Vapourware Scam Citizen - Only people with too much money can become StarCitizens! WOULD YOU LIKE TO KNOW MORE?

[AstroZombie]

Seems like there will be a big sale soon:

Taken from GAF.

 

[Spectacle]

Welcome to Honest Hank's used spaceship emporium! We've got some great deals today!
(All ships are sold as-is and all sales are final.)

 

[Haba]

But do they really have miles of space ships?

 

[hiver]

Stuff about single player on RPS.

Do i reed that right that you will have to babysit your wingman and women? like in some party?
Like... talk to them and... take care of their... problems?

 

[Turisas]

Do i reed that right that you will have to babysit your wingman and women? like in some party?
Like... talk to them and... take care of their... problems?

"Sit down and shut up or I pop you in the mouth again", works every time.

 

[Blaine]

Recent and substantial forum posts by Chris Roberts, from the dev tracker:

http://partedveil.com/index.php?dev=croberts68

Clearly this will be an arcade game. He's a hands-off idea guy who hasn't put much thought into this, and he's just out to take everyone's mo—

Skyflash's summary of what I'm trying to achieve accurately sums up what will underpin the space dogfighting simulation.

And just to re-iterate - the flight model / movement you have seen (and will always see) is 100% Newtonian. All movement of spaceships in gameplay is achieved by applying impulses to the rigid body of the spaceship - either to affect the linear velocity or the angular velocity. There is no cheating / fudging where we introduce fake drag or anything.

As its almost impossible for a pilot to individually control every thruster's attitude and burn to achieve his desired maneuver there is a system which we call the Intelligent Flight Control System (IFCS) that interprets the pilot's input, maps it to a desired result then handles the calculations and control of the thrusters to achieve the result.

I doubt we will ever allow a pilot to try and fly manually and control every thruster individually, but I wont rule it out. But what will definitely happen is that there will be various levels of control / over-ride - you will on a more advanced system be able to specify that your flight inputs are just to control your orientation and not for your velocity vector. There will be other ways to affect how the IFCS behaves - turning off G limiting on certain maneuvers (as the standard system will always operate inside an envelope of safety but a more adventurous pilot may want to push the limits at the risk of blacking out or death to gain that extra edge in a dogfight)

The idea is that the basic / beginner / simple IFCS will be set up to make flying around pretty simple and intuitive. It will take the pilot's inputs and map them to behavior similar to Wing Commander / Privateer - you control the orientation of your ship and set a desired velocity, the IFCS tries to achieve a velocity vector matching your forward vector multiplied by desired speed - which was actually how Wing Commander / Privateer actually worked - it was a basic Newtonian under it all despite popular belief - its why you would "slide" when you hit afterburners and tried to turn - normally there was enough excess thrust for maneuvering to adjust the velocity fairly instantaneously but as the speed got higher it would take a little while to correct to the desired velocity vector.

As you upgrade your IFCS / customize it you will be able to drill down and change its behavior.

The commercials use a combination of this (we have the ability to set a spline curve that the IFCS tries to fly a spaceship along) and occasionally the cinematic artist will hand key positions for "dramatic" effect (for instance the Hornet firing the retro thrusters wouldn't tilt up if you were just arresting velocity - although the IFCS could achieve that if you asked it to - but it looks cool and screams "Top Gun")

I think some of people's confusion (including Codey's) as to whether Star Citizen currently uses correct Newtonian physics stems from the fact that the visual thrust that is displayed from the various thrusters is NOT indicative of the actual thrust being applied - Currently the magnitude of the exhaust flame is showing the magnitude of the component of the delta of velocity between the desired velocity vector and the current velocity vector in the thruster's direction. The direction and flame are really just indicating which component of the velocity vector is being adjusted - so if your sliding sideways due to an aggressive maneuver you'll see the thruster jets firing in the opposite direction as the ship tries to adjust the velocity vector to be aligned with the ships forward vector. I've posted about this before but originally I had the thrusters portraying their thrust and orientation correctly but as there is no drag or force to fight against in space what happened was that the thrusters would oscillate around and flicker off and on, which looked more like a visual glitch or a bug in the system so I switched the visuals (but not the actual physical modeling) to the above system. I intend to take another pass at this and try and have a visual representation that while not 100% accurate (as I believe that will always look silly as the the thruster burns are usually one or two frames maximum given the low velocities the dogfight operates at) will be a lot closer. So you'll see the thruster starting a turn and the opposite thruster deploying to arrest the turn. I think this will help with perception as well as keep the visual elements I want (thrusters gimbaling to apply thrust, cool looking burns).

Codey's ideas and enthusiasm are appreciated and he has some good ideas.

However I'm not looking for a reason to make the dogfighting "more" correct - Codey's suggestion is really another "in-fiction" way of justifying low velocity space dogfighting that handles similarly to atmospheric dogfighting.

