[Megathread] Star Citizen

[zysis]

This thread appeared on my feed and here I am reading it... Holy crap, doesn't anyone know what a Ponzi scheme is? I just tried to search for Star Citizen on Steam and it's not there. People are talking like it's a game when it's not. Probably never will be. As I said well over a decade ago; Star Citizen is pretending it can do things that hardware is incapable of. This is why the game couldn't get an actual investor and turned to crowd funding because it's easy to scam Joe Average than it is to scam an investor who will spend time and research if it's possible. What game promised WAY back then wasn't possible and it's still not possible now. I feel sorry for the guys that were duped into spending money on this, and don't have the insight to see what it really is.

[MrAnderson]

I truly miss the whole anticipation of the game I felt 6 years ago

The idea of a ship with your buddies
Having a buddy do the space pirate aspect and you sell your services as a security escort

That "idea" has been a reality in Star Citizen organically for many years now since the first trading/jumptown wars.

There's whole guilds with branches dedicated to piracy and others dedicated to Security. The latest JumpTown event (fight for territorial power in order to get riches) showcased a lot of that kind of emergent gameplay dynamics.

[MrAnderson]

Not sure how they would compare to cars in other games like Need for Speed, as there are no flat roads to drive on in SC.

Best place to find flat ground to race is on Cold planets/moons as they have gigantic frozen oceans to play around like shown here @3:30


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I just tried to search for Star Citizen on Steam and it's not there.

With good reason. Steam takes 30% of money of every sale there.

Some games and companies are popular or big enough to be able to do without Steam.

Escape from Tarkov comes to mind along with other crowdfunded mmos in development.

With that said, as those games get more fleshed out it's natural for companies to move to steam as a way to market their game to a broader audience.

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What game promised WAY back then wasn't possible and it's still not possible now.

Quite the oposite, what we have now (huge seamless universe with fully traversable planets and highly detailes ships and cities etc) wasn't thought to be possible back in the early days and yet here we are. Enjoying the best space sim ever and having a blast!

[Easo]

Alright y'all, please chill out and keep discussion about the game. Criticism is always welcome, but bashing the game for the sake of bashing it or repeating the same talking points isn't really doing anything productive. I get it, folks have very strong opinions about that game and that's fine. But please remain respectful and fluffy when posting.

Can we at least ask that Anderson actually answers with, well, answers, instead of marketing videos? Or stops doing things like the whole "game is released/not released" and then tries to pretend he did not say anything like that despite the repeated quotes?
If he has different opinion from the rest it's fine, but there has to be one in the first place.

[Kyanion]

snip

Haha damn that is quite the read, thanks for that

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Can we at least ask that Anderson actually answers with, well, answers, instead of marketing videos? Or stops doing things like the whole "game is released/not released" and then tries to pretend he did not say anything like that despite the repeated quotes?
If he has different opinion from the rest it's fine, but there has to be one in the first place.

Few points I've noticed. You can defend the game with anything you want no matter how nonsensical or how much double speak you use while also repeating the same talking points but if you're critical of the game or outright trash it that is not okay. People lave legit responses to some of the crap being spewed and instead we just get 'have a video, lolz' responses that ignore what is being said.

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Quite the oposite, what we have now (huge seamless universe with fully traversable planets and highly detailes ships and cities etc) wasn't thought to be possible back in the early days and yet here we are. Enjoying the best space sim ever and having a blast!

Let's play fact/opinion.

huge seamless universe with fully traversable planets: Opinion. The game had a talking point of many many star systems and planets. How many are in the game right now? How many planets are 'fully traversable' and what does that even mean? You can fly around on a mostly empty planet? You are trying to claim a huge seamless universe as if there are multiple star systems and many planets, that isn't true now is it?

highly detailes ships and cities etc: Opinion. Highly detailed ships as far as the jpegs go? How do YOU define what is highly detailed? What might be highly detailed to you might not be to someone else. And highly detailed cities? Do you mean the buildings? What can you do in the cities? Are they lifeless, teaming with life, like a real bustling city but in space? I wonder about that...

wasn't thought to be possible back in the early days and yet here we are.: Opinion. Things discussed back then some of it is STILL NOT POSSIBLE and not in the game. Where is the server meshing that would let the massive be in MMO. Not in. Server caps. You are trying to speak as if everything described in the initial pitch and feature creep is all here now. It isn't. And you know it.

