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

I feel like the Caterpillar has an excuse to handle like a ship from Elite. It'd be weird seeing a ship like that twisting and turning rapidly. Then again it does have Drake's huge 360-degree gimbals.

[QUOTE=elixwhitetail;51217016]That's been a promised part of the design for ages, if not from the start. It remains to be seen if they actually do it, but honestly it can't be that hard if they're calculating the weights of things which they claim to be. It's just a matter of doing it.[/QUOTE] the rather defining difference being that things like the freelancer and constellation load cargo pretty centrally and you could just add to its overall weight, but full vs empty a caterpillar's center of mass will change dramatically, from the center of the ship to something near the back 1/3 to 1/4 since the cargo sections are big empty shells compared to back end being solid equipment and engines. When empty it's probably feel like you're swinging a baseball bat around ...remember that for when we get the ship in free flight and yeah, the huge gimbals will definitely help, but they'd mostly be useful for forward/backward acceleration/deceleration, and ship roll. If your ship was moving decently fast vertically (let's say downward) and you used them to try to slow yourself down, it would only serve to pitch the ship down fast before acting for reverse acceleration. Which, all things considered, would look like a weighty maneuver, but if you're trying not to collide with something like a landing pad, it might just slap your nose straight into it

nothing about how ships handle in SC right now is realistic and they've done little in the lore yet to retcon that [QUOTE=Sgt. Khorn;51215248]It's okay to be critical on the things you love.[/QUOTE] Uh, its okay to be critical. Period. its also okay to call someone out on their criticism. sorry, praise be chris roberts

The Hulls should be highly maneuverable and fast when unladen, as well, and that's something confirmed by the devs. I would imagine that the Cat's going to feel like a cargo tug with big engines, but even a tug can pull off some impressive speed with nothing stored on it and a rocket for an asshole. IFCS should be tuned for the Cat (maybe not in the initial patch that includes it, since new flyable ships tend to have fucky flight envelopes at first) and, if the system does what CIG's long boasted it can do, should be able to compensate for the Cat's shifting CoM. Hopefully without fudging things too much, Mustang-style.

[QUOTE=paindoc;51217172]Uh, its okay to be critical. Period. its also okay to call someone out on their criticism. sorry, praise be chris roberts[/QUOTE] the point was Why was apologizing for being so critical when he's still in favor of the game and it's totally fine to do so. He talks with heavy knowledge of how other games handle, and how 'realism' should come about therein but hey why not interrupt pages of constructive criticism over how things are being handled with a quip over a cultish attitude in how CR can do no wrong

[QUOTE=paindoc;51217172] Uh, its okay to be critical. Period. its also okay to call someone out on their criticism. sorry, praise be chris roberts[/QUOTE] This isn't reddit, its a forum where the only form of censorship are mods getting rid of blatant shitposting. Try elsewhere. and yes, the ship handling is hilariously unrealistic, but that's mostly because they've been screwing around with it for years with the express intention of trying to make it more fun than realistic.

[QUOTE=ntzu;51217274]and yes, the ship handling is hilariously unrealistic, but that's mostly because they've been screwing around with it for years with the express intention of trying to make it more fun than realistic.[/QUOTE] Other than the speedcap it's pretty realistic as is, way moreso than ED or similar garbage spaceplane models. What is the realism criticism? I find the "overpowered thruster" criticism to be stupid, obviously any magic space thruster can be as arbitrarily powerful as the developers want them to be without being any more or less realistic. The technology doesnt exist either way. Is the issue gforce? We have a gforce system implemented, and here in 2016 we have flight suits and other tools to raise pilots g-limit significantly, so we can fudge better versions of that and we have relative realism.

