Star Citizen Megathread v. procedurally-generated deadlines - Games

[QUOTE=elixwhitetail;52492793] I overshot targets a dozen times because Elite [I]made me fall asleep[/I] before I arrived where I wanted to be, because it was a straight line and I had nothing to do but tab out or stare at nothing for 15 literal minutes. I fear the effect the mindset of the people who find this 'fun' has had on Elite. I don't really think it takes much skill to drop throttle into the blue zone when you get 6-7 seconds away from your destination. The only skills that requires are a) hitting a keybind at the right time and b) not falling asleep first. The fact that there's a (unreliable) landing autopilot but no supercruise deceleration autopilot to automate that "drop to blue at 6s" moment in the 33rd century strains suspension of disbelief. Calling Elite's supercruise "interactive" is technically true but in practice it's pretty uninteractive. If SC makes me take 10-15minute Quantum rides every so often, at least I'll be able to get up and watch planets go by from different windows even if nothing on my ship needs maintenance or tweaking. It could be boring but it's not as boring as being nailed to my seat. If course, if I'm flying a ship with no interior space and just a cockpit, I'm nailed to my seat so hopefully something else will be available to stave off the boredom. Elite's supercruise was also supposed to work exactly like Star Citizen's, and then Elite backers complained and demanded the ability to fly around the star systems in an interactive layer. And that's why Elite has the unholy voodoo of supercruise instances being separated from linear space, and every transition into or out of supercruise is actually a quick disguised loading screen and an opportunity for instancing bugs, like being interdicted by another player and both of you drop out into different instances with nobody around. I think it's cool being able to fly low over a gas giant's ring structure, but the tradeoff to get that functionality has been tremendous.[/QUOTE] You know, I never said that star citizen should use elite dangerous way of travel. The only reason I mention elite dangerous is to highlight the "technical" interactivity, i'm not discussing how would star citizen feel with elite dangerous way of travel. Now my idea so to speak, of a way of travel is similar to how star citizen would do travel between star systems when going through wormholes, except that method of travel between star systems should apply to in-system/interplanetary travel as well. In stargate they call it subspace. [t]https://68.media.tumblr.com/be88b7eb65eed40e32885a4937755234/tumblr_ns95xelH0i1s4svxgo5_1280.jpg[/t] [t]http://vignette4.wikia.nocookie.net/starcitizen/images/5/5d/Jump_Point_Demonstration.png/revision/latest?cb=20150125191950[/t] Imagine this, but on a solar scale level and not a one way road but with many different paths. Everytime you engage hyperdrive, it brings you into subspace. I think if star citizen has this mechanic, it would be pretty interesting even with the low number of star systems.

