[Megathread] Star Citizen

[1001]

Hey, if anyone that shows criticism, skepticism or doubt is a "damaged nerd channeling their video game grudge" then turnabout is completely fair play...

[Beazy]

Oh sure stating that a game keeps recieving updates and improoving (factual), getting new players (factual) and breaking funding records (factual) should please so called gamers, yet makes haters go bonkers. Wonder why.

Hey Anderson, could you pass some info over to your boss for me? Im sure Chris or Sandy is right there in the room with you, just slide your chair over and pass them this note:

Caves are the opposite of "Outer Space".

[MrAnderson]

Haters dont care about criticism, they just want to be vindicated. They dont care about facts or reasoning, just being "right" because that would justify something as pathetic as holding a grudge over a video-game for all these years.

For someone like that I can understand why seeing a game you hate so much getting better and better year after year just agravates the inner damage but that's something that only themselves can work out.

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Patch 3.7 is now Live for all backers!



Enjoy!

[NatePsy]

I do find it hilarious that everytime I come back to this thread, there's always people criticizing it. Might as well change the thread to [NegativeThread] Star Citizen because christ there's a shit tonne of whiners that make up the brunt of the 453 pages.

That type of obsessive negativity, some people need help lol.

[1001]

They dont care about facts or reasoning, just being "right" because that would justify something as pathetic as holding a grudge over a video-game for all these years.

The projection is unreal

When "haters" or critics or skeptics or whatever you want to call them use facts to point out various issues it is always the fanbois in denial, it is always people like yourself who argue that black is white, or come up with some bullshit excuse why doing X is ok.

I do find it hilarious that everytime I come back to this thread, there's always people criticizing it. Might as well change the thread to [NegativeThread] Star Citizen because christ there's a shit tonne of whiners that make up the brunt of the 453 pages.

That type of obsessive negativity, some people need help lol.

Aww, aint life tough.

[Tierbook]

Planets are in space and I can't really complain that they are fleshing them out a bit before releasing them.

[WoWGoneBad]

Patch 3.7 is now Live for all backers!

youtube_share;0Zvj_JXN8tA]https://youtu.be/0Zvj_JXN8tA

Enjoy!

Enjoy what exactly? a small snippet of a new mechanic? in a game full of mechanics that are constantly being worked on to be released at some future point in time, where what the game is about is what humans will actually be doing in reality?

[Tiwack]

I do find it hilarious that everytime I come back to this thread, there's always people criticizing it. Might as well change the thread to [NegativeThread] Star Citizen because christ there's a shit tonne of whiners that make up the brunt of the 453 pages.

That type of obsessive negativity, some people need help lol.

Curious you think adding to it helps, also this project isn't exactly a success story, at this rate it'll be outdated when it finally ships.

[Kyanion]

I do find it hilarious that everytime I come back to this thread, there's always people criticizing it. Might as well change the thread to [NegativeThread] Star Citizen because christ there's a shit tonne of whiners that make up the brunt of the 453 pages.

That type of obsessive negativity, some people need help lol.

Nah, I guess you don't care WHY people have been criticizing it. Better to just drop off a general insult and assume those people are damaged in the head or something.

[Val the Moofia Boss]

Fighting AI on the ground (namely, in SPK) is harder now. The AI will rush to the location of gunfire, so once a fight starts enemy reinforcements will be upon you in seconds and approaching from every direction. I died a couple of times to backup arriving from behind me and killing me before I could turn around (from attacking the guy in front of me) to take them out. It's even harder when you are fighting against the guys with heavy armor, as they take more shots to kill while you need to address the guy shooting you from behind ASAP. If you stand and shoot the guy in the front, the guy behind kills you, and if you turn around to kill the guy in the back, the guy in the front kills you.

Short of grouping up and covering each other's backs, I've found that what you can do is enter the SPK on one side of the facility, shoot a round to lure the AI to that side of the corridor, run out the airlock, enter the airlock on the other side of the corridor, and then gun them down from the other side of the corridor while they are facing the first airlock. I also tried luring them to just one airlock and then tossing a grenade, but grenades are finicky and it didn't seem to work.

