Taintrunner posted:

So I guess the question is what sort of scenario is Crobberts imagining for ship theft - if someone leaves their ship open and unlocked on a dock, can I stowaway and when they go to sleep on their ship and log off I kill them and take their ship? Can me and my copilot lock down in the bridge and then a boarding party can take control from the engine room? Is there a self-destruct feature so I can take my enemies with me and send us all straight to hell? Can they cut through the door and try to breach the cockpit in a gunfight?

Or is it just going to be some bullshit. Hmm. In X3:AP some enemy pilots will eject when their ship is about to blow and you can send a pilot over to claim it as your own, so you can build a ragtag fleet pretty big that way.

quote:

The goal is to develop a system where player-to-player boarding is an occasional reward rather than something that becomes the focus of the game; we’re not building Grand Theft Starship. As such, we need a high cost of entry: players must dedicate both significant resources and skill to be able to put themselves in a position to board in the first place.

There are two major limitations on docking: 1) the target ship must be COMPLETELY disabled before it can be boarder and 2) docking requires the attacking player to dedicate credits and slots to several gate technologies, including a docking collar and a tractor beam.

Disabling a target ship is a much more difficult task than it was in Wing Commander, where leech weapons would simply wear down the target. In Star Citizen, the player needs to knock down the enemy ships’ shields and then (without causing a hull breach) pick off the individual thrusters. This is the skill barrier: if you can’t shoot well enough to take apart a ship piece by piece then you can’t board an enemy ship.

Tractor Beams are a dangerous technology. They take up a standard gun slot and are designed for collecting material significantly less massive than their host ship (escaped pilots, cargo pallets, bobbleheads, etc.) As such, there’s a constant danger of overloading when using them to dock, especially with cheaper models. Additionally, they require that the target ship be ABSOLUTELY DISABLED – firing a tractor beam at a ship that still has functional thrusters will overload it and severely damage the attacker.

A docking collar is needed to attach ships together. As with tractor beams, different levels are available which will allow connections to different sizes of ships; boarding something large like a carrier is much easier than something your own size, like a Constellation (disabling another Constellation’s thrusters will require a crack shot, to say the least, and a much more accurate collar.) If the game hits the $4 million mark, collarless external ship combat will be added with pilots in pressure suits wearing EMUs able to battle it out in space; explosive charges would be used to open the targeted ship’s airlock.

The standard VDU will not identify whether or not a ship is completely disabled; it will have a gut feel/skill element to it. Higher software upgrades will provide more in-depth scans of a target that will give you a better assurance that no maneuvering remains in place… for a price.

Also note that docking mechanics do NOT apply to ships with a single crewman or certain smaller bombers; the general rule is that if there’s not room to walk around then only the salvage mechanic can apply to it. You need a crewed ship to board in the first place and you can only board crewed ships which are larger than your own (in crew size.)

Combat

Once a ship has successfully tractored in a target vessel, it will dock at a pre-determined location on the hull (ie, you will always dock at one of the same doors on the Constellation.) There will be a 30-second period where the attacking player cuts open the target’s door. The defender can use that time to set up to fire back. Think an interactive recreation of the opening scene of Star Wars, with the Rebels nervously waiting to defend the corvette from Stormtroopers.

Players will have access to a variety of upgrades to help/hinder boarding operations. Armored space suits, hand scanners, explosives, more powerful (or functionally different) weapons and so on will be available to players on both sides of the equations.

Defending players will have upgrade options that can help put the battle in their favor: a self destruct process, a dead man’s switch, automated miniguns they can position in the cockpit and so on. It’s going to be a challenge to get onboard a targeted ship successfully, one that you’ll need to work with your friends to accomplish.

Finally, the cost to recover a boarded ship will ultimately be high. Since you’ve disabled and otherwise crippled it in battle (and cut into the hull to board) you must conduct repairs in deep space if you wish to keep the hull rather than simply looting it… during which the ship is in danger of being boarded by a third party. Boarding parties should plan to carry an advance repair bot with them or to suffer the difficulty of flying in a depressurized cockpit (limited life support time, less responsive controls.) Finally, only one ship can be flown at once: you will need to work with a partner if you wish to keep a boarded ship and your own craft.

