Tried dogfighting for the first time in a couple of patches last night and oh god, everything has changed, how do I do... anything anymore? I've apparently got loaner Arrow so I took that out for a "very easy" bounty and while the Gladius I fought certainly couldn't aim for shit, I also couldn't really land any shots on him with any sort of consistency, either with the mouse or joystick. It took forever to actually kill the thing, I suspect I'm doing something terribly wrong but I have no idea what.
Tried dogfighting for the first time in a couple of patches last night and oh god, everything has changed, how do I do... anything anymore? I've apparently got loaner Arrow so I took that out for a "very easy" bounty and while the Gladius I fought certainly couldn't aim for shit, I also couldn't really land any shots on him with any sort of consistency, either with the mouse or joystick. It took forever to actually kill the thing, I suspect I'm doing something terribly wrong but I have no idea what.
Flight control issues, or putting rounds on target issues?
If the latter:
Did you try setting gimbals to AUTO? ("G" until you see a dotted ring around the crosshair)
Or try playing with the PIP lead/lag setting and target head-tracking options? I remember those being set to some unworkable combination when I came back after a few patches.
Auto gimbal did the trick, I have unlocked the secret of life and death! I'll have to try out fixed weapons too, since it looks like the Arrow is all gimballed. I've heard that they're no longer completely useless but I'm not clear what exactly has changed to make that the case.
The hardest difficulty I've had with space combat is that the enemy spaceships seem to move in directions and maneuvers that defy the laws of physics. Doing things like what I can only describe as starship cartwheels, where they are tumbling end over end, and doing all sorts of wacky stuff. I'm sure it's just lag and/or server sync issues. But it makes combat really tough when enemies fly in ways which are literally impossible for a vessel to move.
Auto gimbal did the trick, I have unlocked the secret of life and death! I'll have to try out fixed weapons too, since it looks like the Arrow is all gimballed. I've heard that they're no longer completely useless but I'm not clear what exactly has changed to make that the case.
They quietly give you a couple degrees of aim assist now. It's quite workable!
The hardest difficulty I've had with space combat is that the enemy spaceships seem to move in directions and maneuvers that defy the laws of physics. Doing things like what I can only describe as starship cartwheels, where they are tumbling end over end, and doing all sorts of wacky stuff. I'm sure it's just lag and/or server sync issues. But it makes combat really tough when enemies fly in ways which are literally impossible for a vessel to move.
Yeah it's just the latency when they're in your face making rapid course corrections. That, or AI Buccaneers have some kind of field that induces space-madness inside of 1km.
In either case, engage at long range whenever possible.
I just don't understand why that's a thing you wouldn't want on by default... looking at the UI there are three modes, "Lock" (fixed forward, presumably), "Targ" (???) and "Auto" which is the "actually be able to hit things" setting. I have no idea what "Targ" is or why you would want it, but that's what it defaults to.
Did enough bounty missions last night to afford myself a ROC to put in the back of my Freelancer, so I might give that a try tonight. Anything special I need to know about ROC mining? IIRC the ROC minables don't use any of the new "refining" mechanics, right? They're just gems that you haul to the nearest mining outpost and sell?
ROC mining currently only has 2 mineable gems: hadanite and dolovine. That's it. Don't waste your time with dolovine, it sells for crap and it's actually more difficult to mine than the hadanite is.
The biggest advice I can give you regarding the ROC is to take your time and go slow. Don't flip the ROC. If it gets suck on its side or back, you're screwed, your mining operation is over, and you might also lose most of the cargo. So as you're driving around, be careful, don't hit rocks, don't make big jumps, and really, try to play it safe. Keeping your ROC upright is the most important thing.
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NEO|PhyteThey follow the stars, bound together.Strands in a braid till the end.Registered Userregular
I feel like i once managed to right a ROC with clever maneuvering of the mining arm, but I don't recall for certain if the other guy's attempts to nudge with the cutlass we were hauling it in made any difference.
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
I just don't understand why that's a thing you wouldn't want on by default... looking at the UI there are three modes, "Lock" (fixed forward, presumably), "Targ" (???) and "Auto" which is the "actually be able to hit things" setting. I have no idea what "Targ" is or why you would want it, but that's what it defaults to.
Did enough bounty missions last night to afford myself a ROC to put in the back of my Freelancer, so I might give that a try tonight. Anything special I need to know about ROC mining? IIRC the ROC minables don't use any of the new "refining" mechanics, right? They're just gems that you haul to the nearest mining outpost and sell?
I find the hardest part is actually finding hadanite to mine with it. The scanner picks up any mineable rocks, even though you need a prospector or mole to get most of them.
On the subject of scanning, can someone explain in detail how scanning actually works?
There seems to be 2 controls, and I'm not sure how one relates to the other. The power of the burst seems to be controlled by how long you hold down right click. And I think I understand that. But the part I don't understand is the magnification on the mouse-wheel. Depending on the ship I'm in, I can mouse-wheel between 32x to 16x all the way to 4x. There might even be a 2x. But what exactly does that do? What do the different magnification options do and how does that differ from power?
Let's say I'm in a Cutlass Red, which I think has the best scanners currently (?), and I'm flying around with a ROC in the back of my ship for Hadanite mining, what power bursts do I want to use for best results finding hadanite nodes, and what do I want to set the mouse-wheel magnification setting to?
In general, radar range/sensitivity are controlled by ship (therefore component) size. This probably also applies to the active scanner mode.
By default, your scanner Pings go out in 360⁰ up to something like 9k-12k at a full charge.
The zoom level will narrow it and extend it's range, in theory
In practice, I think there's a hard limit on how far you can detect an object at something like 15k, because nothing outside that range exists on the client until it has been discovered. I'm basing that on how radar contacts work, and assuming mineable entities follow the same rules. Once initially detected, they can be tracked beyond 15k, but not before.
