Star Citizen Megathread - Star Marine isn't doomed after all! - Games

[QUOTE=Hammernipples;50533524]I don't think it's just the ribbing that causes it to be ugly actually, I think the shape of the front half does more to make it ugly. You've got a tiny, narrow cockpit on a fairly large, flat, and wide surface. There's no real flow of any kind to it and it all just looks [I]wrong[/I].[/QUOTE] the first thing I noticed is the placement of the nostril-looking holes on the front compared to the old, I think that alone is a huge eyesore with them way at the corners instead of brought into a narrower end. My first thought was the whole thing was suddenly very bulldoggish, though thinking too much about them nose holes I just get 'hippo' now

On the topic of CoD, I probably won't play it because I avoid the CoD franchise in general, but competition is healthy for everyone involved. CR needs some kind of external pressure to keep his scale in check, and a publisher would micromanage too much; games competing in a similar/the same arena is just the right amount of pressure, because competition means the consumers are the ones CR has to impress, just as it should be. I would hesitate to compare CoD:IW [I]marketing[/I] gameplay against SC live build gameplay, because SC's demos and live builds aren't being made with the level of polish that'll go into a typical AAA-publisher marketing reveal. And we've all seen when E3 demos did not match the released product (although lately that's primarily been Ubisoft's brain damage). However, it's certainly setting a goal for SC to shoot for, and we'll see how things measure up on release. [QUOTE=dai;50533633]the first thing I noticed is the placement of the nostril-looking holes on the front compared to the old, I think that alone is a huge eyesore with them way at the corners instead of brought into a narrower end. My first thought was the whole thing was suddenly very bulldoggish, though thinking too much about them nose holes I just get 'hippo' now[/QUOTE] It didn't occur to me until you started making animal comparisons, but looking at the Cat's cab now, I see a horse face with the ribbed canopy jammed on over the back half of the mouth. The Drake Horseapillar doesn't have the same ring to it. pretty autistic-sounding tbh demanding a full refund now, everything is ruined forever, Chris Roberts you're a fraud

[QUOTE=elixwhitetail;50533651]I would hesitate to compare CoD:IW [I]marketing[/I] gameplay against SC live build gameplay, because SC's demos and live builds aren't being made with the level of polish that'll go into a typical AAA-publisher marketing reveal.[/QUOTE] I'd make a bigger point about the whole 'single player setpiece' vs 'sandbox test environment' comparison on what we've got. We have very little info on S42 outside of the morrow tour and short clips of hamill/oldman, it's 90% character animation tech demos. The only 'big' space fight we've seen was the original pitch video, and that's hilariously outdated in every facet Here we've got a grandiose story mission where you chain a bunch of different play formats (cockpit>EVA>hallway shooting with gravity>cockpit) with long, uncontrollable cutscenes tying them together, to fight through an explosive but pre-scripted chain of events that are basically a larger cutscene that you just get to shoot during. It was beautiful, but entirely what I expect out of a CoD story mission. Fast, easy, powerful action then there's the 2.x builds, which are 95% tech testing for all the boring stuff needed to allow all the assets to 'exist' and traverse/interact within a live sandbox universe. There's a ton of interesting assets to fly, see, accidentally run into, etc, but they're not rigged up in some crazy michaelbaysplosion montage [editline]e[/editline] I'd also like to remind people of this old E:D trailer, it's part of what sold me on that before it released [quote][media]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VE8B4KptyVI[/media][/quote] What I discovered during beta was cap battles were just one cap ship sitting in open space with dumb NPCs just kind of buzzing around in a ~7km radius, fights being slow, weighty jousting matches just gaming the NPCs as I took potshots until I got bored enough to leave and collect my bounty, since most of them never even damaged me. After release, they seemed all but deleted from the game for a long while, marked as a feature that'll see improvement down the line (which I assume it did). The huge times it took to just get out to a point of interest made the fun parts of it feel way too sparse (and were completely unrewarding if you took a few bad hits), and it dulled out hard. In the end that kind of high-octane dogfighting amongst large constructs and space debris is what SC ended up fulfilling for me (even without caps to fight about for now, just the AC satellites), though I'd love to go back and see what E:D's CQC has to offer at some point

To be fair, so far all we've seen of S42 has been one big uncontrollable cutscene, from Bishop's speech to the Morrow Tour.

