The Glade 4.0

Mmm. Interiors of the Drake ships are being blocked out...

It looks like the Caterpillar's cockpit is actually an entire breakaway habitation module... Here's a cross section, where I note that there are.. "Escape Engines"?



Also, at the Comm-Link itself, there's more pictures, including a cross section of the Cutlass. And this textured render of the Caterpillar...

The 4 segmented sections in the nose? There's a cross section for that, too. More living space, appears almost barracks-like. No wonder this thing is pitched as the pirate boarder!

Looks modular, in the above shot, though, so I'm betting those can be swapped out for more cargo capacity, too, which would explain its huge size for a Freelancer-like cargo capacity, yet being billed as the "evil twin" to the Freelancer.

That would sure answer a lot of people's questions about "what makes this worth taking over an add-on Constellation for nearly the same price?"...

Oh, and per the Comm-Link, the add-on is available through noon PDT on Monday before it gets taken back off the shelf with all the other limited availability pledge ships.

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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

How much of a donation is that ship, whats her firepower and hardpoints like?

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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

It's not a combat ship. It's a $225 pledge, and is geared more as an armored troop transport for boarding operations. It carries 20 tons of cargo (same as a Freelancer, though it's twice as long and twice as tall as a Freelancer), crews 5, and based on the interior art, I'd expect another 8-16 passengers the way it's shown.

For armaments, it's got 4 class 2 hardpoints, 2 class 3s, and 2 turrets, though it doesn't come standard with any filled except for a Tractor beam.

Drake built it to service the search and rescue market. *wink*nudge*

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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

Now when I lay in bed and dream of actually being able to fly, My field of vision actually doesn't ghost through my torso. It does however seem like my neck is lower than it should be, but maybe that's just the cut of my spacesuit.

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

That's so you can cut loose the rear of the ship when its overrun by Xenomorphs.

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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."

Fiiiiiiiiiiish!


Is it wrong to be excited about this?

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

I find the fish tank strangely adorable.

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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."

In the subscriber's vault, they've got two concepts for a very alien-looking fish. It's weird.

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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

Ooh. Today's CommLink is the Ellis System's writeup that was featured in a recent Jump Point. Ellis has drawn my eye -- it looks like it might be a fun and productive area to base a mercenary operation in. Lots of economically interesting potential as well as some lawless sectors within two jumps of it, based on speculative maps.

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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

Xi'an light fighter is $23 million stretch goal. Much better than stupid face capture $22 million goal. Do I want a Xi'an light fighter? Not really. Do I want to blow up peeps in Xi'an light fighters? Absolutely!!!

Article at The Mittani regarding player organizations forming up for Star Citizen. The Goons in particular are an EVE staple; currently they're THE massive nulsec superpower, and are also pretty much a griefer alliance, when they're not fighting wars over system soveriegnty. Although Star Citizen won't permit the antics that EVE does, at least not to the same degree, these guys will be a pain in the ***.

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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."

Yup. They're already generally a nuisance (with some individual exceptions, as is to be expected) on the forums.

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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

Ugh. That's awful.

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Holy shitsnacks!

But not unexpected. Nor a deal-breaker, if they're handled well by mods, GMs, and core game design. And it's not like the powers that be don't know they're coming.

In happier news, it's Star Citizen's birthday! A year ago today, Chris Roberts announced to the world that he was creating a new immersive space sim he'd been working on for a little less than a year. All he'd need was $2 million in crowdfunding to demonstrate to his private investors that the market hadn't disappeared...

One year and $21 million later, the private investors have been jettisoned, the ships available at launch to pledgers have more than doubled, they've delivered their patching client and in-engine client content to pledgers (above and beyond the plans at initial pledge-time) to share their progress and in-game assets while it's in-process...

And there's something "special" planned tonight in celebration of 1 year of public Star Citizen development...

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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

...which means that they'll (hopefully) quit in a month and troll on the forums about SC being a carebear game run by nazi mods. IF...

If they're not handled, then it assuredly *is* a deal breaker. At least for me.

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Holy shitsnacks!

Forgot to hit submit on my edit, lol.

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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

And to be fair, the banhammer has a bigger blow when you've invested a couple of hundred dollars into a game.

I don't mind PvP *in general*. Its the PvPers that I despise.

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Holy shitsnacks!

I don't know what can be done for it that's not being done already. I'm fairly confident that if they are inappropriate, they will be dealt with.

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

And there's the rub...

Who gets to determine what is 'inappropriate' ?

I'd like to see general assholery banned with extreme prejudice.

But then, my tolerance for general assholery in my leisure time is *very* low.

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Holy shitsnacks!

Anybody interested in watching the livestream -- looks like they've got *ahem* insufficient upload bandwidth on location where they're filming it. It's streaming smoothly if you're a few minutes behind live, but if you catch up to live, expect it to stutter and re-buffer a lot since the source stream isn't keeping up.

So far? A nice retrospective, starting with the first few minutes of the pitch video and showing clips of footage, live events, etc. over the past year. Now Chris is up on stage talking.

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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

Oh, and anybody who'd like to pledge for a bomber, the Gladiator (the smaller bomber) is back on the store, with a thumbnail.. so I expect they'll be showing preview art 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

Ooh. Previewing upcoming guild (err, "Organization") features on the website.

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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

Devs who really care about the game.

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