Finally Moving Beyond the Tech Demo (Ft.

With Squadron 42 reaching the feature complete stage, the features that have been polished for its release are beginning to be moved over to Star Citizen. With Alpha 3.23 on the horizon, many of the placeholder systems that have held Star Citizen back, like the Starmap, interaction system, and character locomotion, are seeing major updates. Is Star Citizen finally moving beyond the tech demo feel it has always had? Today I discuss with return guest, TheAstroHistorian.
Today’s Guests:
The AstroHistorian
Twitch - / theastropub
KZbin - / theastropub , / @theastrohistorian
Twitter - / theastropub
ToC:
00:00 Introductions
01:00 Straight Into It! How Are You Feeling?
07:40 Is Star Citizen Becoming A Game?
08:05 EVA Gameplay
13:15 UI Updates
21:30 What is Happening This Year?
34:55 First Person Shooters
41:10 Cargo Hauling
48:00 The Looter Shooter
53:00 Ship Combat
01:01:30 What Else Do We Need?
01:04:20 Is This Year Any Different?
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[@TheAstroPubLive]

Thanks for having me on as always Tomato!

[@LucidStrike]

49:56 Re: Contextualized loot. I dunno if Paul remembers, but for anyone who didn't know, CIG actually already explained that the looting system will eventually account for context, having items match the locations, activities, and factions more consistently -- and dynamically. So it's not that CIG doesn't know complete randomness in loot is weird. It's that the looting system simply isn't working as intended YET.

[@TheAstroPubLive]

They have a basic system in for loot spawn in the context of the location of the boxes, the issue is that currently the system doesn't reward players for looting either in cool stuff or financial rewards. Additionally their customization plans for things like armor, last I heard at least, is not really that in depth so using loot as a means to get basic armor but in a different color is not going to work out like they think. In general I don't think loot, as it works now and is planned in the future, will work well in Star Citizen. It's not a survival game, looter shooter, or extraction shooter, and thus beyond desperation it won't be used.

[@LucidStrike]

@@TheAstroPubLive How much more in depth would it need to be than 'environments controlled by UEE will have more military gear while environments controlled by industrial workers will have more industrial gear'? That's about as in depth as real life. And there not being much variety to loot beyond color rn, that's more because there just isn't much specialty gear in the game period yet. Meanwhile, as you know, CIG has given special gear to special members of special factions, so I maintain they have this under control. As for looting, I agree that the drive won't be as strong for most people, but I strongly disagree it's not appropriate for SC. It's a space-based life sim and you can loot irl, so it would be bad for immersion to NOT have looting in SC, even if many including myself will rarely use it. There's necessarily stuff everywhere so it necessarily has to generally be meaningful and collectible stuff for the sake of enhancing the player experience through immersive interaction.

[@alaricpumani5372]

Dayum got it before the Spotify one 😅 I've been listening your podcast all week at work

[@Killingblaze]

What I want is the ability to change color and brightness on the MFDs

[@Tainted-Soul]

also the huds of the ships like the blade to blue and not red

[@victorvendetta9409]

Anything but blue.

[@nemesis851_]

MANIFESTS - being able to know what is on board our fleet is NEEDED PURCHASER - of said cargo have a Tablet with product onboard Mobiglass show inventory on any owned ship

[@zrbytegmail]

Coming from elite myself the cargo loading is actually one of the things im excited about. I am also a long time space engineers player so maybe its that overlap though i dont feel space engineers even comes close to SC.

[@Aethid]

Lone Echo (VR game) has by far the best implementation of EVA. The entire game is zero-g, and you move around by grabbing onto surfaces to pull yourself along, or push off to drift across an open space.

[@First_Chapter]

What's still needed was a question: aerodynamic flight and passenger gameplay.

[@cb_the_kirb]

*If* The first 3 quarter patches are as big as CIG is aiming 4 I definitely wouldn't mind Q4 being relatively "quiet" with iterations on the new stuff and continued QOL changes. This is a lot of stuff they're aiming for! I still think Pyro/meshing will be a Q4 release though

[@LykosMenon]

Watching this after the roadmap roundup is out hits different.

[@gyratingwolpertiger6851]

MM vs current flight model was the first time in years ive had fun in AC.