[QUOTE=Mattk50;51217494]Other than the speedcap it's pretty realistic as is, way moreso than ED or similar garbage spaceplane models. What is the realism criticism? I find the "overpowered thruster" criticism to be stupid, obviously any magic space thruster can be as arbitrarily powerful as the developers want them to be without being any more or less realistic. The technology doesnt exist either way. Is the issue gforce? We have a gforce system implemented, and here in 2016 we have flight suits and other tools to raise pilots g-limit significantly, so we can fudge better versions of that and we have relative realism.[/QUOTE] the overpowered thruster thing isn't about main engines so much as the small maneuvering thrusters (though the incredible acceleration of a number of ships is definitely questionable). The little maneuvering thrusters had been tuned to aid ships in more spaceplane-like flight (counteracting wonky proportions a bit), but ended up just becoming extremely powerful for their size and purpose, and the lack of ramp-up on them means you can be 10 meters above a landing pad and manage to gain enough speed to blow your ship up while trying to set down. The only ship that really merits the crazy thruster capabilities is the Cutlass with its one-axis swivel main engines and the massive full rotation canisters on the sides of its belly

[QUOTE=dai;51217574]the overpowered thruster thing isn't about main engines so much as the small maneuvering thrusters (though the incredible acceleration of a number of ships is definitely questionable). The little maneuvering thrusters had been tuned to aid ships in more spaceplane-like flight (counteracting wonky proportions a bit), but ended up just becoming extremely powerful for their size and purpose, and the lack of ramp-up on them means you can be 10 meters above a landing pad and manage to gain enough speed to blow your ship up while trying to set down. The only ship that really merits the crazy thruster capabilities is the Cutlass with its one-axis swivel main engines and the massive full rotation canisters on the sides of its belly[/QUOTE] I don't see how strong maneuvering thrusters means unrealistic, and why do you think the maneuvering thrusters are supposed to be just "for spaceplane like flight"? Strong strafing is a staple of space combat compared to air combat. Thrusters have had ramp up for a few patches now with the jerk system, it's quick but very noticable and honestly pretty annoying on certain ships. If you crash into a landing pad its because you didn't use landing/precision mode. If its just based on intuition or vague feelings that its different, maybe people are just basing their intuition on more arcadey spaceflight or fighter planes.

[QUOTE=Mattk50;51218040]I don't see how strong maneuvering thrusters means unrealistic, and why do you think the maneuvering thrusters are supposed to be just "for spaceplane like flight"? Strong strafing is a staple of space combat compared to air combat. Thrusters have had ramp up for a few patches now with the jerk system, it's quick but very noticable and honestly pretty annoying on certain ships. If you crash into a landing pad its because you didn't use landing/precision mode. If its just based on intuition or vague feelings that its different, maybe people are just basing their intuition on more arcadey spaceflight or fighter planes.[/QUOTE] of all the people here I feel I'm one of the more capable in not slapping a landing pad, it's a broad example of what just happens to people constantly. while yes precision mode did change that atmosphere (for the most part, I've seen people implode at cryastro a number of times recently), there's still ships that despite having only a small handful of tiny nozzles around the ship, can accelerate the ship to max speed vertically, laterally, or backwards as if it was using its main engines full-forward. [t]http://images.wikia.com/starcitizen/images/e/e9/Avenger_thruster_locations.jpg[/t] just look at the avenger here, you've got these tiny little warts but they do more for your flight characteristics than the one-size-too-massive twin engines on the back. Same for the M50 with its extreme racing engines taking up the majority of its body while you just have some spraypaint nozzles fixed to the body. [t]http://i1174.photobucket.com/albums/r615/ohtochooseaname/JumpPoint_02-05_May_14_WIP_Page_01_zps982f4997.jpg~original[/t] Not to say they should have LITTLE affect on the performance, but there was very little consideration put into placement and capability during early production and they're overcompensating hard to fix up the fun factor, in favor of the current style of full speed flight (erego more force behind mass you'd need to counter-act), so [I]ideally [/I]that will change and take these subsequent problems with it in the near updates. Until we see the newer, slower/meatier maneuvering model for ourselves to get a feel of how it all goes down, there's not much we can ask for or speculate about very well. personally I feel thruster handling was actually BETTER during AC 1.3 than 2.0-5 because there was decent jerk to the maneuvering thrusters when decoupled. I think that was just an accidental benefit of the thrusters being weaker and more affected by your ship throwing its mass around than any sort of intended affect since they had started talking about ADDING a jerk system during that time, but it seems they somehow just made things [i]jerkier[/i] than giving them proper ramp-up in power