Enjoying the best space sim ever and having a blast!: Opinion. The best ever cannot be proven as a fact. Having a blast is your idea of fun and that is your opinion and also not a fact. It is a pretty low bar having the 'best space sim' when the game is supposed to be a MMO. Is it the best MMO. It isn't even a MMO with a 50 player server cap.

You are doing an imitation of another poster that loves to speak as if their opinions are facts. Weird.

[kenn9530]

This thread appeared on my feed and here I am reading it... Holy crap, doesn't anyone know what a Ponzi scheme is? I just tried to search for Star Citizen on Steam and it's not there. People are talking like it's a game when it's not. Probably never will be. As I said well over a decade ago; Star Citizen is pretending it can do things that hardware is incapable of. This is why the game couldn't get an actual investor and turned to crowd funding because it's easy to scam Joe Average than it is to scam an investor who will spend time and research if it's possible. What game promised WAY back then wasn't possible and it's still not possible now. I feel sorry for the guys that were duped into spending money on this, and don't have the insight to see what it really is.

They are making a highly detailed space game which means the current development timeframe is more than reasonable in how long it is taking, they have a running version of the game that is highly enjoyable and good quality, just because you cant understand how to do something doesnt mean it cant be done, CiG are constantly delivering good progress for us to test in the PU which is only a small part of the work being done.

[Calfredd]

They are making a highly detailed space game which means the current development timeframe is more than reasonable in how long it is taking, they have a running version of the game that is highly enjoyable and good quality, just because you cant understand how to do something doesnt mean it cant be done, CiG are constantly delivering good progress for us to test in the PU which is only a small part of the work being done.

When you repeat a lie enough times, even you will think it to be true.

[Val the Moofia Boss]

Those two guys aren't going to give you a straight answer because they know it's not going to look good.

planets: Opinion. The game had a talking point of many many star systems and planets. How many are in the game right now? How many planets are 'fully traversable' and what does that even mean? You can fly around on a mostly empty planet? You are trying to claim a huge seamless universe as if there are multiple star systems and many planets, that isn't true now is it?

IIRC there were like 40+ star systems promised. Right now, there is just the Stanton system, with 4 planets. There used to be 5 planets but it was too much for the servers so we're down to 4. And there is a dozen moons that are nothing to write home about. The planets and moons are quite barren, with only a few copy-pasted habs and caves. Microtech has forests with no animals in them.

The Pyro system was announced half a decade ago and we're still waiting to go there.

highly detailes ships and cities etc: Opinion. Highly detailed ships as far as the jpegs go? How do YOU define what is highly detailed? What might be highly detailed to you might not be to someone else. And highly detailed cities? Do you mean the buildings?

I struggle to think of any other video game with spaceships or even interior housing that is as detailed as - and on such a large scale as - SC's ships, with all of the little doodads and drawers you can open up. Perhaps certain Skyrim housing mods might have more stuff. Maintaining such a level of detail for large gunships like the Hammerhead is quite impressive, though it remains to be seen if this will extend to the humongous capital ships that aren't playable yet.

The cities are deceptively small. From a distance, they seem big, but there is a no-fly zone barrier that prevents you from getting too close to see the smoke and mirrors. Only a tiny fraction of each city is actually playable space, being mostly 2 or 3 plazas with train/bus rides that connect them. I'd say that Skyrim, Witcher, and Assassin's Creed cities are more detailed and larger.

What can you do in the cities? Are they lifeless, teaming with life, like a real bustling city but in space? I wonder about that...

Not much. You can walk into a bar to talk to a questgiver, and that's about it. There are pool tables but you can't play pool like you would in Yakuza. There are arcade machines but you can't play them like you would in Yakuza.

Are they lifeless, teaming with life

There are a couple hundred NPCs in the playable areas, but they're usually broken, either walking in place or T-posed in chairs. When they do work, they just walk their preset patrol route around the cities. They don't even have day/night schedules like in other open world games.

[Revamp Man]

That "idea" has been a reality in Star Citizen organically for many years now since the first trading/jumptown wars.

There's whole guilds with branches dedicated to piracy and others dedicated to Security. The latest JumpTown event (fight for territorial power in order to get riches) showcased a lot of that kind of emergent gameplay dynamics.

The game released???

Holy crap guys I guess we have been wrong for years

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Haha damn that is quite the read, thanks for that

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Few points I've noticed. You can defend the game with anything you want no matter how nonsensical or how much double speak you use while also repeating the same talking points but if you're critical of the game or outright trash it that is not okay. People lave legit responses to some of the crap being spewed and instead we just get 'have a video, lolz' responses that ignore what is being said.

