[Megathread] Star Citizen

[kenn9530]

Oh hey the Javelin. If I get an entire server together on this one ship I would have half a crew.

Min crew on a javelin is 12 and min crew on an Idris is 8 and they are currently the largest ships that the players will eventually have access to, players wont be able to fly these ships until after SQ42 is released, there is not going to be a small server cap when the game is released so comments about it are pointless.

Okay, so the video i commented on showed a big ship.....sitting there getting shot from another ship a long ways away. So the size is neat but there was nothing going on in that clip. Heck the ship getting attacked did not appear to directly respond to the threat. Is this because it did not have enough people piloting it? Big ships are neat but that clip literally showed one ship attacking a nonresponsive whale.

Ships when heavily damaged in SC will stop responding to controls and be disabled well before they should blow up, you wont just be able to fight until the second your ship blows up.

[Kyanion]

Min crew on a javelin is 12 and min crew on an Idris is 8 and they are currently the largest ships that the players will eventually have access to, players wont be able to fly these ships until after SQ42 is released, there is not going to be a small server cap when the game is released so comments about it are pointless.

Ah yes 'minimum' crew is 12, so at minimum if these ships were in the game you could have 3 fighting each other, woo. No one cares what the players will 'eventually' have or anything. You don't know when the game is going to be released where there is no server cap. You have a 9+ year old game here that cannot have more than 40. Period.

Why is there a clip of this Idris ship being tossed about if players can't fly these ships until the release? Which one of you is wrong?

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And none of those prevent these massive space battles of being fun for players or an impressive achievement.

So where exactly was the massive space battle? Where was the fun for that matter... It was one shipping shooting at God knows what getting hit by another ship. Woo sign me up, that shitty video changed my mind about this game!

[Cracked]

Great question!
So the thing about these capital ships and well, about Star Citizen and it's game engine in general is how it can handle the game and it's assets being modelled at a 1:1 scale while maintaining fidelity and performance.

In the video I posts bellow you can see a space station and avatar players going moving around a lot of ships, small to heavy fighters along with bombers and even jack of all trade ships. You can notice the scale is quite big already when you compare ships with players and how everything is detailed and running well (sort of).

Don't get me wrong, the visuals are impressive, but that sort of just works as a wow-effect. It's really neat the first time and then it's just Tuesday. That's not why most people play video games. Great if that works for you.

Heck, we are all on a board dedicated to a game that is as far from visually impressive as it gets today.

[MrAnderson]

So where exactly was the massive space battle? Where was the fun for that matter... It was one shipping shooting at God knows what getting hit by another ship. Woo sign me up, that shitty video changed my mind about this game!

Nah, I'm pretty sure no one is trying you to sign you up or change your mind because you've made it pretty clear that you're just hating for the sake of hating because you can't accept that people can back crowdfunded games and enjoy them while they are in development.

[bloodwulf]

Don't get me wrong, the visuals are impressive, but that sort of just works as a wow-effect. It's really neat the first time and then it's just Tuesday. That's not why most people play video games. Great if that works for you.

Heck, we are all on a board dedicated to a game that is as far from visually impressive as it gets today.

I guess that is where i got confused. Seeing a single ship explode from fire from offscreen did nothing for me. I am someone that plays games of all types of visual fidelity. And then seeing kenn say that ship has a minimum crew of 12 when the servers have a cap of 40 presently is pretty underwhelming right now. Sure the game is supposed to have larger caps, but a lot of companies say they are going to do one thing, and then when it finally launches we get something less. As much as I would love a space sim like this, i think ill check back in a year to see if we are any closer to release.

[Jastall]

Don't get me wrong, the visuals are impressive, but that sort of just works as a wow-effect. It's really neat the first time and then it's just Tuesday. That's not why most people play video games. Great if that works for you.

Heck, we are all on a board dedicated to a game that is as far from visually impressive as it gets today.

I daresay WoW's art design does more than enough to mask its graphical shortcomings. I still find it amazing what the dev team can do with an engine that is technically not too far off from blocky old Warcraft 3. Lots of zones look as amazing as many modern open world landscapes, if less detailed of course.

Speaking of, while Star Citizen's graphical fidelity is beyond reproach and its theoretical scale is certainly very impressive if it ever gets to work, I just can't feel the art design. It's all a bunch of been there, done that, sure the Javelin pictured above looks impressive but artistically it's not my cup of tea at all, few of the models I've seen are TBH. To use only one example, I liked Mass Effect's art design far, far more even if it wasn't the most ambitious and most specialiest game in the universe.

