The Glade 4.0

Experiencing some graphical artifacting on full-screen. Might be since I run SLI. Mostly goes away in windowed mode, though it does rear its head sometimes if I look towards the planet core on Dying Star.

PBR looks gorgeous, and the lighting in the Deluxe Hangar has drastically improved as a result.

The Arena Commander-enabled base ships are in addition to my variants in my hangar, and positioned closest to the door for me. Be sure to pick up your helmet on the stand near where you enter -- it's not sitting on the ship console like at PAX.

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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... just completed 3 waves. Finally figured out how missiles worked at the end of wave 2, so I just cheesed out and killed off the first Elite in wave 3 with 2 missiles to the face.

Leaving for work, now, will post more when I get there.

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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

Only got to twke her out a couple minutes. They didnt give me any missles

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

I don't think they do in Free Flight. Missiles took me almost all of two waves to figure out because of that. I used free flight to figure out keymappings because the T.16000M isn't one of the explicitly shown joysticks in the manual. (Fairly simple.. Weapon groups 1-4 on the trigger and top of the stick, the same targeting functions on the hat as on other sticks, Button 5 is afterburners, and I haven't narrowed down everything else)

But then, jumping into Swarm, I didn't realize that you don't automatically acquire a missile lock on your target -- you have to press the missile button (weapon group 4) to get it to lock, and then again to fire. Which I don't mind, as it keeps the attention-grabbing lock indicator out of the way when you're not looking to burn a missile.

In any event, I forced two pilots to suicide in the first wave, my wingmen killed the third; I got kill-shots on two pilots in the second wave, my wingmen killed the third; and I killed two including Little King (the first elite) in the third wave, with one of my wingmen dying and the two of them taking out two scavengers between them.

All told, those 3 waves took 30 minutes. I'm actually going to make a thread on the forums (if there isn't already one) to see whether that's actually inordinately long, or whether it seems pretty average. It seemed like it was taking me forever to kill stuff, because I'm definitely NOT comfortable with the pitch & roll in space, where you don't have gravity and lift effects tweaking the way your roll actually handles, giving you a bit of natural yaw in the process. I haven't decided, yet, whether it's a bad design decision from a gameplay standpoint, or just something I need practice with.

I should note that I like the way pitch & roll contributes to a cinematic dogfight feel, instead of simply feeling like a turret or camera in space the way pitch & yaw often does, so I don't want to automatically rule it out. I also like, from a design and lore standpoint, the idea of different ships having different performance characteristics that favor one style over the other. It adds variety and customizeability (your playstyle might predispose you to ships X, Y, and Z, and away from A, B, and C -- that's cool) as well as some depth of knowledge of your opponent as a factor of game mastery.

But, in my first hour out with a 300i, pitch & roll definitely felt awkward to me. The flight model itself seemed like it has a lot of promise. I liked how it felt the thrusters were responding, I think they're close to a sweet spot on responsiveness and thruster traversal rates, but not quite there.

I'm still working out how Class 2 weaponry tracks with joystick control. It was fairly apparent that it was actively working with mouse control, and I *think* I caught the indication that it was out of angular range a few times with the stick, but I was still missing a LOT when I had the green reticle, so I'm not SURE it was working the way I thought it was. I'm really excited to see how that progresses with Rift or other accurate, natural, and responsive look tracking.

Thus far, I think they've delivered us something I want to spend more time with, and that's probably the best thing I could've hoped for.

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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

Hopefully my download will have successfully completed by the time I get home from work. Might be able to bail for home a bit early today.

My download finally completed, after having to re-download the launcher and getting a few errors. Also got a connection error when I first logged in, but was finally able to connect. There's not a ton of stuff in there, but man is it amazing to see the ship in action after all this time. They need to get some information on the branded star citizen HOTAS setup out stat!

my game pad doesn't seem to work.

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

So.. how DO the missiles work?

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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."

My gamepad works, but its kinda wonky. I can't get the right thumbstick to do what I want it to do.

Its very pretty though. When I can get it to run.

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Holy shitsnacks!

Some thoughts, observations and useless comments:

Looks beautiful on my machine and runs smooth at high settings. I wish I could turn up the antialiasing a notch for icing on the visual cake (I probably can directly on the card, just haven't fiddled with that kind of thing in a long time).

Finally realized you push (and don't hold) the missile button to get lock and then push again to launch. Made it through 4 waves with out missiles...took almost 45 minutes. Made it through 5 1/2 (killed 2nd elite, but then died) with missiles in about 25 minutes.

Hoping there will be some options in the future for joystick dead zone tuning as I find the controls "jerky." Made it harder than I thought it should be to stay on target.

Not quite sure how the laser turret is supposed to maintain targeting. The gatlin's are badass.

I would like a deep space level without terrain...should be easy for CIG to do. I would also like some junk satellites or something to test weapons and targeting.

Uncoupled mode doesn't quite work like I expected. Not at level of BSG reboot control. But this isn't a big deal to me.

I should probably read the manual.

Spent a small amount of time in 2nd account Aurora. I really like how it is the same but totally different from the Hornet. Just like cars and planes in the real world.

Didn't spend much time with mouse controls.

Gat sounds sometimes disappeared after ***** Betty spoke. Eventually came back mostly always.

