The Star Citizen Thread v5

[Artemus]

As a backer you have access to the Public Alpha build, if you like testing you can join the Private Test Universe Alpha build to help development and report bugs, if you report bugs in a meaningful way long enough you can be called upon to join the Evocati Test Group and have access to the very early iterations of the public builds and help squash bugs/glitches/crashes and most likely download 100+'s gigs of builds in a week lol.

Why are you laughing at the waste of backer money?

You can fly most of the ships, buy weapons/shields etc without spending a penny by renting them with ingame credits or better ask in chat for someone to let you try some ships, might even make an ingame friend for life!

That was not my question. I do not have access to all ships from my account with out having to beg or steal. As for in game renting, I can't rent a cat, connie, or starfarer.

The ships are worth what you feel they are worth, nobody forces you to buy anything, not even the game package.
The game is in active alpha development stage, there is no win except make your own fun with what's available, if you can't have fun with what's available step back and come back after the next big update and try it again. My 2cents.

The ships aren't worth anything.

 

[Artemus]

Well, that depends on whether or not you get an invite to the PTU. CIG knows (just as every other software company) that there is a limit to the amount of testers you need. 1 tester isn't enough. 100 is good. 100,000 is far too many to sort through.

Then why let people play the alpha?

As far as getting an invite, you don't have to be a subscriber, nor pay some sort of concierge fee. I got an invite, and haven't done either of those things. (I also didn't activate the invite, as I've no time to dedicate to thorough testing and reporting.)

But I didn't get said invite. So for me to get into the PTU in this last round I would of had to become a subscriber, yes?

There's also option c: some people just keep flying the ship they own.

With that method of thinking why go for anything but a starter ship?

 

[McGlashan]

The fact that they are proud of having big seamless maps doesn't mean they will ditch the curated hand made high fidelity moto as they showcased clearly in both the Gamescon and Citizencon demos of last year.

"Seamless maps" is an oxymoron. And what they spent most of last year showcasing (until they realised they couldn't deliver it as promised and instead diverted attention to their trivial standalone FPS) was procedural generation, which turned out to be not all that procedural. So now the official line is that it's "hand made". Just the usual revisionism that we've come to expect.

 

[SkUnimatrix]

So as a backer I have access to every single iteration of the alpha that comes out? Why are there tiers of access to the alpha when a new version comes out? I have a lovely golden ticket, shouldn't that let me into the inner workings? Nope, I have to pay a concierge fee to gain access to that on top of having to buy all the ships so I can properly test out the alpha. It's a interesting business model I'll give you that, but the product will suffer if things aren't tested.

Do I have access to spawn all ships? Or do I have to sneak aboard wait for the poor guy jump away from the station and double tap his head, then fly around for a few minutes before he despawns the ship?


----------------------------------------------------------------------

A little while ago some people were talking about the pay to win aspect of this game. Specify they said they wanted to skip the grind. There's a huge list of problems that brings along, but I have yet to hear about new ships that CIG is continuously pumping out that is making $60+ ships old news. Is that a good thing? They promise a top of the line fighter, and 6 months later something even better replaces it. Do you just melt the obsolete ship and upgrade? Or grumble a little and buy this new wonder ship for cash?

What happens when the game releases and they stop anything from being melted or transferring LTI even if you can melt it? We keep hearing "buy buy buy! These are rock bottom prices!", and yet we have no idea what these ships are worth in the game.

I should probably stop here. Just my two worthless cents.

