Game Discussions Bethesda Softworks Starfield Space RPG

[Felix DiCestria]

I've had several NPCs stuck in the floor, including one right behind a mission giver so they were staring at her rear during an entire conversation.
Day/Night cycles seem to be very fast on the planets I've visited, a firefight can start in daylight get plunged into night and back into dawn before the shooting finishes.

 

[Morbad]

You've been missing system suns? I am on a 3060 and have never come across a missing light source for a planet. I haven't even had a clipping issue like in your screenshot.

I've encountered all sorts of bugs, including the rare absent source of directional illumination (a few moons and a sun or two).

In related news, nVidia has released new Starfield drivers today:

View attachment 367079

Good news, though I would assume most technically adept users have been globally enabling ReBAR for a while.

Not sure why NVIDIA leaves ReBAR disabled by default, only whitelisting it on a per-app basis. Very few apps have issues with it, and most benefit from it.

Whoooyah, I just entered a derelict where gravity cycles on and off. Waiting for this since Mass Effect 3.

Just did that one myself. Made padding my character's gymnastics challenge a timing challenge.

Day/Night cycles seem to be very fast on the planets I've visited, a firefight can start in daylight get plunged into night and back into dawn before the shooting finishes.

Time moving approximately ten fold real speed is typical for Bethesda games. Combined with the shorter day/night cycles on some worlds, this can get pretty extreme.

 

[AvonNZ]

Well I do like this game, not really into RPG's but I think Starfield mixes it up a bit, with great FPS, and a sprinkle of Sim in the mix as well

Only just started playing, taking baby steps, loving the ship interior (Elite Dangerous), see my first video -

Source: https://youtu.be/AuQBeOKGniQ


Not sure I will continue making vids as YT is awash with them ;-) That said Starfield is somewhat derivative of other games, NMS, EDO etc with many references ;-)

 

[Mika L]

One of the first piloting skill upgrades unlocks thrusters - on the controller it is enabled by holding RB, vertical/lateral thrust is then on the Left Stick.

There isn’t a way to put reverse thrust on the ship so it’s not true 6 DoF, but it’s not too far off

I have reversed with the Frontier ship, by decreasing throttle after the ship has stopped. Did you mean that kind of reverse thrust or something else? I play Starfield with keyboard + mouse.

 

[wrmiller]

One of the first piloting skill upgrades unlocks thrusters - on the controller it is enabled by holding RB, vertical/lateral thrust is then on the Left Stick.

There isn’t a way to put reverse thrust on the ship so it’s not true 6 DoF, but it’s not too far off

I am genetically deficient, in that I cannot master shooting with any accuracy when using a x-box controller.

 

[Old Duck]

The only mod I want is to make the slow walk speed match npc walk speed.

I have that mod! It's called PS4 Controller

Walking around with a keyboard is so 1990s.

 

[Old Duck]

Day/Night cycles seem to be very fast on the planets I've visited, a firefight can start in daylight get plunged into night and back into dawn before the shooting finishes.

Is this the typical "Let's make day and night unrealistically fast" cycle that so many games use / abuse (I'm thinking RDR2), or is a "some moons spin really fast" form of realism? If it's the former, this feels like something that could easily be modded to make days much longer. I would likely do that.

 

[CMDR-AD]

The time passage is deliberately fast. I can easily see the movement of the shadows on the ground, when I stop and look. I'd guess maybe 30-ish minutes per day? (pure guess)

What is weird, is that I have very little sense of time, while playing. Each time I go to space, or fly my ship between planets, or whatnot, time passes during my travel. Then I arrive back where I started from, and it's either later evening that same day, or even the next day.

But it works so far, since aside from missions having a time limit (like 5 days or whatever)... I never feel any pressures related to time passage. Not much hinges on it. It just happens.

*There are some little details that have integral time-related elements. But no spoilers. They are some those things that were fun to realize.

 

[Darkfyre99]

Is this the typical "Let's make day and night unrealistically fast" cycle that so many games use / abuse (I'm thinking RDR2), or is a "some moons spin really fast" form of realism? If it's the former, this feels like something that could easily be modded to make days much longer. I would likely do that.

