According to Reddit, 3.3 on the PTU is now open to all backers and performance has skyrocketed.
Reports from the SC sub, pcgaming and forums are all saying the same - 60fps+ is now common even without super high end machines, and mediocre PC's are reaching 40-60fps, even low end setups can hit 30+.
u/dd179 : GTX 970 and an i5-4590. Back in 3.2 I was hovering between 20-30fps, but after 3.3, holy fucking shit. I'm at a constant 60FPS at 1080p on medium settings and the game looks absolutely beautiful.
*sigh*
Fine, fine, I'll reinstall and risk getting at least a little impressed that the madlads actually pulled this off.
According to Reddit, 3.3 is now rolling out to all backers and performance has skyrocketed.
Reports from the SC sub, pcgaming and forums are all saying the same - 60fps+ is now common even without super high end machines, and mediocre PC's are reaching 40-60fps, even low end setups can hit 30+.
u/dd179 : GTX 970 and an i5-4590. Back in 3.2 I was hovering between 20-30fps, but after 3.3, holy fucking shit. I'm at a constant 60FPS at 1080p on medium settings and the game looks absolutely beautiful.
*sigh*
Fine, fine, I'll reinstall and risk getting at least a little impressed that the madlads actually pulled this off.
What else is included in 3.3? I mean, I too want to try it with improved performance. But what really interests me is the medship gameplay. I don't want to spend $225 on an Apollo because that's insane, but I do want to probably work my way towards earning an Apollo in the game. Obviously right now that's not a thing. But once the game becomes a little bit more "real" that will be my goal.
What else is included in 3.3? I mean, I too want to try it with improved performance. But what really interests me is the medship gameplay. I don't want to spend $225 on an Apollo because that's insane, but I do want to probably work my way towards earning an Apollo in the game. Obviously right now that's not a thing. But once the game becomes a little bit more "real" that will be my goal.
Uhhh...good question. Unlike Warframe I don't pay that much attention to SC's development anymore and mostly just follow /r/StarCitizen in case something actually relevant happens and shows up in my feed. I'll have to do some digging and find out.
EDIT: My mistake on the first post. 3.3 is rolling out to all backers on the PTU, not the main branch.
According to Reddit, 3.3 on the PTU is now open to all backers and performance has skyrocketed.
Reports from the SC sub, pcgaming and forums are all saying the same - 60fps+ is now common even without super high end machines, and mediocre PC's are reaching 40-60fps, even low end setups can hit 30+.
u/dd179 : GTX 970 and an i5-4590. Back in 3.2 I was hovering between 20-30fps, but after 3.3, holy fucking shit. I'm at a constant 60FPS at 1080p on medium settings and the game looks absolutely beautiful.
*sigh*
Fine, fine, I'll reinstall and risk getting at least a little impressed that the madlads actually pulled this off.
Is it? I thought I remembered reading that it was coming in 3.3.5. Again, shows how little I've actually been paying attention, haha.
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Just_Bri_ThanksSeething with ragefrom a handbasket.Registered User, ClubPAregular
I'm probably wrong. The livestream I was watching has me mixed up.
...and when you are done with that; take a folding
chair to Creation and then suplex the Void.
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Ninja Snarl PMy helmet is my burden.Ninja Snarl: Gone, but not forgotten.Registered Userregular
Just an FYI for anybody looking to try the PTU, it does NOT use the same installer or installed files as the main test environment. You have to go to the RSI website, verify that you have PTU access, duplicate your main account info over to the PTU, then download the PTU installer and install the PTU.
It's not a big deal, unless you sit through the 11 GB install of the main test environment only to find out you need to do another 11 GB install for the PTU. I checked beforehand, but it would definitely add some wait time.
Is it? I thought I remembered reading that it was coming in 3.3.5. Again, shows how little I've actually been paying attention, haha.
It's on the navmap and a selectable destination, but my Cutlass didn't have enough fuel to get there so I'm not sure how you are supposed to. I didn't try to figure it out though.
