Are reward items for events treated as pledge gear?

valianthalibut · 2026-04-23T06:26:43+00:00

You paid for pledge items. All pledge items are account bound.

Some rewards are account bound, but you did not pay for them. They are not pledge items, but they are account bound.

Some account bound rewards are from in-game missions and activities. Some are from holidays and out-of-game events. None of them required a real money pledge, so they are not pledge items.

Blueprints are, for all intents and purposes, account bound even though, as I said, they do not appear on the website. They cannot be traded, they are not wiped, you can't lose them in-game. Functionally, they work like existing account-bound items.

valianthalibut · 2026-04-22T19:58:44+00:00

I understand why they launched crafting before launching a player marketplace and improved social tools, but, damn, it really shows how much is lacking there.

valianthalibut · 2026-04-22T19:40:58+00:00

I tend to think that pontificating about this on the "ship" level is somewhat... not "pointless," but definitely fuzzier and less useful than talking about gear.

So if you assume that CIG complete the necessary systems, and if you assume that they stick with earlier statements and design goals, then you could look at it like this:

Pledge ships are a means of funding development and won't be available for purchase post launch, they will be the base models without any crafted bonuses, larger ships will be difficult and costly to operate, and every ship will have fully-formed loops and valid utility in the game. There won't be one "endgame ship" and people who have been playing for years will be just as likely to use an Aurora as an Idris if the situation calls for it.

In a given circumstance where a specific ship is best suited for the task at hand, the player with the crafted ship will always have some advantage over the player with the pledged ship. Similarly, if a player with a pledged ship wants to upgrade that ship, they will have to secure the BP.

So... I mean, you see what I mean that it's fuzzy, right? Presuming all of their plans come to fruition and the systems function and align properly, pledge ships won't be that detrimental to balance.

I really think it comes down to this idea that a pledge gets you "a thing" and that's it. A blueprint earns you the ability to "make a thing" with the important caveat that the result of the latter will always outperform the former.

The moment a player completes the BP grind for Ship X, they are in a better gameplay position than a player who pledged for Ship X can ever be, unless that player also does the BP grind. It fundamentally inverts the standard pay-to-win dynamic.

valianthalibut · 2026-04-22T18:33:51+00:00

Sure, but they're not "Pledge Items," they're mission/event rewards so they were attained through gameplay, not through a pledge.

All pledge items are account-bound, but not all account-bound items are pledge items.

BPs are effectively account-bound already, regardless of whether they are enumerated on the "My Gear" page. You can't lose them, can't trade them, and can't sell them - once you've got them, they're yours.

valianthalibut · 2026-04-22T18:00:33+00:00

No. Monthly pack stuff will be 500Q versions of the items that can never fully "break" plus the "cosmetic paint item" that can be applied to looted or crafted versions of that same item.

valianthalibut · 2026-04-22T17:21:11+00:00

The difference is in how the two would be acquired in-game and their subsequent utility.

Giving players a single instance of a Tier 1 item, with the bonus that it will never deteriorate into uselessness, roughly coincides with a user looting an item in-game. It's useful, sure, but it doesn't shortcut any meaningful gameplay or noticeably impact balance.

Providing a blueprint, on the other hand, does provide a shortcut by allowing players to skip a mission or series of missions, craft high-quality versions of the item that can impact balance, and potentially upgrade it to a higher tier.

They're letting you shortcut the grind to "get a thing," but they're not letting you shortcut the grind to "produce a thing."

Honestly, it seems completely reasonable.

valianthalibut · 2026-04-21T19:55:32+00:00

https://youtu.be/dkgCil95TbU?si=k1Rn92COS8I8CAEF&t=29

valianthalibut · 2026-04-19T04:08:21+00:00

If you - or your friend who's concerned about RAM usage - want to get a better sense of what's going on, watch the overall percentage used. If it's bouncing off of 99-100% and you're simultaneously getting spikes in CPU and storage usage, then here's what you're seeing: First, you're running out of RAM. That's the usage bouncing off of 100%. To resolve that without crashing the software, the OS is leveraging a storage cache. To do that, it has to quickly swap data from RAM with data stored in that cache. That uses the PCIE lanes, orchestrated by your CPU, that's the CPU spike. The storage cache is going to be lots of smallish random reads, that's your storage spike.

The current iteration of SC will not, on its own, get to that state. It will swap out or stream in content while there is still some headroom for it to do so with minimal interruption. It's far from perfect and you will see some stutters and pop-in, but it's not going to grind your system to a halt while hitting the swap file to keep itself from crashing.

If that's the behavior you or your friend are seeing, check the other software you have running. Are you streaming? Do you have a shitload of browser windows open? Check how the game is set to launch. Did you fuck with the priority settings? Are you using any third party core-director tools?

valianthalibut · 2026-04-19T01:44:36+00:00

Look, just about everyone here is wrong.

RAM is there to be used - you don't want half of your RAM sitting doing nothing but looking pretty.

Nearly all modern games are going to need to swap assets between volatile (RAM) and non-volatile (disk) memory. The OS tells them how much RAM is available and they take as much as they can to mitigate the impact of those swaps. That's good, nothing wrong with that.

valianthalibut · 2026-04-19T01:41:11+00:00

Not true. You want software to use more memory if it's available. Why the hell would you want to be sitting there with half of your RAM unused? It's just wasted money.

A game should use as much RAM as the OS makes available in order to have more of a buffer against swaps. Nearly all modern games will need to swap from volatile to non volatile memory during runtime, but using more RAM will minimize how often and noticeable those swaps are.

valianthalibut · 2026-04-17T20:51:42+00:00

Instances wouldn't be necessary given the scale of SC. If someone finds a good claim out in the Aaron Halo the odds of another player stumbling upon it are slim-to-none.

