Man, if these ships came with a nice pewter version you could put on your computer desk, I bet they’d sell quite a few more and not really add a lot to their cost.
KevinC
1703
For which party, the customer or CIG? Because I beg to differ on one of those. ;)
I mean if you pay $900 for a ship, you also get (with that $900) a pewter physical figure you can have shipped to an address of your choice. Seriously, I think they’d still make a ton of money on each ship they sell, but they might sell more ships if you had a physical thing you could also point to and say, “hey I got this cool little replica of a ship I really like”
KevinC
1706
Yeah, I knew what you meant, I was just making a snarky jab at CIG’s business practices. I could see them having a deal where you get the special pewter collectors model for “just” another $300 more or something ridiculous like that.
Tee hee, I want to play this.
JeffL
1708
Years later, $90 million, good to know they’ve progressed to the point of being able to do a spaceship explosion.
Eh, I did finally play Arena Commander.
It still has bugs, but it has made strides from the previous iteration. It’s actually pretty fun to handle now, imo. It feels very simulationy, which is weird, taking into account the WC games always were on the spectacle side of the spectrum (which is why I preferred Privateer to Elite).
My computer is not going to be able to run the full game, though.
Edit: JeffL, there’s much more than explosions in there now. I was actually surprised at how complete the tutorial feels now. There might be a game in here, although it might still be ways off (SQ42, the sp campaign can’t be that far, one would hope, given the content already present. All the core is there, it’s the campaign they have to build).
Also, I think this is oging to have many bugs until well after release (which is not surprising, but worth pointing out). It doesn’t feel stable at all.
that explosion…
It’s clear to me they are reaching for be all end all game with this.
Lets just hope they succeed
The most expensive explosion I’ve ever enjoyed!
Timex
1712
Come on, you need to admit that it’s pretty awesome.
More importantly though, I think it’s kind of cool that this is being enabled by the previously developed ship system and damage modeling.
That’s a great explosion. Now imagine you paid for that ship and didn’t have insurance.
Timex
1714
If imagine it’s be like having a titan in eve destroyed.
Only cooler looking.
They are obsessing this much over just explosions? just wow. I don’t meant this in a good way either.
The more I hear about this game the only vision I get is the classic video of the Hindenburg going up in flames…
Timex
1716
Bear in mind that this isn’t JUST explosions. This is kind of a secondary effect of the complex damage modeling that they have already done on the ships, which have a gameplay effect. It’s enabled by the fact that the ships aren’t just big ship shaped boxes, but actually have subsystems inside that can be individually damaged (and now explodified, apparently).
An interesting element that this could potentially enable would be that if someone is on board a ship, you could fire your weapons into critical systems from the inside, and potentially blow up the ship. Or possibly even only blow up PART of a ship.
I think it makes perfect sense when you consider there are people out there who simply want to support the development of a game. I’ve seen this comment a few times now in failed KS threads, someone saying “Damn, I’d hate to have put $5000 into this!” and then such a high backer essentially saying that they were disappointed to see it fail, but they’re glad they supported it because they wanted to help give the devs a chance to make their game. It’s a completely different mentality when you have vast amounts of money, $900 is nothing, a vaguely guilty pleasure like treating yourself to ice-cream.
If I paid that much for a ship, I’d at least want it to explode spectacularly!
The part in the tutorial when you have to pursue the trainer through the asteroids is really amazing. The handling in this thin is exceptional. The shooting is very freespacy (low punch, really have to work out each down slowly) and I think I would love something faster, with higher payload per hit (but that’s just because I suck, and maybe because I’m playing with a 360 pad and not my HOTAS).
I really want to try my hornet now.
JeffL
1719
Um, yeah, it was real pretty, and I know about what they are trying to do with damage modeling. Modeling individual systems and calculating actual damage and the effects of what kind of weapon hit, where it hit, etc. is something that was done by others a LONG time ago - CJ and the guys did that for their Hornet sim years ago - they would even have it calculate developing damage, i.e. if this was damaged and there was an oil leak eventually that would cause other systems to fail, and so on. So I’m not exactly blown away that they are doing that too, with all this money and all this time, and they are falling all over themselves on the video over an explosion. And I watched the whole video, and just kinda cringed at a lot of it. The one guy talking about how at this point he is working on how the animation works in the FPS when you aim your weapon, etc,
Yes - I’ve have become very cynical about the project at this point, as much as I seem to be hiding it. ;)
Timex
1720
I don’t recall any games that really did damage modeling to the fidelity of what star citizen has already accomplished, but maybe I’m just unaware of them.
mok
1721
I think this is one of the reasons the game’s development is experiencing controversy. There is a huge emphasis on modeling, textures, and animation. This is reflected in the released modules and the demos.
This may be a bad thing…but this does seem to have always been a sell towards the flight sim crowd - where visuals and details are important, maybe more important than stuff to do - so it may also be a good thing.
I think the disappointments come from people who want to do more, and do it now. But looking over the pitches and such, I don’t think one can be too surprised by the approach CIG is taking.