The laser pointer attachment didn't seem to really help (using a P4 in SPK). The dot is so small that you mind as well use sights anyway, and if you can actually see the dot, the target is close enough you can accurately hip fire.

Got to tour the inside of a Banu Defender. Seems quite nice.

I got interdicted while traveling and was attacked by a Valkyrie and a Bucanner. Killed the Bucanner but sustained moderate damage in my 315p. QTed back to PO to repair, but when I hailed the station I was told I was "prohibited from landing". I don't have a crime stat! I landed anyway and nothing seemed to happen, so IDK what went on there.

Going to hop in with my Discord buds later this week for more extensive play.

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Spent five hours playing. Some more thoughts.

Well, I'm still not fond of the sheer number of randomly generated interdictions that can happen. I can be going from Port Olisar to SPK and get interdicted five times! What's worse is when I'm spending twenty minutes traveling from one side of the solar system to another, get interdicted, and then ram straight into an asteroid without a chance to alter my velocity, and then have to do the whole thing all over again.

Currently there is a bug on the Caterpillar where you walk up to the port side doors and most of the ship geometry around you will disappear, but you can still see players (through the walls) and doors. It's effectively xray vision, and pretty gamebreakingly powerful for combat inside the caterpillar as the person who is using the glitch can basically track anyone in the ship to kill or avoid them.

Mission sharing is fantastic!

Ship rentals are great. Previously, it was a chore to spend hours and hours shooting skimmers and periodically clearing out the SPK to farm the credits to buy a ship you'd lose when a new update came out in three months and the servers were reset. Now, for about an hour's worth of missions, I can rent a small but deadly combat fighter for a three day weekend. Great!

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I hope they revert back to the system where you got credits each time you killed a bandit, rather than only getting the lump sum of credits when you complete the mission. You go through all that work, only for you to be unable to find that one last bandit on SPK, or you run out of bullets during a patrol mission, and you get nothing.

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I've been running laps around the SPK in heavy armor, and my heart rate is never going above 80 BPM. I'll still die if I allow the enemy to just shoot at me but at least I don't fall over from a surprise attack in two seconds. There's literally no reason not to go with heavy armor now.

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Okay, the holographic sight x3 attachment is really nice for the P4.

[Val the Moofia Boss]

It seems shields were nerfed hard in this update. Last update, we had a battle between a Hammerhead with three turrets manned versus a 600 and an Anvil Arrow. Neither the shields of the Hammerhead or the 600 ever went below 75%. It took forever for two fully manned Constellations to kill each other.

In this patch, your shields go down FAST! Our fully manned Constellation killed another Constellation in a minute. Then our Constellation died to three bandit Bucanners in under a minute. I saw a 300i ram into a Caterpillar that was landing and blow up the Caterpillar. Seems the name of the game of this patch is to not get hit at all: you either need to go in first for a deadly alpha strike with everything you've got and take them out before they can react, or you need to be flying evasively.

Despite all of the balance adjustments over the years, it seems one thing will always remain the same: AI bucanneers will almost never die because you hardly ever hit them. If you don't alpha strike them before they start moving, you mind as well just use your tracking missiles at that point.

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Welp, the Anvil Arrow is pretty much the best ship in the game at this point. It doesn't even needs shields; it's so agile you'll never be hit. It's also the cheapest ship to rent too!

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Accepted a "search for missing researcher in a cave" mission and shared it with a friend. Flew to Daymar, landed, and went in the cave. It was a vast cave network; I don't remember Minecraft cave systems being this big. We found the researcher's base camp, but thoroughly explored that chamber of the cave. No researcher there. After an hour of searching, we headed back up to the ship and looked for shipwreck black boxes (we hadn't explored the entire cave).

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Currently there is a bug where if you are QTing to a destination you set on your star map and you are interdicted, if you spool up QT again you won't be able to calibrate to your destination. You have to open up the star map, deselect your destination and reselect it, and then you can calibrate to the target.

[MrAnderson]

Enjoy what exactly?

- Ship rentals for example, you can now fly other ships by renting them with ingame credits.
- Check out the new ships and weapons both for fps and ships, new attachments and so on.
- Test the new interdiction mechanic.
- Explore the new caves spread across the planets and moons.
- Tryout some fps mining and new inventory system.
- Play in the new FPS map.