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Let's play fact/opinion.

huge seamless universe with fully traversable planets: Opinion. The game had a talking point of many many star systems and planets. How many are in the game right now? How many planets are 'fully traversable' and what does that even mean? You can fly around on a mostly empty planet? You are trying to claim a huge seamless universe as if there are multiple star systems and many planets, that isn't true now is it?

highly detailes ships and cities etc: Opinion. Highly detailed ships as far as the jpegs go? How do YOU define what is highly detailed? What might be highly detailed to you might not be to someone else. And highly detailed cities? Do you mean the buildings? What can you do in the cities? Are they lifeless, teaming with life, like a real bustling city but in space? I wonder about that...

wasn't thought to be possible back in the early days and yet here we are.: Opinion. Things discussed back then some of it is STILL NOT POSSIBLE and not in the game. Where is the server meshing that would let the massive be in MMO. Not in. Server caps. You are trying to speak as if everything described in the initial pitch and feature creep is all here now. It isn't. And you know it.

Enjoying the best space sim ever and having a blast!: Opinion. The best ever cannot be proven as a fact. Having a blast is your idea of fun and that is your opinion and also not a fact. It is a pretty low bar having the 'best space sim' when the game is supposed to be a MMO. Is it the best MMO. It isn't even a MMO with a 50 player server cap.

You are doing an imitation of another poster that loves to speak as if their opinions are facts. Weird.

The sad part is if they launched with only like 8 planets and 10 ships they would still have millions of players

[Kyanion]

They are making a highly detailed space game which means the current development timeframe is more than reasonable in how long it is taking, they have a running version of the game that is highly enjoyable and good quality, just because you cant understand how to do something doesnt mean it cant be done, CiG are constantly delivering good progress for us to test in the PU which is only a small part of the work being done.

Fact/Opinion time!
They are making a highly detailed space game which means the current development timeframe is more than reasonable in how long it is taking: OPINION! They have taken more time to make this game than some of the most ambitious games in HISTORY. They dug themselves a feature creep hellhole and have failed to dig out of it.

they have a running version of the game that is highly enjoyable and good quality: OPINION! A running version of the game? How much of the game? 1% of what it is supposed to be? Even less than that? Good quality? It cannot host more than 50 people. It has many reported bugs and issues. Enjoyable? Based on what metric? Twitch stats? It has around 2k viewers most times well below games like: Rimworld, Garry's Mod, FARMING SIMULATOR, New World and so on.

just because you cant understand how to do something doesnt mean it cant be done: Opinion? I guess? Does this even make any fucking sense? I don't need to understand how time travel works to know it can't be fucking done.

CiG are constantly delivering good progress: Opinion. Nine years will tell you that the pace they are on is not typical for game development. They also fail to update the players when they say they will. Many things they've promised in their timelines vanish without a trace or are pushed back with no word.

test in the PU which is only a small part of the work being done.: Opinion. You only know what they are doing because they tell you. Does that mean it is true? Sq42 you were told was greyboxxed years ago. You are not there, you do not know how much or how little work is being done, only what they show you.

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When you repeat a lie enough times, even you will think it to be true.

If you drink enough Kool-Aid you become the Kool-Aid Man or something.

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Those two guys aren't going to give you a straight answer because they know it's not going to look good.

Oh trust me I know, they are either paid shills, too deeply invested monetarily to give up, are dedicated fanboys/white knights, want to work for CIG but don't, are just willfully ignorant, or just like to lie for their own amusement. Pick one.

When they were singing the same praises of CIG back in 2015-2016 on these forums and here we are in 2022 with the game still not released (or released, depending on what someone says) it means I have nothing to prove because CIG has done that for us with their lack of a complete game.

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IIRC there were like 40+ star systems promised. Right now, there is just the Stanton system, with 4 planets. There used to be 5 planets but it was too much for the servers so we're down to 4. And there is a dozen moons that are nothing to write home about. The planets and moons are quite barren, with only a few copy-pasted habs and caves. Microtech has forests with no animals in them.

The Pyro system was announced half a decade ago and we're still waiting to go there.

Quite the oposite, what we have now (huge seamless universe with fully traversable planets and highly detailes ships and cities etc) wasn't thought to be possible back in the early days and yet here we are.

So a 'huge seamless universe with fully traversable planets' is 1 system with 4 planets. The highly detailed cities are not sounding so highly detailed.