[Kyanion]

Nah, I'm pretty sure no one is trying you to sign you up or change your mind because you've made it pretty clear that you're just hating for the sake of hating because you can't accept that people can back crowdfunded games and enjoy them while they are in development.

Ah yes now you are trying to analyze me and decide what my motivations are. Actually I hate crowdfunded money pits that have sucked down over 300 million dollars and still haven't released after 9+ years.

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I guess that is where i got confused. Seeing a single ship explode from fire from offscreen did nothing for me. I am someone that plays games of all types of visual fidelity. And then seeing kenn say that ship has a minimum crew of 12 when the servers have a cap of 40 presently is pretty underwhelming right now. Sure the game is supposed to have larger caps, but a lot of companies say they are going to do one thing, and then when it finally launches we get something less. As much as I would love a space sim like this, i think ill check back in a year to see if we are any closer to release.

Yeah I wasn't really sure what to think with that video, one ship was firing at who knows what and is taking fire from far off to the side. Nothing special happens and then boom, a ship explodes. There was nothing special about it. Kind of sad, because there was the potential of something great, maybe, but no.

I'm sure in a year's time it will be much the same, eventually this thread goes dormant for months at a time because there is just nothing more to discuss. The game keeps getting money and keeps delaying the launch.

[MrAnderson]

I guess that is where i got confused. Seeing a single ship explode from fire from offscreen did nothing for me. I am someone that plays games of all types of visual fidelity. And then seeing kenn say that ship has a minimum crew of 12 when the servers have a cap of 40 presently is pretty underwhelming right now. Sure the game is supposed to have larger caps, but a lot of companies say they are going to do one thing, and then when it finally launches we get something less.

Don't get me wrong, the visuals are impressive, but that sort of just works as a wow-effect. It's really neat the first time and then it's just Tuesday. That's not why most people play video games. Great if that works for you.

Heck, we are all on a board dedicated to a game that is as far from visually impressive as it gets today.

The thing is that the "visuals" are a huge technical achievement for the engine (some years ago the engine couldn't even load assets that detailed and big) and just a a small part of something bigger. This is Star Citizen's first glimpse of a gameplay driven world Event dynamics and these ship's the equivalent to world bosses that you can fight with or against. But the event is a bit more involved than just capital ship phew phew, it thrives on player cooperation and is accessible to any player even new ones.



But these ship's are not "officially" released for the players to fly as they will be essential part of the Single-Player campaign Squadron 42.
The first 15 minutes of the gameplay video takes place inside the "little one of the capital ships" Idris ship.


Some players have managed to find ways to fly them in the Alpha by glitching into the cockpit and taking the seat of the NPC pilot.

As much as I would love a space sim like this, i think ill check back in a year to see if we are any closer to release.

There's usually free-fly events that make the game free2play for one or two weeks so anyone interested can take a peek without spending a thing.

[kenn9530]

Ah yes 'minimum' crew is 12, so at minimum if these ships were in the game you could have 3 fighting each other, woo. No one cares what the players will 'eventually' have or anything. You don't know when the game is going to be released where there is no server cap. You have a 9+ year old game here that cannot have more than 40. Period.

Why is there a clip of this Idris ship being tossed about if players can't fly these ships until the release? Which one of you is wrong?

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So where exactly was the massive space battle? Where was the fun for that matter... It was one shipping shooting at God knows what getting hit by another ship. Woo sign me up, that shitty video changed my mind about this game!

You dont just judge a game solely based on a development version simple as that, if your not taking into account what the game is supposed to have and what it has now then your purposefully not giving the game a fair representation, it doesnt matter what limits the game has currently as it wont have them at the release. Everyone judges a game based on what features it has on release so until then your unable to actually judge star citizen properly.

The only way the idris and javelin was flyable was through a bug which no longer is possible, so no they were not officially flyable and the insides are removed on purpose where there is only a few consoles you can see on the bridge, so no they are not available to the players to fly and wont be until SQ 42 is released as they want the first time you get inside one to be in the single player campaign.

If you have not played the event yourself then you have no right to even comment about it, its not something you can just watch a video about.

[Kyanion]

You dont just judge a game solely based on a development version simple as that

Yeah don't tell me how to judge a game. When a game is in Early Access and is launched for players to purchase and play it gets judged there. Plenty of games I've bought, saw the EA was not great and I was done with it. Is it fair? No. Do I care? No. I'm not the only one that thinks like this so please don't try and lump people into your way of thinking.

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it doesnt matter what limits the game has currently

It DOES matter.

