Star Citizen Discussion Thread v11

[StuartGT]

Has CIG ever said the Beta would be public? I don't think they have.

For Sq42? No. There have been vague mentions of Evocati but I suspect if they are used then there'd be higher-requirements due to leaks.

 

[Ed02349]

Hold on. In that case we skeptics should be held to the same standard shouldn't we? Or we are allowed to talk in generalities but fans must talk about specific mechanics?

I've read you guys talk mechanics like flight, progen vs hand crafting, multicrew etc... all the way back to assume you guys will talk mechanics if fans will talk mechanics. Those kind of debates are a lot more interesting because someone usually think through trying to make it work and point out issues and obstacles CIG need to overcome, strength and weakness etc. Even way back when you guys were arguing why Cryengine wasn't a goot idea was interesting to read.

 

[Tippis]

I could try to find my old post where I broke down their mining concept design document nonsensical theorycrafting in terms of what actual game mechanics and dynamics it would require to work.

Broke the word limit twice because there was so much silliness that had to be sorted out.

 

[sovapid]

Space Engineers launched in Feb 2019.

Dual Universe is currently in NDA-protected Alpha, and due to enter public beta this year.

Starbase is in invite-only Alpha, and also due to enter public beta this year.

All of them provide the immersive gameplay you described in your comment I quoted. DU especially has some excellent Dynamic Server Meshing tech enabling their seamless MMO world to exist - that's what CIG are aspiring to and estimate a few years yet.

All three of those you craft your own space ship. And they can be dopey looking as all hell. Hard for me to get past that.

I backed DU, so see if i can get over it for that one.

 

[CMDR Dizzy]

What I like is the ability to wake up at a location, walk through an area to reach a vessel, call it up, reach and board it, walk through it, launch it, fly around, stop it in space, walk around in the vessel or EVA from it, return to the bridge or cockpit, sign up for a mission, go engage in it - perhaps with other players aboard with whom I can interact, land on a planet or other location and conduct dismounted operations, reenter my vessel, and then log off in the vessel's bed, able to log back in on that same vessel to conduct more operations.

All of that already works to an extent, and that's the design I'd like to see carried forth in other online games.

A long time ago in a galaxy far away, Star Wars Galaxies (SWG), which was an MMO, added an expansion called Jump to Light Speed in 2004 as well as spaceships, space combat and ship manufacture it added -

• Multipassenger Ship (POB)
  • Most have 2 turrets, except for the Y-8 Mining Ship which has 4, and the gunships (6 turrets).
  • These ships have decoratable interiors that can be occupied by group members as if it were the inside of a house. These ships have turrets that can be jumped into and out of by people aboard the ship.
  • POB ships no longer take up one of your structure lots, but still hold a maximum of 75 items on board, gunboats can hold 150 items.
  • Cannot launch a third POB if two others have items inside of them. For the purposes of this maximum of two PoBs, the Sorosuub Luxury Yacht Veteran Reward counts as a PoB.
• Gunboat
  • Multiple decks (1 deck on the Imperial gunboat, 2 on the Rebel gunboat, and 3 on the Blacksun gunboat). They have 6 manned turrets, and two pilot operated weapons or countermeasure launchers.
  • 150 default interior item storage.

I used to crew for a NZ player each weekend on his gunship and it was a blast. You need to be very careful of Chris and Star Citizen claims as never done before. However the graphics on SC are very good compared to a 2004 game

 

[[VR] Merkir]

....are you kidding me right now?

Bucket List Ticked: Read one of MTBFritz's post in its entirety. Wooot!
(Sorry MTBFritz, couldn't help it)

 

[Esvandiary]

I do think it's a fair observation that some of the thread veterans are being a bit overly harsh when it comes to people sharing their enjoyment of the game recently - but for those of us who have been around this loop so very many times (thread v3 in late 2015 reporting in!) it can all look remarkably similar, and that can lead to frustration.

I also just went back and looked at some of the stuff I was chatting about in here back then - anything here sound familiar...?

One of my early posts from April 2016...

Chris presents the vision. the dev team is working out whats doable reasonable and what is not.. thats no secret.