[QUOTE=ulvemann43;52493196]I imagine you'l be able to browse the SC version of the internett while doing single seat craft flying. I heard someone mention that they plan to use GMs as news reporters so that could be a fun thing to happen, browse the latest news while cruisn'[/QUOTE] MobiGlas will still be a thing in the cockpit, so you can flaunt "don't use your [del]phone[/del]mobiglas to chat while [del]driving[/del]flying" laws without actual risk. The promise is that there'll be a fairly constant influx of new content, generated by players (their actions, e.g. killing a significant pirate or some major shit getting blown up) and curated by GMs. There is also the potential, if they can get a workable performance-safe streaming solution to feed into the render-to-texture system, for players to stream their live viewpoint in the game as on-the-scene citizen reporting, since that's the pitched purpose of the Reliant news van variant. If that feed can be streamed to a TV in G-Loc down at ArcCorp's Area 18, I don't see why it can't be streamed to your mobiglas at literally any location in the PU that is within range of the Spectrum network feed (you might be SOL if you're invading Vanduul space but you have bigger worries than the Sataball scores). [QUOTE=Toyokunari;52493283]You know, I never said that star citizen should use elite dangerous way of travel. The only reason I mention elite dangerous is to highlight the "technical" interactivity, i'm not discussing how would star citizen feel with elite dangerous way of travel. -snippo-[/QUOTE] Yeah, that's fair. As to the part I snipped, ah, now I understand what you mean. And I do see your point. It could be pretty cool. However, the devs have envisioned a more EVE-like star system setup, where there are fairly well-defined activity routes and then a billion random squirrely individual sidepaths made by interdiction-conscious players and [del]shady fucks[/del]entirely legitimate businessmen who are concerned about being followed as they go about their business. You can already see this in 2.x in the form of players being little bright dots zipping across the galaxy background when they supercruise perpendicular to you -- this is both a case of immersion/showing their work ("the universe is alive!") and also subtle information (someone just jumped to there, if there's a PoI close by it could be important). This is going to be supported by things such as projected interdiction bubbles -- if QT detects anything more dense than ambient space dust or hydrogen in front of you, it will pull you out in an emergency stop. If a pilot has gotten up out of their seat because they're a Twitch streamer and are pretending to take a shit in the toilet in the travel interval, they've gotta run back to the cockpit ASAP. I imagine there'll eventually be some form of scanner that is sensitive to Quantum Travel wakes in some capacity to allow particularly investigative players, good or bad, to get a general sense of the precise bearings of a recent jump. If the tracker is close enough behind and the tracked pilot didn't immediately jump away or land somewhere and store their ship away, the tracker should get pulled out of QT by the prey's own ship(s) being present on the trajectory. There are merits to both ideas, but CIG's keeps everyone on the same coordinate grid the way EVE does, rather than going into some sort of subspace cave system because you want to go from one moon to another within a gas giant's fuck-cluster of baby moons. Just avoiding two instance transitions with every in-system fast travel action alone dramatically cuts down on the chances of serious bugs being embedded into one of the most important features of the game. I've played Elite for over 200 hours, where every transition into or out of supercruise is an instance transition, which is what would occur with this subspace layer/map idea no matter how cool the subspace tunnels gameplay would be. I've also played I don't know how many hundreds of hours of EVE, making tons of rapid point-to-point jumps and often zig-zagging around to make my final destination less obvious to anyone who might attempting to track me while I was in lowsec/nullsec. Leaving aside all other aspects of both ideas for SC, I choose the one that has no instance transitions and I hope that the gameplay supporting it is fun and not a tedious chore if nothing else. [editline]21st July 2017[/editline] Oh, and [URL="https://robertsspaceindustries.com/comm-link/transmission/16019-Rough-And-Tumbril"]the Tumbril Cyclone concept sale is officially up, now.[/URL] [URL="https://robertsspaceindustries.com/schedule-report"]Schedule report is updated.[/URL] A few delays, but the release windows are the same.

[QUOTE=Lord Hayden;52492309]The thing is that there's a lot more to Star Citizen other than having your own ship. There's thousands of players out there who have already said that as soon as the game drops, they're selling all their ships. Losing your ship doesn't make the game unplayable whatsoever, it just restricts your playstyle.[B] You have no ship and no money? You work for other players that do. You hitchhike over the universe with those kind enough to let you on board. If the game works out the way they say they want it to, not having a ship should not be majorly offputting.[/B][/QUOTE] That sounds [B]awful[/B] to be honest. I seriously doubt (and hope) they will let players get into situations like that without actively trying to.

They probably will have something similar to loaner ships that you have to pay off. Doesn't ED have something like that? I haven't played it in awhile, but if you die and can't afford your ship, doesn't it give you a loaner one to pay off?

[QUOTE=Why485;52493729]That sounds [B]awful[/B] to be honest. I seriously doubt (and hope) they will let players get into situations like that without actively trying to.[/QUOTE] I'm expecting them to go through with the "BUT DEATH HAS [I]CONSEQUENCES[/I]!" shtick at release, and [I]then[/I] everyone realizes it's terrible for gameplay. Nothing will make me stop playing a game faster than losing my ship and getting stuck at a spaceport for eight hours waiting for the insurance to go down. I'm not going to beg to get put on someone's ship to sit inside a (useless) turret doing nothing for two hours then have to beg my way back to the port to pick up my 300i, I'm just gonna hit the wonderful ALT and F4 keys.