Friends and I had the working theory a few years ago that you basically needed 3 ships to cover your basis: a military ship for combat, a trading ship for hauling stuff, and an industry ship. As such I said I'd spend between $500 - $600 and picked up the small bomber, the big bomber, and a starfarer plus the fastest ship in the game (350R) [hey I like to tick people off and I learned long ago to have a ship that can get out of trouble as fast as I can get into it]. We each made sure we have some overlap, but had enough ships we could do whatever from day one. We had learned a few dollars spent early could lead to massive advantages over those who did or could not afford to spend the money to get said ships. Imagine if I start out hauling a 1000 units of cargo and you start out hauling 10. Given the same number of hours of play time how much more cargo will I have hauled by the time you can afford the ship I started with? It eventually evens out as the rest of the player base builds up and if you start out ahead of the game you eventually reach a plateau at least in terms of income per hour of gameplay. Any rate I think most of us have gotten a refund at this point so it is kind of moot.

 

[Sunleader]

Thanks for the response. It's pretty long though so pardon me if I ignore some of it and concentrate on the salient points.

First of all, I hardly post in this thread at all. I think anyone would be hard pushed as calling me a "hater". Then why respond you might ask....well, frankly I'm stuck at home with the flu and I was interested.

You made a statement, as you have acknowledged above, a statement by its very definition is very...well...definite! I cannot fathom what is wrong with asking for supporting evidence. How do you expect to discuss such a definite thing as a statement without any corroboration? I'm happy to have a reasonable discourse but there's literally nothing to discuss....unless you provide some examples of your statement in which case we can have a discussion about it. I honestly wasn't 100% whether there would be any posts supporting your view or not, I found it doubtful yes, but I think it was perfectly reasonable to give you the opportunity to support your stance. That's how discussions work. If you make a statement and won't defend it then you have placed a brick wall in the path of discussion.

For the record, I certainly don't consider you "the enemy" and I'm disappointed you would assume I would discount anything you would say that supports your points. I'm simply trying to have a discussion, point and counterpoint.

As for credibility, that's something that is established, like by backing up statements. If you aren't willing to do it, fine, I can appreciate it might be alot of effort (I wouldn't want to do it either) but if you can't/won't back up a statement...don't make the statement. Or at least make it sound diplomatic.

I'll leave it here, I think this has gotten OT anyway so I'll simply stop now.

Statements are Statements Mate.
Unlike SC making Progress. Which is a Fact. My Opinion of the Regulars here being very Dishonest. Is not really something I need to Post Evidence for.
Its not something that can be Discussed either to be honest. After all my Personal Experience from the Past is not exactly something that you could Debate with me about
So there was no Path for Discussion on this to begin with.

You could try to Attack the Claim itself that many of the Regulars are not Honest. But for that rather than having a Discussion I would just say watch the Topic for a while.
I wont anymore because I got most of them on the Ignore List. But if you actually want to know wether you should Share my Opinion or not that would be one way.
I dont mind you sharing it or not. So I am not going to do that work for you


Well. Ultimately no Discussion to be had on this.
So I.ll agree that this is going OT. Lets leave it here. At least thats what I will do. If you got something else to Add feel Free too of course.

 

[Stigbob]

"Seamless maps" is an oxymoron. And what they spent most of last year showcasing (until they realised they couldn't deliver it as promised and instead diverted attention to their trivial standalone FPS) was procedural generation, which turned out to be not all that procedural. So now the official line is that it's "hand made". Just the usual revisionism that we've come to expect.

Yep, it's a retreat to a previous position. The goal posts have been shifted back to where they were when they were criticizing ED and NMS for being PG, prior to jumping on the PG bandwagon and trying (and failing) to outdo them. I'm sure in the fullness of time we'll pop back to the second position again, it depends what other games actually achieve.

 

[Stigbob]

Friends and I had the working theory a few years ago that you basically needed 3 ships to cover your basis: a military ship for combat, a trading ship for hauling stuff, and an industry ship. As such I said I'd spend between $500 - $600 and picked up the small bomber, the big bomber, and a starfarer plus the fastest ship in the game (350R) [hey I like to tick people off and I learned long ago to have a ship that can get out of trouble as fast as I can get into it]. We each made sure we have some overlap, but had enough ships we could do whatever from day one. We had learned a few dollars spent early could lead to massive advantages over those who did or could not afford to spend the money to get said ships. Imagine if I start out hauling a 1000 units of cargo and you start out hauling 10. Given the same number of hours of play time how much more cargo will I have hauled by the time you can afford the ship I started with? It eventually evens out as the rest of the player base builds up and if you start out ahead of the game you eventually reach a plateau at least in terms of income per hour of gameplay. Any rate I think most of us have gotten a refund at this point so it is kind of moot.

