Game Discussions Star Citizen Discussion Thread v12

[Xink]

She's right though. I was keeping alive a part of my life that should have ended 20 years ago in a field full of rocks. Hard to accept and even admit that it's finally done with, as much as I knew that already...and perhaps why I typed the completely off topic post in the first place.

Old age comes to us all I suppose

Hardly a bad thing. Now you get to spend more time riding bikes.

 

[Vetinari]

Its called Retirement, youre supposed to look forward to it.

Just one part of life that is over, you still have a purpose, many roles to fulfil. Old age is when you give up everything or it takes over.

 

[Agony_Aunt]

She's right though. I was keeping alive a part of my life that should have ended 20 years ago in a field full of rocks. Hard to accept and even admit that it's finally done with, as much as I knew that already...and perhaps why I typed the completely off topic post in the first place.

Old age comes to us all I suppose

I guess that's how groups like Blackwater/Academi get their officers though. Those who can't give up the old life.

 

[Pug]

Mole,
By the sounds of things, you have been through things that you will not and cannot forget, I don't think it will ever end as its who you were and who you are.

You wouldn't be the 'Nugget' you are without those experiences

In this case your wife is right, tell her "not to make a habit of it" as it can get draining. Coo's and bikes etc. sounds awright.

Christ you could be a MacDonalds store manager instead of supplying them.

A bit soft but heartfelt.
Pug

 

[Navigare Necesse Est]

On another note, I had a phone call this morning to go off and do some work in Togo...the usual desert boots and gun stuff. I haven't been doing it for the last couple of years since I figured that pushing my luck just to keep my hand in wasn't really such a great idea.

I was told in no uncertain terms that I'm not going. Seemingly, my wife has had enough of me jetting around the planet to get shot at and shat on for nothing bar a free hotel meal or two. I think her exact words were, "You can tell Gazza to f-off and ask one of his other mates. You stupid old person, I already went through feeding you through a tube 20 years ago. You can't afford to lose any more bits just to keep feeling useful."

Back to feeding cows it is then...

Yeah, she's right I think. And probably selling your expertise under value, too. Tell her you enjoyed the feeding and you're ready for the spoon now.

 

[Red Anders]

She's right though. I was keeping alive a part of my life that should have ended 20 years ago in a field full of rocks. Hard to accept and even admit that it's finally done with, as much as I knew that already...and perhaps why I typed the completely off topic post in the first place.

Old age comes to us all I suppose

With your past, as hard as it is to accept it you're probably best off being glad it's come at all and enjoying it. I bet you knew more than a few mates who never got the chance and honestly, you sound like you have a pretty good life all things considered - best not to thumb your nose at the man upstairs too many times, at least not when he can see you. He has a habit of remembering that stuff. Your missus sounds like she's got her head screwed on.

 

[Viajero]

On another note, I had a phone call this morning to go off and do some work in Togo...the usual desert boots and gun stuff. I haven't been doing it for the last couple of years since I figured that pushing my luck just to keep my hand in wasn't really such a great idea.

I was told in no uncertain terms that I'm not going. Seemingly, my wife has had enough of me jetting around the planet to get shot at and shat on for nothing bar a free hotel meal or two. I think her exact words were, "You can tell Gazza to f-off and ask one of his other mates. You stupid old person, I already went through feeding you through a tube 20 years ago. You can't afford to lose any more bits just to keep feeling useful."

Back to feeding cows it is then...

I can not say I am in any way affiliated with the army. Unless my service in the Spanish army, in the last few years it was ever mandatory in Spain (just my luck) counts . But I have been posted in countries such as Nigeria and Angola because of my line of work. Angola in particular was not long after the almost 30 year long civil war ended. More antipersonnel mines than in Iraq, and Russian weaponry included as gifts in cereal boxes. I also remember my first trip in Port Harcourt in Nigeria, our shuttle was escorted by 2 machine gun mounted pickups fore and aft. Was enough for my "service", pay heed to your lady!

 

[Mole HD]

Its called Retirement, youre supposed to look forward to it.

Just one part of life that is over, you still have a purpose, many roles to fulfil. Old age is when you give up everything or it takes over.

