[Megathread] Star Citizen

[Val the Moofia Boss]

The fact that there aren't gameplay loop tutorials in the game with the introduction of new gameplay loops is probably one of the worst parts about the game. I'd assume you'd learn them all from SQ42 but considering that is still vaporware at the moment, it's kinda hard to figure it out and there needs to be an explanation for mechanics built into the game.

When you first start the game, there are tutorial tooltips turned on by default, ie it tells you hold down F so you can interact with panels to get out of your hab, press H to heal when you are low on health, etc, but it's very basic barebones stuff. The game doesn't tell you where to go to find the hangar, how to enter your ship, how to find missions, etc. You have to Google this stuff or watch a Youtube walkthrough that might out of date because the devs keep overhauling the UI and the flight systems every other year.

[MrAnderson]

Due to the ever changing nature of alpha it would be a waste of time and resources to make an in-depth ingame tutorial because it would be obsolete by the time it was ready. They do have official guides on their website to help new players:
https://support.robertsspaceindustri...eginner-Guides

The game download is like 70GB that time is well spent reading a bit about the basics. The rest can be learned by playing with other players, using the chat system to find guides is useful.

Speaking of tutorials, here's one for the XenoThreat Event:

[Proskill]

what kind of mining is better and why?
on foot? ground vehicle? or ship?

[Val the Moofia Boss]

what kind of mining is better and why?
on foot? ground vehicle? or ship?

Bigger is better.

Hand mining on foot makes the least amount of money. You buy a utility tool and the mining head attachment, a backpack, fly to some cave, and then go inside and look for stuff to mine. It's what you do if you're literally just starting out in Star Citizen and can't afford a ROC (and a ship to transport it) or a proper mining ship, like the Prospector.

Once you obtain a ship that can carry vehicles, then you can buy a ROC, which is a little buggy with a mining laser attached. You must first fly around the surfaces of planets and moons, using your ship's scanning function to search for boulders on the surface to mine. Once you've found minable boulders, you land your ship, open the cargo bay, hop in your buggy, and drive out and mine until you're full. Be careful not to fly too far away from your ship or else it will despawn, as no one is in it. Also be sure to lock your ship so you don't get shipjacked. If something happens to your ship, then all your time mining will have been for nothing as you won't be able to get back to a city or a space station to sell your stuff. I guess you could beg in the chat for someone to come pick you up, but you're just as likely to get pirates who will come in a Cutlass and use their handguns to shoot you (the ROC doesn't have a windshield and is open air exposed) and hijack your ROC and drive it into their ship and fly over.

There is a variation of the ROC that is bigger and has an extra seat, but it's useless. Don't get that one.

The next step up are proper mining ships, ie Prospectors and the Argo Mole. You go to either an asteroid belt or fly along the surface of a planet and scan for rocks to mine. Once you've found rocks to mine, you fly up, deploy your mining laser, and mine. And then when you're filled up, you fly back to a station or a city and sell. Be warned that player pirates can search popular mining areas and come try to ransom your ship (by threatening to blow it up if you don't give them some money), but it doesn't happen often. You get the Prospector if you're a solo player. If you have friends, then you consider getting the Argo Mole.

While mining, it is sometimes possible to wind up mining Quantanium. This is a highly valuable ore, but it also explodes after a few minutes. IIRC the denser it is in quantity, the faster it will explode. If you do stumble upon it, you need to balance mining as much more of it as possible and being able to fly back to sell it before your ship goes boom.



Since you're just starting out, I'd probably recommend just buying a cheap utility tool with a mining head attachment and a backpack, fly to some caves and start mining and see how you like it. Mining pretty much boils down to "go to mining site > find ore > aim mining tool at rock > activate mining tool > play the balancing minigame to crack the rock (too little power won't crack the rock, too much will cause it to explode and you'll die or blow up from fragmentation) > succeeded! > pick up rocks > rinse repeat until inventory is full > go back to a city/station and sell rocks. The gameplay is the same at all levels, be it hand mining, driving the ROC buggy, or using a ship, so if you try handmining and fundamentally don't like the gameplay loop, then don't bother wasting your money on a ROC or a mining ship.

