4307

Sweet, sounds like they are taking code from Freelancer!

Oh wait…

;P

4308

More like trying to execute the original vision of Freelancer, since the outcome offered a static economy without simulation. It was one of Tom’s complaints when he reviewed it:

But on the other hand, as a multiplayer game, there’s no storyline to cover for some of Freelancer’s shortcomings: the unchanging universe, the superficial faction system, the lack of options for ship upgrades, the meager weapon variety, the homogenous missions, the limited multiplayer interaction, the utterly static economy, and the poorly thought-out trading system. In some important ways, Freelancer feels sadly underdone. These are all substantial shortcoming that you might not notice in the rosy glow of those first few hours of ‘hey, look how well it turned out!’. But the longer you play, the more likely you are to notice how much better Freelancer could have been. There are so many ways this very good game falls aggravatingly short of greatness.

Edit: my bad if that was the point of your sarcasm and I didn’t pick up on it

4309

The idea of being able to steal stuff from other ships, or the ships themselves, is pretty neato.

4310

What. You mean those ships that people paid hundreds of dollars in real money for can be stolen by other players?
I can imagine some theft of (virtual) property lawsuits if that’s the case. :)
Not that I wouldn’t mind watching this go down, but I certainly wouldn’t want to be involved.

Maybe I’m misunderstanding. I haven’t exactly been keeping up with all of this.

4311

Yes… Although perhaps not with the consequences you think.

Generally, insurance will cover the loss… same as if a pirate blew it up or something.

But the guy is still gonna steal whatever cargo you got. You’d have to have some kind of additional insurance to cover that.

Well, you’ll get in trouble with the in game cops, bounties put on you, etc.

4312

Is there going to be law enforcement or something?

4313

Can easily see an exploit going. Buy insurance, get friend to steal. Claim insurance. Profit.

4314

Ya… I believe that the “Criminality system” is slated for 3.1.

They’ve had the insurance system in planning for a while, so you aren’t the first to think of this.

Here’s the write up on insurance, for those interested:

And at the end, there’s this section on preventing fraud:

What will you do to combat insurance fraud?

A ship cannot be sold without a legitimate hull id code. Claiming on the insurance policy invalidates the hull code on your previous ship, so if it was captured or stolen the new owner will be unable to sell the ship at a regular ship dealer. Additionally if you have claimed on a policy and someone is flying the stolen ship in a well policed system, the hull id will mark it as a stolen ship, the law will be after you and landing privileges will be denied on any lawful planet. You will be able to fly a “hot” ship to the less savory parts of the Star Citizen universe, where you will probably be able to land and may be able to purchase a fake hull id code, but it will take effort and not necessarily be cheap.
Finally the Advocacy takes insurance fraud very seriously. If it can be proven that a player has colluded with another player to defraud the insurance company, that hull’s lifetime insurance will be invalidated and the player may have to pay a large amount of credits to keep their record clean and not be marked as a wanted criminal.

So basically, if you did your plan, your buddy wouldn’t be able to sell your ship, (unless he purchased a fake hull code somehow), and would be marked as a criminal if he is seen flying it, which would cause problems for him.

And if they realize that you committed insurance fraud, you yourself would become a criminal, potentially losing insurance on the ship (meaning that you’d have to pay each time you used insurance in the future).

4315

Seems like a heavy penalty, which would not be an issue in the first play had they not designed stealing.

Seems strange to me to add in a feature and then adding a lot more convoluted features to restrict said feature.

4316

I look forward to seeing many of those mechanics implemented…in 2025.

4317

Well, you don’t need to steal stuff if you don’t want to pay the penalty.
But for folks who want to, it’s a capability. And there are sections of space where the cops don’t really go, the equivalent of nulsec space, so you could choose to be an outlaw out there and steal ships if you wanted.

4318

I can already hear the cries of “I didn’t know this would happen!!” From affected parties, especially the ones loosing their insurance on their super expensive ships.

4319

Interesting. Thanks, @Timex for the clarification, and for taking the time to indulge my naive questions. While I have been following the drama of the making of the game and its troubles, I had not ever really bothered to take the time to get into all the details of the game itself. And just by what you’ve written there and quoted, it sounds as if there are a lot of details involved. I mean, just the insurance part alone seems as if they are going to have to model it based on actual insurance company models. Mind-boggling.

