The Star Citizen Thread v 3.0

[Mr.Nowak]

What problem with the flight model? It's just the thrust down is too harsh without using decoupled mode. The reason for that is going up or down real quick is used in dogfighting a lot for maneuvers. Also the thrust to weight ratio on the M50 is incredibly high. So comments like paper is actually a compliment to what they achieved in the flight style of the M50.

 

[MPC]

Here's a funny reddit thread:

http://www.reddit.com/r/starcitizen/comments/30htb2/rantteam_bonding_thread_4th_edition/

 

[Pomerlaw]

What problem with the flight model? It's just the thrust down is too harsh without using decoupled mode. The reason for that is going up or down real quick is used in dogfighting a lot for maneuvers. Also the thrust to weight ratio on the M50 is incredibly high. So comments like paper is actually a compliment to what they achieved in the flight style of the M50.

Nevermind. It is still a big problem for me. And I'm not alone : https://forums.robertsspaceindustri...65/video-1-1-gameplay-rubbish-or-skill#latest

 

[Dante80]

Here's a funny reddit thread:

http://www.reddit.com/r/starcitizen/comments/30htb2/rantteam_bonding_thread_4th_edition/

Nice, didn't know sth like this existed.

contributed.

 

[Viking]

Techradar has an article about Star Citizen: Why Star Citizen could be the best space game of all time

Warning: Squadron 42 spoilers!

 

[kilvenny]

@Viking
I noticed the following comment in that article.

"On a technical level, the universe itself is designed to cater to hundreds of thousands of players – and millions more NPCs, the ratio being one human to nine AI characters – but a game server can only contain 50 to 100 craft at this level of graphical fidelity."

I noticed it didn't say 50-100 players, but rather craft. I presume that is a misquote and they meant 50-100 players.

 

[Mu77ley]

@Viking
I noticed the following comment in that article.

"but a game server can only contain 50 to 100 craft at this level of graphical fidelity."

I noticed it didn't say 50-100 players, but rather craft. I presume that is a misquote and they meant 50-100 players.

I think that's definitely a misquote or misunderstanding on the part of the interviewer. Graphical fidelity has absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with what happens on the server side. It's not like the servers are rendering the graphics and sending them back to the client. It basically means that, as many of us predicted ages ago, the game will be instanced in a very similar way to how Elite: Dangerous does things (except server/client rather than p2p). They say 50-100, but I'd put money on them deciding on a 64 player limit.

The real concern here though is that, due to the client/server setup they will be paying a fortune to run all those servers. This pretty much means that Pay2Win is here to stay unless they go a subscription route, as they're going to have to pay those server costs somehow.

 

[bliss]

Vanguard info is up:

https://robertsspaceindustries.com/comm-link/transmission/14623-Relentless-Predator-The-Aegis-Vanguard

Spoiler

I'm not a huge fan of airplanes in space, but I quite like this one. With the wings folded up the front half reminds me of the dropship from Aliens.

 

[Pomerlaw]

I saw someone post on Facebook that since this ship is so big, they will have to boost the turning because it is going to be too slow for dogfight.

The guy was serious.

 

[bliss]

With a notable silhouette, the Vanguard is best known for its distinctive twin X-Forge engines, which allow for both an impressive top speed and an extensive backup system for enhanced combat survivability.

Yeah, it's a "boom & zoom" type of ship. Not a dog fighter.

 

[Zetta]

Chris refutes the pay-to-win accusations himself: "The design of the game, and this is just personal preference, because I hate it in free-to-play games, is there's nothing that you can buy with money that you can't earn in the game."

It's interesting to note the wording. No one ever actually says "there will be things you earn in game that you cannot buy!" So reading his comment in reverse means there's nothing you can earn in game that you can't also purchase. Nice one Chris!
I think that whole bit is a right cop out, saying something is a million miles away from actually doing something.

