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Apr 19, 2024 21:59
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- CrazyLoon
- Aug 10, 2015
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"..."
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MY GOD, It's full of STARS(itizen)
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Nov 30, 2017 20:19
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- TheAgent
- Feb 16, 2002
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The call is coming from inside Dr. House
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Grimey Drawer
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this made me lol
quote:Amazon console exclusive 2020
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Nov 30, 2017 20:19
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- Bayonnefrog
- Nov 9, 2017
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No way this lasts until 2019.
Even if you could theoretically develop a MMO on 10% of what the ship sales are with a smaller team you are talking about Star Citizen here. The entire thing is held up by the faith of people paying for it and how it's a sure thing they just have to wait for. Anything, at all, signalling trouble like a subscription model, layoffs, studio closures or whatever else would be completely disastrous.
I have no evidence but I think the reason they lasted this long is due to their invisible finances. Everyone predicting the giant idiot burning tens of millions on movie shoots would go bankrupt quickly has been wrong but I think it's due to outside factors.
My speculation would be that they got a huge surplus from 2013-2014-2015 ship sales. Sometime in late 2015 they began burning so rich that they got outside loans to burn through before hitting the surplus funding, then hitting the whale sales so hard that they needed to take tax advances out.
I think we hit peak whale a long time ago. Funding is down like 40% over this time last year and historically we are about to drop off a funding cliff which happens even in their best years.
So I'd say before the June-July drought of next year if they can't magic up more money we don't know about to fill the gaps. I originally thought they would collapse the end of this year but I didn't really think it through that they would obviously want to get their three biggest sales in the three biggest months out of the way. Hitting the bottom of the cliff in January and then going forward into the new year with 6-7 months of drastically reduced funding ahead would be when I would think things would happen.
We are going to be at <$1,000,000 per month for 3-4+ months soon. Even the wildest and most optimistic burn rate predictions make that a massive loss.
A complete financial accounting like they contractually promised would be pretty enlightening and might explain how something so obviously failed has persisted so long. There is no "Well a company of 50 could survive for ten years off of the ship sales!" at play. Once the mass delusion cracks they will be swamped in millions of dollars in lawsuits, refunds and bad press while they are still in pre-alpha.
If Crobberts was the type of person to adjust to realistic conditions to produce a realistic product we wouldn't have Star Citizen. This runs at Peak Dreams until it can't.
As a finance/accounting person irl I'd love to talk to their CFO and take a look at all their books to see where everything goes. Fascinating.
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Nov 30, 2017 20:20
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- tuo
- Jun 17, 2016
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Been to Karlsruhe a few times for work-related stuff, sadly no time to check out much except airport/hotel/office.
My mother's from Karlsruhe and I used to be part-owner of a company in Ettlingen, right next to Karlsruhe, but I moved a bit north, next to Mannheim/Heidelberg.
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Nov 30, 2017 20:20
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- TheAgent
- Feb 16, 2002
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The call is coming from inside Dr. House
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Grimey Drawer
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like I know we are all drinking now but gimme something I can post with a straight loving face lol
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Nov 30, 2017 20:21
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- Bayonnefrog
- Nov 9, 2017
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ain't no one going to jail over a space game, no matter how hilariously I want a courtroom to read evidence from this thread
The only way that would have happened is of they took the entire kickstarter money (the 2-5mil they got early on) and took off to some island in the bahamas and never made a game. They tried to make a game so no gross negligence. They're just incompetent. Can you go to jail for being dumb?
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Nov 30, 2017 20:22
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- TheAgent
- Feb 16, 2002
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The call is coming from inside Dr. House
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Grimey Drawer
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nope, you get to shrug and say you tried really hard but the next kickstarter will be totally diff
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Nov 30, 2017 20:23
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- Beexoffel
- Oct 4, 2015
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Herald of the Stimpire
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Hi thread!
I was planning recently to write a big effortpost about how Citizens see the world. What their version of G0RF's chart would look like - the high priests at the top, the masses of citizens, the cliques and then across the gulf to goons and refunders and the Anti-Crobbler himself. But it grew a bit big, so I'm breaking a piece off and tossing it to the thread for discussion even if my timing could have been better and the land plots have arrived, holy poo poo.
