Welcome back space fans! Thanks so much to everyone who read, shared and commented on last month’s article. As mentioned back then, this is the Wccftech monthly round up of all things Star Citizen! Up this month, we have a boatload of news for you. But first, if you don't know what Star Citizen is, I urge you to have a read of the first issue of this series where I give a brief introduction to one of the most ambitious games of all time! You can find that article here.
As you can see from the title of this month’s update, we’ve managed to get an unofficial sneak glimpse into some of the details of Star Marine (the Star Citizen FPS combat module). This comes via Kyle Bromley, an artist who worked on Gold Horizon (an FPS arena level in Star Marine) as well as a mini slip up by CIG themselves in the initial release of 2.2 to the PTU (that’s the test environment for less stable builds before they get promoted to the main PU).
Breaking News!
FPS modes listed! During an Around The Verse segment explaining the new Star Citizen database back end (allowing SC to transition from being mostly XML file based configs), Star Marine FPS modes were spotted. Obviously we have zero real information about these modes and as we all know, everything is subject to change, but we can take some educated guesses:
King Of The Hill: Likely the FPS equivalent of Battle Royale in Arena Commander. You vs. all comers.
Practice: Probably an AI based practice mode.
SATABall: For those of you unfamiliar with Star Citizen (and likely many of you that are!), you’ve probably not heard of this in fiction game. An initial proposal in the lore builder posts can be found here:
With subsequent lore builder comm-links adding additional community feedback. Nothing has been confirmed in terms of finalised SataBall setup/rules but this will give you a basic idea.
Team Elimination: As its name suggests, team deathmatch of some kind.
February 2016 Updates!
2.2 is currently in its 6th build on the PTU. Further details in the New Versions section.
A CIG global “pop-up” event is taking place on the 4th of March. The response was overwhelming and those that responded to the initial thread in the forums are mostly able to go, although for some of the locations there were simply too many responses. There will be more such events to meet the team!
Chris Roberts continued hitting the road hard in February, spending time in (obviously) LA, but also Foundry 42 in the UK and Foundry 42 in Frankfurt.
Larger ships are currently being destroyed too quickly compared to what they will finally be like in game, this is a balancing issue and likely to be worked on later, particularly as the ship repair mechanics come online and ship crew will be able to have a window of opportunity to repair damage done to a larger ship before it gets destroyed.
Current focus with regards to netcode is server and client optimisation rather than data packet size at this stage although packet size and delta updates will also be looked at later on.
Idris frigate was flyable in house! The significance of this is huge given the size of the ship and the number of systems and control points it will have!
Additional backer rewards are now in the “My Hangar” section of the website! Everything from $42m to $100m should now be visible if you backed before that stretch goal milestone was reached.
This year, CIG are aiming for a significant patch release per month or so. The expectation is for those who don’t want to test the new versions, there will be several patches to the PTU with one main update to the production servers per month. They’ve not been explicit, but “significant patch” is taken to mean a 0.1 iteration with new functionality as opposed to the 0.0.1 iterations which are mostly aimed at bug fixes. We’re currently on 2.1 with 2.2 in PTU4
Xi’an Scout is being worked on and should be finished soon. Once done, three older ships will be brought up to current standards (Aurora, 300i and Hornet).
The great package split has occurred! As we get nearer to the release of both Squadron 42 (single player campaign) and Star Citizen (online MMO), the two games have been split. CIG have been very transparent about this incoming split for a long time so hopefully if you were interested in getting both, you got the starter package before they separated them out but anyone new to the game now who wants both will pay a higher price.
Star Marine Unofficial Details!
As mentioned in the introduction to this update. I’ve managed to get some unofficial stuff regarding Star Marine. Kyle Bromley is an artist who was one of the primary environment artists for the Gold Horizon FPS level. I’ve included a couple of screenshots from his website below, but I’d encourage anyone interested to go view them all here:
https://www.artstation.com/artwork/0EaVG
I think it’s safe to say that Kyle is an incredibly talented artist and I personally can’t wait to get into Gold Horizon to shoot people in the face while taking in the gorgeous view!
Additional to the above, the first version of 2.2 which CIG launched on the PTU testing environment accidentally had the Star Marine access option enabled! Although various enterprising people explored and tried lots of different methods of forcing it to load, ultimately we were all unsuccessful since the likely software on the back end servers was probably not running. That much said, I did manage to get some screenshots of the opening menu options and some of the gear that may be available to us when CIG do actually open up Star Marine officially! Please keep in mind, this is all obviously pre-production work in progress, subject to change and not necessarily representative of final art/setup.
Implied functionality:
You will be able to choose to fight as either a UEE Marine or Outlaw.
Each side will have three tiers of armour (Light, Medium and Heavy). Each type of armour will allow a number of slots for weapons, grenades and gadgets. Both sides armour have identical slot numbers for each of the following:
Light armour currently provides slots for:
- One primary weapon and one sidearm.
- Two grenades.
- One gadget.