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If you have not played the event yourself then you have no right to even comment about it, its not something you can just watch a video about.

Wow really? If you say so.

[Ophenia]

Ah yes 'minimum' crew is 12, so at minimum if these ships were in the game you could have 3 fighting each other, woo. No one cares what the players will 'eventually' have or anything. You don't know when the game is going to be released where there is no server cap. You have a 9+ year old game here that cannot have more than 40. Period.

Why is there a clip of this Idris ship being tossed about if players can't fly these ships until the release? Which one of you is wrong?

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So where exactly was the massive space battle? Where was the fun for that matter... It was one shipping shooting at God knows what getting hit by another ship. Woo sign me up, that shitty video changed my mind about this game!

They're trying to prove their point that "40 player" is more than enough for HUGE SPACE BATTLES to occur, showing videos of random af ships shooting at an unmanned 3000$ unavailable ship that needs a crew between 12 (one third of the server's capacity) and 80 (TWICE the server's capacity) people to even operate.

That actually disproves the point. Replace the ship with a Planet, it will have the same effect, as the Ship here was just an AI behaving as a moving target for people to shoot at.

I really hope that one day we'll have videos of realistic huge space battles - I mean, including several ships with players inside, shooting at ships with other players inside. Which is only possible at a low scale as of today.

Showing the Javelin being shot at will never make it impressive. I can show you videos of a Star Destroyer being shot at by plenty of ships in Star Wars, that'll still be a movie, not a MMO.

[Kyanion]

They're trying to prove their point that "40 player" is more than enough for HUGE SPACE BATTLES to occur, showing videos of random af ships shooting at an unmanned 3000$ unavailable ship that needs a crew between 12 (one third of the server's capacity) and 80 (TWICE the server's capacity) people to even operate.

That actually disproves the point. Replace the ship with a Planet, it will have the same effect, as the Ship here was just an AI behaving as a moving target for people to shoot at.

I really hope that one day we'll have videos of realistic huge space battles - I mean, including several ships with players inside, shooting at ships with other players inside. Which is only possible at a low scale as of today.

Showing the Javelin being shot at will never make it impressive. I can show you videos of a Star Destroyer being shot at by plenty of ships in Star Wars, that'll still be a movie, not a MMO.

Oh I know, the server cap basically ruins any chance of these HUGE SPACE BATTLES from ever happening. They can link videos until they turn blue in the face it won't change anything that such a low server cap removes the 'fun' of such a thing.

Maybe one day they'll figure out this magical tech that makes the game stop imploding, I'm not holding my breath for it mind you, but if it ever does happen they could have some nice potential for fun space battles. Too bad that is years off at their current pace.

[Elim Garak]

I don't even understand the appeal of playing as a crewmember on a capital ship. Like what's more fun - flying your own starfighter in insane dogfights - or sitting in a turret waiting for the enemy starfighters to come within the firing range for a brief moment and then back to waiting? Or keeping your finger on the fire button on a big rail gun to take the other capital ship down while all you see is your rail gun firing into the void?

The only fun use of capital ships in gameplay would be boarding them. That might be fun - but that's just shooter gameplay - it doesn't need to be a massive capital ship battle - and it won't be.

The other use - it's just gonna be a base or guild ship, whatever.

But capital ship battles with full crews - is boring. For it to be fun it should be close distance and more mobile than a cap ship. Look at Sea of Thieves. 4 crew ships at a close distance circling around each other and firing from different sides - now that's fun.

[1001]

Yeah I agree, I've thought that about a lot of Star Citizen's design, many of the ideas they've proposed sound good on paper but translating that to enjoyable gameplay is another thing entirely.

[Ophenia]

I don't even understand the appeal of playing as a crewmember on a capital ship. Like what's more fun - flying your own starfighter in insane dogfights - or sitting in a turret waiting for the enemy starfighters to come within the firing range for a brief moment and then back to waiting? Or keeping your finger on the fire button on a big rail gun to take the other capital ship down while all you see is your rail gun firing into the void?

The only fun use of capital ships in gameplay would be boarding them. That might be fun - but that's just shooter gameplay - it doesn't need to be a massive capital ship battle - and it won't be..

Depends on how it's done, really. I could see it working if there is content available for such massive ships - but that would require raid-like content, where you with your big-ass ship will be defending something while being assaulted, having to deal with ship repair, damage dealing with turrets and such, but obviously this would be reserved to guilds with top-notch coordination.

