Daztek posted:

Dunno when I'll get around to finishing this, it's delayed indefinitely delayed until 2016 some future undefined date, but have a dumb WIP video

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UlourXKu5Gc

Jason Sextro posted:

"the 'before' picture of a penis pump advert" is the best burn this thread has seen in ages imo

WhiskeyWhiskers posted:

Even better, they have literal 19th century racist caricature posters about Chinamen Xi'an scum raping are white women!

his nibs posted:

Santaball is back.. kinda

https://youtu.be/Qyymbmis7xA?t=53m42s

D_Smart posted:

Thanks to those of you posting that you liked the latest blog.

Funny thing is that I didn't even want to write it. I actually started it after the show because people kept asking for my thoughts (even though I was on the stream taking the piss, the whole time).

For some yet-to-be-determined reason, I was just so very upset writing this one. I dunno if it's because I know that all of this could have been avoided had people actually heeded my warnings, stopped giving croberts money, and held him accountable, or what. But there it is.

Daztek posted:

http://imperialnews.network/2016/10/citizencon-analysis/

D_Smart posted:

Right. Didn't I do that already? How fast are you suggesting?

Fatigue Factor (FF) is now tracked (0-100). High is bad.

- Affects all movement. e.g. the more you run, the higher the FF which will then limit your movement (walk, run, swim, jetpack etc) speed.
- Increased based on carried weight
- Limit movement in order to lower the FF

ZenMaster posted:

Hah I couldn't resist:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pnE175zsVng

Jobbo_Fett posted:

Star Citizen: Czechmate, goons

D_Smart posted:

blog
bläɡ/
noun
1.
a regularly updated website or web page, typically one run by an individual or small group, that is written in an informal or conversational style.
verb
1.
add new material to or regularly update a blog.
"it's about a week since I last blogged"

Go-Gurt For Dinner posted:

The Farce Awakens.

trucutru posted:

Austin -> LA -> England -> Germany -> Czech republic, let's guess where they are going afterwards. I say... Russia. Jail is the final destination

Mirificus posted:

cixorez posted:

less than three posted:

HuxleyCreative.com? Like "Annabelle 'Boo' Huxley" Creative?

AP posted:

STAR CITIZEN, MY FIRST LOOK

cixorez posted:

MeLKoR posted:

They are referring to 64-bit positioning, not 64-bit processors.

The Titanic posted:

Oregon Trail was a game that probably needs to be in some Smithsonian of games.

Madcosby posted:

is subsumption in game yet

gonna subsume

FailureToReport posted:

Okay, I want to preface this, I own a Polaris. Before you ask, I bought it because it was the first Capital Ship I've had a chance to buy. If I win the lottery I'll melt all my ships and buy the Completionist package and just not care. I'm not rich however so I care enough to think about this stuff in my spare time, you don't have to agree with me, but here follows my attempted reasoning on why someone at CIG needs to talk to Chris:

TL:DR- The Polaris tried to fill the role already filled by the Retaliator. You don't send a Corvette to kill a Heavy Cruiser/Battleship/Carrier. That's what PT Boats & Submarines are for. Chris calls the Polaris a B-17 or PT Boat. We have bombers, the Gladiator and the Harbinger are nearing useless with all this overlap. The Retaliator in comparison to Idris/Javelin/Etc is literally the definition of a PT Boat.

The Polaris as described by the Q&A from yesterday is meant to be a capital ship attack craft which torpedoes enemy capital ships. While they mentioned you could use torpedoes on smaller craft (I'm imagining ships in the Connie/Tali/Etc range) they mentioned it would be very easy to evade torpedoes, even without the use of countermeasures.

-Issue: You're primary function in combat is to shoot torpedoes at larger capital ships, whom have big kid guns, torpedoes as CIG described them will be slow moving and depend on the quality of torpedoes. This will also mean you are rolling the dice against your intended target's ability to evade them AND their counter-measures. There is a very real chance that you can blow you're entire purpose in a battle and inflict zero damage. You are now a giant dorito to be fired upon by Ship To Ship and every bomber in sight.