I hope that one of the side effects of the global slowdown is a smoothing and shallowing of the acceleration curve so that it doesn't immediately scream up to 100% with a sharp jerk even in precision mode. The ramp up shouldn't be so relaxed that we become ED's tacos in pudding, but it should still be backed off a bit in the immediate moment of directional input. Have a little bit more easing into it before going fully hard, but without delaying the response time so much that dogfighting becomes frustrating or feels unresponsive. There's a happy medium somewhere in there. I'm sure CIG's designers would tell us that the third-order motion/jerk system as it stands now isn't representative of their final vision, and there'll be balance passes and such going forward, because that's basically the default answer to everything right now (we're still in alpha for a reason). Slowing the speeds down should also make the Mustangs less dependent on crazy OP thrusters that have to fire constantly under any sort of directional acceleration in order to maintain control.

[QUOTE=Oicani Gonzales;51218427]cig is putting cool before true, which is understandable (and hell, probably better)[/QUOTE] adding: they went way too far into cool/arcadey with the latest tweaks and need to find a way to tone it back into the sweet spot that skirts realism still

I don't see any issue with the thrusters on the m50 and most small ships. they're tiny on the m50 but you could hand wave it as a lightweight ship with extremely high quality thrusters also generally speaking it's not a stretch to say that most of the main engine's power can be piped into the manoeuvring thrusters, and the big bells on the back are just neccessary for afterburners, quantum travel etc [editline]18th October 2016[/editline] they still have 'real physics': each thruster has a max thrust value and the IFCS converts pilot controls into thruster commands, which then impart impulses to the rigidbody this isn't mutually exclusive with rule of cool designs, though it does diminish the relevance of it. you still get the effect of being able to shoot off a thruster and see a 'realistic' response, it's just that that may not make as much sense knowing how overpowered the thrusters are it's a lot like the first and third person animation sync shit they're doing, it's not impossible to get either working and feeling good, it's just a lot more work. is it worth it? probably not in terms of effort vs payoff, but this game is trying to be ambitious so it's fun to see how it turns out anyway lets be real though they could just ditch the entire IFCS/real thrusters thing and no one would know the difference

I think the handwave for rear thrusters being bigger was that they need to be for the qdrive. Honestly a significant slowdown before big ships are added will be a big step back for SC's gameplay. The big stuff is supposed to be slow, the small stuff is supposed to be fast, imagine how much slower the big stuff will need to be if they slow down the current ships. it could end up being like ED where your huge ships have the same flight properties as a sidewinder.

[QUOTE=dai;51218243]-snip-[/QUOTE] I dont think the visuals of the models are super relevant to how the game should play, but the main engines are mainly for quantum drive rather than impulse power. No the effect doesnt make sense but gameplay really comes first. Also there's some lore about how the main engines shunt thrust to the retros.

