The Glade 4.0

Pardon the sound, I think it does a few funky things in a couple spots.

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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

Sweet!

Definitely!

I shared this link with some work/swtor friends.

What program did you use to record the video?

I was using Fraps, which gave me a bunch of ~2 minute files that I stitched together using Freemake.

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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

Awesome! Love that Freelancer. Thanks for the tour.

Yup, looking good. Thanks Kaffis. Now we know where we'll be having our laser battles when we get jumped.

Speaking of laser battles, I got the impression from the site that there's a very limited selection of weapons and other stuff for ships initially, and new stuff will be added later as "technological advances". While I like the idea that the game world is progressing and advancing around the players and not technologically stagnat, it did seem like initially it'd be all projectile weapons (and presumably other systems would be similarly limited).

Is that accurate?

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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."

That's not entirely accurate.

What the situation is is this: they've got a webstore that has a very limited selection of items, including some equipment you can buy for your ship, so you can play around with swapping weapons on hardpoints and such.

Right now, the selection is very limited, because they haven't gone and designed all the weapons yet. By the time the game launches, the "Voyager Direct" store (which is like the in-fiction equivalent of Amazon) will have a wide variety of entry-level equipment, but to secure more advanced or specialized equipment will require travelling around to different stores and manufacturers.

Off the top of my head, the stock equipment for the ships that have already been designed already include Neutron Guns, Lasers, Masers, and Mass Drivers.

What you might also be conflating there is the stated intent that currently, Lasers will fire bolts rather than beams. No beam weapons have been announced, yet, because those present unique design considerations when balancing against projectile weapons based technological constraints with the netcode and how well they can fend off aimbots and the like.

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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

Got the new graphics card installed last night and was able to check out my hangar, hornet and freelancer. Can't wait to get to fly them. I loved the look of the freelancer interior when the hangar lights were down, and the military feel of the hornet vs the 300i as represented by Kaffis' video.

Were some funky interactions with my AV8R-1 controller...only pitch control worked in the hornet, and only roll in the freelancer that showed as what looked to be yaw. Granted, I expect all this to be worked out before flight, I just thought it was queer.

Wait - we can log in to our accounts now or something?

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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

You can download a client that will let you walk around a hangar in-engine and look at the ship(s) you've pledged for.

In the meantime, they'll be working on engine optimization, troubleshooting diverse computer configurations, getting into the swing of operating with a patching update system, etc.

Then, they'll add on to that incrementally. There are a few scheduled "big" revisions to the hangar module that will add new ships when they're finished, and maybe a few new features (like more animated ship actions, refining the UI, etc) before the next module is released. That module will allow us to fly our pledge ships in simple dogfights to start testing the flight engine and combat. Some time after that, we'll get some expanded planetside locations to walk around in the "social module" and interact with other players, etc.

So far, they haven't told us the dogfighting module isn't still on track for December-ish.

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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

Input devices. What's the current (left handed) options suitable for the dog fight module? You know, just in case I wanted to be ready...

Thrustmaster's T.16000m comes with a very quick and easy kit to convert it to a lefty ergonomic stick. It's literally remove a few screws and swap different contoured plates on.

I own a T.16000m and it's pretty solid. It's one of the less expensive options around for getting Hall effect sensors on your flightstick, which are less prone to wear since the sensors themselves have no moving parts. The stick itself hits a sweetspot between too tight and too loose for me, though a few years of use on mine has developed a slight bit of center-wiggle that is still well within my preferred dead zone.

All in all, it's an easy stick to recommend at a reasonable price point just above entry level.

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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

Just out of curiosity Kaffis, what's your ultimate setup for space sims? 2 joystick, 1 joystick 1 throttle? I mean, I'm just asking for a friend...

Honestly? I've never owned an independent throttle. I just get them built into the bases of my 4-axis sticks. I have "borrowed" my brother's racing pedals before.. I think for X-Wing Alliance.

That said, I'm sure between now and the full release, I'll be upgrading my stick setup, since now I'm a working adult instead of a teenager in high school, and I can afford to throw some more money at the experience. Five years ago, I might've gone with a Thrustmaster Warthog HOTAS, but with the physics Star Citizen is going to be using (namely, the likely capability for fairly robust lateral thrust), coupled with the fan demand and expressed openness to working with peripheral manufacturers to create one or more branded Star Citizen peripherals... I'm going to hold off and see if something more robust than even that comes out.

If I were to sit down and design something? It would probably be a two-stick setup (with pedals?) that would take me a lot of practice to really get proficient at. But ultimately, I can't see how I *wouldn't* want six analog axes when all things are said and done. And probably some hats and either head tracking or a thumbstick for turret tracking.

I really wanted this one Kickstarter to succeed that aimed to create a left-hand (ambidextrous, actually) peripheral that was targeted at FPS users to replace WASD movement with an analog input. They just couldn't generate interest, though. It would have been patterned after a dedicated throttle, ergonomically, with two axes plus a two-axis D-pad/thumbstick. That would have been pretty awesome.

