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Star Citizen Pre-Alpha: 'Arena Commander' Dogfighting

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I wonder a lot about exploration in SC... With 150 systems, won't they all get explored really fast!?

150 systems is more then enough for one or two years given additional content made either by CIG or the players. We are talking a lot of open space here with hundreds of landing zones and other activities.
 
I wonder a lot about exploration in SC... With 150 systems, won't they all get explored really fast!?

Given the potential player base, no it isn't too much. They can increase having the longevity of that with instances in the servers. Also making the systems not immediately accessible by linear travel. Having systems or clusters being hidden behind hidden warp points is another way to do this. Then having areas of the universe behind hostile zones (like deep in Vanduul space) can keep places out of reach for players.
 

MrBig

Member
Given the potential player base, no it isn't too much. They can increase having the longevity of that with instances in the servers. Also making the systems not immediately accessible by linear travel. Having systems or clusters being hidden behind hidden warp points is another way to do this. Then having areas of the universe behind hostile zones (like deep in Vanduul space) can keep places out of reach for players.

Systems will indeed be obfuscated. Jump points will need to be discovered and charted for new and existing systems, which CIG wants to be a long-term community effort for each one rather than something one person can do in a session.
 
Systems will indeed be obfuscated. Jump points will need to be discovered and charted for new and existing systems, which CIG wants to be a long-term community effort for each one rather than something one person can do in a session.

Plus jump points can become unstable and or just disappear and one would have to discover a new jp into that system.
 

Pomerlaw

Member
150 systems is more then enough for one or two years given additional content made either by CIG or the players. We are talking a lot of open space here with hundreds of landing zones and other activities.

Elite has billions of them and until you get out of the populated area, which is hundreds of times bigger than SC's bubble, it is becoming harder and harder to find an unexplored star system.

Of course the space between stars is empty and we don't even visit it, and Elite systems are pretty void of anything... As in real space... Until they add more stuff and planetary landings.

I guess in SC there will be much more things to do, but I was talking specifically about finding something first.

150 systems for thousands of hungry players is nothing.

Systems will indeed be obfuscated. Jump points will need to be discovered and charted for new and existing systems, which CIG wants to be a long-term community effort for each one rather than something one person can do in a session.

This may be key, but remains to be seen how it will work? What about the lone wolf explorer?
 

MrBig

Member
150 systems for thousands of hungry players is nothing.

This may be key, but remains to be seen how it will work? What about the lone wolf explorer?

I wouldn't compare SC directly to ED in this case due to their travel systems having a high degree of differentiation (SC being much slower in general), but yes that is a relatively low amount of system for the amount of players. At the least 150 is not a static number, CIG plans to have consistent content updates every month.

If someone finds a jump point location, they do not have to report it. They can keep it private within their org or just peck at it themselves for however long it takes. Someone else could always come along and discover it during that process of course, though.

Majorly I expect single-person exploration to take the form of scouting systems and reporting/selling information about material deposits to other organizations.

As for the specifics of jump point charting, they have to found via scouting with instruments, and then a course through them must be chartered, going in alone would be risking your ship/life with no one to aid you.
 

epmode

Member
I hear all of that crazy shit about jump point reporting, crewing multiple owned ships with AI, multicrew gameplay, player owned structures and Chris Roberts' fever dreams about cargo management... and I don't think I'll believe a word of it until I actually see it implemented and working in the public alpha.
 

Zalusithix

Member
Not sure where to throw this, but given it's primarily for SC (with a side of ED), I'll throw it here. I finished my HOTAS chair mounting system. Really need to get a compound table for stuff like this. Doing it with a standard clamp/vice method was tedious as hell and cost me precision. Now to get the custom throttle design fully fleshed out...
pzmJIVg.jpg
 

Danthrax

Batteries the CRISIS!
That chair is my bloody dream, Zalusithix.


I hear all of that crazy shit about Chris Roberts' fever dreams about jump point reporting, Chris Roberts' fever dreams about crewing multiple owned ships with AI, Chris Roberts' fever dreams about multicrew gameplay, Chris Roberts' fever dreams about player owned structures and Chris Roberts' fever dreams about cargo management... and I don't think I'll believe a word of it until I actually see it implemented and working in the public alpha.

fixed =P

I think we'll get it all. Probably not in that public alpha, but it'll all happen eventually.
 

Zabojnik

Member
Not sure where to throw this, but given it's primarily for SC (with a side of ED), I'll throw it here. I finished my HOTAS chair mounting system. Really need to get a compound table for stuff like this. Doing it with a standard clamp/vice method was tedious as hell and cost me precision. Now to get the custom throttle design fully fleshed out...

Hey I have the exact same GOAT chair. How much for the mounting system? :p
 

Zalusithix

Member
That chair is my bloody dream, Zalusithix.
It's overkill and a half, but I'm happy with how it turned out. The mounting arms have a few inches of vertical adjustment in half inch increments, and the angle can be adjusted to 3 different positions with around 7 degrees between each. Back and forth movement is infinitely adjustable and held in place via a holding bolt at the bottom. Loosen the bottom bolt and the entire arms slide off the rail in seconds so they don't need to be on the chair all the time.

Hey I have the exact same GOAT chair. How much for the mounting system? :p

The chair is actually what spawned the idea. One of the arm rests started cracking somehow. After failing to to fix the crack and having it grow, I simply stripped the arms off the chair and thought that it would make the perfect opportunity to mount the HOTAS. It took a little bit of thinking on how I wanted to do it as the mounting points' angles shift in relation to the seat as the chair reclines. Originally I wanted a system that allowed a center stick option as well, but that wasn't going to pan out with the way that the reclining worked.