Chris likens the Polaris to a B-17 Flying Fortress or a PT-Boat. A B-17 was a slow heavy bomber of its time, where as PT-Boats were meant to be small target fast attack ships which would attack enemy supply ships/transports/and warships.

-Issue: Setting aside these two things contradict each other, I feel that there are already ships that fill these roles. We have Bombers: a light strike bomber in the Gladiator and a heavy bomber in the Vanguard Harbinger. We have a "PT Boat" already in the form of the Retaliator, which compared to Capital Ships, is a small targer/faster moving/and armed with torpedoes.

The Q&A suggests that the Polaris is meant to attack "larger capital ships", dumping its payload and then retreating from battle while defending itself from fighters/bombers with its turret compliment.

-Issue: Let us imagine a WW2 Naval Battle (I'm using WW2 because Modern Navy does not compute with our ingame melee, as modern warfare is shooting munitions at targets you can't even see due to distance.) At what point do you tell your corvette they are now in charge of attacking an enemy carrier/battleship? In WW2 Corvettes/Destroyers started off very heavyily torpedo based, which rapidly fell from disfavor as these ship classes evolved into either less torpedo bays and more Ship to Ship Weapons (both the British and American destroyers dropped torpedo bays and nearly/did double their primary cannons), or they were completely specialized towards anti SUBMARINE AND AIRCRAFT roles.

CIG calls the Polaris a Corvette / Idris a Frigate / and the Javelin a Destroyer.

-Issue: These names more or less describe the same ship but with slight differences in tonnage. CIG needs to look at what they are calling these ships, while I'm a little out of the loop beyond the Bengal Carrier, the UEE should be calling the Javelin a Heavy Cruiser / Idris a Light Cruiser. (Obviously the presence of Hangers in all of these Capital Ships completely screws any traditional naval functions, so I'm ignoring these.) The Polaris should have been branded a Destroyer/Frigate and its role should have been set to Anti-Bomber/Fighter/Multi-Crew.

I'm going to talk a little about why the Polaris is wrong for what CIG intends it, I apologize if you are drooling on yourself. I wanted to do a video (that probably would have been quicker) but I didn't want to wake the nurse who has to be up in 3 hours with my video game rant.

While I understand that this is Star Citizen and not WW2 Naval Conflicts, I feel that era of naval warfare is the most similar in function to Star Citizen and hence why I draw so many comparisons (as did Chris Roberts honestly, so...). Warships in a strike force all serve purposes, in WW2 the ships tasked with striking High Value Units in a formation were other battleships or cruisers using their main batteries. If you wanted to weaken an enemy formation you used Submarines/PT Boats/ or Aircraft. You didn't tell 2 of your "corvettes" to break off and make a torpedo run and then run away from the battle. (Note that the Torpedo cruisers/destroyers of WW2 all had Ship to Ship guns as well, where the Polaris is lacking.)

Additionally, a serious issue I have with CIG saying the Polaris should shoot its payload at an enemy capital ship and then flees......what purpose does the Hanger serve then? Do you want fighters to abandon the fleet they are protecting (I'm assuming they are launching from a Javelin/Bengal or maaaybe an Idris) and jump back to home base to refit on a Polaris and hope there's still a fight going when they get back home? The Hanger in the Polaris was PURELY fan service.

If the Polaris wants to function in a UEE/Militia role, it should fit one. CIG/Chris designed this thing (By the way Chris/CIG, I LOVE the way this thing looks, I love it! My argument is with function here) to fill a role that is suffering SERIOUS overlap.

First we had the Gladiator, a "carrier based bomber".

Then we had the Vanguard Harbinger, a long range heavy strike bomber.

These ships obviously aren't going out to bomb fighters, so their target range must be Multi Crew range ships, ie: Constelations/Retaliators/Support Ships. Then to make things even more overlapped we threw the Retaliator in there and gave it "two torpedo bays". (yeah, you can change out it's modules, I'm tracking.) What is the purpose of the Retaliator? The Retaliator SCREAMS space submarine/stealth anti-capital attack.

