Star Citizen - media blowout, Chris Robert's new game

If this game wasn't rocket science, I'd give it a shot. No thanks $80.00 for a shot at rocket science!!
 
lol. You got the effective top of the line graphics card but it's only good up to what amounts to medium Res now.

Huh- I could pull medium on my old stock 1080, I'll try to remember to run benches and see what I'm getting now (and what settings, I might be in medium).

If this game wasn't rocket science, I'd give it a shot. No thanks $80.00 for a shot at rocket science!!

If you lurk here, basic access packages (starter ship) often go for $40 or less, and that gives you full access to the Alpha and the (eventual) full game.
 
The game is in pre alpha development. 95% of gamers will not like or be happy with it as is. People need to keep this in mind. Any amount you invest in the game whether its a starter pack or thousands of dollars of ships its a gamble still and you are investing for a future product or just supporting the developers. Although personally I believe they will succeed but that's just me. Do your proper research before putting money down. That's my disclaimer and advice for those thinking of getting into SC.
 
Some Hammerhead bits of info. Really excited to try this as it's the first combat-only capital ship to be released. Aside from the minimum 2 bridge crew, it will require up to 6 other people to man all its turrets.

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3.1.4 released to live with a ton of IFCS, Hoverbike Gravlev, and ESP (enchanced stick precision) improvements.

https://robertsspaceindustries.com/...r-citizen-alpha-3-1-4-live-757485-patch-notes

Sweet, will have to try and get in it before the weekend is over. I did some fun stuff on my Dragon Fly in 3.1.3 but it was hilariously difficult to get the stupid thing in my ship and back out again once we got to a point of interest to explore lol. Kept thinking it was the ground or an obstacle to avoid. Really flipped it out when I tried to get it out of the ship lol. When I parked it again hoping to let it despawn back on the pad it went nuts and teleported through the hull onto the freelancers engine. Stayed up there like a little friend or fish cleaning the bigger shark. Was able to fly a little distance with it before it went psycho and flew off into space hah. Been excited to try the changes.

The posts on Spectrum have been very iffy on the ESP stuff till the last few patches so I'm curious how it turned out.
 
They're still going to work improving it further but it's much better than 3.1.3, Oh and it's not just for joysticks it also helps mouse control as well. Try it in a ship with gimbals locked and you'll feel/see the difference
 
New Shipshape out- and Holy Hell I love the weirdness of the Vanduul Blade. Mind you- I wouldn't like to fly it - distractingly garish, but it's cool that the design is so out there. And I really love the direction that the exterior of the Vanduul ships is going toward.
 
Having issues testing most of the changes because performance is horrible for me in this one. So far not a big fan of the IFCS or ESP.

IFCS makes space feel like a plane in an atmosphere. While the drift was a bit much this is a bit much in the other way. Perhaps they could add a slider for the impact of the system so that those who did not mind a bit of manual control can drift a bit with their inertia while those who dont can burn through their fuel and blank out. Trade offs and gains to each method and more realistic as people can dial in their ships to their liking.

ESP I really have not had much time with due to performance and a complete lack of missions for fighting over the 2 hours I've played. I did find some random pirates and it felt like a heavy drag on a tripod or someone pushing back against my aiming to make it more fine tuned up to the point I get lined up at which point they stop holding me back and it jumps off target. Combine that with the ship being so ridiculously jittery now that I cannot get lined up very well. AI seems to be like 2.3 / 2.4 where they are on rails and flying in their own physics plane. I'd turn it off but I really want to play with it and better test it. Not sure how much of my angst is due to ESP or the jitters and lag outs or 15 FPS.

The rocks and Asteroids seem messed up now visually, like a laser pointer where you can "see" the light dancing from the photons moving around etc. They look pixilated like that and almost liquid flowing around a bit. Distracting and wigs my eyes out in mass. Once the ship stops it calms down and the details return.

Hovering is a blast now though. Good job on 'most' of the fixes here. The bikes angle of attack needs to better reflect the terrain plane that it is on. At high speeds the system is not scanning far enough ahead in order to adjust and due to performance it is hard to manually get it done in time. BUT it feels like its hovering now and is a lot of fun. Transitioning from HOV to SCM and back is so much smoother now. Loved flying around the little I got before random explosion and performance killed it.

I'll give it a few more runs but if its the same I'll check out till 3.2 next month IIRC.
 
Gonna give it a go on live in a few minutes. I do my bulk of testing/playing during evocati/PTU periods before release which means servers have a lot less players and thus much better performance.

Object Container Streaming can't come soon enough.
 
Object Container Streaming can't come soon enough.

Definitely, same with the server meshing.

I was trying to do a live stream on Friday but it was lagging out so bad it kept killing and restarting the stream as the game locked up. Started quickly with 10+ viewers in a few minutes then promptly 0. Ended up recreating it all on Saturday to upload so the file is unified vs cut up missing commentary lol.

