Star Citizen: Death of a Space Thread?

The Something Awful Forums > Archives > Comedy Goldmine > The Goodmine > Star Citizen: Death of a Space Thread?

Cyberpunkey Monkey: Jun 23, 2003; by Nyc_Tattoo

SoftNum posted:

No see galaxy-brain is telling them they are being blocked. The actual blocking is basically unimportant as long as they know you did it! You sure showed them!

Don't forget to accidentally respond to them 2 weeks later.

Here on SA it serves more like a little reminder that I'm about to read an extra lovely post, and I have to put out the tiniest amount of effort each time, so I'm slightly less likely to actually touch the poop and egg them on more.

# ? Oct 15, 2018 02:36

Adbot: ADBOT LOVES YOU

# ? May 16, 2024 22:58

no_recall: Aug 17, 2015; Lipstick Apathy

Neltharak posted:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oGoNVWzgsBI

Pro click of the day.

Holy poo poo, "Raise the pledge! Numa numa yey!"

:laffo:

# ? Oct 15, 2018 02:42

colonelwest: Jun 30, 2018

Sarsapariller posted:

Sure.

1- This is your ship shield and damage indicator. It is displayed on a monitor in your cockpit. If you have time in battle you can hit F, mouse over it, and hit those little pie chart slices to direct shield power to different parts. I don't know if that works, it probably doesn't. The damage part flashes to show which parts of your ship are hit, or still exist. Note that my cockpit has not been damaged- it literally always looks like the front has fallen off. The two little graphs EM and IR on the side are supposed to indicate your ship's current heat and electromagnetic signatures. I guess higher is worse, because targeting? But there's no way to lower or manage them, and missiles don't work anyway, so gently caress it.

2- This is the same information as 1, but it is displayed on the inside of your helmet. There is no way to turn off this second display. It makes both 1 and 2 completely unreadable in combat.

3- None of these actually do anything. The first one is showing weapons, I think, but none of that information matters. I think you can turn them "Off" but why the gently caress would you ever do that. The second is the "Comms" display which may, some day, actually show people's faces. Right now it just constantly lights up like people are calling you but nothing ever displays and you don't hear anything. The third panel up here is another pointless set of graphs about thermal and heat signatures.

4/5- Similar to 1/2, except this time the display is for the enemy ship. The only useful part of this is the shield facing strength, which is displayed in a 3d format so it's basically impossible to loving read even if there weren't two of the same displays cluttering each other up. The graphs are for the enemy heat/electromagnetic signatures, which are useless.

6- This is your power distribution settings, and also 3 more graphs for your heat and electro signatures. Those things must be real goddamn important because they are on literally every display on the loving screen. Anyway the power triangle lets you distribute ship power to your various systems. I've tried it, it moves around but as far as I can tell doesn't do anything. The guns still overheat at the same speed, the shields still drop just as fast. I don't know. The usage/required poo poo at the top seems to be some kind of "Power output" management system, and you can slide those gauges around, but they also do nothing that I can determine.

7- Here's another visual indicator of your shields along with a bunch more useless garbage sliders that don't do anything.

8- Here's where the game constantly, constantly spams you with tooltips. Right now I'm fighting for my life and it is pretty sure I want to travel somewhere so it's going to put up a bunch of messages about quantum drives.

9- Back here, obscured by the helpful messages, is the loving ship's radar. The one useful item in this whole cavalcade of horseshit and it is the size of a postage stamp, and obscured by the tooltips. FIRE YOUR loving UI TEAM. Also you may note that the enemy ship I'm currently 10 feet away from, is not showing up on the radar. Guess they're pretty good at managing those power settings!

This is a level of UI fidelity never before attempted. Overlaying your helmet UI over the ship UI results in 2x the fidelity and is 2x better than any other space game. You don't understand game development.

# ? Oct 15, 2018 02:57

colonelwest: Jun 30, 2018

Neltharak posted:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oGoNVWzgsBI

Pro click of the day.

FOIP is the best gift Chris could give us, Christmas has come early this year.

# ? Oct 15, 2018 02:59

Quavers: Feb 26, 2016; You clearly don't understand game development

Robbaz has found FOIP

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CX-c78SURpI

# ? Oct 15, 2018 03:07

Cyberpunkey Monkey: Jun 23, 2003; by Nyc_Tattoo

# ? Oct 15, 2018 03:25

Quavers: Feb 26, 2016; You clearly don't understand game development

Shower thought: why are CIG having so much difficulty adding :females:

avatars?

# ? Oct 15, 2018 03:37

MarcusSA: Sep 23, 2007

Quavers posted:

Shower thought: why are CIG having so much difficulty adding avatars?

Because they aren't working on them.

They are focused on creating models for SQ42 which consists of males aged 25-40.

# ? Oct 15, 2018 03:51

colonelwest: Jun 30, 2018

Quavers posted:

Shower thought: why are CIG having so much difficulty adding avatars?