I've noticed that besides the interdiction bugs this patch was deployed smoothly and has brought a lot of old and new backers into the servers.

Theres more fixes cooking in the PTU that should deploy next week to further the gameplay experience.

[Val the Moofia Boss]

I think what I'm most wowed by is the stability and performance of the patch. When you compare how Star Citizen plays now to how it played a year ago, the difference is night and day. I'm always getting 60 frames unless I'm in Loreville or Area 18, hardly any crashes, very few bugs, and so on.

I've noticed that besides the interdiction bugs this patch was deployed smoothly and has brought a lot of old and new backers into the servers.

I am also seeing a lot of newcomers this patch. It seems that everytime I log on, there's always somebody asking in global how to play.

Theres more fixes cooking in the PTU that should deploy next week to further the gameplay experience.

Among the many QoL improvements (yay Mobiglass no longer bugs out sometimes and closes when I open it), it seems asteroid interdictions will be turned off until they retune the encounter rates.




That said, my biggest apprehension about the project is the development of Object Container Streaming and Server Meshing. CIG has a steady pipeline for rolling out ships and landing zones (and they have the tools the quickly create planets and moons in just a few hours), but it's all meaningless if the universe can't actually hold all of those locations and ships. The servers can't hold more than the Stanton System and 50 players. While it seems that they got OCS working, it's still only one half of the equation. It seems like they might have to remove Delamar from Stanton if they are to implement Microtech. You can't really have MMO gameplay with that, and as I understand it, they don't have a working prototype for Server Meshing yet; it's all theoretical, and who knows when that will come out. For all intents and purposes, Star Citizen currently feels like a lobby MMO (albeit one of the best I've ever played), where you join the lobby with your friends and then login into the same server to have a little bit of fun, not a persistent universe with thousands of players flying around.

[MrAnderson]

I think what I'm most wowed by is the stability and performance of the patch. When you compare how Star Citizen plays now to how it played a year ago, the difference is night and day. I'm always getting 60 frames unless I'm in Loreville or Area 18, hardly any crashes, very few bugs, and so on.



I am also seeing a lot of newcomers this patch. It seems that everytime I log on, there's always somebody asking in global how to play.



Among the many QoL improvements (yay Mobiglass no longer bugs out sometimes and closes when I open it), it seems asteroid interdictions will be turned off until they retune the encounter rates.




That said, my biggest apprehension about the project is the development of Object Container Streaming and Server Meshing. CIG has a steady pipeline for rolling out ships and landing zones (and they have the tools the quickly create planets and moons in just a few hours), but it's all meaningless if the universe can't actually hold all of those locations and ships. The servers can't hold more than the Stanton System and 50 players. While it seems that they got OCS working, it's still only one half of the equation. It seems like they might have to remove Delamar from Stanton if they are to implement Microtech. You can't really have MMO gameplay with that, and as I understand it, they don't have a working prototype for Server Meshing yet; it's all theoretical, and who knows when that will come out. For all intents and purposes, Star Citizen currently feels like a lobby MMO (albeit one of the best I've ever played), where you join the lobby with your friends and then login into the same server to have a little bit of fun, not a persistent universe with thousands of players flying around.

Interdictions are already toned down in the PTU, as for OCSS tech it's a major task just like 64-bit precisions, multiple physics grid, procedural planets were. It's really just a matter of time=money and one of the reasons why after all these years Star Citizen is still very much relevant. If it was easy to pull any other company would have done it by now and steal the market from CIG. Anyway even If they don't get the wanted results in one way they will find other way just like they did before. Game development R&D is a LOT of trial and error and since a lot of what CIG is doing is new it's impossible to accurately predict when it will be ready, hence all the delays and missed "dates".

Delamar was never supposed to be in Stanton as it belongs in the Pyro System, putting Microtech instead makes all the sense as they flesh out the universe. Going to Delamar will always involve a jump point and that's what should be coming next.

Coincidentally, Digital Foundry just dedicated a whole episode to Star Citizen technical hurdles and how it's pushing tech and hardware to achieve it's vision:

[1001]

... (and they have the tools the quickly create planets and moons in just a few hours)

Is there any evidence that this is actually true. The reason I am doubtful is we would hear how well work has gone this week in producing the non-populated planets for numerous systems if they could knock out planets and moons in just a few hours. They would be producing these things in preparation of SSOCS being implemented but we never hear that is the case.