The "in-fiction" reason in Star Citizen for the low velocities during dogfighting is due to a human pilots ability sustain large G-forces. If you need rapid and dramatic velocity vector changes (note this is different than orientation changes) unless we have developed a way to sustain / absorb much higher forces than we can presently the top speeds will be naturally limited as the faster you go the smaller vector change you can enact without applying a potentially lethal amount of force on the pilot. Even today most jet fighter airframes can take a lot more G-Force than the pilot. This is probably why in the future most air combat (and probably space combat) will be done with drones - but where's the fun it that?

So in the Star Citizen universe you can go very fast (much faster than during a dogfight) but the faster you go the less maneuvering you can do. During dogfighting the IFCS limits your top velocity for safety reasons (if you start going too fast it will fire retro thrusters to slow you down). I am toying with the idea of a pilot being able to turn this "safety" off to a certain extent (at large magnitudes the physics system breaks down as there isn't enough precision in a 32 bit float). At faster speeds it may either limit how much you can turn (not very helpful if you have a missile on your tail!) or would cause you to back out / die if you told the IFCS to adjust your velocity vector quicker than your body could take.

Due to this travel between distant locations will probably entail a period of linear acceleration and then an equal amount of deceleration as you approach your destination. But during this you wont really be able to make dramatic or quick course corrections which also folds nicely into our "in-fiction" explanation for "auto pilot" or "warp" in system -

Because you will be traveling at velocities several orders of magnitude than while dogfighting you can only every "warp" in a straight line and the ship's systems will pull you out of warp when close to other ships / navigation hazards (like asteroids, planets etc.) as it would be impossible to affect any significant velocity vector change in a short period (the kind that would be needed to avoid a collision) without killing the pilot / crew.

I do think that a local gravity field / effect (Codey's proposal) would be a great way to explain how ships can achieve 0.2c in system without a huge fuel burn - We haven't really detailed out the physics behind "auto-pilot" / "warp" mode in system (which is what the RSI Quantum drive was all about) so maybe we "borrow" some of Codey's system for that as I think its a pretty cool idea. It would be especially handy if due to the "physics" of the gravity field it somehow negated the forces being applied to the pilot / crew so we would have a good in-fiction explanation why we can accelerate to 0.2c in a relatively short order of time but need to keep dogfighting speeds really low due to the inability for the human body to sustain forces above a certain level.

Oh.

 

[Haba]

But why... are the fighters... piloted... and... not automated?

 

[Blaine]

But why... are the fighters... piloted... and... not automated?

Same reason the characters in a two-hour film miss their easy opportunities to resolve everything in ten minutes, or just shoot the villain (or whatever) thirty minutes in—there'd be no film. "Why doesn't he just...?"

Can't think of a good specific example, but there is this.

 

[Runciter]

Recent and substantial forum posts by Chris Roberts, from the dev tracker:

http://partedveil.com/index.php?dev=croberts68

[...]

I never would have suspected that Star Citizen will model space flight more realistically than Elite: Dangerous. ED devs presume to know what's best, or "most fun", for you and it's going to have ficticious forces which keep you from having too much control over your spacecraft, in addition to a speed limit.

 

[Azazel]

I never would have suspected that Star Citizen will model space flight more realistically than Elite: Dangerous. ED devs presume to know what's best, or "most fun", for you and it's going to have ficticious forces which keep you from having too much control over your spacecraft, in addition to a speed limit.

You never would have suspected that a studio which has made shovelware for the past 15 years, and fumbled their last AAA pet project so spectacularly that it nearly killed the company, would be unable to make their desperately underfunded fanboy cash-in on a dead IP from the early 1990's compare to the most cash-flush space simulator in the 21st century?

 

[Turisas]

Well, finally couldn't resist anymore, I just felt the need... the need for speed!




Got the 300i package - Blaine, I'll try and catch you when you're on Steam and you can do that space voodoo thing with the LTI?

 

[Blaine]

I prefer this as "get hype music":

Got the 300i package - Blaine, I'll try and catch you when you're on Steam and you can do that space voodoo thing with the LTI?

I'll PM you the email address to gift it to, you PM back the email address I'll be returning it to once laundered. Make sure it's spelled properly, etc.

 

[Haba]

God damn Blaine, ignoring my PMs!

Can you still gift LTI ships? Does it make any sense to get one (over buying the backer package).

 

[Blaine]

You sent me a bunch of gibberish, though I see now what you meant to say....

Can you still gift LTI ships? Does it make any sense to get one (over buying the backer package).

Packages (which include a copy of the game/extras) can also be gifted, and the ship(s) included can have LTI. It doesn't make any sense not to, from your perspective—you'll get whatever you buy, except with LTI, and also probably with 1-3 $5 skins since original backers get packages more cheaply.

 

[Turisas]

You sent me a bunch of gibberish, though I see now what you meant to say....

If it's in finnish, I can translate. Avaruustelakoituminen is serious business.

 

[Blaine]

Oh shit, seems I missed this little tidbit:

And since we hit this goal before November 26th, the Banu merchantman will be one of the ships available during the sale (you heard it here first!)

