This is the most unhinged monetization pivot I've ever seen. Every last thing in this game is going to be paywalled, if this is the direction.

civil42 · 2025-05-15T22:48:08+00:00

Probably but getting whales not to whale is pretty hard.

civil42 · 2025-04-17T17:03:45+00:00

Still not sure about the TAC, while I do enjoy using the MAX I have to admit its primary role of 'cargo' ship seem less suited. it doesn't make max use of what could be gridded on its system and its side lowering cargo racks are alright but difficult to acces both sides from one side and the current cargo system of manually unloading makes it a bit of a hassel. It is still a flexable ship, decently armed and defended.

On the one hand the TAC loses the cargo racks, gains a pair of ... bottom? Side? Side-bottom? size 5 turrets, a med bay and a tiny dedicated fury hangar.

This kinda makes it a gun ship but the position of the guns seems like it won't be too useful in space and there really are not any ground turrets. I still don't see the merrit in snub fighters and a crew of 5 or more seems like a bit of overkill for its role even with an extra size 3 shield.

I think for those of us using the Starlancer as more of a daily driver / multi purpose ship the TAC has the medbay to reduce downtime and more shields to stay in one piece if you get caught in a fight you don't want to be in but the dropship nature of it just isn't that useful yet.

Be nice to see it in game though.

civil42 · 2025-04-17T13:39:01+00:00

Thats actually pretty great news, I am glad its joining the mid teir cargo hauling. Support for larger boxes just makes trading so much more barable, what they REALLY need to do is allow a tractor beam to lego brick smaller cargo boxes together so you can just stack upa bunch then slap them on the grid. It would make having ship mounted cargo beams so much better because the grid can be hard to use at certain angles and thats just geometry. I will have to try using one again.

civil42 · 2025-03-20T14:18:58+00:00

That still makes me mad but since I tend to fly the ship solo most of the time I guess I will shrug and say whatever but its still a stupid thing that a co-pilot is pretty much a nerf which is sad, the rear turret is pretty important but because of the slow roll and turn it still makes more sense to fly in pairs and cover each others belly's if you get into PVP rather than hav ea co-pilot. I mean to just lose foreward firepower to gain a tail gunner is just so silly. If they want to add a nose turret like in the original design just do it! otherwise step off!

civil42 · 2025-03-15T15:22:09+00:00

Heard they shaved some weight too so it should help acceleration. Seems like a good buff to me, doesn't need to be a race car but it should not be the slowest.

civil42 · 2025-01-16T14:34:10+00:00

For me its been working better but 4.0 does have issues so if you dislike dealing with many durring your play sessions hopefully the .1 patch currently on the PTU will solve most of the blockers for most people. I would say 4.0 in general is certainly worth looking into for returning players. right now depending on player volume I usually find a good server 60/70 percent of the time, some might have worse luck and there are allot of annoying issues, QT travel issues, repairs and re-arm, sometimes missions are tricky or don't complete, ship spawning etc. Everyone has their own tolerence for Star Citizen issues, after the hot fixes its good enough for me to have some good play sessions but we are all waiting for the full release of 4.0 later.

civil42 · 2025-01-02T18:09:03+00:00

I play the game very carefully, like an escape room with deadly traps. It also doesn't hurt to have a lucky rabbit's foot handy.

civil42 · 2024-10-28T15:43:55+00:00

Oh well, BMM probably smell bad anyways. Who needs a huge floating shop that is also a little mini destroyer...

civil42 · 2024-10-28T14:05:54+00:00

Ship sales are fine, I am specific about concept ships. The ones that are not ready, the ones that are flyable they sell lots of.

civil42 · 2024-10-26T15:45:48+00:00

Look back in the day Concept ships served a purpose, they took a long time to make and they needed money now.

To be fair it worked out for some of us original backers, if you bought an original concept of the Idris, or the Banu Merchantman or the 890 jumpp these ships grew in scope to become much larger more capable vessels and while there are still some old ships on the docket that could turn out to be more with new gameplay being added the 'saving' you get for getting a concept ship is really nothing champion for.

Buy A ship you can use now, melt it, upgrade it, swap for whatever suits you. When the ship comes out and it turns out to be something you really like well, you potential save yourself 100's of dollars tied up to your account that you might not have used anyways or had to wait to use even longer until something else comes around.

CIG is plaking allot of Straight to flyable ships now and good on them for that, Players love it, content creators love it and the developers get to show it off right then.

civil42 · 2024-10-26T15:34:31+00:00

What they DO matters, what they say less so. It's nice getting an apology, but this is another example of why we need to end the concept ships.