[Cyclone Jack]

Is there any evidence that this is actually true. The reason I am doubtful is we would hear how well work has gone this week in producing the non-populated planets for numerous systems if they could knock out planets and moons in just a few hours. They would be producing these things in preparation of SSOCS being implemented but we never hear that is the case.

They've shown the process in previous videos. However, there are a few caveats. This only works for planetary bodies (planets and moons) in which all of the assets are already created. If you notice, each body released thus far has been different from any previously released body, as they're still amassing their huge pool of assets. Additionally, these bodies still requires an artist to go in and add all of the different points of interest.

That said, once they fill their asset pool, I would expect their process for releasing bodies to increase tremendously, excluding those bodies with special requirements, like Hurston or MicroTech.

[1001]

They've shown the process in previous videos. However, there are a few caveats. This only works for planetary bodies (planets and moons) in which all of the assets are already created. If you notice, each body released thus far has been different from any previously released body, as they're still amassing their huge pool of assets. Additionally, these bodies still requires an artist to go in and add all of the different points of interest.

That said, once they fill their asset pool, I would expect their process for releasing bodies to increase tremendously, excluding those bodies with special requirements, like Hurston or MicroTech.

It's a rather big caveat tbh. But supposing all of this is the case, I can't say I have ever seen a video showing them creating additional planetary bodies from start to finish in just a few hours even with existing assets. They've talked about all the hand placement of assets, scouting the planet and adjusting lighting for the most scenic effect, all the blending they need to do etc.

[Cyclone Jack]

It's a rather big caveat tbh. But supposing all of this is the case, I can't say I have ever seen a video showing them creating additional planetary bodies from start to finish in just a few hours even with existing assets. They've talked about all the hand placement of assets, scouting the planet and adjusting lighting for the most scenic effect, all the blending they need to do etc.

It is a big caveat, but one that would be expected; its not like the engine can craft its own textures. But they're talking about the procedural generation of a basic planet or moon, which drops in the textures, biomes, and everything else that goes with them. Even at that basic level, I'm sure it saves a massive amount of time when you're wanting to kick out hundreds, if not thousands, of planetary bodies. Sure, you still want an artist to look at each one and give them some hand picked PoIs, because if you rely purely on procedural generation you end up with things that are a bit generic and lackluster.

As for the video talking about it, it was a while back, and to be fair it was mostly them talking about it and only showing small bits here and there. That said, seeing how they're using procedural generation to create outposts, truck stops, space stations, and now caves, and that they've shown this process multiple times, creating entire locations in a minute or less, I'm inclined to believe them when they talked about planetary generation.

[1001]

It is a big caveat, but one that would be expected; its not like the engine can craft its own textures.

Yeah, no shit.

But they're talking about the procedural generation of a basic planet or moon, which drops in the textures, biomes, and everything else that goes with them. Even at that basic level, I'm sure it saves a massive amount of time when you're wanting to kick out hundreds, if not thousands, of planetary bodies. Sure, you still want an artist to look at each one and give them some hand picked PoIs, because if you rely purely on procedural generation you end up with things that are a bit generic and lackluster.

As for the video talking about it, it was a while back, and to be fair it was mostly them talking about it and only showing small bits here and there. That said, seeing how they're using procedural generation to create outposts, truck stops, space stations, and now caves, and that they've shown this process multiple times, creating entire locations in a minute or less, I'm inclined to believe them when they talked about planetary generation.

My stance is that until we see the planets being knocked out in a day or less perhaps people should refrain from claiming it is a thing. It paints a false impression otherwise.

They have worked on procedural assets and tech for the last 4 years and yet there is only a handful of planets in the game. Hardly a testament for how quickly they can produce things, procedural or otherwise.

[Cyclone Jack]

My stance is that until we see the planets being knocked out in a day or less perhaps people should refrain from claiming it is a thing. It paints a false impression otherwise.

I would agree with this. Once they're able to get all of the core planet varieties in place (all of the texture/asset work), then we'll hopefully see this system come to fruition.