The Glade 4.0

Spent some time last night with the latest build. Thoughts: (Yes, I know Alpha is Alpha, this is my stream of thoughts.)

The Hornet feels really underweaponed for a military vessel. Either that or the Vanduul have some really stout ships.

I need a third hand to control the gimbaled weapons. They're never really pointed where I want them. Or I want them to be a bit more intelligent. Is it too much to ask for a little more autoaim? Especially in a militaryish fighter? We have look to shoot on Apache Helicopters *now*. This is the future. Not saying do it for me, but if you're going to have turrets and gimbal mounts in a single seat fighter, there should probably be some level of automation.

The nose mounts do not seem to be connected to the power system. Moved the Badgers to the front, a set of bulldogs to the wings, and the Mantis ones to the turret. (Cause, the turret isn't useless enough as laggy as it is, let's make it even worse with guns that spool up for a second) The badgers fire for 15 shots or so, then go dead. And the turret doesn't seem to like the chain guns. They don't fire at all. Fine, let's kill this Vanduul.

*17 minutes pass*

Sweet mother of Science! What are this ****'s shields made of? WHY WON'T YOU DIE? And STOP RAMMING ME! DO YOU NOT HAVE ANY SELF PRESERVATION?

*5 more minutes pass*

Alright, fine. Eat missile. Man those are effective. Why do I even *have* guns? Why don't I just have 5 racks of like 5 missiles each?

Maybe the Badgers just don't like being up front. Oh hey, I have neutron guns. Let's throw those on the nose. And badgers go in the wings, bulldogs in the turret. Load in, configure alpha strike mode, and pewpewpewPOOMpewpewpewpew... wait. One round?

I'm going to fire my mechanic. He didn't connect the nose guns again. At least the turret guns are working. Weird. Ah well, its late, and I'm in free flight mode. Time for bed.

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Holy shitsnacks!

The Hornet's front mounts are currently not providing power to recharge their weapons, IIRC. I know the Mantis chainguns have been having intermittent ammo-related bugs when moving them around, but I thought the patch notes claimed it was fixed, so I'm not sure that's what's going on, there.

It's worth noting that the only ship with its actual weapons configuration reflected on the trainer is the Aurora. The 300i trainer is configured more like a 325a, and the Hornet is all kinds of different than either the F7A (military model), the F7C (that it's allegedly a trainer for), OR the F7C-M...

Easy money says that this was done so that in initial rounds of multiplayer, we wouldn't get simply spammed with P2W threads when the Hornets were dominating and the Auroras were pants.

But then, of course, the Omnisky VI's they put in the 300i trainer turned out to be super-beefy. So, maybe that still didn't work out as well for them as they expected.


I'm surprised you seem to be avoiding the Mantises. They're probably my favorite gun. Yeah, I waste some ammo when I spin them up anticipating getting on-target in the next second and then failing to, but in Vanduul Swarm, they get replenished every wave. They're pretty punchy DPS for a decent sustained fire weapon, and shred through stuff pretty well, I find. I could totally see replacing the turret with Bulldogs, though.

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"Aaaah! Emotions are weird!" - Amdee
"... Mirrorshades prevent the forces of normalcy from realizing that one is crazed and possibly dangerous. They are the symbol of the sun-staring visionary, the biker, the rocker, the policeman, and similar outlaws." - Bruce Sterling, preface to Mirrorshades

I'm still pretty twitchy on the controls. I need to work on being a bit smoother. The spool up is problematic as ammo is finite and those Vanduul are nimble little minxes. By the time I get them in my crosshairs, and pull the trigger... spooling... and they're gone.... PEWPEWPEWPEW dammit.

Doesn't help that the gimbaling lags behing the spooling that lags behind where my nose is pointed. I need a "Lock weapons to crosshairs" switch, then I can point my nose and tear things up.

If the gimbals and turret are doing what they want and trying (and failing) to keep up with the crosshairs... I need to be able to shut them off. I had the same problem with MW:O, but at least that made sense with arms being kinda in the same place and only having two dimensions to deal with.

I'm sure there are people that do fine with it, but its a VERY steep learning curve. And as a new player, its VERY frustrating.

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Holy shitsnacks!