Similar to other patches some hardware mixes just dont seem to do well and in this one I am eating it for now. I'm sure the'll do some tweaks but 3.2 is not far off.
 
I have to say, that's pretty badass looking.

I agree. Having trouble seeing from the perspectives in the pics. Do those rear-turrets clear the front ones well enough? I could see some accidental front-turret destruction. :D

I mean, you'd still want to be able to shoot forward if you did lose a front turret. Just curious about the mechanics of that. I think most gunners would be fine, but I'd hate for someone to man that in an emergency and damage an expensive ship.
 
I'd hope there are firing cutouts to prevent self strike- that's current technology, and not hard to figure out.
 
I'd hope there are firing cutouts to prevent self strike- that's current technology, and not hard to figure out.

I'm sure they'd have thought of that. I just haven't played anything post 2.x and only in my 315, so I have no experience with multi-crew-member ships, or turrets in general. Was purely curious based on the visual perspective above.
 
I'm sure they'd have thought of that. I just haven't played anything post 2.x and only in my 315, so I have no experience with multi-crew-member ships, or turrets in general. Was purely curious based on the visual perspective above.

The way it will work is the turret's targeting computer simply won't let the guns fire when you aim it directly at some part of the ship or another turret. The system is already in place for other ships with turrets like the Cutlass, Constellation, Vanguard etc.

In the concept images with all turrets firing forward, the rear turrets are nearly hitting the front turrets. Is the Hammerhead not intended to fire all turrets forward? What are the intended firing arcs and convergence?

The Hammerhead is intended to hold a position with full 360 turret coverage on all angles, rather than be able to point them all in one direction. There are systems in place to prevent the turrets from hitting the ship so whilst they can fire all forwards, it isn’t an optimal solution. Recall that one of the Hammerhead’s chief duties is protecting other ships from attack by fighters and small bombers; the Hammerhead is not a dogfighter, it’s too large and too heavily armed for that. It’s designed to provide, not firepower in one direction, but flexible, massed firepower in any direction while adapting to the flow of combat threats around the ships it’s escorting. And when it’s not escorting anything, the Hammerhead is designed not to be safe to approach from almost any angle.
 
The way it will work is the turret's targeting computer simply won't let the guns fire when you aim it directly at some part of the ship or another turret. The system is already in place for other ships with turrets like the Cutlass, Constellation, Vanguard etc.

Nice! I figured something would be in place for that, but you never know. :D
 
I figure if and/or when this game eventually comes out it will be either the biggest thing in years or a colossal flop. Only have the $35.00 invested from the start in it so i'm good either way. (Hoping for the best though)
 
I agree. Having trouble seeing from the perspectives in the pics. Do those rear-turrets clear the front ones well enough? I could see some accidental front-turret destruction. :D

I mean, you'd still want to be able to shoot forward if you did lose a front turret. Just curious about the mechanics of that. I think most gunners would be fine, but I'd hate for someone to man that in an emergency and damage an expensive ship.

Other people have covered the in game logistics of it well enough but looking at the model, the rear most side mounted turrets will barely clear the forward mounted ones in a straight forward firing arc. Star Citizen has some cool looking ships and some not so cool looking ones. The Hammerhead is one of the coolest ships I've seen in science fiction period. I'm a huge fan of the look. I'd probably purchase it, even at the retarded price it goes for if I was 100% certain this game would see the light of day and that I'd enjoy it. I've spent thousands of dollars in hardware and software for playing games, so I can justify the retarded price if this was a game and a ship I'd be able to use for years to come. That is if I knew for certain I'd want to sink 100's or thousands of hours into the game.

Because I can't be certain, all I can do is drool on my keyboard for now.
 
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Other people have covered the in game logistics of it well enough but looking at the model, the rear most side mounted turrets will barely clear the forward mounted ones in a straight forward firing arc. Star Citizen has some cool looking ships and some not so cool looking ones.

I dont remember where but I read somewhere they intended the ship to rain hell down from above so maybe surface and outpost assaults as well as coming over a battle between capital ships and just go nuts on them. A trade off decision for the awesome and brutal ship having to expose itself a bit to maximize firepower if it wants all weapons on one target at once.
 
In a way I understand the pack of this size and expense. Consider that prior to this the Wing Commander (10,000) and Completionist (15,000) packs offered what many felt was far less for the money as time went on; them not having the newest ships, or the particular ship a backer wanted, copies of those not wanted etc. This prompted many who owned similar packages to ask to trade in certain ships and have them swapped out by CS for others, which is okay, but I understand them wanting to "modernize with a pack that offers everything. The $27,000 price seems to at least be in the ballpark of what it would take to buy every single ship and variant available in the game, including those restricted or limited sale items (like the capital ships shown in that picture)

However, I do think that earlier Completionist (perhaps Wing Commmander) packs should be upgraded to something like this - after all, Completionist should have been truly accurate. Earlier buyers thereof would maybe eventually get a better value after a certain point, but someone who put 10,000+ into the project earlier on is deserving of getting a better deal; there's little gray-market worry as well, as I'm pretty sure the ships in these sorts of packages cannot be gifted or otherwise sent individually.


