Star Citizen Catch-all

You can upgrade and I believe the benefits extend to those ships you upgrade too. So if you were an original kickstarter I think that LTI applies to new purchases. Thought I read that somewhere or maybe Veloxi mentioned it, way back when? Veloxi - do you remember?

I caught the Star Citizen panel at Dragon Con. We got a live demo of the hangar walk-around and they took a bunch of questions. They confirmed multiple players in a single ship, and talked about manning turrets. Their line was something about how there have been games that let you be Luke Skywalker, and they want to give you the Han Solo + small crew experience. I didn't get to ask them if there'd be anything for Kaylee to do down in the engine room.

The most interesting bit was the community manager's pet project. He wants to put whaling in the game. Space whales. So far the actual developers have rejected the idea (don't want people to think this was actually promised or expected or anything), but I could see it being a lot of fun. It'd be like a raid boss in space.

SpyNavy wrote:

You can upgrade and I believe the benefits extend to those ships you upgrade too. So if you were an original kickstarter I think that LTI applies to new purchases. Thought I read that somewhere or maybe Veloxi mentioned it, way back when? Veloxi - do you remember?

I believe if you're an original backer, you get LTI until November on ship purchases, but not sure about new backers. I'll try to look today.

Veloxi wrote:
SpyNavy wrote:

You can upgrade and I believe the benefits extend to those ships you upgrade too. So if you were an original kickstarter I think that LTI applies to new purchases. Thought I read that somewhere or maybe Veloxi mentioned it, way back when? Veloxi - do you remember?

I believe if you're an original backer, you get LTI until November on ship purchases, but not sure about new backers. I'll try to look today.

Ah, just checked the store while logged in:

ORIGINAL BACKERS

The United Empire of Earth appreciates your service! As one of Star Citizen's very first backers, you are eligible for exclusive packages not available anywhere else and lower prices than anyone else through November 26, 2013.

Any package purchased before that date will include Lifetime Insurance on all ship hulls.

Dammit!

Yup if you kickstarted you have until november. I'll probably wait and see if they release more detail before then and make a final decision later.

Reading this, I keep thinking, "Man, it'd be cool to own a ship that I could fly with some friends. That's ONLY $225..."

And then I stop myself, because there's land to be purchased in VT, and a cabin to build, and woodworking to be done. Adulthood...

If I could upgrade my pledge from the Aurora to the 315p I would be more inclined to spend the cash, but I'm not interested in spending another $65 for a second ship.

Yeah, the multi-person crew aspect makes me a little anxious about the intended pace of this game. Not just that, but if the person at the controls of my turret gets bored and decides to take potshots at a military cruiser to test the range of my guns... I'm going to guess that the entire ship/crew take the alignment hit.

What I'm hoping is that the ship's AI will handle turrets and the fighter if there aren't people to crew 'em, which is what I would prefer.

I'm guessing this really isn't a game that you want to have a multi-player crew unless you know and trust all those on board..

Could be interesting, though.

Anyone here ever play the old space sim Allegiance (or its later iteration, FreeAllegiance)? Back in 1999 they had ships with up to I think 6 (or was it 8?) turret gunners. That was fun as hell. I'm hoping this game will be similar.

Maq wrote:

If I could upgrade my pledge from the Aurora to the 315p I would be more inclined to spend the cash, but I'm not interested in spending another $65 for a second ship.

There's an "Exchange for Store Credits" button under the pledge package in the "My Hangar" section -- I think that's what it's for.

OMG OMG OMG.... Space Traffic Controller! I want that to be a job option.

EDIT: Because I was just thinking that if I was close enough to a military cruiser for my turrets to be effective then it was probably my fault for tempting my gunner. But that then raised the possibility of negative alignment due to sight-seeing close-proximity passes of other ships/bases and that made me a little sad.

cheeba wrote:

Anyone here ever play the old space sim Allegiance (or its later iteration, FreeAllegiance)? Back in 1999 they had ships with up to I think 6 (or was it 8?) turret gunners. That was fun as hell. I'm hoping this game will be similar.

I've toyed with it over the years, good stuff, but I always found myself returning to Jumpgate.

So, player-owned stations - how cool/absolutely hellish could that be at the same time?

It's a giant pain in the ass in EVE, so it'd likely be the same case here. They're nifty in Jumpgate though, but expensive as all get out.

I'd prefer if you could just rent/buy a section of an existing station for your shop/factory/whatever. But then I guess it depends on what the function of the player-owned station would be.

A goodjer run space station would be kind of cool. Id pay to support that.

Guys you can still get a ship with Life Time insurance!

It's just that if you're not an original backer at this point, you need an original backer to buy it and gift it to you!

Original backers can still buy LTI ships as part of their reward for being original backers before the craze got so big.

You just need to be able to trust the guy to gift you the ship when you paypal him the money for it.

so if you have someone you trust who is an original backer and want to get in with a ship now, i'd suggest donating the minimum to get an account with alpha and beta access and then have your friend buy and gift you the ship you want, if you want an expensive ship, so you'll get LTI.

I'm an original backer, and will do what Fuzzballx suggests if anyone's interested. I'm holding off on spending any more real-world money on this until I know that (a) it isn't broken, (b) it doesn't turn into the dude-bro nonsensefest that, say, DayZ did, and (c) it's worth enough time to justify the cost.

