The Star Citizen Thread V2.0

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Linwig

L
Had another go last night but this time tried a few console commands to tweak the visuals (ditch that motion blur at all costs). My old faithful 1gb 5850 card is really sweating at 1080p, get an average of just under 30 fps at most, so dropped the resolution down to 1440x900 and it is now running at 40+ fps in combat. I always prefer a smooth framerate over eye candy, so although it's a little ugly it now runs nicely.

My choice of control system at the moment is mouse/keyboard (locking the cursor with CTRL+F). Starting to get used to switching the flight modes for turns, and gentle movements when aiming at an enemy. Lateral and vertical thrust seems to be working pretty nice for dodging the enemies fire, but you have to be de-coupled for this. Grrrr.

Made it to wave 10 on third proper go in the Aurora, will try and get a bit further on the next effort. Should be a bit easier when they get the LN variant working. ;) After the initial head scratching of the flight model, it is growing on me. I am confident the Devs will take time to address a lot of the issues people have been patiently posting, good luck to CIG with a few tweaks I am sure it will be great.

Though not the greatest :D
 

Mazhurg

Mazhurg
Having played some more with the AC and HOTAS, I've come to the following conclusions:

There need to be some external indication of speed/vector - not necessarily space bunnies (dust) but perhaps something like an animated watermark on the HUD.

While the flight model feels laggy in response to JOY inputs, I think it has to do with thrusters ramp-up/down delays and leads to over corrections.

Leading input controls stops tends to increase the accuracy of the moves, but is very difficult to achieve as the thrusts acceleration curve up to infinite very quickly (but limited in maximum velocity)

In addition, DeltaV values on thrust power appears way out of proportion with the mass of the vessel which amplify the over corrections. It feels akin to have a Jet engine with afterburners attached to a WV bug.

Last, on the HOTAS side, using Voice Attack to control the flight modes and directional thrusters help a lot in controlling this beast - leading up to a sore need to be able to map controls to the HOTAS of choices, which I very much suspect they will do.

It still feel arcady though and probably will until they address the perceived speed velocity and mass/acceleration curves.
 

Bains

Banned
B
As a joystick user, and assuming your interest is the PU, none of this really matters.

Zero order mouse control will mean there will no parity for joystick users. It will always be mouse or die regardless of any they come out with to the contrary.

Basically it means unless they reverse course on this, SC will have been nothing short of a complete waste of money, time and interest.

Apologies if this sounds negative and a bit 'heavy', but assuming you are a joystick user with an focus on multiplayer, this is just stating the plain facts. If you've ever played war thunder arcade mode you'll know what I mean.
 
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Mazhurg

Mazhurg
Bains said:
As a joystick user, and assuming your interest is the PU, none of this really matters.

Unless they reverse course on zero order mouse control there will no parity for joystick users, regardless of any they come out with to the contrary.

Basically it means SC has been nothing short of a complete waste of money, time and interest.

Apologies if this sounds negative and a bit 'heavy', but assuming you are a joystick user with an focus on multiplayer, this is just stating the plain facts.
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Actually, the more I hear from RSI on the mechanics of the PU, the less enthused I am becoming by it. It almost appears as if - pushed by the 'majority' - they want to create an Eve like environment (minus the point and click scripts) in game play, and after almost 7 years of Eve I have no interest whatsoever in reliving this.

Still hoping that SQ42 at least harkens back to WC(2-3).
 

Bains

Banned
B
Mazhurg said:
Actually, the more I hear from RSI on the mechanics of the PU, the less enthused I am becoming by it. It almost appears as if - pushed by the 'majority' - they want to create an Eve like environment (minus the point and click scripts) in game play, and after almost 7 years of Eve I have no interest whatsoever in reliving this.

Still hoping that SQ42 at least harkens back to WC(2-3).
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S42 being essential one player wont be an issue. What zero order mouse control will do is kill the PU for joystick users like me. Unfortunately S42 was never really my focus given at the end of the day it was only ever going be an experience you play through once or so and thats it.

EDIT

BTW the PU will never be an eve like environment, the mainstream that make up the new majority of the SC community don't have the balls to spend one day in such an uncompromising environment. The whining about the horrors of EVE and griefers etc, began as soon as they began to appear and has already led to a bunch of lame concessions like PVP sliders. Regardless of what they say these sliders will let you pick flowers in the depths of mordor without any concern for PVP if you want to. Just remember that pandering to 'carebears' for want of a better term, has always been their downfall.

Of course this latest development just builds on this by allowing them to fly in their favorite way, using zero order mouse control, and on a playing field leveled to ensure their lack of skill wont matter anymore than someone else's prowess. The only real factor that will play a part is the value ship and parts.