I almost wonder if they are aware how loving creepy their remaining community is and don't want to add fuel to that particular dumpster fire?

# ? Oct 15, 2018 03:55

Butter Activities: May 4, 2018

I'm sure CR has to check the pixels on the boob jiggle physics as well.

Can't have FEEEmales without bust-emphasizing combat armor and spacesuits for proper titty fidelity.

# ? Oct 15, 2018 03:58

iospace: Jan 19, 2038

Sarsapariller posted:

Sure.

1- This is your ship shield and damage indicator. It is displayed on a monitor in your cockpit. If you have time in battle you can hit F, mouse over it, and hit those little pie chart slices to direct shield power to different parts. I don't know if that works, it probably doesn't. The damage part flashes to show which parts of your ship are hit, or still exist. Note that my cockpit has not been damaged- it literally always looks like the front has fallen off. The two little graphs EM and IR on the side are supposed to indicate your ship's current heat and electromagnetic signatures. I guess higher is worse, because targeting? But there's no way to lower or manage them, and missiles don't work anyway, so gently caress it.

2- This is the same information as 1, but it is displayed on the inside of your helmet. There is no way to turn off this second display. It makes both 1 and 2 completely unreadable in combat.

3- None of these actually do anything. The first one is showing weapons, I think, but none of that information matters. I think you can turn them "Off" but why the gently caress would you ever do that. The second is the "Comms" display which may, some day, actually show people's faces. Right now it just constantly lights up like people are calling you but nothing ever displays and you don't hear anything. The third panel up here is another pointless set of graphs about thermal and heat signatures.

4/5- Similar to 1/2, except this time the display is for the enemy ship. The only useful part of this is the shield facing strength, which is displayed in a 3d format so it's basically impossible to loving read even if there weren't two of the same displays cluttering each other up. The graphs are for the enemy heat/electromagnetic signatures, which are useless.

6- This is your power distribution settings, and also 3 more graphs for your heat and electro signatures. Those things must be real goddamn important because they are on literally every display on the loving screen. Anyway the power triangle lets you distribute ship power to your various systems. I've tried it, it moves around but as far as I can tell doesn't do anything. The guns still overheat at the same speed, the shields still drop just as fast. I don't know. The usage/required poo poo at the top seems to be some kind of "Power output" management system, and you can slide those gauges around, but they also do nothing that I can determine.

7- Here's another visual indicator of your shields along with a bunch more useless garbage sliders that don't do anything.

8- Here's where the game constantly, constantly spams you with tooltips. Right now I'm fighting for my life and it is pretty sure I want to travel somewhere so it's going to put up a bunch of messages about quantum drives.

9- Back here, obscured by the helpful messages, is the loving ship's radar. The one useful item in this whole cavalcade of horseshit and it is the size of a postage stamp, and obscured by the tooltips. FIRE YOUR loving UI TEAM. Also you may note that the enemy ship I'm currently 10 feet away from, is not showing up on the radar. Guess they're pretty good at managing those power settings!

Hold on, let me grab the UI for Elite.

Upper left: comms screens. You have various sub-screens for various purposes. See #3 for SC

Upper middle: Wing info (if in wing). Blank if not in wing.

Upper right: ship info/status. Also has the ship name and the clock (UST). Largely the same as #8 in the SC display.

Middle: weapons. Will display targeting retacule and what weapons are deployed dynamically.

Lower left: target info. Dynamic based on what's targeting, but will state if a ship is wanted or not in a local system. The sphere is the star itself being targeted, but will change to be a ship if a ship is targeted and display the shield and hull %. #4/#5 for SC

lower middle: compass, heat levels, radar, throttle level.
-Compass, the smaller circle, shows you the direction to the targeted celestial (non-ship) object. A filled in circle is behind you.
-Heat level bar is self-explanatory, but scales weirdly (basically once you're in critical range it sort of "stops").
-Radar shows all objects local to you that can be targeted. Same as #9
-Throttle is largely self-explanatory. In sub-light flight, the blue zone represents the most maneuverable range. In supercruise (FTL), blue is "stay in this range so you don't overshoot or take forever".

Lower right: Ship display, subsystems, and persistent statuses.
-The ship display is the same as the targeted ship display, shows shields and hull %. My shields are OFF here (save power and thus fuel, also less heat emitted). Effectively #1/#2
-subsystems are like the triangle, but changing them does stuff. Each subsystem has a total of 8 available levels, but you can only add two at a time, which will subtract one point from the other two as you do. Mine subsystem control is off in this image to save power. Same as #6
-Persistent statuses are your fuel levels, scoop or landing gear deployed, and mass locked, which means you can't jump to FTL from sub-light.

That's not even getting into the side menus, which provide a lot more information, but are "hidden".

e: added closest comparisons.

iospace fucked around with this message at 04:06 on Oct 15, 2018

# ? Oct 15, 2018 04:02

Sarsapariller: Aug 14, 2015; Occasional vampire queen

iospace posted:

Hold on, let me grab the UI for Elite.

