The Star Citizen Thread v 4

[Hydrino]

Quantum Travel

A quantum is the minimum amount of anything you can have.

I find it weird that SC uses the word Quantum for their super-fast travel.

FTL travel fantasy is usually allowed by very macro-scale things like enough mass/energy to contract space to shorten the distance between two points on a massive scale, or a strange 'worm-hole' connection between two points on a hologram that require similar mass like a black hole.

Or am I missing something CIG put out on this topic?

This observation is meaningless, of course, because it's a game. But for some reason makes me scratch my head.

 

[Backer42]

These two missions were pretty fun in their own right and show a bit more gameplay than most people assume exits, since most of the press involves just the hangar and the barren 'social module' (planetside). For those willing to poke around in Crusader, though, there is at least a smidgen of engaging gameplay to be had even now.

You just played content, which is by now half a year old. I did those "missions" last year when 2.0 got released. It's "engaging gameplay" which is good for five to fifteen minutes. Until you notice the AI is broken and the "rescue mission" is pointless.

So where is the additional content? Beside some new P2W-JPEGs and a "bounty system", which can be tricked by resetting you local PC clock.

I was surprised by the expression, ,"minimum viable product", being articulated. Now, it might be a throw away comment of the kind you use when speaking off the cuff and rambling. It's the kind of phrase you might use internally, but not one you would normally make in public because it is open to interpretation. Whilst I understand not everything will be in the pu at launch, that is obvious; using the term minimum sounds like you are working to the smallest feature set you think you need to deliver. Who knows what was meant, but I am going to make a prediction we will see the "release" of the pu this year.

CR spilled the beans. That is indeed the term they use internally for sure.

We hope to get Sq42 out this year

Not going to happen.

Let's face it: Someone can lie to the press that he has already a year of development done and is going to release in two years and make that believable. This is what happened during the Kickstarter. But you can't tell someone your release is less than 8 months away with exactly nothing to show. Nobody who has any clue about game development is going to believe something ridiculous like that.

At the most CIG will release another Hangar module or tutorial mission in Dec 2016 and declare that "Squadron 42 commercial release". If the money doesn't run out before that.

Minimum viable product
You know he's just teeing up for worse news. If he says something might be bad that means it's definitely bad - if he says something might not happen it's almost certain to not happen.

CIG basically "released commercially" in Nov/Dec 2015 with "Star Citizen Alpha 2.0". This is the minimum viable product, justifying denying refunds. That is the $100 million end product of a four years development cycle.

This is the news not everyone has digested yet, because most of them are is still in the denial, anger or bargaining phase of the give stages of grief.

So if ED is 'mile wide and an inch deep' the Star Citizen 'minimum viable product' will be an 'inch wide and a inch deep' . $112 million later, maybe now people here might cut Frontier a little more slack and time to get things right.
They have got a hell of a lot more game for a hell of a lot less money.

I say this as and Original backer of Star Citizen who backed to the tune of $1000's expecting a 2014 release, in that period pretty much everything that was promised turned out to be a lie from putting in zero-order mouse controls to reselling limited ships to reselling Lifetime insurance. CIG are literally the most shameless crowd of articles I have ever come across, they make EA and Ubisoft look like saints.

I've learned something about publishers and what is good about them.

Still no TrackIR support?

Anyone got any idea when this will be back?

Delayed indefinitely, means for all practical reasons: Never.

Funnily enough, there is still the a prominent screenshot on http://naturalpoint.com/trackir/ which looks like plain false advertising now. Someone should tell them.

 

[Aleksej]

Star Citizen now aims to clone ED. There is no doubt that as the stretch goals piled up and more 10ftC answers and CR realize you cannot make a huge space game the way he wants without Procedural Generation, instancing players means a shared Background Sim but only small groups in the same instance so certain game mechanics can be "manipulated" and things like a space station blockade are just factually impossible to enforce outside of any given instance.