$500-600 is the price of 10 full AAA games. I spent an extra £15 on ED and got early access a bonus ship and some exclusive skins. I don't understand how anyone can look at SC's prices and not immediately think "SCAM". Games are simply not worth that much (even good ones).

 

[Sunleader]

Just throwing this in on you guys Debating Nicely.


But.

1.
The Flight Model in SC is not that Bad to be Honest. The thing is that currently the Ships have Zero Weight for most Part. Which does not seem to be a Bug but rather an current Stopgap Measure because it takes quite a bit of Time to adjust exact weight scales for Ships within and outside Gravity. Its not exactly an very Hard thing to Change the Current Flight Model into something that would be Comparable to Elite. Because for most part its just Stat Values that need to be Changed.
But its a ton of detailed work. Its much like sorting a 1000 Needles with Colored Heads which have been thrown through the Room. Its not that Hard to do it. But its an very time intensive Work. And likely not very high on the Priority List right now.

2.
Having an Highly Detailed World does not mean they cant use Random Generated Contend.
To begin with. Elite Dangerous went with the Super Extreme case here. They made an Purely Random Generated World including all Stations etc.
The Original Idea is usually that you use the Random Generation World out and then Start Detailing certain Areas.
It actually looks more Natural this way because just like in Reality. You then dont prepare an Area to Place a City. But actually look for an Area where you can Place it and then Build it into the Terrain rather than changing the Terrain to Fit the City.

SC will likely follow this method as well.
They will Generate an Map with Planets etc. And then go ahead Detailing certain Areas of this World to their Likings.

Now here we got to say one thing Clearly.
In Absolute Size. SC will never Reach Elite Dangerous.
BUT.
Elite Dangerous while being so Big. Feels rather Small. I mean if you saw one thing you saw all. Its having far too little variation in things.
They seriously need to start doing some work on this. Otherwise their World will go to Waste. Because if you got a Billion Systems with only a Hundred Different Ones in it. The most Players will not Feel the Size at all.
Moreover 99% of the World are pretty much not used. I mean you this Gigantic World. But there is nothing there. So no Player Cares.
A Station is a Station. Nothing else to See there. Each Asteroid Field looks the same as well.
Even on the Planets you got only like 3 different Outposts Setups and 2 bigger Bases.
Only some of the Engineer Bases actually look different.

If Elite does not go ahead making some Changes here. By doing some extra stuff.
Like maybe Hiding some Secret Bases. Having some Asteroid Mining Stations within an Asteroid Belt etc etc. There seriously is enough Option for doing things there.
Then SC will be Feeling like the much Bigger World. Because even if the World is in Factual Size Smaller. There will be much more to Discover for the Player making it feel Bigger.

 

[Skizomeuh]

Newton's 3rd Law: "To every action there is always opposed an equal reaction"

So, there's more physics fidelity in this thread than in SC

 

[Asp Explorer]

The Flight Model in SC is not that Bad to be Honest

It's so good, it's just perceived as bad

 

[Stigbob]

It's so good, it's just perceived as bad

That one never gets old. And it's probably the going to be the reaction to any actual release reviews.

 

[GaryII]

Just throwing this in on you guys Debating Nicely.

1) Fight model: after 4 years and 100m+ they still do not have set final fight model...

2) Universe hancrafted and/or PG -> the same: after 4 years and 100m+ they just have Tech-Demos and theorycrafting...

I am sorry, but here I see a lot of red flags and lulzbackets...