 

[Turisas]

A trade ship? Hmm, I guess it'll be 100+ dollars?

 

[Blaine]

I'm still seriously considering organizing a single-elimination deathmatch tournament featuring one-on-one battles between players piloting stock M50s. As such, I refinished the M50 in classic Wing Commander HUD style for later use as a propaganda poster logo for said tournament:

Sorry about the watermark. This is a derivative copy of someone else's work, but it took time to do and I don't want it jacked for general usage.

 

[Turisas]

a single-elimination deathmatch tournament featuring one-on-one battles between players piloting stock M50s.

Sounds like a good idea, even for spectators. Of course, as the organizer you'd have to pull the clichéd villain move where the winner has to fight you and you cheat with some pimped-out god-tier ship.

 

[Blaine]

Turisas
I'm considering offering one of my limited-quantity LTI ships attached to a Golden Ticket account as the grand prize—either the Idris-M Corvette or the Vanduul Scythe. Either ship would guarantee interest in the tournament. Runner-up prize(s) would be split between runners-up (of which there'll be either one, or three; haven't decided yet), and I feel that a 5,000-credit entry fee would be fair and ought to cover runner-up prizes handsomely. If there's only one runner-up, then the entry fee pot will probably be split between the champion and the runner-up, further sweetening the grand prize. If there are three runners up, then half the pot will go to the final match runner-up, while the other half will be split between the semi-final runners-up.

The "organization" bit comes from needing livestreamers/recorders (for those who wish to spectate—I don't fancy myself ESPN, but some people enjoy that sort of thing), multiple judges to inspect ship loadouts and referee matches, and even advertisers/match coordinators.

I won't be taking a single credit of entry fees and all "staff" will be volunteers. This will be for the glory of the champion who leaves a smoking pile of shipwrecks in his wake.

 

[Blaine]

This is 3D-enabled, which means you may or may not have to turn off 3D—but if you have glasses, you can view it in 3D.

Basically, some guy loaded the p52 Merlin model (Constellation's snub fighter) into Unity and flew it around a bit with the Oculus Rift.

 

[Blaine]

Well, I'd better break this myself, since I'm the de facto Official Star Citizen Shill and will be accused of "hiding" it otherwise....

There is a PS4 development kit in CIG's offices, as seen on Wingman's Hangar yesterday.

(for reference)

(screen grab from Wingman's Hangar)

Now I'm legitimately worried and no longer as dismissive of Chris' statement at E3 (I think it was E3? Grunker, you linked that quote, what was it again?) that he "might consider" console ports. It's worth noting however that they may simply have been sent a free dev kit by Sony, and just didn't elect to throw it in the garbage. It is being used as a monitor stand after all, and is not powered on in the picture.

There is an enormous shitstorm on the forums about this, as there should be. If Star Citizen is ported to consoles pre-release (by which I mean Star Citizen 1.0 for the PC), I'm selling off as many of my ships as I can and demanding a refund of the rest (CIG is known for actually providing refunds when asked).

 

[Tzaero]

Uh oh

 

[felipepepe]

They get almost 28 fucking million dollars of donations, and put everything in risk by trying to get more from Sony. Greed is strong here.

 

[Blaine]

They get almost 28 fucking million dollars of donations, and put everything in risk by trying to get more from Sony. Greed is strong here.

Bear in mind that Sony has reportedly been passing the dev kits out like candy—as I've said, CIG may simply have accepted the development kit because there are human beings in that office, they were curious, and they just wanted to check it out. They are a development team, after all, and to many of them consoles don't seem as hateful and poisonous as they do to us here at the Codex. The presence of the dev kit doesn't necessarily mean that Star Citizen will ever be developed for the PS4. In fact, if the hangar module's recommended specs are anything to go by, the PS4 could barely handle Star Citizen, if at all.

Note too that all of the old 1990s Wing Commander games were ported to SNES/PlayStation/etc. It could be that only Squadron 42 will ever be ported to consoles in limited fashion (if indeed anything is ported).

All that being said, again, if a console port is announced or released before ALL THREE PHASES of the PC version (multiplayer servers, persistent universe, and Squadron 42) are completed and have been released—or if the PC version's UI elements, menu system, control scheme, netcode, ceiling on graphical enhancements, patches, manpower spent developing the PC version in the future, et cetera seem in danger of being affected IN ANY WAY WHATSOEVER by the console version—that's it. Chris Roberts will be dead to me, the project will be dead to me, I'll be forced to suck Grunker's cock textually on the Codex until the end of time, and likely computer gaming itself will be dead to me. I'll take up banzai gardening, golf, play-by-mail chess, or sit in Starbucks pretending to be a writer on my off-hours.

The dev kit wouldn't worry me one bit if not for the fact that Chris Roberts himself publicly stated that he wasn't ruling out console ports/versions. It's the two combined that worry me.

Edit: I have created a little image in order to commemorate the shitstorm, though.

Spoiler