The last 10ftC CR announced the minimum viable product strategy, which is what Frontier used with Elite. Do the core game so it functions, get it out the door, then start iterating immediately. What that means yet is anyone's guess but I'm thinking SC will have a nice vertical slice group that is very let down at the launch of 1.0 just like ED had and ED made very few hard promises about features and always mentioned some things like planetary landings as post release paid expansions.

FD are not sitting still. They will have landing on planets with atmosphere and walking around as well, and those were always part of the plans for post 1.0. Question is will Star Citizen be more or less complete than ED when SC says they are at 1.0 and how long will that take?

Your question is good and I've posted the thought multiple times. What does anyone think CIG will do differently in the game, so different from ED, that they can continually fund? SC is an instanced massively multi-player game where players can join up in small groups but everyone shares the same background sim. Elite was there first and has been at it over a year. Missions for a million players in such a game, how can CIG make a single-player experience in this "MMO"? I think ultimately someone will make it feel kind of like a single-player game but it will take years to perfect, imho. FD have been working on missions over several iterations to enable 2.1. FD are not sitting still, they will eventually have walking around and NPC mission givers we can meet. But then, I can already see having to walk everywhere in Star Citizen is just a huge time drag. It's why MMO and big games like Skyrim have some sort of "fast travel".

We are yet to see what FD is going to implement with the missions, I really hope that this time they manage to come with something really interesting. As for now the missions were reworked multiple times already, however, unfortunately, it is really hard to make them more boring that what we have now.

As for PG in SC, it was a $41M stretch goal that was achieved 1/04/2014, i.e. two years ago. So I would not say that PG implementation is something new.

Due to the nature of it is really hard to compare ED in SC in terms of "minimal viable product strategy". SC is going to be released with FPS, planetary landings (probably) and a lot of other things. So it is not that obvious.

SC is different as it is not going to separate the players into Solo/Private/Open. It is going to be the Open for everyone. This also means that they need to have a perfect bounty system already at launch that will limit the griefing, and will actually punish for committing crimes in the high security areas.

 

[Monk]

Yeah it's possible, but also risky due to the current map having a distance limit and QDrive requiring time to speed up and speed down.

You might be interested to know that QDrive is getting a full rework right now (mentioned in monthly report). They're adding a skill-based layer to it, so people who know what they're doing can jump faster than others.

Also, F42 Germany has been working on interdiction mechanics since December, so you can force people out of QDrive similar to ED.

That is interesting...looking forward to what they come up with

A quantum is the minimum amount of anything you can have.

I find it weird that SC uses the word Quantum for their super-fast travel.

FTL travel fantasy is usually allowed by very macro-scale things like enough mass/energy to contract space to shorten the distance between two points on a massive scale, or a strange 'worm-hole' connection between two points on a hologram that require similar mass like a black hole.

Or am I missing something CIG put out on this topic?

This observation is meaningless, of course, because it's a game. But for some reason makes me scratch my head.

Having been someone who has done physics experiments using a live neutron beam streaming off an active fission reactor, I've always taken issue with this name. I'm guessing it means that some science regarding Quantum Mechanics is involved, but I can't seem to make the connection to actual travel. Perhaps through manipulations of quantum states and energies they are suggesting they can expose a higher order dimension which provides fast travel over long distances. Like, imagine all you see is a long, straight path. It will take x amount of energy to get to the other end. However, add another dimension and now you see the long line is really on a steep slope. Exposing a viable path that requires very little energy input to go at ludicrous speed to the other end....anyway, I digress....I think Quantum Travel just sounds cool, and that is why it is named that.

 

[Aleksej]

You just played content, which is by now half a year old. I did those "missions" last year when 2.0 got released. It's "engaging gameplay" which is good for five to fifteen minutes. Until you notice the AI is broken and the "rescue mission" is pointless.

So where is the additional content? Beside some new P2W-JPEGs and a "bounty system", which can be tricked by resetting you local PC clock.

And I still find these missions much more interesting than what is offered in ED.

I think you are missing the addition of persistence element that is due to be implemented in 2.4

Not going to happen.

