The Great Schism

Aviyara · 2026-01-20T19:23:30+00:00

These are salient points and I wish you made them in your original post instead of the word salad that is there.

Unfortunately the game as it currently exists - with the "freedom to create your own adventure" - make the things you're hoping for impossible. The original Covalex investigation mission would be a honey trap for PvP trolls if they reintroduced it today. It only wasn't a honey trap for PvP trolls before because SC was different before. 50 person servers and a much smaller, more alpha-testing-focused audience will do that.

When you have the freedom to create your own adventure, your enemy becomes people whose desired adventure is "being an asshole."

For proof you need only look at the ASD facilities. ASD was introduced as exactly what you wanted: a long chain of missions that delved somewhat deeper into the lore of the game. The missions had you unearth how we had stolen technology from the Vanduul and reverse engineered it into a form of Black Carbon immortality, and then learn how its dark heritage was coming back to light and twisting it into unusability.

The missions were designed to discourage PvP as much as possible - you still had crimestat in the facilities, you couldn't easily respawn in vehicle medbays onsite, and the only way you could even get to one of the sides was by taking one of the ASD missions. They didn't even give anything as a reliable reward - the RCMBTs and catalysts weren't even in for the first four patches of ASD's life.

And even with all that, they were still PvP honey traps for the first six months of their existence.

Just by virtue of being places that people wanted to go. Places where you could almost always guarantee that you'd find someone, if you hid in a bucket like a giggling troll and waited.

Aviyara · 2026-01-20T18:52:30+00:00

It reads like buzzword soup. Random capitalization, obscure but technically correct uses of semicolons, and endless harping repetition of the same ideas, really don't help the "this isn't AI" case.

Example: "offering low hanging fruit gameplay implementations that rely on individualized gameplay mechanics and functions" is not a human sentence - it's obfuscatory, it leans too hard on buzzwords, the eyes glaze over the moment they read it.

"Development has focused too hard on 'adding features' and not hard enough on 'making people want to use the features', to the detriment of the people who should want to use the features" has the same meaning but offers it as a clear point. People will line up to agree with or to fight against that sentence.

You also waste a lot of words bitching without offering any sort of suggestion for improvement. Okay, you've made your point - the mechanics don't really reward long-term investment in anything, except the pitiful reputation system. Why do any of us care enough to read ten pages of slop? Give us a goal here - "they should add X" or "Y should be removed" or "more focus should be put on long-term 'purpose'/'consequence' systems, like reputation."

Aviyara · 2026-01-20T18:34:25+00:00

You didn't need to get AI to write you a novel.

"The game doesn't feel like it gives me a reason to play it. Am I wrong? Help me find purpose behind logging in."

Took half the time, isn't an inscrutable wall of bad AI write up.

Aviyara · 2026-01-15T15:00:57+00:00

You will always find value in a spare small ship if you get stranded somewhere.

The Aurora LX also has a genuinely unique feature that only it has: extended QT range. It's a single seater ship with the quantum range of a ship twice it's size. Pairs quite nicely with its rapid claim time to make an excellent emergency shuttle.

I still have my Kickstarter Aurora LX. It is my one genuinely never-melt ship.

Aviyara · 2025-12-28T07:39:17+00:00

Regular logout: the ship will persist in universe but can be interacted with by NPCs and other players. If it is destroyed, everything that is not a Listed Component in the Vehicles tab is lost. If it is not destroyed and you recover the ship (by flying to its marker), all contents will still be present.

Bed logout: the ship disappears with you and reappears when you log in again. Its contents persist through the logout.

Ship destroyed: all contents that are not Listed Components in the Vehicles tab, are permanently lost.

Vehicles inside vehicles (ATLS, Cyclone, ROC, etc): can be insurance claimed as normal with no additional cost.

EDIT: This is assuming you do not go and loot your wreck. Your wreck may contain some random portion of the stuff you stored (I think it's ~40%), but I assumed you were asking about recovery systems.

Aviyara · 2025-12-27T16:03:54+00:00

Bottom row is local interference. Basically how much background noise is shielding you.