It's almost like they designed game mechanics first and then built the ships to accommodate them, instead of building 200 ships and then going "Oh poo poo all these screens should do something" and then literally building custom UI's for every ship, half of which don't work. One of the many reasons I have 700+ hours in Elite and probably about 10 in Star Citizen despite owning both for the same number of years.

# ? Oct 15, 2018 04:16

colonelwest: Jun 30, 2018

SpaceSDoorGunner posted:

I'm sure CR has to check the pixels on the boob jiggle physics as well.

Can't have FEEEmales without bust-emphasizing combat armor and spacesuits for proper titty fidelity.

Star Citizen so far is devoid of sex though, to an extreme extent that is in itself kind of weird and creepy. I've always wondered why they didn't play up at least some sort of mild romance angle to open up the wallets of the lonely neckbeards.

# ? Oct 15, 2018 04:16

iospace: Jan 19, 2038

Sarsapariller posted:

It's almost like they designed game mechanics first and then built the ships to accommodate them, instead of building 200 ships and then going "Oh poo poo all these screens should do something" and then literally building custom UI's for every ship, half of which don't work. One of the many reasons I have 700+ hours in Elite and probably about 10 in Star Citizen despite owning both for the same number of years.

Like, I can understand projecting your ship and targeted ship data onto your helmet HUD. It makes sense to me in the "it's the most important in a dogfight, and you want to be able to see it at all time without having to turn your head." Hell, you could modify it based on what ship you're flying. Flying a freighter? Have only your ship info on the helmet and any targeted ship on the ship HUD. Combat? Both.

However, having both helmet and ship HUD displays is so dumb.

# ? Oct 15, 2018 04:21

VealCutlet: Dec 21, 2015; I am a marketing god, shave that shit

Signing in for duty

# ? Oct 15, 2018 04:51

Sarsapariller: Aug 14, 2015; Occasional vampire queen

iospace posted:

Like, I can understand projecting your ship and targeted ship data onto your helmet HUD. It makes sense to me in the "it's the most important in a dogfight, and you want to be able to see it at all time without having to turn your head." Hell, you could modify it based on what ship you're flying. Flying a freighter? Have only your ship info on the helmet and any targeted ship on the ship HUD. Combat? Both.

However, having both helmet and ship HUD displays is so dumb.

The problem is, as with most of the other systems, they build the new ships around whatever the current design plan is. Take, for example, the shiniest new toy the hammerhead, or the alien ship the Kartu'al.

You can see in both these videos that the screens have been updated so only the helmet display shows up. It's not all functional but it works.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V6tOvPiH0MI&t=6s
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hFubZ1N3HxU&t=8746s

But the old and busted generation 1 ships that they sold in 2013 or whenever do not get updated to keep up with the newest changes. They might get a pass in a year or two, but until then they are functionally broken. Plus, most of their features were never completed in the first place. They rely on Citizens not to notice this or care because they have their whole fanbase chasing the newest, hottest upgrades. We laugh a lot at the prices in here but it's actually a very canny business model. You can trade in that old constellation and get this shiny 600i! All the money you've already put in bridges the gap so you're only paying 150 bucks or whatever to get the newest thing! Then they gradually string that out, until the newest thing is 700 bucks total but all the backers chasing it have already put 600 in, so what's 100 more?

Playing this week I have seen absolute shitloads of: Hammerhead, Cutlass Black, (New) Mustang, and Aurora. That is to say, three types of starter-ish ships, and the newest most expensive combat toy on the block. You know what I didn't see? literally anything in between. No freelancers, no constellations, no caterpillars, no F7C-M hornets, no retaliators, nothing. I saw ships worth less than 100 bucks, and ships worth more than 700, and that was it. There's two types of people playing basically- guys who buy the latest ship, and guys in starters, and nothing in between, because why bother? Everything in between is some shade of broken garbage. Chase the fad or don't bother at all.

# ? Oct 15, 2018 04:57

Agony Aunt: Apr 17, 2018; by LITERALLY AN ADMIN

Neltharak posted:

even in the rear end-end of france

Paris?

# ? Oct 15, 2018 05:00

DapperDon: Sep 7, 2016

I've been away for a while just lurking. Is Star Citizen...Good now? I am confused.

# ? Oct 15, 2018 05:02

iospace: Jan 19, 2038

Let's see. I threw money in... 2015? I forget. Arena Commander was the only mode at the time, and I was all "Maybe I'll get a game out of it, maybe I won't. Oh well." Funding was still around... 50 mil? Not sure. Elite was in the final phases of its beta, and I was having fun lassoing people with the interdiction tether so it influenced my decision to buy...

An Origin 325A. 70 bucks. Little bit more than a traditional game, but sure, fine. How many of those do you see running around? :v:

(irony: I have not accepted any TOS for SC since then. I could probably sue for a refund on the grounds of the old TOS and thus they are legally bound to the contract we mutually agreed to, but 70 bucks is... not worth the hassle)

# ? Oct 15, 2018 05:05

Sarsapariller: Aug 14, 2015; Occasional vampire queen

iospace posted:

An Origin 325A. 70 bucks. Little bit more than a traditional game, but sure, fine. How many of those do you see running around?