Let's say I'm in a Cutlass Red, which I think has the best scanners currently (?), and I'm flying around with a ROC in the back of my ship for Hadanite mining, what power bursts do I want to use for best results finding hadanite nodes, and what do I want to set the mouse-wheel magnification setting to?
I'd click the zoom up once, which I think constrains it to 180⁰ fwd (I think twice constrains it the onscreen ring?), then pick a direction, fly at full SCM speed, and start zig zagging 45⁰ after each full charge pulse until you find something.
There's, sadly, no way to know whether the deposits are Hadanite until you get up on them. But when you find some, I recommend landing pointed in the direction you were heading because it's easy to get turned around and wind up heading back through the region you'd already cleared.
Well that was an unexpectedly interesting session. I only meant to log on for an hour or so to test out the ROC and ended up hunting the white whale.
Started out flying to Arial in my Freelancer to do some ROC mining. As it turns out, the player status system is a harsh mistress. Arial is ridiculously hot, and the ROC has an open cabin. The suit I was wearing is rated for 100C, but unfortunately Arial is about 200C. The HUD let me know that I would be able to survive for about 12 minutes. No problem, right? After all, I can just duck into my nice climate-controlled ship to cool down periodically. I was lucky enough to find four nice Hadanite rocks pretty much right away, and got to work. After the second rock my life expectancy was down to 4 minutes, so I ducked inside for a bit to cool off. What I realised was that the game keeps track of your internal body temperature vs outside temperature and that, realistically enough, it takes a while to equalize vs the ambient temperature. So ducking back inside wasn't going to be an instant fix, but I did at least let my body temperature cool down to 39. Fun fact; Did you know that a normal human body temperature is about 36-37 degrees, and 40 is severely hyperthermic? I didn't! So I was already overheating when I went back out to grab the last two rocks. I did so without much hassle, besides the last once exploding and scattering its contents across a wide area, and got back into the ship with 2 minutes of estimated survival time left.
At this point my body temperature is at 39.9, but more worryingly my hydration is at 15%. Normally nutrition and hydration are something you have to worry about once every couple of hours, but I guess if you've just spent 15 minutes on the surface of basically Venus and you're borderline hyperthermic, it goes down a little quicker. A lot quicker as it turned out. In fact as I watched in horror, my hydration was going down by 1% every couple of seconds. This was a problem, because I hadn't brought any water with me. I had just enough time to panic, accidentally hit F and get into my bunk, get back out of my bunk, run into the cockpit and sit in the pilot's seat before I died of dehydration.
So what have we learned today? If you're going somewhere hot... bring water. Ideally I should have also brought better armor, but I probably could have survived long enough to get my body temperature back down by chugging water.
Not being able to actually afford the high-temperature armor, I decided to do some bounties to earn some cash, since they seem to be ridiculously lucrative right now. After a few NPC bounties, I saw a mission pop up for some sort of "advanced" bounty hunter certification and took it... not realising that this is the one that sends you after players. Oh well, worst that can happen is I embarrass myself and die, right? Guy is 500km off of the nearest thing I can QT to, so I start slowboating out to him. While I'm waiting, I see a guy in chat mention that he has the "Destroy the captured Idris" mission, and asking if anybody wants to join him. Fuck yes I do. Oh look, its the guy whose bounty I'm supposed to be hunting. I maybe won't mention that part to him.
So I warp to the beacon and there he is... Maltrox Arlington, the closest thing Star Citizen has to a final boss right now, flying an actual goddamn Idris. And for a brief, shining moment, I saw the game as it exists in Chris Robert's head. Everything just worked. I've seen clips of people fighting the Idris on YouTube and Twitch but they don't really do the thing justice. Its big, its bad, and it does not fuck around. There were six of us trying to fight it, and it seemed to prioritise targets pretty well, one guy tried to hit it with torpedos but it shot them all down and the guy had to QT off to reload. I was able to dodge most of its shots even in a Freelancer, but the ones that landed hurt. I got behind it and unloaded all of my missiles, and it was a real "oh shit" moment when it started slowly rotating that big-ass railgun toward me. Someone in a Constellation was subsequently killed by said railgun in a single shot. I died because I stopped dodging for a minute to check my ammo count and the turrets tore me apart. Sadly the server crashed before we could actually finish the thing, but I made some new space friends at least.
On the subject of scanning, can someone explain in detail how scanning actually works?
There seems to be 2 controls, and I'm not sure how one relates to the other. The power of the burst seems to be controlled by how long you hold down right click. And I think I understand that. But the part I don't understand is the magnification on the mouse-wheel. Depending on the ship I'm in, I can mouse-wheel between 32x to 16x all the way to 4x. There might even be a 2x. But what exactly does that do? What do the different magnification options do and how does that differ from power?
Let's say I'm in a Cutlass Red, which I think has the best scanners currently (?), and I'm flying around with a ROC in the back of my ship for Hadanite mining, what power bursts do I want to use for best results finding hadanite nodes, and what do I want to set the mouse-wheel magnification setting to?
If you pay attention to the UI, there's a white ring that gets narrower as you adjust the settings; that's the area you're scanning. I think by default you're scanning a full 180 degrees in front of you, if you adjust it then it becomes an increasingly smaller cone. I believe the range is the same regardless, what you're getting at higher magnifications is more accuracy, i.e, the box that appears to indicate where the thing you're looking for is will be smaller.
If you’re gonna be rock mining on Arial or Aberdeen, you should invest in the Pembroke armor suit, which is sold at Tammany and Sons on Hurston. That suit is rated up to like 232 deg or somewhere in that neighborhood. There’s also a cold set of armor called Novikov. I forget where it’s sold.