But I'd like to talk for a moment about something I said in an earlier post. That when Chris sold a big ship, he sold an unstated promise to fill it with players. Players who have to have a reason to want to be an Idris turret gunner rather than buy a ship of their own. Players, in short, who don't actually get to play Star Citizen...
THE FAITHLESS
In other words, the mainstream mass of gamers. People who presumably have only dimly heard of the project until launch day. The people who will flock to the game on the glorious Day of Release, when the clouds open and Chris Roberts descends from Heaven to grant Idrises to the faithful and cast Smart and his Goons into Hell where they shall wail and gnash their teeth as they are never permitted to fly e'en the smallest of Auroras.
A good Citizen is naturally an elitist. He would prefer to disdain the masses as fools, people who turned aside the CRoberts when he preached his message and whose tastes are nowhere near refined enough for the Best drat Space Sim Ever. However, they are caught by a tenet of Star Citizen theology - Star Citizen will be the best game ever and sell millions and millions of copies. The space stations must be bustling and full of players.
Someone must buy your mined space rocks. Someone must gape in awe at your 890 Jump, sometimes even try to attack you (and fail, and be sent to Pirate Jail to think about what they've done).
So the Faithless who buy after release get to be in Outer Heaven (a concept you sometimes see in real no-questions-asked cults). In the ‘verse, but firmly second class. They can man the turrets. Scrub the hot tubs. Be the redshirts and helm officers and people who report “Vanduul on the scope, Captain!” while the Faithful command from the bridge. There will be entire skillsets (like shield balancing or power management) that the Citizens never touch. But by heck they'll toss peons out the airlock (and out of their orgs) if they don't give their captain full shields when he calls for it in the heat of battle. It'd be like being the healer in a WoW raid if your tank was also paying your salary.
Perhaps, with much grinding and proof of their faith, the Faithless might aspire to own a ship one day (but it had better be after many months of tub-scrubbing). In which case they can be cannon fodder, escort fighters, perhaps pirates and targets for bounty hunters. The people who man all the dozens of planes lined up on the deck of the Citizen's pocket carrier. The people who foolishly charge the Citizens' guns and die so the Citizens can call themselves space aces.
It’s the Faithless who the insurance mechanics are for. A good Citizen has multiple ships and just flies off in another one. But someone with one ship they had to save for years to afford? Get scrubbing that jaccuzi. This is the dark secret of LTI; LTI on a ship means you never run the risk of being reduced down to Faithless level by a run of deaths.
It helps that a Citizen's natural contempt for the masses means he expects the Faithless to log in and immediately become pirates and griefers, because they're such dumb CODdies. They’ll run everywhere in the spaceports and ruin our immersion (so punish them. Ideally by forcing them to spend longer manning our turrets; some nice heavy fines would do it). They don’t understand the game like a Citizen does. Really, it’s what’s best for them and they’ll see that. Come the day.
A good citizen rebels when CIG suggest new players who haven't proven their faith, haven't sacrificed, haven't paid and faced the real-world consequences of paying (a citizen's going to have felt the impact on his wallet of all those ships, after all) might be able to own big ships in less than 100,000 hours. Surely Chris wouldn’t do that. We need people to stuff into crates and introduce to the inevitable consequences of piracy and it sure as hell ain’t gonna be the Citizens, they paid too much to put up with that. Their whole identity is built on being the big people in the ‘verse. On being whales.
This basically means the average Citizen sees themselves as a kind of MMO slumlord, keeping a horde of Faithless latecomers in poverty to keep their guns manned. It doesn’t occur to a Citizen for a moment that the Faithless might work this out and refuse to buy in. An unspoken tenet of the Cult of Star Citizen is the masses will kneel in awe when the glory of the full game is revealed to them. Kneel and beg for forgiveness, and in their mercy the Citizens will let them load cargo with their bare hands.
People who ask awkward questions about how, exactly, this is going to work get an incredible dose of rage. You're threatening a core tenet of the Star Citizen fantasy.