[Elim Garak]

Depends on how it's done, really. I could see it working if there is content available for such massive ships - but that would require raid-like content, where you with your big-ass ship will be defending something while being assaulted, having to deal with ship repair, damage dealing with turrets and such, but obviously this would be reserved to guilds with top-notch coordination.

Sure coop-PVE content might work, but we haven't seen even something simpler like SQ42. Though they present it as PvP cap vs cap content - and that I am not seeing as fun. It might work in PvP matches where one side attacks a cap ship and the other - defends a cap ship - like in SW Squadrons, only with people inside the cap ship. But that's not what they are going for - they are going for open space PvP. The inside cap crew will be bored.

[kenn9530]

Sure coop-PVE content might work, but we haven't seen even something simpler like SQ42. Though they present it as PvP cap vs cap content - and that I am not seeing as fun. It might work in PvP matches where one side attacks a cap ship and the other - defends a cap ship - like in SW Squadrons, only with people inside the cap ship. But that's not what they are going for - they are going for open space PvP. The inside cap crew will be bored.

The game will mostly be about PvE, the universe will be mostly populated by NPCs flying around doing normal jobs and such and your unable to tell at least straight away if its an NPC or player your even targeting in the first place, boarding options add a ton of ways to play the game from just simple salvage missions to actually stealing the ship but it all requires groups and coordination and having the correct ships to complete the task, if you completely disable a ship and have no means to repair or tow it that ship wont be going anywhere.

Depends on how it's done, really. I could see it working if there is content available for such massive ships - but that would require raid-like content, where you with your big-ass ship will be defending something while being assaulted, having to deal with ship repair, damage dealing with turrets and such, but obviously this would be reserved to guilds with top-notch coordination.

The most simple reason to board a ship would be to either steal it or strip it for components, players will be able to remove ship components in the future like shield generators, power plants and such, and even strip the hull for materials and fuel/oxygen. You can scan how many crew they have aboard so you can pick your targets and if they have decent cargo to even be worth going after.

No ship will ever be safe and can be completely disabled with the right ships/equipment against it.

It DOES matter.

It doesnt matter just becuase you say it does, simple fact is that there wont be a 40 player limit when everything is in place, your making it like its always going to be a limited player cap. If you dont take into account at least some of the games most basic features its going to have when its released your just arguing in bad faith and it just makes everything you say mean nothing.

When you will never play they game your opinion means very little as it is not even based from your own experience with the game

[Kyanion]

in the future.

Never about what you can do now, just this magical future stuff. And you totally won't be able to tell who is a NPC or a player. Totally..

[MrAnderson]

They're trying to prove their point that "40 player" is more than enough for HUGE SPACE BATTLES to occur, showing videos of random af ships shooting at an unmanned 3000$ unavailable ship that needs a crew between 12 (one third of the server's capacity) and 80 (TWICE the server's capacity) people to even operate.

You seem to be stuck on the formatted "mmo theme park cartoon game" mindset or thinking about Star War movies where big numbers are needed to convey the "massiveness" or "epic" feeling.

When I talk about the "massiveness" and "epicenes" feeling of playing in these big space battles not the MMO acronym. Guess if you haven't experienced yourself is hard to understand what I'm describing.

In a first person universe where the assets are rendered at 1:1 scale with skill FPS based action combat everything is more visceral by default. See Planetside2 or Battlefield gameplay for example.

If you go watch space battles in other fps games they usually don't have Hundreds much less thousands of of ships all battling it out for performance reasons and also because it becomes a bit too chaotic a detracts from the experience because the skill factor becomes diluted by numbers/randomness similar to how most mmo zergs end up.

Which is what already happens in Star Citizen in those 40 player battles. Hence why, I, who play the game say they feel massive already (despite not having 100's or 1000's of players like you guys dream of).

I really hope that one day we'll have videos of realistic huge space battles - I mean, including several ships with players inside, shooting at ships with other players inside. Which is only possible at a low scale as of today.
Showing the Javelin being shot at will never make it impressive. I can show you videos of a Star Destroyer being shot at by plenty of ships in Star Wars, that'll still be a movie, not a MMO.

Except you can't actively actually participate in a movie now can you.

BTW CIG just announced a 2 week Free-Fly event starting next week so here's a chance to shoot a capital ship, if you can manage to open the hangar door that is.

[1001]

Wow, that is some serious backpedalling.

I remember many times you'd rag on another space game for not having hundreds of ships battling it out despite it never being an intended feature for that game. That having ships zip around hundreds of meters per sec in 6 directions would make for a very chaotic player experience.
And now that argument is being used in defense of a game where big battles was an intented feature along with hundreds of players in the same area, so weird to read.