Basically, space-racists are invading and you have to help the UEE in a multi-part mission, first clearing out a Starfarer wreck, then moving the supplies therin to a UEE base where a Javelin is resupplying. During all this the Javelin will be periodically attacked. If you deliver all of the required supplies before the Javelin takes too much damage it will help you in phase 3, which is a full scale assault by the bad guys with multiple Idrises. Expect griefers to try and fuck everything up because "Muh PVP" or "I'm roleplaying as a bad guy"; an organized group is probably recommended. I'm in the Aus TZ and I've got shit to do this weekend, but I'd be happy to try this out with you guys if the stars and our timezones align.
I'll be around this weekend and definitely want to give the event a try. I'll try to be on Discord in case other people are around. Feel free to hit me up for Xenothreat action. Maybe we can take that Hammerhead out again and wreck some foolz.
The hardest difficulty I've had with space combat is that the enemy spaceships seem to move in directions and maneuvers that defy the laws of physics. Doing things like what I can only describe as starship cartwheels, where they are tumbling end over end, and doing all sorts of wacky stuff. I'm sure it's just lag and/or server sync issues. But it makes combat really tough when enemies fly in ways which are literally impossible for a vessel to move.
The hardest difficulty I've had with space combat is that the enemy spaceships seem to move in directions and maneuvers that defy the laws of physics. Doing things like what I can only describe as starship cartwheels, where they are tumbling end over end, and doing all sorts of wacky stuff. I'm sure it's just lag and/or server sync issues. But it makes combat really tough when enemies fly in ways which are literally impossible for a vessel to move.
Would you say they were doing a barrel roll?
Definitely not! I've played enough Star Fox 64 in my day to say I'm something of a barrel roll expert, and the maneuvers they were pulling were definitely not that.
The hardest difficulty I've had with space combat is that the enemy spaceships seem to move in directions and maneuvers that defy the laws of physics. Doing things like what I can only describe as starship cartwheels, where they are tumbling end over end, and doing all sorts of wacky stuff. I'm sure it's just lag and/or server sync issues. But it makes combat really tough when enemies fly in ways which are literally impossible for a vessel to move.
Would you say they were doing a barrel roll?
Definitely not! I've played enough Star Fox 64 in my day to say I'm something of a barrel roll expert, and the maneuvers they were pulling were definitely not that.
From what I've seen while bounty hunting, it's the enemy ships reacting to the impacts from your weapon fire.
Also, be careful with piloting a Hammerhead against the Idris. Be mindful to not forget that it has a big, fuck-off sized fixed railgun under the nose that will ruin your day.
| Origin/R*SC: Ein7919 | Battle.net: Erlkonig#1448 | XBL: Lexicanum | Steam: Der Erlkönig (the umlaut is important) |
The hardest difficulty I've had with space combat is that the enemy spaceships seem to move in directions and maneuvers that defy the laws of physics. Doing things like what I can only describe as starship cartwheels, where they are tumbling end over end, and doing all sorts of wacky stuff. I'm sure it's just lag and/or server sync issues. But it makes combat really tough when enemies fly in ways which are literally impossible for a vessel to move.
Would you say they were doing a barrel roll?
Definitely not! I've played enough Star Fox 64 in my day to say I'm something of a barrel roll expert, and the maneuvers they were pulling were definitely not that.
Acshtually, the maneuver that is performed in Starfox isn't a Barrel Roll, it's an Aileron Roll.
I have contacted Nintendo about this numerous times, but so far they have not responded to any of my emails.
A patch or two ago I made a new character and he looked like a young Ray Liotta whose (due to the occasional goofiness with the character faces) facial expression indicated he had just caught a whiff of someone's aerosol turd.
Gave Xenothreat a try. It seems as though the major flaw with this event is that "pirates" (read: griefers) can derail the whole event very easily. We had two such shitheads on the server I was on, and I immediately made it my mission to kill them, even if I had to suicide my ships into them repeatedly. I grabbed the bounty for one of them and engaged, but my Arrow was no match for his "Battle Connie", but someone else managed to take him out shortly afterwards. I like to think I softened him up for him at least, I certainly put a lot of shots on target and learned a lot about engaging big ships with a smaller, faster one but all it had to do was successfully sneeze in my direction once or twice and it was over. The prison system does seem to be doing its job though; after being taken out the guy immediately logged out rather than stay logged in to try and reduce his sentence, which must have been lengthy given the number of people he'd killed.
So with that out of the way, I got to engage with the mission proper. As I described above there are basically two components, protecting the docked Javelin from periodic waves of Xenothreat including an Idris which will wreck the Javelin very quickly with its railgun if you don't give it something else to think about, and moving supplies from a Starfarer wreck site to Jericho station (while also dealing with periodic waves of Xenothreat). This is where my machine let me down; the wreck site is in one of those fancy new gas clouds, and that combined with all the ships it had to render what with half of the server all being in the same spot, it was a lag-fest. The server itself seemed to be fine, but my 3rd generation Intel processor, even overclocked, was really not up to the task. We subsequently failed the mission when we didn't respond to an Idris attack in time (because we were all at the wreck site loading boxes into somebody's Carrack), and the Javelin had to run away.
I guess on the bright side, the actual event seems to be working nicely for the most part, griefers aside, and I've been waiting until Star Citizen is in a more playable state to justify my hardware upgrade, and this is probably going to be the catalyst for that.