How are the more fighter configured 300's doing?

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"...but there exists also in the human heart a depraved taste for equality, which impels the weak to attempt to lower the powerful to their own level and reduces men to prefer equality in slavery to inequality with freedom." - De Tocqueville

Oh, that's right -- you're on an X-Box controller, aren't you, Müs? Because I'm just pointing my nose with a joystick...

Can't you just leave your thumb off the right stick? I admit, my time with a pad was limited when I tried it.

Elmo, I was doing much better with my 300i last night. Either swapping my roll/yaw or some undocumented handling tuning they did really helped it out. I need to take it back into AC for some standardized testing, I can probably approach or beat my Hornet high of wave 9, now.

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"Aaaah! Emotions are weird!" - Amdee
"... Mirrorshades prevent the forces of normalcy from realizing that one is crazed and possibly dangerous. They are the symbol of the sun-staring visionary, the biker, the rocker, the policeman, and similar outlaws." - Bruce Sterling, preface to Mirrorshades

So what are these wave things. Just like the old simulator on the TC

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"...but there exists also in the human heart a depraved taste for equality, which impels the weak to attempt to lower the powerful to their own level and reduces men to prefer equality in slavery to inequality with freedom." - De Tocqueville

Waves of progressively larger better scythe fighters in the vanduul swarm game mode

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I prefer to think of them as "Fighting evil in another dimension"

I did get wave 3 last night and little king ate my last missile

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I prefer to think of them as "Fighting evil in another dimension"

Do you start each wave with refreshed ammo and everything?

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"...but there exists also in the human heart a depraved taste for equality, which impels the weak to attempt to lower the powerful to their own level and reduces men to prefer equality in slavery to inequality with freedom." - De Tocqueville

I tried leaving off the right stick, but the gimbals still waggle around fruitlessly trying to track where the enemy was.

It feels like they're *loose* and I'm dragging them around to get them on target. Like if you hold your arms out, and move your torso and try to keep your arms in front of you. And I don't have the hand/eye/mind coordination to aim and fire with my right hand, and steer with my left in 3 dimensions with waggly weapons

I'd also like to be able to increase thruster power or something to stop me slewing around like a drunken leprechaun. I know, newtonian 6dof and all, but the Hornet doesn't feel sharp. Its all... flobbery.

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Holy shitsnacks!

Each wave refills any ballistic ammunition you have. Every 3 waves comes with a named boss, and after boss waves, your missiles replenish.

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"Aaaah! Emotions are weird!" - Amdee
"... Mirrorshades prevent the forces of normalcy from realizing that one is crazed and possibly dangerous. They are the symbol of the sun-staring visionary, the biker, the rocker, the policeman, and similar outlaws." - Bruce Sterling, preface to Mirrorshades

Yeah the game is in the future, but you and your computer aren't. An Apache costs $18 million. I wouldn't expect to see look-to-shoot until they get Oculus Rift going.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

You misunderstand me. I am talking about a simulated look to shoot feature that assists in getting your turreted/gimbaled weapons on target faster. Especially for single seat fighters.

Not an actual monocle system that plugs physically into my computer.

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Holy shitsnacks!

I think it's valuable to keep in mind that too effective a system might trivialize the gunnery aspects of the game. I remember ITTS in WC2 and Privateer making it almost ridiculously easy to hit.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

It's all still being figured out. I don't have a gimble or a turret, but I would imagine that there will be a "lock forward" feature at some point. They haven't even really worked out real controller configuration yet.

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I prefer to think of them as "Fighting evil in another dimension"

I think this would be a good balance between "Too Easy" and Enragingly frustrating.

Edit: Because, for me, the two control schemes I have available to me are both towards the latter end of that scale. I tried mouse/kb, and I end up shooting *around* the bad guys. I get green diamond with the turret weapon, but rarely get big green diamond. Its almost as if the gimbaling system tries too hard with xbox controller, and is close enough for government work with mouse/kb.

Also, Vanduul shield systems are made of unexplodium. There's no other explanation. Had one that refused to die, shot the hell out of it for ten minutes and every time, I'd get its shields down and it would flit away. Swear to god, it was cockpit, engine, shield generator. and they were all red, but the shields would come back in the time I could reacquire it and fight the turret back on target.