[QUOTE=krail9;51218502]I don't see any issue with the thrusters on the m50 and most small ships. they're tiny on the m50 but you could hand wave it as a lightweight ship with extremely high quality thrusters also generally speaking it's not a stretch to say that most of the main engine's power can be piped into the manoeuvring thrusters, and the big bells on the back are just neccessary for afterburners, quantum travel etc [editline]18th October 2016[/editline] [B]they still have 'real physics': each thruster has a max thrust value and the IFCS converts pilot controls into thruster commands, which then impart impulses to the rigidbody this isn't mutually exclusive with rule of cool designs, though it does diminish the relevance of it. you still get the effect of being able to shoot off a thruster and see a 'realistic' response, it's just that that may not make as much sense knowing how overpowered the thrusters are[/B] it's a lot like the first and third person animation sync shit they're doing, it's not impossible to get either working and feeling good, it's just a lot more work. is it worth it? probably not in terms of effort vs payoff, but this game is trying to be ambitious so it's fun to see how it turns out anyway [B]lets be real though they could just ditch the entire IFCS/real thrusters thing and no one would know the difference[/B][/QUOTE] Yes. All of this, but especially the bolded parts. It isn't that the underlying physics aren't real. They are, and it's actually a pretty damn impressive feat of control engineering that anything in Star Citizen flies at all given how many variables the whole system can have in it. However, the ship designs are so fundamentally broken that the whole thing has to be fudged to the point where it none of that actually [I]matters[/I]. To get Star Citizen ships to fly, they're fudging not only thruster power in extreme ways just to make something fly straight, but they're faking the current feeling of flight. That's what the third order control method they talk about literally is. It's the IFCS firing thrusters in a way to mimic mass and inertia. It's [I]monumentally[/I] wasteful in a way that's as impressive as it is a sad waste of potential. Think about it. I [B]bet[/B] you that this is how implementing a ship goes: 1. An artist creates a cool Star Wars space ship. 2. A game designer puts it ingame and puts thrusters where they should be with reasonable guesses in power. 3. Uh oh, it can't fly straight because none of the forces are balanced and some of the gimballed thrusters have awkward deflections and physical limitations. 4. Maneuvering thruster power has to be raised, and perhaps extra physics only thrusters need to be added (I'm looking at you Mustang), such that the ship can translate and rotate in 3 direction in a controlled manner. 5. Now that the ship can physically control its own weight, we have to decide how we [I]want[/I] it to fly. This is where the third order control stuff comes into play. 6. This ship is supposed to be big and heavy, so we tweak the 3rd order controls to respond slowly to rotation and changes in throttle. 7. Now your ship is "flight ready" and ready for the rest of the ship pipelines like equipment and balancing stats like HP and energy. And at that point... what's the point? If you're going to fudge it that much, go with House of the Dying Sun style physics. Do the single point rigidbody thing that everybody else does, and for very good reason. You would save a [I]huge[/I] amount of dev time because what's happening now is somebody is designing a real life but horribly flawed space ship, then an engineer has to take this design and make it fly in a completely unnatural, unrealistic, and inefficient way in order to meet the expectations of its hypothetical space customers. That numbered list is all very simplified by the way. I could make it a lot worse sounding if I wanted to start talking about exactly how translations and rotations need to be handled but I want to keep this post "short", and don't even get me started on the lunacy that is gimballed maneuvering thrusters. Star Citizen is impressive in its marvelously complex waste, and the flight model is far from the only example.

[QUOTE=Why485;51219440]what's the point?[/QUOTE] I guess so a damaged ship flies like you'd imagine based on the damage done to it? Like I was trying the Khartu-Al recently and I've had it be a crippled drifter or a dead stick depending on what was blown off. Might make sense once we're targeting Starfarer engines or something. I agree it's a mad way to go about it though.

[QUOTE=Why485;51219440]It's [I]monumentally[/I] wasteful in a way that's as impressive as it is a sad waste of potential. Think about it. I [B]bet[/B] you that this is how implementing a ship goes: 1. An artist creates a cool Star Wars space ship. 2. A game designer puts it ingame and puts thrusters where they should be with reasonable guesses in power. 3. Uh oh, it can't fly straight because none of the forces are balanced and some of the gimballed thrusters have awkward deflections and physical limitations. 4. Maneuvering thruster power has to be raised, and perhaps extra physics only thrusters need to be added (I'm looking at you Mustang), such that the ship can translate and rotate in 3 direction in a controlled manner. 5. Now that the ship can physically control its own weight, we have to decide how we [I]want[/I] it to fly. This is where the third order control stuff comes into play. 6. This ship is supposed to be big and heavy, so we tweak the 3rd order controls to respond slowly to rotation and changes in throttle. 7. Now your ship is "flight ready" and ready for the rest of the ship pipelines like equipment and balancing stats like HP and energy..[/QUOTE] yeah I think the key issue here is a disconnect in the earliest stages of development where artists don't understand the importance of the thruster layout on some ships the layout is actually fine, eg. the m50, the 300i, even the aurora. on other ships like the hornet and mustang they come SO close to being viable but have key flaws that necessitate fake thrusters and other tricks... once you go down that path the whole effort is a waste