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I struggle to think of any other video game with spaceships or even interior housing that is as detailed as - and on such a large scale as - SC's ships, with all of the little doodads and drawers you can open up. Perhaps certain Skyrim housing mods might have more stuff. Maintaining such a level of detail for large gunships like the Hammerhead is quite impressive, though it remains to be seen if this will extend to the humongous capital ships that aren't playable yet.

The cities are deceptively small. From a distance, they seem big, but there is a no-fly zone barrier that prevents you from getting too close to see the smoke and mirrors. Only a tiny fraction of each city is actually playable space, being mostly 2 or 3 plazas with train/bus rides that connect them. I'd say that Skyrim, Witcher, and Assassin's Creed cities are more detailed and larger.

I mean on the one hand it is kind of neat that you can have a detailed inside of a ship to do things in but like you said we have no idea if that will be expanded upon further in other ships and how it will work. But how important is it to have a ship you can use the drawers on if you know there aren't a lot of places to like...go with it.

Really disappointing about the cities, I wonder if you can bypass the barriers to see what is really going on in the parts they don't want you to go in. This sure does not seem amazing after so many years, it is like parts of it are there but other parts are just no where to be seen, like the development is all over the place.

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Not much. You can walk into a bar to talk to a questgiver, and that's about it. There are pool tables but you can't play pool like you would in Yakuza. There are arcade machines but you can't play them like you would in Yakuza.

There are a couple hundred NPCs in the playable areas, but they're usually broken, either walking in place or T-posed in chairs. When they do work, they just walk their preset patrol route around the cities. They don't even have day/night schedules like in other open world games.

To me it sounds really creepy, like one of those cheap games you find on steam with pre-fabbed NPCs you just plop down that don't interact with the player. It reminds me of a game I've seen a streamer play that was like a lot of arcade games like skeeball and other games for tickets that just felt lifeless.

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The game released???

Holy crap guys I guess we have been wrong for years

Woah careful now or he'll say the game hasn't released.

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The sad part is if they launched with only like 8 planets and 10 ships they would still have millions of players

Maybe, it really depends on what you could have done though and how many people could play together. If it was a detailed solo game with inhabited planets and a story it might have done well there too. Sadly we'll never know what could have been since it feature creeped itself to death.

[Aeluron Lightsong]

There's no point in arguing with someone like that but I suppose some like to argue. If the game or the MMO was focused on it could of evolved to add more stuff over time but...... I guess the vision just kept increasing

[zysis]

=just because you cant understand how to do something doesnt mean it cant be done,=

Incorrect. I don't think you understand the limits that both hardware and PACKET LOSS present to the end-user.

If you had, you wouldn't be sold on the idea of such a game being able to exist when the tech isn't capable of it.

[MrAnderson]

Let's play fact/opinion.

Don't see where the confusion about those statements comes from:

1- Huge Seamless Universe with fully traversable planets.

Star Citizen universe is indeed all completely seamless and it's planets completely traversable. There are no loading screens besides the initial one. All planets, moons, space stations, cities etc are fully rendered and modelled and shared by all players in the server without magical dusty clouds or glide stall trickery's.
Here's a video tour around the system:

2- Highly detailed ships and cities.

Self explanatory. Top of the Crop.

3- "Wasn't thought to be possible back in the early days":
The original vision for Star Citizen didn't included seamless flying from space to planets but a transitional loading screen to small areas like in the game Freelancer as the engine wasn't able to do it at the time.
Only in late 2014~2015 when CIG managed to hire the Cryengine original developers who left Crytek they were able to upgrade the engine to be able to go for the seamless approach and fully modelled planets with "Crysis quality". Until this day Star Citizen features the best looking, performing, fully modelled, playable and traversable planets in the industry.

4- "Enjoying the best space sim and having a blast!"
Can confirm as a matter of fact I'm enjoying the best space sim and having a blast.

Those two guys aren't going to give you a straight answer because they know it's not going to look good.

You didn't quite provide a straight answer but more of a faulty and incomplete one. C'mon, You're supposed to be one of the rare posters here that actually played the game and follow it's development more in-depth.

IIRC there were like 40+ star systems promised. Right now, there is just the Stanton system, with 4 planets. There used to be 5 planets but it was too much for the servers so we're down to 4. And there is a dozen moons that are nothing to write home about. The planets and moons are quite barren, with only a few copy-pasted habs and caves. Microtech has forests with no animals in them.