Gave Xenothreat a try. It seems as though the major flaw with this event is that "pirates" (read: griefers) can derail the whole event very easily. We had two such shitheads on the server I was on, and I immediately made it my mission to kill them, even if I had to suicide my ships into them repeatedly. I grabbed the bounty for one of them and engaged, but my Arrow was no match for his "Battle Connie", but someone else managed to take him out shortly afterwards. I like to think I softened him up for him at least, I certainly put a lot of shots on target and learned a lot about engaging big ships with a smaller, faster one but all it had to do was successfully sneeze in my direction once or twice and it was over. The prison system does seem to be doing its job though; after being taken out the guy immediately logged out rather than stay logged in to try and reduce his sentence, which must have been lengthy given the number of people he'd killed.
I guess on the bright side, the actual event seems to be working nicely for the most part, griefers aside, and I've been waiting until Star Citizen is in a more playable state to justify my hardware upgrade, and this is probably going to be the catalyst for that.
It sounds like the prison system is working as intended then. That's kinda cool to hear.
I myself am a total PVEer and have little to no interest, whatsoever, in engaging in PVP in that game. That's not to say I won't defend myself, and that's not to say I won't occasionally take up a bounty against a fellow player, if only to send them to prison.
But! I do understand the plight of the PVPer. There are people who legitimately enjoy the challenge of fighting against another human, and I can respect that even if that's not for me. And for those people who want to participate in legitimate PVP, they need something that brings people together in order to do so. Unfortunately, the Xenothreat mission is just that sort of catalyst for bringing people together for engaging PVP. Yes, I imagine there are a few people who are griefing just because they get some sort of sick pleasure from disrupting other people's gameplay. But I also think there's a significant portion of the playerbase who are just hungry for real engagement opportunities against other players in big fleet battles.
This is one of the problems with early access and layering the game together in bite sized pieces. They just added an event to the game that is clearly a PVE event. But there was no reciprocal PVP event added at the same time. So now the PVPers have to find ways to draw other players into PVP engagements.
It's kind of a lose/lose situation for everybody.
I am absolutely 100% in the camp that feels Star Citizen should be one single server where everyone can play, as they like. There should be room for the PVPers and PVEers alike, and ample content for all. But until the Pyro system (and other lawless systems) are added, until piracy has some actual gameplay loops added into the game that support that playstyle, until the game provides scenarios that draw people together for the explicit purpose of engaging in PVP, the PVPers are always going to be showing up to PVE events. And I don't necessarily fault them for that.
We did the thing! I guess people have had enough practice to have this down at this point, because I logged in today and with a group of complete randoms we smashed Xenothreat in no time at all. My ship came back... a little crispy.
The game keeps locking up for me a few minutes after spawning on Microtech (while I am running around trying to shop for new threads). I haven't had time to do any non-user folder troubleshooting, but I am going to give it a shot later on tonight.
The game keeps locking up for me a few minutes after spawning on Microtech (while I am running around trying to shop for new threads). I haven't had time to do any non-user folder troubleshooting, but I am going to give it a shot later on tonight.
I have the same issue, haven't been able to resolve it even with some suggestions from a support ticket to CIG, and I've resigned myself to just never going to Microtech. It seems to only happen when there's weather but unfortunately there's no weather effects slider.
I completed the phase 2 Xenothreat mission last night myself. For being a cargo hauling mission it was surprisingly fun.
I showed up in my Cutlass Red, with the intent of solo carrying some boxes, plus helping with the FPS clearing of the wreck sites. But when I got to the wrecks, I discovered that people have already figured out how to monopolize access and min/max the cargo hauling. The first wreck site had a Carrack parked so close to the wreck that I had to park down and away. They had a couple people with multitools and tractor beams just basically slinging boxes into the back of the carrack. It didn't leave much room (or need) for anyone else. Plus, access was bad. I had to space walk in, grab a single box, and then space walk back to my ship. Why bother doing that when another crew can do the whole thing in a matter of minutes?
Anyway, I showed up to the next wreck site, and the exact same thing happened, only this time it was a Freelancer. The guy had his ship basically pulled right up to the opening and was solo slinging boxes into his ship with a multitool.
However, at the second wreck site, a bunch of Xenothreat showed up in fighters. I ended up just flying around and running protection in my Cutty Red, and that was a lot of fun. Probably more fun than cargo hauling. So I did end up having a great time with the event, I just wish it was maybe designed a little better so that one solo person (or one crew) can't monopolize the entire operation.
If there's only one wreck site, it seems appropriate that a single crew could handle it.
Maybe they could have the wreck strewn over a few miles, so there's large deposits for multicrews, and smaller deposits for privateers/small-time scavengers?
Seems like something that would be applicable to salvage gameplay later on.
@TychoCelchuuu FYI just in case you wanted to add that to the thread title to draw in new players to join our space cult group of friendly space adventurers.
We're onto phase 3 now, incidentally, which is basically just a big capital ship fight between the players + UEE Javelin and waves of Xenothreat including Idrises. I've not logged in to try it yet but people are saying its a lot simpler and shorter, and can be over in as little as 10 minutes with a competent team.
I'm excited to see what they do with the dynamic mission system moving forward; there was a "Calling all Devs" video on it last week (spoilered in case you don't want to watch an hour-long video) and it sounds like they've now opened up a lot of variables to the mission designers that they didn't have before, allowing them to do things like switching missions on and off, apply multipliers to the values of commodities and mission rewards e.t.c based on rules that they can set up, and then either switch on or off manually or trigger based on in-game activity. They talked about the "Nine Tails Lockdown" event which will probably be next, where pirates take over a certain area of space, spawning pirate ships and driving up the prices of any goods in the area, but also increasing the sell price of any goods that do get delivered. Then players would have the option of fighting the pirates, helping them to keep the blockade going, or just exploiting the chaos to make a quick buck (hello hi, this is me). Will be interested to see how this "blockade" works in practice and how easy it is to circumvent, but Xenothreat did have Mantises that would Quantum interdict haulers trying to deliver goods to Jericho, so clearly some of that behavior is already working.
