Star Citizen

[FlyingMongoose]

So I thought I'd point this out, many are wary because they've invested in numerous titles via Kickstarter and IndieGoGo and other crowdsourcing platforms. So they're wary because Star Citizen doesn't seem to have a solid release date. Well, the thing is, it doesn't have a solid release date because it doesn't have a publisher. They've managed to get 100% (and more) funding entirely from the crowd, that means the publisher they need to "show progress to" is actually the backers, what's the best way to show progress? Give the publisher (the backers) some "work so far" stuff. They're doing that. There is not, and never will be a "hard release date" for the entire game.

Here's what I know:
Late 2015 is suppose to be when Squadron 42 (Single Player Campaign with Coop Drop In Capabilities) is suppose to be released. They haven't given an exact date because they don't have one. This is only 10 chapters of the story, but these 10 chapters they say are already at least 3 times longer than the entire Wing Commander 1 (circa 1990) story.
They claim everything you see within the Squadron 42 universe will also be part of the persistent universe (like owning capital ships, needing crew to pilot and control it, etc).

The Persistent Universe keeps getting bounced around, I've heard them say sometime in the middle of 2015, I've heard them say sometime in 2016, I'm hedging my bets on 2016, but it'd be awesome if they get it done sooner.

So, the question is, what can I get right now?
Well, essentially through the "Game Package" orders (available here: https://robertsspaceindustries.com/pledge/game-packages) you get your Persistent Universe ship guaranteed to you + insurance as is labeled on the web site. Also access to the Hangar (so you can go and look at your pretty ship if you have one that is in the Hangar Module so far), and the Arena Commander Module.

Next question that stems off of the above statement:
Insurance?
Yeah, in the Persistent Universe there is a semi-permanence similar to Eve, but not quite, while it's entirely possible to rebuild ships from chassis you already had, you may lose upgrades, weapons systems, and so on, Insurance pretty much helps to guarantee a reduced cost or a full coverage of the ship to be completely rebuilt. As SoGo said it; "It lets me be reckless."

What is the Hangar Module?
The Hangar Module is pretty much just a first person character view within a Hangar that allows you to wander around within your Hangar (customize-able to a point), the hangar is basically a very pretty graphics representation of where your ships are, but also supports certain other interactive items (such as, for the Backers in November they got a Liquor Cabinet that they could interact with and make their character "drunk", which explains the drunk mechanic that as posted about earlier.) Some Hangars have a stereo system you can turn on. And of course, you can get in and explore and play with your ships and functions therein.

What is Arena Commander?
Star Citizen is a continuation of the Wing Commander story and universe. Within these universes (Freelancer, Wing Commander 1, 2, 3, Starlancer, etc.) your character often is a pilot who's recently joined the military (This is Squadron 42 here), or some pilot in training or something like that. The primary "hub" area of these games often has an "Arcade" machine, or a simulator. Arena Commander is actually a continuation of this particular functionality (though it has real-world multiplayer in it, unlike it's predecessors).
A couple of differences here, Arena Commander can be accessed through some of the ships (the ships that are supported by it). When you get into your ship inside your hangar, if it's supported by Arena Commander, the Arena Commander simulation window will pop up in front of you and you can interact with it (or you can just go straight to it through the Escape key menu).
This Arena Commander supports a Race Mode and there are different Race class ships, but right now only one is available (though that looks like it'll change soon), this is new and unique to Star Citizen.
This has online multiplayer for both vs. and coop modes.
Arena commander has free-fly, single player wave dog fighting, free fly in the race arena, multiplayer race, multiplayer dogfight deathmatch mode, and multiplayer dog fight vs. waves coop mode.

Persistent Universe? What can I do?
Well, you know how when you first watched Star Wars, thought Han Solo was awesome, or BSG, or Firefly, and so on, and wanted to play a game that let you be that smuggler? Or let you be that Freedom Fighter? or let you be that Pirate? or let you be that Bounty Hunter? Or let you be that Imperial Soldier? Or let you be that Military Member? Or be that Racer?
That... all of that. Basically you can have your "Citizen" career be whatever you want it to be. You can opt to jump straight into the persistent universe without playing Squadron 42 if you want to do that, or vice versa, though from what I understand there are certain benefits to Squadron 42 participation. You want to be a career racer? Well, you can, smuggler? Yep, Pirate? Absolutely, and so on.