There's 100+ systems planned you mean. This goes back to the original vision of Star Citizen where just alike Freelancer, each system would be comprised of only 1-2 small hero zones. So, way before the move for fully procedural planets and the decision to detail every system at much higher degree. Every known system, with their own lore etc can be seen in their interactive map: https://robertsspaceindustries.com/starmap

Stanton is the "Hero System", the one they choose to do first because it has the most variety and complexity and that serves as a template to base others upon.



Delamar doesn't belong to Stanton System but to the Nyx system, so it was removed. It's not really a planet but more like a big ass asteroid. It was actually the very first testing bed for the seamless planetary landings and was showcased in the very first demo of such.

I struggle to think of any other video game with spaceships or even interior housing that is as detailed as - and on such a large scale as - SC's ships, with all of the little doodads and drawers you can open up. Perhaps certain Skyrim housing mods might have more stuff. Maintaining such a level of detail for large gunships like the Hammerhead is quite impressive, though it remains to be seen if this will extend to the humongous capital ships that aren't playable yet.

Indeed there's not really anything to question about the graphical quality and detail of Star Citizen in general. We've got a good taste of the detail of the humongous capital ships with the Javelin tour during Invictus, all looking top notch as usual.

The cities are deceptively small. From a distance, they seem big, but there is a no-fly zone barrier that prevents you from getting too close to see the smoke and mirrors. Only a tiny fraction of each city is actually playable space, being mostly 2 or 3 plazas with train/bus rides that connect them. I'd say that Skyrim, Witcher, and Assassin's Creed cities are more detailed and larger.

Did you meant deceptively big? As in they look massive but inside are smaller? Well that is by design. They are player hubs after all and need also to be practical to play. Still, the structures are there and are modelled and convey a great sense of scale. No, we can't enter everywhere or go anywhere like in any other game there's limitations for performance and playability reasons but they did a great job conveying the city feeling. Travelling the metro loops is a chill experience. New Babbage has no "no-fly" zones though that I've found.

Not much. You can walk into a bar to talk to a questgiver, and that's about it. There are pool tables but you can't play pool like you would in Yakuza. There are arcade machines but you can't play them like you would in Yakuza.

There are a couple hundred NPCs in the playable areas, but they're usually broken, either walking in place or T-posed in chairs. When they do work, they just walk their preset patrol route around the cities. They don't even have day/night schedules like in other open world games.

Cities like most mmorpg big player HUB's are used for a multitude of things besides the social aspect or the hero quest givers.

- Cargo Buying/Selling
- Ship Buying / Rental
- Personal Clothing, Armour and Weapons
- Ship Weapons/Shields

Every city has some personalized items that can only be bought there which for collectors is and fashion inclined folks is enough reason to explore around.

[XDurionX]

Don't see where the confusion about those statements comes from:

1- Huge Seamless Universe with fully traversable planets.

Yeah but what's the point about a "huge, seamless, fully traversable Universe" if it's completely barren and empty? I mean it's easy to procedurally create unlimited amounts of space, the hard part is to make it interesting.

2- Highly detailed ships and cities.

Yeah nobody denies that part, but the "cities" are tiny and the ships are completely useless without any game mechanics to employ them in

3- "Wasn't thought to be possible back in the early days":

Yep, and it still isn't, which is proven by CIG year after year. They cannot even provide a small fraction of what they promised, and they never will.

4- "Enjoying the best space sim and having a blast!"
Can confirm as a matter of fact I'm enjoying the best space sim and having a blast.

I think we all can agree that this is anything but a fact.

[MrAnderson]

Yeah but what's the point about a "huge, seamless, fully traversable Universe" if it's completely barren and empty? I mean it's easy to procedurally create unlimited amounts of space, the hard part is to make it interesting.

That's the thing. It's not "completely barren and empty". It's sprinkled with handcrafted locations with purpose and meaning all tied with a deep and rich lore. That's the benefits of doing things handcraft instead of letting a mathematical algorithm generate the locations.

Yeah nobody denies that part, but the "cities" are tiny and the ships are completely useless without any game mechanics to employ them in

Cities are quite big if you actually take the time to visit them and players often get lost in them, even with all the signs.

And there's plenty of ships to go around (100+!) supporting multiple forms of gameplay:

Yep, and it still isn't, which is proven by CIG year after year. They cannot even provide a small fraction of what they promised, and they never will.