Seen Space Jam? You know that vision of the future the villain gives Michael Jordan of being chained to a basketball hoop, terrifying children in cinemas across the globe? That's where the faithless, the filthy faithless gamer on the street who didn't buy in when he had a chance, sits in Star Citizen theology.
Enjoy your hot tub.
hello
I wasn't exactly sure what they were talking about but no further discussion happened about that
free-to-play players
- can access the game
- cannot own shops / outposts / land / stations
- cannot own ships or pilot ships
- can crew for others / take on specific ftp missions with friends or others
- have a total credit cap earned weekly
- total credit cap
- cannot craft items
- cannot sell on the marketplace
- no storyline content is available for f2p tier
citizen tier or citizenship
- full access to the complete experience
- can own buildings / shops / outposts / land /stations
- has standard entry on markets and customer service queues
- can create items
- can sell on the marketplace
- can see storyline content in SC
premium or commander tier
- same as citizenship
- has priority access on market lists (show up first)
- priority access on CS queues
- can ask developers in game about upcoming features
- has additional storyline content via updates
- priority choice of base (??)
additional higher tier called internally as royalty
- invite only by dev choice
- all content available
- priority across the board
- special irl and in game dinners and mixers with devs and staff
- special promo skins
- special bases / homes / outposts
- f2p
- $14.99
- $39.99
- $249.99
Two great posts! I think they mesh on the levels of faith/money spent.
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Nov 30, 2017 20:33
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- Hav
- Dec 11, 2009
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Fun Shoe
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The only way that would have happened is of they took the entire kickstarter money (the 2-5mil they got early on) and took off to some island in the bahamas and never made a game. They tried to make a game so no gross negligence. They're just incompetent. Can you go to jail for being dumb?
Depends if you release emails implicating yourself in negotiations with someone you weren't supposed to. Self-implication is _pretty_ dumb.
Never overlook a civil suit, though.
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Nov 30, 2017 20:34
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- Enchanted Hat
- Aug 18, 2013
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Defeated in Diplomacy under suspicious circumstances
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It still triggers the gently caress out of me that they're using the Star Wars stars-whizzing-past hyperdrive effect even though the ship is moving like, less than a thousandth of a light year and the stars' positions relative to the ship should barely change. You can see that the gas giant in the background doesn't even change size!
It's unfidelitious is what it is
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Nov 30, 2017 20:35
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- Scruffpuff
- Dec 23, 2015
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Fidelity. Wait, was I'm working on again?
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You have such great info. If I could get you to answer a question that’s nagging me for a long time, I’d love it. If it endangers you somehow don’t though:
I have always gotten the feeling that Chris Roberts feels like everything is “easy”, or at least that even something “hard” should be handled very quickly.
Since he began this, his dates have always been hideously optimistic to the point of sheer unreality.
For this to happen, I feel like there is only two reasons:
1: He thinks everything can be done as fast as he imagines, and thus everything is a simple, trivial task.
2: He’s knowingly lying to everybody.
I’m going to say it’s not option 2, only because I’m nice and feel like most people won’t do this at this level. That leaves option 1.
So my question is does CR think everything can really be done almost immediately? Like a full redesign of internet communication for video games is going to be redesigned from ground up better than anybody has done before.. because he said so? Does he have any knowledge ever to back himself up or provide valuable direction (saying the word mesh over and over does not constitute professional direction for a project), or does he just demand people make technological magic happen because he wants it, and he wants it in a week or two?
Thanks friend! 
I suspect the answer to this lies in one of Chris Roberts' basic tenets: he thinks Hollywood movies are how life works. The Hollywood CEO takes no prisoners, and their effectiveness is never in their own intelligence, ability, aptitude, or leadership, but in the ability to be a no-nonsense guy who takes no guff and says things like "GET IT DONE!" while disregarding the lives of everyone beneath him. If you don't do what he says, then you don't have "what it takes" to work for him, implying that being under his leadership is a great privilege reserved for only the best of the best.
This was hinted at during his early pitch way, way back in the day, a small hint at his ego: "They said I was dead."