Performance is night and day different. I used to be happy to hit 25 fps under any circumstances. Today I was regularly holding 60fps in space, 40-50 in stations, and 30-50 on planets (mostly depending on how close to a base I was). Still has occasional stutters though. Sometimes you QT to a planet and none of the locations load (they say <--UNINITIALIZED--> ) and I couldn't fly to them.
That being said the navmap is still trash and probably the biggest obstacle to having fun in the game now.
Just an FYI for anybody looking to try the PTU, it does NOT use the same installer or installed files as the main test environment. You have to go to the RSI website, verify that you have PTU access, duplicate your main account info over to the PTU, then download the PTU installer and install the PTU.
It's not a big deal, unless you sit through the 11 GB install of the main test environment only to find out you need to do another 11 GB install for the PTU. I checked beforehand, but it would definitely add some wait time.
And to further reduce bandwidth waste, you can move the PTU files to the live folder, and patch that with the live launcher when the PTU goes live.
Welp, I'm trying to install the PTU but when I get a prompt to update the launcher it gets stuck in a loop where it goes back to the INSTALL button, I hit that, then it tries to initialize before going back to INSTALL. I tried to hit verify but that isn't working either.
Prolly doesn't help I'm on a slowish network connection right now but has anyone else run into this?
TOGSolid on
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Ninja Snarl PMy helmet is my burden.Ninja Snarl: Gone, but not forgotten.Registered Userregular
Welp, I'm trying to install the PTU but when I get a prompt to update the launcher it gets stuck in a loop where it goes back to the INSTALL button, I hit that, then it tries to initialize before going back to INSTALL. I tried to hit verify but that isn't working either.
Prolly doesn't help I'm on a slowish network connection right now but has anyone else run into this?
I've had the exact same issue, apparently other people on the RSI forums are seeing it as well. Mixed results from uninstalling/reinstalling the launcher, haven't tried myself.
EDIT: Letting the whole thing download in one go (no pauses/interrupts from restarting or suspending the PC) seemed to take care of the issue. HOWEVER, I have a second follow-up warning that the initial 11GB download is followed by a 35GB download, so this is a fairly monster-sized download overall.
EDIT: Did finally get the PTU downloaded and installed (I feel like having it all done in one go without letting the download get paused or interrupted did the trick). The performance isn't flawless, but it is HUGELY improved. Ran into hitches and a fair amount of texture popping, but what used to be a slideshow for me is now in the 30-40 FPS range (albeit on Low settings, which still look great). Doesn't sound like much, but I'm also running on laptop with a 980M card (not even a full desktop card).
16GB of RAM is still needed, but this was a MASSIVE step in the right direction. The multiplayer component feels like it's getting pretty close to something I'd actually play, though it's not quite there yet.
Watching the gameplay footage and I still think that Star Citizen's big trick isn't really the detail so much as the focus on making scale differences and player dependence core features. It lends footage a really dynamic aspect because all the stuff fades in and out of focus mechanically.
Also have they talked about the plans for the inventory system? I'd kinda dig if someone planning to be the medic or engineering specialist couldn't lug around a rifle. Make it so scav teams can't be loaded up like special forces.
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Just_Bri_ThanksSeething with ragefrom a handbasket.Registered User, ClubPAregular
Endurance will be a limiting factor. Carry all you think you can lug around and not get winded on.
...and when you are done with that; take a folding
chair to Creation and then suplex the Void.
They're modeling every square foot of a ship inside the skin and creating an inventory system for cargo where you can actually load and unload containers. Hard to imagine them having characters be Bags of Holding at the same time!
And I'm just here like 'I wanna be a shitty jobber who waits for trains and meticulously picks clean salvage jobs'.
*jots down Albino Bunny as potential crew for salvage ship*
It was that somehow, from within the derelict-horror, they had learned a way to see inside an ugly, broken thing... And take away its pain.
Warframe/Steam: NFyt
+3
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Nova_CI have the needThe need for speedRegistered Userregular
I'd be nice if player inventory was just, like, a long weapon slot (Rifle, shotgun, etc), a sidearm, and, like, your credit cards, and then you can carry something around in your hands (But then you can't use your weapons).
Eliminate the desire to pick up everything you see when you have to run it back to your ship every time.
