******Official Star Citizen / Squadron 42 Thread******

Indeed there isn't really any new gameplay loops there at moment, there a new location and some ships. The bigger thing with this is more the balance side for all ships going on. There is some solid additions for the start of proper multicrew roles with the updates to scanning, radar, ping and missile operator mode. It seems more to make things better to play day to day than dropping in new mechanics. Hopefully with 3.15 though the inventory and the medical gameplay will be some solid updates and change a lot of how the game is played.



Hello everyone, and welcome to the first Alpha 3.14 Patch Watch, where you'll get an in-depth look at the upcoming first balance pass to ship shields and weapons.

With the introduction of Capacitor Gameplay/Energy Management v2 and Missile Operator Mode, the team took the opportunity to review and rebalance almost all combat stats for Star Citizen’s ship weapons and shields.

Some changes are significant and affect the default loadouts of many fighters to better suit their intended role in the 'verse. Of course, you can still customize your ships' loadouts to suit your individual playstyle best, and we're eager to take a closer look at your loadouts. So, please check out the changes in-game, put them through their paces, and share your feedback. We’ll review your comments and, along with the data we collect from the game servers, incorporate them into the next iteration of the balancing process.

The current stats may be subject to change, as our goal is to achieve a fun combat experience where your decisions as a pilot have a meaningful impact in battle.

Let’s jump into the specifics:

Shields

Design Goals:
The goal is to make players feel more in control of their shields via the Power Triangle. It also includes balancing shields by giving fighters faster regeneration and allowing smaller ships to grind through larger ships’ shields rather than battling against instant regeneration.

Outcome:
The changes to shields are not extensive for the initial release. However, we have removed a couple of non-player facing delays and tried to split the generator sizes for certain ship classes.

Specifics:
Size 0 and Size 4 Shields
  • No changes, as these sizes are only used by vehicle-specific shield generators
Size 1 Shields
  • Typically used on small fighters and transporters, such as the Gladius
  • High regen/HP ratio
  • Low HP overall
  • Bubble shields only (Bubble is just the term we use (and used prior to SC Alpha 3.0 when they were last in the game) for a shield setup which technically only has one face. Regardless of the current SDF based technology or the prior implementation the hit detection is still divided up into "faces" so think of the Bubble shields having a single face that a hit from any side will deplete.)
Size 2 Shields
  • Typically used on heavy fighters and larger ships, such as the Vanguard and Freelancer
  • Normal regen/HP ratio
  • Around 4x more HP than Size 1
  • Bubble shields only
Size 3 Shields
  • Typically used on heavy multi-crew ships, such as the Reclaimer
  • Large multi-crew ship sizes
  • Around 10x more HP than Size 2
  • Quad faces or above
Additionally, the following changes apply:
  • Shield generators in the same class temporarily all have the same stats to aid the initial balancing pass
  • Shield hardening has been removed as it did not produce interesting gameplay choices. We will redevelop it at a later point
  • The shield UI has changed slightly
  • A lot of time dynamics in the shield regen process have been removed to make it easier to predict when the shields will be up again
  • The regen rate is dictated by the power triangle
  • Powering off one shield generator will remove the shield properties from the shield system (half HP and regen if you turn off one of two generators)
As the new shield tunings use vastly different multipliers, the following ships have been rebalanced to prevent them from being significantly underpowered or overpowered.
  • Aegis Sabre reduce shields from 3xS1 to 2xS1
  • MISC Razor reduce shields from 2xS1 to 1xS1
  • Origin 85x reduce shields from 2xS1 to 1xS1
  • Origin 600i increase shield from 1xS3 to 2xS3
  • Vanduul Blade increase shield from 1xS1 to 2xS1
  • Anvil Hurricane increase shields from 2xS1 to 1xS2
  • Anvil Terrapin increase shield from 1xS2 to 2xS2
  • Crusader Starfighter Ion reduce shields from 3xS2 to 2xS2
  • Drake Caterpillar increase shield from 1xS3 to 2xS3
  • RSI Constellation increase shields from 2xS2 to 1xS3
Weapons

Design goals:
The goal was to ensure that different weapon types have advantages and disadvantages and that there are no overpowered meta-weapons.