If Star Citizen approaches, and there's no word on new peripherals aiming to support its playerbase, I suspect I may try my hand at modding to convert my T.16000m into a device with throttle-like ergonomics (but retaining the multiple axes of input) since it's got really solid sensors, as I mentioned a few posts above, and I'll want to upgrade my stick anyways to something a little heavier and more adjustable (Like the Warthog, or maybe I'll get over my old prejudice against Saitek and opt for their X52 or X65 series, which others often recommend).

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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 need to look into at least one stick myself. I have one I got for Falcon 4.0 a good 6 years ago and it was never that great. I really miss that bigass stick with like 25 mappable keys I had back in college.

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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."

So, talking with some friends, the conversation of death, and PvP and griefing and ganking came up.

This led me to this page
https://robertsspaceindustries.com/comm ... A-Spaceman

I'll have to read this over again, but I'm not liking what I'm reading here much.

It kind of gives me the feeling that whoever wrote that doesn't really understand what motivates PvP griefers.

Edit:I won't link all of the parts that concern me, but this was rather ... interesting..

Yeah, I'm a little concerned about that too. He talks about not wanting to do EVE 2.0, but the "get your escape capsule blown up, then respawn in a med bay with new injuries" isn't really that different from EVE's "get your pod blown up and then respawn in a clone which you need to purchase a new upgrade for."

Putting bounties on people and having them targeted by the police hasn't proven much of a deterrent to griefing and ganking in EVE in highsec (similar to his "civilized space"). In EVE, outside of very specific circumstances (duels, you have kill rights on the person, your corporations are in a declared war/you're in your nation's militia and he's in an enemy one) attacking another player summons CONCORD (the space cops) who promptly blow you into oblivion. There's an entire technique of "suicide ganking" which revolves around constructing a ship that locks fast and has an incredible alpha strike to destroy a high value ship before CONCORD arrives, which is swift. In fact, CONCORD is totally invincible, and evading them is considered an exploit and grounds for a ban, but people still suicide gank, sometimes in large numbers. I've seen some suicide ganks with over 40 gankers.

The bounty system was rife with exploitation until recently; people would just have a friend blast them, and split the bounty when it got large. They revised that recently so you only get a small chunk of the bounty based on the value of the ship blown up, but bounty-hunting as a profession is now a losing proposition without other sources of income.

I'm not sure exactly why griefers like being griefers so much, but I have read some griefer blog posts, and their view on gameplay seems to be that A) everyone else is there for their entertainment, but the reverse is not true B) they seem to object to people going about any business other than pvp C) they generally avoid any pvp where there's risk involved and D) they feel that game systems should be changed to give them maximum advantage. I remember one particular post where the blogger was talking about some in-game issue and changes he thought ought to be made (which made perfect sense) then at the bottom he goes essentially "oh by the way warp disruptors and scramblers (devices that prevent a ship warping away) should prevent docking." It was transparently obvious that he simply wanted to be able to sit on a station and just lock up and scram/disrupt ships coming or going and have no risk of them getting away from him, despite the fact that warping and docking at a station have no logical relationship to each other, and this change would be a massive departure from previous mechanics for no purpose other than to make it harder for ships already unsuited to pvp to get away.

I'm hoping in Star Citizen that at least there won't be the obvious difference between pvp and pve combat spacecraft. That's one major thing in EVE; PVE ships tend to be more expensive than pvp ships, sometimes by a lot, but are far less suited to defending themselves from other players because they leave off essential pvp modules that are useless for pve, such as the aforementioned warp-preventing modules.

That's about the only thing that really limits griefing - the prospect that the target will fight back in an effective manner. Star Citizen being much more about manual control and player skill helps a lot there, but griefers are notoriously ingenious in setting up modus operandai that give them the fights they want - one-sided ones. The griefer rarely wants a challenging enemy; he wants to kill someone that had no chance so that they get angry and rage and he can "collect tears". I hope Roberts understands that.

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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."

Cool, that's pretty much what my plan was as well, 2 sticks and possibly pedals if necessary. Definitely hope their are some "officially" created Star Citizen peripherals.

That's what I was leaning toward as well since that's how the aurora is laid out, but I don't feel compelled to run out and buy anything yet

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

I don't know what can be done for greifers. I imagine there's not going to be much game reward for blasting life pods, so we will just have to hope that the penalties involved outweigh whatever internal reward greifers have. Death is going to mean something to the greifers too, and if you get too notorious the law has Bengal carriers.

Everything seems to point that differences between pvp and pve will be fairly minute (ai pilots vs real intelligence pilots). Personally I think it'd be cool (and possible) to have no idea if you are engaging a pc or Npc at random until its too late.

