Star Citizen (Wing Commander MP successor)

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So far no update on the Escapist debacle. Apparently Roberts isn't suing them, unless they are just taking their sweet time about it.
 
Couple updates.

Star Citizen reaches $100,000,000 in funding.

Alpha 2.0 released. First iteration of (mini) open world universe - seamlessly go from a space station to your ship to space, then EVA out of your ship and FPS other people.

Features:
17 OPEN WORLD MISSIONS
8 Comm Array missions involving dogfighting and EVA, 8 Research missions involving protecting civilians or recovering lost data and 1 Exploration mission of an abandoned station.
20+ Random Encounters – Most are random dogfighting encounters, often with a mix of friendlies and hostiles. 4 are random exploration missions involving finding lost wrecks.

FIRST PERSON SHOOTER

Recharging energy weapons.
In-game pick-ups including ballistic weapons, ammo and MediPens.
Player healing.
Due to the open-world architecture of the Crusader system, FPS combat can occur on space stations, on the decks of ships, or even while engaged in EVA.
A space station location specifically designed for and dedicated to FPS combat, including many stores and caches of personal weapons.

MORE FEATURES!

Constant and ongoing skirmishes and space dogfights between Pirate factions and insystem security forces in the Yela asteroid belt.
Wreckage to scavenge in the Yela asteroid belt.
Ship Repair, Refuel and Restocking at Cry-Astro.
EVA – Extravehicular activity.

Multicrew ship gameplay! You’re not tied to your seat, you can walk around inside your ship with friends, and assume different responsibilities at different crew stations, such as ship’s pilot or copilot, engineer, or turret gunner.
Ship to space transitions.
Seamless first-person gameplay! Transit between the interior of your ship to outer space and back without any loading screen! Fly, fight, and spacewalk all in the same game.
Quantum Travel, complete with limited fuel mechanics.
All non-fighter craft have a Quantum Drive that allows them to travel through local space at genuinely 0.2 speed of light.
Mobiglass Mission and Journal system.
EMP warfare in the Avenger Warlock.
Large World tech that allows for extremely large expanses of space to explore without loading screens.
New IFCS Flight models.
Ship repair refuel and restock.
Party system.
Multi-ship crew stations.
IFCS Flight Modes – Precision, SCM, and Cruise flight modes.
Afterburner.
Ship-to-ship EMP and disruption damage.
LOCATIONS
Cry-Astro Repair & ReStock Station
Cry-Astro Repair & ReStock Station
1 planet: Crusader.
3 moons: Yela with its asteroid belt, Cellin with a station and Daymar with a station.
3 distinct stations: Port Olisar (The new local shipping hub, a space hotel players get their start in), Security Post Kareah (our FPS PvP location), Covelex Shipping Hub (Abandoned shipping hub, acting as an EVA exploration location for players).
1 Cry-Astro repair and restock station.
9 Comm arrays with encounters, missions and EVA exploration.

I logged in for the first time in several months, and I gotta admit, it was pretty damn cool seeing how things are coming together.
 
Also logged in for the first time in a while, but then couldn't be arsed to configure my combination of 2 joysticks, a throttle and rudder pedals, and so quit again.

I'll just wait for Squadron 42 to be released.
 
Yeah it always seemed weird to me as well. But now that I've tried it, it does make the whole 6DOF thing way easier, strafing every which way and all that. Gives more control than having it all on your stick's hats.
 
I played Elite: Dangerous with stick + keyboard, having all rotational control on my stick and all thrust control on WASD/RF. I don't have a stand-alone throttle (I'm a pleb), so I don't have to switch my left hand between throttle and keyboard.
 
Looks promising. Hopefully it won't turn into another "No Man's Sky", focusing purely on graphics and innovative worlds/level design while forgetting about gameplay and longetivity.
 
I actually am impressed. The entirely seamless process of getting from star base to ship to enter through atmosphere to planetary base, where you are able to see outside but your buddy outside can still see you inside if you're close to the windows - and having that heating effect of going through atmosphere, and seeing it happen in the right place (often it's depicted way too late, ie too close to sea level), the fact that the planet looks "proper" sized - I know there are literally endless number of different sized planetary bodies but having a game depict a terrestrial planet actually look like Earth-sized planet is extremely rare.

I'm sure that the final product will suffer from E:grin: syndrome - you got a dozen cool missions and then everything else is just tiny variations of those but that doesn't matter in this case because Roberts and his 3 (or is it 4 now) teams have built an insanely detailed and robust framework. It's kinda like the autistic guy doing Dwarf Fortress - he doesn't just code some hackpatch to do melee damage, no, he has the full framework for skeleton, muscle and flesh systems, so that anything can be used as a weapon (just like in real life) and it can simulate actual wounds to a sufficient level of detail. That's the sort of thing the SC team is doing and which has to be applauded. That the elevators are not magic teleporter scripts but actual physical units that move you the actual amount of distance in the actual time.

Even if Roberts himself dies from heart attack and Squadron 42 is utter ****, we'll at least have the fantastic mechanical framework to build more stuff on. Content creation is deceptively simple once the tools exist and are sufficiently robust. I wouldn't be surprised if SC ended up having player-created content and not just in emergent, Eve Online style, but in NWN-module creation style.
 
It looks impressive, and I was surprised at how lifelike the characters are; that man they meet in the bar looked almost like a real actor. Speaking of which, I just checked the website and it seems they are going to have sixteen professional actors voicing characters in the game; Gary Oldman, Mark Hamill, Gillian Anderson and John Rhys Davies (who I remember fondly from the cheesy late 90s show Sliders) being the ones who stand out most to me.
 
I wonder if they're going to be able to add enough gameplay into all the middle, tedious bits to prevent it from being "Walking Through Base/Cargo Loading Simulator 2942." Because otherwise I can see that **** getting repetitive as hell in very short order. No doubt there's a subset of the population who thrives on this type of realism, but I'm pretty cautious.

With the crazy amount of detail going into this, unless they make some wicked smart/innovative game-play design choices, I see it being total Death by Realism. There's no way to tell right now, but pacing in this game is going to be utterly critical to making it sustainable. There will have to be a balance of fighting, repairing, exploring, looting, ambushing, fleeing, walking, EVAing, etc., because if any one or two of these activities end up taking 90% of the players time, that could really drag in short order.

 
Llew said:
I wonder if they're going to be able to add enough gameplay into all the middle, tedious bits to prevent it from being "Walking Through Base/Cargo Loading Simulator 2942." Because otherwise I can see that **** getting repetitive as hell in very short order. No doubt there's a subset of the population who thrives on this type of realism, but I'm pretty cautious.

With the crazy amount of detail going into this, unless they make some wicked smart/innovative game-play design choices, I see it being total Death by Realism. There's no way to tell right now, but pacing in this game is going to be utterly critical to making it sustainable. There will have to be a balance of fighting, repairing, exploring, looting, ambushing, fleeing, walking, EVAing, etc., because if any one or two of these activities end up taking 90% of the players time, that could really drag in short order.
This is also my greatest concern at the moment. I think they're too big to just fall out and kill the project now, so we're going to see something at least resembling a finished product, but will it be entertaining? Its saving grace might be the scope creep, giving the game plenty of ways to redeem potential failures. It seems that most aspects aren't compulsory, which means undesirable aspects could often be avoided. That being said, if everything gets bogged down in complexity then only the diehards will stick it out and the game may boil down to a very expensive and tedious co-op X game.
 
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