The raw material costs weren't bad at around $100 shipped, though it would have been a bit higher if I didn't have a certain amount of aluminum plate already on hand. On the other hand, the time it would have saved me having to cut it myself would have made up for that. (I don't have a means by which to accurately and easily cut 1/4" plate that's too big for the chop saw.) Ideally it would have been made using thinner aluminum welded together. Instead it's made out of 1/4" and 3/8" plate/bar so that I could screw it all together with tapped holes.

All told, it took me a bit under 30 hours to make it, but that includes doing all the one time measurements and planning, adjustments, testing, etc. It'd probably take less than half of that to do it again.

Now I just need to mount the trackball below the joystick - probably with some of that heavy duty plastic velcro-like stuff. Then there's the figuring out how to integrate a keyboard holding system that retracts out of the way...
 

Raticus79

Seek victory, not fairness
Chances are good that Mark Hamill will be in SQ42.

Well there it is! Guess the scheduling must have worked out.

---

Just cancelled my preorder for the STEM controllers. I'm lucky I ordered from the store instead of kickstarting it since backers can't get a refund at all. There was still a 30% "cancellation fee" so I only get $200 back. Still made sense since Lighthouse tech is going to be so much better than what STEM is trying to do.
 

Kabouter

Member
It looks pretty cool, but the variants:
“News Van” – Designed for deep space broadcasting, the ‘News Van’ Reliant adds an Image Enhancement Suite that helps capture every moment of lfe in the stars.

More gameplay mechanics? :/
 

CTLance

Member
Man, that looks good. Kinda fragile though. Anyway, love the twisty command module thing it's got going on.

Dammit, Chris, stop tempting me.
 

Raticus79

Seek victory, not fairness
Here's the video of the transformations:
https://player.vimeo.com/video/128510240

It's nice that they have the reverse thrusters as a justification for exposing the engines like that. Otherwise it would have been much better to keep the engines in line with the wings in space to minimize the cross section (smaller target).
 

Zalusithix

Member
Seeing the transformation of the Reliant just makes me want the Khartu-Al more... That said, it looks like a fun little ship with a decent amount of versatility.
 

epmode

Member
Mod support, private servers... if CIG doesn't make it happen, modders can.

This is kind of off topic but do you guys really think CIG will provide the server code to run a de facto MMO away from their own infrastructure? I don't care what they've said, I'm pretty sure it won't happen. I suspect that the most we'll get is a way to run small scale stuff like Arena Commander or Space Marine.
 

Raticus79

Seek victory, not fairness
This is kind of off topic but do you guys really think CIG will provide the server code to run a de facto MMO away from their own infrastructure? I don't care what they've said, I'm pretty sure it won't happen. I suspect that the most we'll get is a way to run small scale stuff like Arena Commander or Space Marine.

Yeah, it's more limited, at least when it comes to the number of players. It came up in a "10 for the chairman" video a month ago:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eA95r5b6rEM

He says "it's not the same scope and scale", but it's not really clear whether that's referring to some content not being there (e.g. no economic simulation) or just lacks the ability to scale out to a bunch of dedicated servers for the different components of that private universe, since it just runs on one machine to host for ~100 players.

Either way, there's definitely no way they'd launch private server support day 1. It would mess up player numbers on launch day for the persistent universe since so many would be busy burning through the content on private servers with cheats. It'll be interesting to see how long they wait and how much they wind up releasing.
 

Zalusithix

Member
This is kind of off topic but do you guys really think CIG will provide the server code to run a de facto MMO away from their own infrastructure? I don't care what they've said, I'm pretty sure it won't happen. I suspect that the most we'll get is a way to run small scale stuff like Arena Commander or Space Marine.

That's what I see as well. Not sure we honestly need more than that though. That'll satisfy the PvP centric crowd that want to tweak engagement rules to their likings. The people interested in the PU by and large aren't going to be too interested in unofficial servers. Accomplishments mean pretty much jack all on an unofficial server.
 
It looks pretty cool, but the variants:


More gameplay mechanics? :/

That's already been something that was talked with the community at large before you even knew what star citizen was ;p

Plus its not a game mechanic its a platform for players to feed their content into the PU.
 
Melted my 300i for that new ship. I like the 300i and it's probably my favorite ship to fly right now, but that new one is too damn cool and it has the LTI my Origin didn't have plus a few extra goodies. Seemed a good trade off since I can't find anything the stock 300i has going for it anymore among the other starters.
 

Sijil

Member
Ok so I can't understand the specs correctly, objectively speaking, is the Reliant better than my Aurora MR? As a small but capable hauler with a bite.
 

Zalusithix

Member
Ok so I can't understand the specs correctly, objectively speaking, is the Reliant better than my Aurora MR? As a small but capable hauler with a bite.

It's a ship that's twice the price. Yes it's objectively better than the MR in virtually every way. Better shield, greater total weapon loadout, more cargo capacity, multi-crew capable.
 

Daedardus

Member
Good. They should focus more on premium 'single' seaters.

They also need to close the funding already. There's only so many Ferrari's Chris Roberts can buy.
 
40gb internal development build leaked and some are saying it includes SQ42 levels, Star Marine, almost completed ships along with things they haven't revealed.. so far no screenshots or detailed info is out yet.
 
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