Your average AAA title dev time is ~6-10 years, with an average of 7-8.  It just seems like it's taking so long since they are in open development.  Most companies will only come out with playable content/teasers after it is nearly feature complete and time to debug.  IMO, if modules keep coming online like they have, I'd guess the first SQ 42 campaign section to be out in mid winter or so.  That's the nice thing about parallel development though.  Once your groundwork is done (and it's getting damn close to complete) you just plug in modules and debug/tweak as they come online.  It turns it from a jumble of code into legos really.

Then again, considering the size of the game has quadrupled from the initial goals, I'm kind of amazed they are this far.  They had to completely rebuild the entire cryengine from the ground up, since it couldn't hold up to the system stress.  When patch 2.5 hits in the next month, I'm hoping we'll see a fair bit of optimized netcode coming in with it.  That should really make the game a lot more stable.  Backend server netcode is a bastard and a half, that's why they switched over to google's cloud servers to smooth the hardware side of things.  So it's just internal netcode now.

Still is plenty playable already though, albeit limited in scope.  

You want a chaotic time, check out what Microsoft did after buying Bungie.  Halo was supposed to be a RTS but it didn't work well.  MSoft gave them 6 weeks to build the game for E3.  Hell, the monks chanting was the nearest CD since they didn't have a soundtrack when they went live at the show  There is a reason I only volunteer to test stuff and not do it for a living.  I fucking hate code, but it is really cool to see software come together and have input on doing it.

Now if only Blizzard would start sending me testing stuff again.  

Free Fly for the game starts tomorrow for a week everything so far will be unlocked for everyone.  If you want, use my referral code STAR-BDBQ-VZV3. It gives you 5,000 credits for use in the rental/in game items store, and counts towards my referral stuff.

They are also changing the patch downloads to be a lot smaller.

Gif of the new pirate base getting introduced.  They said one of the new enviroments
https://gfycat.com/FluidGrouchyEastrussiancoursinghounds

12 minutes for in engine video of the station.  17:50 for Herald.  It is 80-85% done before hangar ready.  18:45 for Tony Z and persistant universe talk.  Planet to Space and levski are coming at the same time, along with the new items/NPC system.  Smuggling/piracy is soon.  Mining/salvage ships are next year, but the systems should be online soon, possibly 2.5.


Big Benny's shirt/patch combo is live for subscribers for $25 with worldwide shipping.

And some random 2.4 gameplay

It's a little bit complicated as far as time goes. For instance, Fallout 4 was about 7 years of development after Fallout 3.



CIG started out star citizen with like 5 people and no buildings about four years ago. They had to completely build the company and hire people to get started with the game.



With the way things are going, CIG appears to be doing fairly well as far as development time goes.



 

this looks fun. I played a lot of FS2/starlancer/homeworld.

Would I like it?

Did you play Freelancer?
There's a free fly week coming up, get an account and try it out.

eta, free fly is up: https://robertsspaceindustries.com/promotions/Summer-Free-Fly-2016

Kharn

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I've been following the development of this game but am a little reluctant to get started mainly because the last time I did an MMO  game (Eve, around 2005) I got hooked on it for a couple years and so I have to sort of limit myself because I can sometimes gorge on a game if its really good.  This one's pretty tempting.



Anyway, my question is, I know you can do FPS stuff, space flight and combat, anything else?  How exactly do you earn money in the game?  How much does a typical small ship cost?  Do ships require maintenance of any sort?  Can you build or design your own ship?

You will be able to run cargo, do piracy, bounty hunting, mining, salvage, and a few other professions.  In game prices are a TBD and in cash during development ships are $30 to $2500 (there were only a handful of those available and they went quick).

You won't be able to design your own ships on the public servers but private servers are going to be whatever you want to do.

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You will be able to heavily customize your ship and weapon performance on live through research though.

Yup.  Or even pay other players who have put the (in game) money into doing the research and sell the upgrade work on the black market, or buy legal (but sometimes less effective) mods/upgrades.

I think I'll give it a try this weekend for the free stuff they're offering.  Do I join the 87th?  Or another clan?   How exactly do I do this once I get in-game?

You needn't join an organization at this point just to try the free play.  There is no in-game use for it at this point.  You're better off just getting onto a voice chat with some folks.

Ok cool.  I did find where to submit an application to join the 87th, however because I'm on the free play I can't do this yet.  So, if I decide to stick with this game and have to buy a package, what is a good one to select?  I have absolutely no idea what I'd like to do once I get in game, but my choices appear to be either buy some fighter ships or buy a pledge package.  

Use a referral code when you create your RSI account btw.  You'll get 5k for renting weapons for ships, etc.

