Squadron 42 / Star Citizen, The largest crowd funded game ever.

Cymelion

Now if you visit gaming websites you've probably seen the game mentioned now and then as they hit targets like $33 Million Dollars - and to most cursory glances the game seems to scream (Scam or Pay to Win or WTF?)

And the way it is presented it might come off that way. But trust me it's not there is no P2W here - just browsing the Pledging store and seeing packages ranging from $30 to $10,000 might switch you off instantly but give me a moment to dispel some myths and misconceptions about what is easily the BDSSE (Best Damn Space Simulation Ever)

First up.
The game deals with in game currency earned in game.
With a legitimate cap on any purchased currency to stop the economy tanking and to mitigate gold farmers and sellers.

There is no MMO style subscription model and is unlikely to happen - the money for the game is going to come from regular updates/mission packs people can buy for the single player side of things these will not be crucial to the Persistant universe.

Approx 95% of all in game features and content can be earned in game the remaining 5% being things like naming star systems or planets/space stations, designing NPC's - these were locked to certain pledge tiers but have no impact on content.

The game will feature servers both in Alpha/Beta and on Launch in Europe - America and Oceanic areas to provide the lowest ping possible, however it is believed you will be able to join friends on the other servers but will suffer the lag issues associated with it.

The game relies on skill - someone who learns how to fly well will beat someone who has large guns most of the time.

The game will have a 50-70 mission single player campaign with writing that looks to the mistakes of other games (Mass Effect for example) and endevours to not repeat them - it will be Fully voiced - and while no actors have been lined up people are speculating that Mark Hamill is on board for it.
The game will feature a very gender neutral story - they want to try very hard not to fall into the similar gender tropes affecting games lately you can pick your gender and design your character but they have been clear from the start they don't want the game to be about space bikinis.

The game will feature optional drop in co-op mode for the Single Player campaign or complete offline play - the ability to create and host your own multiplayer servers with your own settings and mods - access to a persistant universe MMO style game featuring - Exploration - Salvaging - Piracy - Bounty Hunting - Trading - Mining - Large Space Battles - First Person Shooting style boarding of ships or space station combat.

All the ships are made by in game companies so you can often tell what company a ship is from just from its appearance - they will add to these as they continue to grow and each ship will have a level of customization that will accent your gameplay style not hinder it.

Now why should you consider getting this game?
Well there are many many videos up now but they don't convey the message of hope that well - this game is Chris Roberts 3rd attempt at making a dream come true. The first was his Wing Commander series but there was no way he could make the game back in the late 80's do anything remotely close to what he wanted to do. Then EA obtained the rights to Wing Commander and would not allow him to reclaim them. So he tried making Freelancer and it was getting close to what he wanted before Microsoft bought them out and shortened their development time rushing the game out - a game that was released with so few bugs it still stands up today with no official patch ever released or needed.

So this time with a crowd of people world wide funneling in their hard earned money to make the game he and all of they have dreamed of for so many years. Whether you're spending just enough to get the game ($40) or buying every ship on you see the money being spent on this game is being used to make it better than anything that has ever come before it.

I hope if you've ever had an interest in games like this either trading and selling - or dogfighting - or exploring every nook and cranny for hidden secrets you would consider Star Citizen.
I've spent 1280 on the game including buying copies for 4 of my friends and I have not regretted a moment of it.

Have a look around my Hanger (Temp video till I can finish a better version)

Sakonosolo

Could have sworn you already made a thread about this earlier.

Cymelion

@Sakonosolo:

Could have sworn you already made a thread about this earlier.

Wasn't my thread - this thread has more current information in an easy to read manner - plus I can edit the main post as they release more information to ensure it isn't incorrect in the first post.

Now that Star Citizen is a year old - and the game is about to release the Dog fighting module there is likely to be more updates coming in a quicker fashion.

Sakonosolo

Oh, heh, seems it was my thread :sideways: .

Cymelion

@Sakonosolo:

Oh, heh, seems it was my thread :sideways: .

Hah all good - I thought it had been abandoned since so much new information was out rather than necro'ing a thread I just thought to create a new one with more up to date information - sorry if I stole your thunder ^_^

Zack

I'm always in favor of a new topic if the other one's old enough and the OP has more and better organized information.