Aye, it's strange. When I was in the job and had no concept of living to an age where I could look back at things, I think all of us doing it had a secret dream that one day we'd own a farm with a few cows and have a shed full of bikes to play with...Now that I've got all of these things, the only thing missing is the one thing that kept all of it in that secret part of my soul in the first place, the adrenaline fueled nonsense of doing what I did.

It always seems strange to folk who've never done it...but you get to a point after it all stops and you become a reasonably functioning human again, where the craving to get it back is worse than for the forbidden cigarettes in the kitchen drawer

Anyway, back on topic. I tried the Xenothreat thing for a bit tonight...shooty stuff rather than hauling boxes about. Apart from the 10fps the dozen or so of us attacking the Idris suffered...it was fairly good. Disappointed I didn't get to see the Idris go boom though...it jumped out after we scrapped it's fighter support and began doing damage.

There were a few errant human types there too, they lasted no longer than the fighter support did

 

[ECity]

Spoiler: Off topic: Moleman with gun

 

[Surefoot]

Disappointed I didn't get to see the Idris go boom though...it jumped out after we scrapped it's fighter support and began doing damage.

Got to shoot a few using the Tali (even got confirmed "kill"), they give sweet amounts of cash when they pop and being the main damage dealer. That may prepare my account for buying equipment when the C2 Hercules appears, and maybe space trucking makes a comeback as it's now entirely broken.
Still apart from being a bigger piñata for players to shoot at, it's quite passive, and since it's a fixed script the "xenothreat" never bring anything else, like Retaliators actually, a full wing of those could certainly deal a lot more damage to the Javelin than the quickly destroyed Idris.
Didnt get to try moving boxes in the nebula, as i did not figure out what to do and where (got the tractor beam thing but that's it). Also "xenothreat" fighters in there appear at regular intervals, but again always the same wing, that gets obliterated in seconds by players.
TTK on that Idris with a few bombers facing it is really short, less than a minute i think...

 

[Mole HD]

Spoiler: Off topic: Moleman with gun

View attachment 207751

 

[Mole HD]

Got to shoot a few using the Tali (even got confirmed "kill"), they give sweet amounts of cash when they pop and being the main damage dealer. That may prepare my account for buying equipment when the C2 Hercules appears, and maybe space trucking makes a comeback as it's now entirely broken.
Still apart from being a bigger piñata for players to shoot at, it's quite passive, and since it's a fixed script the "xenothreat" never bring anything else, like Retaliators actually, a full wing of those could certainly deal a lot more damage to the Javelin than the quickly destroyed Idris.
Didnt get to try moving boxes in the nebula, as i did not figure out what to do and where (got the tractor beam thing but that's it). Also "xenothreat" fighters in there appear at regular intervals, but again always the same wing, that gets obliterated in seconds by players.
TTK on that Idris with a few bombers facing it is really short, less than a minute i think...

Aye, it didn't last much longer than that all in...considering I was with a mixed bunch of newbies in Auroras with a couple of Cutty blacks, 2 Connies, 1 Superhornet, 1 Harbinger, 1 Tali bomber plus a few others crewing a Hammerhead... and me in my Sovapid inspired Hornet Ghost full dakka build with the SH auto-turrets fitted... awesome

Edit: I had another go at the xeno threat escorting a guy in a Freelancer Max who wanted to load up with some of the Javelin resupply cargo...which was fine until we discovered there were only 3 players on the server and the other guy was mining ...Whilst my erstwhile companion EVA'd inside the wrecked Starfarer, I was sitting top cover in the Ghost being swarmed by half a dozen NPC Xenothreat ships at a time whilst he was killing the foot soldiers inside the wreck to get at the boxes.

We both survived through 3 waves of fighters while he loaded the cargo into his Max, a slow process doing it on his own... By the time I had finished dealing with the 3rd wave of fighters as my part of the team effort, my ammo and missiles were about done so I had to bug out to the nearby R&R stop to rearm. The NPC Valkyries in each wave are as tough as old boots and fairly soak up the ammo as well as being able to chuck a fair bit back at you from their turrets. I rejoined him at the wreck site just in time for another wave of fighters to appear so we bugged out to restock the UEE Javelin with what little we had. Part of his cargo didn't allow for QT travel so we had to slow time it back the 500k or so to the Javelin with me picking off Xeno fighters in one's and two's as they appeared.