Allegedly, the day on Jemison is 49 hours long. IIRC, one visit there, I experienced a full day/night cycle, despite not having played even 49 hours yet, so I'm guessing the former.

On a more positive note, preliminary tests on whether the skybox is "real" are looking good. Here's snapshots of a local day on a moon around a gas giant, taken three local hours apart... which can vary between 39 minutes to six hours, depending upon the body you're on. This moon is tidally locked, quite close to its planet, and is apparently in a slightly inclined orbit.

Spoiler: Sky Gazing

In contrast, here's some snapshot planet around which the habitable moon of Kreet orbits. There's a second moon, closer in. I generally had to wait 28 local hours before the planet moved into view, and there were several local days where it didn't come into view at all, so when I saw it barely pass into view near sunrise, I ended up having to get up off the bench I'd placed, and look at it directly. You can see the inner moon getting larger as time passes in the first three snapshots.

Spoiler: More Sky Gazing

 

[Old Duck]

Allegedly, the day on Jemison is 49 hours long. IIRC, one visit there, I experienced a full day/night cycle, despite not having played even 49 hours yet, so I'm guessing the former.

On a more positive note, preliminary tests on whether the skybox is "real" are looking good. Here's snapshots of a local day on a moon around a gas giant, taken three local hours apart... which can vary between 39 minutes to six hours, depending upon the body you're on. This moon is tidally locked, quite close to its planet, and is apparently in a slightly inclined orbit.

Spoiler: Sky Gazing

In contrast, here's some snapshot planet around which the habitable moon of Kreet orbits. There's a second moon, closer in. I generally had to wait 28 local hours before the planet moved into view, and there were several local days where it didn't come into view at all, so when I saw it barely pass into view near sunrise, I ended up having to get up off the bench I'd placed, and look at it directly. You can see the inner moon getting larger as time passes in the first three snapshots.

Spoiler: More Sky Gazing

[/QUOTE]
It might not be Elite level of accuracy, but at first glance it is WAY better than Space Engineers or No Man's Sky!

 

[Felix DiCestria]

Is this the typical "Let's make day and night unrealistically fast" cycle that so many games use / abuse (I'm thinking RDR2), or is a "some moons spin really fast" form of realism? If it's the former, this feels like something that could easily be modded to make days much longer. I would likely do that.

Deliberately fast I'd say. I haven't found a planet with day/night cycle longer than an hour yet.
The Skybox is ours, I can recognise constellations...

 

[Dutchman141]

My Frontier after a few upgrades.

 

[Codger]

For example, I wish ALL games had Elite's Stellar Forge when it comes to rendering the skybox and planets, or at least made an effort to pretend. How does Starfield do with this?

I don't know. There's a day/night cycle, that's all I noticed, and it didn't much matter.

In Starfield, space is the "backdrop" for the game, which is at its heart an RPG. It is not a sim. It's a role playing game with a space theme.

And it's great at giving that "freelancer with a ship loose in the galaxy" feel, with story upon story, little towns and outposts and abandoned places, alien life, caves, pirates, good guys, bad guys, grey-area guys, hotels, resorts, zero-g combat in an abandoned posh bar, all so detailed and interesting I keep marveling at it. Story after story. Memory after memory, for me.

So no, it's nothing at all like Odyssey despite the superficial resemblance. But damn is it ever fun.

 

[Navigare Necesse Est]

I've encountered all sorts of bugs, including the rare absent source of directional illumination (a few moons and a sun or two).



Good news, though I would assume most technically adept users have been globally enabling ReBAR for a while.

Not sure why NVIDIA leaves ReBAR disabled by default, only whitelisting it on a per-app basis. Very few apps have issues with it, and most benefit from it.



Just did that one myself. Made padding my character's gymnastics challenge a timing challenge.



Time moving approximately ten fold real speed is typical for Bethesda games. Combined with the shorter day/night cycles on some worlds, this can get pretty extreme.

I think itvdepends on the size if planets how long the day and night is. Or there is rotation speed - I havent checked.
Night is really dark as are caves.

---

I reached the sea at sunset and took a swim.

 

[RooksBailey]

I don't know. There's a day/night cycle, that's all I noticed, and it didn't much matter.