My 2 cents on CoD:IW. Honestly, looking at the gameplay trailer while I freely admit it does look polished and well presented it's all in all a giant scripted cutscene as Dai has laid out. I'm far more interested in seeing how the space battle scenarios will play out in MP, because that's where we will be able to start picking apart the brass tacks for how it stands up next to SC (To clarify, I mean we're seeing CoD's singleplayer and SC's multiplayer. It's not really right to compare them too extensively). Kudos to CoD for managing to keep the excitement and action that the series seems to thrive on in new waters. Whoever said that ships in SC die near-instantly being a fault needs to take another look at that trailer then because the player sure was blowing up those ships at record speeds the instant they got a bead on them. Also, in my experience it's fairly difficult to instakill another ship in two similarly-classed ships in SC. It's also worth noting that it's a lot easier to balance 1 to maybe a half dozen ship classes/loadouts (I'd wager, since they didn't say the space battles were a focus. Just a thing you could do) against each other in CoD compared to what SC is trying to accomplish with sheer scale of battles. Gotta be fair.

[QUOTE=Visorak06;50534501] Whoever said that ships in SC die near-instantly being a fault needs to take another look at that trailer then because the player sure was blowing up those ships at record speeds the instant they got a bead on them. Also, in my experience it's fairly difficult to instakill another ship in two similarly-classed ships in SC. It's also worth noting that it's a lot easier to balance 1 to maybe a half dozen ship classes/loadouts (I'd wager, since they didn't say the space battles were a focus. Just a thing you could do) against each other in CoD compared to what SC is trying to accomplish with sheer scale of battles. Gotta be fair.[/QUOTE] Regarding the time-to-kill, it's silly in Star Citizen because the time to activate the ejection seat on a number of ships is lower than the time it takes to kill the ship in question. As is, there is no way people will be able to escape from something like a Constellation before it goes boom, though this is apparently being changed in some regard ('invincible' crippled state for x seconds before the big boom?) Hilariously low TTKs are to be expected in a COD game, but it pairs fairly well with the gameplay when everything is extremely agile and you aren't really held back by slow animations as you are in SC. It's rocket tag gameplay. SC's TTK is deceptively long because weapons are so inaccurate (due to spread, travel time, and convergence on some craft) and often held back by clumsy ship handling or silly mixed gimbal/fixed loadouts. In multiplayer, you also have to lagshoot. The TTK also seems to be effected by your FPS, as for me it takes an eternity to kill enemies on Olisar (~20fps) versus Arena Commander (~40). This might stem from weapon refire rates being based on framerates, which is the default behavior in CryEngine; in MechWarrior Living Legends, pulse lasers had extremely variable DPS based on your framerate until the refire rate was uncapped from FPS.

