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

[QUOTE=The bird Man;50951064]My stepbrothers has gotten real interrested in this. So what, we can gang up with ships and work togheter, and save for a larger multi-crew ship and constantly work togheter on that one? I guess there's a teamwork reward system in this? Or what's planned.[/QUOTE] Yes. [QUOTE=Hezzy;50951659]Nothing has been announced regarding the ingame systems for working together as a crew. Only info released is that there will be multi-crew ships, but no clarification on what the crew will do.[/QUOTE] Teehee, wrong. [URL="https://robertsspaceindustries.com/comm-link/transmission/14354-Letter-From-The-Chairman"]This Letter from the Chairman discusses the devs' plans for multicrew ship UIs and assigning different roles and stations to crew.[/URL] This includes shield management, EWAR, radar operation, communication, fuel management, power management, avionics and system priority, scanning, and navigation. On single-seater ships, these roles will either be unnecessary or handled by the single pilot, but the more crew the more specialized each crew member can become. Initial features for this (controlling the power triangle and shield facing) are already in the game. Think Artemis Bridge Simulator, because the devs have taken some inspiration from it as well as other sources. Most recently, around Gamescom, Chris Roberts discussed about how they're working on maintenance components for ships, like fuses, and having crew need to go and maintain the ship while it's in operation like replacing fuses and repairing the thing internally while it's still in flight. The idea is to give crew something to do other than the pilot and other than gunners during combat. As for teamwork rewards, aside from the obvious reward of being an effective, coordinated, efficient force that'll perform better than a solo player trying to manage everything themselves, that's TBA. Much is still not implemented yet, but multicrew functionality is [I]definitely[/I] more fleshed out than "it'll exist". Multicrew ships have been playable in the live build since last Christmas.

When doing the PI mission, at the station where you search for the evidence: [sp]How do you open pod 3? I did collect a PDA that mentioned its door code but it wont open. In pod 5 you can collect some cigar boxes, are those used for anything at all?[/sp] Also after accidentally killing 2 guys, I'm now an outlaw, are there any other missions available with rewards, the only one I have that's got it is the Cartographer one.

[QUOTE=dreukrag;50951951]When doing the PI mission, at the station where you search for the evidence: [sp]How do you open pod 3? I did collect a PDA that mentioned its door code but it wont open. In pod 5 you can collect some cigar boxes, are those used for anything at all?[/sp] Also after accidentally killing 2 guys, I'm now an outlaw, are there any other missions available with rewards, the only one I have that's got it is the Cartographer one.[/QUOTE] The Covalex mission doesn't require any complex hacking bullshit or anything, so it's likely that [sp]the door can't be opened.[/sp] There are two mission outcomes, [sp]if you report in the easily-found pad, you submit evidence that implicates Darnel and disappoints his widow but you still get your reward; if you keep searching for more evidence, you find weapons and an audiolog revealing the conspiracy to frame Darnel, and reporting the evidence then exonerates Darnel and leads to an additional reward over the base outcome[/sp]. Now that you're an outlaw, your mission is to turn [I]off[/I] comm arrays and deprive law enforcement of its security coverage. If all the arrays are off, you can turn one on and right back off again. Now that you're an outlaw, you'll respawn in GrimHex instead of Port Olisar, too, so if you want to get there the easy way just suicide while wanted.

I just recently watched the gamescom alpha 3.0 gameplay video and I gotta say Im really impressed how far the game has progressed so far. I wont rush to buy it and will wait patiently for release but I am definitely still hyped

[QUOTE=elixwhitetail;50951722]something[/QUOTE] You really know much about the game, did you started following it since the very beginning? you give very accurate information for a fan. [I]are you robert?[/I]

I became a backer in October 2014 and I have a good memory for detail. If I was Chris Roberts I wouldn't have the postcount I do.