P.S.
In 2013 I backed SC for 80$ thank god I did not wasted more..

 

[Cmdr Eagleboy]

2.6 was very critical release for CIG to prove they are working towards Squadron 42. Having still not workable flight model indicates not only they are incredibly late on Squadron 42 (it is obvious at this point that prelude won't have flying in it, nor it will be exactly a game - it will be a bone to throw to people so they don't eat CIG alive), but growing concerns for them just being incompetent to make a game could be justified. If you are doing FPS instead of nailing FM, if you are showing how you design clothes instead of how Squadron 42 mission loops will work, etc. there's something terribly wrong with priorities.

Also we should do "Mike Evans was right" movement https://sites.google.com/view/starcitizenflightmodelproposal

 

[dumbo]

The Flight Model in SC is not that Bad to be Honest. The thing is that currently the Ships have Zero Weight for most Part. Which does not seem to be a Bug but rather an current Stopgap Measure because it takes quite a bit of Time to adjust exact weight scales for Ships within and outside Gravity. Its not exactly an very Hard thing to Change the Current Flight Model into something that would be Comparable to Elite. Because for most part its just Stat Values that need to be Changed.
But its a ton of detailed work. Its much like sorting a 1000 Needles with Colored Heads which have been thrown through the Room. Its not that Hard to do it. But its an very time intensive Work. And likely not very high on the Priority List right now.

I'm not quite sure what you mean? The game is based on a physics engine, so all SC ships already have mass (otherwise you would have infinite acceleration). Ships obviously lack weight because there is no gravity.

It's possible the mass numbers are all placeholders, but I doubt that's correct (as a lot of 'hype' has been based around how physically accurate the thrusters/mass are).

SC will likely follow this method as well.
They will Generate an Map with Planets etc. And then go ahead Detailing certain Areas of this World to their Likings.

Yes, this is something ED has also been doing since the Engineers patch. The only quirk is that SC lacks any procedural "content", so procedurally generated planet areas are (at this point) functionally wastelands. If you want 10 things to do on a SC planet, then CIG need to handcraft & test those 10 things on that planet.

 

[Mu77ley]

The "denser is better" as allways been Chris Roberts moto

Seems rather apt considering some of his "backers"...

 

[Tippis]

Humm nop, wrong, Star Citizen strength was never about the size of it's world.

…and yet, it was something they bragged about, and are bragging about a this very moment. The kickstarter talked about a “huge universe”; how space is empty; and about how it would have unprecedented scale. If you're going to make this claim, you should probably ask CIG to take it off the front page first. It is indisputably something that CIG has chosen to brag about consistently from the very start.

No. I'm not wrong. You're just not ignoring what CIG actually said from the very start and what they're saying to this day for some mind-boggling reason.

Again, just because it turned out that CryEngine became a problem in delivering that scale and vast emptiness doesn't mean it wasn't what they were talking about — it means they eventually shifted their narrative to be one about density instead, because that's what they eventually were limited to actually delivering. Assuming they ever manage to deliver anything.

You keep bringing NMS or ED when their gaming concept is totally different from the Star Citizen one. Both NMS and ED rely heavily on PG assets to populate their gameplay area

…and for a while, when these were the games to beat and PG was all the rage, SC was supposed to offer the same, up until the point where it turned out to be a technical challenge they couldn't really overcome for a number of reasons. And then the narrative shifted to one of density instead. At first, PG was bad because ED used it. Then PG was good, because SC would use it to deliver unprecedented scale. Then PG was bad again because we've always been at war with Eastasia.

Yeah I've seen that, I think he his talking about gamers has consumers in general not goons/trolls engaging in hate campaigns that aim to undermine a game development project for petty reasons, going as far as attacking it's developers, fan base and supporters by all means, that includes, doxing, harassment, lying, deceit and collusion with several shady immoral individuals that aim for "vindication" by bringing the project down.