No, Chris. Nobody said you were dead. Nobody thought about you at all, even fans of Freelancer didn't know who you are. Nobody did outside a very small group of people who, had you asked them "Do you remember Chris Roberts?" would have said "No." then when pressed with "He made Wing Commander" would then say "uhh I guess so."
He's convinced that the only reason there are Bad Games™ is because he stepped away for a while to fail in other ventures.
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Nov 30, 2017 20:43
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- TheAgent
- Feb 16, 2002
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The call is coming from inside Dr. House
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Grimey Drawer
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even the author has to go out of his way with a fuckin paragraph of chris roberts praise before he gets to his criticisms
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Nov 30, 2017 20:51
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- Abuminable
- Mar 30, 2017
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Now, aside from the Abuminable, business goes on as usual.
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e: CIG intern if you pass this up the chain and it releases I only ask that "Ursine Catastrophe, Known Goon" ends up in the special thanks section
CIG should hire FrogBear on as a consultant. FrogBear could come up with far better concepts than they ever could.
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Nov 30, 2017 21:01
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- TheAgent
- Feb 16, 2002
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The call is coming from inside Dr. House
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Grimey Drawer
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Does anyone know if CIG's art staff is being sent home on vacation now so they can come back fresh and ready to get to work after The Last Jedi is released? Or is just work from here until the end.
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Nov 30, 2017 21:03
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- BluesShaman
- Apr 25, 2016
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She wore Blue Velvet.
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0xOVHcFnsBA
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Nov 30, 2017 21:03
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- Bofast
- Feb 21, 2011
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Grimey Drawer
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I've commented in the past that every time CIG had a marketing disaster the citizens reacted in a predictable cycle. That cycle is going on around us right now. So let's get out our finest nature documentary gear, don some thick protective gloves, and take this wonderful opportunity to study firsthand the Five Stages of a CIG Marketing Fuckup.
You can break it down roughly into five stages as follows:
Stage 1: CIG makes a boo-boo. Chris throws a tantrum when his own game crashes, a demo goes wrong, the wheels come off on the ramp, they've started selling land plots, whatever it is. It's deeply embarrassing and directly contradicts the narrative the Citizens wrap themselves in as a safety blanket.
Stage 2: Suddenly the rug is yanked out from under the Citizenry's delusions and they're confronted with the reality that they've sunk thousands of dollars into a disaster. They panic, and when the citizenry panics it freezes up as it tries to process (and justify away) whatever they're seeing. Star...Citizen...bad? But but but nooooooo.
So we get a period of silence from the hardcore backers, usually a day or two but sometimes as long as week, as they struggle to come to terms with their situation. Into the silence emerge, blinking, a whole variety of less-crazy citizens who are usually lost in the glare, kept cowed by the threats and sheer volume of their nastier cousins. People who'd been shouted down in the past take advantage of the shocked paralysis to actually speak about their fears for the project in public for the first time. They can be surprisingly erudite and well-thought-out.
Some of those people, hearing the words coming out of their own mouths, realise they've been had and go on to demand refunds. More, perhaps too scared of the "refunder" label, quietly disappear and write off their investment. Others hesitate, knowing the backlash will come or fearing that if they do cross the wire the goons on the other side will mock them or seek revenge for past slights.
This phase lasts until the citizens can construct a reassuring narrative in their heads that doesn't hurt so much to think about. CIG know this, which is why after a day or two we always see...
Stage 3: CIG releases a sanitised version of whatever has scared the citizens. A livestream with the cringeworthy bits cropped out. "It's not really selling land". See, it didn't happen the way you were afraid it did, it actually happened like this. This is a nice safe version you can tell yourself is the real one. A kernel for the new Citizen narrative to form around.
Then the cry goes up and we're on to Stage 4, THE PURGE. Buoyed by the new narrative and happy to embrace their worldview once again, the citizens regain confidence. They haven't forgotten the pain of that horrible period when CIG's incompetence yanked the rug out from under them, oh no, but they have enough confidence now to silence any painful introspection. And they're angry.
So it's purge time. All you filthy critics, you refunders, you people who made us think scary and painful thoughts that we want to assign to outsiders instead of CIG...you're going down hard.
