Game Discussions Star Citizen Discussion Thread v12

[LittleAnt]

SC is lacking a proper physical model at the moment, the ships movement is goal-based and not inferred from newtonian physics. There is no simulation.

You are right. SC is not a real space simulation because they don't attend to respect all newtonians rules. They will modify them if the technical gain is important, to limit the complexity of the code or when they though something is more cool made differently. The goal is to have a fun game, not a true realistic one. It's the same for ED no ? (haven't enough experience in ED to know)
I use "space simulation" because SC only wants to "feel" realistic. If you have a better term, I don't have one...
"Arcade game" don't fit in too.

Hold on, A Bug's Life? LittleAnt? By Jove we've cracked it ! The only things missing are the leaf clipping through the terrain and the ant T-posing!

When I'm stuck under a seat, trying to get out by crawling, I feel sometimes like an ant ;-)

 

[Skizomeuh]

Chris's current withdrawal, before any kind of delivearable has made it to market, is spicier due to his Freelancer history. IE getting deposed by the money men due to scope creep / lack of delivery.

Now I know why I'm eager to watch the SQ42 video: to see if there's Chris to be seen in it or not. That would explain the delays (reeditting to remove the Perfectionist), and that would be a truckload of lulzbucket to witness how it would be justified by the faithfuls.

 

[govny]

The goal is to have a fun game, not a true realistic one.

the problem here is that it is not even fun.

 

[Arcondes]

The goal is to have a fun game, not a true realistic one. It's the same for ED no ? (haven't enough experience in ED to know)
I use "space simulation" because SC only wants to "feel" realistic. If you have a better term, I don't have one...
"Arcade game" don't fit in too.

Better Term Arcade shooter? Turrets in space? Walking simulator?

So you having fun when you walk to your terminal spawn a ship walk to the ship and waiting for the QT loading screen to finish and then doing a basic mission? That in a space game? So many time wasted with zero gameplay?

 

[Navigare Necesse Est]

Yeah the thing you miss is called "moment of inertia". A long and thin ship will roll very easily with little effort, even with the mav thrusters near the axis. While it wont pitch or yaw all that easily even with mav thrusters located at both ends. The shape or rather mass distribution is key here.

....

Yeah, I have a little flawed concept of that. I had to read up on some real-life phenomena to acknowledge my flawed concept. So it's actually easier to roll because the mass is distributed closer to the axis.

 

[Asp Explorer]

Yeah, I have a little flawed concept of that. I had to read up on some real-life phenomena to acknowledge my flawed concept. So it's actually easier to roll because the mass is distributed closer to the axis.

Your understanding of physics is still vastly more correct than that of Genuine Roberts though

 

[Navigare Necesse Est]

Better Term Arcade shooter? Turrets in space? Walking simulator?

So you having fun when you walk to your terminal spawn a ship walk to the ship and waiting for the QT loading screen to finish and then doing a basic mission? That in a space game? So many time wasted with zero gameplay?

You have completely omitted the manual loading and refueling process. Along with the survival mechanics and the Bureaucracy DLC (which will have you fill out forms before loading, unloading and crossing any border, also for toilet hygiene checkups etc.) you probably only will be able to get a glimpse of the stars for mere minutes of your average gamer play session. This is to ensure the rare moments of spaceship gaming remain precious, valuable and highly coveted.

 

[Arcondes]

You have completely omitted the manual loading and refueling process. Along with the survival mechanics and the Bureaucracy DLC (which will have you fill out forms before loading, unloading and crossing any border, also for toilet hygiene checkups etc.) you probably only will be able to get a glimpse of the stars for mere minutes of your average gamer play session. This is to ensure the rare moments of spaceship gaming remain precious, valuable and highly coveted.

I know I missed something

 

[Sanya V. Juutilainen]

You are right. SC is not a real space simulation because they don't attend to respect all newtonians rules. They will modify them if the technical gain is important, to limit the complexity of the code or when they though something is more cool made differently. The goal is to have a fun game, not a true realistic one. It's the same for ED no ? (haven't enough experience in ED to know)

The problem is that ED's solutions are mostly consistent and mostly work. For example take this quote from Senior Designer Michael Evans (who has been in FDev for 9 years now):