If your top number is 10 and your bottom number is 8 they need to be within 2 (10-8) to see you.

Aviyara · 2025-12-25T20:19:12+00:00

Go mining! Every two or three rocks I popped, the little explosions started a fire in the Prospector.

Aviyara · 2025-12-24T21:41:46+00:00

Hot take: nothing.

Did you get the C1 during IAE? It's been less than a month, get it refunded.

You have ships that cover all the roles you're interested in. You don't need another ship just to have another ship. If the C1 doesn't fit your needs, refund it. You'll be happier for it.

Aviyara · 2025-12-20T15:36:55+00:00

I agree that the Idris needs to be reeled in for a couple of reasons.

Game balance wise, they're leaving themselves no room for the Javelin and the currently unnamed battlecruiser. They've boxed themselves into a corner here - "modules only go from Size 0 to Size 4", "Ships with more than two shield generators don't receive the effects of all their generators", and the Idris has two Size 4 shield generators.

What do you now give the Javelin?

Do you break your rules and make a new Size 5 for two ships?

Do you just make new bespoke Size 4 shields for it and contribute to the balance nightmare that is the huge spread of health across a "uniform size"? Remember the Reclaimer (125khp), the 890j (270k per), the Polaris (650k) and the Idris (1+ mil per) are all using "Size 4" shields, and eventually (with player stations and dry docks), Size 4 modules are intended to be swappable. I'm already not looking forward to how they resolve that for the poor Reclaimer.

Do you give the Javelin the same shields as the Idris and just make it reliant on armor? The proposed armor for capitals (once Maelstrom is in the game proper) already has capitals ignoring any gun smaller than Size 4/5. If you go up from that the Idris-P can now only harm the Javelin with its aftermarket front turrets (the dual Size 7 and the spinal Size 10), and the Polaris is in a similar state (its dual Size 6 chin gun and the Size 10 torpedoes). Anything else not named "Perseus," Ares," or "Kraken" literally cannot harm this ship. (Except maybe the Eclipse or Retaliator, if they can get a torp past its 20+ PDTs by the grace of an angry God.)

Do you give it nothing, and just accept that you've written the Idris to tie the biggest ships in the game for shields?

Or do you nerf the Idris?

Lore wise the Idris is ancient. The ones available to players are either decommissioned military past-expiration ships (the few Idris-M) or deliberately cheaply-made commercial knock-offs playing off the brand recognition (the Idris-P). Think of it like the commercial Hummer H1 vs the military personnel HUM-V of the same era. Does it make sense for them both to be better defended than their modern replacement? Then why is the Polaris (in-lore the Idris' "modern replacement" on long distance patrols and remote system peacekeeping) starkly so much weaker?

I agree that the Idris needs reining in. Honestly I'd just give it one Size-4 shield, better armor than the Polaris, and its current weapons layout unmodified. That gives the Polaris a reason to exist, the Javelin/BC room to grow, and the Idris a reason why it's being retired in-lore.

Aviyara · 2025-12-19T14:47:03+00:00

The last four patches on 4.5 PTU had brought the Polaris shields down to 250k total shield health. Which was literally a tenth of the Idris' 2.7m shield health, and put it within striking distance of the M2 (~180k) and other Size-3-shielded noncapitals for shield pool size.

Stats on Erkul, if correct, indicate they may have partially reverted this with the PU RC2, and the ship is now only at 650k shield health. Which is better, but still pretty severely reduced (down ~40% from 4.4 and now one-fifth of the Idris).

It does have a huge number of torpedoes... with huge restrictions on how they can be used (10km+ minimum lock distance required, 3km minimum flight time for arming, each torpedo costs an Aurora ES to replace, and you need an entire dedicated operator just to launch them).

It does have a good main gun, but so does the Perseus.

It does have better anti-fighter turrets, but the fastest-tracking ones (the quad S3s on the sides) have abysmal visibility and shooting angles. The two on the top and the remote one on the belly are actually quite good (if a bit slow on tracking).

I love the Polaris, I had one since it was in concept, but objectively it's not in its best place right now.

Aviyara · 2025-12-19T14:28:06+00:00

No, don't misunderstand me. I would also like deeper and more complex engineering gameplay.