It also lets them do more subtle things, like they talked about the demand for alcohol and drugs going up during fleet week since everyone is out partying. Looking forward to seeing what the mission team comes up with, now maybe we'll at least get a custom mission like Xenothreat every couple of months instead of 4 patches a year and that's it.
CIG has a sale going on right now on the Hornet Heartseeker for Valentines. They're also doing a warbond upgrade option. My question is twofold and I'm just looking for general advice and thoughts on the matter.
1) In practical terms, what's the difference between the Super Hornet and the Hornet Heartseeker? I can obviously read what the official website says on the ship matrix, but in terms of how they play, fly, and fight in game I'm looking for input. Is one better than another for bounty hunting missions? Is one better for the current Xenothreat mission?
2) I'm considering doing the warbond upgrade and putting the value of my Mustang Alpha towards the Heartseeker if that's a reasonable idea. I really did not like my Mustang Alpha when I was a fresh new player with no game experience, and I think it's a pretty horrible ship to learn the game in. It left a sour taste in my mouth and I honestly don't know if I would ever use it again in-game, unless I absolutely had to. So it's mostly just dead weight in my hangar. Really, the only reason I can think of why it would be a good idea to hang on to that ship is because the reclaim time on it is only like 1:30 which is super short.
Pretty sure the Heartseeker is just a Super Hornet with a unique skin, no functional difference.
And yeah with how the Star Citizen has evolved and changed over time, I'm of the opinion that the game's "original" starters, the Aurora and Mustang, really aren't viable anymore as anything other than fun little sightseeing ships. I'd call the Reliant Kore and Avenger the true starting ship options. If you want to CCU to something like a Hornet, just keep in mind that it's a pure combat vessel. I do think it's a good idea to at least have a "daily driver" ship (Avenger, Nomad, and Cutlass are good options) that can do every mission type out there.
The Reliant and Avenger are fairly cheap to buy I game though, especially with the Xenothreat event going on to make some decent money fairly quickly. My recommendation on what to own with money is to only go for something that you really, really want to keep no matter what.
Pretty sure the Heartseeker is just a Super Hornet with a unique skin, no functional difference.
And yeah with how the Star Citizen has evolved and changed over time, I'm of the opinion that the game's "original" starters, the Aurora and Mustang, really aren't viable anymore as anything other than fun little sightseeing ships. I'd call the Reliant Kore and Avenger the true starting ship options. If you want to CCU to something like a Hornet, just keep in mind that it's a pure combat vessel. I do think it's a good idea to at least have a "daily driver" ship (Avenger, Nomad, and Cutlass are good options) that can do every mission type out there.
The Reliant and Avenger are fairly cheap to buy I game though, especially with the Xenothreat event going on to make some decent money fairly quickly. My recommendation on what to own with money is to only go for something that you really, really want to keep no matter what.
So a bit more info then:
Ships I own with real money:
Mustang Alpha
Cutlass Red
Mercury Star Runner
Ships I have bought with aUEC:
Anvil Pisces
125c
Cutlass Black
That means right now I've got 6 ships available to me in game. I can use the Pisces as my short range errand running ship, and it has a quick respawn timer of 2:45. And in the event of a server wipe, which is inevitable at some point, it would not be hard to earn back the Pisces again.
Additionally, the Mustang beta is super cheap in game, as are most of the Mustang variants, so if I ever decide I want to own a Mustang again in the future, it wouldn't be a huge investment to just buy one for aUEC.
Anyway, I think I might have just solved my own question. I'll probably put that $30 cash towards the Heartseeker just because I don't see much point in owning a Mustang anymore, especially since I have enough game knowledge now that I can easily replace one if I ever need to.
And yeah, as a side note, if I were ever going to recommend a starter bundle to a friend to get them into the game, I would absolutely tell them to buy the Avenger bundle for $60 rather than a Mustang or Aurora bundle.
A lot of things can change the calculus, be they new gameplay features or economic rebalancing, but, at the moment, the Aurora is just not a practical starter vehicle when you look at it as a career ceiling instead of merely a vehicle.
The Avenger/Reliant class starts around 750k, and I have no idea how you earn that with an Aurora before you go crazy. Its a borderline poverty trap but for the fact we don't have to pay hangar fees and such. If do we ever have to start paying for lodging, its saving grace will be the fact it has a bed.
It's the "500 aUEC OBO" beater a teenager gets as their first spaceship. It should be the loaner you get while your insurance claim processes.
Xenothreat ended fairly unceremoniously and also fairly unexpectedly yesterday.
Phase 3 of the event only lasted about 2 days. I feel sorry for people who work weekends or were otherwise occupied and unable to participate. It was a fun event. For many of us, it was the first time we got to see big fleet battles in game.
Going forward, CIG needs to much better communicate the start/end times for each phase of the event, and also events should not last 2 days. That seems like a horrendous waste of resources to spend countless months of time developing it, testing it on the PTU, and then only allowing it to run for 2 days and then never again.
I am definitely not a fan of one-and-done events. It just seems so inefficient. I'm not advocating for seasonal events, or events that rotate frequently. But I also don't think they should be saying "never again." Not when it clearly takes so much effort to make these. Maybe in a couple years time they could roll the event back out again. I'd be ok with that and my immersion would definitely not be broken because the Xenothreat are attacking the IMS Jericho again. I'd prefer it.
This event was fun. And it's a damn shame it was over with so quickly. And without any notice.
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Flight control issues, or putting rounds on target issues?
If the latter:
Did you try setting gimbals to AUTO? ("G" until you see a dotted ring around the crosshair)
Or try playing with the PIP lead/lag setting and target head-tracking options? I remember those being set to some unworkable combination when I came back after a few patches.