[@malismo]

Great video! Love the content. Another great guest as well! Minimap, starmap, UI look and feel, compass and the new looting system are such QoL improvements it will play completely different. Getting rid of the wonky interaction system we have now is so necessary and I am so glad CIG realized that and has come up with the solution they have. I hope they keep the oldskool MMO loot tables and statistics out of the game, played too much of that and there are plenty of games which have already implemented that to "perfection". It is time for a new and better take at looting. Could it not just be precision targetting just happens when you are zoomed in enough for it in your turret? We do have zoom there already, this might just be the highest level of zoom.

[@Knort]

1:00:00 maybe the zoom in feature should be displayed on a different screen, like a MFD or your helmet HUD

[@uuuuuu8373]

PiP is expensive on hardware. Not good for an already unoptimized game.

[@animusnocturnus7131]

The armor discussion was the one thing in the citizen con panels that made me really anxious, because it sounded a lot like going into a WoW direction. And it never sat right with me because it just hurts my brain to consider that some bozo showing his midriff on the frozen fields of microTech would somehow be able to make better armor than a military contractor with 50 generations of experience. Also @Paul, I'm pretty sure you played Mech Warrior at some point in your life, and at least in one of those they had a zoom-in that worked just around your crosshair. You were able to shoot more precisely, but the rest of your FOW was still the same as before. I really wish they would do something similar in SC.

[@hutitch2647]

I have a question regarding Freight elevators, these bring in persistent hangers if I am not wrong? are these hangers just going to be like rooms where we prep and that only, as in we won't be able to launch from these hangers?

[@HappyRBOB]

Always love when Paul and Tomato get together.

[@TrashedRedPanda]

Ugh I didn't get notified for this stream only the video.

[@LucidStrike]

Is Launch Sequence always streamed?

[@Sheppardsg1]

cant wait

[@ChristopherFehrenbacher]

27:39 let's be honest, it's hard to find a decent shirt that actually costs less than a full magazine of commonly used ammunition. 😂

[@honichi1]

ive seen multiple leaks of SC's new quantum travel my guess is they are either waiting to do some balances first on master modes or they are waiting for vulkan/new graphics, cause the vids looked more like SQ42 vids and less like current SC

[@RED-ic3tk]

Really good podcast guys

[@exedorerex7653]

To your question on other space combat PVP games. Hunternet Starfighter has some pretty great combat.

[@davidmcmillon913]

With Eva and your not touching a surface to like anchor you wouldn’t shooting cause you to fly backwards or use a lot of Eva fuel to stay still

[@Traumglanz]

39:40 Man, if it would be tribes, if they would give us some combat suit to have Tribes like over and ballistic gun plan, I would be so hyped for the FPS gameplay around moons and mountains. Can you imagine dropping from Orbit in your Tribes style Combat Suite and attacking a bunch of tanks at jump down with your grenade launchers at 100m/s while going up and down the mountains? ;-) Heck, if they could get the overbikes to move like Tribes Combat Suits I would be satisfied. ;-)

[@victorvendetta9409]

I wish that with the mfd and hud work we can change the color of them. Most times you can't see shit lol

[@overcast80]

The ammo/mag consolidation reminds me of Battlebit. Their system is simple and great.

[@lb2180]

Needing content we see the normal flipping from "this is cool" to "omfg we're getting nothing because CIG took a holiday"

[@phxbadash]

Just an fyi but push/pull refers to the playerbeing able to pull themselves along in zero g and/or push themselves off of surfaces. All the games assets would need tto be marked up for this which is why it wont be in 3.23. its also likely why the new ladder traversal wont be either

[@DignitaryDivision-bm5ue]

Just let yourself be excited paul, we have salty Mike to be the negative skeptical one.

[@gyratingwolpertiger6851]

I'll take cautious optimism over that chap any day.

[@OllieMendes]

I wonder if you run out of EVA fuel if you had a weapon you could shoot in one direction and the recoil from that would move you.