I know a lot of you guys like Universe Stories and backgrounds, well there's a metric fuckton of it (that's the technical measurement).
https://robertsspaceindustries.com/comm-...m-dispatch - Look at Lore Builder

Ship progress and process? Yep got that too:
https://robertsspaceindustries.com/comm-...ngineering

Want to see some fan art and other cool stuff?
https://robertsspaceindustries.com/comm-link/citizens

And all kinds of other information!
https://robertsspaceindustries.com/comm-...ansmission

So; my Citizen Profile/ID
https://robertsspaceindustries.com/citiz...gMongoose0

The BRBU Organization (marked as a "Religious" organization, but I believe we can change this).
https://robertsspaceindustries.com/orgs/BRBU

Ultimately we need more members!
You need to have a game package before you can join an Organization.

Details on getting Arena Commander and so on:
https://robertsspaceindustries.com/download

Oh and in case you were wondering, yes, they plan on making it so that we can get capital class ships in the Persistent Universe (considering they'll take cash for them now apparently, I don't see why not).

[FlyingMongoose]

10 For the Producers
10 For the Producers Episode 02. December 29th, 2014

But there's still a ton more information on the comm-link section of the main web site.

[FlyingMongoose]

PC gamer on star citizen

http://www.pcgamer.com/the-future-of-star-citizen/

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[FlyingMongoose]

Just to point out, on my previous post, that link includes information that KillerObe asked me:
"What sets Star Citizen apart from other Space Simulations that are popping up now?" The interview asked this and used Elite: Dangerous as one example (with others), KillerObe specifically asked me about "Compared to Elite: Dangerous"

My personal assessment of the response is;
Star Citizen is a First Person game, you play as the pilot, it just so happens that vehicle play is a key component of this. Apparently these other Space Sims are heavy on you having your ships/vehicles, but don't put you into the life of the pilot (based on Chris Robert's response).

This, to me, essentially is basically like saying Star Citizen will be to other current space sims as GTA is to Racing games, except the vehicle control won't suck or be arcady comparatively. Seriously, the ship flight control in Star Citizen is pretty bad ass (and SoGo can confirm this).


I will personally not say that these other space sim games are bad, or that they aren't worthwhile, I'm sure they are, I don't know I haven't played them myself, but Star Citizen is really trying to set itself apart from anything we've seen in Space Sims before. It won't be Spreadsheet Simulator 2015 In Space (Eve), and it won't be just a bunch of people flying around in ships. It's suppose to be a whole universe in which your character lives and works in, plays in, races in, bounty hunts in, etc. Hell he even said "at some point when we're adding in some new systems, the first player who gets to that system would be able to name it!" <-- Pretty bad ass if you ask me.

[FlyingMongoose]

How to build a space station.... in space!

https://robertsspaceindustries.com/comm-...ce-Station

[FlyingMongoose]

Time to learn about the Haunted Hades system:
http://bit.ly/1AokWVo

Just to point out something I said on IRC today;
I can't wait until there's a brb'u capital ship which is stocked with our org's ships that when we come under attack each of our members can load into their ships and provide support for (won't it be awesome)?

We'll call the ship the SS Fearless Leader. the SS is for Starship

[FlyingMongoose]

Town hall at PAX South!
https://robertsspaceindustries.com/comm-...-PAX-South

[FlyingMongoose]

https://hh.reddit.com/r/Starcitizen_trades/#hh. Interesting

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[FlyingMongoose]

New Around The Verse:
Around the Verse: Episode 28

You get a space globe, and you get a space globe, and you get a space globe! If you're a backer.
https://robertsspaceindustries.com/comm-...pace-Globe

Arena Commander Trailer (this is basically what you can play RIGHT NOW!)
Official Arena Commander 1.0 Trailer

Public Test Universe (I'm not entirely sure what this entails as I haven't read it yet, but pretty awesome):
https://robertsspaceindustries.com/comm-...e-Launched

[FlyingMongoose]

New 10 for the chairman
10 For the Chairman Episode 51. January 26th, 2015.

PAX South Town Hall
https://robertsspaceindustries.com/comm-...all-Photos

There's bunches more, go check out the web site.

Arena Commander 1.0.1 is released
https://robertsspaceindustries.com/comm-...1-Released

[FlyingMongoose]

So... three awesome videos uploaded yesterday. Make note, two of these are really big deals.

1: Meet the CIG Devs Episode 9
Persistent Universe Townhall Presentation

2: (The Big one!) The Persistent Universe Town Hall Presentation (From PAX South)
Persistent Universe Townhall Presentation

3: The Panel from after that presentation!
Persistent Universe Panel 1 - The Path You Choose

[FlyingMongoose]

Meet the Devs Episode 10:
Meet The CIG Devs Episode 10 - Ortwin Freyermuth

10 For the Chairman Episode 52:
10 For the Chairman Episode 52. February 2nd, 2015.

Mobiglass design concpets (there's a video somewhere in there)
https://robertsspaceindustries.com/comm-...n-MobiGlas

The idea for the mobiglass is you have glasses or a display on your helmet's face shield that allows you to select items from a shop, choose purchase, and they're "Delivered" to your hangar. It's pretty neat.