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Another thing you should beware of: sometimes in chat people will start inviting people to group up to go hand mining. Now, maybe you might like the company of other people, but just know that there is no tangible benefit to doing this, and there is a chance some bored PvPer is going to sneak into the group, wait until everyone enters the cave, and then start going on his killing spree. It gets really fun if a criminal player with a bounty joins the group, and then a bounty hunter comes into the cave not knowing that there are innocent miners inside, accidentally kills one by shooting the first guy he sees, and gets a bounty too. If you want some thrill of cave PvP, you might find this fun. If you don't want to die then you might want to avoid this kind of group.

[Proskill]

thanks for the lengthy answer, as always. appreciated

my ROC got bugged. cant claim, cant switch modules, cuz its in read-only mode (as i cant claim), cant retrieve - error pops up
guess im waiting for some patch to fix it, cuz i aint reseting my account just for that

i might consider getting prospector sometime in the future, but rather save money for 600i for bounties (which is the real money maker). beside im still not sure if i wanna do mining with how servers currently work etc. too risky imo. when bounty hunting i lose 60k aUEC in the worst case when theres 30k hitting and im on 1/3 targets killed

FPS mining seems like the least profitable so ill just pass that for now

so thats about mining. i heard theres some FPS contract that involves killing outpost turrets and getting into a bunker. id like to try that out, more specifically make use of my nova tank i bought ingame. does anyone know the mission name? what tab it is under etc etc?
the contract manager is so unintuitive its one of those things that made me not play this game for 2 years

[Val the Moofia Boss]

i heard theres some FPS contract that involves killing outpost turrets and getting into a bunker. id like to try that out, more specifically make use of my nova tank i bought ingame. does anyone know the mission name? what tab it is under etc etc?

You fly to Hurston, open your Mobiglass and look for missions called "evict illegal occupants". You will then be directed to go to a bunker on the planet (you can QT to it) and kill everyone inside. Note that the bunkers have turrets that will be hostile and should be destroyed before you land and enter the bunker. If you have a small ship (anything smaller than a Cutlass or a Freelancer) then the turrets can be quite dangerous, so you'll need to dodge the incoming fire as you take them out.

It is also possible to buy a car or a hoverbike, load it up to your ship, and land your ship outside of range of the enemy turrets, or on the other side of a hill, and drive to the bunker, thus bypassing the turrets. However, if you have a ship capable of carrying those vehicles (Cutlass or Freelancer and above), then your shields are tanky enough to withstand the incoming fire and you mind as well just blow up the turrets.

Once inside the bunker, you have to kill 7 bandits. Pretty straightforward. However, FPS combat with NPCs in Star Citizen is very janky. The netcode is pretty awful. You can be standing behind cover, with absolutely no enemies in your line of sight, and then all of the sudden you are being shot at through a wall and die, and then as the camera is zooming out from your dead corpse, you see an enemy emerge from behind cover, having obviously shot you through a wall (or there was a time delay where on the server, the NPC bandit had line of sight of you, while on your computer he didn't have line of sight yet). You can be extremely careful and check all corners and such, do everything right, and still get killed out of nowhere by a guy you couldn't have possibly seen because he was still behind cover on your computer screen. It is infuriatingly unfair. If you do bunker missions, you're just going to have acknowledge the fact that you can do everything right and you're just going to die due to reasons outside of your control because how janky the game is. If you bring a ship that has a medical respawning bed, like the medical Cutlass or the Valkyrie or a Carrack, then you can at least be back in action within a couple minutes. Otherwise, it feels pretty bad to die for bullshit reasons in a bunker, and then have to spend 10-15 minutes trying to get back to the bunker by waking up in your hab, riding elevators, running to your hangar, flying to the location, etc).

Wearing heavy armor slightly helps. The time-to-kill in FPS combat is very short; pretty much any gun can kill anyone just by shooting at them for a second or less (though NPCs seem to be unfair in that you sometimes have to be shooting at them for 3 seconds before they finally die, even though you're using the best gun in the game and they're wearing light armor). Heavy armor can give you a slight fighting chance by letting you survive a split second of being shot at, but again you're still at the mercy of the jankiness of the game and you can still be killed in half a second by an NPC that was behind a wall while you were wearing heavy armor.