Spoiler: Mike Evans quote

Suffice to say a low yaw rate is a fundamental part of our games aesthetics and a corner stone to our flight model that we at frontier like the way it is. We're not changing it, for to do so would be to compromise our own vision for what Elite: Dangerous is and what it's going to be. I don't give a damn what all the other space games have done in the past, nor do I care that our yaw rates are apparently even slower than a plane's is (though every time I've tried doing a pure yaw turn in IL-2 I've stalled my plane before I got anything that even resembled a steady and fast turn rate).
Fast yaw and pitch in a space game is a video game trope of the highest order along with banner arrows sliding around the screen and compasses telling you where to fly all the time.
I'm almost certain that other developers just implement those features because they've been so prevalent rather than actually reassessing whether the game needed them or could be even better without them! We found for example that the compass that pointed you towards your target at all times made combat too easy to end in stalemate of circling. As soon as we tried removing it all of a sudden it was more exciting to fight someone because they could give you the slip whilst you weren't glancing at your sensors and even if you did pay attention to the sensors the difference in the way the information is presented can still mean you don't quite stay on the target's tail perfectly, again providing more opportunities for them to turn the tide of the battle.
Suffice to say we wanted Elite to feel like star wars in terms of how the ships move by banking/rolling and pitching through manoeuvres opposed to the yaw and pitch based FPS style movement most other space games offered (where roll plays little or no part). That limitation to having to do your main directional change manoeuvring by pitching makes the flight path taken to be more cinematic and means a skilled player can predict the manoeuvres of an opponent in advanced by observing their current roll position relative to themselves only. So long as they match the roll quickly enough they can always follow through the inevitable pitch manoeuvre effectively and maintain the chase. If the target could yaw or pitch effectively then it's much harder to assess what they're going to do as they're current roll position doesn't really matter any more.
Finally realism has played no part whatsoever in any of our design discussions about the flight model. We don't care what would be realistic as we only care what the game play experience is when flying these ships and so far we feel we're hitting the right notes for the majority of our audience.

On this, you see they've thought up the basic principles, they've tested them and they stand behind them.

Now compare it with Star Citizen's "physics flavour of the year", where they think up some random physics "hotfix", work on it for a year or so, roll it out (so their testers are mostly Evocati / players), and then within a month - after player base backlash - they pull it. That's not what I call a viable development style.

 

[Skizomeuh]

You have completely omitted the manual loading and refueling process. Along with the survival mechanics and the Bureaucracy DLC (which will have you fill out forms before loading, unloading and crossing any border, also for toilet hygiene checkups etc.) you probably only will be able to get a glimpse of the stars for mere minutes of your average gamer play session. This is to ensure the rare moments of spaceship gaming remain precious, valuable and highly coveted.

It's a HardChore Sim.

 

[Navigare Necesse Est]

It's a HardChore Sim.

 

[Fishy]

I use "space simulation" because SC only wants to "feel" realistic. If you have a better term, I don't have one...
"Arcade game" don't fit in too.

I sort of like "simcade" personally. And yes, that applies to ED too imho, considering the amount of compromises (speed limit, blue zone, gimped yaw).

The "simulation" term has drifted over the years. It used to be that anything with a cockpit view would be called a simulation, so all those jet fighters arcade combat games would be called as such. These days, there's still a school of thought along those lines, but my impression is that the realism bar has generally been put higher and that a cockpit and keyboard shortcuts for subsystems is no longer sufficient if the game doesn't simulate "enough" of reality/physics.

Typically, WC/WC2/X-Wing/TIE Fighter were called "space sims" in their days but are definitely simcade. They come with the trappings of sim games (cockpit, buttons, shortcuts...) but behind that, you have a 3d arcade game that obeys to imaginary laws of physics. In an era where DCS, XP11, MSFS2020 (well almost) exist for atmospheric flight and Orbiter, FE2/FFE, Kerbal, RogSys, CoaDE, SE exist for space, those old "sims" stand out as something different, and so do ED, SC and others (Everspace to name one that I love and is not a sim either). Just like Need for Speed or Burnout are racing games but not racing sims.

The debate gets even more complicated when semantics come into it as there's an argument that what one game "simulates" doesn't have to be reality, hence X-Wing being a proper simulation of flying a spaceship in the Star Wars universe. While I agree with the premise that you can perfectly simulate something that doesn't exist, I'd only call the result a 'sim' if the imaginary part is embedded in an attempt at modeling reality. For X-Wing, well, that's never going to work: Star Wars and physics simply don't mix, too many issues. But take Kerbal for example, while the characters are obviously imaginary and the system isn't a 1:1 copy of the solar system, the imaginary part fits in a pretty good canvas of orbital physics. CoaDE is one of the most fascinating to me in that regards, as it doesn't simulate anything real, but anticipates space combat based on known physics and technologies.

Finally, there's also a more recent term called "immersive sim" which has nothing to do with physics or reality, but more with the game design making you feel like you are the main character. That sorts of merges with realism/physics though, as a lot of that identification comes from interacting with the environment and having it react as you'd expect it too: a set of rules that are consistent and can be observed/understood/abused. I'd say SC could fit in here actually due to its focus on that first person view and (relative) lack of magical transition, provided that they iron out a lot of the jankiness. It's lovely static, but when people start moving, it doesn't feel terribly immersive anymore. That could be fixed obviously. Whether it's likely to be is another debate...

Anyhow, I'm turning into MTB now, so I'll leave it there. I just feel the term "simulation" these days is both complicated and interesting.

 

[Surefoot]

(Everspace to name one that I love and is not a sim either). Just like Need for Speed or Burnout are racing games but not racing sims.