They quietly give you a couple degrees of aim assist now. It's quite workable! Yeah it's just the latency when they're in your face making rapid course corrections. That, or AI Buccaneers have some kind of field that induces space-madness inside of 1km.
In either case, engage at long range whenever possible.
Did enough bounty missions last night to afford myself a ROC to put in the back of my Freelancer, so I might give that a try tonight. Anything special I need to know about ROC mining? IIRC the ROC minables don't use any of the new "refining" mechanics, right? They're just gems that you haul to the nearest mining outpost and sell?
The biggest advice I can give you regarding the ROC is to take your time and go slow. Don't flip the ROC. If it gets suck on its side or back, you're screwed, your mining operation is over, and you might also lose most of the cargo. So as you're driving around, be careful, don't hit rocks, don't make big jumps, and really, try to play it safe. Keeping your ROC upright is the most important thing.
Warframe/Steam: NFyt
I find the hardest part is actually finding hadanite to mine with it. The scanner picks up any mineable rocks, even though you need a prospector or mole to get most of them.
There seems to be 2 controls, and I'm not sure how one relates to the other. The power of the burst seems to be controlled by how long you hold down right click. And I think I understand that. But the part I don't understand is the magnification on the mouse-wheel. Depending on the ship I'm in, I can mouse-wheel between 32x to 16x all the way to 4x. There might even be a 2x. But what exactly does that do? What do the different magnification options do and how does that differ from power?
Let's say I'm in a Cutlass Red, which I think has the best scanners currently (?), and I'm flying around with a ROC in the back of my ship for Hadanite mining, what power bursts do I want to use for best results finding hadanite nodes, and what do I want to set the mouse-wheel magnification setting to?
By default, your scanner Pings go out in 360⁰ up to something like 9k-12k at a full charge.
The zoom level will narrow it and extend it's range, in theory
In practice, I think there's a hard limit on how far you can detect an object at something like 15k, because nothing outside that range exists on the client until it has been discovered. I'm basing that on how radar contacts work, and assuming mineable entities follow the same rules. Once initially detected, they can be tracked beyond 15k, but not before.
I'd click the zoom up once, which I think constrains it to 180⁰ fwd (I think twice constrains it the onscreen ring?), then pick a direction, fly at full SCM speed, and start zig zagging 45⁰ after each full charge pulse until you find something.
There's, sadly, no way to know whether the deposits are Hadanite until you get up on them. But when you find some, I recommend landing pointed in the direction you were heading because it's easy to get turned around and wind up heading back through the region you'd already cleared.
Started out flying to Arial in my Freelancer to do some ROC mining. As it turns out, the player status system is a harsh mistress. Arial is ridiculously hot, and the ROC has an open cabin. The suit I was wearing is rated for 100C, but unfortunately Arial is about 200C. The HUD let me know that I would be able to survive for about 12 minutes. No problem, right? After all, I can just duck into my nice climate-controlled ship to cool down periodically. I was lucky enough to find four nice Hadanite rocks pretty much right away, and got to work. After the second rock my life expectancy was down to 4 minutes, so I ducked inside for a bit to cool off. What I realised was that the game keeps track of your internal body temperature vs outside temperature and that, realistically enough, it takes a while to equalize vs the ambient temperature. So ducking back inside wasn't going to be an instant fix, but I did at least let my body temperature cool down to 39. Fun fact; Did you know that a normal human body temperature is about 36-37 degrees, and 40 is severely hyperthermic? I didn't! So I was already overheating when I went back out to grab the last two rocks. I did so without much hassle, besides the last once exploding and scattering its contents across a wide area, and got back into the ship with 2 minutes of estimated survival time left.
At this point my body temperature is at 39.9, but more worryingly my hydration is at 15%. Normally nutrition and hydration are something you have to worry about once every couple of hours, but I guess if you've just spent 15 minutes on the surface of basically Venus and you're borderline hyperthermic, it goes down a little quicker. A lot quicker as it turned out. In fact as I watched in horror, my hydration was going down by 1% every couple of seconds. This was a problem, because I hadn't brought any water with me. I had just enough time to panic, accidentally hit F and get into my bunk, get back out of my bunk, run into the cockpit and sit in the pilot's seat before I died of dehydration.
So what have we learned today? If you're going somewhere hot... bring water. Ideally I should have also brought better armor, but I probably could have survived long enough to get my body temperature back down by chugging water.
Not being able to actually afford the high-temperature armor, I decided to do some bounties to earn some cash, since they seem to be ridiculously lucrative right now. After a few NPC bounties, I saw a mission pop up for some sort of "advanced" bounty hunter certification and took it... not realising that this is the one that sends you after players. Oh well, worst that can happen is I embarrass myself and die, right? Guy is 500km off of the nearest thing I can QT to, so I start slowboating out to him. While I'm waiting, I see a guy in chat mention that he has the "Destroy the captured Idris" mission, and asking if anybody wants to join him. Fuck yes I do. Oh look, its the guy whose bounty I'm supposed to be hunting. I maybe won't mention that part to him.
So I warp to the beacon and there he is... Maltrox Arlington, the closest thing Star Citizen has to a final boss right now, flying an actual goddamn Idris. And for a brief, shining moment, I saw the game as it exists in Chris Robert's head. Everything just worked. I've seen clips of people fighting the Idris on YouTube and Twitch but they don't really do the thing justice. Its big, its bad, and it does not fuck around. There were six of us trying to fight it, and it seemed to prioritise targets pretty well, one guy tried to hit it with torpedos but it shot them all down and the guy had to QT off to reload. I was able to dodge most of its shots even in a Freelancer, but the ones that landed hurt. I got behind it and unloaded all of my missiles, and it was a real "oh shit" moment when it started slowly rotating that big-ass railgun toward me. Someone in a Constellation was subsequently killed by said railgun in a single shot. I died because I stopped dodging for a minute to check my ammo count and the turrets tore me apart. Sadly the server crashed before we could actually finish the thing, but I made some new space friends at least.
