that looks straight up like he's trying to be a 21st century infantryman. I think an alien race should have more alien looking armor.[/QUOTE] But that also comes back to being humanoid, armor is designed to protect your bits, and if the alien has a nearly identical bits to you, it makes sense that the armor isn't going to be as alien looking as something with 5 arms and reproductive organs for eyes. It comes back to the fact that there's only so much you can do when you're trying to make something humanoid. Although I [i]do[/i] think we're going to get some very extravagant combat armor for the Banu leaders/generals/whatever they have, with their culture being so materialistic and all. Maybe the 21st century infantryman was just one of the lower Banu fighters?