[QUOTE=elixwhitetail;50951722] Teehee, wrong. [URL="https://robertsspaceindustries.com/comm-link/transmission/14354-Letter-From-The-Chairman"]This Letter from the Chairman discusses the devs' plans for multicrew ship UIs and assigning different roles and stations to crew.[/URL] This includes shield management, EWAR, radar operation, communication, fuel management, power management, avionics and system priority, scanning, and navigation. On single-seater ships, these roles will either be unnecessary or handled by the single pilot, but the more crew the more specialized each crew member can become. Initial features for this (controlling the power triangle and shield facing) are already in the game. Think Artemis Bridge Simulator, because the devs have taken some inspiration from it as well as other sources. Most recently, around Gamescom, Chris Roberts discussed about how they're working on maintenance components for ships, like fuses, and having crew need to go and maintain the ship while it's in operation like replacing fuses and repairing the thing internally while it's still in flight. The idea is to give crew something to do other than the pilot and other than gunners during combat. As for teamwork rewards, aside from the obvious reward of being an effective, coordinated, efficient force that'll perform better than a solo player trying to manage everything themselves, that's TBA. Much is still not implemented yet, but multicrew functionality is [I]definitely[/I] more fleshed out than "it'll exist". Multicrew ships have been playable in the live build since last Christmas.[/QUOTE] I'll applaud this harder than anyone seeing as I love Artemis [url=http://www.pulsarthegame.com/]and anything remotely like it[/url], I just can't help wonder how the multicrew dynamic, with running around the ship mid-fight replacing fuses, will fit together with the current typical fast-paced dogfighting. Maybe I just haven't been playing the game enough, but I have my doubts about this fitting into current combat mechanics in a way that's both interesting and balanced. If the huge ships end up behaving like fighters, I.E with fast handling and same front-facing main weapon layouts, I can see multicrew combat becoming a bit boring as it's all down to the pilots tactical decisions in flight and any ancillary activities like replacing fuses will end up being annoyances that either contributes little or puts the team at a great disadvantage over the single-seat fighters that can't suffer such failures. Unless the larger ships would have their behavior altered to make them more slow and lumbering and very resistant to fire rather than relying on the pilot to fly it like a fighter; that would put more emphasis on additional crew functions. That's something I'd like to see personally. But maybe this will all work itself out in playtesting.

I do think its a safe assumption that the larger the ship, the less like the current fighters it will act. One thing i was thinking about, CIG is going to need to take balancing past the balance spreadsheets when it comes to gear of increasing size even if they get the flight model worked out, to account for all the differences you mentioned. Doing that well is very difficult, we'll see how they manage.

[QUOTE=Im Crimson;50952367]I'll applaud this harder than anyone seeing as I love Artemis [url=http://www.pulsarthegame.com/]and anything remotely like it[/url], I just can't help wonder how the multicrew dynamic, with running around the ship mid-fight replacing fuses, will fit together with the current typical fast-paced dogfighting. Maybe I just haven't been playing the game enough, but I have my doubts about this fitting into current combat mechanics in a way that's both interesting and balanced. If the huge ships end up behaving like fighters, I.E with fast handling and same front-facing main weapon layouts, I can see multicrew combat becoming a bit boring as it's all down to the pilots tactical decisions in flight and any ancillary activities like replacing fuses will end up being annoyances that either contributes little or puts the team at a great disadvantage over the single-seat fighters that can't suffer such failures. Unless the larger ships would have their behavior altered to make them more slow and lumbering and very resistant to fire rather than relying on the pilot to fly it like a fighter; that would put more emphasis on additional crew functions. That's something I'd like to see personally. But maybe this will all work itself out in playtesting.[/QUOTE] I share your doubts but I know they at least *want* to make multi-crew ships meaningful. I hope they can pull it off. In the meantime, I saw that you mentioned Artemis and Pulsar... Well there is a free and open source clone of Artemis that is arguably better called [URL="http://daid.github.io/EmptyEpsilon/"]Empty Epsilon[/URL]. You should take a look!

Something to also keep in mind, with respect to ship handling, is that even without balance adjustments that are sure to come, the ships we're flying now are as light as they'll ever be. Because of the physics-based flight model (even if they keep cheating to make badly-engineered designs work despite having a wildly midplaced Center of Thrust/etc.), as soon as cargo comes into play it should change ship handling by significant degrees. A fully-loaded Freelancer will probably be much more of a flying brick than an empty one (and an empty Freelancer isn't generating profit unless it's filling a combat-first role). It's fully intended for this to be the case with the Hull series of ships, since the A-E range goes from "box truck" to "supertanker" on the pure cargo hauling role and will be most affected by the sudden injection of lots of mass above stock stats. I suspect that larger ships will have their performance characteristics reduced as the multicrew range of ships fills out and multicrew combat becomes a practical thing (turrets still suck to use, especially against fighters). Most of the ships currently in the game are still single-seat fighters and the meta is still primarily balanced for them as of now. Also, in case anyone doesn't know this already, as far as realism goes, Star Citizen is aiming less to feel like a scientifically-accurate space sim and more like an interactive scifi movie. This philosophy appears in pretty much every layer of the design beyond engine technicals, and it's something to keep in mind when discussing flight models and pretty much any other aspect of the game where a stylistic choice is involved in decisions. [editline]26th August 2016[/editline] Also, on the multicrew design document front, that's not the only document that discusses multicrew roles and interfaces/mechanics, because it's a fundamental aspect of basically every ship with a crew size greater than one. For example, [URL="https://robertsspaceindustries.com/comm-link/transmission/14522-Star-Citizen-Careers-Mining"]the mining design document for the RSI Orion and the mining profession in general[/URL] details as many as six separate player roles to be operated simultaneously, from the pilot to the mining laser operator to the tractor beam operator (hoovering in only the ore chunks you want, if they're on the ball) to at least one person assigned to monitor the conditions of the asteroid lest you pump too much energy into it and detonate internal gas pockets, causing the asteroid to explode and potentially damage your ship (having a dedicated pilot may let you escape the worst even if you fuck up, but if you made your pilot get up to operate the mining laser, you're in a pinch). [URL="https://robertsspaceindustries.com/comm-link/engineering/15062-Ship-Repair-And-Maintenance"]The ship repair design document[/URL] suggests different roles, and while this could be managed by a single player it'd be a bit inefficient to have to keep hopping interfaces/changing seats. Although it's kind of cringe-inducing in parts, it is a design document that involves crew having delegated roles: [URL="https://robertsspaceindustries.com/comm-link/transmission/14804-Design-Civilian-Passenger-Transport"]The Genesis Starliner's companion design doc about passenger transport[/URL] details several things to keep crew members busy, including repairing the entertainment console and the drinks pouring and serving minigame :rolleyes: Incidentally, [URL="https://robertsspaceindustries.com/comm-link/transmission/15482-Squadron-42-Hoodies-Now-Available"]the Squadron 42 hoodie sale just started[/URL] and there aren't that many, if anyone cares. I'm passing on one, but they look okay.