However, I have to admit I - despite being a very strong backer of the game and in general CIG's policies prior to 2018 - am a bit concerned with decisions they've made recently that seem to be focusing way too much on monetization using less player-friendly policies. I'm concerned that the expansion of CIG as a company have put some people into middle management who have brought with them the same poisonous and exploitative tactics that are present in the rest of the industry. Worse, its clear from Star Citizen's funding success in 2017 and prior that they don't need these practices to make money! For my part, I've long said that CIG's refreshingly open-handed practices (ie just about every ship and widget will be available with in-game funds, easy pledge/ship upgrades and melting for store credit, lots more ..) that compelled me to contribute as much as I have, wanting to encourage not just the technical "virtual world of unprecedented depth" aspect but also a healthful monetization system. I know that many older backers are similarly frustrated with how things have evolved recently.

Since 2018 it is the first time I've seen CIG implement some worrisome policies and have been writing a letter to the upper management with some of my concerns; I don't know if anything will come of it, but I encourage any other backers - especially long term/early backers, subscribers, and VIP/Concierge - to do the same.
 
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In a way I understand the pack of this size and expense. Consider that prior to this the Wing Commander (10,000) and Completionist (15,000) packs offered what many felt was far less for the money as time went on; them not having the newest ships, or the particular ship a backer wanted, copies of those not wanted etc. This prompted many who owned similar packages to ask to trade in certain ships and have them swapped out by CS for others, which is okay, but I understand them wanting to "modernize with a pack that offers everything. The $27,000 price seems to at least be in the ballpark of what it would take to buy every single ship and variant available in the game, including those restricted or limited sale items (like the capital ships shown in that picture)

Consider this, though: if I buy GTA V for $60, I'm buying all of virtual Los Angeles and every car, motorcycle, airplane and helicopter contained therein for $60. Or if I buy BF4, I get unlimited supplies of tanks, attack helicopters, jets and various other military hardware from multiple armies for $60.
 
Consider this, though: if I buy GTA V for $60, I'm buying all of virtual Los Angeles and every car, motorcycle, airplane and helicopter contained therein for $60. Or if I buy BF4, I get unlimited supplies of tanks, attack helicopters, jets and various other military hardware from multiple armies for $60.

In Star Citizen too, all you need is a copy of the game key for the public universe (and/or the one for Squadron 42 if you want it as well) and you have access to all of these ships and other content. Paying such a huge amount of money is to have them all available to you immediately, without having to procure in-game resources to do so and use said resources to buy them instead.

However, it is worth mentioning there is a major difference between a MMO with a virtual world economy and a single player or short-term/match multiplayer experience. GTAV actually makes a fantastic example here. Play GTAV single player and yes, you get all of the content for your $60. However, GTA Online mode has been constantly critiqued about the amount of grinding and real money transactions (ie Shark cards) to have access to those goodies - cars, housing, apparel, weapons that people want etc... in the MMO virtual world side of things. Items are valued differently, no matter how they are acquired - this isn't limited exclusively to real money either, as the economics of a MMO come into play at varying levels from say... how often boss monsters spawn and the drop rates of gear, as to control how much powerful gear ends up in the world as well as things like money sinks required to take game currency out of it to prevent inflation.
 
How many ships that are being sold are actually playable? How many are permanently purchasable with in game money?

For fucks sake, CIG still hasn't released ships they have been selling for years.
 
How many ships that are being sold are actually playable? How many are permanently purchasable with in game money?

For fucks sake, CIG still hasn't released ships they have been selling for years.

Some of them are actually in the game. Although, I'm not sure how many are vs. how many have been sold.
 
Last I heard number wise it's a bit over 50 in game, but I think that's counting variants. I just hope 3.2 is quick- this last patch made the game unstable when I hit the network.
 
GTAV actually makes a fantastic example here. Play GTAV single player and yes, you get all of the content for your $60. However, GTA Online mode has been constantly critiqued about the amount of grinding and real money transactions (ie Shark cards) to have access to those goodies
You'll need to spend a couple hundred bucks to unlock all the online stuff immediately, vs. this Legatus pack that you'll need to spend a thousand bucks just to unlock the opportunity to purchase. Maybe not the best example.
 
Jump Point issue 06.05

reddit.com/r/RSIsubscriber/comments/8n2u65/jumppoint_issue_65_may_2018/

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