+1
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Librarian's ghostLibrarian, Ghostbuster, and TimSporkRegistered Userregular
So tried the ptu 3.3 last night.
It runs great! I didn't really feel in control of my ship using mouse+ keyboard, but that could be inexperience.
I picked up a retrieval mission. And after figuring out how the quantum drive works. I was near the planet but still 200km of target. And we'll 200 km of target is farther away than anything you can reach directly with the quantum drive. 200km takes a looooong time.
Eventually I got bored and landed my ship. Got in my bed and couldn't log out, but it did put me back on the space station?
I had some glitches but thats to be expected. My radar did a great impression of the sun and not only my in-game Avatar was blinded, outside of the game my eyes started hurting also.
Yeah, performance is waaaay better. 3.2 was an unplayable <1FPS slideshow for my puny 8MB of RAM, now its kinda sorta almost playable. I can actually fly around and do things! I know I'm going to have to upgrade to play properly, but I can at least look at the game in progress through lag-o-vision. Its weird because its actually silky smooth at times, but there there's sudden huge lag spikes which ruin it, which I guess is when some huge ship with all its textures is being loaded into memory. At one point I went to the menu to try turning the graphics down in the hope of squeezing more performance out of my poor PC, at which point I realized I was already on minimum settings, and it still looks incredible. That was a "holy shit" moment.
Mr Ray on
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daveNYCWhy universe hate Waspinator?Registered Userregular
I'd be nice if player inventory was just, like, a long weapon slot (Rifle, shotgun, etc), a sidearm, and, like, your credit cards, and then you can carry something around in your hands (But then you can't use your weapons).
Eliminate the desire to pick up everything you see when you have to run it back to your ship every time.
The Deus Ex system where you have an inventory grid and whatever you have takes up various amounts of space within that grid wasn't bad. Just put in a fitter button so you don't need to manually rearrange everything so you have enough contiguous space to fit the big stuff.
Shut up, Mr. Burton! You were not brought upon this world to get it!
If anyone is interested in the PTU, they've just implemented a pretty major feature out of the blue; ship purchasing. As in, you can buy ships now. With in-game money. And they gave everyone 5 million credits so that they can test the feature out properly. The only available shipyard is of the "used car salesman" variety so don't expect to be able to purchase a Super Hornet or pretty much anything by Origin, but if you never pledged beyond the basic Aurora and want to try out some fancier ships, now is a great time to hop onto the PTU.
Complete list of available ships and prices:
Anvil Hornet F7C 1.496.000 aUEC
Drake Buccaneer 1.128.700 aUEC
Drake Cutlass Black 1.552.000 aUEC
Drake Dragonfly 74.800 aUEC
Drake Dragonfly Yellowjacket 74.800 aUEC
MISC Prospector 1.620.750 aUEC
RSI Aurora CL 496.700 aUEC
RSI Aurora LX 220.900 aUEC
RSI Aurora LN 367.200 aUEC
The economy is going to need a serious re-balance at some point since currently missions are only giving out only 400-1000 credits each, so that's 496 "Deliver this box" missions in your Aurora before you can afford... a nicer Aurora to deliver boxes in. But for now, free money! And also free insurance; any ships you buy are automatically insured and can be reclaimed for no cost, just as if you'd pledged for it. This will no doubt change when ship insurance becomes a thing you actually have to buy.
Neat. This is the kind of feature I've been waiting for. The first sign of a real game, as far as I'm concerned.
But, are there trade markets for commodities? And is it possible to sell a ship?
I moved Star Citizen to a new SSD over the weekend, and talk about an significant improvement. My load times from 'Launch' to hitting 'H' to stand up went from about 5 minutes to 30 seconds.
Neat. This is the kind of feature I've been waiting for. The first sign of a real game, as far as I'm concerned.
But, are there trade markets for commodities? And is it possible to sell a ship?
You can buy stuff, haul it to another station and sell it, yes, although its still very rudimentary right now. Currently you can only see the sell price of a commodity if you actually have some in your cargo hold, and only at the station you're actually in, so trading profitably usually involves using a 3rd party utility like VerseMate to actually find out what's selling for what and where.