Weapon loadout should also be an important decision and have a meaningful impact on playstyle. We also wanted to replace mindless shooting with a carefully considered decision about when weapons are used. Player-controlled turrets should be more powerful and, as with shields, the regeneration rate of energy weapons should be adjustable via the power triangle.

Outcomes:
There are a lot of updates concerning weapons and their new associated capacitors, and with how ammunition and regen distribution works for energy weapons. In Alpha 3.14, every ship has a capacitor that produces "ammo" for the energy guns (this item is not visible, though we want to make a proper swappable item out of it).

Two variables come into play here:
  • Regen: How fast the ship can replenish energy ammo
  • Ammo Load: How much energy ammo the ship can hold at a time
Both regen and ammo load are distributed across all powered energy weapons on a ship. So if you have one energy cannon and two energy repeaters, you can disable the energy repeaters and send all ammo and regen to the energy cannon. This means that the energy cannon will be able to hold more ammo and regenerate faster.

In addition, we gave each weapon category an intended purpose:

Specifics:

Energy Repeaters Size 1 to Size 4
  • Dedicated anti-fighter weapons
  • Should be the most dangerous energy weapons against fighters
  • Normal regen and ammo load cost
Energy Repeaters Size 5+
  • Dedicated anti-large-ship weapons
  • Relatively high fire rate to keep larger multi-crew ships shields under strain
  • Normal regen and ammo load cost
Energy Cannons Size 1 to Size 4
  • Fighter-carried anti-large-ship weapons
  • Should not be very effective in dogfighting against other fighters
  • Regen and ammo load cost is reduced to make them more efficient than repeaters
Energy Cannons Size 5+
  • Dedicated anti-large-ship weapons
  • Very low fire rate, very high damage
  • Regen and ammo load cost is reduced to make them more efficient than repeaters
Ballistic Weapons
  • Specialized ‘alpha-strike’ weapons
  • Penetrate shields
  • Not supposed to be a good choice for long-duration engagements
  • Should feel limited in terms of ammo but be very powerful when used
Scatterguns - Energy & Ballistic
  • Specialized short-range weapons
  • High risk/reward
  • Very high damage output that cannot be employed as easily as before
Weapon Loadouts:
To reflect the intended gameplay changes, we adapted the default loadouts on some ships:
  • Defensive ship turrets will now always be equipped with energy repeaters
  • Offensive ship turrets will be equipped with either energy repeaters or energy cannons
  • No turrets have scatterguns due to the limited range
  • No turrets have ballistics equipped unless for a specific role, such as a dropship
  • Scatterguns will not be equipped by default as they are specialized weapons
  • On all default loadouts, energy weapons should make up at least 50% of all equipped weapons
  • By default Fire Group 1 should be assigned to energy weapons, Fire Group 2 to ballistics

Finally, as a reminder, the team is iterating based on the data collected and your feedback, so current stats are subject to change.
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They made some big changes to ship weapons.

You can't just hold down both mouse buttons all day and wreck everything in sight, try that now and you will be out of ammo and energy drained in a minute.

I like it, it forces you to use your weapons with much more thought.

Anyway, The Elite Dangerous refugees just keep piling in.... I know why they all think the way they do about SC, ED forums are extremely toxic about SC. They all get one hell of a shock to find its nothing like what they were led to believe.

https://www.reddit.com/r/starcitizen/comments/ogudrd/goodbye_edo_for_now_maybe_well_see_how_it_goes/

Xe1OdbU.png
 
Me and a random player got together to help out and give a little tour to a new player coming from ED the other day. His thoughts pretty much echoed the above and he was loving it.
The guy had FOIP set up and there was this moment when we were on the bridge of the other guy's 890 going into atmo with the sun rising and he turned to look at me with this open mouthed 'wow' expression. I should've saved the footage...

I've given many tours and tutorials to new players and it's always fantastic to see them go through that same sense of awe that most of us did and still do.