It took the biscuit that when we got back to the Javelin with the cargo... and with my ammo once again fairly depleted... the enemy Idris appeared with the usual swarm of escorts...needless to say, with just the 2 of us there we didn't survive it. I went out in style doing my best impression of a Star Wars A wing straight into the bridge of the Idris

All in all, the mission is a fairly decent experience when you're doing it coop, there's a variety of things to do and tasks to complete which relies on a sizeable team effort with some degree of coordination and there's enough action to keep even the most attention deficient Star Citizen backer entertained while it lasts... and all despite the p*** poor frame rates which lets it all down massively...With only the 2 of us there, they were still crap, struggling to reach 20fps during the Idris attack phase, dropping to barely double figures at points.

You can see the frame rates take a dive as soon as the enemy Idris spawns. During the cargo loading section, the frame rates were passable at least, even with the area full of fighters and floating wreckage, so it's the Idris (and Javelin) that's killing the servers. Ci¬G could easily have replaced the silly and pointless Idris with a more sensible...and destructive... wing or two of Tali bombers with assorted escorts attacking the Javelin and kept the frame rates up a bit, but Chris Roberts is so desperate to show his pet whales a pretentious effort at a capital ship battle that the logic of that totally escapes him. The servers are also emptying quickly due to folk server hopping to get straight back into it rather than wait for the server to reboot the mission once the phase has completed, failure or success...which happens roughly every hour or so.

Yes, it's a slideshow... No, it isn't dynamic in the slightest. It's so much on rails, you could easily mistake it for an intercity 125...Yes, not all the phases are active yet or the entire mission very occasionally doesn't spawn parts of it properly for some reason (missing wrecks or non spawning Idris)...but having played through bits of it a couple of times and thoroughly enjoying the effort, it's OK overall.

TL;DR: 5/10 for effort...would have been a 6...but I removed a point because it's Chris Roberts and his dreams.txt miniscule space battle over Endor with only two of his $1500 whaley boi flying jpegs... I you listen closely, you can almost hear the Ewoks complaining about plagiarism...

 

[metatheurgist]

They're happening a lot lately, it feels. Are they perchance having issues with retention and conversions?

Can't be because the income is excellent...(Calder is due for another rescue package investment).

 

[Surefoot]

Yes, it's a slideshow... No, it isn't dynamic in the slightest. It's so much on rails, you could easily mistake it for an intercity 125...

Good luck trying to explain this to cultists.. "ItS FuLlY dYnAmIc !1!1 NeVeR doNe BeFoRe !1!!". Nevermind trying to let them blurt out what they mean by "dynamic", or even what the word itself means.
I think the sad part is it took them months of effort and a considerable amount of millions of $$$, to produce this. Even more baffling is there was an existing mission framework (bounty hunting chain of missions precisely) that had one dynamic element to them (you get more difficult targets as you progress), and that is completely ignored by either CiG or their cultists.
I suspect the Idris completely killing the server and framerate is due to NPC turrets. Like you said the small swarm of fighters in the nebula do not harm the server as much (the fps do take a dive though, at least on my 3090, even when not looking at them...) - so it's likely that the turret AI is the cause of performance loss there. It's not looking good at all as CiG being who they are, will take years before even starting to try and solve this problem.

 

[VR Golgot]

so it's likely that the turret AI is the cause of performance loss there.

Yeah seems likely. Tony Z's recent gabble is instructive on that front:

Tony on turret AI:

For this particular event a major [focus] was from the beginning we knew that we wanted to put a lot of emphasis, you know, for the first time on the capital ship battles. So there were a litany of changes that we needed to make in order to enable this, and at the top, at the very top of the list was how the AI responded to the threat of torpedoes.

...Originally neither turrets nor ships tasked with defending a capital ship paid them any heed and that meant that it was way too easy to take these capital ships out in the early days. It was literally trivial, was no fun at all. And so we spent you know over a month fine-tuning various systems so that counter measures would be launched and worked as expected, turrets would prioritize major incoming threats like a torpedo over most other things.

He goes more into how turrets are trying to be 'less boolean' to engage as many players as possible etc. But ultimately, all that effort seems to currently add up to a TTK of 1 minute on an Idris? And poor performance...