They are in effect gearing up to replace world of war craft for a community that is growing tired of it. From what I have seen tailoring to achieve crossover appeal to the EvE community has never been their agenda.

Here's one of the key guys who'll be helping Chris 'Dollar-Sign' Roberts to achieve this:
http://massively.joystiq.com/2014/05/13/star-citizen-hires-ex-blizz-producer-mayberry/

"Alex brings invaluable experience in managing a live game while developing new content, something he did with WoW for Burning Crusade and Wrath of the Lich King. After working on those games, he ran the development efforts as lead producer of Diablo III and helped manage a game, already several years in development, across the finish line with rave reviews and acclaim. From there he followed up with the Diablo III expansion, Reaper of Souls."


By the way did you notice, how according to massively Diablo III received rave reviews and acclaim?

...and the hits just keep on coming.
 
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fourty6to3

fourty6to3
Incredible. It appears that the game mechanics will change direction according to the shifting winds of peak pledges, thus compromising the "vision" that Chris Roberts initially had. First it was WWII Dogfighting like Star Wars, and now it's whatever the "majority" wants. You never know which way CIG is going to go because they change their minds on stuff from one week to the next.

My final point, we have a powerful system that can support as much or as little realism as we choose to support. Ultimately it's going to be about what the most backers like. We will never make everyone happy, as much as we'd like to. But we definitely will try to make this game what the majority want it to be. We have the systems in place to make Arena Commander a marriage of Kerbal with World of Tanks if that's what the community wants. On the other hand, we could make it Arcade Commander, though that would have saved a lot of us a ton of time and effort.

Source
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What happened to your vision, Chris? Perhaps the $$$ signs have gotten in the way and he's heading for "greener" pastures. I remember when he was asking for money, how it was going to be a PC game. A space sim. And the big bad publishers wont get in the way. Now that it's overfunded by the hard core audience, he's going to build a game that appeals to anyone he can take a dollar from.

Chris [Smith] explained that they used to have Class 1 weapons on every ship, But you just couldn't hit anything.

The problem with fixed weapons is that you not only have to lead a target but you have to account for different vectors and directions of travel.

In a normal WWII simulator you only need to lead them one direction, ahead of where their turned.

In this game you have to not only lead them, but adjust for which direction their going in relation to your speed and direction of travel. Which without assistance is almost impossible.

With my Aurora, it takes me a good 5 seconds of sustained fire to destroy a Scythe, which I almost never get in one go with a green diamond gimbaled lock on.

Without gimbaled I wouldn't be able to make any kills with the sort of maneuvers I'm pulling in the AC. Hell without it I doubt I'd be able to hit a Scythe one out of every 10 bursts of fire, and those shields recharge fast!

The point is, they did try it with Class 1's, they tried it. Realized it wasn't fun, or didn't work, so it was changed. Gimbaled weapons weren't added for the benefit of one control over another. They were added for the benefit of all of us.

Source
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It's also embarrassing to watch the fanboys adamantly defend the current flight model when one of the developers himself says that he finds it difficult.

As I said in another post, I personally struggle with tracking and aiming with the current input response, but I find the improved system much easier to use. It's at least a step in the right direction, I'm sure.

Source
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My biggest fears are starting to come to pass. The more new backers they receive, the more "mainstream" the mechanics will be and there's nothing we space sim fans can do to stop it because they outnumber us 3 to 1; while the biggest white knights delude themselves into thinking that everything is alright because Chris is at the helm and aren't willing to offend their position to the point that they acquiesce themselves into a dumbed down space shooter.

This will be the Call of Duty of space sims. Mass Effect with War Thunder ship control.
 
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Vargur

Vargur
Well Diablo 3 wasn't bad, it just wasn't what people expected from it.
Ok well the auction house was bad.
D3 2.0 brought it back on track to be a diablo game which we knew from the past.

Aside from that, it's been 4 days (?) since AC released, are there already players playing multiplayer or not? I thought they would start off with around 250 players being let in, haven't heard anything from it since.
 

Vargur

Vargur
The gimball issue is indeed getting out of hand.
They added them because they couldn't hit anything.
Why couldn't they hit anything? because their ships are uncontrollable.
So the gimballs are really a half ***** solution to make up for the half ***** flight system.

I don't like gimballs in ED either, but atleast FD made it so there are some countermeasures to them, so i'll live with it.
 

Aleksej

Aleksej
Adept said:
Wasn't it so that "small caliber" weapons were felt to be useless if fixed (crazy ppl there), but bigger ones like the plasma blaster on the Vanduul can be fixed? There is still some hope. I'm not too thrilled at the moment though :eek:
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I am not thrilled at all as well. That's actually another feature that was sorted out by the devs as "We have tested it and it is not fun for us, so you won't find it in the game".

