The Latest From Star Citizen (2.6, Star Marine, and More!)

Ah, that's too bad. Though I think they also wanted the new VR support, so maybe they will upgrade to the newer version after all. Oh well, we'll see.

A really nice post showing the early concept development to official reveal of the Retaliator:

https://robertsspaceindustries.com/comm-link/transmission/14628-WIP-Retaliator

First, the non-hype stuff. Some more news on what's happening with FPS:

https://robertsspaceindustries.com/comm-link/transmission/14803-Letter-From-The-Chairman

Basically they've decided to get rid of some legacy code which means completely doing over a few things. So there are some technical and some gameplay issues that need to be sorted. These are detailed in the linked post. From now on there'll be an update on Star Marine every week. No release date yet.

Since Star Citizen is being made in a way where separate studios are working on their own portions of the game, this isn't bringing the entire development of the game to a grinding halt. But it's undoubtedly holding some things back.

I'll admit that this is concerning but I'm not about do go all doom-and-gloom about it like everyone on the Elite forums. Christ those people are such misery-guts. Not that their complaints are unjustified and I agree with most of them but there's a 100% focus on the negative there.

Now the fun stuff.



Ever thought to yourself: "Gee I'd love to be a commercial pilot, but New York to Madrid is a boring-*** route"?

Well how does New York to MARS sound? Star Citizen allows for careers in passenger transport.

https://robertsspaceindustries.com/comm-link/transmission/14804-Design-Civilian-Passenger-Transport

Basic gist of it:

>You need a license from the government.

>Four classes of comfort: Coach, Business Class, First Class, and Luxury Class.

>Fuel capacity, consumable storage capacity, and engine efficiency are your main concerns for classification as long or short-range.

>Once that's sorted, park on a public landing pad and initiate a connection to the local Flight Schedule Computer in order to get a sense of passenger traffic at that location. Desired destinations are shown in order of popularity, with the number of passengers that have travelled to that locale over the last day and the average prices they paid for each ticket class available as a means of reference.

>You select the destination, ticket price, departure/estimated arrival times. Then you publish it so people can buy tickets.

>Your flight will fill up either quickly or slowly depending on how tempting your offer is.

>Reputation directly impacts two things: whether your license to operate is temporarily revoked or not, and how much of a discount you must suffer or premium you may enjoy when competing against others and offering an otherwise identical level of service.

>Reputation is measured via how well travellers are being safely delivered to their destination, and the overall level of satisfaction of those passengers with the flight experience.

>There is a computer system known as ICES. Information, Communication, and Entertainment System.

>This thing can fail. Different problems have different solutions:

>There's a bartending mechanic

>While coach plebs won't care too much about delivery time or quality, the upper class people are going to be very upset with you if you bugger up the shaken-not-stirred-cost-more-than-a-ticket-in-coach alien space brandy.

>You can upgrade the MixMaster and customize your passenger ship. You can also buy obscure alcohol from out-of-the-way places to give your passengers a unique buzz to mask your dodgy flying. The ICES system also has a movie library that needs to be updated/expanded to include the latest stuff.

>You may have to deal with medical emergencies. Each ship has at least one medical cabinet with a diagnosis machine and other basic supplies.

>You will have the option of flight attendants. However "A single experienced player can likely handle a ship with 20-30 seats by themselves". Sounds like crazy talk but even these days autopilot does most of the work.


But what ships have they made to facilitate this? Well say hello to the top-of-the liner passenger ship:

The Genesis Starliner!





https://robertsspaceindustries.com/comm-link/transmission/14801-Introducing-The-Genesis-Starliner

Forty seats sounds kinda low. But a 747 doesn't go to space and take people to Mars. Nor does it have turrets and shield generators. And life support. And nuclear generators. You get the idea.

NOTE: The page for the Starliner is one of those fun ones with interactive elements. Audio recordings of a faux departure lounge will PLAY AUTOMATICALLY. Also about halfway down the page there'll be a thing you can click to "select a destination" each unique destination has a unique PA recording from what sounds like a Texan pilot.