Another thing I noticed, the wing mounts weren't tracking. They'd track until I started firing, then remain on that same axis. Let off the trigger, and they'd spaz out and try to interpret the inputs necessary to get back where I wanted. It could be just because I'm bad (which, for all intents and purposes, I am. ) but the cannons never seemed to be pointed where I thought they were, and often would bear only a passing resemblance to reality when I pulled the trigger.

I'm so glad my Tracker doesn't come with a turret.

The Neutron Cannons fired a single shot and refused to charge when placed in the nose or wings. Only one Mantis would fire when loaded in the nose, and refused to fire when in the turret. The badgers and bulldogs didn't seem to care where they were but refused to stay in one weapon group whilst respawning (which I did a lot because the Vanduul liked to ram me.)

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Holy shitsnacks!

Ahh, its not just me.


And as an aside, the lasers are not lasers. They have to be some sort of particle beam weapon. Lightspeed weapons wouldn't need to be led so much at these piddling dogfighting ranges.

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Holy shitsnacks!

So I'm thinking my computer's not the swiftest thing in the world for this. Running FRAPS, I was getting ~20 FPS or so. However, that could be because I was running FRAPS. /shrug

Since I got out of the PC support industry, and really stopped caring what my computer did as long as it ran WoW and Rift etc... I have no idea if what I have is any good, relative to what's there now.

Win7 64bit. 8GB PC6400 DDR2 800 ram
AMD Phenom IIX4 965 Black
nVidia GTX 660ti 4GB Video

I'm thinking I need new proc/cpu/mobo/SSD. Or would upgrading my SATA II HDD to an SSD make a huge difference? I have an ASUS M3A78-EM motherboard, and I'm thinking it wouldn't really make a huge difference as the mobo/memory is 5 years old.

I'm kind of lost when it comes to PC specs anymore.

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Holy shitsnacks!

My guess is that you are indeed cpu-bound. Running at 1080p?

The way to check is to turn the resolution and quality down, restart Star Citizen, and see if you're frapsing higher. If you're not, the CPU is working it's butt off and that's mostly resolution independent. Improve the CPU, and your GPU will get to stretch its legs at higher resolutions.

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"Aaaah! Emotions are weird!" - Amdee
"... Mirrorshades prevent the forces of normalcy from realizing that one is crazed and possibly dangerous. They are the symbol of the sun-staring visionary, the biker, the rocker, the policeman, and similar outlaws." - Bruce Sterling, preface to Mirrorshades

Maybe not enough RAM?

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

8GB ram not enough? I think that's all I am running.

Good call. Yeah, I run the same frame rate at 1080p that I do at 1024x768. I think I'm going to add in an SSD first as I know my HDD isn't all that jazzy. Did some reading at Tom's, and my processor isn't all that awful, it is a couple of tiers back, and I'd have to probably go to the new Haswell stuff. Intel has been kicking AMD's *** in performance lately haven't they?

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Holy shitsnacks!

8;should be sufficient

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I prefer to think of them as "Fighting evil in another dimension"

To put it lightly, yes.

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"Aaaah! Emotions are weird!" - Amdee
"... Mirrorshades prevent the forces of normalcy from realizing that one is crazed and possibly dangerous. They are the symbol of the sun-staring visionary, the biker, the rocker, the policeman, and similar outlaws." - Bruce Sterling, preface to Mirrorshades

I was just thinking about the radar.

And why I don't like it.

If the representation of my Hornet stayed static instead of wiggling all about, it'd be easier to determine where an enemy was in relation to myself. As it is now, I have to figure out How I'm oriented with respect to one dimension, then determine how the enemy is placed on the other two.

It would be more intuitive if our representation never changed, and we could base enemy location off of that without having to calc what our wings were doing.

Also: The enemy ship representation in the upper right. Why is it red? Red and yellow etc are the "damaged" colors. I know its an enemy because its flagged as such. Having it start as red and go to a slightly darker red as I spray hundreds of ineffectualish particle bolts at it doesn't really tell me how messed up it is or isn't.

The UI seems very rule of cool and not particularly combat functional.

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Holy shitsnacks!