I will have to admit that IF this game ever gets completed, it has the potential to be very involving, and it’s something I could easily be interested in. But wow, with what they’re trying to accomplish, it’s no wonder so many people have their doubts that it can ever be finished. I hope I live to see the day. And I hope their company also survives to see the day. Because I’m genuinely curious. But not curious enough to lay out any money at apparently any time in the near future, probably years.

When I think of all the great games that were completed with a fraction of their budget, I personally think they went way off the deep end, but that’s already been stated repeatedly. Does anyone really think they could possibly pull this off? And under what scenario would it take for them to actually do it? I have to wonder if Roberts himself is secretly harboring his own doubts.

For comparison, does anyone happen to know what Frontier Development has so far spent on “Elite: Dangerous”? I haven’t bought or played that one either, but the consensus seems to be that they developed that in a much more rational way. David Braben has always seemed to be pretty level-headed in developing this game.

4320

Chris Roberts is just trying to simulate everything that could possibly happen in a distant universe in the far future.

4321

I do very much like the idea of this being possible. As a spectator. :)

And I can certainly appreciate the ambition of this, although man, that’s a very tall order, at any cost.

4322

They need to hire David OReilly.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_OReilly_(artist)

Previous works of David are “Mountain” a Mountain simulation that simulate a Mountain, with day and night cycle. And Everything, a Universe simulation that simulate all the universe, from the microscopic scale to the macroscopic scale.

4323

well… thats done and done, I fear

4324

Eh, I don’t think they are actually going to be running actuarial tables or anything… Players aren’t going to be running those companies, so they don’t need to be profitable. That is, you won’t have to pay more for insurance based on risk or anything.

I think that maybe a better way to think about it would be like buying clones in EvE. You’re paying a relatively small amount of money that guarantees you’ll be able to get your ship replaced at no cost to you for the duration of the contract. Losing your ship itself doesn’t have a major cost to you, although apparently if you keep losing it over a short period of time, there’ll be an increasing delay in getting it back (so you can’t just use your ship like a ram and smash into other folks).

But at the same time, the ships can still be stolen by other players… it doesn’t really hurt you, while giving the thief a gameplay option. He can be an outlaw without ruining your game.

The only problem for the victim is the inconvenience of having their current trip interrupted, and potentially losing upgrades or cargo on their ship.

Ultimately though, recall that “paying hundreds of dollars for a ship” isn’t the main way that folks will be getting ships. It’s more like a short cut. Kind of like how you could buy ships in EvE with real dollars converted into ISK if you wanted, but you don’t need to. Potentially in EvE the losses are “more real”. The first time the goons took down a Titan for instance, using primarily a swarm of garbage starter ships… I think the Titan itself represented a rough equivalent of a few thousand real world dollars at the time. Up until that point, folks didn’t really think you could destroy one, but they did, and the guys who owned it were just out that money.

At this point, there’s tons of stuff already there. I think 3.0 in a few weeks is going to be the best indicator, since a lot of the mechanics are going to be active at that point.

I think we’re past the point where it’s possible that “nothing gets completed”. Something is going to come out the other end of this drawn out process. The question is more along the lines of, “How well will that something match up with what Roberts said he was going to build.” And that question is way harder to answer.

There’s already a lot of cool stuff going on, tackling significant technical hurdles… but the biggest hurdle that we haven’t seen tackled yet, is whether or not they can make a fun game. Because while there’s lots of cool stuff in there now, and space combat and flying is very well done, outside of the flying there’s been limited “fun” gameplay.

4325

Virtual Mafia is coming.

4326

CIG responds to the “5-10 star systems on release” quote in the german magazine.

Hey guys! This is a case of things being lost in translation; Chris was asked a specific question about how many systems we expect to have online at the point that we’ve got most of the core mechanics completed and we would consider the gameplay experience suitable for a larger audience. There are no changes with regards to the planned amount of systems which are well documented on the current Star Map.

Also, it’s important to remember that the scope of the game has increased greatly since the original crowdfunding campaign. Since those early days we’ve created procedural planet tech, moved from 32 bit to 64 bit… all of it leading to billions of kilometers of space and millions of square kilometers of landmass to explore, all rendered in detail that matches the most detailed 1st person games that only have to worry about a few dozen kilometers of playable area.

This takes time to fill out, so while it will take us longer to fully deliver and populate every system at this fidelity rather than if we had only a handful of points of interest per star system, we have no intention of reducing the size of the Star Citizen universe.

Vague answer. Nonetheless, this seems to confirm that there will be more than 5-10 star systems on release.