TL;DR Version
I head down the stairway at Port Ollisar to the ASOP terminal to call my Aurora MR (Starter Pledge ship ~35USD that I purchased more than a year ago). I head through the hallways to the airlocks to Pad A07, the launch pad my ship is sitting at. I walk around the corner then I spot her, beautiful yet simple. The sun shines off her canopy blinding me a little bit. I then gaze out over the launch pad to spot a huge gas planet off in the distance and ships flying about around the station. I turn around to board my ship and spot another ship to the side of my launch pad, it's HUGE! Oh, wow! That's a Reclaimer! This ship TOWERS over me like a skyscraper in New York!
I open the side door and jump in the cockpit. Once in the pilots seat I start the startup procedure (it has a "flight ready" option but immersion...). I flick the switches, Power - Online, Engines - Online, Shields - Online. After a few seconds , I hear the on-board computer, "Ready for takeoff!" I fire my vertical thrusters.... nothing.... hmmmm... (the update must have reset my control settings). I reset controller settings... LIFTOFF! I take a few laps around Port Ollisar to make sure all of my controls are functioning the way I want them to.
I open my system map and plot a course for Yela, a moon of the Planet Crusader in the Stanton system (where the current "universe" is located). Yela is pretty much a straight shot from Port Ollisar to the moon. "Quantum Drive engaged," the ship announces when I align to my waypoint and press the jump button on my HOTAS. A countdown starts and then the space in front of me starts to deform inward and then all of the sudden the view gets a bit blurry with pretty lights zooming past me and Yela quickly coming into focus and growing larger by the second. My ship comes out of quantum drive and particles of ether trails off the back of my ship as the quantum flux disperses and disappears.
Yela sits in my view so I plot a course for Arc Corp Mining 157 surface base some 450+km away. I hit the afterburner and slowly burn towards the base @ ~1100m/s. Within a few minutes the details of the surface start coming into focus; mountains, valleys and cloud structures. 250km and counting, not too much longer. Finally, I hit the atmosphere! The front of my shields start glowing, spewing sparks and flames as my ship pierces through the atmosphere. I'm also finding it a bit difficult to keep my ship on course from the way my ship is being tossed in the atmosphere.
Now that I've safely entered the atmosphere, I find my ship a dozen or so km from the base and then hit the afterburner! The landscape was amazing! I sped past rocky canyons and crevasses as my ship gently rocked in the atmosphere. Upon approach to the mining base I noticed the Reclaimer that I saw at Port Ollisar parked by the base. Even from a few hundred meters in the air and from the base that ship dwarfs the small base in comparison. I find myself a good place to land then extend my landing gear and touchdown. I turn all my ship's systems off and exit the ship.
Exiting my ship, I see a sandy and rocky landscape and when the wind blows and I can see little puffs of sand and debris floating in the air around me, absolutely amazing! The surface is littered in rock of all sizes and I can see huge mountains towering in the distance. If this was a procedurally generated world, I couldn't tell! The mining base was a few meters away from me and still, the Reclaimer stands prominent in the background, towering above the mountains. Moments later, a Redeemer landed at the mining facility and a player emerges from the rear cargo bay carrying a box. He was heading for one of the buildings to turn in his cargo.
Conclusion
Star Citizen is making good progress! I didn't have any lag but I did have dropping FPS periodically with my meager PC setup (I still need to upgrade my MOBO & CPU) but it was very playable. There also were a dozen or more players in the same instance role playing. I didn't try out any of the missions that are available, that'll be tonight maybe. It looked like the missions can be made by players as well. I got a few notices for player pickup from other locations and help with missions.
I'll try to add some pictures later tonight as I only thought, just now, to tell my experience. I'll even see if I can get the Reclaimer guy to set his ship up for pictures so you can see what I saw.
I had a chance to go in a play a little bit of Star Citizen 3.1.4 Alpha build. It had been a few months since I last played because of the connectivity and lag issues. After a quick download of the new patch I was up and running and ready to go. I landed on one of the moons in the SC system!