[QUOTE=Saber15;50534827]Regarding the time-to-kill, it's silly in Star Citizen because the time to activate the ejection seat on a number of ships is lower than the time it takes to kill the ship in question. As is, there is no way people will be able to escape from something a Constellation before it goes boom, though this is apparently being changed in some regard ('invincible' crippled state for x seconds before the big boom?) Hilariously low TTKs are to be expected in a COD game, but it pairs fairly well with the gameplay when everything is extremely agile and you aren't really held back by slow animations as you are in SC. It's rocket tag gameplay. SC's TTK is deceptively long because weapons are so inaccurate (due to spread, travel time, and convergence on some craft) and often held back by clumsy ship handling or silly mixed gimbal/fixed loadouts. In multiplayer, you also have to lagshoot. The TTK also seems to be effected by your FPS, as for me it takes an eternity to kill enemies on Olisar (~20fps) versus Arena Commander (~40). This might stem from weapon refire rates being based on framerates, which is the default behavior in CryEngine; in MechWarrior Living Legends, pulse lasers had extremely variable DPS based on your framerate until the refire rate was uncapped from FPS.[/QUOTE] I still feel SC's TTK is balanced entirely around data that made it fun in Arena Commander, but will be severely increased for actual universe play, else everything would feel WAY too risky since you're likely to pop pretty easily. There's no real reason to eject in AC either, so that's barely been a consideration until now since persistence in ship damage/recall/replacement//pilot death is starting to take shape One feature I assume they're planning out (given a lot of the literature regarding larger ships and their escape pods we've seen in recent times, notably starfarer), is that there will be a disable point where the ship is doomed. It can't do anything but MAYBE simple navigation, but at the same time it's essentially invulnerable to any more damage as it begins an internal countdown to destruction. This would give a very clear "shit's SOL, let's bail" point for the crew to stop trying to fight (presumably emergency lights, consoles shut down, etc) and a reliably timed grace period to either hit eject on smaller ships, or a longer period for a large crew to haul ass to the escape pods or EVA bays to throw their suits on, with limited nav ability for someone to try to navigate the dying ship through a debris/asteroid field in its last moments so the crew can escape, lest it quickly drift into an asteroid and EVERYONE dies I totally wouldn't mind that huge of a difference between the arcadey fast action of AC and the open world. Long dogfights sound challenging but rewarding, and I wouldn't mind missiles having a comparatively equal or slightly lower % damage capability as they do now, so long as they're prohibitively expensive for the average schmuck to just spam around. Would keep them a bit more valuable to keep stocked, would be more decisive in swaying fights if you could land a good shot

[video=youtube;nKn25_e-vZM]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nKn25_e-vZM[/video] I'm specifically interested in 35 seconds onwards. Considering they've been working on this sort of thing I imagine that they could just run the sequence of cascading failures slower than shown here (longer delays between each main failure stage), and when this sequence begins it's the "shit's fucked, boys" signal that it's time to escape. Combat is risky in SC and that's why there's a lot of development on the non-combat side of activities, although I don't think combat is intended long-term to be balanced around the Arena Commander meta either.

dragonfly revealed in ATV [t]http://i.imgur.com/6cKJEQj.jpg[/t] it's apparently going to be multi-mode, compact for stowing in a ship and then it transitions according to environment when you take it out. Can't enter atmosphere on its own since the pilot/passenger are KIND OF exposed and would burn up [t]http://i.imgur.com/CWzzRdM.jpg[/t] it's going to fit just fine inside most of the ships you'd expect (I doubt cutlass due to the size of its door, unless they give it a drop-base in the revisions), and surprisingly, can carry two people [t]http://i.imgur.com/ADoosQj.jpg[/t] should have all the accomodations that a merlin has as far as shielding and small storage goes (lack of cockpit means you could take direct shots though, so don't take it to a dogfight. Great for a raiding attack force or otherwise small operations in a mostly FPS-bound area). Also, they had to make a new smaller component size for it [t]http://i.imgur.com/Nwvbtv6.jpg[/t] [t]https://scontent.ford1-1.fna.fbcdn.net/v/t1.0-9/13393979_1085648761477145_9023370074433603505_n.jpg?oh=e0285a709f9d34643ca17060e930b6fe&oe=57CAB4C5[/t] goes up tomorrow, $35 (and did somebody say you get two of them for one pledge?), and they say there may be some bonus content to go with it. Would consider trading out my archimedes if there's indication they'll also be prime for racing, otherwise they'll be so dirt cheap there's no reason not to just pick it up ingame. lots of people bitching, but I think it looks neat, like a solid mix between a star wars speederbike and something out of wipeout [QUOTE=Visorak06;50535204]It also comes with LTI, confirmed. Return of the Archimedes mass purchases?[/QUOTE] to be fair, that wiped out a decent chunk of the grey market

It also comes with LTI, confirmed. Return of the Archimedes mass purchases?