Let's face it: Someone can lie to the press that he has already a year of development done and is going to release in two years and make that believable. This is what happened during the Kickstarter. But you can't tell someone your release is less than 8 months away with exactly nothing to show. Nobody who has any clue about game development is going to believe something ridiculous like that.

At the most CIG will release another Hangar module or tutorial mission in Dec 2016 and declare that "Squadron 42 commercial release". If the money doesn't run out before that.

This will be known for sure only 31.12.2016 at 23:59:59. Well, definitely earlier but still.

Delayed indefinitely, means for all practical reasons: Never.

Funnily enough, there is still the a prominent screenshot on http://naturalpoint.com/trackir/ which looks like plain false advertising now. Someone should tell them.

No one said that it is delayed. It was stated that it will be implemented.

 

[Rolan]

A quantum is the minimum amount of anything you can have.

I find it weird that SC uses the word Quantum for their super-fast travel.

FTL travel fantasy is usually allowed by very macro-scale things like enough mass/energy to contract space to shorten the distance between two points on a massive scale, or a strange 'worm-hole' connection between two points on a hologram that require similar mass like a black hole.

Or am I missing something CIG put out on this topic?

This observation is meaningless, of course, because it's a game. But for some reason makes me scratch my head.

Having been someone who has done physics experiments using a live neutron beam streaming off an active fission reactor, I've always taken issue with this name. I'm guessing it means that some science regarding Quantum Mechanics is involved, but I can't seem to make the connection to actual travel. Perhaps through manipulations of quantum states and energies they are suggesting they can expose a higher order dimension which provides fast travel over long distances. Like, imagine all you see is a long, straight path. It will take x amount of energy to get to the other end. However, add another dimension and now you see the long line is really on a steep slope. Exposing a viable path that requires very little energy input to go at ludicrous speed to the other end....anyway, I digress....I think Quantum Travel just sounds cool, and that is why it is named that.

Right now in the wiki there only this info about the engine:

The Quantum Drive Engine is a starship engine created by Dr. Scott Childress and his team at RSI on May 3rd, 2075. When first used, it allowed travel at 1/100th the speed of light,reached 1/10th the speed of light in 2214, and has now advanced to allowing 1/5th the speed of light (0.2C).

Source
It should be updated(more info about it) this year imo.

 

[Skizomeuh]

SC is different as it is not going to separate the players into Solo/Private/Open. It is going to be the Open for everyone. This also means that they need to have a perfect bounty system already at launch that will limit the griefing, and will actually punish for committing crimes in the high security areas.

I remember they plan a PVP/PVE slider? Doesn't it look like a way to separate players? Note: it's not a bad thing, just to consider it's not "open for everyone" as in Eve.

Bounty system, anti-griefing... So much things yet to be created.

 

[bitstorm]

The last 10ftC CR announced the minimum viable product strategy, which is what Frontier used with Elite. Do the core game so it functions, get it out the door, then start iterating immediately. What that means yet is anyone's guess

What <someone> hinted at earlier is worth bearing in mind here.

With ED, when their MVP was released ED became revenue generating, in that all development from there was via paid expansions.

Not so with SC, if their MVP is indeed an MVP, well they still have all their stretch goals to sort. Their stretch goals covering every thing they could possibly think up at the time to keep the money coming in.

I mean arguably revenue from your typical player in SC is $40? With ED, it's base plus expansions.

Kinda interesting when you contrast the two, yes on the face of it SC has all the cash but they also have to deliver everything. Not so with ED.

 

[Aleksej]

I remember they plan a PVP/PVE slider? Doesn't it look like a way to separate players? Note: it's not a bad thing, just to consider it's not "open for everyone" as in Eve.

Bounty system, anti-griefing... So much things yet to be created.

Yeah, I remember of PvP slider. However, I have actually no idea of how they are going to implement it. So I would not be surprised if it is actually not implemented. But as I have stated an almost perfect bounty system is required for that.

 

[303i]

-snip-

*sigh*

You understand that your entire post is essentially conjecture, right? You make some rather serious assumptions that are outside the bounds of normal reasoning.