In Starfield, space is the "backdrop" for the game, which is at its heart an RPG. It is not a sim. It's a role playing game with a space theme.

And it's great at giving that "freelancer with a ship loose in the galaxy" feel, with story upon story, little towns and outposts and abandoned places, alien life, caves, pirates, good guys, bad guys, grey-area guys, hotels, resorts, zero-g combat in an abandoned posh bar, all so detailed and interesting I keep marveling at it. Story after story. Memory after memory, for me.

So no, it's nothing at all like Odyssey despite the superficial resemblance. But damn is it ever fun.

That is a great summation! Bethesda should put it on the back of the box.

I find myself marvelling at all the little details. Check this out:

See the shard of ice leaning against the shipping container? You know how it got there? It was originally a canister filled with some sort of liquid or gas. What happened is while exploring this pumping station, a two-man patrol of spacers arrived on a ship and started a fight with me. As I was shooting at one of them that took cover behind that gray partition (btw: the AI can be surprisingly good at times), one of my rounds must have ricocheted or I just missed (more likely) and that cannister made a "pop!" sound with the contents freezing solid in a second or two. I was so amazed by what I just witnessed that I stopped shooting and took a few rounds to the face. That's the type of detail that exists only because someone was really passionate about this project. And the game is filled with such stuff!

Also, I found Naomi Nagata at that dive of a bar in The Well.

 

[Cosmo]

Real Grav Drive Supercruise and EVA Spacewalk with Hotkeys

This mod disables achievements, but Achievement Enabler should fix it.

I don't know. There's a day/night cycle, that's all I noticed, and it didn't much matter.

There are day/night cycles. I saw a sun rise and sunset on New Atlantis. The weather changes too (sunny, cloudy, rainy).

 

[Far Beyond Driven]

Real Grav Drive Supercruise and EVA Spacewalk with Hotkeys

This mod disables achievements, but Achievement Enabler should fix it.



There are day/night cycles. I saw a sun rise and sunset on New Atlantis. The weather changes too (sunny, cloudy, rainy).

Can confirm rain / lightning and dust storms as well on some of the planets I've been exploring. Also varying day light night cycles. You can use rest or wait to see how long the local one is compared to actual (It shows the numbers). Also witnessing full orbital system mechanics sky as time progresses. Planets moons stars shifting and moving. Appearing disappearing as light conditions change Very Elite without that cold crisp matter of fact style. More warm and a touch of hand drawn. Feels very organic.

There's a few great fan made time lapses and other things on reddit but casual spoilers galore. So tread carefully.

 

[Arioch]

I have reversed with the Frontier ship, by decreasing throttle after the ship has stopped. Did you mean that kind of reverse thrust or something else? I play Starfield with keyboard + mouse.

That’s the kind I meant - I shall give it a try later

 

[RooksBailey]

I can also confirm rain. I was in New Atlantis today. At the start of doing my errands, it was a typically sunny day. A few hours later, the weather changed to rain (as with Cyberpunk 2077, there seems to be a behind-the-scenes dice roll to determine the weather every time a new instance loads). I was happy to see this because I thought New Atlantis was only going to be a perfectly sunny place. The only thing I didn't care for is how SF produces a rainy day in the same way as NMS: you might see a gray sky and raindrops, but the lighting remains sunny. You can see that here:

That's a strong shadow for such a cloudy day. Stuff like that annoys me.

I stole my first ship from raiders. While doing a planetside survey, I came across this landed ship and shot my way aboard. Now it's mine! Here it is landing at a LIST homestead.

This game can be gorgeous!

 

[varonica]

Time moving approximately ten fold real speed is typical for Bethesda games. Combined with the shorter day/night cycles on some worlds, this can get pretty extreme.

I have played a few games where night lasted a long time (relatively) and the darkness was so extreme in some areas you just had to sit down and wait for the dawn, or indeed log off and return to playing later, there are two extremes, proper night and pretend night, I would take short nights over proper nights any day in RPG's, I mean it's not a simulation, you are there to have fun, and that's hard to do when you walk right past a huge great castle in the middle of the night because you can't see a thing!