I'd say as far as balance goes, as long as they don't allow people to blob to high heavens(which afaik they've said they're trying to avoid). It's going to be really cool to see what kind of ship compositions you can have. Ie: 1 Command/Ewar multi crew ship, 2-3 multicrew gunships, 5 fighter escorts vs an equivalent force would be really interesting. In Archeage I was raid leading anything from 10-20 people specialized for pvp, completely destroying large blobs of uncoordinated people. I've also been raid leading absurd events where we had 100~ vs 50~highly geared players as well.(Full of pvp novices that couldn't tell left from right and couldn't listen to commands, it was a massacre :v:) One of the biggest issues about pvp in archeage was, that in order to compete as a 20man~ crew, everyone would need the best gear available. Add to that gear balance skews way out of whack at top level, so even if we employed superior tactics. If the enemy had similar or better gear and they outblob you, there's nothing you can do. (Unless you do super careful guerilla hit and run attacks non stop. Which is fun the first few times, but it quickly becomes tedious when you can't counter at all.) Hopefully though, as long as things like EWAR, and tactics can turn the tide with specialized ship combat, and the amount of players capable of fighting in the same plane is limited to some extent. That is my only worry really, I don't think anything's going to come close to trainwreck that is archeage end game gear balance :v:

Don't remind me of Archeage, good lord that was a classic example of good concept terrible execution. To add on to what Elix was saying about the multicrew questions, they mentioned that a lot of multicrew ships will have redundant components so that if say; your shield generator blows on a large ship due to a really unlucky hit or power surge that your chief engineer failed to divert in time, then the engineer can beat feet to where the damaged component is after switching the function over to the backup/auxiliary and repair it. Ideally you'd have a two man engineering team on most large vessels so that the chief can manage the levels/critical functions and a technician can be directed by the chief to repair what's blowing up in the combat while they prevent things from going further into FUBAR best they can. That's just an example, there's other situational and interesting scenarios that having spare crew can help with in the future as these things become more robust. On a side note, they very recently mentioned that NPC crew will be a thing, and that you'll be able to hire specialized officer crew if you scout for them or do missions to get rep. Redshirts that can be bought in bulk to crew specific ships will be available, so you don't have to have an army of friends to fly a multicrew ship. It's just that a skilled player crew will beat out a skilled ai crew most of the time in an even match.

Hiring crew for complex positions makes me think of Hazeron, where pilots flew into the sun and gunners shot torpedoes into your own ship while the sole ranking officer on ship decided to play cards and get stuck on ladders oh god

[QUOTE=paindoc;50953597]Hiring crew for complex positions makes me think of Hazeron, where pilots flew into the sun and gunners shot torpedoes into your own ship while the sole ranking officer on ship decided to play cards and get stuck on ladders oh god[/QUOTE] It'd be up to the owner of the ship to lock them out of consoles and, if necessary, space them for insubordination. On the other hand, in a first-person universe, you can space players for insubordination. At gunpoint. For AI, hopefully the AI won't be that retarded, unless the game allows you to offer [I]that low[/I] of a payment that you actually are selecting from :downs: "asteroids are my friends" level AI NPCs.

I mean just having fuse monkeys running around dinging stuff would be great.