It is the case that if you take off in your last ship while it's uninsured and you don't have much money, or you take off in your last, insured ship without any money to pay for the insurance fee, you [I]will[/I] be without a ship on a temporary basis. However: 1) Elite makes you pay the rebuy cost at time of destruction or not at all. You either can afford to pay for a replacement right after your ship was blown up, or you get a default Sidewinder pleb sled and you're starting from the bottom. I don't think this is CIG's intention. From the way they talked in the 3.0 game systems Happy Hour, it seems more like a thing you file for at a LZ at your discretion. There could be a time limit before claims become invalid and ship goes byebye, but I've never heard that be discussed, just speculating on the potential for creating such a restriction. 2) It shouldn't take you long to earn yourself back into a ship of your own, even if it's an Aurora ES, and that would be a worst-case scenario where you have no tangible assets and have been bled dry. I'm not sure how that'd be possible without repeated mismanagement or a worst-case persistent griefing situation. Unless you managed to strand yourself with nothing in the worst possible place, e.g. being a very lawful citizen and accidentally setting your save point to GrimHEX or Spider while having zero credits and no ship, you'd probably be back in a ship of your own within 3 hours.

I'd reckon ship destruction will just work the way it works now, and starts that "timer" which ticks down at 1k AUEC an hour, and you get the choice to make a claim there and then or wait until the "timer" goes down to 0AUEC. That is how i understand it at least.

[QUOTE=Why485;52493729]That sounds [B]awful[/B] to be honest. I seriously doubt (and hope) they will let players get into situations like that without actively trying to.[/QUOTE] It isnt as bad as it sounds, there is an AI transport network and entire player orgs hundreds strong dedicated to ferrying and rescuing people around the universe. The absolute worst you'd have to deal with is making travel money on the planet you find yourself stranded on, which shouldn't be hard at all.

I'll say right now, I'll always offer a ride or pickup for anyone ever out of a ship. I'll even offer a job to help get you back on your feet.

Can you by any chance CCU to a pack? I really want the pack with the ursa and cyclone, but i wanna keep the dust devil skin. (also you should be able to spawn the vehicles by themselves on any planet yes? Like there is confirmed to be spawn terminals for them there?) Edit: actually does the ursa have any cargo capacity?

Well, I wanted a terrapin since it got closer to completion.. Rip my wallet I guess. Slightly related, but not really because it's already too late, but is CIG okay with customers saying they are from USA when they're really in EU to avoid VAT? Because looking at the price before VAT applied and then having it slapped on hurts my wallets feeling. It's pretty shitty, instead of buying from CIG, it's usually much cheaper to buy on the greymarket, which I know they don't support but they don't crack down on it either..

[QUOTE=ulvemann43;52495440] (also you should be able to spawn the vehicles by themselves on any planet yes? Like there is confirmed to be spawn terminals for them there?) [/QUOTE] According to this ATV from a month ago, that should be possible. [url]https://youtu.be/STwVI6_xWqc?list=PLVct2QDhDrB2X8pRZcGMMWpsy0TuyrQOo&t=509[/url]

You can't CCU from a single ship to a combo pack. The CCU system doesn't recognize packs, only individual ships. [QUOTE=mu ha ha;52495467]Well, I wanted a terrapin since it got closer to completion.. Rip my wallet I guess. Slightly related, but not really because it's already too late, but [B]is CIG okay with customers saying they are from USA when they're really in EU to avoid VAT?[/B] Because looking at the price before VAT applied and then having it slapped on hurts my wallets feeling. It's pretty shitty, instead of buying from CIG, it's usually much cheaper to buy on the greymarket, which I know they don't support but they don't crack down on it either..[/QUOTE] I mean, they can't endorse avoiding VAT, which the EU mandates they collect, by misreporting your location. But I don't think they'd do anything crazy like close your account for doing it. Before the changes to apply VAT and to unfreeze the Euro-US exchange rate (previously CIG kept the Euro pricing artificially low and fixed instead of pegging it to the floating exchange rate) I occasionally said I was in the EU in order to get better Canadian->EU exchange rates than the CDN->USD exchange rate at the time. Also, the grey market is a huge source of the problems CIG is trying to fix by doing things like restricting the Cyclone's CCU capability to other ground vehicles only. The grey market is why $0 CCUs are going away and CIG is going to start expiring the stockpile of CCUs -- because people are hoarding literal thousands of $0 CCUs in order to use them to flip items on the grey market for less than their purchase price, such as someone buying a Redeemer (before it was taken down) and using an old Redeemer->Starfarer CCU and making $100 in value (and grey market profit for the backer, but not CIG) appear out of nowhere. imo if you don't like VAT, better to lie about your location (and take the minimal risks involved) than to buy on the grey market and contribute to the cancer that's slowly ruining CIG's very generous and liberal CCU policies. The only time I'd recommend someone go to the grey market is if they want something that cannot be pledged for anymore or is only available in the 2-3/year limited-ships-are-back sales, and they [I]really[/I] need to have it.