On another note; for anyone that does nothing but play solo and is getting burned out doing standard missions, get yourself some ingame buddies and see what fun you can have doing those same missions, or better yet, ending up on random epic adventures.
You don't have to join an org. Just talk to people in global chat and see where it takes you.

Ever ended up being on the run for 4hrs with an eventual CS level 5 after your mate ran somone over at an outpost because that guy gave you the finger? :D
 
Uncle Petey said:
I've given many tours and tutorials to new players and it's always fantastic to see them go through that same sense of awe that most of us did and still do.
On another note; for anyone that does nothing but play solo and is getting burned out doing standard missions, get yourself some ingame buddies and see what fun you can have doing those same missions, or better yet, ending up on random epic adventures.
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I might have to join one of your tours, then...

SC is quite pretty and there's certainly a lot more to do than when I last spent any amount of time in it... But between the 30Ks, the bugs and the various non-yet-interactive elements, it's still woefully short of impressive. It definitely has the same flavour as Freelancer (which I played to death on various servers and with various mods), but also feels equally limited. The best part is still exploring your newly purchased ship and seeing how well it works for you, but even with a crew it still doesn't pop the way that the first 1500-odd hours of Elite did.
There are a few things that SC does better than ED, but the core UI and most of the basic game mechanics (including flight) are still janky and annoying.
 
Uncle Petey said:
Me and a random player got together to help out and give a little tour to a new player coming from ED the other day. His thoughts pretty much echoed the above and he was loving it.
The guy had FOIP set up and there was this moment when we were on the bridge of the other guy's 890 going into atmo with the sun rising and he turned to look at me with this open mouthed 'wow' expression. I should've saved the footage...

I've given many tours and tutorials to new players and it's always fantastic to see them go through that same sense of awe that most of us did and still do.

On another note; for anyone that does nothing but play solo and is getting burned out doing standard missions, get yourself some ingame buddies and see what fun you can have doing those same missions, or better yet, ending up on random epic adventures.
You don't have to join an org. Just talk to people in global chat and see where it takes you.

Ever ended up being on the run for 4hrs with an eventual CS level 5 after your mate ran somone over at an outpost because that guy gave you the finger? :D
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Ever ended up being on the run for 4hrs with an eventual CS level 5 after your mate ran somone over at an outpost because that guy gave you the finger? :D
Click to expand...

No but it sounds like a fun way to earn some hours in the naughty house. :D
 
humbug said:
No but it sounds like a fun way to earn some hours in the naughty house. :D
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Hell yeah! We cleared our stats in the end, but the prison time or escape would've been worth it :D

Ok, story time :)

A lot happened. These are just the main highlights.

Me and a buddy were having a little trouble selling crates of our hadenite haul at an outpost on Arial and there was another dude in a Cutty there, who was acting a bit suspect by lurking around our ship while we were going back and forth.
So me and him are standing there looking at each other and he just flips me off... My mate was in no mood for BS at this point, so jumps in the ROC and turns him into corned beef.

The guy presses charges and then hilariously tries to extort 20k out of us by threatening to come back and do us in if we don't pay :cry: We're like "lol whatever man" and carry on with our business.
Dude eventually turns up above us in his Cutty with more threats, so we jump in my Cutty with my guy on turret, get out of the armistice zone and have a close quarters in-atmos ship battle that we barely win because my dumb arse forgot to unspool the QD, so I can't lock target :o

Rather than go to the usual Kareah or Hurston security depot, I decide to find one on Microtech and hopefully get some repairs.
Outpost repair was bugged, so we head for the security outpost which pounds us with turret fire and we have about half a ship left that won't fly straight, so we have to take cover behind a mountain 3 clicks away and drive our ROCs there.
We go in and take out security (so we're now at least at CS4), and it turns out there's no security console here :o
Back up top and my ROC is dead, so he drives and I walk 3km back to our half a ship, which is on fire and kaput :D We still have a crate with about 400k of hadenite inside, so I jump on our org discord to call in for a rescue mission.