@Geers I view this delay as a very positive thing. It's not really the first person aspect that's problem, it's the back end infrastructure of cry engine that's at fault. They're trying to build an mmo scale game and the engine was never built for that. At the end of the day, it's far far better they build strong foundations now, than lash something together on the existing tech that never gets fixed due to it being to integral to everything.

In the last '10 for the producers' they mentioned this and basically said they're at an infection point. Quite soon, they should have all the custom tech they need worked out, and then things will really shift up a gear as they can focus on adding content and testing rather than foundation work.

The fact is they're doing a lot of never done before things (not fully at least) so it's understandable they need the tech. I think when they're done star citizen will have its own engine as it's so far removed from what they started with.

Okay...
So the commercial flight thing sounds kinda interesting. Mostly because I'm way too much of a Euro Truck Sim nerd, and am the sort of idiot who picks the most mundane thing to do in a game.

You think that's mundane then you should sign up to be a flight attendant. See the galaxy (through little windows)! And all its entitled arseholes who complain about getting the wrong bag of peanuts!

Here's the uniform:



And yes, Google Glass is part of the male uniform.


PS: I'm taking bets on how long it'll take kvalheim to go from commercial pilot to slave trader.

One thing the community was very clear on was they wanted depth and gameplay choices in the open universe that aren't solely about combat (which is covered pretty well with all space sims and gets old pretty fast if your not an ace).

So we currently have planned career paths in:
haulage, passenger transport, mining (this has lots of in depth mechanics rather than 'point magic beam at asteroid, profit), salvage (covers salvaging derelict ships as well as search and rescue for other pilots), science (e.g. surveying systems, finding and plotting New jump routes), news and broadcasting and deep space exploration. On top of that there's the multi crew roles including on ship engineer on larger vessels (think crawling around jeffries tubes trying to keep the ship working in a fight).

I don't know if they'll get all these things in, however I'm hopeful that this might be one of the most interesting sandbox games made. I've played a fair few of the earlier open space games and the biggest issue is things get repetitive really quickly.

Well literally though anytime someone lists "Oh here's all the stuff you can do!" my brain just screams out "FEATURE CREEP! FEATURE CREEP! FEATURE CREEP!"

Keep in mind that this isn't really new stuff. They stopped adding new features. This is just fleshing out what was already on the table.

Currently I see no reason why you can't deviate from your flight plan and sell all your passengers to pirate scum. It might even be possible (speculating here) to pass it off as a tragic accident/pirate attack to avoid prosecution.

I'm still skeptical. This game's kickstarter ended in 2012 - it's 2015 now, they've made a HELL of a lot of money, and all the game has is basically what could be released as a fairly small multiplayer arena game (few races, skirmishes, etc) and a hangar to look at all the ships you can't fly yet but good god you already spend $200 on it so why not.
This may have been previously revealed, and yeah I got a little interested there, but as soon as I zoom back and look at the whole thing I just can't get interested. That and the almost-cultish attitude of the fans to absolutely find no flaw in the game and constantly praise anything that comes out really puts me off.

Had the game come out with a reasonable amount of announcement a few months to a year before release yeah, I'd be excited. I just feel like I can't move past though the feeling that this could EASILY collapse in on itself.

Oh believe me when I say people are pissed about the flight model. Because it's pretty crap.

Heh, they're going for a AAA production with a AAA budget. New IP of this size takes a lot of work so it doesn't surprise me in the slightest that the schedule has slipped a lot (many people have mad the comment of 'its been 3 years'... look how long Rockstar worked on GTA V, this is every bit as big so another 2 or 3 years of development is needed imo).

You are correct in that there is a risk it could collapse, however I don't see that happening before we get some major gameplay. The original plan was to make a great new story driven space shooter (AKA Wing Commander / Star Lancer). What happened as I'm sure your aware is it then took off so they expanded it to include a sandbox game as well. What I think is encouraging are the various updates and sneak peaks we've had at Squadron 42 (which is what I'm personally waiting for). That appears to be coming along nicely, and everything needed for that is pretty much in place. From that perspective I'm confident Squadron 42 will release in the not too distant future, and based on the preliminary work (the tutorial) it will be good.