CIG basically "released commercially" in Nov/Dec 2015 with "Star Citizen Alpha 2.0". This is the minimum viable product, justifying denying refunds. That is the $100 million end product of a four years development cycle.

This is the news not everyone has digested yet, because most of them are is still in the denial, anger or bargaining phase of the give stages of grief.

Yeah no. The only person saying this is you and it has no basis in reality.

If CIG cut back development and announced the game was released, then sure, you'd be right. But we're still getting alpha releases, major features are still in development, and CIG has not announced an official release yet. The "minimum viable product" is still quite a long way out, and entirely rests on Chris's judgement.

 

[Hydrino]

You also are saying that it is not 100% seamless in ED, this is exactly the what I said it. And I also said that we are yet to see how it is actually implemented in SC, i.e. the demo is one thing, however, the actual realisation might be a different story. So what exactly, did I say wrong?

I did not say that it is 100% realistic. But they are trying to add some realism into them. E.g. if the ship is relatively flat, the thrusters are mostly fixed and positioned more along the vertical axis. And having different pitch/roll/yaw dynamics that differ from ship to ship actually makes it more interesting.

And also we do not need one game copying the other one. It is way better if they are different. In addition to that, I can only say that my friends share the similar idea regarding the flight model to the one that I have. The improvements are significant compared to the FM that was in SC before, and it is much more enjoyable. So it is a matter of personal taste. I like the FM that we have in ED, I like the FM that is now in SC.

ED is not perfect as well, there are a lot of things to improve.

ED has truly seamless space to planet and back travel. All you have to do is stay out of SuperCruise. There are a couple of YouTube videos showing this already. I did it in Beta before they locked out planets and of course there were no surface details back then.

SuperCruise is fully seamless as far as the planet approach is concerned, it must function identically to non-SC travel or else you are saying FD wrote special graphics display and object instancing code for SC. No, the SC being "non seamless" is just a delay due to the servers and P2P comms trying to instance with other players. This difference can be seen by playing solo versus open. Performance varies between players and sessions. Sometimes I drop from SC approaching planets in 2 seconds and other times it is 15 seconds, this has zero to do with seamless graphical approach and everything to do with just waiting on peering comms.

I agree ED has a lot to improve. And SC has a long way to go to get to where ED will be in a few short weeks. And of course we all know by now that CR goal is to fully copy ED but just have different graphics, flight model and try to do a few things better and maybe sooner (like FPS actions). But then SC has 3x the staff (and more with sourcing, Illfonic, etc.), and 3x the budget that FD have put into Elite, so catching up is possible.

 

[303i]

Yeah, I remember of PvP slider. However, I have actually no idea of how they are going to implement it. So I would not be surprised if it is actually not implemented. But as I have stated an almost perfect bounty system is required for that.

It's more or less a preference slider. Choosing PvE will increase the likelyhood of being put into a zone with lots of AI, but doesn't eliminate the risk of you being matched with players. The same for vice-versa.

 

[Asp Explorer]

I think it's inevitable that CR will issue Vision 3.0 and announce all the things that weren't high fidelity enough to meet his new vision will have to be redone. Basic stuff like networking, the script, acting, mo-cap, the fight model, the Vanduul, the coffee machines.

 

[Aleksej]

ED has truly seamless space to planet and back travel. All you have to do is stay out of SuperCruise. There are a couple of YouTube videos showing this already. I did it in Beta before they locked out planets and of course there were no surface details back then.

SuperCruise is fully seamless as far as the planet approach is concerned, it must function identically to non-SC travel or else you are saying FD wrote special graphics display and object instancing code for SC. No, the SC being "non seamless" is just a delay due to the servers and P2P comms trying to instance with other players. This difference can be seen by playing solo versus open. Performance varies between players and sessions. Sometimes I drop from SC approaching planets in 2 seconds and other times it is 15 seconds, this has zero to do with seamless graphical approach and everything to do with just waiting on peering comms.

I agree ED has a lot to improve. And SC has a long way to go to get to where ED will be in a few short weeks. And of course we all know by now that CR goal is to fully copy ED but just have different graphics, flight model and try to do a few things better and maybe sooner (like FPS actions). But then SC has 3x the staff (and more with sourcing, Illfonic, etc.), and 3x the budget that FD have put into Elite, so catching up is possible.

The plans for both games were very similar from the very beginning as such I would not say that SC is copying ED.

 

[Hydrino]

Yeah, I remember of PvP slider. However, I have actually no idea of how they are going to implement it. So I would not be surprised if it is actually not implemented. But as I have stated an almost perfect bounty system is required for that.

PvP slider = different modes and not all open. Will PvP slider=off mean you play in same instance as PvP players but they cannot harm you?

 

[Backer42]

And I still find these missions much more interesting than what is offered in ED.

I put over 30 hours into ED Horizons just with a Stock Sidewinder upgraded here and there and I've hardly done any of those generic missions. You really think these to two barebone "missions" are more than that?

This will be known for sure only 31.12.2016 at 23:59:59. Well, definitely earlier but still.

I can say for sure, that there is no real Squadron 42 game in 2016. Present tense. We are already far enough into the year, that the few months left aren't relevant anymore.

Remember when Star Marine was just two weeks away?

It was stated that it will be implemented.

Ladies and Gentlemen, this is Star Citizen condensed into a single sentence:

It was stated that it will be implemented.

BTW: What do you think of CIG's new $15 "dispute fee"?

 

[ianw]

PvP slider = different modes and not all open. Will PvP slider=off mean you play in same instance as PvP players but they cannot harm you?

GTA invisimode?

Joking apart - the PVP slider - if it happens - will have to end up segregating people in the same area in some way.

 

[Hydrino]

The plans for both games were very similar from the very beginning as such I would not say that SC is copying ED.

The radar, the self/target holograms are straight from ED.

SC scope was originally a short single-player optional intro to the game universe which would be a relatively small number of hand-crafted star systems with hand-crafted missions doable with $23 MUSD and with hopes to expand and build upon that later. That blew up rapidly but that was the original scope.

Yes ProcGen was a stretch goal, meaning it was not a goal at the start, not really a consideration. With ED ProcGen has always been essential.

Seamless, free-flight planet landings on procedurally generated worlds were not the goal for SC at the start. Small landing zone with AI guided landing "cinematic" was the plan, and the "city" is a small CryEngine level map. This is now changed is it not?

Was QT an original concept, or just POI hopping? Was 64-bit playspace an original concept or decision after the money flowed like water?

 

[303i]

And of course we all know by now that CR goal is to fully copy ED but just have different graphics, flight model and try to do a few things better and maybe sooner (like FPS actions).

Please don't tell me your serious. Literally every single thing about SC is implemented or built differently from ED.

From the top my head to do with ships:
- Design
- Damage modelling
- IFCS simulation
- Flight model
- Component system
- HUDs
- Flight modes
- QDrive
- Jump points
- Overclocking


^ Every item there is different to Elite, just on the ships alone. Design documents between the games are completely unique, items such as mining, cargo and repair have been, or are planned to be wildly different. Exploration features are unique. SC's science, medical, passenger and EWAR systems have nothing in common with anything planned for Elite.

If you're just comparing core technology like Procedural Generation, you might as well say No Mans Sky and Infinity: Battlescape are cloning Elite too.

 

[Hydrino]

*sigh*

You understand that your entire post is essentially conjecture, right? You make some rather serious assumptions that are outside the bounds of normal reasoning.

Yeah no. The only person saying this is you and it has no basis in reality.

If CIG cut back development and announced the game was released, then sure, you'd be right. But we're still getting alpha releases, major features are still in development, and CIG has not announced an official release yet. The "minimum viable product" is still quite a long way out, and entirely rests on Chris's judgement.

Can you define "a long way out"?

Is it before TOS 1.1 or 1.2 run out?

How do you think CIG announcing they will give financial accountability if they cannot release by X months after stated target date (to gain confidence of backers to invest), figures in with your "long way out" MVP 1.0 delivery?