And no, its not possible to sell a ship currently.
We're definitely fast approaching the point where this can be considered an actual game rather than a dicking around in space simulator. Due to my crappy specs I've been staying away from combat missions and have mostly been a space garbage man; the "maintenance" missions currently consist of "Pick up this cargo and get rid of it. Sell it, dump it, we don't care, just make it not be here anymore". In theory "maintenance" will one day include things like "repair these solar panels" or "dig out these rocks" but for now its all garbage pickup.
The first FPS mission is also making an appearance in 3.3 in the form of a "Bandits have taken control of Kareah outpost, go kill them" mission. Again I've not actually attempted it due to potato PC but the FPS AI are supposed to be fairly competent, albeit bad at taking cover and don't seem to work together in any meaningful way.
Apparently the most profitable thing to do right now is mining, although you'll need a ship capable of actually doing that, which will probably be the prospector since you can now buy that with in-game cash. That said, given the free $5 mil and the fact that the PTU is wiped regularly "what is the best way to make money" is largely moot.
If anyone is interested in the PTU, they've just implemented a pretty major feature out of the blue; ship purchasing. As in, you can buy ships now. With in-game money. And they gave everyone 5 million credits so that they can test the feature out properly. The only available shipyard is of the "used car salesman" variety so don't expect to be able to purchase a Super Hornet or pretty much anything by Origin, but if you never pledged beyond the basic Aurora and want to try out some fancier ships, now is a great time to hop onto the PTU.
Complete list of available ships and prices:
Anvil Hornet F7C 1.496.000 aUEC
Drake Buccaneer 1.128.700 aUEC
Drake Cutlass Black 1.552.000 aUEC
Drake Dragonfly 74.800 aUEC
Drake Dragonfly Yellowjacket 74.800 aUEC
MISC Prospector 1.620.750 aUEC
RSI Aurora CL 496.700 aUEC
RSI Aurora LX 220.900 aUEC
RSI Aurora LN 367.200 aUEC
The economy is going to need a serious re-balance at some point since currently missions are only giving out only 400-1000 credits each, so that's 496 "Deliver this box" missions in your Aurora before you can afford... a nicer Aurora to deliver boxes in. But for now, free money! And also free insurance; any ships you buy are automatically insured and can be reclaimed for no cost, just as if you'd pledged for it. This will no doubt change when ship insurance becomes a thing you actually have to buy.
I wouldn't worry too much about it.
iirc they have an actual economist on staff who is helping to design how they want the economy to function but I don't think any of that has been implemented at all at this point. I imagine the economy at this point exists almost solely to test game play mechanics.
+1
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Ninja Snarl PMy helmet is my burden.Ninja Snarl: Gone, but not forgotten.Registered Userregular
If anyone is interested in the PTU, they've just implemented a pretty major feature out of the blue; ship purchasing. As in, you can buy ships now. With in-game money. And they gave everyone 5 million credits so that they can test the feature out properly. The only available shipyard is of the "used car salesman" variety so don't expect to be able to purchase a Super Hornet or pretty much anything by Origin, but if you never pledged beyond the basic Aurora and want to try out some fancier ships, now is a great time to hop onto the PTU.
Complete list of available ships and prices:
Anvil Hornet F7C 1.496.000 aUEC
Drake Buccaneer 1.128.700 aUEC
Drake Cutlass Black 1.552.000 aUEC
Drake Dragonfly 74.800 aUEC
Drake Dragonfly Yellowjacket 74.800 aUEC
MISC Prospector 1.620.750 aUEC
RSI Aurora CL 496.700 aUEC
RSI Aurora LX 220.900 aUEC
RSI Aurora LN 367.200 aUEC
The economy is going to need a serious re-balance at some point since currently missions are only giving out only 400-1000 credits each, so that's 496 "Deliver this box" missions in your Aurora before you can afford... a nicer Aurora to deliver boxes in. But for now, free money! And also free insurance; any ships you buy are automatically insured and can be reclaimed for no cost, just as if you'd pledged for it. This will no doubt change when ship insurance becomes a thing you actually have to buy.