[video=youtube;PPBaqI6_B-4]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PPBaqI6_B-4[/video] [QUOTE]00:54 – Intro 05:09 – NFATV 13:15 – ATV Interview with Jim Martin 24:33 – Ship Shape: Dragonfly 31:05 – MVP [URL="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HaOGzMPm4rE"]Gameplay video[/URL][/QUOTE] And, according to INN's summary of RtV, the Dragonfly will be $35 each, but they'll sell them individually and in two-packs (presumably for $70). I'm presuming as a Drake cheap-ass version of the Merlin. I like the second guy on the back literally riding shotgun (in space). Two of those each with a guy holding a sniper rifle could make for a really tense cat-and-mouse game in an asteroid belt.

[QUOTE=dai;50535126]dragonfly revealed in ATV [t]http://i.imgur.com/6cKJEQj.jpg[/t][/QUOTE] That is actually better than i expected, i'm glad to see it actually is pretty much is a space bike like many people speculated. However, the initial description of "You don’t so much as climb into the Dragonfly as you do put it on around you" doesn't seem entirely correct with that design, which is a bit disappointing but it's still a pretty cool. I think one way to solve that would be to have a sort of oversuit that's part of the ship attach to the pilot.

[vid]https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/7939899/Images/gifs/Star%20Citizen/ooaauuugooa.webm[/vid] Funky

Interesting, according to RtV the "two-pack" package is actually a combo pack of a Caterpillar and two Dragonflies (with the intention of you launching the Dragonflies from the Cat). However, there's a wrinkle: because of the limitations of how the store and attributing packages/ships works, everything in the combo pack (including the Cat) comes with LTI. It would've been a terrible mess to manually glue LTI onto only the Dragonflies and CIG wants to avoid their CS team staging a mutiny from avoidable ticket floods. The Dragonfly's loaner will probably be the Merlin, but on RtV just now, the Dragonfly "might pop up sooner than normal so you may not need a loaner for long". Given how tiny it is, I can see that. Matt Sherman's on RtV and is talking about how the Dragonfly is smaller than the concept makes it look; it's like half the size of a Merlin. Two should be able to launch from a single Cat module (as always, differentiate between storage capacity and [I]launchable[/I] snub capacity). "Can we have a Greycat to Dragonfly CCU?" "No, hold onto those Greycats, they'll be useful someday!" Apparently there will be two colour options for the Dragonfly, and the yellow colour is semi-unique to the concept sale run. The black style is the "normal" one. Yellow will be available in the universe but it'll be a rarity (similar to how Connie Phoenixes will supposedly have a limited production rate) as opposed to the common paint scheme(s). The Dragonfly is also basically the "first" space motorcycle; Drake is effectively creating a new class of ship. Eventually, we might see competing speeder-likes from the other manufacturers. Sherman answers the inevitable, preemptively: The Dragonfly [I]cannot[/I] fit in the Reliant or the Avenger, but probably can fit in compact-mode into most any other ship for [I]transport[/I], but not necessarily launching from it. They haven't worked out how boxing up ships for transport will work so it's not yet known if an Aurora will be able to haul a Dragonfly in its underslung cargo but it's not intended for the Aurora to become a pocket carrier. All hopes and dreams shattered, Matt Sherman canceled [del]Rust[/del]SC :v:

a solid deal for a lot of late entry cat owners to melt for the credit to bump that up, LTI is a bit more meaningful on something so huge compared to the dragonfly, given it'd be pocket change to just buy a new one of those without insurance anyways. also worth note, there was rumor they'd only have the cat on sale one more time at its current price before bumping it up for flight ready status, this is probably that sale.