What I'm less confident on is how the persistent universe sandbox game will pan out. If it collapses it will be the PU that brings it down as that is one complex beast. I'm still optimistic though- I mean they are using the money on the game no doubt about that (I think it's 6 studios working on the game currently) and the communication is good. That said I think the PU is quite a long way off being released even in alpha form (I don't expect to see it in 2015, I'm hopefully that the first episode of Squadron 42 will release around Christmas or early in the new year although even that is probably optimistic).

I think this is the issue though, people don't appreciate the time involved in these projects as so many Kickstarters pop up with a game already in Alpha. PA suffered from that a bit as well ("it's been in development forever" type comments), and Star Citizen started off at a similar level (i.e. a concept video essentially). There will be lots of teddies thrown around when they announce the delay to the PU Alpha (which was scheduled for November / December this year) but not much they can do about that. I mean from my perspective I put in £30, which got me a ship and the game and Squadron 42 which strikes me as reasonable. I may not get everything stated but I think I'll get more than my moneys worth. Where people are going to be disappointed is where they've shelled out big money for lots of ships. If you like the idea of a single player campaign then I'd say your probably pretty safe to back now, if the PU is more your thing then I'd just keen an eye on it. Chris Roberts does know his stuff (he was behind Wing Commander Privateer 1 and 2 and MS Freelancer, both excellent open sand box space sims in their day), and I think they have the money so I think it will pan out.

Gamescom!



The flying still looks awful but DAT SPACESTATION.

I think they've juts proved every point in their ambitious plan is possible and works already...

- massive seamless maps (whole full sized solar system)...

- seamless transitions from landing zones to ships to flying around. Also proves viability of boarding actions

- multiple crew on a single ship, with full freedom of movement within the ship whilst it's moving in space.

- Also dayum! That retaliator is epic, and the constellation can take a beating!

@Geers what's wrong with flight exactly? The main thing I noticed was the somewhat strange look of the character movement animations (which explains why they've been working on them so much as these are the current improved ones).

It's most noticeable if you watch a ship take off. It just goes VOOP straight up. There's absolutely no sense of inertia. When you fly in Elite you can feel the mass of your ship as the engines work to alter your course. In Star Citizen everything feels like origami spaceships.

Looks cooler than origami though .

Have you played ac 1.1.6 yet? They significantly increased ship inertia, they all drift quite a bit while turning (unless you use boost, which is now severely limited).

I agree they take off a bit quickly however performing tight manoeuvres around asteroids makes the ships feel quite weighty so it's probably more they need to tune take off more than anything....

Yeah I heard about the update but haven't had time to check it out myself yet. I'm just going off what I saw in the vid.

There was an interesting Polygon article about Star Citizen released last week.
For die hard fans this article has nothing new, but I think it is a really good summary and a bit of look behind the scenes for all those who wondered what's all about the development of Star Citizen.

And by the way:

Also the social module is out- with the Arc-corp area 18 zone available to explore now

Amazing- a target date they actually hit We've been promised Star Marine by the end of September, and then Arena Commander 2.0 (which will feature a single 'large world' test level that prototypes much of the final game, as well as the full multi crew capabilities and flyable constellation and Reatliator ships).

If they hit all these this side of Christmas I think they'll hopefully allay most of the fears people have as AC 2.0 should show off a baby version of the final game with (to a basic level at least) pretty much all the core mechanics in and working.

They're also going to give details of SQ42 at CitizenCon in October.

There is a studio monthly report (August) on their website with lots of interesting content (sorry the forum doesn't let me put any links). I don't personally understand the criticism and bashing they have got. The game is absolutely huge and making it takes its time.

What I have tried Social module it feels very good and impressive already even without NPCs. According to all the current available modules I think the game is going to be amazing and making it has progressed very well.