The problem is, that's the order it sometimes appears to be happening in. Chris presents the vision, to the public, in the form of promises for what will happen. Various different teams then have to work out how to achieve something approximating that.
That's not the order these things should happen in, because it results in exactly what we're seeing now - disappointment and confusion as things are scaled back, shelved, or appear in a very different form to how they were originally described. That's not open development, that's poor communication and community management.

I completely agree with Komemiute - the levels of "well, uh, it'll probably work like this" at this point are pretty unnerving. The mechanics that we know about are for the most part completely barebones and unclear. The big list of links on the RSI forums with all the different professions et al is a start, but its sources are mostly one-line throwaway quotes from ship descriptions and very old videos. Given the rate that CIG seem to be "refreshing" the game and how things work, how do we know any of that is even still valid?

Especially concerning to me is the idea that they're only now starting to look at persistence. That's something that a significant part of could be done by a different team whilst the client/realtime server folks get the basics up and running - if you've designed well. To me, the fact they're only now thinking about what sort of things should be persistent is very scary - it says they're still finalising basic game systems that should have been set in stone a year or two ago.

I'd really like the PU to be great, but I think they're going at a pace and with a lack of direction that'll leave it outdated before it's close to finished.

Immediately followed by this gem from MaxLexandre (where's he these days!)

And that's where you see what is freaking know for long already, Squadron 42 is the priority and where the majority of the dev-core is focused on. Means, the priorities and development of the PU, will by no way overlap the priorities and development of Squadron 42 at this point.... so obviously the PU-specific stuff that they need to do, is set to face a slow progress.

And this is not news, as much we would want the PU fleshed out sooner, is as much they need to deliver SQ42 as a fully released game first.

We've come full circle - seven threads and four years later, PU development is slow because getting Squadron 42 out is the priority!

 

[CMDR Dizzy]

The problem with a public beta is people can see it and report on it.


Said it earlier, i'm pretty certain SQ42 is still missing huge chunks of stuff needed to make it work, a lot of that stuff it shares with SC, so when we see things like CIG working on NPC AI for years, its safe to assume they don't have a separate AI waiting in the wings for SQ42, at best its going to be scripted encounters and dialogues, which would be 100% fine for just about any dev company, but probably not good enough for CR.

I thought that at one stage SQ42 and SC were tightly coupled from a software point of view. I could only see them making progress if they broke that coupling.

 

[StuartGT]

All three of those you craft your own space ship. And they can be dopey looking as all hell. Hard for me to get past that.

I backed DU, so see if i can get over it for that one.

Both Dual Universe and Starbase allow players to create, save, and trade ship blueprints. I.e. a player-made ship market

 

[ECity]

...along with the seamlessness of moving from one piece to the other without loading screens.

Unlike NMS and ED, SC doesn't allow free fast travel within a system. You have to point and click on predetermined locations. And while in "quantum" the game is of course loading in the assets required to render the destination.

If CIG is working so hard on SQ42 because of Calder, then why are they doing Theaters of War?

 

[Mole HD]

Unlike NMS and ED, SC doesn't allow free fast travel within a system. You have to point and click on predetermined locations. And while in "quantum" the game is of course loading in the assets required to render the destination.

If CIG is working so hard on SQ42 because of Calder, then why are they doing Theaters of War?

I suspect it's seen as a way to drag in revenue not tied to the the PU...sort of like an SC version of CQC for those with the attention span of wasps that won't readily go for Star Citizen and want something to pick up and play..

I think we all know where it's headed...and that's nowhere good.

 

[StuartGT]

Genuine query: what's counted as a loading screen by people?

IMO, these games don't have loading screens: Elite Dangerous, Star Citizen, No Man's Sky, Space Engineers, Dual Universe, and Starbase. And I'm probably missing a good few too.

Are fade to black transitions loading screens? Because Star Citizen has them.

Are loading/network stutters hidden "loading screens"? Because Star Citizen has them.

Are canned-animations, taking control away from the player briefly, hidden "loading screens"? Because Star Citizen has them.

I mean, even CIG say Star Citizen has loading screens:

Star Citizen Alpha 3.9.1 - Roberts Space Industries | Follow the development of Star Citizen and Squadron 42

Roberts Space Industries is the official go-to website for all news about Star Citizen and Squadron 42. It also hosts the online store for game items and merch, as well as all the community tools used by our fans.

robertsspaceindustries.com

If the player exits to menu/disconnects/crashes during the prison load screen transition their load-out will not be changed.​

 

[Bob McBobblehead]

Elite could of had a few potential 'please wait!' loading screens, but the team did a good job of hiding it using animations. For example, the hyperspace jump animation time is used to load in and generate the system you're jumping to.