All you have to do is get a package to start playing the game.  Everything else is able to bought in game using earned credits or you can always to a cross chassis upgrade if you want to get something bigger later.  



If you want to start on the small end then there are really two starter ship options: the Mustang Alpha or the Aurora ES.  Both are able to do most of the stuff that you would want to, just smaller than the big boys will be able to.



 

I used your referral code and got credits.



 

What'd you buy?



ETA:  Next thing you know you'll have far too many ships.  







 

Btw, in case anyone is using a controller to play (me) here's a link to a PDF of the new keybinds in 2.4
https://robertsspaceindustries.com/media/xmexhyiy8cf0or/source/Alpha24_controls.pdf

Nearly finished with the download, so I have no idea.



 

Gotcha.  During the free play you'll have access to a Mustang Beta, the Sabre and the F7C Hornet.



If you hop on with someone you'll be able to hop in on their multi-crew ships as well to try them.  Heck, I'd let you borrow my ships if I was on the time.



 

Ok I have no idea what I'm doing.  I'm in a station that I selected, how do I even started with this game?

Go downstairs to the main room that has a giant hologram of the star system.  Computers under it (F to use) let you pick a ship.  Go to the airlock, put on your space suit (if you aren't wearing one already) then go outside to your ship.

Walk to a middle area that has a big room, there are a bunch of computer terminals that you can order your ship from.  It will tell you what pad the ship was delivered to then just follow the signs to that number.

You can also do arena commander if you just want to try flying around for a while.

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Ok i found that.  I'm supposed to have $5000, but when i get to the terminal it says I have $2750??





Also how do i check that I'm wearing a space suit?



Edit:  Went ahead and bought one anyway and managed to get space suit on.  Now I'm trying to figure out how to get aboard the ship.  Is it really too difficult to ask for in-game tutorials?

The $5k is for the RSI site and their rental store. Adds stuff to your account that way.  Mustangs are either under the hull (round hatch) or cockpit. Most others are cockpit or cargo doors.

So I've gotten a bit better at flying around.  Earlier some dude at a station was attacking me, stopped, then harassed someone else for a while.  I decided to unload on him but exhausted all my lasers before I could kill him so I warped back to the Olisar station and didn't pay attention that it said some obstruction was in the way so I lost the ship.   Does that deduct from my total credits available to me?



I'm not quite understanding what to do to make money.

There is no persistence to the universe yet so there is no losing money.  Respawn, get a new ship, and go have fun again.



 

2.4 added the initial aUEC and item persistence.  Mostly it's for items you buy with the aUEC though.  You can earn it by doing missions though.  Losing ships shouldn't deduct I think though, unless you pay to get it out from respawn sooner.

Oh and hit F10 or 12 to pull up your mobiglass.  You have missions pop up in there.

If that was said with a British accent, I'd swear you were Jeremy Clarkson.
Cheers, mate!

The tutorials have been up and down.  Remember, the game is still pre-alpha, and things change so quickly that they took the big flying tutorial down.  

What you have to understand, is that the game is still in very early stages, and that you are essentially a play-tester rather than a traditional customer.

Open mobi glass,  pick missions like repair comm arrays.  To repair, you'll need to fight 2-4 NPCs then get out of the ship, go inside and hit F on the computer at the bottom of the station.  Enter the array at the red lights midway on the body.

Kharn

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Yeah I managed to get that far, but how do I land the ship on this comm array and exit it?



 

Stop the ship near the service entrance, hold alt-F to exit your seat, walk to the ship's hatch, hit F to open it and "swim" into the array opening near the lights/pipes.

Kharn

Confirmed list of locked features for 2.5 with a huge list still to come:

-Reliant (Kore) flyable
-Argos cargo and passenger variants flyable
-GrimHEX outpost
-Landing zones 2.0
-Item 2.0 (in progress)

Applied for the org today (with arf u/n in the comments). Just started playing again after 2.4 came out. Currently have a Hornet Ghost and 325a.

I've actually been aware of this game for over a year and occasionally kept up on what's new.  This week was different simply because it was my first time to play since it was free.  So unless I'm missing something else, it seems like I'm not really going to devote much time to it.  I've gotten familiar with flying ships and such, did some repairs, traveled around a bit, got into a pissing match with some other dude.........anything else I'm just not aware of?  If that's it, there's really not much interest from me currently in this game in its present state.

Beyond the missions, not much right now.  New patch is supposed to add a  bunch but we'll see.  Just remember they are nowhere near feature complete but are working on it.  

Should start to come together rapidly here soon as the background stuff finalizes.

Dude I just realized who you are. What's that first picture of? I'm kind of out of the loop.

The Argo, it's used for carrier onboard delivery.