Literally none. Probably because they built the loving ceiling wrong, so you spend all your time in it with the character model hunched weird. Although the screens on that one do look like they work with the helmet at least. (Edit: I guess they fixed the ceiling thing. I had no idea, I literally haven't seen a single one)

Most people in starter ships now are in auroras or mustangs because they're the cheapest possible. Anyone who was in for 70 bucks back then, and is still playing, is probably running around in something like a cutlass (100 bucks) or the new valkyrie (330). There's kind of a whole series of all-rounder ships that gradually escalate in price.

VealCutlet posted:

Signing in for duty

Added

# ? Oct 15, 2018 05:13

Popete: Oct 6, 2009; This will make sure you don't suggest to the KDz
That he should grow greens instead of crushing on MCs; Grimey Drawer

Even if this game came out and fulfilled %100 of everyone's fantasy of whatever the hell this game actually is supposed to be. How on worth would it ever be full of players? The prices for a single ship are just bonkers and am I correct in assuming if your ship is blown up it is permanently lost?

Like even if you were a true believer that this was gonna ever be fun and functional, the pricing alone is so absurd as to limit the number of people who will ever play it. Whose gonna wanna be stuck flying a scrub tier ship when whales are flying around in massive capitals you'll never be able to attain?

Sorry, I've only loosely been following this "game" for the laughs so this is probably a well worn out thought.

# ? Oct 15, 2018 05:14

iospace: Jan 19, 2038

Popete posted:

Even if this game came out and fulfilled %100 of everyone's fantasy of whatever the hell this game actually is supposed to be. How on worth would it ever be full of players? The prices for a single ship are just bonkers and am I correct in assuming if your ship is blown up it is permanently lost?

Like even if you were a true believer that this was gonna ever be fun and functional, the pricing alone is so absurd as to limit the number of people who will ever play it. Whose gonna wanna be stuck flying a scrub tier ship when whales are flying around in massive capitals you'll never be able to attain?

Sorry, I've only loosely been following this "game" for the laughs so this is probably a well worn out thought.

Well, if your ship blows up right now, I thiiiiiiiiiiink you get it back. For now.

Upon release, well you're poo poo out of luck because they have not indicated a "fallback starter ship", like EVERY OTHER SPACE GAME OUT THERE. Unless you have Lifetime Insurance, in which case you get your ship back, no clue at a reduced rate or free. I speculate insurance will operate more like Eve, in which you pay in per hull, but won't cover modules.

Also, ingame it costs... 220 dollars to buy a new starter ship assuming 1k ingame cash = 1 USD. One you could buy for 45 fresh off the store.

# ? Oct 15, 2018 05:19

Sarsapariller: Aug 14, 2015; Occasional vampire queen

DapperDon posted:

I've been away for a while just lurking. Is Star Citizen...Good now? I am confused.

Yes, time to buy back in

Popete posted:

Even if this game came out and fulfilled %100 of everyone's fantasy of whatever the hell this game actually is supposed to be. How on worth would it ever be full of players? The prices for a single ship are just bonkers and am I correct in assuming if your ship is blown up it is permanently lost?

Like even if you were a true believer that this was gonna ever be fun and functional, the pricing alone is so absurd as to limit the number of people who will ever play it. Whose gonna wanna be stuck flying a scrub tier ship when whales are flying around in massive capitals you'll never be able to attain?

1) Filling the game with players does seem to be the hitch. Any time you have more than 7 or 8 people in one place with their ships active, performance starts to crater.

2) Your ships are not permanently lost if they kersplode, unless your insurance runs out. They like to sell ships with "Lifetime" insurance the first time, i.e. a permanent guarantee that you will never lose the ship. Then in later sales they drop the lifetime part and sell 6 or 12 or whatever-month insurance on the ship. The understanding is that some day, they will flip a switch, and people will start running the risk of their ship being lost forever unless they keep making insurance payments. But since the game is in permanent alpha and there would be literal riots if people lost their poo poo before the game was even released, they will never flip that switch. It's just another sales pressure tactic to get people to buy at the first sale. Effectively losing a ship just spawns you back at the only current spawn point, and you have to wait out a 20 minute or longer timer to get your ship back. It is a pointless waste of time. The only real penalty is you lose any cargo you were carrying, but trading doesn't work anyway, so...

3) The idea is that players will be able to earn their way up gradually. The video at the recent convention is the first hint in 6 years that CIG might actually implement something like that. The in-game economy is currently hosed. You have to play for about 2 hours and get very very lucky to make enough money to earn a single pair of space pants. I'm not making that up. You have to buy casual wear and it costs almost as much as guns and armor. If they ever do fix the economy and allow ship sales in game currency their cash shop will crater because why would you pay 700 bucks for a ship you can earn in game?