[QUOTE=Why485;51219440]Yes. All of this, but especially the bolded parts. It isn't that the underlying physics aren't real. They are, and it's actually a pretty damn impressive feat of control engineering that anything in Star Citizen flies at all given how many variables the whole system can have in it. However when the ship designs are so fundamentally broken that the whole thing has to be fudged to the point where it none of that actually [I]matters[/I]. To get Star Citizen ships to fly, they're fudging not only thruster power in extreme ways just to make something fly straight, but they're faking the current feeling of flight. That's what the third order control method they talk about literally is. It's the IFCS firing thrusters in a way to mimic mass and inertia. It's [I]monumentally[/I] wasteful in a way that's as impressive as it is a sad waste of potential. Think about it. I [B]bet[/B] you that this is how implementing a ship goes: 1. An artist creates a cool Star Wars space ship. 2. A game designer puts it ingame and puts thrusters where they should be with reasonable guesses in power. 3. Uh oh, it can't fly straight because none of the forces are balanced and some of the gimballed thrusters have awkward deflections and physical limitations. 4. Maneuvering thruster power has to be raised, and perhaps extra physics only thrusters need to be added (I'm looking at you Mustang), such that the ship can translate and rotate in 3 direction in a controlled manner. 5. Now that the ship can physically control its own weight, we have to decide how we [I]want[/I] it to fly. This is where the third order control stuff comes into play. 6. This ship is supposed to be big and heavy, so we tweak the 3rd order controls to respond slowly to rotation and changes in throttle. 7. Now your ship is "flight ready" and ready for the rest of the ship pipelines like equipment and balancing stats like HP and energy. And at that point... what's the point? If you're going to fudge it that much, go with House of the Dying Sun style physics. Do the single point rigidbody thing that everybody else does, and for very good reason. You would save a [I]huge[/I] amount of dev time because what's happening now is somebody is designing a real life but horribly flawed space ship, then an engineer has to take this design and make it fly in a completely unnatural, unrealistic, and inefficient way in order to meet the expectations of its hypothetical space customers. That numbered list is all very simplified by the way. I could make it a lot worse sounding if I wanted to start talking about exactly how translations and rotations need to be handled but I want to keep this post "short", and don't even get me started on the lunacy that is gimballed maneuvering thrusters. Star Citizen is impressive in its marvelously complex waste, and the flight model is far from the only example.[/QUOTE] This is a really intelligent post and I like it a lot, even though I want to think it's being unfair somehow.

[QUOTE=Why485;51219440]Yes. All of this, but especially the bolded parts. It isn't that the underlying physics aren't real. They are, and it's actually a pretty damn impressive feat of control engineering that anything in Star Citizen flies at all given how many variables the whole system can have in it. However when the ship designs are so fundamentally broken that the whole thing has to be fudged to the point where it none of that actually [I]matters[/I]. To get Star Citizen ships to fly, they're fudging not only thruster power in extreme ways just to make something fly straight, but they're faking the current feeling of flight. That's what the third order control method they talk about literally is. It's the IFCS firing thrusters in a way to mimic mass and inertia. It's [I]monumentally[/I] wasteful in a way that's as impressive as it is a sad waste of potential. Think about it. I [B]bet[/B] you that this is how implementing a ship goes: 1. An artist creates a cool Star Wars space ship. 2. A game designer puts it ingame and puts thrusters where they should be with reasonable guesses in power. 3. Uh oh, it can't fly straight because none of the forces are balanced and some of the gimballed thrusters have awkward deflections and physical limitations. 4. Maneuvering thruster power has to be raised, and perhaps extra physics only thrusters need to be added (I'm looking at you Mustang), such that the ship can translate and rotate in 3 direction in a controlled manner. 5. Now that the ship can physically control its own weight, we have to decide how we [I]want[/I] it to fly. This is where the third order control stuff comes into play. 6. This ship is supposed to be big and heavy, so we tweak the 3rd order controls to respond slowly to rotation and changes in throttle. 7. Now your ship is "flight ready" and ready for the rest of the ship pipelines like equipment and balancing stats like HP and energy. And at that point... what's the point? If you're going to fudge it that much, go with House of the Dying Sun style physics. Do the single point rigidbody thing that everybody else does, and for very good reason. You would save a [I]huge[/I] amount of dev time because what's happening now is somebody is designing a real life but horribly flawed space ship, then an engineer has to take this design and make it fly in a completely unnatural, unrealistic, and inefficient way in order to meet the expectations of its hypothetical space customers. That numbered list is all very simplified by the way. I could make it a lot worse sounding if I wanted to start talking about exactly how translations and rotations need to be handled but I want to keep this post "short", and don't even get me started on the lunacy that is gimballed maneuvering thrusters. Star Citizen is impressive in its marvelously complex waste, and the flight model is far from the only example.[/QUOTE] goddamn you covered it well I am so impressed by the flight model and all the work they've put into modelling individual thrusters and making them work together. I cannot imagine the lunacy that is gimballed maneuvering thrusters, and I fancy myself (probably falsely) to be someone pretty good with that kind of maths. Its also weird to me that so much work is being put into making us feel like we are our characters, but then it seems factors like the ridiculous G-loads these frames are being put under are neglected. Either we're pulling enough neg G's to get a hermohhagic stroke or we're pulling enough positive G's to send out kneecaps into the nearest bulkhead (and then through them). You can even compensate for that stuff by changing the design of the craft too (laying on your back = much higher G tolerance), or using gimballed flight seats like what the Expanse uses. They also have pilots hooked in intravenously so that during high-G's they can get pumped full of amphetamines and other chemicals to keep them alive and awake for 10+ G burns