And you have evidence to back up these accusations, I take it? The point is, he's talking about exactly what the major public meeting places for the SC community has turned into: consumers being vociferously anti-consumer, engaging in exactly the same tactics you're describing to “protect” their game from an imagined enemy that doesn't even exist. They are, in the end, consumers in general who have chosen to get on board with these practices, with very toxic results.

You may be rustled that I like posting stuff about something you dislike (for whatever reasons), it's ok really, but please dont bring on the deceptions and ofuscations lol the only people here using trickery to try and fool other people into believing stuff are well known and documented
You might be forgotten how several lies from the goon party that ended up camping here were already debunked, from edited video-clips that try to portray the game more broken than it is (seriously, it doesn't need that) or simply spreading lies like Star Marine not being in evocati testing lol. Just to name a few.

And you have evidence to back up these accusations, I take it? Actually, never mind — none of it is relevant to the point at hand. The simple fact remains: some people believe that what is said on forums matter, and that if someone offers up a critical perspective or asks questions about the official hype, they must be attacked, mocked, ridiculed, “debunked”, doxxed, “archived”, physically threatened, or lied about. This evangelising and hype-mongering is a scourge on modern gaming because it hurts consumers and producers alike. Comment fields have to be brigaded; opposition squelched; and any non-positive message silenced wherever possible.

That's the whole point you're apparently not willing to discuss: the videos you promoted are just as much an indictment of the practices of CIG and its community as it is of the specific examples used in those videos. They're not taking an anti-corporate stance, but a stance against practices in the gaming industry that fans are as much a part of and culpable of as the companies.

 

[Phoenix_Dfire]

I'm probably going to regret this but....

I'm only asking as a small backer of Star Citizen (and someone who feels they've already lost their kickstarter money), what's the present TL : DR state of Star Citizen?

Specifically, what's the state on Squadron 42?

I'm tempted to download the latest Beta but cutting through all the vitriol and Hype is just putting me off.

Ta.

 

[Tuub t Tute]

I'm only asking as a small backer of Star Citizen (and someone who feels they've already lost their kickstarter money), what's the present TL : DR state of Star Citizen?

Specifically, what's the state on Squadron 42?

I'm tempted to download the latest Beta but cutting through all the vitriol and Hype is just putting me off.

Ta.

1 star system with 2 bases (1 goodie, 1 baddie), couple of PoI-type locations.

You can fly your ship, you can EVA, you can shoot people.

It is PvP full-time, only one mode with no flag system.

You can buy clothes with alpha currency, which is the only persistence so far. Every time you log in, you are back in your bunk in Port Olisar.

Frame rate is a bit better for most players, <USE> interface has been changed a bit, it still isn't fully functional.

You can crew other people's ships, or steal them.

It is still in alpha (or pre-alpha, or testing to be ready to release to alpha) depending on your reading of their delivery mechanism.

You will need to download the full 30-ish Gig patch to play.

I think that is reasonably neutral assessment?

Oh, Sq 42 does not exist in any playable form currently. Only Hangar, AC, Star Marine and P(T)U are available.

 

[Cmdr Eagleboy]

I'm only asking as a small backer of Star Citizen (and someone who feels they've already lost their kickstarter money), what's the present TL : DR state of Star Citizen?

Specifically, what's the state on Squadron 42?

I'm tempted to download the latest Beta but cutting through all the vitriol and Hype is just putting me off.

Ta.

There's 2.6 update with slightly updated flight model and combat mini game called Space Marine. If you are interested to see those things and mechanics, do check out, ignore everything said on Internet and form your own opinion.

As for release of Squadron 42 first whatever it will be, there are no clear official update yet. There are some information that it comes this year Q1, but it seems unlikely at this point. Some information might come soon from CIG headquaters.

 

[Tippis]

Specifically, what's the state on Squadron 42?

In a word: unknown. No-one has ever seen it, and CIG hasn't offered any real information about it.