Tony on performance:

The biggest concern from the beginning, i would say, um, was going to be performance. We knew performance was going to be an issue, um, it continues to be an issue. We've got a number of initiatives underway to basically improve that, um, and then we're also attacking it you know from a completely different angle, which is not just the per server performance, but you know the whole server meshing, you know, initiative is intended to eventually allow us to distribute the workload over as many servers, you know, as we need. And so that was always something that we, um, were aware, we were aware of. Um, we've basically tweaked and refined things we, you know, uh, you know, uh, you know the maximum number of enemies you face. In other words do you face 50 enemies at once or do you basically face, you know, uh, you know, a dozen and we keep replenishing them as, you know, as you destroy them or take them out, make them flee, basically replenish them you know quicker. Um how many capital ships can, you know, can we put, you know, you know, at a time.

Uh there's been a tremendous amount of focus on, um, optimizing everything from you know turret AI to even seemingly unrelated things like, um, you know social AI. It's like any time you're saving there is basically additional time that you can inject into, you know, into these events that are that are intended to basically, uh, draw lots of players together and have you know, you know and have an enormous amount of AI, you know, active. If you think about i mean this is definitely, uh, this is definitely, um, the biggest such event we've done today and we're putting more, more players and more AI, um, and you've got you know tons of turret operation. You, you have a lot of stuff happening in one area. And so it's it, you know, it, it's, it's like with most things right which is your first iteration of these things is never as mature as you would like in terms of the performance and, you know, uh, yeah we're going to keep refining it. I think you'll see some big improvements over the course of the next few quarters.

 

[LittleAnt]

@Mole HD : useful tip for the event, you can scan the wrecks to see how much and which boxes they have.

 

[Skizomeuh]

Tony on performance:

um... um... um, and then ... you know ... but you know ... you know, ... you know, ... um... Um, ... you know, uh, you know, uh, you know ... you know, uh, you know, ... you know, ... Um ... you know, can we put, you know, you know, at a time.

Uh ..., um, ... you know ... like, um, you know social AI. It's like ..., you know, ... to basically, uh, ... you know, you know and have an enormous amount of AI, you know, ..., uh, this is definitely, um, ... um, ... And so it's it, you know, it, it's, it's like with most things right which is your first iteration ... and, you know, uh, yeah we're going to keep refining it. I think you'll see some big improvements over the course of the next few quarters.

This is good for Star Citizen.

 

[Surefoot]

He goes more into how turrets are trying to be 'less boolean' to engage as many players as possible etc. But ultimately, all that effort seems to currently add up to a TTK of 1 minute on an Idris? And poor performance...

I'll say that the AI comes in with a wing of escorts around the Idris, but these get dispatched pretty quickly as the AI is still very poor at dogfighting, also the ships that are involved (and certainly their weapon payload) are far from optimal. Then it's basically 15+ player ships firing at the one Idris, whose turret gunners cant hit much at all due to the massive server desync (i'll come back to this), so players can just park around it and keep shooting. Lets add that this TTK is achieved with actual bombers (Retaliator), with a main role to destroy these cap ships, so that makes sense in a way. TTK would be much higher if said Idris did defend itself properly.

As for the desync: it's unbearable if you try to PvP in the area of the Jericho (*), the other ship will just teleport around by steps of 5Km, so hitting a moving target is entirely out of the question. I feel server frame time was in the area of 4-5 seconds. That means that even size 1 missiles, which are really small and agile (and would never miss otherwise) have zero chance of hitting a moving target, and I've observed that directly.

This is quite bad looking compared to for instance Infinity Battlescape, which provides much bigger scope battles (with cap ships and AI turrets, even) with really smooth frame rates and no server desync.

(*) and no it's not my connection: my ping is about 20ms, with 2GBps fiber. Debug console gives a hit of what's happening though, the server itself becomes unresponsive.

 

[Skizomeuh]

Surprisingly a "storyboarded then choreographed then heavily edited massive starship battle" cliché doesn't transcribe well in a real time situation involving players, barebone AI and poorly optimized engine, server and network layer.

 

[Cotic]

This is good for Star Citizen.

I remember reading a discussion on mmorpg.com where people were laughing at Erin doing the ummm, uh, ah stuff and how it made it look like he was making things up as he went along. The die hard fans started claiming that Erin was not making it up as he went along but it was actually due to a speech impediment and making fun of ummm, uh, ah was being a big, bad meany.

The lengths some fans go to defend things is just pure crazy.