I wouldn't worry too much about it.
iirc they have an actual economist on staff who is helping to design how they want the economy to function but I don't think any of that has been implemented at all at this point. I imagine the economy at this point exists almost solely to test game play mechanics.
Yeah, dumping money on people so they'll use the system is CIG basically just wanting to make sure that there won't be things like "using the buy button with inverted mouse settings while at high presets causes a hard system crash". They just want as many people as possible trying it a bunch to get test info.
Economy balance is just a matter of math and adjusting values on the backend, that stuff is easy to implement and the testing is entirely down to whether or not players are happy with it, not whether or not it crashes systems.
I think the bigger question with cash is speed of acquisition and scale of loss.
Basically whether we’ll have a game where someone whose played a year and a half has no money concerns and how long it takes to get to that point or recover from a meaningful loss.
+1
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Ninja Snarl PMy helmet is my burden.Ninja Snarl: Gone, but not forgotten.Registered Userregular
I think the bigger question with cash is speed of acquisition and scale of loss.
Basically whether we’ll have a game where someone whose played a year and a half has no money concerns and how long it takes to get to that point or recover from a meaningful loss.
It's not a F2P or subscription game, so there's no incentive at all for CIG to make it a pain in the ass to progress or to make "premium" players feel better by being able to purchase all the best gear.
Insurance is going to be a thing and it will cover an entire ship, so that sort of loss should be no big deal.
Where I would expect the "loss" to come from would actually be things like exotic/rare/unique ship components. So nobody can put themselves unplayably in the hole by having their ship explode, but they also can't get insurance to cover those salvaged prototype engine components that you can't even buy anywhere.
It'll take a sure touch, but I'm really hoping they get the balance down well enough that it makes you not want to fail a mission, but not so much that you just never even want to do missions. If anything, earning money should pretty much be the way everybody gets cool experiences out of the game, not the prime goal of the game.
To be clear: I actually want it to be a pain to get rich and stay rich. A game where you move towards the top income bracket and all other gear becomes novelty already exists: Elite
Personally, i want it to be difficult to become super rich, but not a pain.
Ideally, someone really keyed into the systems intricacies, should be able to become mega rich just sitting in a cafe somewhere on Terra and handing out contracts for players and npc's.
I hope there is the option to create a huge business empire, if someone has the skill and time to do it.
And further, i hope that player will hire my tiny hauling company to move their shit (possibly literally, there's lot of money in fertilizers).
I think the bigger question with cash is speed of acquisition and scale of loss.
Basically whether we’ll have a game where someone whose played a year and a half has no money concerns and how long it takes to get to that point or recover from a meaningful loss.
Again, iirc because it's been awhile since I was paying really close attention, but I think the goal was basically "You can buy a ship like a Constellation at least once a month playing the game fairly casually [maybe something like 10-15ish hours a week?]" and the ability to buy in game currency was planned to be limited to a fraction of that each month because they wanted a way for people who could only play a few hours a week to have a way to subsidize their playtime but they explicitly wanted to avoid entering into pay to win territory.
Again this was was years ago though so I have no clue if the plans have changed given the ridiculous amount of money "Free" games have been able to rake in.
Posts
*sigh*
Fine, fine, I'll reinstall and risk getting at least a little impressed that the madlads actually pulled this off.
I will reinstall also. Cautiously optimistic!
Uhhh...good question. Unlike Warframe I don't pay that much attention to SC's development anymore and mostly just follow /r/StarCitizen in case something actually relevant happens and shows up in my feed. I'll have to do some digging and find out.
EDIT: My mistake on the first post. 3.3 is rolling out to all backers on the PTU, not the main branch.
EDIT 2: https://starcitizen.tools/Star_Citizen_Alpha_3.3.0 This has the tl;dr for what's coming in 3.3. I think some new planet is coming after 3.3 drops too.
EDIT 3: And apparently in 3.4 the flight model is finally getting unfucked. https://www.reddit.com/r/starcitizen/comments/9ngn72/
chair to Creation and then suplex the Void.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?reload=9&v=oymAApEbIho
Only thing keeping me from poking around the new stuff was knowing it ran like crap. I guess I'll fire it back up, if I must.