KaizokuJinbei

This looks really interesting. But I'm going to pass for now as I already have a hand full of games to play.

stephen

Good memories of Privateer.

Cymelion

@stephen:

Good memories of Privateer.

Same here - I once made a fortune of credits in that game by shooting merchants while apologizing to them enough they stayed friendly even as I blew them up and tractored in their cargo.
While I sincerely doubt I'll be able to take advantage of that feature nowerdays - I'm looking forward to doing some space trading missions.

Urouge

I should have just found and bumped this thread in the first place to say that the alpha for the dogfighting module has been released. Good times were had.

I'm really looking forward to this game, as Freelancer is one of my all time favorites to this day. The gameplay was fun, but even more than that I enjoyed the universe between the missions. Wing Commander was fun too, but was sort of doomed to the shadows of X-Wing, despite all the cool wingman and storyline stuff that it was pushing out.

$45 million and counting. I'm probably going to wait until AC 1.0 and then decide how much more money I'm willing to give them, at which point I think I'll just use it to buy up currency and be done with it, and maybe this cool deluxe hanger. Oddly enough, the crowdfunding concept completely changed my willingness to spend some extra cash (just not cymelion levels of extra cash, maybe an extra $100 or something), since I feel like it'd actually go towards the game itself rather than towards some profit margin that determines a game's success.

I'm also super psyched about Oculus Rift support. Putting on that VR helmet and grabbing a joystick is like everything I ever dreamed X-Wing could be as a kid.

@Cymelion:

You're not colliding with ships the Vanduul Scythe has massive blade installed on the wing which they love to use to rip open ships.

http://img1.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20121018143809/starcitizen/images/2/2e/Vanduul_Fighter_Concept_Art.jpg

Regardless of the enemy's intent, the targeting system still makes it so that I can't really see these collisions coming in order to properly avoid them. I can probably train myself to see through it (I have a little bit already), but they should still make it more intuitive and obvious (INCOMING LOOK OUT). And they probably will.

Though on the AI front I'll give the thumbs up from what I've seen so far. They fly logically and don't collide with their targets or other junk at the very least. Usually AI's are doing stupid and annoying crap in alphas, but these ones are skating by unnoticed which is largely the goal in the first place. I'll leave it to the aces out there to figure out how truly difficult they are.

Avenger is a nice investment - I have one too not sure how often I'll use it, My Freelancer is my baby.

I probably would have gotten a Freelancer but the oddly tiny cargo space scared me away. For example, the Caterpillar is described as the evil twin of the Freelancer, but it has 3200 cargo units of space compared to just 168 on the Freelancer. Now this very well might be adjusted for balance before the game is released, but I'm not willing to spend $100 on "might be adjusted."

Cymelion

@Urouge:

I should have just found and bumped this thread in the first place to say that the alpha for the dogfighting module has been released. Good times were had.

I'm really looking forward to this game, as Freelancer is one of my all time favorites to this day. The gameplay was fun, but even more than that I enjoyed the universe between the missions. Wing Commander was fun too, but was sort of doomed to the shadows of X-Wing, despite all the cool wingman and storyline stuff that it was pushing out.

$45 million and counting. I'm probably going to wait until AC 1.0 and then decide how much more money I'm willing to give them, at which point I think I'll just use it to buy up currency and be done with it, and maybe this cool deluxe hanger. Oddly enough, the crowdfunding concept completely changed my willingness to spend some extra cash (just not cymelion levels of extra cash, maybe an extra $100 or something), since I feel like it'd actually go towards the game itself rather than towards some profit margin that determines a game's success.

I'm also super psyched about Oculus Rift support. Putting on that VR helmet and grabbing a joystick is like everything I ever dreamed X-Wing could be as a kid.

Regardless of the enemy's intent, the targeting system still makes it so that I can't really see these collisions coming in order to properly avoid them. I can probably train myself to see through it (I have a little bit already), but they should still make it more intuitive and obvious (INCOMING LOOK OUT). And they probably will.