The citizens go berserk. Boldly defy THE SMART and His Dark Works! Seek out the enemy within! Scour the apostates from the halls of the faithful! All their pent-up venom is unleashed on any poor souls who voiced criticism and don't get out of the way in time. Anything and everything is used as tool to vent the citizens' anger - past post history, old grudges, being on the wrong side of innocuous debates about flight physics three years ago, showing a flash of heresy, the existence of one of the other Hated Subreddits. All must either display their loyalty or be purged.
One of the sad forces fuelling the loop is that sometimes abused becomes abuser; someone who felt the wrath of the citizens in the last cycle gleefully joins in the next, in self-defence and to vent their own anger at their past treatment.
Lastly comes Stage 5: Project, Project, Project.
Y'see one of the dirty secrets of the citizenry is that they're not entirely terrible people. Some part of them is quite aware their behaviour is disturbing and cultish. But their greater investment in their self-image as Good Citizens drives them to suppress it. So after the initial outburst of rage comes a period of guilt and vulnerability, which a good citizen deals with by projecting it onto the enemy as hard as they can. I talked about how SC's problems as a game get projected onto Elite and LOD; this period is when the citizens deal with their problems as human beings.
They raged? No, goons rage. That dancing cat is full of rage and anger (this is literally how that running joke got started). They shilled? No, Smart shills, with his thousands of shilling shills in every shadow. They hounded enemies from the subreddit? No, goons did that. Filthy goons, driving people from their safe spaces with their trolling and hate. Chris openly laughed and talked about how easy it is to sell JPGs? Well Derek sells JPGs all the time from his JPG truck which he doesn't own because it was repossessed last week when his wife divorced him and also we don't doxx, Derek doxxes.
This phase is when the choicest and most ridiculous conspiracy theories form, to repair the citizenry's damaged self-image and explain away whatever excesses they need to excuse. Then everything returns to normal and the citizens can go about their business, refreshed and ready and ever-vigilant.
The citizenry don't always process each stage neatly. Individual citizens can be at one phase while others have moved on, or are still stuck in phase 2. Right now we've seen an unusual double-disaster (3.0 followed by land sales) and the amusing result is collisions between citizens who are at different points.
Let's take a worked example - Fandred trying to out jester86 as a goon spy.
Consider that from Fandred's POV. He's already smarting from his rejection from the refunds subreddit, is largely considered a joke verging on an apostate by the citizenry, and he wants attention. At the same time like any good citizen he distrusts the grey market as something that shouldn't be needed because the citizenry should be Buying More Ships from Glorious CIG. Worst of all, THE SMART has been discussing how jester86 had a different identity as a grey market seller and he was openly caught trying to buy accounts from refunders.
But Star Citizen GOOD. Star Citizen fans GOOD. Star Citizen fan reddit moderators DOUBLEPLUS GOOD.
So he tried to project his fears onto someone else - see? SEE? The grey market subreddit mod is a goon plant! That's why he runs the grey market subreddit (when all backers should be Buying More Ships from the Crobbler), and why he shut down the R/DS subreddit (which was a very painful defeat for its occupants, who suddenly found themselves unwelcome amongst the citizens they told themselves they were protecting), and why he consorted with filthy refunders. Above all that's why jester86 didn't conform to Fandred's mental image of a Good Citizen. A Good Citizen who was so blessed as to be a subreddit admin.
So he must be a secret plant. Must be a spy and a heretic. Must be called out and the wrath of the faithful brought to bear (which incidentally should get Fandred promoted up the ranks and rewarded for his faith, because it's horribly clear Fandred feels painfully isolated and really really wants friends).
There's just one eeeensy problem...
...CIG's image of the land claim spike got leaked.
Goons laughed. Citizens froze in horror. The cycle skipped to stage 2 and that meant Fandred unveiled his conspiracy theory too early. The citizenry can't run a witch-hunt now, they're too busy circling the wagons and trying to make the horrible horrible land sales go away. They're too busy fighting the whispers inside their heads to throw away a valuable fellow citizen. So nobody sided with Fandred and he got roundly ignored, left to the less-than-tender mercies of his would-be victim.