 

[Viking]

@kilvenny

I'm not sure how many ships and players are going to fit in an instance. They've said differently when answered that question before. And to be honest, I don't think they know themselves yet because it's not balanced yet. Optmizations in the game (rendering, for instance) and in the server structure will probably allow more ships, the new zone system will also probably allow both more ships and players, and so on.

So it's not yet determined how many ships and players will fit in each instance. We'll just have to wait and see.

About how many players vs NPC's there'll be they've also said differently in the past. In the early days of the project CR said it'd be approx. 20 million NPCs filling up the universe, and then that number would decrease to fit players so that basically each new player replaces one NPC. Now, when you look at the number of players currently, it's about 850,000 (or less) and that means a ratio of 4.25% players - if all backers were to play the game. To get upto 10%, as they are mentioning now, they have to have 2 million players. We also know that at the moment only a small amount of backers actually play the game regularily - maybe 8-10% of the 850,000 - so the the real percentage of NPCs will actually be much higher than 90%, in reality.

 

[Helfix]

What problem with the flight model? It's just the thrust down is too harsh without using decoupled mode. The reason for that is going up or down real quick is used in dogfighting a lot for maneuvers. Also the thrust to weight ratio on the M50 is incredibly high. So comments like paper is actually a compliment to what they achieved in the flight style of the M50.

Sorry if I take what you say with a grain of salt, I mean you yourself came out and said how perfect and awesome the flight model was in v.8 yet it was a broken piece of crap, it is still far far far far from being finished/implemented fully mechanics wise. Even the programmer behind it has stated numerous times that its far from finished.

It's interesting to note the wording. No one ever actually says "there will be things you earn in game that you cannot buy!" So reading his comment in reverse means there's nothing you can earn in game that you can't also purchase. Nice one Chris!
I think that whole bit is a right cop out, saying something is a million miles away from actually doing something.

That is what worries me to be honest. That they will continue to sell all the ships, equipment and every single thing in the game for real money. If they do that, it will be the biggest slap to gamers in gaming history.

@kilvenny

I'm not sure how many ships and players are going to fit in an instance. They've said differently when answered that question before. And to be honest, I don't think they know themselves yet because it's not balanced yet. Optmizations in the game (rendering, for instance) and in the server structure will probably allow more ships, the new zone system will also probably allow both more ships and players, and so on.

So it's not yet determined how many ships and players will fit in each instance. We'll just have to wait and see.

About how many players vs NPC's there'll be they've also said differently in the past. In the early days of the project CR said it'd be approx. 20 million NPCs filling up the universe, and then that number would decrease to fit players so that basically each new player replaces one NPC. Now, when you look at the number of players currently, it's about 850,000 (or less) and that means a ratio of 4.25% players - if all backers were to play the game. To get upto 10%, as they are mentioning now, they have to have 2 million players. We also know that at the moment only a small amount of backers actually play the game regularily - maybe 8-10% of the 850,000 - so the the real percentage of NPCs will actually be much higher than 90%, in reality.

They have been estimating that 40-100 players might be in a single instance, but that is just speculation. To be honest, its really hard to tell how many players will ultimately be able to play in a single instance. I expect more than Elites because SC will have dedicated servers where as Elite is on P2P. I'll be perfectly fine if the limit ends up being 30-50 players. In this type of gameplay, any lag will just kill the game to be honest.

The question will be, how will the bigger ships such as Connie, Idris and etc. heck, even Bangle carrier affect those instances. I mean when we talk about the Bangle/Idris they alone can take up a whole instance at a full crew....so that remains to be seen. But we will see that soon enough, PU Alpha launches at end of year so that will be a big tell on what will be possible and what will not be...gameplay and instance wise.

 

[Viking]

This article on GamersNexus is more than 14 days old but is useful for those who wonder what Physically-Based Rendering (PBR) is about:
http://www.gamersnexus.net/gg/1866-what-is-pbr-cryengine-star-citizen

 

[BOT #00001]

Ohhh, you cagey little storm trooper. Come on, speculate wildly!