For fighting NPCs in tight spaces like bunkers, space stations, and ships, you should just bring a shotgun or a machine gun. Don't bother with sniper rifles. Bring a ton of ammo. Buy like 30 magazines for your primary weapon. Trust me; you're going to blow through them so fast. The amount of ammo needed to kill NPCs can be pretty insane at times, and you're facing down 7 NPCs per bunker. Buy laser pointers for them (press U to activate it). For machineguns, buy the highest powered scope you can and attach it to them. Don't bother with combat knives or silencers or muzzle flash hiders, as stealth is completely broken.

Also buy some magazines for your handgun, but in general you're only going to use your handgun as a backup weapon in case you run out of ammo for your primary weapon, but you're in the middle of a fight and you do not have the time to open your mobiglass and equip more magazines. Don't bother buying a laser pointer or a scope for your handgun. I guess you could add a suppress to it, in the off chance you eventually want to do some PvP and you want a stealthier gun (not that it will help you against NPCs).

Do not bring grenades. Grenades are broken. Usually when you try tossing a grenade, it doesn't actually go anywhere. It just bounces off an invisible wall in front of you and lands at your feet and blows you up. Or you toss it and it doesn't explode, and you just wasted time you could have spent holding a gun you could have used to defend yourself.

Bring lots of medpens. Buy like 40 of them.

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Also, those giant shoulder mounted railguns and missile launchers are useless for the bunker missions. They're only good against shooting down small spaceships or vehicles while on foot. You will never encounter such a situation fighting against NPC in FPS combat.

[MrAnderson]

iF it's credit gaining you're after instead of specifically the mining activity just do the XenoThread event in Microtech > MIC-L1 Station > Jericho station. It's the priority mission with the voice over that spawns once in a while.

One can get a lot of credits just killing random npc pirates and their capital ships while participating in the event.

[Proskill]

just completed that quest. it was meh. first of all i didnt use nova tank as i couldnt transport it with andromeda, it didnt fit in unfortunately. so i just destroyed the turret with my ship.
then i went into the bunker. it was a bit more stressful than BH, but all went smooth. didnt get hit once, but boy oh boy is the NPC AI retarded. half of them just stood in the same place doing nothing, and the other half ran straight onto me

profit-wise its bad. doing bounty hunting i could earn 60k aUEC in half the time i earned 14k aUEC doing this.
but well, its something different to do. at least theres land and vegetation to look at instead of black emptiness of space.
someday ill get a starlifter just for this but srsly, i hope they add some contracts to do on the ground with nova tank, because there isnt much use for it unfortunately

[Val the Moofia Boss]

just completed that quest. it was meh. first of all i didnt use nova tank as i couldnt transport it with andromeda, it didnt fit in unfortunately. so i just destroyed the turret with my ship.
then i went into the bunker. it was a bit more stressful than BH, but all went smooth. didnt get hit once, but boy oh boy is the NPC AI retarded. half of them just stood in the same place doing nothing, and the other half ran straight onto me

profit-wise its bad. doing bounty hunting i could earn 60k aUEC in half the time i earned 14k aUEC doing this.
but well, its something different to do. at least theres land and vegetation to look at instead of black emptiness of space.
someday ill get a starlifter just for this but srsly, i hope they add some contracts to do on the ground with nova tank, because there isnt much use for it unfortunately

Yeah. There is a slightly different variation of the bunker mission that is framed as a drug heist. If you got to ArcCorp, you can get a mission from Tecia, where she will loan you a Cutlass. You take the Cutlass, fly to a bunker on one of the moons, kill everyone inside as usual, and then you steal the boxes of drugs and throw them into the Cutlass, and then fly back to ArcCorp to drop them off. But yeah you've pretty much experienced all there is to bunker missions.

[MrAnderson]

[XDurionX]

You fly to Hurston...

I really enjoy reading these summaries about how bad the "game" actually is. Appreciate that.

[Proskill]

xenothreat is such a clusterfuck. buggy and confusing. its not even fun at all.
im not even sure why im doing it. for the time-limited armor i guess, like the rest of people, i only wonder why we do this. why ppl feel the need to collect EVERYTHING in games. ill probably never even wear it, as armor has statistics and i bet theres better stuff just from the vendor at PO. but i want to finish this shit...

[banmebaby]

how bad the "game" actually is.

I tried the free flight event, and honestly think everyone should do the same.

Because words just ain’t enough to express it…

I’ve had this dude in another forum bothering me to try it out and write about my experience with it, and just… woah. I understand it’s still very “early” on development, but holy fuck, it gives you a whole new perspective.