Happy to help someone else, though.

Getting "rewarded" with in-game currency for downloading the tech demo? Everything about this project reeks of micro-transactions.

If I'd known X-Rebirth would, in fact, get a release date when the Star Citizen Kickstarter was up, I may well have reconsidered.

EDIT:

Now I'm really worried.

I just ran up the the Hanger Module for the first time. It looks like these guys are violating every tenant of iterative, agile development. This is a game that will be (if it's ever released) centered around dogfights in space. The first tech demo focuses on a highly detailed mo-cap animation of a gentleman in a fancy space suit laying down for a nap. The principle of "minimum viable product" is clearly lost on this dev team. Taking a nap, no matter how well animated the pre-nap lie down sequence may be is not a core requirement of a space combat simulator.

No wonder they need 17 million dollars if that's how they assign development resources.

plavonica wrote:

I am hoping for a robust industrial/merchant/smuggler/pirate mechanism in the game. Something beyond just dog fighting in space. There have been talks about such things but who knows how it will all work out.

Edit:

Found a video.

That's what I'm here for. I don't mind the single player campaign being mostly dog fights in space, but the actual game I'm expecting to be more open-ended and sandboxy.

Jarpy wrote:

Getting "rewarded" with in-game currency for downloading the tech demo? Everything about this project reeks of micro-transactions.

If I'd known X-Rebirth would, in fact, get a release date when the Star Citizen Kickstarter was up, I may well have reconsidered.

EDIT:

Now I'm really worried.

I just ran up the the Hanger Module for the first time. It looks like these guys are violating every tenant of iterative, agile development. This is a game that will be (if it's ever released) centered around dogfights in space. The first tech demo focuses on a highly detailed mo-cap animation of a gentleman in a fancy space suit laying down for a nap. The principle of "minimum viable product" is clearly lost on this dev team. Taking a nap, no matter how well animated the pre-nap lie down sequence may be is not a core requirement of a space combat simulator.

No wonder they need 17 million dollars if that's how they assign development resources.

I'm 100% with you on the micro-transaction focus, but these guys aren't amateurs. MVP and lean development tend to be start-up methodologies, and are done when speed is more important than anything (e.g., to get a product to market in order to gain investment confidence, or win early customers).

Alas, I'm such a sucker for cool concepts.

Here's to hoping something cool is cooking with gas in Star Citizen when I return from the far side of the world next year.

If not, consider this a $75 donation toward seeing so many of you guys enjoy yourselves and talk about it on here.

Viva the 315i !

Jarpy wrote:

Now I'm really worried.

I just ran up the the Hanger Module for the first time. It looks like these guys are violating every tenant of iterative, agile development. This is a game that will be (if it's ever released) centered around dogfights in space. The first tech demo focuses on a highly detailed mo-cap animation of a gentleman in a fancy space suit laying down for a nap. The principle of "minimum viable product" is clearly lost on this dev team. Taking a nap, no matter how well animated the pre-nap lie down sequence may be is not a core requirement of a space combat simulator.

No wonder they need 17 million dollars if that's how they assign development resources.

1. It's not entirely a space combat simulator. It was pitched as a Freelancer/WC: Privateer style game.

2. They have no reason, other than their promised dates, to deliver anything at this point. The dogfighting module was promised in Q4 this year. This is just a bonus.

3. Walking around and such is a part of the original design spec.

4. MVP only applies when you're not sure about your product and don't have any investors or customers. They have both.

There's a TON they can learn by putting even this basic tech out this early. If they've put in good data gathering code they can find out about load times, framerates, compatibility problems, crashes. They can improve the launcher and patcher and optimize around the information they gather. All well before there's anything truly at stake. It will start the next phase out on the right foot with more users having better experiences, and the phase after that etc.

polypusher wrote:

There's a TON they can learn by putting even this basic tech out this early. If they've put in good data gathering code they can find out about load times, framerates, compatibility problems, crashes. They can improve the launcher and patcher and optimize around the information they gather. All well before there's anything truly at stake. It will start the next phase out on the right foot with more users having better experiences, and the phase after that etc.

Hence the bonus credits incentive for getting people to try it out

Which can then be used to buy decorations for your hangar, further pushing the data gathering opportunities.

Yup, this is free testing under the guise of an early sneak peek.

cube wrote:

MVP only applies when you're not sure about your product and don't have any investors or customers. They have both.

Ah, that's interesting analysis. Maybe I'm letting my lean start-up bias mess with how I should think about crowd funding. Come to think of it, crowd funding is pretty new and I haven't spent a lot of time thinking about how it affects development decisions.

So many smart people here! Thanks for the new ideas.

I'm just amazing at how much community angst this game gets... The more cool sh*t it does and the better it gets and gets funded, the more people post negatives and post in the Star Citizen thread about how much better the new X-series game will be than Star Citizen....

*facepalm*

Meanwhile, in another galaxy, the actual fans of Star Citizen and Chris Roberts couldn't be more giddy and happy about how things are progressing if they all got a Lego Constellation kit in the mail tomorrow..

Wait.. that's actually a good idea. Need to email Chris Roberts and Lego about this.. We simply MUST have lego models of these ships.