The Dragonfly was the starter ship I voted for in that poll eons ago so I definitely want to get one but I feel like buying it without a ship that stands a reasonable chance of carrying it is kind of a waste right now? I only have the Mustang. I [I]might [/I]drop the money for a Cutlass later on when the game looks more finished

Hang on there's a [i]space motorcycle[/i] in the game now? GOTYAY

[QUOTE=Raidyr;50540317]The Dragonfly was the starter ship I voted for in that poll eons ago so I definitely want to get one but I feel like buying it without a ship that stands a reasonable chance of carrying it is kind of a waste right now? I only have the Mustang. I [I]might [/I]drop the money for a Cutlass later on when the game looks more finished[/QUOTE] the cutlass is in a rework phase right now so it [I]may[/I] be more capable of actually launching the bugger down the line, but there's no confirmation I've seen on whether it's going to properly accomodate it, or just allow for raw storage. Current cut model has way too small of a door to really get anything bigger than a moving box in there in the first place having said that, the bike's gonna be dirt cheap in the verse, if you're flimsy about spending more cash for a long time anyways it's not gonna be worth dumping it on this of all things

Didn't know about the Cutlass rework, interesting. That is my first multi-crew target.

Really wish they could partner with Google and setup a 2-step verification through Authenticator.

2FA is in the works, but, as with many things, has the status of "not yet".

BTW: With regards to what Saber had to say with regards to Call of Duty, look again at that trailer. There's no mass or momentum to ship movement whatsoever, it all feels horribly wrong, like some teenager's arcade game. That's what I hate about the franchise. It's all about bright lights and flashy presentation, but no real magic. Ships in Star Citizen *feel* right. The game isn't finished yet, so there isn't all the detail you might be wanting, but there's real immersion there that Call of Duty has just never delivered - it feels too much like watching a high-budget but poorly thought out action movie. HUD elements are functional and necessary in SC, there's little non-functional fluff, everything has high fidelity damage modelling and believable utility. I'm not saying Star Citizen is a hundred per cent hard sci-fi, because it obviously isn't. But it feels believable. And for the record, on-foot gunplay feels goddamn amazing, a million times better than Call of Duty ever did. FPS gameplay in Star Citizen reminds me of tactical shooters like Rainbow Six and ArmA, with a little more fluidity.

[QUOTE=archangel125;50540874]than Call of Duty ever did. FPS gameplay in Star Citizen reminds me of tactical shooters like Rainbow Six and ArmA, with a little more fluidity.[/QUOTE] I was going to disagree on the ship kinesthetics based on my experience in prior CoD campaigns of similar sorts of mechanics but then I read this and I kind of have to wonder if you have played a Call of Duty game or Star Citizen because right now this is definitely not true. The closest thing I'd compare it to is maybe ArmA with [B]less [/B]fluidity. Walking around with a rifle in Star Citizen is a glitchy mess right now. I'm sure it will be fixed in time as these things usually are but a million times better than CoD? No way. Frankly, and this is my opinion, I don't think any shooter handles as well as Call of Duty.

[QUOTE=Raidyr;50541021]I was going to disagree on the ship kinesthetics based on my experience in prior CoD campaigns of similar sorts of mechanics but then I read this and I kind of have to wonder if you have played a Call of Duty game or Star Citizen because right now this is definitely not true. The closest thing I'd compare it to is maybe ArmA with [B]less [/B]fluidity. Walking around with a rifle in Star Citizen is a glitchy mess right now. I'm sure it will be fixed in time as these things usually are but a million times better than CoD? No way. Frankly, and this is my opinion, I don't think any shooter handles as well as Call of Duty.[/QUOTE] I like how Battlefield is a good mix between the faster paced Call of Duty and the slower paced ARMAs and Red Orchestras. It has the smooth fluidity and intuitive nature of Call of Duty, but still has just enough momentum and weight to it that it feels "realistic." I despise the unfortunately common notion that hard = realistic, and I especially hate when garbage and awful feeling movement systems are justified with that notion. Without having played Rainbow Six, I can't attest to how good it feels, but I can say that ARMA is a complete mess in CQB. Thankfully in A3 it's gotten to the point where it almost feels like a real game, but I still have flashbacks to how unbelievably difficult it was to move through a building in the old Flashpoint and ARMA 1 games. There tends to be a correlation between how large a game world is and how awkward said game is to navigate in CQB spaces, and Star Citizen's movement feels like it was designed for huge open fields. Whether intentional or not, I think that's a mistake because all your fighting is going to be in cramped space stations and hallways. They did say in a recent post (I think it was a monthly report) that they've "solved" the movement problem and got FPS-like movement with their incredibly complicated third person rigs, so I'm looking forward to trying that. I'll believe it when I see it, but it's good to know they agree that the movement is awkward and needed addressing.