# ? Oct 15, 2018 05:22

Popete: Oct 6, 2009; This will make sure you don't suggest to the KDz
That he should grow greens instead of crushing on MCs; Grimey Drawer

Yeah that's a good point, even if they somehow fixed their in game economy to make it remotely possible to attain ships without investing years of grinding. That will just drive away all the Whales who have spent 100s or even 1000s of dollars on ships.

They're basically screwed if they even wanted to try and balance the game.

# ? Oct 15, 2018 05:27

iospace: Jan 19, 2038

Popete posted:

Yeah that's a good point, even if they somehow fixed their in game economy to make it remotely possible to attain ships without investing years of grinding. That will just drive away all the Whales who have spent 100s or even 1000s of dollars on ships.

They're basically screwed if they even wanted to try and balance the game.

yup, and that's the thing. At some point, the game as planned went from "pipe dream" to "impossible". The point was probably around the time of the Infamous Stretch Goal Poll. The game is strictly catered towards whales now. Anything that would be balanced towards allowing new people to get in would be defeating the purpose.

Elite has the problem of "Forum Dads". At least they didn't pay real money to fly Anacondas.

# ? Oct 15, 2018 05:30

Viscous Soda: Apr 24, 2004

Sarsapariller posted:

It's almost like they designed game mechanics first and then built the ships to accommodate them, instead of building 200 ships and then going "Oh poo poo all these screens should do something" and then literally building custom UI's for every ship, half of which don't work. One of the many reasons I have 700+ hours in Elite and probably about 10 in Star Citizen despite owning both for the same number of years.

That's just crazy talk. The obvious conclusion is that you don't understand games development.

# ? Oct 15, 2018 05:31

no_recall: Aug 17, 2015; Lipstick Apathy

Sarsapariller posted:

The problem is, as with most of the other systems, they build the new ships around whatever the current design plan is. Take, for example, the shiniest new toy the hammerhead, or the alien ship the Kartu'al.

You can see in both these videos that the screens have been updated so only the helmet display shows up. It's not all functional but it works.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V6tOvPiH0MI&t=6s
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hFubZ1N3HxU&t=8746s

I really hope Frontier makes spacelegs a viable in game system and it shits on Star Citizen.

# ? Oct 15, 2018 05:46

Chin: Dec 12, 2005; GET LOST 2013
-RALPH

Popete posted:

Even if this game came out and fulfilled %100 of everyone's fantasy of whatever the hell this game actually is supposed to be. How on worth would it ever be full of players? The prices for a single ship are just bonkers and am I correct in assuming if your ship is blown up it is permanently lost?

In that case they would have made revolutionary breakthroughs in the fields of networking and artificial intelligence in addition to achieving some sort of time travel in order to allow their employees enough time to generate one hundred solar systems of content and thousands of voiced and interactive NPCs when it's taken them several years to implement three shallow NPCs and a small fraction of a single system.

# ? Oct 15, 2018 05:47

Popete: Oct 6, 2009; This will make sure you don't suggest to the KDz
That he should grow greens instead of crushing on MCs; Grimey Drawer

Chin posted:

In that case they would have made revolutionary breakthroughs in the fields of networking and artificial intelligence in addition to achieving some sort of time travel in order to allow their employees enough time to generate one hundred solar systems of content and thousands of voiced and interactive NPCs when it's taken them several years to implement three shallow NPCs and a small fraction of a single system.

But even in the alternate reality where CIG realizes they cannot make the game they promised and decides to come up with a concise and focused space sim that is actually achievable and fun (starting from scratch). They still couldn't pull it off because they've already broken the fundamental concept of balance with these insane ship prices. They would have to actively screw over their most dedicated cash cows.

# ? Oct 15, 2018 05:54

no_recall: Aug 17, 2015; Lipstick Apathy

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uvlwQ4doxPc

# ? Oct 15, 2018 06:10

Tokamak: Dec 22, 2004

Quavers posted:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UXHWGb23S5g

Worth a good listen; a few non-CIG devs pop in to give their take

I'm the first 'game dev' who thinks OCS was a 30-40m lines of code rewrite that took hundreds of thousands of man hours. It's about as realistic as claiming that a loaf of bread requires a ton of flour.

To put in perspective, an entire AAA game engine has a few million LOC. Assuming six people (which was their entire network team a few years ago) worked on it full time for two years (they said they worked on an off for three years), you get around 25,000 hours. Converting to LOC, a dumb metric (at aprox. 250 per day), puts an upper limit of 800k LOC. Given more realistic figures, it's likely below 100k.

I don't know how you can argue that CIG is making good progress on tech, since they have a budget that could have easily afforded a custom built engine from scratch by now. It's fair to say they had to make many inefficient decisions, and had to support an art team to even bring in the money. But in isolation, 5 years at 35m/year gets you an engine. By that comparison, CIG is very behind in tech. You have to rationalise every misstep and compromise that CIG made in order to justify where they are today. But at that point you aren't really being objective anymore.