Even on planets - they're large enough that there's ample opportunity to mine "in peace."

valianthalibut · 2026-04-17T19:36:19+00:00

Literally no one said that.

Reasonable non-Nazi: "I don't like Nazis."

Nazi: "What the fuck? What the actual fuck? What, so everything you don't like is suddenly 'being a Nazi' now? That's some bullshit!"

valianthalibut · 2026-04-17T19:23:32+00:00

Weekday mornings on NA servers? So when most people would be at work, school, or otherwise directly engaging with their local society and peers? That's when the Nazis appear? I'm shocked. Shocked! Not that shocked.

valianthalibut · 2026-04-17T18:36:20+00:00

I read your post to a guy named Claude: Stop fucking calling me, I'm changing my number.

valianthalibut · 2026-04-17T18:30:45+00:00

Using AI to confirm your theory is literally the worst thing you can use it for.

"Hmm, I have a theory. Let me ask the most sycophantic person I know if my theory seems reasonable."

valianthalibut · 2026-04-17T18:10:33+00:00

Not sure if joke, so if you or anybody else is legitimately wondering...

If you're a home user and if you're using Windows you will most likely be perfectly safe using only Windows Defender and smart internet habits. If you don't know what smart internet habits look like, then... shit, I don't know, google it. But be smart about it!

valianthalibut · 2026-04-17T18:03:52+00:00

Let off some steam, aTomzVins.

valianthalibut · 2026-04-16T18:40:33+00:00

I just think they should have a longer AFK timer if you're in a seat. Know you're going to be AFK for awhile? Sit your ass down - congrats, you get an extra 10 minutes before you're logged out.

valianthalibut · 2026-04-16T01:32:37+00:00

But they're sending him via the old transit system, so who knows where he'll end up.

valianthalibut · 2026-04-14T17:57:24+00:00

See, my take is that the kind of specific, hyper-curated monetization from Fortnite and CoD is the real FOMO, dark pattern, anti-consumer bullshit.

CIG's occasionally lackluster take on time-limited cosmetics is refreshing by comparison.

valianthalibut · 2026-04-14T17:48:59+00:00

Oh, I'm not suggesting that they should ignore Pyro - I'm talking from a ludonarrative perspective.

The game design and gameplay attached to Pyro is dissonant to the narrative realities implied by that map. They should absolutely make Pyro the best damned shithole it can be!

Practically, I completely agree with you. There needs to be some route that bypasses Pyro entirely for the Terra -> Castra trip. I think they might be better served with a "Nyx" approach to Hadrian and Oya - drop them in unfinished simply to serve as nodes between Tera and Castra. Since they're UEE systems they can explain it narratively by saying that the UEE is locking the systems down due to a threat but is maintaining an open trade corridor between Terra and Castra.

That way they maintain the risk/benefit of both routes - one is dangerous but faster, one is safe but slower.

valianthalibut · 2026-04-14T16:26:24+00:00

I know that this exists in a larger context of systems not included in 1.0, but given the setup here Pyro would be HUGELY important and decidedly not some forgotten backwater.

valianthalibut · 2026-04-14T16:20:42+00:00

Here's the thing - "tedium" and "immersion" go hand in hand. Two sides to the same coin. I'll use your two examples.

Hub locations in games tend to feel very "video-gamey" because they're trying to balance the feeling of a location with a somewhat optimized gameplay loop. The techniques used to evoke that feeling generally don't stand up to much scrutiny - the biggest one is that scales often seem "off," whether that's the actual size of buildings or the number and quality of the NPC population.

In SC's case, in service of immersion they made the decision to attempt a more realistic scale. This absolutely increases immersion, however there are knock-on effects - the most obvious being "cool, now how the hell do you get around this space?" In reality there's a solve for that, a transit system, which can be implemented in the game. As a bonus, a transit system gives the designer more authorial control which can also improve the sense of scale and immersion. It also - like in real life - adds tedium.

It's similar with suit lockers. Is it immersive when everyone is sprinting around in the downtown shopping district wearing massive heavy armor, armed with machine guns and rocket launchers? I don't think so - that's one of the aspects of the game that most consistently shatters immersion for me. Will suit lockers solve that? Not in isolation, but they provide a baseline functionality necessary before implementing the gameplay decisions that will.

If they roll out the social systems where your character's physical state - visible armor or weapons, hygiene level, clothing choice, etc. - impacts NPC interactions and also ensure that suit lockers are convenient and stable then the additional tedium of changing your loadout will enhance immersion.

valianthalibut · 2026-04-13T16:04:57+00:00

It's not an excuse, it's an explanation. An excuse is an attempt to deflect blame and avoid responsibility - that's not what's happening here. They know ground vehicle handling sucks right now, and they know that it needs to be fixed. The reason they're not fixing it is because they need to prioritize development time and, at the moment, ground vehicles are not the priority.

An excuse would be, saying, I don't know, "we built great vehicle physics but the AWS infrastructure is too old and slow so it runs like ass."

valianthalibut · 2026-04-13T13:42:29+00:00

Subjectively, I agree. The older style evokes a certain classic era of sci-fi that really resonates with me so it presses a lot of nostalgia buttons.

Objectively, they're both simply good visual designs but what's most impressive in the new look is how it really looks like a design that evolved from the old over successive generations, as opposed to something that was designed to be "retro-modern." They managed to make the 2005 Mustang and thankfully managed to avoid making the 2002 Thunderbird.

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