In addition, I think this thread needs support:
https://forums.robertsspaceindustri...understood-yaw-g-forces-and-the-human-body/p1

It is about dedicated to the fact that a person can withstand g-forces caused by yaw much worse than g-forces during pitch.
 

Aleksej

Aleksej
Vargur said:
The gimball issue is indeed getting out of hand.
They added them because they couldn't hit anything.
Why couldn't they hit anything? because their ships are uncontrollable.
So the gimballs are really a half ***** solution to make up for the half ***** flight system.

I don't like gimballs in ED either, but atleast FD made it so there are some countermeasures to them, so i'll live with it.
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Completely agree it is difficult to hit ships because controls suck. And there cannot be any other argument as they suck by a large margin. They should give us controls that allow performing maneuvers with high accuracy instead of controls where we need constantly to compensate over-steering. And primarily they need to nerf yaw!
 

Dante80

Dante80
Btw, the rage right now in the SC forums is that SC has a proper, realistic and incredibly complex flight model that has never been done before while ED is a dumbed down and run of the mill "planes in space" arcade game. :D

Which makes me wonder. Does ED simulate physics and have thrusters that actually fire, ships with mass etc or is it on rails with magic rules? Anyone care to page Mike Evans?..XD
 

Toumal

Toumal
Dante80 said:
Which makes me wonder. Does ED simulate physics and have thrusters that actually fire, ships with mass etc or is it on rails with magic rules? Anyone care to page Mike Evans?..XD
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That would be interesting to know, yes. But you know what, if I want realistic space flight physics, I play Space Engineers. THAT is fully newtonian, realistic space flight. And dogfights there play nothing like Star Citizen :p
 

Vargur

Vargur
Looks like their form over function approach to have sleek looking ships that sell combined with the ambition for realistic simulation is starting to take it's toll.
 

ianw

I
Dante80 said:
Btw, the rage right now in the SC forums is that SC has a proper, realistic and incredibly complex flight model that has never been done before while ED is a dumbed down and run of the mill "planes in space" arcade game. :D
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Which would of course actually matter and be a knockout blow were we flying *look away now immersionists* actual spaceships as opposed to playing a game on a PC on a desk :D


Dante80 said:
Which makes me wonder. Does ED simulate physics and have thrusters that actually fire, ships with mass etc or is it on rails with magic rules? Anyone care to page Mike Evans?..XD
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It would be interesting to hear the answer to that my above comment notwithstanding.
 

drakmaniso

drakmaniso
Dante80 said:
Which makes me wonder. Does ED simulate physics and have thrusters that actually fire, ships with mass etc or is it on rails with magic rules?
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I don't think the answer is so black and white. Almost all games simulate physics in some way, even Pong and Super Mario. Obviously they do it with more or less detail and accuracy, hence the "realistic" qualifier that is so important for sims enthusiasts.

The page about the Cobra Engine doesn't give any detail, but I think it's pretty safe to assume that Elite physics use some kind of rigid body simulation, because otherwise it would be pretty hard to simulate the collisions. Rigid body dynamics use mass and forces.

That means it almost certainly also use forces to move the ships (because mixing "magic rules" with this kind of simulation would be more difficult). Those forces act like virtual thrusters, and their value are increased or decreased in order to create movement.

We know that in game the displayed thrusters match the current ship action. They could be calculated from the ship movement, but at this point, why not match the displayed thrusters with the virtual forces (or, in your words, have thrusters that actually fire)? I would be surprised if that was not the case.

I've read on the SC forum that their engine goes beyond that. It not only simulates the force that thrusters apply, but also the time they need to get to full power, and, for the gimballed thrusters, to rotate. You can see this when some of the ships oscillate, or even rotate a little, when a strong yaw or pitch is applied.

But I would guess that the main difference between SC and ED is in which order the design was done. Apparently, SC designed the ships and their thrusters placement first, without having any kind of gameplay in place. I would guess that FD went the other way, and that the thrusters placement on our ships was choosen and modeled after the design and implementation of the underlying forces. But only a dev could confirm that (and I seriously doubt any of them read this cut-throat of a thread! :D).
 

[VR] Mad Mike

[VR] Mad Mike
Linwig said:
Made it to wave 10 on third proper go in the Aurora, will try and get a bit further on the next effort. Should be a bit easier when they get the LN variant working. ;) After the initial head scratching of the flight model, it is growing on me. I am confident the Devs will take time to address a lot of the issues people have been patiently posting, good luck to CIG with a few tweaks I am sure it will be great.

Though not the greatest :D
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Pretty much my thoughts. The controls which work for me however are the Xbox pad.

I can't eject at the moment which is a pain ( no right alt on my keyboard). I can float with no engines for minutes before I am finished off.
 
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