Is it? I thought I remembered reading that it was coming in 3.3.5. Again, shows how little I've actually been paying attention, haha.
chair to Creation and then suplex the Void.
It's not a big deal, unless you sit through the 11 GB install of the main test environment only to find out you need to do another 11 GB install for the PTU. I checked beforehand, but it would definitely add some wait time.
It's on the navmap and a selectable destination, but my Cutlass didn't have enough fuel to get there so I'm not sure how you are supposed to. I didn't try to figure it out though.
Performance is night and day different. I used to be happy to hit 25 fps under any circumstances. Today I was regularly holding 60fps in space, 40-50 in stations, and 30-50 on planets (mostly depending on how close to a base I was). Still has occasional stutters though. Sometimes you QT to a planet and none of the locations load (they say <--UNINITIALIZED--> ) and I couldn't fly to them.
That being said the navmap is still trash and probably the biggest obstacle to having fun in the game now.
And to further reduce bandwidth waste, you can move the PTU files to the live folder, and patch that with the live launcher when the PTU goes live.
Prolly doesn't help I'm on a slowish network connection right now but has anyone else run into this?
I've had the exact same issue, apparently other people on the RSI forums are seeing it as well. Mixed results from uninstalling/reinstalling the launcher, haven't tried myself.
EDIT: Letting the whole thing download in one go (no pauses/interrupts from restarting or suspending the PC) seemed to take care of the issue. HOWEVER, I have a second follow-up warning that the initial 11GB download is followed by a 35GB download, so this is a fairly monster-sized download overall.
EDIT: Did finally get the PTU downloaded and installed (I feel like having it all done in one go without letting the download get paused or interrupted did the trick). The performance isn't flawless, but it is HUGELY improved. Ran into hitches and a fair amount of texture popping, but what used to be a slideshow for me is now in the 30-40 FPS range (albeit on Low settings, which still look great). Doesn't sound like much, but I'm also running on laptop with a 980M card (not even a full desktop card).
16GB of RAM is still needed, but this was a MASSIVE step in the right direction. The multiplayer component feels like it's getting pretty close to something I'd actually play, though it's not quite there yet.
Also have they talked about the plans for the inventory system? I'd kinda dig if someone planning to be the medic or engineering specialist couldn't lug around a rifle. Make it so scav teams can't be loaded up like special forces.
chair to Creation and then suplex the Void.
Inquisitor77: Rius, you are Sisyphus and melee Wizard is your boulder
Tube: This must be what it felt like to be an Iraqi when Saddam was killed
Bookish Stickers - Mrs. Rius' Etsy shop with bumper stickers and vinyl decals.
And I'm just here like 'I wanna be a shitty jobber who waits for trains and meticulously picks clean salvage jobs'.
*jots down Albino Bunny as potential crew for salvage ship*
Warframe/Steam: NFyt
Eliminate the desire to pick up everything you see when you have to run it back to your ship every time.
Like I’ve said before. I will do any boring jobs anyone needed on their ships.
I've got a couple ships that could use an all-rounder power grid engineer, turret jockey, repair tech, medic!
It runs great! I didn't really feel in control of my ship using mouse+ keyboard, but that could be inexperience.
I picked up a retrieval mission. And after figuring out how the quantum drive works. I was near the planet but still 200km of target. And we'll 200 km of target is farther away than anything you can reach directly with the quantum drive. 200km takes a looooong time.
Eventually I got bored and landed my ship. Got in my bed and couldn't log out, but it did put me back on the space station?
I had some glitches but thats to be expected. My radar did a great impression of the sun and not only my in-game Avatar was blinded, outside of the game my eyes started hurting also.
The Deus Ex system where you have an inventory grid and whatever you have takes up various amounts of space within that grid wasn't bad. Just put in a fitter button so you don't need to manually rearrange everything so you have enough contiguous space to fit the big stuff.
There's going to be a lot of spacemen pulling silly faces until the novelty of this wears off.