Tokamak fucked around with this message at 06:41 on Oct 15, 2018

# ? Oct 15, 2018 06:38

Snack Bitch: May 15, 2008; Goodness no, now that wouldn't do at all!

Quavers posted:

Shower thought: why are CIG having so much difficulty adding avatars?

All of Roberts notes on female avatars are extra sticky and no one will touch them.

# ? Oct 15, 2018 06:58

Solarin: Nov 15, 2007

Sarsapariller posted:

Alright, just for fun here's an old school write up. The server was back to being a loving headache today, crashes and hangs galore, so lots more frustration.

My self-imposed mission for the day: Do any one space combat mission successfully.

First attempt- Woke up in the wank pod, ran downstairs and spawned a constellation. Took a mission to go get a black box from a wrecked caterpillar. The missions seem to randomly generate from a set of about a dozen different scenarios and there's no guarantee that you'll get the same one if anything goes wrong. There's also no guarantee that you won't get assigned the same mission as someone else and end up shooting them over the black box that you both need. I kind of like that. If it weren't for the extremely low payouts (600 uec), that would be an awesome scenario. Anyway I took off and then the game crashed. When I logged back in I was in the wank pod again. With the NEW AND IMPROVED insurance timers, I'd only have to wait FOUR minutes to recover the ship that was lost due to no error on my part. But I didn't want to wait so I spawned my Gladius, even though I knew it had no cargo area to hold the black box. Took off, game crashed again.

Second attempt- Spawned a constellation since it had been 4+ minutes since the last time. Couldn't find the black box thing again so I took a new mission- go to beacon and defend ship. I fly my ship out there, there is of course no sign of anything until I get within 3km of the beacon, then a Starfarer (friendly) spawns that fills half my loving screen. Three enemy gladiuses spawned, and then a goddamn constellation. For a 1000 credit mission. Even in my own constellation I was hard pressed to finish it, and lost about half my ship. There is no payout for killing enemies, I should note- only for finishing the mission. The enemies were extremely glitched. Every time they took damage they'd come to a complete halt, but continue firing. So you'd get on a guy's tail and shoot him only to overshoot instantly as he just lost all momentum. When they died, they were no longer targetable but they didn't disappear from my radar or HUD. If I flew to one of the enemy icons I could see that it was now fixed on a random piece of the enemy ship. Eventually I got stuck just plowing shot after shot into the constellation which would. not. die. Then I got disconnected.

shooting enemy constellation

Third attempt: My constellation was lost in space due to the disconnect, again, which meant I had to reclaim again. Note that reclaiming is currently free. If it wasn't, I literally would not be able to play the game because my meager credits would be completely drained due to losing my ship on every single crash and disconnect. I am really glad that I only do this to myself once per year, because I'm already completely loving sick of spawning in the wank pod, spawning a ship, running through the airlocks etc. It is like groundhog day except instead of emotional fulfillment and enlightenment at the end of your reincarnation journey all you get is loving rage. Anyway I tabbed out to type this while performing one of the six unskippable cutscenes that have to play out every single time you go through this dance. I take the Gladius out to another emergency beacon. This time only a single enemy Gladius spawns so maybe it's done based off the weight of your ship? Kind of sucks though, if every time you take a 1000 cred mission you are going to face something that stands a good chance of killing you, even in super heavy gunships. I start to fight him, but he rams me, as seems to be standard protocol now. I bounce off the friendly Starfarer at 600 miles per hour and explode, dead instantly.

Fourth attempt: Well that's the gladius back on insurance timer. Wake up, wank pod, spawn constellation, unskippable cutscenes, etc. I take the Constellation out. Luckily little timmy starfarer keeps falling down the well, and this emergency beacon seems pretty drat consistent. I fly back out again. Sure enough it pops 4 enemies on me, so I guess it's based on the weight of your ship. This time none of them will die, though. My missiles are useless. Did I mention that? Missiles don't work in the PU, ever, so about 3/4ths of the armament on the constellation is out of action right from the start. I die, shot to pieces by the 4 spaceships. No 1000 credits for me.

Fifth attempt: Wake up, wank pod, spawn Gladius, unskippable cutscenes. Never one to shy away from a challenge, I go after the beacon again. Same old starfarer, single gladius spawns. I engage in glorious combat and actually win this time. I think I see what the problem is with the ramming, finally. Your guns are fixed-forward and you have a range of approximately 500m, at best, because this is world war 2 in space. But you are traveling at 250m/s, and your opponent who is also trying to shoot you is traveling towards you at 250 m/s. So you likely have about .1 seconds to fire before you literally just smack each other. The solution would be to engage in some kind of noclip strafing duel, but the AI opponents insist on flying directly towards you at all times, and there is no such thing as flying in reverse in Star Citizen unlike, for example, Elite. So you can, at best, fly solidly to the left while they just rush right in, and try to dodge them at the last second before they ram you. Anyway my opponent just kind of randomly explodes, I'm not sure why. He leaves half his parts and a target marker, again. I think that must be it, sweet victory must be mine! Then three more enemies spawn. Another gladius and two more auroras. loving SERIOUSLY? You don't just have to kill your own weight in ships for 1000 credits, you have to kill multiple times over? So I spend the next 60+ seconds plowing shots into the stationary Aurora which just won't loving die, for some goddamn reason, it is like it isn't even taking damage. If you're going to do WW2 in space the guns need to actually DO something, Chris. Then my Gladius just kind of explodes. I don't know why, I had full health and shields. I guess the enemy missiles work? Good for them, they get fully functioning ships.