 

[Darkfyre99]

Space Engineers launched in Feb 2019.

Dual Universe is currently in NDA-protected Alpha, and due to enter public beta this year.

Starbase is in invite-only Alpha, and also due to enter public beta this year.

All of them provide the immersive gameplay you described in your comment I quoted. DU especially has some excellent Dynamic Server Meshing tech enabling their seamless MMO world to exist - that's what CIG are aspiring to and estimate a few years yet.

Another game to add to that list is Empyrion: Galactic Survival. It may still be in Early Access, but it's very playable.

 

[GreySix]

Unlike NMS and ED, SC doesn't allow free fast travel within a system. You have to point and click on predetermined locations. And while in "quantum" the game is of course loading in the assets required to render the destination.

If CIG is working so hard on SQ42 because of Calder, then why are they doing Theaters of War?

Not a fan of the current QD system, but its what CIG has implemented, so I usually just do something on another screen or chat in-game during QD travel.

From what I can gather, TOW is intended as a mechanism to flesh out combined arms ops within Squadron 42, but of course your guess is as good as mine. I'm not a fan of it, but if our organization wants to participate in it, I'll do so as well. Frankly, combined ops are working fine in the PU as is, so it just seems unnecessary to me. But nobody at CIG asked my opinion on it.

 

[StuartGT]

Another game to add to that list is Empyrion: Galactic Survival. It may still be in Early Access, but it's very playable.

Good shout; not played that.

 

[ECity]

From what I can gather, TOW is intended as a mechanism to flesh out combined arms ops within Squadron 42...

Do you mean within Star Citizen? SQ42 is single player. IMHO, CIG leadership knows they can't deliver the MMO they've promised, so ToW is (yet another) distraction to give the appearance of progress. They have time to do it because they're under no pressure to release SQ42.

 

[GreySix]

Do you mean within Star Citizen? SQ42 is single player. IMHO, CIG leadership knows they can't deliver the MMO they've promised, so ToW is (yet another) distraction to give the appearance of progress. They have time to do it because they're under no pressure to release SQ42.

Yeah, I'm not gonna try to defend it. Much of CIG's development makes little to no sense.

 

[StuartGT]

Not a fan of the current QD system, but its what CIG has implemented, so I usually just do something on another screen or chat in-game during QD travel.

From what I can gather, TOW is intended as a mechanism to flesh out combined arms ops within Squadron 42, but of course your guess is as good as mine. I'm not a fan of it, but if our organization wants to participate in it, I'll do so as well. Frankly, combined ops are working fine in the PU as is, so it just seems unnecessary to me. But nobody at CIG asked my opinion on it.

You've said you're interested in the Calder investment side of things - and Spectrum keep banning you for mentioning it - but I wonder what your thoughts on it are?

For me, Theaters of War is a compromise CIG made with the Calders, probably an idea of the latter.

We know from the funding tracker and 2018 financials that CIG were very thin on cash early 2018 and desperately needed the investment. Calders will naturally want return on investment, with Sq42 being the obvious big-ticket route, but a percentage of interim ship-store sales would do nicely too.

But when they did their due diligence they determined that Sq42 was still multiple years away. The Crytek lawsuit ending with "this case is not yet ripe" and Sq42 roadmap being DOA for near a year both corroborate that too.

So I reckon Calders asked "well, make a Star Citizen Fortnite or something, those are popular and generate big bucks! You want our investment right?". Unfortunately, the networking cannot handle more than 50 players so a Battle Royale was out of the question (100+ players), so they pointed at Battlefield and said "we can make that!".

More micro/macro-transactions with ToW, upsell its players to SC/Sq42, etc. All easy money in Calders' eyes - they gotta get that continuous 14% (was 10%) return.

But tbh, with how poor ToW looks in the leaks, and Sq42 being MIA, who knows what is happening inside CIG.

 

[Virgile]

I've tried star marine during last free fly and considering how catastrophic it was After that many years, I don't see how they could release a working version of this ToW thing which seems a lot bigger.