The call is answered and one of our guys eventually turns up to scoop us in his Vanguard - Even after all this time, I still find the sight and sound of a ship coming into land absolutely awesome - especially when it's a lovely day on the mountain meadows of Microtech.

I'm a little hazy on what happened next, but we had to take out several bounty hunters, there was a lot of skirmishes and jumping around until we eventually find ourselves at a security depot on Hurston. Our rescuer is also now a criminal.
The console is in the basement and each of us has a lengthy charge sheet and we're looking at at least 15mins each to clear our stat, so we station two of us at the base of the elevator while the other one uses the console.
Me and my buddy are cleared and guarding the entrance while our other friend is busy downstairs when the elevator is recalled from above :eek: Uh-oh.. Action stations!

As soon as it comes back down, we're lighting it the **** up from cover and I think we manage to kill at least two or three of them before they somehow take us out and there are two left, who go on to attempt to clear the rest of the bunker.
Our friend gets the drop on them and takes them both out :cool:

The end.

- Or the time some sneaky sod on foot tried to steal the cargo out of my ROC in the middle of nowhere and got run over and lasered to death :D
- Or the time me and a friend were out mining and got caught slipping by some guys in a Valkyrie that stalked us and waited for the perfect time to infiltrate under cover of darkness, take us both out and steal everything we had :cry: Last time I play on an Aussie server :p
- Or the times when we've simply grabbed some vehicles and gone for a road trip to the mountains. One of my best early memories of this game was when about 6 of us grabbed a bunch of cars to climb a mountain in the darkness and just chilled out at the top to watch the sun rise while shooting the breeze.
- Or the time me and another random bounty hunter happened to turn up at the same time and teamed up to take out the criminal who'd entrenched himself in a cave.
- Or the time I landed to go cave mining and three guys on foot fire at my ship, so I land, get out and skirt around the surrounding rock, climb up to get an elevated position and take all three out while laughing at their panicked movements :cry:

Etc etc...

All I'm saying is that despite it's up and down faults and the pace of progress, there's a lot of fun to be had - especially if you play with others, whether it's a crew or a fleet and find yourself going off the beaten path.

jonneymendoza said:
Hehe I remembered that.epic time's indeed!
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Then there was that time when we spent hours on jonney 'AFK in the pilot seat' mendoza's Carrack fighting bounty hunters while we're trying to rescue someone from prison. That was a mad one :D
Was that the same one where we took out those bounty hunters, then went down to a moon outpost only to find a bunch of ships and about 6 Ballistas spread around, which we blew up and then I got in the snub fighter and rammed that guy in front of our ship? :cry:
 
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Will have to hook up with you guys in-game at some point. I've had a whole load of fun with mates who I regularly play with but would be good to mix it up with some different ideas of things to try :D

As much fun as just flying around doing combat missions or similar can be, the most fun I've had is definitely doing dumb things with vehicles and ships. We had a load of entertainment out of just driving tanks between Hercules in mid air, and then scoping the tanks back up if they fell :cry:
 
I'm gearing up to spending 3 hours trying to get my HOTAS and pedals setup to try out live tomorrow (going to skip PTU for now)

Need an early night to keep motivated :D
 
I backed SC at a basic level in 2012 when ED still wasn't released. So all this talk about people leaving ED in droves means nothing because ED has been out for 7 years folks and people who have played it to death and are getting bored. Ironically a lot of the same people only went to ED back in 2014 because Star Citizen was... I mean IS in a perptetual alpha/design stage.

Finally the ED fanboys are realising what most of us realised years ago, that Frontier Devs are absolutely crap at gameplay. The idea that "Elite" is a sandbox and you make your own "game" is pure ********, it was boring drivel when it was released and it is even worse boring drivel 7 years later. There was absolutely nothing stopping Frontier Devs from putting some actual fun gameplay into their game other than pure ineptitude.

I think SC eventually (after 9 years) proved that it is possible to have fun gameplay in a Space MMO with how it looks and plays even as an alpha. Though having said that let's not delude ourselves that it isn't a cluster **** as far as development goes. Because in all this time it took SC to get where it is, ED has already been a sucess for Frontier.
 