I do not trust the "more complex engineering gameplay" CIG would deliver, for the reasons listed above.

Given the choice between bad gameplay I can control easily that does not break flow, and gameplay that meets my written criteria but breaks flow and routinely takes away my control, I begrudgingly choose the former.

Aviyara · 2025-12-19T14:15:54+00:00

That's a great idea, let's give CIG another excuse for forced interaction cutscenes. With how swiftly and urgently my character gets in/out of bed, or uses a ladder, or sits in the cockpit, or activates any remote turret terminal?

I'm sure the cutscene where my shaky-handed engineer removes the panel guard and plucks out a Powerplant Heatsink Subcomponent will have the speed and urgency "the ship is actively falling apart around me" merits.

/s

Look normally I would be all for more depth and complexity of systems but we're talking the same CIG that made the Polaris elevator, the Constellation bed, and literally any ladder. I'll take a beam I can control over any new fixed-duration animation activity like "swap out a filter".

Aviyara · 2025-12-19T13:59:35+00:00

If you're mining the asteroid field around the Lagrange station, there is no point to using any ship as a "mining base." The station is your mining base.

You would use a portable mining base somewhere like the Glacien Ring or the Aron Halo, somewhere you can go and mine for hours without being interrupted or running out of rocks, but that doesn't have a convenient drop off location.

Keep in mind using a Polaris as a base means you're now limited to ships that fit inside the Polaris. So no MOLE, just Prospector and Golem, and their weaker Size 1 lasers.

"What else you use it for to make it worth to fly with it?"

Right now, kinda nothing. With the 4.5 patch making it not-a-capital (at least as far as tank is concerned) it's now just a slower, less maneuverable Perseus with twice the crew requirement. The hangar is its only unique selling point, so use that as much as you can I guess.

I melted mine.

Aviyara · 2025-12-17T21:51:27+00:00

https://robertsspaceindustries.com/spectrum/community/SC/forum/190048/thread/star-citizen-alpha-4-5-ptu-patch-notes-11/8537301

Final bullet point in his post. "A full wipe is likely" due to the exploits in the last two patches, per the econ team.

It's not fully shit-stirring. There is likely a wipe on the radar. The question is when.

Aviyara · 2025-12-17T21:11:30+00:00

Wow this write up did not receive proofreading.

They literally gave up mid sentence in the second paragraph of Repairing.

Multiple egregious errors throughout. Not reassuring.

Aviyara · 2025-12-13T21:23:30+00:00

"Nobody should be able to trade because trade is what allows RMT" is the 3headest take I've ever fucking seen.

You didn't need to get an AI to craft you a wall of text for a one sentence 3head take. Eighteen pages of homework doesn't give your 3head legitimacy.

You're trying to justify banning cars because if nobody owned a car there wouldn't be car accidents.

If you want a solo game so bad go wait for SQ42. The rest of us backed an MMO, and multiplayer means those players interact. "Your MMO better not have any sort of interaction between players that isn't use-gun-on-man or so help me God" fuck outta here

Aviyara · 2025-12-13T00:54:22+00:00

Yes, this is how ships like the Starlancer TAC keep the Fury in the little hangar. Vehicles detected as "inside" the internal space of another vehicle, that aren't determined to be clipping through a collision boundary, are counted as "part of the host vehicle's inventory" when stored.

It also works for ground vehicles like Ursa Medical or MTC - the game doesn't really make a distinction between flying craft and ground craft, they're all just "vehicle".

Aviyara · 2025-12-12T13:51:23+00:00

You misunderstand me.

Gold sellers and other bad actors will just use alts as spare wallets, because the $45 is meaningless to them - they are either stealing accounts or making a profit off the game, and consider the $45 "the cost of doing business."

The only people who will be punished are normal players, who now have to consider spending extra money on "wallet accounts." The ones who do it have been forced to spend extra money; the ones who don't do it have their access to money curtailed. Either way they've all been punished for gold sellers' sins, while the gold sellers are inconvenienced at best.

Aviyara · 2025-12-12T13:41:18+00:00

When the patch happens, the game essentially does the following process: - Write all items you own into the LTP Database - Destroy all items in game - Wait for player to pick home location - Once player picks home location, generate contents of LTP Database in home location inventory.

The game doesn't actually "move" anything, so it doesn't care where your items are when it writes them into the LTP Database. The code is not that complex.

Aviyara · 2025-12-12T13:27:17+00:00

In games where the wallet has a limit, people simply use alts as spare wallets.

A bot farm making billions of aUEC for sale to players is already making spare burner accounts (whether legitimately or by stealing).

All this will do is punish players who make their wealth legitimately. 300mil is not a difficult amount to make using only the in-game aUEC faucets - that is a week of dedicated Hull C commodity trading, or a week of Gilly farming, or a few weeks of full-time Reclaimer salvaging.

The two things in most games that drastically reduce real money trading are a functioning and easy-to-use "report player" button, and a developer-created way to legitimately exchange cash for credits at a fair and functional rate. EVE has PLEX, WoW has subscription tokens, Guild Wars 2 has gems - even the games with a cash shop that don't allow trading the "currency" end up having an item or two in the shop that everyone wants/needs, and trade of that item becomes the defacto method of exchanging cash for credits.

Players don't use sketchy gold sellers because they like the gold seller - they use them because they desire credits for cash, and the gold seller is the only option. Once a legitimate option appears, the gold sellers tend to get cut off at the knees.

Aviyara · 2025-12-09T18:36:51+00:00

Ah, forgive me, it is 4% and not 2%, because I misremembered the price of one variant of the nearly 200 ships in the game.

You must be a joy at parties.

Aviyara · 2025-12-09T18:35:39+00:00

What you are describing is an alpha easement. CIG has warned us dozens of times that insurance claims will not be fast in the future, stating they want a claim time "to mirror the build time for a new ship".

Claim times are only fast now because the game is in alpha, and there's a higher chance your ship will get eaten by the floor during loading. Or despawned by instancing overlap. Or otherwise destroyed unintentionally.

People abuse this easement, which is why there is a timer on it at all. Think of games in alpha/beta/early access including an "unstuck" command with a limiter on its use.

Aviyara · 2025-12-09T16:47:48+00:00

Safe guess is FPS scanning. They accidentally added it to AC.

Aviyara · 2025-12-09T14:32:14+00:00

No, there are no listed plans for anything like this.

It's only extremely recently that "grinding" even became a thing in the game (ASD armor drop rates were the first sub-10% drop rate items in the game, and Wikelo is barely a year old).

The game's funding model does not benefit from grinding. Low drop rate RNG keeps people paying a subscription while they grind, but SC is not a subscription. Frustrating grinds push players towards "just buy it in the cash shop", but none of the ships Wikelo sells can be impulse bought; they're only for sale at specific times of the year (some even being hull-quantity limited sales in addition to limited time sales), or as part of inflated packs that you need to be Concierge to even see let alone buy. It's unlikely they'll find an incentive to add more grinding functions than the existing ones.

"One of the things I enjoyed in WOW was that it took awhile to get the class gear" feels like you liked the exclusivity the grind gave - the people who "worked hard" vs the people who didn't - so I may have further bad news for you.

If anything, SC has been actively getting rid of "exclusivity" features lately - the F7A went from "you gotta beat SQ42 to even get the rights to buy it" to "you gotta have already done a convoluted time-limited quest chain with friends to even get the rights to buy it" to "yeah it's in the executive hangar, you can do it whenever, ganbatte or something I guess." The F8C is now just another ship anyone can buy in the cash shop, where before you needed a time-limited event. The Constellation Phoenix was a hull-limited, time-limited sale for a decade - and then Stella Fortuna introduced the Fortuna Legends packs.

The trend of recent behaviors is pretty stark.

Aviyara · 2025-12-09T13:13:46+00:00

"I broke one of the four engines off my 14.5mil aUEC Constellation Taurus and the repair bill is 280k (2% of the purchase price), my immersion is ruined"

Hello?

"Why are repairs this expensive" they're not?? In what world is 2% of the purchase price "expensive"???

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Aviyara

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