A dead enemy, still targetable.

Anyway that has tapped out my rage-o-meter for the time being. Five attempts, five full ships lost, probably 10+ enemies killed in total, and I could not complete a single entry level, 1000 credit mission. Absolute dogshit.

you don't understand game development. Show me the AAAA games you have made

# ? Oct 15, 2018 07:03

MedicineHut: Feb 25, 2016

Sarsapariller posted:

Alright, just for fun here's an old school write up. The server was back to being a loving headache today, crashes and hangs galore, so lots more frustration.

My self-imposed mission for the day: Do any one space combat mission successfully.

First attempt- Woke up in the wank pod, ran downstairs and spawned a constellation. Took a mission to go get a black box from a wrecked caterpillar. The missions seem to randomly generate from a set of about a dozen different scenarios and there's no guarantee that you'll get the same one if anything goes wrong. There's also no guarantee that you won't get assigned the same mission as someone else and end up shooting them over the black box that you both need. I kind of like that. If it weren't for the extremely low payouts (600 uec), that would be an awesome scenario. Anyway I took off and then the game crashed. When I logged back in I was in the wank pod again. With the NEW AND IMPROVED insurance timers, I'd only have to wait FOUR minutes to recover the ship that was lost due to no error on my part. But I didn't want to wait so I spawned my Gladius, even though I knew it had no cargo area to hold the black box. Took off, game crashed again.

Second attempt- Spawned a constellation since it had been 4+ minutes since the last time. Couldn't find the black box thing again so I took a new mission- go to beacon and defend ship. I fly my ship out there, there is of course no sign of anything until I get within 3km of the beacon, then a Starfarer (friendly) spawns that fills half my loving screen. Three enemy gladiuses spawned, and then a goddamn constellation. For a 1000 credit mission. Even in my own constellation I was hard pressed to finish it, and lost about half my ship. There is no payout for killing enemies, I should note- only for finishing the mission. The enemies were extremely glitched. Every time they took damage they'd come to a complete halt, but continue firing. So you'd get on a guy's tail and shoot him only to overshoot instantly as he just lost all momentum. When they died, they were no longer targetable but they didn't disappear from my radar or HUD. If I flew to one of the enemy icons I could see that it was now fixed on a random piece of the enemy ship. Eventually I got stuck just plowing shot after shot into the constellation which would. not. die. Then I got disconnected.

shooting enemy constellation

Third attempt: My constellation was lost in space due to the disconnect, again, which meant I had to reclaim again. Note that reclaiming is currently free. If it wasn't, I literally would not be able to play the game because my meager credits would be completely drained due to losing my ship on every single crash and disconnect. I am really glad that I only do this to myself once per year, because I'm already completely loving sick of spawning in the wank pod, spawning a ship, running through the airlocks etc. It is like groundhog day except instead of emotional fulfillment and enlightenment at the end of your reincarnation journey all you get is loving rage. Anyway I tabbed out to type this while performing one of the six unskippable cutscenes that have to play out every single time you go through this dance. I take the Gladius out to another emergency beacon. This time only a single enemy Gladius spawns so maybe it's done based off the weight of your ship? Kind of sucks though, if every time you take a 1000 cred mission you are going to face something that stands a good chance of killing you, even in super heavy gunships. I start to fight him, but he rams me, as seems to be standard protocol now. I bounce off the friendly Starfarer at 600 miles per hour and explode, dead instantly.

Fourth attempt: Well that's the gladius back on insurance timer. Wake up, wank pod, spawn constellation, unskippable cutscenes, etc. I take the Constellation out. Luckily little timmy starfarer keeps falling down the well, and this emergency beacon seems pretty drat consistent. I fly back out again. Sure enough it pops 4 enemies on me, so I guess it's based on the weight of your ship. This time none of them will die, though. My missiles are useless. Did I mention that? Missiles don't work in the PU, ever, so about 3/4ths of the armament on the constellation is out of action right from the start. I die, shot to pieces by the 4 spaceships. No 1000 credits for me.