If you pay attention to the UI, there's a white ring that gets narrower as you adjust the settings; that's the area you're scanning. I think by default you're scanning a full 180 degrees in front of you, if you adjust it then it becomes an increasingly smaller cone. I believe the range is the same regardless, what you're getting at higher magnifications is more accuracy, i.e, the box that appears to indicate where the thing you're looking for is will be smaller.
Basically, space-racists are invading and you have to help the UEE in a multi-part mission, first clearing out a Starfarer wreck, then moving the supplies therin to a UEE base where a Javelin is resupplying. During all this the Javelin will be periodically attacked. If you deliver all of the required supplies before the Javelin takes too much damage it will help you in phase 3, which is a full scale assault by the bad guys with multiple Idrises. Expect griefers to try and fuck everything up because "Muh PVP" or "I'm roleplaying as a bad guy"; an organized group is probably recommended. I'm in the Aus TZ and I've got shit to do this weekend, but I'd be happy to try this out with you guys if the stars and our timezones align.
Would you say they were doing a barrel roll?
Definitely not! I've played enough Star Fox 64 in my day to say I'm something of a barrel roll expert, and the maneuvers they were pulling were definitely not that.
From what I've seen while bounty hunting, it's the enemy ships reacting to the impacts from your weapon fire.
Also, be careful with piloting a Hammerhead against the Idris. Be mindful to not forget that it has a big, fuck-off sized fixed railgun under the nose that will ruin your day.
Acshtually, the maneuver that is performed in Starfox isn't a Barrel Roll, it's an Aileron Roll.
I have contacted Nintendo about this numerous times, but so far they have not responded to any of my emails.
@SmokeStacks
A patch or two ago I made a new character and he looked like a young Ray Liotta whose (due to the occasional goofiness with the character faces) facial expression indicated he had just caught a whiff of someone's aerosol turd.
So with that out of the way, I got to engage with the mission proper. As I described above there are basically two components, protecting the docked Javelin from periodic waves of Xenothreat including an Idris which will wreck the Javelin very quickly with its railgun if you don't give it something else to think about, and moving supplies from a Starfarer wreck site to Jericho station (while also dealing with periodic waves of Xenothreat). This is where my machine let me down; the wreck site is in one of those fancy new gas clouds, and that combined with all the ships it had to render what with half of the server all being in the same spot, it was a lag-fest. The server itself seemed to be fine, but my 3rd generation Intel processor, even overclocked, was really not up to the task. We subsequently failed the mission when we didn't respond to an Idris attack in time (because we were all at the wreck site loading boxes into somebody's Carrack), and the Javelin had to run away.
I guess on the bright side, the actual event seems to be working nicely for the most part, griefers aside, and I've been waiting until Star Citizen is in a more playable state to justify my hardware upgrade, and this is probably going to be the catalyst for that.
It sounds like the prison system is working as intended then. That's kinda cool to hear.
But! I do understand the plight of the PVPer. There are people who legitimately enjoy the challenge of fighting against another human, and I can respect that even if that's not for me. And for those people who want to participate in legitimate PVP, they need something that brings people together in order to do so. Unfortunately, the Xenothreat mission is just that sort of catalyst for bringing people together for engaging PVP. Yes, I imagine there are a few people who are griefing just because they get some sort of sick pleasure from disrupting other people's gameplay. But I also think there's a significant portion of the playerbase who are just hungry for real engagement opportunities against other players in big fleet battles.
This is one of the problems with early access and layering the game together in bite sized pieces. They just added an event to the game that is clearly a PVE event. But there was no reciprocal PVP event added at the same time. So now the PVPers have to find ways to draw other players into PVP engagements.
It's kind of a lose/lose situation for everybody.
I am absolutely 100% in the camp that feels Star Citizen should be one single server where everyone can play, as they like. There should be room for the PVPers and PVEers alike, and ample content for all. But until the Pyro system (and other lawless systems) are added, until piracy has some actual gameplay loops added into the game that support that playstyle, until the game provides scenarios that draw people together for the explicit purpose of engaging in PVP, the PVPers are always going to be showing up to PVE events. And I don't necessarily fault them for that.
I'm sure that'll buff out.
I have the same issue, haven't been able to resolve it even with some suggestions from a support ticket to CIG, and I've resigned myself to just never going to Microtech. It seems to only happen when there's weather but unfortunately there's no weather effects slider.
I showed up in my Cutlass Red, with the intent of solo carrying some boxes, plus helping with the FPS clearing of the wreck sites. But when I got to the wrecks, I discovered that people have already figured out how to monopolize access and min/max the cargo hauling. The first wreck site had a Carrack parked so close to the wreck that I had to park down and away. They had a couple people with multitools and tractor beams just basically slinging boxes into the back of the carrack. It didn't leave much room (or need) for anyone else. Plus, access was bad. I had to space walk in, grab a single box, and then space walk back to my ship. Why bother doing that when another crew can do the whole thing in a matter of minutes?
Anyway, I showed up to the next wreck site, and the exact same thing happened, only this time it was a Freelancer. The guy had his ship basically pulled right up to the opening and was solo slinging boxes into his ship with a multitool.
However, at the second wreck site, a bunch of Xenothreat showed up in fighters. I ended up just flying around and running protection in my Cutty Red, and that was a lot of fun. Probably more fun than cargo hauling. So I did end up having a great time with the event, I just wish it was maybe designed a little better so that one solo person (or one crew) can't monopolize the entire operation.