[QUOTE=Oicani Gonzales;51220710]you could just as easily fake thrusters and probably get a better result. instead of actually having thrusters that affect the ship based on their position and such, just make the ship handle the way you want and add cosmetic thrusters. simpler code, more manageable for designers.[/QUOTE] This was proposed a very long time ago by community members in extreme detail by a guy with an engineering background and tons of diagrams specifically as a compromise for flyability and design. I'll see if I can dig up the post sometime but it's probably going to be impossible because of how old it is. It was made back during the initial releases of Arena Commander when all the ships were unflyable.

I found the post I was looking for. [url=https://forums.robertsspaceindustries.com/discussion/289468/deedee-101s-final-project-released-flight-model-demystified]Here's the post itself[/url]. There's a PDF in the post which explains how unbalanced and weird Star Citizen's thruster arrangements are and the nightmare they are for control. At the end he proposes a way to have the game still be driven by legit physics, but in a much, much more predictable and controllable way by separating the physics from the visuals. [url=https://www.dropbox.com/s/mhf32d9w64nfjhi/Star Citizen Flight Model demystified.pdf?dl=0] Here's the document[/url].

avacado invites sent out not a patch test, just more people getting into the system

[QUOTE=Oicani Gonzales;51221013]it's anything but impossible (ignoring The Vision). it's literally [I]the[/I] easiest way of doing it: have maneuvering thrusters be just particle emitters. fire particles when rotating. have movement be completely unrelated. that's it[/QUOTE] I think Why485 meant it'd be almost impossible to find the post. And, in true Star Citizen fashion, what was "almost impossible" plus the application of the time needed turned into [QUOTE=Why485;51221180]I found the post I was looking for. [url=https://forums.robertsspaceindustries.com/discussion/289468/deedee-101s-final-project-released-flight-model-demystified]Here's the post itself[/url].[/QUOTE] In terms of changing the system around to line up with a faked-thruster system, it's far from impossible, it'll just be a bunch of work to go rewrite the system to fake certain aspects of the thruster simulation that they were simulating "faithfully" (for very narrow and specific meanings of the word). Everyone remember that CIG is less concerned about fine-tuning everything to be perfect and release-worthy (SQ42 excluded) during alpha; beta is when they really want to nail shit down like input method parity and really driving hard on performance polish. It remains to be seen just how well the engine cleans up, but that isn't unusual a practice in development: make it work, then make it nice and pretty and slick. Also, this week's schedule is a bit light, but given that Citizencon is only just over that's not too surprising. AtV and RtV are back to normal, Jump Point this Friday, Loremaker's guide, Vault post. Also, [I]no[/I] monthly report for September, due to Citizencon. I kinda understand that, especially since it happened on the LA community team's turf and they handle collecting and putting together the report, but I'm not sure I like that precedent because it leaves a gap in the record and it does leave open the question of what CIG was doing last month that wasn't either Citizencon or spoilers-can't-give-details. I don't think they just slacked off and made margaritas all month, obviously, but the curiosity angle is a major reason why backers want the reports.