MilesK posted:

Once 3.0 comes out, Star Citizen would only need to release 99 more star systems, 5 more alien races, a tablet companion app, vanduul trading post and alien derelict base types, a kilometer long carrier that crews 1,000, professional mod tools, and a single-player mode with 50 missions, celebrity voice-acting, professional mocap, and a "Mission Disk" called Behind Enemy Lines, to deliver what they said they could when they reached $6,000,000 on Nov 18th, 2012.

Dusty Lens posted:

A common misconception is that the stretch goals were meant to aggregate rather than supersede. So each new stretch goal actually cancelled out the one before it.

The last stretch goal was abandoning stretch goals.

This might clear up a lot of the perceived issues with SC development.

peter gabriel posted:

MOONS


moons

peter gabriel posted:

MOONS


moons

BeigeJacket posted:

The thing that strikes me most about the last 6 months development of Roberts wretched little game is that, if you didn't know anything else about the project, you'd assume that it was a Planetside/Battlefront style combined arms shooter.

They've been hyping their planetary tech for so long now, the fact that its supposed to be a deep space sim seems somewhat forgotten. Even the 'fly your chariot seamlessly from space to the surface' (which is something I still legit find impressive in any game) was barely mentioned.

Thoatse posted:

Subnautica -underwater first person base building/exploration... in VR can be downright scary when the sea monsters are on your rear end

Beer4TheBeerGod posted:

So what is the difference between OS and OS2? I bought OS awhile ago but only played it for 2 hours.

Beer4TheBeerGod posted:

So what is the difference between OS and OS2? I bought OS awhile ago but only played it for 2 hours.

thatguy posted:

Can we do a Star Citizen themed campaign?

Beet Wagon posted:

I'm having a hard time deciding whether Lethality should be a shining white knight or a necromancer who destroys enemiesgames with his touch of death.

Toops posted:

If you wouldn't mind, could you elaborate on how a single server-authoritative physics sim is favorable at scale in a game as complicated as SC? Because physics is so expensive, imo it's completely impossible at scale, like, don't even bother trying it.

Bootcha posted:

Namaste/Tane

thatguy posted:

I added you or someone pretending to be you on Steam.

Beer4TheBeerGod posted:

So what is the difference between OS and OS2? I bought OS awhile ago but only played it for 2 hours.

AP posted:

https://twitter.com/SandiGardiner/status/920048855936262144

nawledgelambo posted:

I just skipped some 1700 odd posts

someone sum up everything, and it better have the words 'star citizen' and 'good' in it

Chev posted:

Regarding why it's favorable, it's easy: it's the only way to avoid cheating and desynchronization. You're mostly right regarding the scale, though like all physics problems the complexity can at least be brought down somewhat by good clustering of objects. There's that other crowdfunded space game that was linked in here, kinda minecraft in space but with round planets and all, that claimed to do that, they had a nifty demo video with wireframe cubes showing the dynamic clustering but heck if I remember how that was called, though that probably only brings you up to a couple hundreds. Beyond that the only real answer is simpler physics and avoiding direct manipulation so lag matters less, which is why actual MMOs like Wow clones or Eve don't have twitch gameplay.

Toops posted:

- We want to give players the ability to more intuitively interact with items and objects within the game, but also find ways to indicate to the player what type of interaction they would be performing (pick up, start conversation, push button, etc).
(what the gently caress does this even mean, what are you talking about, what kind of patch note bullet point starts with "we want to ..." then describes incredibly vague yet contradictory things... this is pure loving cat drugs)

I can't read any more of this bullshit I'm getting pissed off again.

Ghostlight posted:

Time for an engine change

Beet Wagon posted:

I'm having a hard time deciding whether Lethality should be a shining white knight or a necromancer who destroys enemiesgames with his touch of death.

thatguy posted:

You know I thought for sure I would get a new avatar when I posted all that anthropomorphic spaceship fetish porn. I didn't really expect to get this random one after ironically making fun of Derek.

Semisponge posted:

He's a Blight Knight.

Incitatus posted: