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

[PinkFloyd]

This is why many veteran players keep telling newcomers that:

1. its a very very buggy early alpha game
2. jump on it if you want but jump on and play with a fello veteran to help show you the ropes

Yep, I tell newbies this already. But I still maintain there is no good reason for this game to not have better ingame help for new players.

To reiterate and reinforce what was said before it would be pointless to make a tutorial at this point.

There used to be a tutorial play-through, a tutorial mission where it would teach you everything you needed to know through literal voice-over hand holding.
Its was scrapped because the game quickly evolved and the whole thing became completely wrong, if they re-make a tutorial like that now at least parts of it will be wrong in 6 months, certainly a lot of it will be missing as there are new mission types and mechanics coming online this year.

I guess we'll just agree to disagree on the New Player Experience. I just don't think some basic tutorials to help out for the meantime would be as much of a timesink as some are suggesting. We only need more text popups and so on, not fully interactive voice acted guides. Maybe I'll just accept I'm in a minority of experienced players that would like to see better ingame stuff for newbies. I'll go back to telling everyone it's an Alpha and they should get gud

 

[humbug]

Yep, I tell newbies this already. But I still maintain there is no good reason for this game to not have better ingame help for new players.


I guess we'll just agree to disagree on the New Player Experience. I just don't think some basic tutorials to help out for the meantime would be as much of a timesink as some are suggesting. We only need more text popups and so on, not fully interactive voice acted guides. Maybe I'll just accept I'm in a minority of experienced players that would like to see better ingame stuff for newbies. I'll go back to telling everyone it's an Alpha and they should get gud

No you are right, i completely forgot about the help text thing, i've had it turned off for a long time, that was added a couple of years ago in response to exactly this citisisum, it needs updating

 

[Cantankerous]

I was thinking along the lines of a popup over the screen when you first get in a ship telling you want each UI thing was. Decoy vs Noise vs CPLD etc.

Had a bit of mild panic earlier. Remembered I'd taken my helmet off to drink. I remembered this, while the airlock was cycling. Double clicking to equip items from the inventory is a very useful function.

 

[humbug]

I was thinking along the lines of a popup over the screen when you first get in a ship telling you want each UI thing was. Decoy vs Noise vs CPLD etc.

Had a bit of mild panic earlier. Remembered I'd taken my helmet off to drink. I remembered this, while the airlock was cycling. Double clicking to equip items from the inventory is a very useful function.

Right, it perhaps needs to be more obvious and relevant to what you are doing, so when you sit down in you ship it needs to go *Bing: Press R to power up the ship, press U to power it down*........*Bing: Hold space bar to lift off*...... *Bing: press N to retract or deploy landing gear*....... Bing: Helpfull hint, you can turn off engines without powering down the ship by pressing I, press I again to turn them back on*

I still walk out of airlock without a helmet on.....

On the UI, everyone hates it, especially the Star Map, and CIG know everyone hates it, all of it is being worked on as we speak, a ground up rework, the new Star Map will also allow you to save places you can name, like a google maps pin.

 

[jonneymendoza]

I was thinking along the lines of a popup over the screen when you first get in a ship telling you want each UI thing was. Decoy vs Noise vs CPLD etc.

Had a bit of mild panic earlier. Remembered I'd taken my helmet off to drink. I remembered this, while the airlock was cycling. Double clicking to equip items from the inventory is a very useful function.

And how is cig to do that so easily for every ship in game?

every ship in game is unique with different MFD's and weapons and emp's, missiles, cargo retractor, refuelling, accepting other ships to dock on you et etc. Thats not a easy feature to just implement, even if its text based and especially when half the ships dont have its full gameplay loop added to it yet

 

[jonneymendoza]

Right, it perhaps needs to be more obvious and relevant to what you are doing, so when you sit down in you ship it needs to go *Bing: Press R to power up the ship, press U to power it down*........*Bing: Hold space bar to lift off*...... *Bing: press N to retract or deploy landing gear*....... Bing: Helpfull hint, you can turn off engines without powering down the ship by pressing I, press I again to turn them back on*

I still walk out of airlock without a helmet on.....

On the UI, everyone hates it, especially the Star Map, and CIG know everyone hates it, all of it is being worked on as we speak, a ground up rework, the new Star Map will also allow you to save places you can name, like a google maps pin.

i remember some of that is actually in the game when you first get into the ship It tells you what button to start your ship and call for ATC text at the bottom etc

I think what others are wanting is information on how to get to spaceport in the first place and how to put your armour on etc and where things are?
I actually think that PO should be the place where new players start, not in a major city. PO is the perfect place to introduce new players to the game

 

[humbug]

i remember some of that is actually in the game when you first get into the ship It tells you what button to start your ship and call for ATC text at the bottom etc

I think what others are wanting is information on how to get to spaceport in the first place and how to put your armour on etc and where things are?
I actually think that PO should be the place where new players start, not in a major city. PO is the perfect place to introduce new players to the game

Yeah, PO was the first thing in the game, its a very simple space station, you're right it is a good place to start.


On the Star Map. In fact, it looks like that work is done, the new Star Map took 43 weeks, they did say it was close now..

 

[Cantankerous]

And how is cig to do that so easily for every ship in game?

every ship in game is unique with different MFD's and weapons and emp's, missiles, cargo retractor, refuelling, accepting other ships to dock on you et etc. Thats not a easy feature to just implement, even if its text based and especially when half the ships dont have its full gameplay loop added to it yet

They don't have to do every ship; they could even do it just for the starters. However, I would expect the basic functions to be the same on all ships. HYD, QUA, LOCK etc. More of a general overview and as humbug said, Power, engines, request takeoff and landing via comms MFD.

The current star map did take a while to figure out and get used to. Lots of rotating to get things to be visible and then trying to get a route set.

 

[humbug]

*Bing: Starmap Helpfull hint, zooming in from full view to a planet or moon doesn't work, to zoom in and out to a planet or moon double click on it, then use scroll wheel to zoom further, to quickly zoom out fully double click in empty space anywhere in the Starmap*

 

[PinkFloyd]

And how is cig to do that so easily for every ship in game?

every ship in game is unique with different MFD's and weapons and emp's, missiles, cargo retractor, refuelling, accepting other ships to dock on you et etc. Thats not a easy feature to just implement, even if its text based and especially when half the ships dont have its full gameplay loop added to it yet

I think they could get away with a generic popup, or even something in the menu with a reminder of what all the abbreviations mean, and some basic controls like humbug said. Just enough to get a rookie off the ground.
I bet that once most of us who like the game got off the ground and saw the scale we all went "holy crap, I want more of this, I'll go learn how to do things!"
It's just that first step is pretty brutal right now without a running commentary from a friend.

On the "without a helmet" theme. I left the expo on Orison at the weekend, burnt out of atmo in an arrow and heading to Port Olisar to crack on with some missions and stuff. I remembered in the nick of time I wasn't wearing any helmet... Ended up redirecting to Grim Hex so I could actually buy a helmet rather than fly back down into Orison!

 

[Cantankerous]

Monthly report came out yesterday. This is the first one I've read and it all seems to be pushing forwards.

"AI Tech worked on spaceship functionalities, including several improvements to quantum travel and quantum boost."

What's Quantum Boost?

Star Citizen Monthly Report: May 2022 - Roberts Space Industries | Follow the development of Star Citizen and Squadron 42

Roberts Space Industries is the official go-to website for all news about Star Citizen and Squadron 42. It also hosts the online store for game items and merch, as well as all the community tools used by our fans.

robertsspaceindustries.com

 

[pete910]

What's Quantum Boost?

Boost for the quantum

Sounds painful.

 

[Cantankerous]

I didn't find a lot of information about it but it sound as if they're going to rework quantum travel. Best idea so far for the quantum boost is a slower straight line only speed boost the same as a few other games have.

New missions coming in with the next patch. Illicit Delivery missions and a rework of the combat assistance missions to add a difficulty. I feel all the missions should have some indication of how difficult they are before you accept them. I'm ok with a sentence or two that you need to read though over slapping a lev1-9 on all of them.

Inside Star Citizen: Illicit Delivery | Spring 2022

Ready to earn some reputation with Red Wind? On this week's Inside Star Citizen, we take a look at mission updates coming in Alpha 3.17.2, including both ill...

www.youtube.com

 

[jonneymendoza]

I didn't find a lot of information about it but it sound as if they're going to rework quantum travel. Best idea so far for the quantum boost is a slower straight line only speed boost the same as a few other games have.