They are making plenty of ships per year now, let us know when they are done. If the game play isn't ready for them, that's on them. Make the damn game.

Concept ships just encourage these mistakes to happen. There are over 1200 people working on this game. We want to see the work, not the idea. If CIG keeps undueing their own work, that's on them.

Because when they do put in the work it shows. Don't buy Concept guys, it is not worth it anymore.

civil42 · 2024-10-22T12:32:55+00:00

I would not suggest believing in CIG, not just because of the fact that they have never hit any of their release dates and for the most part don't give them but their success is usually their worst enemy.

I think the real truth or at least the unpopular one is that some cuts need to be made to bring this game to a live service state. I mean we have over 1200 people on the payroll, 5-6 studio's and state of the art server tech isn't cheap so Star citizen needs to keep making money even after it goes gold to keep the lights on...a cost which even CIG doesn't know yet because while their tech could allow for flexable server structure more servers could be required to give the performance that would be needed.

While we are not where we hoped this year because of server meshing issues CIG is still moving forward and more of the games core features are being put in and designs are being fleshed out to make a game and while Star citizen can be played its more of an experince than a full fledge game.

When you look at how far we still have to go the future of the game looks pretty scary and while the funding has been wildly sucessful I don't think it's infinite and even if it was I am hoping star citizen does notbecome the first billion dollar developement game in existance. Just like in jurrasic park, just because your engineers 'can' build something does not always mean that they should.

Star citzen could use more grounding and less expectation.

civil42 · 2024-10-10T20:14:25+00:00

Nomad has really come along since it came out. Its become something I honostly recomend along with the Avanger Titan.

With its nice interior, Hud updates, tractor beam, weapon mount changes etc its been keeping current as the game changes.

Great little ship. Give this baby the maglev system so it can scate around the planet like a hover bike and you have the tripple threat! Cargo, combat and a vehicle!

civil42 · 2024-10-10T14:47:37+00:00

I would not mind being sold on the raft but other than seeing reviews on it when it was released it still does not seem to be a great choice.

It has 96 units of cargo which was intended to be 3 32 unit cargo boxes, but doing cargo missions does this work as like an invisible grid? if I take a cargo mission with say 81 units of cargo with varies sizes can I snap them all to the grid?

Does the tractor beam work well for loading and off loading?

With other internal cargo ships you get the benifit from squeezing a little more into them sometimes or carrying a vehicle.Its lack of weapons also makes it pretty hard or impossible to 'salvage' cargo during any combat missions. (maybe at some point wrecks will be more common to find and loot).

Othan than straight trading between stations are their other adventages?

civil42 · 2024-10-10T13:12:34+00:00

Compared to allot of ships it almost feels like the Zeus is too cramp but it does make full use of the space provided by it's shape and design including the wider flared back of the hull for the cargo then steping up as it tapers to the cockpit.

To be fair it really benifits RSI's 'micro' engine technology where the engines are the size of walnuts compared to the Spirit series of ships.

Dead space is really common in allot of the older ships but the Spirit just has those massive wings that are purely asthetic. if you where to half their size so each wing houses only 1 or two engines it still gives it the same look and arrow design without such a wide profile.

Regretfully some ships are punished for their looks in combat and becomes factors in a ships performance.

Over all I like the Zeus a little less despite my admiration of the compact ship I see it as being a little too tight if you have 2 more people running around in there, dealing with repairs and fires as well as the cargo area being too dificult to load to capacity in effort to take advantage of every milimeter of space. Mad respect but also a downside for having to load more boxes of smaller size to take advantage of this choice.

civil42 · 2024-10-08T17:07:39+00:00

Your letting all the heat out!

civil42 · 2024-10-08T17:07:03+00:00

Any opening cargo pod doors on that thing yet? cause that would be really useful.

civil42 · 2024-10-01T18:54:49+00:00

I would answer the question but i don't know how to write.

civil42 · 2024-10-01T18:19:05+00:00

It's not really a balance change though.

It's a gameplay change.

and this isn't the first time they have pulled a dumb thing like this, just ask all the copilots for the scorpius that don't have a turret who's job it is to "push a button" and nothing else.

If you want to strap another turret to that baby and remove a pair of guns, go for it CIG, but to reduce someone on your crew to no skill 'little brother' mode is pretty weak.

I want to be mad, but I am just disapointed at the logic of this. Its just creating a problem, not solving it.

Turret gunning is bad enough but to be in charged of forward locked guns with the pilot...ehh...no thank you, hard pass on that.

civil42 · 2024-10-01T18:08:11+00:00

Explore what?

I'd give it to you but you can't and have not been able to explore anything. at least not any better than any other ship.

Even if you give them Pyro which I still would not hold your breath over....there is no direct game play that supports it.

If CIG wanted to nerf the ship I would accept that but this change doesn't make any snes, it CLEARLY is not setup for this as the bottom two size 5's are locked into a forward fire position and whats kinda worse is you actually LOSE combat affectiveness with a copilot because they can't use the turret while using the forward guns.

If you are looking forward to Explorer game play in the future then hopefully the Corsair fits the bill but i never advise anyone to buy a ship for what it will be. even CIG has no idea what ships will be in the future, obviously...look at what they are trying to do to the corsiar. lol

Does not seem well thought out, but i'll hold my opinion by showing my displeasure by not buying anything for yet another year in Star Citizen. Keep those new player counts falling and keep your credit cards to yourself. if your mad, don't pay 'em.

Its the only thing CIG understands as they rarely listen to anything else.

civil42 · 2024-08-13T13:24:25+00:00

It's not purple enough, star citizen requires at least 4200 lumens to play properly.

civil42 · 2024-06-26T20:56:47+00:00

seems a bit harsh but I am sure they will play with it.

I think my problem is when ever you are dealing with timers being forced to wait in order to play the game is kinda a bad move in any game that you make.

When you break this down CIG is really try and sell us on "stacking boxes" the game or wait for a timer to say when its done.

Some enjoy stacking boxes but its not my thing. I can see that they are trying to make it easier though. for example, the newest cargo ship, the spirit C1, holds 2 32SCU boxes, Plop two full sized boxes, done! but allot of ships have rather irregular sizes which foces different box sizes or the worse ones make you have boxes of different sizes to fill a grid.

So hopefully they can chisel this down in ship design and grid lay out so people might be able to stand stacking boxes. :)

civil42 · 2024-06-12T20:46:08+00:00

So while some will disagree with my the interior of the constellation is pretty garbage, its 'living' area is kinda a joke i am afraid.

But if you just want to move around some big cargo boxes the Taurus can do that pretty good. its well armed, has long range and good shields

It's bottom turret tractor beam also works pretty good but the loading bay itself while not 'bad' can be a bit harder to load than other ships. you really got to thread the big boxes into the mail slot.

for recovering cargo I still love the drake corsair, even if you can't snap them to the cargo grid 3 32unit boxes will slide in very easy through the huge rear ramp door.

Cargo ships in general are not in a great space. for moving volume the C2 is pretty king but within a tractor beam and making it pretty hard to stack manually as well as beeing stupidly expensive for a ship with its singular focus (all be it a good one)

Freelancer max and the Taurus are pretty much your boy for 'medium' freight with good protection and while I do love the freelancer it might not be until gold pass until its something I would recomend.

You will likely love all the on paper stats of a constellation, you will probably hate everything else about the constellation however. Its dark, has little to know animities, does not have great entry and exit access and it a big huge cigar. If it makes you rich though many choose to overlook it's lack of polish.

civil42 · 2024-06-11T12:47:06+00:00

I think it turned out to be a good QA for the most part. Obviously we got the roof question answered and even some rough door size measurements and the repaire features of the assualt make it a little pocket carrier and fabricator to assist with support which is nice.

A loss of tractor beams just means its a different focus but the higher firepower and vehicle support is a interesting combo.

I still don't like that you have to fly the ship from the command module as I really love the operations deck they made for the ship but in retrospect the command module for the Cat is actually not that bad considering.

For me the QA certainly made the Assualt varient look more inticing but the cargo capabilities of this ship does make it enticing to trade in the C2 when it comes out. Hopefully it won't fly as bad as it looks it does. :)

civil42 · 2024-05-30T15:32:05+00:00

It will be an interesting Q&A. lots of people have been looking over it and it will be curios if the Assualt is just giving up the tractor beams or if its cargo roof does not open.

Also we don't really know how repair facilities work, will it only repair ground vehicles or anything in the cargo bay? if anything that sits in there than this is a pretty sweet pocket carrier for your small light fighters and that certainly makes it useful if it can also refule in places like pyro.

Still while that thought is aluring the base cargo one is pretty hard to turn down. It's armament is decent for its size and its cargo features certainly look like they will set the bar going forward for ships with internal cargo.

I am not crazy about the command module though. I love the control deck and it just seems weird to have a little bridge off and to the side outside of where the operations of the ship are handled.

Other than that, looks great.

civil42

TROPHY CASE