The loadings feel like GTA Online in the good old days, over 5 minutes waiting on an SSD.

As a newcomer you have no fucking clue where to go and what to do, the game tells you very little about it, you either keep alt-tabbing to Google/YouTube shit around or you take your chances in the chat.

The community overall seems pretty friendly and helpful, but if you are unlucky like me, you are bound to stumble upon of those zealot freaks that will interpret your questions as “shittin on the game” and give you hell for it.

For example, 15 minutes trying to find a way out of the damn planet, the floor just vanishes and I start falling, I shit you not, but I’ve must have spent around 15-20 minutes falling, while at it, I’ve started asking for help on the chat, because I wasn’t fucking dying at all…

This one very special dude, start’s giving me shit for it, that I doing nothing but “complaining” about the game, and how he couldn’t wait till the free flight ended, that I should just leave… but as I said, most of the community seems pretty fucking nice, they gave him shit for being a dick and a few of them even sent me some friend requests to give me a hand…

That said, I can say for sure now, that everyone going around claiming that “Oh even in alpha it’s better than X and Y”, is a dishonest clown, even Odyssey being the shit it was doesn’t force me to do a fucking research 15min into the game for a way to kill myself because the floor just pulls a disappearing act…

Besides the technical problems, what I also found troubling is the amount of clutter throw at you for the “mah immersion” sake, turning every trivial thing into a bore fest, I think a lot of will start getting tweaked and removed once the game goes live, because I highly doubt most player will have enough patience to go over such crap over and over…

TL,DR: The community overall is pretty cool, don’t let the few cultists going around forums “fighting the good fight” make you believe otherwise, the flight seems pretty solid, you got a lot of control, as an “alpha” game, it has a fuck ton of technical problems, shit that won’t show up on the fancy ass “buy our new jpg” edited videos…. Just give it another decade of development.

[BeepBoo]

for the time-limited armor i guess, like the rest of people,

Are you telling me this early access game has real time-limited events with exclusive rewards in it already? L.O.L.

Jesus christ. Some people who try to be internet personalities/streamers/whatever are just so bad and so unsuited for it.

That person sounds like the UK equivalent of someone from boston with a THHHHHHHHHHHHHHHICK accent and it's painful to listen to.

Also, game is meh.

[kenn9530]

xenothreat is such a clusterfuck. buggy and confusing. its not even fun at all.
im not even sure why im doing it. for the time-limited armor i guess, like the rest of people, i only wonder why we do this. why ppl feel the need to collect EVERYTHING in games. ill probably never even wear it, as armor has statistics and i bet theres better stuff just from the vendor at PO. but i want to finish this shit...

You are playing an alpha where you wont get to keep most things anyway, the only things you do keep will be items that attach to the actual my hanger on the account itself like invictus jacket but most of those things can still be earnt when they are available anyway.

[Proskill]

You are playing an alpha where you wont get to keep most things anyway, the only things you do keep will be items that attach to the actual my hanger on the account itself like invictus jacket but most of those things can still be earnt when they are available anyway.

yeah, about that jacket. it shows in my hangar that i got it, but its nowhere available in the game. so?

[kenn9530]

yeah, about that jacket. it shows in my hangar that i got it, but its nowhere available in the game. so?

During the alpha you would still have to buy it during the event as it wont just appear in your inv, later however as long as its attached to the account there should be a way to obtain the items you own.

[Proskill]

During the alpha you would still have to buy it during the event as it wont just appear in your inv, later however as long as its attached to the account there should be a way to obtain the items you own.

alright then, that explains it. i didnt even play at the moment it was given out, let alone know i have to buy it ingame during the event

edit: interestingly enough carrack helmet and one empire pistol is available to me without doing nothing

[MrAnderson]

ex-Elite CMDR's seem to enjoy it:

[banmebaby]

Yeah, if I had a few hundred views and zero comments on my videos I sure wouldn’t mind dangling the perfect carrot in front of one of the most gullible gaming communities ever all over their reddit page, day after day, as long as I get a couple hundred bucks per video, I also love Star Citizen. In fact, I truly play it every day now. I’m indeed the living proof that that SC killed WoW. Please. DO SHARE and subscribe, and don't forget to smash that like button.

https://vimeo.com/597773032