Ah darn. But can the ursa carry any cargo? If it can i may get the pack regardles.

It [I]should[/I] be able to carry some cargo in the back. It's about the size of a panel van and WIP concept art shows a bench and a cargo space in the back (though it'll only hold a few boxes).

Ah, excelent, may buy that pack with it then if i can get a refund for that one cyclone i bought before they said you can't CCU it into other ships.

[QUOTE=Why485;52493729]That sounds [B]awful[/B] to be honest. I seriously doubt (and hope) [b]they will let players[/b] get into situations like that without actively trying to.[/QUOTE] Pretty sure the whole idea is to create in-depth game mechanics that you can create gameplay from. If CIG jumped in and added these fail-safes to it to make sure you can never be without a ship for more than 5 minutes they're pretty much going against that whole idea. If they're going to be adding in as much as they say they are, I don't see a problem in not having a ship for a little while, this isn't Elite, the whole universe doesn't revolve around you having your own ship. [editline]23rd July 2017[/editline] [QUOTE=Saber15;52494177]I'm expecting them to go through with the "BUT DEATH HAS [I]CONSEQUENCES[/I]!" shtick at release, and [I]then[/I] everyone realizes it's terrible for gameplay. [b]Nothing will make me stop playing a game faster than losing my ship and getting stuck at a spaceport for eight hours waiting for the insurance to go down.[/b] I'm not going to beg to get put on someone's ship to sit inside a (useless) turret doing nothing for two hours then have to beg my way back to the port to pick up my 300i, I'm just gonna hit the wonderful ALT and F4 keys.[/QUOTE] Why would you decide to sit at the same spaceport for 8 hours? As I said, this game doesn't require you to [i]have[/i] a ship. Let's just say, in this extreme case, you have 8 hours to kill, why wouldn't you go and do a couple missions around the area, or do a few in-system trading runs with another player? There's absolutely no reason you should have to enjoy CIGs idle sitting animations for 8 hours. With their mission system, you don't need to beg to get put on a ship/turret. Players post/share missions which you can sign up for, there will always be something else you can do. Look at the current PU. You can spawn in Olisar and complete every mission the PU currently has to offer without ever spawning a ship. While CIG doesn't yet have the mission posting mechanics in, you can ask if anyone wants co-pilots, etc. and then float about doing missions. You can ask for a taxi service to Hex, or Corvalex, buy a laser gun, or investigate insurance claims.

To be fair, there are two different arguments in play. One argument is "What I want to do is fly my ship and do the things I want, and I don't want CIG to go overboard with replacement timers." The other is "If you lose your ship, there will be so many other things you can do." Both are valid. One is outlining the broad spectrum of activities CIG intends on supporting in SC, which should enable many different gameplay experiences. The other is stating their preference to enjoy a particular subset of those experiences, being in the pilot's seat of their own ship, as an important priority, with an expression of concern that CIG may be excessively punishing with insurance cooldowns. Both viewpoints [I]can[/I] choose to do all of CIG's side attractions and alternate gameplay paths if their own ship(s) cannot be used at some point, but one may be more willing to embrace these alternatives, so CIG needs to strike a careful balance between making ship destruction meaningful and making insurance replacement cooldowns an excessive and aggravating lockout.