Please rethink the Polaris. I don't know how far into designing the interior you guys are, but I'm begging you CIG, rethink this ship before you get too far along.

quote:

I think people focus too much on semantics, and fail to fully envision the multi-purpose nature of the Polaris. It has a great balance of weaponry and defenses that allow it to occupy any space in a fleet battle.

It's speed makes it a great 'tip of the spear', and the size of its shields mean it can forward observe but still sustain until it can retreat or until reinforcements arrive. It can also carry and deploy a recon fighter to help sweep the area for enemy ships.

It will also be invaluable as wing lead of both bomber and fighter wings. The thinking that it overlaps with the Retaliator too much is flawed, because it will actually be a force multiplier to bomber wings. I envision Polaris leading the charge while shielding multiple Retaliators and providing a heavy base of fire to keep fighters and missle-boats away.

For fighter wings, the faster speed will allow it to provide additional coverage and firepower for fighter wings as well. In this configuration, it also brings a spare fighter to launch in case one gets blown up. The hangar also provides limited refuel, repair and rearm for its wing, which will give a fleet an advantage in long sustained battles.

Then, when it comes to the real dirty part of fleet battles (capital ships vs capital ships), it can hold its own and still dish out some major pain with its torpedos. Capital ship battles would be slow and fairly boring without this smaller class of ship. Now well see Polaris diving in with their attack wings, weaving around the larger capital ships, unleashing their torps, and then diving away to safety. Fleet strategy will be completely different now, as commanders will always have to be ready to reposition their wings to counter incoming attacks. Some Polaris will be assigned to this roll specifically (protecting larger ships) and will have to intercept and destroy incoming torpedos.

And finally, I always emphasize the role that the Polaris can have in a smaller fleet. For small groups of 5-10 fighters, the ability to land and rearm/refuel/repair will be extremely valuable. Even just for groups that are out doing tough PvE missions, the Polaris will allow them to stay in the field longer. It can bring a spare ship in case someone looses theirs, or takes enough damage that they need to swap while the Polaris repairs theirs, etc. And it provides security against larger threats, enabling a small group of fighters to take on much tougher opponents.

At the same time, I do agree with some of the criticisms leveled against the Polaris. The current load out does seem a little weak and unimaginative, and turns the ship into a jack-of-all-trades... But I still have hope that CIG will see the light and expand on the ships modularity. Not having modularity in all ships is a massive failure at this point, and it's something that would end almost everyone complaints about it (besides the guys that don't like how it looks and the bridge positioning :P ).

When it comes to staffing all 7 crew positions... I'm not so sure that will be a problem. When you distill the crew positions down to critical components, you end up with 2-3 positions that should be human controlled, and the rest can be filled easily with NPC. I'm guessing that during a fleet battle, there will also be a lot of people blowing up and then respawning in the NPC crew positions (we won't really know how this mechanic will work until later on), so larger crewed ships actually might provide a weird kind of respawn mechanic. During large fleet battles, as the smaller fighters get wiped out, the capital ships will become better crewed and more formidable, slugging it out with each other until one side finally wins.

To wrap up: I understand peoples [concern] , but I think that a lot of the Polaris utility is being overlooked. I'm also hopeful that CIG will make the ship modular, which would solve pretty much all the problems.

quote:

I think all of this is meant to be scalable, and some of the perceived overlap in ship-to-ship combat may actually be alleviated by the different roles these ships will fill, not just in ship-to-ship combat, but combat against stationary or defenseless targets (space stations, terrestrial bases, large transport ships, etc.).

If the larger capital ships have extremely durable defenses, I would think that sending a group of Gladiators and Harbingers (and probabaly even the Retaliator in some cases) up against those ships wouldn't really do anything. Instead, the smaller bombers will likely be more effective at striking the stationary and defenseless targets that I mentioned above since they'll likely have somewhat hardened defenses where standard weapons aren't as effective, and lighter torpedoes will be needed to break through. These targets could also include the support ships that that'd be supporting the enemy forces.

As the Gladiators and Harbingers are off working on those smaller targets, you'll have your Retaliator working on the larger targets like enemy Polarises, and Idrises (or they could strike the even larger targets once their shields and hulls have been weakened).