Medium armour currently provides slots for:
- One primary weapon, one secondary weapon and one sidearm.
- Two grenades.
- One gadget.
Heavy Armour currently provides slots for:
- One primary weapon, one secondary weapon and one sidearm (same as medium armour).
- Four grenades.
- Two gadgets.
The loadout screen let users select from:
- Two different sidearms.
- Four different primary/secondary weapons (one ballistic assault rifle, one energy shotgun, two energy rifles).
- Three different varieties of grenade (frag, EMP and a “Force Propulsion”).
- Two different “gadgets” (CDS QuickCade and JOKR Doubletime Hologram).
New Versions!
2.2.0e is currently available in the PTU! Headline features of 2.2 include:
A new flyable ship (the Sabre).
A new hangar ready ship (the Xi’an Scout).
Some reputation mechanics within the Crusader system now take effect including:
- Monitored space alert: Active comm arrays now allow for space to be monitored. When monitored, criminal activities will increase your criminal level.
- Disabling a comm array will allow you to undertake dastardly deeds unnoticed thereby not affecting your criminal level.
- You can reduce your criminal level by:
- Ten minutes without criminal activity will reduce your level by 1.
- Hacking a terminal at Security Post Kareah. Each hack takes 1 minute and reduces level by 1, however only one criminal can hack at a time so you’d best defend the terminal while your hack takes place!
- Once you reach criminal level 5, a bounty is placed on your head and other players are invited to go kill you. If you kill a level 5 criminal, congratulations! Crusader Industries will give you a Klaus & Werner ATT4 Energy Rifle for your troubles (you’ll find it in your sleeping pod on Port Olisar).
- If killed while a criminal, each criminal level adds 30 seconds of “jail time” to your respawn during which time you’ll have to wait in your pod. If you attain level 5 and are killed, you’ll be ejected from the instance.
- Both pirates and security AI will become much more aggressive towards aggressors.
- When a player attacks another player, the radar will now flag that player as hostile.
A new EVA (jet packs in space) model which allows for some degree of drift and inertia.
There is now a much more usable party system in 2.2. Forming a party (for example from the hangar module) prior to joining the PU will mean that the servers will attempt to place all party members in a single instance (instance size now increased to 24).
The above is just a very small snapshot of the changes which come with 2.2. If you’re a backer, head over to the forums here to see the full list (it’s big!).
https://forums.robertsspaceindustries.com/discussion/319414/2-2-0-published-to-ptu/p1
In addition to the big initial release of 2.2, 5 subsequent patches have fixed about 60 bugs that have been found in it.
New Videos!
The BBC visited CIG in both LA and the UK to do a piece on them for their regular technology show “Click”. There was no big news in the show but those with access to BBC iPlayer can watch it here:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b070w3zm/click-13022016
February 2016 Rumours!
Each week, CIG host a livestream on their Twitch channel where they take questions from the community. Questions are frequent and the chat goes nuts when this happens! Answers which are given on Reverse the ‘Verse are off the cuff and as such usually highly tentative but if you don’t want to take the stuff that gets said here as gospel, there are interesting tidbits that come out. Stuff that gets mentioned on other shows which seem tentative I’ll put into this section too. This month, the key things I caught are:
CIG are currently testing a release candidate for 2.2 build to push it to the live production servers.
CIG are still working internally on the design for ship to ship docking. No clear statements yet on final design but unlikely that every ship will be able to dock with every other ship. Differences between manufacturers and ship sizes likely to impact this with larger ships that have docking rings/airlocks likely to have some kind of unifying docking tunnel.
The Star Citizen HOTAS is still going ahead, despite Madcatz massive restructuring so it’s not in danger.
CR mentioned on 10ftcm that 2.3 and 2.4 will likely further flesh out the Stanton system (of which the baby PU of Crusader is a part) with more landing zones and areas etc. Core gameplay to be fleshed out primarily in the PU. Both AC and SM will continue for honing combat skills without death penalties.
Improved item system may come in 2.3 or 2.4 which will contextualise the existing generic “Use” function. This is currently being worked on.
The Next Great Star Marine is coming SOON™! Sounds like they’ll be asking for initial submissions of a helmet!
Mining and salvaging are the designs currently being worked on from a mechanics perspective. Mining is likely to be the next big design post they publish.
Mention in the monthly report of the “True Friends System” which work is starting for. Exactly what this is isn’t yet clear. Personal completely unfounded speculation? Maybe some way of attempting to identify friendlies/hostiles on radar when they are players and intentions obviously unknown? We’ll see.
The new Corvette has started to be worked on! It will be manufactured by RSI (one of the in game ship builders and thankfully not yet another Aegis ship!) and an initial working name is “Polaris”.
CitizenCon this year will take place in LA again on the 9th of October.
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About the author: Run Product Management for Aquis stock exchange. Designed, built and managed several market making, algorithmic and aggregation trading systems for most exchange traded asset classes including Equities, FI, FX and Commods cash and derivatives markets as well as multi-venue FX spot. Massive PC gamer!
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