I personally think that just the concept of losing all of your cargo, captured bounties etc + travel time will do a lot to make ship destruction really meaningful. There will be people who want to get into SC purely to be pilots, and to have fighters. Having too much of a wait between each ship "life" can quickly be a big turnoff. I will certainly enjoy doing all manner of varying things in the game when it is launched, but i don't want to feel like i am being -forced- to do anything, if there is one thing which can really zap enjoyment of a game, it is being forced to do something. I believe that ship wait times shouldn't be much longer than 6 hours max for really big ships unless it is something like an idris, javelin or polaris which are the exeptions i'd make. Generally for the bigger ships, like a BMM and a reclaimer and the higher hull series, a ship death means almost a fortune of cargo being lost, that is one massive punishment right there. The ship wait times if anything, in my opinion should be there to stop people from spamming smaller craft and fighters, but the really long wait times should specifically be targeted at people who keep dying or keep killing people etc. You can argue as much as you want that the game will give you many things to do, but in the end of it all, people will generally come to SC for one specific thing. Me, i want to try a bit of everything. I love flying, i love being a gunner, wouldn't mind being a guard, a freighter etc (offer open btw, i like being a crewmate). But i don't want to feel forced to do one since say, my ship or rover is on cooldown for the next two days. And especially with how CIG described the current idea for insurance to work, that has me extremely concerned that this may very well be what will happen, since a simple aurora would take 25 hours to get back to you, and a cutlass would take 115 hours. Bit much isn't it? And CIG said that these prices are "good value" compared to what it will be in the full game.

Make so that hull cooldown starts from when you last received one. So if you have not crashed after a long time you dont have to wait much at all. That way people wont get to be spammy, but if its actual accident once in a while you wont have to wait as your next hull is already stocked and waiting.

[QUOTE=creec;52498885]Make so that hull cooldown starts from when you last received one. So if you have not crashed after a long time you dont have to wait much at all. That way people wont get to be spammy, but if its actual accident once in a while you wont have to wait as your next hull is already stocked and waiting.[/QUOTE] Yeah, that's also a very good idea of implementing it, certainly.

The intended insurance mechanisms for 3.0, where your rebuy ticks down at 1000 aUEC an hour, is a placeholder. It's a simplified system that gets 'er done for now. Like combat, the ease of death, and the lack of meaningful exploration, this is a placeholder and not to be taken as 1:1 indicative of how the final feature will be implemented. If anything, I see it as training the userbase to gradually shift its views on the importance of ship destruction by making insurance actually count. Remember, the way insurance is supposed to work in the PU is that your replacement ship actually has to come out of the economy. If you're making your first claim (in a while) on the ship, a replacement will be delivered to you as fast as the game can logistically get it to you (it has to "fly" to where you are if there aren't any ship sources locally), and depending on the ship that may actually require the universe economy to build one first. Auroras and Hornets and such should be replaceable almost instantly, because they're small, cheap(er), common ships. There shouldn't be any need to actually construct one for you unless extreme conditions are in play. Something in the mid-range like a Carrack or a Reclaimer may or may not be in insurance replacement stock at the time that you make your claim, and if one does exist for delivery there are probably fewer centralized locations that hold spare Reclaimers compared to spare Auroras, so delivery may take longer since there isn't a Reclaimer dealership in every planet's back yard. Something huge like an Idris may take a day or something of realtime to build a replacement if no stock exists, but if you're the captain of an Idris you shouldn't be careless and let your crew die constantly. Where artificial delays will start getting added is if you make frequent claims within one period, such as using your LTI Aurora as a suicide ramming sled on the Port Olisar landing pads as if it's still 2.5.x. If you are constantly losing your ship and filing insurance claims every time it blows up, you're going to get delays added artificially to the delivery time as a discouragement against reckless suicidal tactics. The game itself won't discourage this behaviour unless you're griefing or otherwise being a shit, but there will be consequences if you insist on having insurance replace your ship. You can get around the insurance consequences by just making sure you're able to afford to buy new ships straight across before throwing them away in careless combat/ramming. And remember, Arena Commander isn't going away when the PU leaves beta. There are no consequences inside the SimPod, so if you and your buddies really want to do some machinema of kamikazes in space, you can do it for free in AC and your PU ships are totally safe.

I have never heard of that insurance plan once, but if that is how it will work, then that sounds good, yeah. I for the past week heard mentions that the devs talked about the 3.0 system as -the- system which was going to be at launch. Though why they add this new insurance system in the game when a random can still easily steal and board your ship, is beyond me. That should be added after you can lock your ship, not before.