Though on the AI front I'll give the thumbs up from what I've seen so far. They fly logically and don't collide with their targets or other junk at the very least. Usually AI's are doing stupid and annoying crap in alphas, but these ones are skating by unnoticed which is largely the goal in the first place. I'll leave it to the aces out there to figure out how truly difficult they are.

I probably would have gotten a Freelancer but the oddly tiny cargo space scared me away. For example, the Caterpillar is described as the evil twin of the Freelancer, but it has 3200 cargo units of space compared to just 168 on the Freelancer. Now this very well might be adjusted for balance before the game is released, but I'm not willing to spend $100 on "might be adjusted."

Cheers I had forgotten about this thread - I might need to edit the Original Post though.

Yeah Freelancer is my fav of the genre too - I have a Friend that invested in this based on that it was a successor to Freelancer although now he found out there is no 3rd Person View HUD he is complaining and threatening to get a refund - his loss if he does though.

Yeah waiting is the better option especially since there will be at least one more limited edition ship run before too long - Also the cargo status has completely changed - its now Frieght Units (FU's) Although the Freelancer MAX is meant to be a decent transporter of goods like.
Cat's are segmented though so you might have to purchase extendable cargo modules if you want to carry its Max. But thats speculation.
I ended up getting a Banu Merchantman and no doubt you've seen the artwork on that, I never once regret buying it it will be my dream cargo frieghter.

AI - Is going to be industry changing I hope - infact I really hope Star Citizen is industry changing on the whole. Just be so amazing to see how the world reacts to it.

Urouge

I've been busy this past week and only had about an hour per day or so to put in to this. Thankfully the website still can be entertaining while I'm idle. Anyway, a buddy of mine lent me his stick that he never uses to try out today. As it turns out, it yaws perfectly fine in coupled mode with the twist functionality so I'm not sure if my other stick died or just isn't supported properly yet. I tried to rethink about coupling mode from a different viewpoint.

Saints Row 3 has a jet with thrusters that switch from vertical (hover mode) to horizontal (jet mode) and back at the push of a button. The system is all super simplified and works great. Just push a button to fly off wherever you want to go, and then push it again to hover when you want to focus on a specific point, be it landing or shooting. I think that's sort of what they were going for here with the coupling/decoupling mode. There are some great inherent advantages to the system when it comes to things like landing, careful maneuvering, stealth, or combat with stationary objects. The problem is that it's not really NEEDED in a game in which you can just bring your velocity to 0 at the push of a button and not fall out of the sky anyway. So it seems like they tried to make it more appealing by stripping the coupling mode of the ability to strafe, which I don't like. After thinking about it, I'm all for a simplified, fine adjustment hovering mode for things like landings and hiding from enemy capital ships in the shadows of an asteroid, but not at the cost of the regular mode. There's no reason to not be able to strafe while flying forwards.

Of course, I say this as someone who can't even properly master turning and such tactics would probably just be used to destroy me. I still want to see the game become as great and as complete as possible, though, even if that's beyond my current abilities.

@Cymelion:

Yeah waiting is the better option especially since there will be at least one more limited edition ship run before too long - Also the cargo status has completely changed - its now Frieght Units (FU's) Although the Freelancer MAX is meant to be a decent transporter of goods like.
Cat's are segmented though so you might have to purchase extendable cargo modules if you want to carry its Max. But thats speculation.
I ended up getting a Banu Merchantman and no doubt you've seen the artwork on that, I never once regret buying it it will be my dream cargo frieghter.

I gotta admit it has a cool commercial, and kinda sounds like a pickup truck from space. The Firefly inspiration is really big on this one so that's another thing going for it. I did spend $5 on that Firefly coat that's only available for this sale lol. I definitely dig the Merchantman. I have a feeling that I'm going to want several ships capable of moving cargo, though. I think fighting over cargo in some form or another is probably going to be a big part of the game for me. Besides, you don't want to be driving a Pinto when you happen upon a grand piano. But I think the Freelancer will probably do alright.

The crazy thing is that they've made like $700k on this Freelancer sale in 3 days, and in a month they're going to role out the Constellation sale which sells for twice as much. Probably right after an Arena Commander update that pumps everyone up too, sly bastards.