I just feel like that is a backwards way to go at it though, and it's not really worked for them so far. You just end up building lots of technical debt, alpha is when you want to get those core systems working and then beta is content content content What the hell do I know though

I'm talking more about balancing out the exact feeling and the specific curves, numbers tweaking that can be done whenever. Actually deciding on the exact, final physics model for thrusters and stuff, that should be resolved in alpha, yes.

[QUOTE=elixwhitetail;51222087]I'm talking more about balancing out the exact feeling and the specific curves, numbers tweaking that can be done whenever. Actually deciding on the exact, final physics model for thrusters and stuff, that should be resolved in alpha, yes.[/QUOTE] Yeah, balance makes sense. Also putting balance off because balance is not the most fun to do. No matter how much data you collect and how well you try to model the idea of balance, things never seem to work as planned. Darn humans, being innovative and unpredictable

I don't know if I've glazed over this in a post, but have they said anything about that S42 demo they were going to show. I'm just wondering because in that behind the scenes video they seemed pretty confident they were fairly close to done, I just want to know if we expect this thing to materialise in an RTV bit or if it'll be in limbo till an event or something.

I wouldn't be surprised if they've decided to hold it for the anniversary livestream next month, and use the extra time to make SQ42 that much better. They could do a special RtV, but I think they probably want to do it live so people can see that it is, in fact, live, and not a rigged pre-rendered cutscene.

[QUOTE=elixwhitetail;51221900]Everyone remember that [B]CIG is less concerned about fine-tuning everything to be perfect and release-worthy (SQ42 excluded) during alpha; beta is when they really want to nail shit down[/B] like input method parity and really driving hard on performance polish. It remains to be seen just how well the engine cleans up, but that isn't unusual a practice in development: make it work, then make it nice and pretty and slick.[/QUOTE] Squadron 42 has been stuck in its own development hell. There's simply no way that Squadron 42 could have come out at any point in the past, and I'm still skeptical of it coming out even as early as mid 2017. You can't even start thinking about releasing Squadron 42 when your shit [I]isn't[/I] at the fine tuning legit beta stage. The expectation that S42 could be anywhere near done, let alone polished, when the gameplay and its lower level systems aren't anywhere near done is crazy. The way creating a SP game used to work in the old days was that your team spends a year or two to develop their engine, toolset, and technology. Then, once that's in a solid enough place, you start creating the content. In SQ42's case, that would be the missions and whatever specific assets and game mechanics are required for it. These days, with the proliferation of off the shelf engines, you can skip that lead time and start working on your SP story, content, and mechanics very quickly. There's something in common with both those situations that is not the case for Squadron 42: [B]They have solid foundations to build a game upon[/B]. What's happening with Squadron 42 is that the technology is so in flux, that it's hard for them to really get anything done. When animation rigs are getting re-rigged from scratch, when the flight model undergoes dramatic shifts between builds, when the way your characters fundamentally walk around and control on the ground are seeing near constant re-works from the ground up, you [I]can't[/I] make a game. Any time Squadron 42 starts to make headway CIG pulls the carpet from right out under them. It's completely insane. You can't build a singleplayer game when your engine is so far from being finished and technology is in constant and utterly game changing flux. Again, this is me just speculating based on what I'm seeing as an outside observer, but as soon as I heard that Foundry 42 was going to be redoing the flight model themselves, my immediate thought was that they were tired of this shit. They need a finalized flight model so that they can start scripting and timing missions, designing the enemy AI, and so on, and weren't happy with how things were going. But I wasn't there. That's just what I think. [editline]19th October 2016[/editline] To be fair, Star Citizen seems to be [I]approaching[/I] the point where content can actually become the main focus and is no longer is at the whims of CR's latest session of, "Wouldn't it be cool if?" tasking. While the demo we got at Gamescom wasn't exactly a complete vertical slice of finished mechanics, it's getting there.