Good examples here. Everspace (which i like a lot by the way) never pretended to be a simulator. Even less so the BDSSE.... Like NFS or Burnout, they also never pretended to be racing sims. This is RFactor series or Assetto Corsa for example.
As for having fun or not: the question is flawed for SC.
SC is before all a walking sim. Flying a ship, according to what they plan to do with player roles, is limited to pilots, while everyone else sit at various stations (turrets today, missile operator in next patch ? i think i read something about that) or are even carried as a cargo on those dropships (can do that with a Freelancer by the way...).
So actually making the piloting part challenging would create a skill ramp, and a progression path for pilot careers. The ill-fated hover mode was actually a step in the right direction. Flawed physics engine non withstanding, when it was not glitching horribly it was actually like flying a hover jet, which kinda surprised me considering the flight model in this game was completely absent. One could get a hold of it and actually move like intended... Well, until the physics engine decided to suddenly tilt and translate the frame of reference and throw the ship away. The cries on forum were coming from non-pilots, who want SC to be just another FPS with ships as a means of transportation and nothing else...

 

[n4p0l3on]

space sim never really mean anything equivalent to the likes of racing sim or flight sim though, when we talk about space sim as a genre what we usually mean is a game genre where you play as a pilot piloting a personal combat spacecraft with the primary gameplay focus revolving around ww2 like or star wars inspired space combat while things like exploration and cargo hauling may often be offered as possibilities for side activities.

space sim never meant to be equivalent to study flight sim nor kerbal space program rocket sim nor actually have realistic depiction of space and heavenly bodies. that being said, the bar for the genre has been raised with games like I-war series, X series, ED, IB etc; so for SC to honor it's own claim and promise to bring the BDSSE, it ought to deliver equal to or more all of those games.

 

[LittleAnt]

the problem here is that it is not even fun.

Alpha, not finished, not all mechanics in game, etc, etc..., everyone's sticking to their guns.

So you having fun when you walk to your terminal spawn a ship walk to the ship and waiting for the QT loading screen to finish and then doing a basic mission? That in a space game? So many time wasted with zero gameplay?

The famous "zero gameplay".
I will describe precisely one old mission of SC and you will say me if you does not see at least one once of gameplay in it. The mission is the Covalex one.
I wake in my bed, got to my ship, call it, open my mission tab and chose the Covalex mission.
The mission giver describe by audio+text the mission, I must find why her husband is dead in a station because the insurance company doesn't want to pay her.
I go to the station, find a broken bay and EVA through it. I check all computers to find infos and audio logs.To find all computers, you must go in EVA in a simple maze with floating objects. There is a closed door in the station, if you find the good computer, you will get the code to unlock the door. The main audio log with evidence is behind this closed door. At the end of this little maze, you will find a one way door which permit to exit the maze by a shortcut. If you find all evidences, the widow give you 8000 aUEC.

This mission in video, the guy know it well you can easily get a little lost the first time you do it.

If you want more action, you can do the Claimjumper mission, a bounty one, etc. If you want to trade you can buy and sell with cargo run. You can investigate a cave to find missing persons, etc.

 

[MTBFritz]

Anyhow, I'm turning into MTB now, so I'll leave it there. I just feel the term "simulation" these days is both complicated and interesting.

grumble you make it sound like thats a bad thing.....

 

[LittleAnt]

The problem is that ED's solutions are mostly consistent and mostly work. For example take this quote from Senior Designer Michael Evans (who has been in FDev for 9 years now):
On this, you see they've thought up the basic principles, they've tested them and they stand behind them.
Now compare it with Star Citizen's "physics flavour of the year", where they think up some random physics "hotfix", work on it for a year or so, roll it out (so their testers are mostly Evocati / players), and then within a month - after player base backlash - they pull it. That's not what I call a viable development style.

Let me guess at which moment FDev had developed and tested those principles. During their alpha.
Let me guess at which moment CIG is developing and testing those principles. During their alpha. Once in beta, CIG, like FDev, will stand behind them.

 

[ECity]

Let me guess at which moment FDev had tested those principles. During their alpha.
Let me guess at which moment CIG is testing those principles. During their alpha. Once in beta, CIG like FDev will stand behind them.

This guy has no problem with CIG still trying to figure out core design principles eight years into development. Hilarious.

 

[Surefoot]

the bar for the genre has been raised with games like I-war series, (...)

These were really good, and their predecessor on Amiga, called Warhead, was too. And all did feature kinda realistic movement (for the time..). And yeah being called "BDSSE" means one has to raise the bar...

 

[n4p0l3on]

Let me guess at which moment FDev had developed and tested those principles. During their alpha.
Let me guess at which moment CIG is developing and testing those principles. During their alpha. Once in beta, CIG, like FDev, will stand behind them.

Have you seen or played the alpha version of ED though? Flying a sidey in ED alpha is not different than in today.

For SC, how many changes have they made to the flying mechanics again? Remember the different flight modes? Remember that quantum travel used to be free flying to anywhere you wanted? Compare that to ED where all of that are still the SAME today as it was in alpha.

What's the excuse next, Commando?