[@Rogun987]

There's a difference between getting all this new stuff and if it actually WORKS and not a buggy mess. Whenever they released new things it's always been followed by months of bug fixes

[@hawkzulu5671]

Theres also a difference between the workflow we are used to where a P.U. team starts on a feature from kicking around ideas in concept phase - through to its 1st tests. The bulk of new stuff coming in 3.23 was already fully built in Squadron 42 by those teams. The 1st wave of 300 employees that came back to SC brought with them the tools, tech and features they developed for Squadron so its just a matter of porting over and integrating that content into SC ..same code base, same engine - the only difference is SC is much larger and has more total play area and additional locations than squadron and theres network code involved - otherwise the plug & play would be even simpler. But even the integration front is boosted because 80% of the staff was assigned to Squadron 42 ... porting squadron tools / features / content and working on new content and refining SC, tackling bugs and performance will all happen at a pace we've never seen before. In 2020 CIG had 500 employees total - with majority assigned to squadron ... now theres 1,300 with the majority assigned to SC Still going to be a long road, slow going and a ton of bugs and problems ahead - but this is really a turning point

[@amigo3284]

Star citizen will be “Privateer” and “Wing Commander” had a baby. If you played those two games you will have an idea what space missions are going to be. FPS is new for Chris Robbert’s and I’m not sure the direction he will go with this part.

[@RandyMoonihoawa]

You just barely touched on it, but I think the most obvious comparison for what CIG is going for with FPS content is STALKER, and more specifically, STALKER GAMMA.

[@xm153088]

I really want Star Citizen to have very slow progression and be very much about the grind. I want it to take a year or more to be able to even buy an 890 Jump in game. The players that did not back the game and are starting fresh on release need to feel the pain of the grind. The players that did, need the pain of saving for the ships and other items in this game they did not pledge for. I do think the long time players should have less pain, but should still have to grind. I also don't think players need the extreme pain of losing items (ships) they grind for months for, unless they put themselves in the position to do so. I also believe any item you pay real money for should never be lost.

[@aguy446]

That would be nice but it won't happen. The people that spent their money are already invested. They'll want to go after people who haven't spent any money yet. And time gating them out of ships isn't how to attract them. Old players always get screwed in every game.

[@LtHeavyMetal]

Arma is jank but nobody does ballistics better.

[@hollywoodguy70]

4.0 and then nothin.... Have we forgotten 3.0? Once we have server meshing for Pyro, the floodgates will be opened for Magnus, Nyx, Terra and Odin. Version 1.0 next year

[@Traumglanz]

The 3.23 Feature List really hit like a bomb in the community. Kinda fun to see that people still get so excited over these kind of things. Anyway, with EVA fuel becoming a thing later this year I am sure that the multi-tool becomes even more important as it includes the tractor beam attachment with it's traversal modus. That mode is already super handy, but when you are limited on fuel it becomes even more important … well, at least until you run out of batteries that is. ;-)

[@rock2k14]

To be fair they really can't do fuel without push pull at the same time, we need it for conserving fuel I think is the idea

[@TheAstroPubLive]

They can add it in with the traversal and without push pull. Push pull is just going to make it easier on your EVA fuel.

[@maverik19671]

Any news on the Hull D release

[@JamestheKilljoy]

No and I think they will want to figure out the economy and cargo missions before releasing the hull d/e. More likely we get the hull B next

[@bsquaredbundles]

Paul I think you zoom in to select where on the ship you want your shots to land, then you can zoom back out and your pip will be adjusted to hit that spot. At least that was my understanding.

[@chrismcdonald5775]

Hellion

[@AccidentalFriendlyFire]

It's a CR game, of course the fight model will be like WW2. :-)

[@bsquaredbundles]

For shoot loot... BRING BACK THE POCKET GEMS! With an actual chance for hadanite!

[@hIGH_aND_mIGHTY]

I miss raiding the daymar cave

[@bsquaredbundles]

@hIGH_aND_mIGHTY yeah that place was almost turning into a mini jumptown. I always assume someone might be camping the entrance, and even did so myself a few times.

[@hIGH_aND_mIGHTY]

@@bsquaredbundles same page club on the mini jumptown. Could hang out in a ship and people would be server hop bed logging. How I earned enough for my first ingame ship

[@gamingduology4757]

I don’t care about my frames . I just want the game server to stop crashing. With sorta perma death coming that’s is the most important thing.