I think I'd be a nice behind the scenes feature if having crewed station increased the time to catastrophic destruction on the bigger ships, someone staying behind piloting the ship and another one at engineering keeping the core in check as the rest of the crew bails out.

[QUOTE=dreukrag;50953808]I think I'd be a nice behind the scenes feature if having crewed station increased the time to catastrophic destruction on the bigger ships, someone staying behind piloting the ship and another one at engineering keeping the core in check as the rest of the crew bails out.[/QUOTE] I see no reason this couldn't happen from emergent gameplay, other than the lack of a "try and hold off the big boom for just a few seconds longer but you have to work at it" fuse mechanism for last-second evacuations. It's been said by CIG that larger multicrew ships should have a long enough delay between "it's official, shit's fucked" and "everything still on-board explodes, RIP" to get to an escape pod if you're on the ball about the impending failure of the ship..

I may be wrong, but I believe they also said it's far less likely for a ship to just up and explode into a million pieces of doom the bigger it is. If you're on an Idris it's more likely that when the ship is more or less dead in the water it becomes hazardous to navigate/specific sections of the ship get hosed. The ship will largely become a derelict at that point, so it's possible even if you're stuck on the ship that you could just be lucky enough to not be in a severely destroyed section and wait for rescue/bail out and hope for the best. A good engineer would likely be able to isolate or spool down the reactor so that it doesn't become a catastrophic daisy chain of explosions going through the ship. That said, I definitely wouldn't want to be near a magazine on a Javelin when things are going tits up.

That's also true, they talk about how really big ships like the Idris aren't supposed to explode into tiny bits from catastrophic damage so much as become gigantic hulks of death. At that point your problem would be oxygen and EVA survival, most likely, and that means getting a helmet and suit on unless you can hide in an escape pod and your section stays intact.

I'm having so much fun in 2.5.

[QUOTE=Forumaster;50954368]I'm having so much fun in 2.5.[/QUOTE] I don't know, man, your avatar suggests otherwise.

[QUOTE=archangel125;50954687]I don't know, man, your avatar suggests otherwise.[/QUOTE] My face can't handle the fun.

I wouldn't mind becoming a saboteur/espionage mercenary. Plant a bomb in the core room, gtfo before it blows. Get shot as you're making it into the escape pod. I think saying that now just barred me from ever getting into a facepunch fleet. :v:

[QUOTE=LtKyle2;50955699]I wouldn't mind becoming a saboteur/espionage mercenary. Plant a bomb in the core room, gtfo before it blows. Get shot as you're making it into the escape pod. I think saying that now just barred me from ever getting into a facepunch fleet. :v:[/QUOTE] Are you kidding? You just volunteered for permanent boarding party duty.

Yeah, my 760 is running worse every update, I dunno if 3.0 would even help.

[QUOTE=Visorak06;50954205]I may be wrong, but I believe they also said it's far less likely for a ship to just up and explode into a million pieces of doom the bigger it is. If you're on an Idris it's more likely that when the ship is more or less dead in the water it becomes hazardous to navigate/specific sections of the ship get hosed. The ship will largely become a derelict at that point, so it's possible even if you're stuck on the ship that you could just be lucky enough to not be in a severely destroyed section and wait for rescue/bail out and hope for the best. A good engineer would likely be able to isolate or spool down the reactor so that it doesn't become a catastrophic daisy chain of explosions going through the ship. That said, I definitely wouldn't want to be near a magazine on a Javelin when things are going tits up.[/QUOTE] an image detailing just that idris situation was found recently too [QUOTE=Wii60;50933637]datamining found dis [t]http://i.imgur.com/ffcNIS3.png[/t] [t]http://i.imgur.com/9AFXB3W.png[/t][/QUOTE]

[QUOTE=Xavith;50953711]I mean just having fuse monkeys running around dinging stuff would be great.[/QUOTE] Absolutely. I would pay extra credits for some NPCs who hit things with wrenches and just [I]look[/I] useful even though my ship is in top condition. Also offer some very light resistance with pistols or something. Decorative meatbags basically.

[QUOTE=ScottyWired;50955899]Absolutely. I would pay extra credits for some NPCs who hit things with wrenches and just [I]look[/I] useful even though my ship is in top condition. Also offer some very light resistance with pistols or something. Decorative meatbags basically.[/QUOTE] I'm 90% sure Chris said you'd be able to hire crew to do just that.

So hows performance in 2.5? The game runs smoothly in offline in 2.4 but the online parts were near unplayable sometimes

I'm averaging about 10-15fps more than in 2.4.x in Crusader ...which still only comes out to 30-35 fps, but hey better than 20 ¯\_(ツ)_/¯