sale's up [t]https://robertsspaceindustries.com/media/fajguwk3baw8yr/source/Drake_Dragonfly_Exploration_Planetside01.jpg[/t] [url]https://robertsspaceindustries.com/comm-link/transmission/15382-Hatching-The-Drake-Dragonfly[/url] also, new looks at the full body of the caterpillar [t]https://robertsspaceindustries.com/media/kl6d9r1swomrfr/source/Presentation-Bucc02-6-6.jpg[/t] [t]https://robertsspaceindustries.com/media/bidvaq65iq9d2r/source/Ext-Engines_v03.jpg[/t] [i]meaty[/i] [media]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pRMCI-d1rUc[/media] [t]https://robertsspaceindustries.com/media/mb9gokk02jo1zr/source/Drake_Dragonfly_Compact_Storage.jpg[/t] looking back- [t]http://vignette3.wikia.nocookie.net/starcitizen/images/6/65/Caterpillar_atv8_1.jpg/revision/latest?cb=20140731172812[/t]

[QUOTE=Why485;50541151]I like how Battlefield is a good mix between the faster paced Call of Duty and the slower paced ARMAs and Red Orchestras. It has the smooth fluidity and intuitive nature of Call of Duty, but still has just enough momentum and weight to it that it feels "realistic." I despise the unfortunately common notion that hard = realistic, and I especially hate when garbage and awful feeling movement systems are justified with that notion. Without having played Rainbow Six, I can't attest to how good it feels, but I can say that ARMA is a complete mess in CQB. Thankfully in A3 it's gotten to the point where it almost feels like a real game, but I still have flashbacks to how unbelievably difficult it was to move through a building in the old Flashpoint and ARMA 1 games. Call of Duty is very well optimized for tight spaces that the game typically takes place in. There's an interesting correlation between how large a game world and how awkward said game is to navigate in CQB spaces. It's because of that, that I think Star Citizen should be targeting a Battlefield style movement, because all your fighting is going to be in cramped space stations and hallways. They did say in a recent post (I think it was a monthly report) that they've "solved" the movement problem and got FPS-like movement with their incredibly complicated third person rigs, so I'm looking forward to trying that. I'll believe it when I see it, but it's good to know they agree that the movement is awkward and needed addressing.[/QUOTE] Honestly I don't understand why CR went with a rainbow six/arma route when both games were notoriously crappy in CQC. Rainbow six derives its difficulty from this fact whilst arma is mostly just from the nearly unavoidable jankiness that comes with trying to merge third and first person animation seamlessly (and though Arma 3 has actually pulled it off quite well, it took them MANY years and it still isnt perfect.) What would be wrong with this game having movement and animation style akin to battlefield, albeit maybe slightly slower? I get that he wants to make everything as simulation as possible, but tbh being able to navigate a fucking corridor quickly is more realistic than bumping into everything because the animation jukes put delays and false stops in all your movement.

Battlefield or Rainbow Six (particularly Siege) would have been optimal. I like how fluid CoD is but it's clearly designed to be a sort of arena shooter, where as I think Battlefield, especially BF4, has the best overall infantry feeling in an FPS at the moment.

sc movement already feels better than arma3 when you're not dealing with crusader lag, can't speak to the gunplay though

Did anything ever happen with the april fools Benny's skin?

[QUOTE=Ott;50541332]Did anything ever happen with the april fools Benny's skin?[/QUOTE] They've heard the community's pleas for it, they want it too, but there's no official announcement, merely a "maybe". Then again, that was the state of the Dragonfly after it lost the poll for third starter ship, and here it is on concept sale.