[@hawkzulu5671]

The 30k crash recovery tests went pretty well.. only missing thing was the systems that will let missions and security status be updated after the game recovers from a crash and resumes play. If you were on a bunker mission for example, after the 30k recovers you no longer have that mission active and are considered trespassing and the bunker turrets will open fire on your ship. Also if you were riding a tram when the 30k happens, when it recovers you might find yourself skydiving. They cleared the decks for the test servers - Evocati is testing 3.23 but the last pinned MOTD message on testing chat channel was 'keep an eye out here for upcoming PTU tests' so im expecting something like the next round of replication layer / crash recovery tests to tune it in prep for server meshing and / or the new Pyro Playground. ...whatever is coming they dont usually tee it up with such a drumroll

[@gamingduology4757]

@@hawkzulu5671 recovery is great but why does it need recovery in the first place ? Did they make code that has an infinite loop that needs to be fixed I suspect this is the issue when the server crashes due to the reclaimer or from just moving boxes . Where are the memory leaks that cause the server to degrade . Can we fix these . My self and my friends died using the ROC because the server froze and did not register that I stoped using my laser and it caused a huge overload . A server recovery won’t help this because the server did not die it just had a hiccup. Maybe they should force a server recovery if the server goes below 23 frames that would be at about 75% server health .

[@hawkzulu5671]

@@gamingduology4757 The replication layer split and crash recovery are 1 thing but the Real benefits of them are we wont be using 1 server to handle all the calculations of an entire solar system + all the entities in it. Things like you mentioned with the ROC not registering a state change - or things like the DGS/Server skipping giving commands to ai because the players being updated of any changes, frame by frame - leaving the NPC just standing idle or T-posing ..alot of that will be eliminated even if we have Static server meshing and the Replication layer handling a portion of the load - vs the server handling 100+ players and the entire universe

[@gamingduology4757]

@@hawkzulu5671 I hope that all that’s needed is more power And I’m sure it will help . We will need to wait and see . I just think there are a few core problems that need to be addressed after the replication layer is implemented . And if I’m right and I could be wrong but more servers will just delay the issue and maybe just hide the issues with reboots . I’m concerned that the program is written in a way that does not allow for proper exiting of the code when an error or loop has started . I play Tarkov with 32 gigs of ram due to known memory leaks . Me adding hardware only hides the problem.

[@justamigo]

The space FPS game paul mentined might be "Boundary" .. cool game but the playerbase is dead. (kinda unfortunate tbh)

[@CosmicD]

5:30 ...... i just sat literally with my mouth open here... no, I just don't take this, this is too much! I quit this game. Human beings taking a much deserved leave after a year of hard working ? That's too much for me!

[@UnknownMoses]

They need to find a way to raise the sill floor without lowering the skill ceiling in ship combat

[@wantedscroll1365]

It's not out yet chill everyone the number of new problems we gonna get from all this new stuff I'm not sure it's that good tbh I feel like they should fix the game before adding new stuff

[@ToitleInTime]

“Running out of EVA fuel in like 5 minutes.” Man.. it’s 900 years in the future, Star Marines need the functionality to run entire missions in zero G. These content creators and game design speculators just toss out their half baked declarations as to their own expectations with zero depth of thought or consideration. Most of the time I find myself really wishing that nobody is paying any attention to them, which is a shame, because they have the rare good idea, too.

[@bgd_ton6648]

If you play arma vanilla, its not even close of a simulator, it need at least 15 mods to start working like a simulator. Star Citizen is still very arma vanilla, so not much of a simulator

[@Anonnymouse53]

The Alive mod reminds me of Quanta/Quantum system. And ACE medical system is where I wanted the mesical system to go

[@bgd_ton6648]

​@@Anonnymouse53me too. Id go even further and ask for KAT lol

[@hollywoodguy70]

Why the click baity title? Only non-players think SC has been a tech demo. Pre-PU Arena Commander was the tech demo 10 years ago.

[@fffx2]

An alpha, by definition, is a tech demo, brainlet

[@woodybear3823]

Who isn't click baiting at this point, we have seen far worse...

[@r.daneel.90]

Tbh, after seeing these features, SC was indeed sort of a tech demo

[@TheAstroPubLive]

It worked, you clicked it/it was recommended for you. There are plenty of people who still think of Star Citizen as a tech demo despite it being an alpha game so it isn't really click bait in the sense that it is selling you a false premise.

[@LtHeavyMetal]

Astro dont know f all about ragnorrak

[@TheAstroPubLive]

Admittedly I haven't played it, but I have seen the discussion/controversy about the camera being far too tight in on the characters to match the other '3rd person Sony action game' style.