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[alway]

Again, combat != winning; and there's not a solid hierarchy of 'this ship is better, and this is best.' You got an Idris? Congratulations, you now need to find either half a dozen friends or pay half a dozen NPCs to man enough stations to fight back. And now you've got higher fuel, maintenance, and equipment costs. Welcome to logistics, because you're now a strategic asset. You got a short-range military fighter? Well, now you can singlehandedly beat most others in combat.... but you also need to stay close to home so you don't run out of fuel. Again note, I don't work on gameplay and so all these are speculative based on released info and such.

Today in Alway's corner of the CI office: All sorts of overheard fleshing out of the details from the economy system in that recent video. Pretty much a lengthy, detailed discussion of ramifications of specific mathematical models, been ongoing for a good portion of the past 2 days. How to avoid things screwing up when they aren't supposed to and letting them screw up when they are supposed to. But that's not my job, so it's just overhearing ramblings from down the hall. Though I did hear mention of Dwarf Fortress stories at one point, so I suspect that's a good thing.

Fun fact: A full recompile of the game results in a 4500+ line Output window log in visual studio, and takes like 15 minutes even on our SSDs with high end CPUs.
And I will probably be getting my own dreaded 'ask a dev' thread on the official forums soon.

[Capntastic]

Prepare for dozens of "CAN A M50 BEAT A HORNET IN A DOGFIGHT??" questions

[alway]

Followed by an easy, pre-typed and copy & pasted response of "All gameplay related questions should be directed towards gameplay dev threads, as I have neither the expertise nor details to fully answer such queries."

[BuriBuriZaemon]

Why focus on the life time insurance only? If I get the cheapest account with the cheapest/no ship will I be able to fight and win (assuming equal skill and luck) a fight on day one against a guy with the best ship money can buy on day/minute one? If the answer is no the game is pay to win, if the answer is yes I wonder why people are buying these ships considering they're so terrible.

1) Cheapest ship is a basic all-rounder ship not specifically designed for combat, so you're comparing apple-to-orange;

2) Again, combat isn't everything and your definition of "winning" is the outcome of a single dog fight; your Call of Duty mentality isn't compatible with the type of experience this game offers;

3) People don't pledge just to "pay-to-win"; they do so to support the development of the game through crowd-sourcing;

4) I paid $175 for a cargo hauler because I want to experience the trading aspect of the game but you can still destroy my $175 ship with your $45 starter ship; is this "pay-to-win" too?

5) It seems crowd-funding isn't your cup of tea, so I'll leave it at this.

[Viken]

Sadly, I never was able to get in on the action for Star Citizen.  I'm not big into MMO's anyway, but this looks awesome.

@always: Yep, logistics are going to be a pain. Better make sure you OWN a couple of planets before you start fielding those supercarriers, or the sheer operational costs of them are going to eat you alive, and then pirates are going to smack around the remains for a bit. Haha.

[Capntastic]

Sadly, I never was able to get in on the action for Star Citizen.  I'm not big into MMO's anyway, but this looks awesome.

You can still pledge, and if you launder your pledge through someone with Original or Veteran backer status, you'll still get Lifetime Insurance on your ship

[Hanzoku]

Hm... I missed some of the debate. Originally, I thought Star Citizen was supposed to have a full single-player campaign, but now everyone is referring to it as only an MMO. Was the single-player aspect dropped?

[BuriBuriZaemon]

It has both single player module (called Squadron 42) and multiplayer module (Star Citizen). Both are interlinked. Whether you finish the single player campaign and your decisions in it will affect the transition to the multiplayer.

It's not an MMO ala EVE. It's instance-based, so to my understanding is close to Star Trek Online. The world is persistent and the players are able to directly impact the economy.

You can also host your own server (ala Freelancer) and set the rules in it.

[jocan2003]

The singleplayer are more like a tutorial/story part of the game, then it opens up to the multplayer, from one of the video i think your single player can be *imported* in the game somehow. Not quite sure there, but the economical video talk, the guys said something along those lines. "So you finished the singleplayer portion of the game, you most likely gathered some money, what to do now? Well you can op on the multiplayer" He is kinda implying you can carry your game credits into the multiplayer side of the game.

Also there will be a possibility to own private server, how it will turn out? No clue either. But in any fragging case... i want in..... Since the very first time i went into a milenium falcon in star wars galaxy... i always dreamed of a game where you actualy man console, move inside a ship all at the same time looking at the window and see the battle come alive around you.

I really... want.... in dammit!!!