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

Well, I have never played Eve Online and never will. I've read enough about the griefing and ganking in that game to know I want nothing to do with it. There is no way the enjoyment of the game will overcome that kind of frustration.

So, in that sense, 'they' have already won.

If this games mechanics do anything to encourage or reward that kind of activity I won't be investing much time or money in it.

EVE isn't nearly as bad in that regard as it's often made out to be, and I hope I haven't overstated it. Ganking is not that common; I've never been ganked in 2.5 years, and only really griefed once, and that was because I overestimated the degree my ship was suited to pvp. I've lost plenty more ships to other players, but those have been pvp-fitted ships either taken in order to go into a dangerous area, or because I went looking for trouble and found it.

My biggest peeve is that a combat ship isn't just a combat ship; it's fitted for pve or pvp. Switching gear is fine in WoW where there's discrete battlegrounds; it sucks in EVE where it's a sandbox. Most of my other peeves have to do with the aforementioned hypocrisy of the gankers.

One effect that I do predict, however, is that there will be a difference between "gankers", "griefers", and "pirates/pvpers", which exists now in EVE. Gankers and griefers want to kill targets that won't effectively fight back; the ganker for profit, the griefer for tears. The methods often overlap. Pirates, on the other hand, will engage someone that can and will fight back effectively, and thus tend to be much more skilled at pvp than griefers or gankers. However, they often fight skilled opponents, and so they lose a lot too. However, those sorts of losses tend to be quite amicable; pirates in EVE are usually quite willing to tell you exactly what you did wrong, or give you other advice and a rare few will send you money to buy a new ship, especially if you're new, poor, and trying to go into pvp. Pirates love good fights. That isn't to say they never gank/grief (pirates will attack ships more with the expectation that some will fight back and others won't), but a ganker or griefer will never give you advice, and frequently will just troll you afterwards. When forced to actually fight, griefers and gankers are not consistently good, and their ships are also often set up for efficient ganking of easy targets, not to engage a pvp-fitted opponent.

I expect that to pop up in Star Citizen too, and I really hope the different nature of the controls and combat make ganking and griefing less easy, and force people who want to do that sort of thing to actually be prepared to fight.

There are opportunities to start on the right foot in EVE, but it still is exceedingly harsh compared to other MMOs. If it doesn't sound appealing, I wouldn't try it. They've improved a lot of the anti-frustration aspects of it, but if its not your cup of tea it will probably not be something you can easily make fun out of. Then again, there are styles of play (industrialist) for example that I know almost nothing of, so I can't speak to its appeal to everyone.

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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."

There are probably a few things worth mentioning to those with concerns.

First off, Chris Roberts, Rob Irving, and Eric Peterson have all said, multiple times, that along with "insurance" comes "insurance fraud." That is, they absolutely don't condone suicide tactics, and attempting them will be grounds for the revocation of ship insurance. So suicide ganking is, right out of the gate, not condoned from a design and CS perspective. How effective they are at quickly detecting such usage patterns is, of course, yet to be seen. But it's on their radar and not something they want in their game.

Next up is the notion of griefing and ganking in general. While the developers are very supportive of piracy as a career, they want their game to be fun and inclusive, so they've gone out of their way to design towards multiple play styles and keep the player experience on both ends of the encounter in mind. EVE has punitive measures in high-sec space, but the player-driven politics and laissez faire attitude of EVE is such that there's not really that much profit or interest in high-sec space to begin with, making the security measures there not all that relevant. In contrast, Star Citizen will involve a lot more PvE gameplay, a lot of which will take place in well-patrolled UEE space -- space with consequences.

Couple that also with the fact that Star Citizen is a game with a significant NPC presence throughout, and that reputation will be pervasive in your interactions with those NPCs, and it's not just the threat of a UEE task force or UEE-issued bounty making you think about how you treat other players (and NPCs, for that matter).

Furthermore, the focus on piloting and sim-style maneuvering and targetting takes the focus away from leveraging your superior equipment and time investment against those who are easily recognized as lesser than you. Gankers and griefers thrive on stacking the odds to make easy fights against known non-threats, and avoiding fights they're not prepared to win. When player skill is a much bigger factor that cannot be determined ahead of time by game systems and UI, the only way you can stack odds is by massing numbers.

Speaking of which, the instanced nature of the majority of encounters means that I really don't expect territory acquisition and defense to be a significant part of the game -- if you can't guarantee you'll encounter people at choke points, you can't exercise control over a region. Again, this is likely to make Star Citizen a much less interesting ground to many of the groups that make EVE an unsavory play experience for many gamers. In addition, the matchmaking that will determine who encounters whom can throw wrenches in the ability for ganking players to pick fights where they have clear numerical advantages.

For these reasons, I think Star Citizen will likely be less a magnet for the griefers of the world than a game like EVE tends to be. There will be some, but it seems as if it will be a less attractive environment for it.

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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