[URL="https://robertsspaceindustries.com/comm-link/transmission/12820-Insurance-FAQ-And-Update"]One of the oldest FAQs is on insurance.[/URL] Despite being posted shortly after the end of the Kickstarter, the design for insurance it gives is still fairly consistent with the design CIG describes today, although it has obviously evolved in the meantime. We still don't know all of the details for insurance, especially the balance-related numbers like cost or replacement timeframes, but it is still the same general idea as first presented. CIG wants insurance to be cheap and easy and provide a reasonable method of replacing your ship if something happens to it in this big universe filled with solid objects and weapons, but it isn't a blank check to treat the whole game like an arcade (that's what AC is for in a literal sense). Also, in the 3.0 systems Happy Hour, Lando explicitly said that 3.0's systems are placeholders and first "drafts" of functionality, not defining concepts that show exactly how CIG plans to do it for real. You have to take your baby steps before you can do motorcycle stunts, after all. Ship ownership and locking is something they are working on and have acknowledged for a while. As you might expect, a lot of systems touch the need to determine the owning player of a ship, and currently the person in the pilot's seat "owns" the ship once it's spawned. CIG is now working to add the notion of "pilot" versus "owner" to the engine. Item 2.0 should be a huge step forward in CIG's goal of allowing the true ship owner to have access controls for the ship (both in locking doors and locking control stations from unauthorized use), because they had this notion of access control and nuanced ownership before Item 2.0 was complete. This does [I]not[/I] mean ship locking and access control is a confirmed 3.0 feature, but CIG recognizes that ship theft is a major aspect of the current PU and they're working on properly implementing the counter to the current problem.

It will really suck if 3.0 releases with the new insurance system and without any way to keep unwanted people from accessing your ships. since you need to file a claim in case someone steals your ship and escapes with it.

Passed the test with 7/10. Scraped by :v: [IMG_thumb]http://i.imgur.com/XTsDhS8.png[/IMG_thumb] Guess I am good to go

[QUOTE=joshthesmith;52502549]Passed the test with 7/10. Scraped by :v: [IMG_thumb]http://i.imgur.com/XTsDhS8.png[/IMG_tumb] Guess I am good to go[/QUOTE] Sorry but we at FPCorp only allow those who failed their driving exam to operate company vehicles. Feel free to re-take the exam and answer those questions [I]correctly.[/I]

I see a lot of talking about a permadeath system in the game. Is that just refering to the "lose all your cargo when you die and wait for insurance" system or is there another planned system i am not aware of? True permadeath in a game on which people have spent this much cash on does not sound fun if it is the traditional sense.

[QUOTE=ulvemann43;52503055]I see a lot of talking about a permadeath system in the game. Is that just refering to the "lose all your cargo when you die and wait for insurance" system or is there another planned system i am not aware of? True permadeath in a game on which people have spent this much cash on does not sound fun if it is the traditional sense.[/QUOTE] Permadeath in this case means that your character dies, but you become in control on an heir for all of your items with a loss on some reputation. It's basically not really going to be important unless you want to make a name for yourself or buy items from factions which require you to be in exceptional standing with them. That's how I understand it at least.

basically, yeah [url]https://robertsspaceindustries.com/comm-link/engineering/12879-Death-Of-A-Spaceman[/url] the tl;dr is that in lore, your ability to survive and be recovered after lethal incidents like getting spaced in a fight is pretty good in the future of medical science, but even then your luck only lasts so long; whether your body can't endure more modification, or you end up in a fatal no-recovery situation like plummeting into a star or gas giant, at some point a character will be considered dead for good. (headshots are probably going to be a huge point of contention in whether they should be forgiving in this system, given they're so easy to happen, especially at the hands of griefers) At that point you're still getting your stuff back, but as mu ha ha mentioned, it's an heir, so a chunk of money ends up getting taxed out, and you'll lose some standing with factions. On the plus side for some, this may be a way to escape bad standings and atone for a life of piracy. Players may not be so forgiving as the system however, and [url=http://daisura.tumblr.com/post/163369579697]you may remain a marked man[/url]