Complete list of available ships and prices:
The economy is going to need a serious re-balance at some point since currently missions are only giving out only 400-1000 credits each, so that's 496 "Deliver this box" missions in your Aurora before you can afford... a nicer Aurora to deliver boxes in. But for now, free money! And also free insurance; any ships you buy are automatically insured and can be reclaimed for no cost, just as if you'd pledged for it. This will no doubt change when ship insurance becomes a thing you actually have to buy.
But, are there trade markets for commodities? And is it possible to sell a ship?
You can buy stuff, haul it to another station and sell it, yes, although its still very rudimentary right now. Currently you can only see the sell price of a commodity if you actually have some in your cargo hold, and only at the station you're actually in, so trading profitably usually involves using a 3rd party utility like VerseMate to actually find out what's selling for what and where.
And no, its not possible to sell a ship currently.
We're definitely fast approaching the point where this can be considered an actual game rather than a dicking around in space simulator. Due to my crappy specs I've been staying away from combat missions and have mostly been a space garbage man; the "maintenance" missions currently consist of "Pick up this cargo and get rid of it. Sell it, dump it, we don't care, just make it not be here anymore". In theory "maintenance" will one day include things like "repair these solar panels" or "dig out these rocks" but for now its all garbage pickup.
The first FPS mission is also making an appearance in 3.3 in the form of a "Bandits have taken control of Kareah outpost, go kill them" mission. Again I've not actually attempted it due to potato PC but the FPS AI are supposed to be fairly competent, albeit bad at taking cover and don't seem to work together in any meaningful way.
Apparently the most profitable thing to do right now is mining, although you'll need a ship capable of actually doing that, which will probably be the prospector since you can now buy that with in-game cash. That said, given the free $5 mil and the fact that the PTU is wiped regularly "what is the best way to make money" is largely moot.
I wouldn't worry too much about it.
iirc they have an actual economist on staff who is helping to design how they want the economy to function but I don't think any of that has been implemented at all at this point. I imagine the economy at this point exists almost solely to test game play mechanics.
Yeah, dumping money on people so they'll use the system is CIG basically just wanting to make sure that there won't be things like "using the buy button with inverted mouse settings while at high presets causes a hard system crash". They just want as many people as possible trying it a bunch to get test info.
Economy balance is just a matter of math and adjusting values on the backend, that stuff is easy to implement and the testing is entirely down to whether or not players are happy with it, not whether or not it crashes systems.
Basically whether we’ll have a game where someone whose played a year and a half has no money concerns and how long it takes to get to that point or recover from a meaningful loss.
It's not a F2P or subscription game, so there's no incentive at all for CIG to make it a pain in the ass to progress or to make "premium" players feel better by being able to purchase all the best gear.
Insurance is going to be a thing and it will cover an entire ship, so that sort of loss should be no big deal.
Where I would expect the "loss" to come from would actually be things like exotic/rare/unique ship components. So nobody can put themselves unplayably in the hole by having their ship explode, but they also can't get insurance to cover those salvaged prototype engine components that you can't even buy anywhere.
It'll take a sure touch, but I'm really hoping they get the balance down well enough that it makes you not want to fail a mission, but not so much that you just never even want to do missions. If anything, earning money should pretty much be the way everybody gets cool experiences out of the game, not the prime goal of the game.
Ideally, someone really keyed into the systems intricacies, should be able to become mega rich just sitting in a cafe somewhere on Terra and handing out contracts for players and npc's.
I hope there is the option to create a huge business empire, if someone has the skill and time to do it.
And further, i hope that player will hire my tiny hauling company to move their shit (possibly literally, there's lot of money in fertilizers).
Again, iirc because it's been awhile since I was paying really close attention, but I think the goal was basically "You can buy a ship like a Constellation at least once a month playing the game fairly casually [maybe something like 10-15ish hours a week?]" and the ability to buy in game currency was planned to be limited to a fraction of that each month because they wanted a way for people who could only play a few hours a week to have a way to subsidize their playtime but they explicitly wanted to avoid entering into pay to win territory.
Again this was was years ago though so I have no clue if the plans have changed given the ridiculous amount of money "Free" games have been able to rake in.