Fifth attempt: Wake up, wank pod, spawn Gladius, unskippable cutscenes. Never one to shy away from a challenge, I go after the beacon again. Same old starfarer, single gladius spawns. I engage in glorious combat and actually win this time. I think I see what the problem is with the ramming, finally. Your guns are fixed-forward and you have a range of approximately 500m, at best, because this is world war 2 in space. But you are traveling at 250m/s, and your opponent who is also trying to shoot you is traveling towards you at 250 m/s. So you likely have about .1 seconds to fire before you literally just smack each other. The solution would be to engage in some kind of noclip strafing duel, but the AI opponents insist on flying directly towards you at all times, and there is no such thing as flying in reverse in Star Citizen unlike, for example, Elite. So you can, at best, fly solidly to the left while they just rush right in, and try to dodge them at the last second before they ram you. Anyway my opponent just kind of randomly explodes, I'm not sure why. He leaves half his parts and a target marker, again. I think that must be it, sweet victory must be mine! Then three more enemies spawn. Another gladius and two more auroras. loving SERIOUSLY? You don't just have to kill your own weight in ships for 1000 credits, you have to kill multiple times over? So I spend the next 60+ seconds plowing shots into the stationary Aurora which just won't loving die, for some goddamn reason, it is like it isn't even taking damage. If you're going to do WW2 in space the guns need to actually DO something, Chris. Then my Gladius just kind of explodes. I don't know why, I had full health and shields. I guess the enemy missiles work? Good for them, they get fully functioning ships.

A dead enemy, still targetable.

Anyway that has tapped out my rage-o-meter for the time being. Five attempts, five full ships lost, probably 10+ enemies killed in total, and I could not complete a single entry level, 1000 credit mission. Absolute dogshit.

Good effort brother.

Was that in the current PU or the new PTU?

# ? Oct 15, 2018 07:13

MedicineHut: Feb 25, 2016

Sarsapariller posted:

I don't know, right at the start they're praising Mining as a "Good" system. I haven't been able to mine, since literally one ship in the game is capable of it and it doesn't tie into any other mechanic. Also the host is excusing away Crobberts' promises.

CIG is doing its outmost to properly massage the message and prepare the fans for a more than likely incomplete release (CR�s original MVP statements, CitizenCon�s "What is release?" etc), whatever that release happens to be (early access or whatever). I am pretty sure the main SC streamers and co. have been given the word and marching orders correspondingly to indoctrinate the masses that "incompleteness" is the new normal.

After years of SC fans making GBS threads on everyone else for releasing incomplete stuff and telling us how SC delays were so to take all the time it needed to deliver a complete and full product, and quoting the poo poo out of Miyamoto etc, CIG and the whales are surely scared shitless that the screams and laughs could be of epic proportions.

MedicineHut fucked around with this message at 07:40 on Oct 15, 2018

# ? Oct 15, 2018 07:30

Combat Theory: Jul 16, 2017

iospace posted:

Let's see. I threw money in... 2015? I forget. Arena Commander was the only mode at the time, and I was all "Maybe I'll get a game out of it, maybe I won't. Oh well." Funding was still around... 50 mil? Not sure. Elite was in the final phases of its beta, and I was having fun lassoing people with the interdiction tether so it influenced my decision to buy...

An Origin 325A. 70 bucks. Little bit more than a traditional game, but sure, fine. How many of those do you see running around?

(irony: I have not accepted any TOS for SC since then. I could probably sue for a refund on the grounds of the old TOS and thus they are legally bound to the contract we mutually agreed to, but 70 bucks is... not worth the hassle)

What would be worth the hassle is a gang tag for goons who keep star citizen accounts despite looking at the game as a joke. The blocked buddies are kind of an elite group now that ol man Derek is no more on these here forums.

# ? Oct 15, 2018 07:50

Thoatse: Feb 29, 2016; Lol said the scorpion, lmao

Popete posted:

But even in the alternate reality where CIG realizes they cannot make the game they promised and decides to come up with a concise and focused space sim that is actually achievable and fun (starting from scratch). They still couldn't pull it off because they've already broken the fundamental concept of balance with these insane ship prices. They would have to actively screw over their most dedicated cash cows.

The meltdowns will be glorious

# ? Oct 15, 2018 07:58

Thoatse: Feb 29, 2016; Lol said the scorpion, lmao

https://i.imgur.com/plaiup0.gifv

# ? Oct 15, 2018 07:58

Sandepande: Aug 19, 2018

Reading about the economy makes me think of a tabletop RPG GM who is extremely convinced that the players really need to appreciate every soggy toothpick that the world throws their way.

Also, CR would probably be a super-horrible GM (unless he was running a game where the players were people he'd love to impress).

# ? Oct 15, 2018 08:51

Adbot: ADBOT LOVES YOU

# ? May 16, 2024 22:58

Mr Fronts: Jan 31, 2016; Yo! The Mafia supports you. But don't tell no one. Spread the word.

Magirot posted:

There's also a "decoupled mode" which you can use to turn while keeping your trajectory, but it isn't bound to any key by default. For whatever reason.
Edit: unless they added one since the last free weekend and it's exactly that thing bound to "3".

PRESS 3 TO USE

# ? Oct 15, 2018 09:37

The Something Awful Forums > Archives > Comedy Goldmine > The Goodmine > Star Citizen: Death of a Space Thread?

«‹›6530 »