Any idea if there'll be FPS elements in that SQ42 instalment? I'm intrigued by the transitions that will take place from flying into FPS which could be equally amazing or game breakingly terrible and everything inbetween.

FPS in Squadron 42 is confirmed. It's used rather heavily in fact, IIRC.

@Viking
I noticed the following comment in that article.

"On a technical level, the universe itself is designed to cater to hundreds of thousands of players – and millions more NPCs, the ratio being one human to nine AI characters – but a game server can only contain 50 to 100 craft at this level of graphical fidelity."

I noticed it didn't say 50-100 players, but rather craft. I presume that is a misquote and they meant 50-100 players.

That's not a misquote. They plan on making the ships their own little instances. Any information that needs to be shared(say looking in through a window, or out of it) would be streamed between the instances. The instance limit that CIG is facing has nothing to do with player client/server communication, but rather the client's ability to actually render that many ships at once.

 

[Dante80]

That's not a misquote. They plan on making the ships their own little instances. Any information that needs to be shared(say looking in through a window, or out of it) would be streamed between the instances. The instance limit that CIG is facing has nothing to do with player client/server communication, but rather the client's ability to actually render that many ships at once.

They have gone back and forth a lot regarding the way they build this. In the end though, I think that it will be a player, not a ship limit for the instance. If not, having the players of a couple multicrewed ships EVA out of their ship instances in the middle of a large battle would bring down the server...and thats just for starters...XD

Also, what CIG said they are trying to do is to have a physics bubble around a ship, so as to have it not share the physics rigid body calculations for the main instance. Thats very different (actually, totally different and irrelevant) from making a separate network instance.

With things like LoDs in effect, rendering was not, is not, and will never be a hard limit for the instance size in a multiplayer game. For those in the know the "graphical fidelity" limitation is backwards.

 

[Mu77ley]

Any information that needs to be shared(say looking in through a window, or out of it) would be streamed between the instances. The instance limit that CIG is facing has nothing to do with player client/server communication, but rather the client's ability to actually render that many ships at once.

That's not how game networking works, and it's not how Star Citizen works. All clients run their own simulation and notify the server about inputs, etc. This information is sanity checked (to avoid cheating) by the server and other player/NPC vector information is then retransmitted to all clients so they can then apply this data to their own simulation, extrapolating and correcting when needed due to dropped packets (which is why you sometimes see ships warping all over the place when things get laggy in Arena Commander).

What they were saying about the ships being their own instance was purely from a physics simulation point of view. Basically there will be one physics world which the ships fly in, and then another one for multi-crew ships which only affects characters and objects inside the ship. This is actually pretty straightforward to do so long as the physics engine supports more than one "world" (as they're usually called), especially as Star Citizen has gone the magic anti-grav technology route so they don't need to worry about 0g stuff inside ships for the most part.

 

[Viking]

PC Powerplay on March 24: Interview: Chris Roberts on Star Citizen, Han shooting first, and FPS perma-death


Source: http://forums.starcitizenbase.com/t...tizen-han-shooting-first-and-fps-perma-death/

 

[Mr.Nowak]

Tried some free flight with a buddy it was insane fun. Doing formations and actually landing and flying around in our characters was a once in a lifetime experience. The way we were flying together was amazing can't wait for more open world stuff. Even coop singleplayer. Having a blast in just free flight is a good sign of how much fun it's going to be when more things are out.

 

[Ripley]

I definitely agree about the Free-Flight mode with friends! Its awesome seeing them flying while in First Person controlling your avatar, really gives a nice sense of scale and speed that just wow's the heck of me! Check it out >

Spoiler

[video=youtube;lgt4kEhqOak]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lgt4kEhqOak[/video]

Landing with decoupled mode is the way to go I've discovered after many crashes!

Spoiler

[video=youtube;h4gwjn_lk00]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h4gwjn_lk00[/video]

Having such twitchy thrusters makes finesse flying/manoeuvring lots of fun.