Seamless Planetary landings on highly detailed planets has been a thing for some time now.

I think we all can agree that this is anything but a fact.

Since you've been quoting myself I can confirm you that it is indeed a fact as I've been enjoying the best space sim and having a blast for many years.

[kenn9530]

Incorrect. I don't think you understand the limits that both hardware and PACKET LOSS present to the end-user.

If you had, you wouldn't be sold on the idea of such a game being able to exist when the tech isn't capable of it.

The technology already exists to allows thousands of players in one area as it is, they just need to develop the tech so the largest amount of ships and players can interact with each other at the same time, you dont understand what they are actually developing and how the server system will work in SC, current tech in the alpha can handle 100 ships in the same area with very little issues and load in everything on the server at the same time, when the server is not handling everyone all at the same time that number will increase a large amount, there will be a limit on how much can be handled on a server but it will be a fairly large number.

[Katchii]

The game released???

Holy crap guys I guess we have been wrong for years

As disingenuous as I find most of his posts, this one is actually true. The game is available to play. Just like any other pre-release game where you can pay money to access the features that are available, Star Citizen IS available to play. And has been for a long time.

It's not "released," as it's not feature complete...or functioning like the developers promised, but it IS available to play.

I'm not defending him, so much as maybe trying to keep the criticism against the game to the factual stuff about it. Laying facetious or outright fallacious arguments against the game, when there's plenty of legit stuff wrong with it, doesn't help and just encourages people like Anderson.

[Val the Moofia Boss]

That's the thing. It's not "completely barren and empty". It's sprinkled with handcrafted locations with purpose and meaning all tied with a deep and rich lore. That's the benefits of doing things handcraft instead of letting a mathematical algorithm generate the locations.

Very, very little of the Stanton system is "handcrafted". Besides the 4 cities, Port Olisar, the Klesher prison mines on Aberdeen, and the Javelin crash site on Daymar, the rest of the Stanton system is just copy-pasted procedural assets. Procedurally generated space stations that use the same tileset and asset. Hundreds of the same copy-pasted outposts and bunkers. Hundreds of procedurally generated caves that all look the same.

[kenn9530]

Very, very little of the Stanton system is "handcrafted". Besides the 4 cities, Port Olisar, the Klesher prison mines on Aberdeen, and the Javelin crash site on Daymar, the rest of the Stanton system is just copy-pasted procedural assets. Procedurally generated space stations that use the same tileset and asset. Hundreds of the same copy-pasted outposts and bunkers. Hundreds of procedurally generated caves that all look the same.

Everything is handcrafted though, doesnt matter if assets are resued is other locations, in a large scale game is it to be expected to reuse assets.

[MrAnderson]

Very, very little of the Stanton system is "handcrafted". Besides the 4 cities, Port Olisar, the Klesher prison mines on Aberdeen, and the Javelin crash site on Daymar, the rest of the Stanton system is just copy-pasted procedural assets. Procedurally generated space stations that use the same tileset and asset. Hundreds of the same copy-pasted outposts and bunkers. Hundreds of procedurally generated caves that all look the same.

No no no, you got it all wrong. It's the way around!

Very little is exclusively procedurally generated in Star Citizen. Most it's placed and crafted by artists using special procedural tools developed by CIG to be able to "paint" each planet with different biomes seamlessly add details etc. This has been explained and showcased a number of times in several panels by CIG dev's:



The same goes for space stations. The Covalex, Space Port Kareah, GrimHex space stations were all placed and crafted manually. The Hurston crashed satellite tied to a mission, caves aren't all the same, some are big others small. Some you can only access by foot, others you can enter with ground vehicles and some are only accessible with a spaceship. The multiple Easter egg areas in many planets and moons were all hand-crafted and placed there by devs in that exact location by choice. The Benny edge stop in yela's asteroid, Christmas fire place below Microtech main building, The bench with beers overlooking the spaceport and city. And most recently the painting of Jax Mccleary in New babbage skyscraper showed inthe trailer is there too.


What CIG has been doing is building the tools and refining them to be able to automate the process the most possibly without loosing quality and purpose. But their Universe is for the most part curated with the work to achieve that leveraged with the help of procedural tools, but never automatically generated by an algorithm by a set of parameters to infinity.

So the look of the outposts belonging to the law abiding companies in Stanton will not be the same look of the outposts in Pyro where they have no presence. Pyro will have it's own colonialist style reflected along that system be it in the architecture or inhabitants clothing and so on.