I head down the stairway at Port Ollisar to the ASOP terminal to call my Aurora MR (Starter Pledge ship ~35USD that I purchased more than a year ago). I head through the hallways to the airlocks to Pad A07, the launch pad my ship is sitting at. I walk around the corner then I spot her, beautiful yet simple. The sun shines off her canopy blinding me a little bit. I then gaze out over the launch pad to spot a huge gas planet off in the distance and ships flying about around the station. I turn around to board my ship and spot another ship to the side of my launch pad, it's HUGE! Oh, wow! That's a Reclaimer! This ship TOWERS over me like a skyscraper in New York!
I open the side door and jump in the cockpit. Once in the pilots seat I start the startup procedure (it has a "flight ready" option but immersion...). I flick the switches, Power - Online, Engines - Online, Shields - Online. After a few seconds , I hear the on-board computer, "Ready for takeoff!" I fire my vertical thrusters.... nothing.... hmmmm... (the update must have reset my control settings). I reset controller settings... LIFTOFF! I take a few laps around Port Ollisar to make sure all of my controls are functioning the way I want them to.
I open my system map and plot a course for Yela, a moon of the Planet Crusader in the Stanton system (where the current "universe" is located). Yela is pretty much a straight shot from Port Ollisar to the moon. "Quantum Drive engaged," the ship announces when I align to my waypoint and press the jump button on my HOTAS. A countdown starts and then the space in front of me starts to deform inward and then all of the sudden the view gets a bit blurry with pretty lights zooming past me and Yela quickly coming into focus and growing larger by the second. My ship comes out of quantum drive and particles of ether trails off the back of my ship as the quantum flux disperses and disappears.
Yela sits in my view so I plot a course for Arc Corp Mining 157 surface base some 450+km away. I hit the afterburner and slowly burn towards the base @ ~1100m/s. Within a few minutes the details of the surface start coming into focus; mountains, valleys and cloud structures. 250km and counting, not too much longer. Finally, I hit the atmosphere! The front of my shields start glowing, spewing sparks and flames as my ship pierces through the atmosphere. I'm also finding it a bit difficult to keep my ship on course from the way my ship is being tossed in the atmosphere.
Now that I've safely entered the atmosphere, I find my ship a dozen or so km from the base and then hit the afterburner! The landscape was amazing! I sped past rocky canyons and crevasses as my ship gently rocked in the atmosphere. Upon approach to the mining base I noticed the Reclaimer that I saw at Port Ollisar parked by the base. Even from a few hundred meters in the air and from the base that ship dwarfs the small base in comparison. I find myself a good place to land then extend my landing gear and touchdown. I turn all my ship's systems off and exit the ship.
Exiting my ship, I see a sandy and rocky landscape and when the wind blows and I can see little puffs of sand and debris floating in the air around me, absolutely amazing! The surface is littered in rock of all sizes and I can see huge mountains towering in the distance. If this was a procedurally generated world, I couldn't tell! The mining base was a few meters away from me and still, the Reclaimer stands prominent in the background, towering above the mountains. Moments later, a Redeemer landed at the mining facility and a player emerges from the rear cargo bay carrying a box. He was heading for one of the buildings to turn in his cargo.
Conclusion
Star Citizen is making good progress! I didn't have any lag but I did have dropping FPS periodically with my meager PC setup (I still need to upgrade my MOBO & CPU) but it was very playable. There also were a dozen or more players in the same instance role playing. I didn't try out any of the missions that are available, that'll be tonight maybe. It looked like the missions can be made by players as well. I got a few notices for player pickup from other locations and help with missions.
I'll try to add some pictures later tonight as I only thought, just now, to tell my experience. I'll even see if I can get the Reclaimer guy to set his ship up for pictures so you can see what I saw.
) as a kid I could get hours of fun out of a cardboard box. I see that CIG have now taken this to heart, and have written a 'carrying boxes around' simulator. Because carrying boxes around is obviously going to be a major part of future-spaceship-geezer life...