[alway]

It's my understanding that SP and MP will be entirely separate entities. I may be wrong on this, but you would otherwise run into all sorts of complications. In an MMO setting, cheating (and modding, which for all intents and purposes is basically a permutation of cheating in most cases) are both definitely bad things. If you were to transition from SP to MP, it would mean you couldn't mod SP and SP would need to be as online as the MMO to detect cheating. Which would be stupid. So no; from a technical standpoint, it would make no sense for such a transition to be possible, as it effectively destroys the whole point of SP existing in the first place (mods, cheating, offline, ect).

So yeah, Squadron 42[SP] and Star Citizen[MMO] will be separate experiences. Or at least I think they are....

[Rince Wind]

You could have the Sq. 42 thing online, for when you want to make the transition, or offline, if you want a purely singleplayer game and know you won't join the multiplayer thing. Or...if your rewards are fixed for the Sq. 42 part, it would not really matter, as everyone who did it would start the same.

[Leyic]

Completing military service in S42 will grant your character instant citizenship, which can also be earned through other means. You may also get some other small perks (i.e. military pay, a military grade starter pistol, etc.).

[Capntastic]

It's

You got namedropped in the new Wingman's Hangar!

[alway]

So today, fans from about 1800 miles away came down just to bring us a couple dozen pounds of BBQ & gallons of booze for lunch. I love my job. <3

Oh, and there's been a bit of speculation over the overall tone of the game in this thread as to 'what will make it different,' or 'how will this be different from X3/freelancer/ect.' And I think some info mentioned during the NVidia meetup* helps to clarify it a bit. First, 75% of backers surveyed were above the age of 25. Second, based on unique credit card info, the average backer gave around $140. Additionally, this will not be a release-and-forget game. The goal is to create a living universe. Add all these things up, and the result is a game being created for a very mature audience to play over the long term. Not 'console-kiddie mature' as in tits, booze, and swearing, but as in an actually mature audience consisting of working adults who want more than simplistic COD-in-space dogfights. It is oriented around action of course; Chris Roberts is very specific in the fact that he doesn't want Eve's boring "Spreadsheets In Space." But that action will be based on much more nuanced simulation; both in the game world and in the ships themselves. For ships themselves, think less Freelancer's damage model, and more Dwarf Fortress' damage model.
There's also the ongoing development bit of it. Quite frankly, unless we ran out of people giving us the money to stay afloat, I'm pretty sure Chris Roberts would be perfectly content with continuing development until the day he died. I think a telling example of this is from one of the previous Wingman's Hangar answers. When asked about whether ship models would be updated much like real world auto models are, his response was that they would be periodically released. That much like a 2013 Toyota Corolla is much different from a 2003 or 1983 Toyota Corolla, the ship models would be updated over time with small revisions and redesigns.

*which is largely NDA, so this is the extent to which I will refer to it; these facts are either public or close enough to public that mentioning them doesn't matter

[jocan2003]

So today, fans from about 1800 miles away came down just to bring us a couple dozen pounds of BBQ & gallons of booze for lunch. I love my job. <3

Oh, and there's been a bit of speculation over the overall tone of the game in this thread as to 'what will make it different,' or 'how will this be different from X3/freelancer/ect.' And I think some info mentioned during the NVidia meetup* helps to clarify it a bit. First, 75% of backers surveyed were above the age of 25. Second, based on unique credit card info, the average backer gave around $140. Additionally, this will not be a release-and-forget game. The goal is to create a living universe. Add all these things up, and the result is a game being created for a very mature audience to play over the long term. Not 'console-kiddie mature' as in tits, booze, and swearing, but as in an actually mature audience consisting of working adults who want more than simplistic COD-in-space dogfights. It is oriented around action of course; Chris Roberts is very specific in the fact that he doesn't want Eve's boring "Spreadsheets In Space." But that action will be based on much more nuanced simulation; both in the game world and in the ships themselves. For ships themselves, think less Freelancer's damage model, and more Dwarf Fortress' damage model.
There's also the ongoing development bit of it. Quite frankly, unless we ran out of people giving us the money to stay afloat, I'm pretty sure Chris Roberts would be perfectly content with continuing development until the day he died. I think a telling example of this is from one of the previous Wingman's Hangar answers. When asked about whether ship models would be updated much like real world auto models are, his response was that they would be periodically released. That much like a 2013 Toyota Corolla is much different from a 2003 or 1983 Toyota Corolla, the ship models would be updated over time with small revisions and redesigns.

*which is largely NDA, so this is the extent to which I will refer to it; these facts are either public or close enough to public that mentioning them doesn't matter

Very well explained, sums up pretty much everything about the game target audience and Chris vision also nailed perfectly the damage model and such. Well said mate.