Then you have the Polaris, which can go after the larger/largest ships with the massive torpedoes that it'll be a carrying. It'll likely require a team effort to take on something like a Jav or Bengal - once the other groups have taken out their targets, it'll leave the Polaris open to engage the big boys

You wouldn't necessarily want to bring a tank to crush a golf cart, and you wouldn't want to bring a bunch of golf carts to crush a tank. Each bomber fits it's own class, and it'll likely be meant to fight within that class. I know the idea of the hangar on the Polaris was questioned, but there's an easy explanation to that. The Polaris isn't always going to be travelling with an escort... it's probabaly going to give off a pretty significant radar signature as well. If it's only support is going to come from the turrets located across the ship, it'll likely need some kind of external support to not only help fight off any attackers, but to keep eyes on those attackers as they dip in and out of the line-of-site of the different turrets (I'm thinking of a few Snub Fighters, or maybe something like a Super Hornet or Sabre that can help fight off enemy bombers). Being able to track and keep steady pressure on attackers will be crucial for improving the survivability of the Polaris so that it can escape.

I think it's hard to compare the terms that they've used to explain these ships, to the ships of the past that have been classified with the same terms. Of course it's going to be different - this is space. The way I see it, Chris and CIG may be using the terms and considering historical roles of historical/modern military ships as forms of inspiration, but now they're at a point where they can rebrand those terms and make them their own. Nothing about this game will be conventional. So much has already changed throughout history - the meaning of certain words, the roles of different ships, the types of ships used to fill certain roles - so what's to say it can't or won't change again?



TL;DR - The Polaris makes sense to me, as do the other bombers in this game. There's still so much more to be revealed and released in Star Citizen, so there's no way we can know for certain just how all of these ships will play out in their respective classes/roles. The titles of the classes for those ships doesn't necessarily mean they'll fit the same role as the ships from modern times.

Also, it's necessary to scale the amount of force applied to specific targets - light/long range bombers would be used to take out smaller targets (and will probably be ineffective against Cap ships of all sizes), heavy bombers will be used for larger targets (including the smaller Cap ships), and the smaller "attack" Cap ships will be needed when going after large Cap ships.

quote:

Ok i tried to read this. (Good layout by the way) But i've got a little lost at the second quote.

The only thing i could pick on is the whole point of a capital ship is to provide orders and to slow down the enemy capital ship. A capital ship won't be able to protect itself from a swarm of smaller faster fighter ships. That is where the escort of alliance members would come in to play.

A capital ship will fire heavy hitting yet slow firing weapons at the enemy capital ship or try and provide a repair/refuel/rearm/electrical warfare disruptions to prevent the enemy capital ship from boosting it's fleet.

If someone thinks a capital ship is the end all of ships and could fly this without a crew or even with a small fleet to protect it then they're going to have a bad time.

Compare the capital ship to an Aircraft carrier. The Aircraft carrier has very limited weapons to attack and a somewhat limited defense capacity compared to say a destroyer. The Aircraft carrier relies on the fleet it carries and those that escort the ship to protect it. Without any of these it's a giant floating landing strip.

I would somewhat expect a capital ship to have multiple roles. Say Cap-Ship-A to be a heavy hitting torp boat with lots of armor/shields
Cap-Ship-B to have some kind of targeting or navigational disruption device
Cap-Ship-C to have some kind of maybe a fleet buff purpose.

Any long range bomber ship is not designed to get deep in to the action but more of a "pick them off at range" style play. They lack the defence in favor of a higher DPS. They should be used to hold back with further targeting while the smaller ships work down the shields allowing the small ships to peel off and start work on the next ship as the bomber launches a nice large payload to wipe out that limping ship. Maybe with enough bombers they could work on the enemy cap ship bringing their systems offline for long enough to either destroy them or board them if the friendly cap ship has a small fast personal transport carrier in its hold to launch a bunch of merc's to over run the ship.

Anyway like i've said i got a little lost pretty quick but i just wanted to give an understanding of what a cap ship is for.

Please correct me if i'm wrong. I'm trying to get back in to SC after a long break and i'm finding it rather fun when you don't get attacked 24/7 while minding your own business.