1 AM. Going to bed now.

A lot of people (or at least a loud minority on the forums) seem unhappy. I'm not sure why. I was able to get an older gamepad to work somehow and it's better than kbm at least for me. I'll be happier when controller customization and the ability to change my load out comes.

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

I'm not sure if it was my abilities improving (along with my understanding of missiles and how to prod the gimbal tracking into reluctantly working with a stick), or that I was flying a Hornet instead of the 300i today, but I got to wave 7 before dying today on my joystick in about 40 minutes. Progress! I'll blame two of my deaths on Windows' StickyKeys prompt coming up while I was afterburning, /facepalm.

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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 can't even seem to download it. It says it's unable to download when I first log in and asks if I want to repair. Then it just sits there saying "repairing" with no progress or download speed or anything listed even after almost an hour.

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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 might try uninstalling the client and downloading from scratch if the repair doesn't go anywhere soon.

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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.. that would take me like a week at the speeds i get. fortunately i found a solution on the forums.. delete all .version files. repair seemed to work after 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."

Nice. I'll remember that one for the future.

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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

If you prefer to have the joystick do pitch and yaw rather than pitch and roll you can bring down the console and type

pp_rebindkeys layout_joystick_spacesim

(there's more info in this thread - https://forums.robertsspaceindustries.c ... mapping/p1 )

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Nuit Wingbane (ex Ranger, Bristlebane)

I am currently in travel mode and only have the mouse with me. I find at the moment I tend to do a great deal of over correcting when chasing vanduul around. Someone posted on the boards that it's like flying a ship filled with water sloshing it about, I found that a good comparison to what I am experiencing. I also find it hard to score hits, even when there are lots of green targeting reticles which seems upsetting.

I did get better, reaching wave 5 last night but that was mostly to do with the massive number of missiles in the hornet.

I thought there was a repair stage after each 3rd wave? I handled the last 2 waves with one wing and half a tail....

The repair and rearm stage after each 3rd wave rearms your missiles (in addition to your ballistic ammo like every other wave) and respawns your wingmen if they died. It doesn't currently repair your own ship, and I'm not positive whether it's supposed to or not -- the repair might just refer to the wingman respawn.

On the subject of over-correcting... I started out that way, too, then about 3 waves in, I realized what I was doing: I was starting pulling one direction, then rocking my stick in other direction, not seeing it respond immediately, and pushing harder. The thing that's happening under the hood, though, is my initial input had the maneuvering thrusters pointed one direction, but then my follow-up input needs them pointing in another one -- so they've got to traverse that distance and fire back up. If you don't internally recognize that, your instinct is going to be "I'm still in the dead zone" or "the sensitivity is borked" and you'll respond to those reactions by increasing the magnitude of your input. Then, when the thrusters catch up, they're going to fire way harder than you wanted.

In subsequent plays, I've been trying to be more conscious about smoothly engaging and disengaging the stick, and trying to avoid doing hard combinations of multiple axis-maneuvers, and things have gone much better for me. A light touch and some patience has gone a long way, and I've really been digging the result. And then a couple maneuvering thrusters get blown up, and everything goes to ****.

The mouse is also a bit of a challenge, in that regard, because of the wonky combination of crosshair control in a large maneuvering dead zone on the same set of axes. I really hope they just can that notion.

I also had an epiphany, last night. The green reticle doesn't mean, as I initially thought, that the ITTS is actively tracking the target within your guns' articulation range. So you can't just get the green diamond and unleash and stop worrying about precise aim. Instead, the green diamond means that the ITTS is calculating lead on a per-weapon mount basis. So it's like having lead pips to put your crosshairs on, except in reverse -- instead of aiming your guns at a pip off-target that's calculated by your ITTS, your ITTS is aiming your guns off-target for you so that they'll hit where your crosshair is. So you still need to put the crosshair on the enemy target (and, if you're very precise, the part of the enemy target you want to hit) to hit.

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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

Downloading a 2 GB patch, not sure what is in it, yet.

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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.. lovely. I have 25 more hours of downloading ahead of me and they released another 2GB patch. I have this feeling I am going to be forever playing catchup with the dogfight module patch.

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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."

was looking at grouse's install, it seems these files are missing for him. I'll have to see if its the same on mine when I get home.

Also, we're enjoying ourselves, but we need a lot of help/practice. I also had the joy of having a very close encounter with the business end of a scythe

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

Still can't figure out why grouse and my clients are missing the controls folder, but i made it through the first wave and then promptly became a missile pincushion.

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

Finally got on tonight and played with free flight for a few minutes. I can already see I'm going to need a new graphics card for this; even on medium it's rapidly pushing the card to the high 70's Celsius.

My 300i is the wrong color. It's gray rather than the paint scheme on the ship specs page.

It takes too long to walk across the hangar. I feel like I'm taking baby steps.

Got the joystick working, and the yaw/roll switch in place.

Scenery in space is fantastic. I only checked out the moon mining, in free flight, but very cool.

Other than those minor complaints, I can see I'm going to like this!

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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."

I'm pretty sure the 300i is supposed to be unaccented grey, which mine is, at least. It's the other variants that have the trim paint. I just double-checked the brochure and it looks like a dead ringer for the loaner in my hangar.

Deluxe hangars are huge. There's a reason I broke down and bought a buggy. (which I can't even use right now because of known bugs in the latest patch, lol) And it's currently exacerbated by the addition of 3 entire sections of hangar added temporarily -- two for the gunships and 1 for the loaners.

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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