Maybe they could have the wreck strewn over a few miles, so there's large deposits for multicrews, and smaller deposits for privateers/small-time scavengers?
Seems like something that would be applicable to salvage gameplay later on.
https://robertsspaceindustries.com/comm-link/transmission/17988-February-Frenzy
@TychoCelchuuu FYI just in case you wanted to add that to the thread title to draw in new players to join our space cult group of friendly space adventurers.
I'm excited to see what they do with the dynamic mission system moving forward; there was a "Calling all Devs" video on it last week (spoilered in case you don't want to watch an hour-long video) and it sounds like they've now opened up a lot of variables to the mission designers that they didn't have before, allowing them to do things like switching missions on and off, apply multipliers to the values of commodities and mission rewards e.t.c based on rules that they can set up, and then either switch on or off manually or trigger based on in-game activity. They talked about the "Nine Tails Lockdown" event which will probably be next, where pirates take over a certain area of space, spawning pirate ships and driving up the prices of any goods in the area, but also increasing the sell price of any goods that do get delivered. Then players would have the option of fighting the pirates, helping them to keep the blockade going, or just exploiting the chaos to make a quick buck (hello hi, this is me). Will be interested to see how this "blockade" works in practice and how easy it is to circumvent, but Xenothreat did have Mantises that would Quantum interdict haulers trying to deliver goods to Jericho, so clearly some of that behavior is already working.
It also lets them do more subtle things, like they talked about the demand for alcohol and drugs going up during fleet week since everyone is out partying. Looking forward to seeing what the mission team comes up with, now maybe we'll at least get a custom mission like Xenothreat every couple of months instead of 4 patches a year and that's it.
CIG has a sale going on right now on the Hornet Heartseeker for Valentines. They're also doing a warbond upgrade option. My question is twofold and I'm just looking for general advice and thoughts on the matter.
1) In practical terms, what's the difference between the Super Hornet and the Hornet Heartseeker? I can obviously read what the official website says on the ship matrix, but in terms of how they play, fly, and fight in game I'm looking for input. Is one better than another for bounty hunting missions? Is one better for the current Xenothreat mission?
2) I'm considering doing the warbond upgrade and putting the value of my Mustang Alpha towards the Heartseeker if that's a reasonable idea. I really did not like my Mustang Alpha when I was a fresh new player with no game experience, and I think it's a pretty horrible ship to learn the game in. It left a sour taste in my mouth and I honestly don't know if I would ever use it again in-game, unless I absolutely had to. So it's mostly just dead weight in my hangar. Really, the only reason I can think of why it would be a good idea to hang on to that ship is because the reclaim time on it is only like 1:30 which is super short.
And yeah with how the Star Citizen has evolved and changed over time, I'm of the opinion that the game's "original" starters, the Aurora and Mustang, really aren't viable anymore as anything other than fun little sightseeing ships. I'd call the Reliant Kore and Avenger the true starting ship options. If you want to CCU to something like a Hornet, just keep in mind that it's a pure combat vessel. I do think it's a good idea to at least have a "daily driver" ship (Avenger, Nomad, and Cutlass are good options) that can do every mission type out there.
The Reliant and Avenger are fairly cheap to buy I game though, especially with the Xenothreat event going on to make some decent money fairly quickly. My recommendation on what to own with money is to only go for something that you really, really want to keep no matter what.
So a bit more info then:
Ships I own with real money:
Mustang Alpha
Cutlass Red
Mercury Star Runner
Ships I have bought with aUEC:
Anvil Pisces
125c
Cutlass Black
That means right now I've got 6 ships available to me in game. I can use the Pisces as my short range errand running ship, and it has a quick respawn timer of 2:45. And in the event of a server wipe, which is inevitable at some point, it would not be hard to earn back the Pisces again.
Additionally, the Mustang beta is super cheap in game, as are most of the Mustang variants, so if I ever decide I want to own a Mustang again in the future, it wouldn't be a huge investment to just buy one for aUEC.
Anyway, I think I might have just solved my own question. I'll probably put that $30 cash towards the Heartseeker just because I don't see much point in owning a Mustang anymore, especially since I have enough game knowledge now that I can easily replace one if I ever need to.
And yeah, as a side note, if I were ever going to recommend a starter bundle to a friend to get them into the game, I would absolutely tell them to buy the Avenger bundle for $60 rather than a Mustang or Aurora bundle.
The Avenger/Reliant class starts around 750k, and I have no idea how you earn that with an Aurora before you go crazy. Its a borderline poverty trap but for the fact we don't have to pay hangar fees and such. If do we ever have to start paying for lodging, its saving grace will be the fact it has a bed.
It's the "500 aUEC OBO" beater a teenager gets as their first spaceship. It should be the loaner you get while your insurance claim processes.
Phase 3 of the event only lasted about 2 days. I feel sorry for people who work weekends or were otherwise occupied and unable to participate. It was a fun event. For many of us, it was the first time we got to see big fleet battles in game.
Going forward, CIG needs to much better communicate the start/end times for each phase of the event, and also events should not last 2 days. That seems like a horrendous waste of resources to spend countless months of time developing it, testing it on the PTU, and then only allowing it to run for 2 days and then never again.
I am definitely not a fan of one-and-done events. It just seems so inefficient. I'm not advocating for seasonal events, or events that rotate frequently. But I also don't think they should be saying "never again." Not when it clearly takes so much effort to make these. Maybe in a couple years time they could roll the event back out again. I'd be ok with that and my immersion would definitely not be broken because the Xenothreat are attacking the IMS Jericho again. I'd prefer it.
This event was fun. And it's a damn shame it was over with so quickly. And without any notice.