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Frontier have a problem on their hands though, much like WoW oddly enough - once the player base starts to dwindle you need to catch them quick.

I don't see ED doing much soon other than quality of life improvements, ironically the same sort of this SC has failed to do for years and consistently been forgiven for.
 
Raumarik said:
Frontier have a problem on their hands though, much like WoW oddly enough - once the player base starts to dwindle you need to catch them quick.

I don't see ED doing much soon other than quality of life improvements, ironically the same sort of this SC has failed to do for years and consistently been forgiven for.
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Yea and the next two patches are going to completely transform sc as well!

If they manage to crack server meshing and gen12 rendering, it's game set match basically
 
ICDP said:
I backed SC at a basic level in 2012 when ED still wasn't released. So all this talk about people leaving ED in droves means nothing because ED has been out for 7 years folks and people who have played it to death and are getting bored. Ironically a lot of the same people only went to ED back in 2014 because Star Citizen was... I mean IS in a perptetual alpha/design stage.

Finally the ED fanboys are realising what most of us realised years ago, that Frontier Devs are absolutely crap at gameplay. The idea that "Elite" is a sandbox and you make your own "game" is pure ********, it was boring drivel when it was released and it is even worse boring drivel 7 years later. There was absolutely nothing stopping Frontier Devs from putting some actual fun gameplay into their game other than pure ineptitude.

I think SC eventually (after 9 years) proved that it is possible to have fun gameplay in a Space MMO with how it looks and plays even as an alpha. Though having said that let's not delude ourselves that it isn't a cluster **** as far as development goes. Because in all this time it took SC to get where it is, ED has already been a sucess for Frontier.
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I can agree with a lot of this.
ED has the better gameplay mechanics and interfaces, and is a far better platform for most things. But once you've done the learning curve and tried out everything several times, bought all the ships you like and modded them up, maybe reached Elite status in something... there's not much reason to continue playing other than the fun of it.

SC has greater variety of detail and immersion, and it's the pretty stuff that keeps people interested. It's just very clunky to play and at this stage just about every little thing needs a lot of work to be of an acceptable standard, with many things still needing a re-think too. I truly hope they get there, but I'll still be surprised if it ever happens.
 
ttaskmaster said:
I can agree with a lot of this.
ED has the better gameplay mechanics and interfaces, and is a far better platform for most things. But once you've done the learning curve and tried out everything several times, bought all the ships you like and modded them up, maybe reached Elite status in something... there's not much reason to continue playing other than the fun of it.

SC has greater variety of detail and immersion, and it's the pretty stuff that keeps people interested. It's just very clunky to play and at this stage just about every little thing needs a lot of work to be of an acceptable standard, with many things still needing a re-think too. I truly hope they get there, but I'll still be surprised if it ever happens.
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Indeed, I just find it laughable that some people are still fooled by what SC has to offer after 9 years in development. It is certainly impressive in areas but so far from even remotely finished and still many years from being a release candidate. I am no fan of Elite Ponderous but at least it did reach a state where it could be called "finished" and that was 7 years ago. In the meantime SC has reached barely pre-alpha status after 9 years.
 
ICDP said:
Indeed, I just find it laughable that some people are still fooled by what SC has to offer after 9 years in development. It is certainly impressive in areas but so far from even remotely finished and still many years from being a release candidate. I am no fan of Elite Ponderous but at least it did reach a state where it could be called "finished" and that was 7 years ago. In the meantime SC has reached barely pre-alpha status after 9 years.
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It will go on for as long as people enjoy playing it.

My advice to anyone would be only put in as much money as you think is worth it for how the game stands right now, not what might be, $45 gets you full access, if you want other ships earn them in game, no need to spend more than that.

People who are confused by how people can still buy into it should also stop assuming its just as a very pretty tech demo, ask the army of Elite Dangerous refugees who thought that until they spent a few hours actually giving it a chance, then one might understand how its still going. :)
 
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