If he'd waited a week or two...waited for the cycle to move on and reach the purge or guilt-flushing stage, when the citizenry is eager to grasp at straws...jester would have been in a lot more trouble. The subreddits would have been on the hunt for apostates to purge, and the very same evidence might have been more than enough to make them get the pitchforks and stakes.
Jester got lucky that time. Ironically he owes his deliverance to CIG itself tripping over their own egos...but then, jester is a member of the inner cult and he already knows that. He's keeping his head firmly down right now and probably cursing CIG's idiocy for ruining the value of his investments.
Most impressive 
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Nov 30, 2017 21:10
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- ManofManyAliases
- Mar 21, 2016
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ToastOfManySmarts
Can't post for 3 hours!
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Unlike Derek I am extremely careful about my predictions. The first one I ever made for a collapse was Q4 2017. Everything I've seen points to the highest possibility in the entire projects history of failure in Q1-Q2 2018.
Your arguments are either lies, faith or both. If you followed your predictions you would have gotten a refund six months ago because you expected procedural planets in December 2016, and Squadron 42 and 3.0 by this summer.
You want to shill at least come up with something constructive as a rebuttal based on finances or even dream up some hypotheticals where Chris Roberts could totally leverage his existing assets to develop with a team of 50 elite developers for the next decade or something.
I tried all that stuff - yada yada - it was chastised here because it doesn't conform to the "get a refund, SC is a SCAM" mantra that's circle-jerked in this thread.
Try as hard as anyone might, but predictions based on CIG's finances are nonsensical because ... get this ... no one here has access to CIG's finances. Not even Bootcha as a former investor (because they would have shown him projections, a business plan, etc, but nothing remotely close to financial statements).
Believe it or not, I'm not shilling for CIG. I have no need - CIG is making millions of dollars on their own without the help of shills. Yeah, I've dicked around here (who hasn't), but even if I were to put at least 50% effort into attempting to post a reasoned rebuttal/opinion based on my actual industry/career skill-sets and experiences, it wouldn't be met with anything other than "ban MoMA" or "your parents are dead." Which is fine because we're all dead and gay and it's a stupid video game - all that jazz.
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Nov 30, 2017 21:16
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- Mu77ley
- Oct 14, 2016
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How long is 8 minutes in parsecs?
"He made the Daymar run in __ parsecs!!"
-Citizen Luke about Royalty Miku someday
Well, seeing as a parsec is a unit of length, not time, the question (and Star Wars script) don't actually make much sense.
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Nov 30, 2017 21:16
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- TheAgent
- Feb 16, 2002
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The call is coming from inside Dr. House
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Grimey Drawer
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I tried all that stuff - yada yada - it was chastised here because it doesn't conform to the "get a refund, SC is a SCAM" mantra that's circle-jerked in this thread.
Try as hard as anyone might, but predictions based on CIG's finances are nonsensical because ... get this ... no one here has access to CIG's finances. Not even Bootcha as a former investor (because they would have shown him projections, a business plan, etc, but nothing remotely close to financial statements).
Believe it or not, I'm not shilling for CIG. I have no need - CIG is making millions of dollars on their own without the help of shills. Yeah, I've dicked around here (who hasn't), but even if I were to put at least 50% effort into attempting to post a reasoned rebuttal/opinion based on my actual industry/career skill-sets and experiences, it wouldn't be met with anything other than "ban MoMA" or "your parents are dead." Which is fine because we're all dead and gay and it's a stupid video game - all that jazz.
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Nov 30, 2017 21:21
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- Adbot
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ADBOT LOVES YOU
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Apr 19, 2024 21:59
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- Gravity_Storm
- Mar 1, 2016
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I want to purchase a bridge over troubled space waters. What are my options?
Buy an Idris and then CCU to a bridge later. Make sure you get LTI. Oh, its cash only, none of your special snowflake already-paid store credit crap.
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Nov 30, 2017 21:22
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Nov 30, 2017 20:12
C-Bangin' it 
Welcome to the