Kharn

And yup, like Kharn said, it's the Argo supply/cargo ship. Think a COD in the Navy.

Translation from the GER Pc Gamer Frankfurt interview via Reddit.

2.6 will launch Star Marine as separate module just like Arena Commander, this was also played by staff of PC Games and they are saying it's much more polished on the FPS side and feels a lot better than current rudimentary FPS in the PTU. - Interesting side-note: they talked about map->s.
2.7 will bring procedural planets and you will be able to travel the whole stanton system and all planets and moons can be directly approached down to the surface. Edit:
They say the new lighting system as part of the procedural planets build looks much more natural.
They say that approaching the planet looks and technically feels better than with Elite Dangerous.
You can land anywhere manually, automatic landing gets you to fixed positions i.e. landing zones.
Microtech and Hurston come in follow-up patches after 2.7
They aim to have Stanton fully playable i.e. with all stations and landing zones (according to CR about 40 locations) by end of 2016
There will be more jobs and missions as well.
Trading will be in by then
Chris describing that missions accepted up in space stations could lead you eventually down to planet surfaces, not clear if this is going to be in with 2.7 but seemingly something SQ42 will benefit from.
Planets and moons are revolving around suns, with naturally simulated day and night cycles. When flying over the ocean they were noticing that the horizon had a correctly simulated curve. Trees and Animals seemingly are planned (edit: doesn't seem to be in with 2.7, sorry) - they have them seemingly setup in pre-made templates they call eco-systems - these can be brushed over the planet surface, some magic blends the transitions to make it look naturally and consistent.
Planetary surface and topograhy details are controlled by a dynamical LOD system.
Some pop-up was visible during the planetary approach but they described it as impressive regardless.
They were also impressed with the cloud system, which wasn't just a simple texture layer but seemingly is described what I assume would be volumetric, i.e. they have deepth and height and impact visibility, leading to mountain crests piercing through clouds and valleys being covered.
They are writing that there isn't any artificially restricted view range, visibility is rather a result from the volumetric calculation of the athmosphere.
Parallax-Occlusion maps with dynamic tessellation is used for the surface details.
GTX 980 was used with 100 fps on the planetary surface, so performance seems to be pretty good already, sorry, that was just editor performance - in-game performance was 45fps :)
Some stuff about the subsumption-AI saying NPCs might have hobbies and a virtual mind, allowing them to remember the player or be influenced in his opinions by the player. To avoid performance issues, they seemingly control the update cycles for NPC AI based on player proximitiy i.e. update cycles go to 1hz instead of 60hz if no one is around.
There was also a part about server architecture, how they intend to improve upon it in order to sustain more concurrent players in the same server zone. target is to reduce the numbers of instances.
They intend to mesh servers together in order to form a huge cluster, the necessary optimisations are already being coded into star citizen, accordingly they also should yield some marginal performance improvements on the client side.
Head bob will apparently also be customizable, think severe (realistic), semi realistc and non.
They also wrote that they were positively surprised that all employees at Foundry 42 Frankfurt, of which they had a chance to talk with, seemed to be truthfuly grateful to be able to work on the project due to the challenge it represents. They specifically point out, that the enthusiasm didn't feel faked. One of the journalists wrote in his opinion piece that the gamescon presentation is going to drop some jaws to the floor.

Awesome    
Thank you!

Don't want to pry, but, who are you?
You're not the Alaskan dude from the Next Great Starship, are you?

Off topic, but do we know what system the first episode of Squadron 42 is going to take place in?

No, but he does live here in the same town as me.  I've traded a few emails back and forth with him and will probably play some games once matchmaking is improved.  I made Geno an avatar a couple days ago while we chatted I wish I had the modelling skills to say I'm the graphic arts dude up here though.  

I just do a lot of photoshop stuff and general photography since I'm housebound due to medical.  Keeps me sane.  Plus I get to play a lot of games that are in testing stages with the big companies.  Just can't say much since they are NDA.  Wish I was someone important, but I'm just some random crippled up guy waiting on disability.


As for SQ42, there are a lot of rumors about stuff being revealed at Gamescon, since PC Gamer got to play a mission but is under NDA till then.  Could be an early mission or not, no idea at the moment.  They are definately going to pop procedural generation and ground to space at the con though, that was one thing PC Gamer said they can't say too much but had a chance to play.

Can't wait for Gamescom, the next few months are going to be awesome.

Kharn

My ASUS STRIX GTX 1080 came in today. My body is ready.

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2.7 is supposed to feature procedural generation with the full Stanton system,  procedural planets, and 40 locations released by the end of the year.

http://segmentnext.com/2016/07/25/star-citizen-2-6-2-7-details-arrive-star-marine-fps-procedural-planets/

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Was just about to order that.