[FlyingMongoose]

Shield Design and Shield Management Systems
https://robertsspaceindustries.com/comm-...Management

[FlyingMongoose]

Neat - https://robertsspaceindustries.com/comm-...-Dogfights

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[FlyingMongoose]

More vids

Inside CIG: Imaginarium

Austin Artist Roundtable

Around the Verse Episode 32

In other news; SoGo and I discussed and we felt a "Faith/Religious" organization wouldn't be conducive to the kind of play we want to do, so, the org has been changed to a PMC (Private Military Corp.).

The Org is still open to join so long as you have a game access package
https://robertsspaceindustries.com/orgs/BRBU
You can, of course, view it no matter what.

[FlyingMongoose]

Mining stuff and a ship for it.

https://robertsspaceindustries.com/comm-...ers-Mining

https://robertsspaceindustries.com/comm-...g-Platform

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[FlyingMongoose]

So I took the time to read through the mining outline article in detail (this is the first career outline there is).

This outline is amazing and definitely shows some fantastic features. First up it specifies that no career is "locked in" you can change and go anywhere at any time.
Second let's say you're a terrible pilot but still want to operate the mining laser (or any other specific role in that case) you can.  You can get yourself hired onto a mining rig or just go with a buddy who had one. Each mining role can be filed by a player or an NPC. NPC cost will probably drive the market value on wages for real players.  Even though we've changed our organization to a PMC I'm excited to try out the mining stuff.  It's not just going to be click and wait like in Eve.

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[Sogo]

So I took the time to read through the mining outline article in detail (this is the first career outline there is).

This outline is amazing and definitely shows some fantastic features. First up it specifies that no career is "locked in" you can change and go anywhere at any time.
Second let's say you're a terrible pilot but still want to operate the mining laser (or any other specific role in that case) you can.  You can get yourself hired onto a mining rig or just go with a buddy who had one. Each mining role can be filed by a player or an NPC. NPC cost will probably drive the market value on wages for real players.  Even though we've changed our organization to a PMC I'm excited to try out the mining stuff.  It's not just going to be click and wait like in Eve.

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Honestly, I think having at least some mining capability would be useful for us, ores are definitely going to have ingame uses, so even if we don't sell them we can use them for whatever reason, at least being partially self-sufficient.

Plus if there are ever times in game where the demand for combat is low, we can still mine.

[FlyingMongoose]

[quote author=FlyingMongoose link=topic=7091.msg283677#msg283677 date=1424504536]
So I took the time to read through the mining outline article in detail (this is the first career outline there is).

This outline is amazing and definitely shows some fantastic features. First up it specifies that no career is "locked in" you can change and go anywhere at any time.
Second let's say you're a terrible pilot but still want to operate the mining laser (or any other specific role in that case) you can.  You can get yourself hired onto a mining rig or just go with a buddy who had one. Each mining role can be filed by a player or an NPC. NPC cost will probably drive the market value on wages for real players.  Even though we've changed our organization to a PMC I'm excited to try out the mining stuff.  It's not just going to be click and wait like in Eve.

Sent from my SCH-I545 using Tapatalk

Honestly, I think having at least some mining capability would be useful for us, ores are definitely going to have ingame uses, so even if we don't sell them we can use them for whatever reason, at least being partially self-sufficient.

Plus if there are ever times in game where the demand for combat is low, we can still mine.
[/quote]

The article outlines freelancers who mine having a risk/reward situation.  It points out the possibilities of mining a high yield resource in one sector then hauling to another where that resource is scarce,  which of course means selling at a higher price than where it is less scarce.  But doing this also means higher likeliness of running into some conflict,  like pirates (player or npc). This is another place where a PMC can come in. Escort.

It also outlines particular tasked  mining (like from an NPC corp) but also points out this is low risk and may have less return but is safer.

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[FlyingMongoose]

Great little "review" video of what we see so far.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QqU2I8GwbEU

A couple of inaccurate statements though: Some "Concerns about an ever growing feature list" (feature list is locked in)
"Long Development Cycle" yes, we've been hearing about this game for almost 2 years now, average development time on most AAA titles: 4 years
"Is the money going where it's needed"? Absolutely, They now have staffed around 300 employees plus have been using external specialized services (like some awesome mocap from the same studio Andy Serkis is part of).

Watch the vidya it's neat.

Note this too: Who are the primary investors? The players and if the players ask enough questions they get answered, there's no publisher to deal with in this space for this game, that means it's from Developer -> Players, not Developer -> Publisher -> Developer because the publisher didn't like something -> Publisher -> Do it again (Developer) -> Publisher -> Players (Seriously plenty of games have this bullshit cycle).