New missions coming in with the next patch. Illicit Delivery missions and a rework of the combat assistance missions to add a difficulty. I feel all the missions should have some indication of how difficult they are before you accept them. I'm ok with a sentence or two that you need to read though over slapping a lev1-9 on all of them.

Inside Star Citizen: Illicit Delivery | Spring 2022

Ready to earn some reputation with Red Wind? On this week's Inside Star Citizen, we take a look at mission updates coming in Alpha 3.17.2, including both ill...

www.youtube.com

Yes they said last year that they are reworking quantum travelling actually.

Yea that was a nice ISC.

Some good stuff there on the new mission

 

[Cantankerous]

Slowly getting used to using a joystick in the left hand for flight controls. Finding it still seems to be very on/off for controls at times though. Currently using push forward for thrust forward (back/back) and it seems to bounce between nice and sensitive to binary inputs.

Unfortunately the in game screenshots are low quality and my normal screenshot tool seems to be suppressed by the game.

 

[jonneymendoza]

Slowly getting used to using a joystick in the left hand for flight controls. Finding it still seems to be very on/off for controls at times though. Currently using push forward for thrust forward (back/back) and it seems to bounce between nice and sensitive to binary inputs.

Unfortunately the in game screenshots are low quality and my normal screenshot tool seems to be suppressed by the game.

Just press the print screen button when playing sc. It automatically saves a full res pic of the game inside the sc screenshots folder

 

[Cantankerous]

Just press the print screen button when playing sc. It automatically saves a full res pic of the game inside the sc screenshots folder

I wouldn't say full res. That's what I've been doing for the above pics and it saves them as tiny jpg files. The largest one so far, at 1440p, as been just over 600KB. PNG's that ShareX take at high settings are 2-8MB ish and it is noticeable when you look at the pics.

 

[Curlyriff]

Star Citizen Live: Invictus All-Ships Q&A

Looking for the latest on the nitty-gritty of flight, aerial combat, and all things vehicles? John and Richard from the Vehicle Team join us for a special In...

www.youtube.com

This is a very useful SC:Live but it shows why SQ42 is at least xmas next year away considering how much left to do and what missing and so much core needed for ships and gameplay. There is a lot of premise and good ideas but they still just that right now.

 

[PinkFloyd]

Slowly getting used to using a joystick in the left hand for flight controls. Finding it still seems to be very on/off for controls at times though. Currently using push forward for thrust forward (back/back) and it seems to bounce between nice and sensitive to binary inputs.

May have an explanation for this... When you say it feels like binary inputs, are you basing this on the amount of thrust you are seeing on the readout ingame is either nothing with the stick neutral, and then 10G (or whatever) when moving the stick forward at all? If so it could be because you have the ship in coupled mode - where 50% forward throttle would set the ships speed to 50% of it's maximum. If you toggle into Decoupled mode, 50% forward on the stick will be 50% forward thrust. It's a lot easier to fly smooth in decoupled mode imo.

It might be that there are different ingame controls you can bind for a slightly different flight behaviour, or other settings that affect this. There's so much control flexibility in Star Citizen it can easily lead to getting lost in settings. I really need to revisit it myself to get a better controller layout since changing flight stick and controls.

 

[Cantankerous]

May have an explanation for this... When you say it feels like binary inputs, are you basing this on the amount of thrust you are seeing on the readout ingame is either nothing with the stick neutral, and then 10G (or whatever) when moving the stick forward at all? If so it could be because you have the ship in coupled mode - where 50% forward throttle would set the ships speed to 50% of it's maximum. If you toggle into Decoupled mode, 50% forward on the stick will be 50% forward thrust. It's a lot easier to fly smooth in decoupled mode imo.

I was going off the thrust indicator and velocity values; and crashing into a station. It was very apparent when I was trying to land or in atmo where the smallest amount of stick movement maxed thrust. Where in space this wasn't the case.

I've been using combination both modes as I get to grips with space flight but I'll need to do more testing to see if it only happens in coupled flight. Thanks for the suggestion though.