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Star Citizen Pre-Alpha: 'Arena Commander' Dogfighting
- Thread starter MrBig
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VisceralBowl
Member
Screens are incredible but I can absolutely confirm that Elite's audio design runs circles around Star Citizen. I hope they step it up.
The game runs a lot better than the hangar module so that's nice to see. And it looks like the hangar also had a performance update!
One thing I'm surprised about: I expected the public release to be like CIG's DFM reveal in which the ship actually flew out of the hangar into the map. They put a lot of work into that reveal that didn't make it into the public release.
The game runs a lot better than the hangar module so that's nice to see. And it looks like the hangar also had a performance update!
One thing I'm surprised about: I expected the public release to be like CIG's DFM reveal in which the ship actually flew out of the hangar into the map. They put a lot of work into that reveal that didn't make it into the public release.
VisceralBowl
Member
Same. Around that wave they all start swarming me and I can't deal with them all simultaneously.
Right, that's the style I was thinking of. Joystick was the way to go before that point for sure. Having the main guns on (implied) swivels to allow mouse aiming really cuts down on the value of movement precision. It's similar to how aim assist in console FPS games changes things.
Now, where's that button to duck behind the asteroid cover... (if someone winds up makes a space game with cover shooter mechanics now, I'm sorry for introducing the concept, lol)
Sucks that Vixen and Warlord start dying really fast in the later waves, or I'm just unlucky. I gotta read up on the power management stuff and what everything on the HUD does.
UnluckyKate
Member
Got two 300i in the hangar, a white and a black one. Different interiors. Can only launch sim from white one
VisceralBowl
Member
Black one is yours, the other is the alpha 300i for testing. It is just a generic one.
I think the next patch removes all sound effects but the pilot's breathing. Realism!
in-universe explanation: Sound effects are simulated by your ship to assist with situational awareness
How is it that a guy who was one of the creators of Wing commander is able to generate so much more kick starter money than the guys who created Elite? A series that had single handedly created the "space pirate open world" genre and went on to successfully iterate on this exact genre and carries the same name and pedigree for 3 decades?
Looks gorgeous, thanks for all the screenshots and webms folks. This is the one to finally get me to upgrade my PC, I can feel it.This game is just too pretty for it's own good:
The performance is better than I thought.
Thanks. I just landed on the platform for a walk and was surprised by the heavy sound. Was a bit odd, to be honest.
Speaking as a big fan of Elite: Dangerous, Elite's crowdfunding pitch was pretty half-assed compared to Star Citizen's, especially when it first went up. It seemed like Braben was riding Roberts' coattails.
It's now obvious to everyone that Braben put a LOT of work into the new Elite years before the crowdfunding campaign started. Hindsight is 20/20 I guess.
edit: Star Citizen selling the ships separately and fostering a COLLECT EM ALL attitude really helped too. Space sim fans from the Wing Commander days tend to be older with significant disposable income. It was an vastly underserved market.
My favorite explanation is that the ship's computer feeds canned audio to the pilot's helmet of events it detects (via external cameras or whatever) so the pilot can have better situational awareness.
MasterOfPastures
Banned
Played around and found some bugs concerning swapping weapons and then having no ammo/functionality. I hope a major patch isnt that far off.
I also hope they let us play a Capital Ship mode in the future. Training for larger vessels. Capship to capship combat, with boarding and coop management, is going to be GOAT.
Agreed completely. Maybe they should poach the sound designer from Elite.
Hopefully people complain and they step-up big time.
I also hope they let us play a Capital Ship mode in the future. Training for larger vessels. Capship to capship combat, with boarding and coop management, is going to be GOAT.
Agreed completely. Maybe they should poach the sound designer from Elite.
Hopefully people complain and they step-up big time.
I suspect that most of it is temp work. Listen to the eject in that third webm. Contrast with this Elite clip in which the ship is limping home after a hull breach:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6R0tByWJwHI
Or just the usual engine sounds from this one:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TEoia-5DVf8
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6R0tByWJwHI
Or just the usual engine sounds from this one:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TEoia-5DVf8
ThatsMytrunks
Member
So is there Rift support in there yet? Or any videos with rift support?
MrChowderClams
Member
Dogfights can get pretty intense 0_0
Trying to avoid wreckage from the baddies you just blew up while strafing and trying to line up a shot x_x
http://a.pomf.se/yazrid.webm
Trying to avoid wreckage from the baddies you just blew up while strafing and trying to line up a shot x_x
http://a.pomf.se/yazrid.webm
I was part the of people who questioned the viability of HOTAS vs K/M for dogfighting in previous threads. It was because I went and got a Saitek X52 HOTAS in anticipation of Squadron 42 and Star Citizen release. Set it up on War Thunder and found myself totally gimped fighting against K/M users even in Real History Battles (Simulation mode). I know that War Thunder and Star Citizen are two different games, however their skill sets overlaps quite a bit.
In War Thunder, K/M have huge advantage because K/M have trainers built into the control scheme. K/M have an automatic turning/banking limiter that prevents you from stalling your aircraft. On the other hand, if you go HOTAS, there is no such computer limiter. This means you often stall your aircraft out and plummets out of the sky and need to recover from it manually. Even if you tune your joystick to max/min joystick sensitivity so you don't stall, it was impossible to keep it tune for every aircraft due to the needing to change aircraft often. Therefore, you just have to rely on sound and hear your airframe shake and rattle to know when you are near stalling. K/M users don't need to do such thing, they can just point the opposite direction and do a 180 and let the computer controls all rudder, aileron, elevators, all that for them at minimum turn radius.
Furthermore. K/M users can just use the mouse to point and shoot. Anywhere they point the mouse, the aircraft auto calculate all flight surfaces to meet that flight vector demand. As a result, K/M were very effectively at sniping you out of the sky from farther distances. Not to mention amazing twitch shooting ability the mouse allows you to do on a fly pass. HOTAS needs you to control yaw and roll separately to point the nose of the plane to where want to fire, twice as much effort to achieve the same goal.
The most advantageous thing K/M have over HOTAS is view hopping. K/M users always just fly in 3rd person for maximum awareness. If they requires finesse, they just hop into first person. With the mouse you can also pan the camera very quickly to look behind and under your aircraft whilst avoiding incoming fire at the same time. That is very difficult to do on HOTAS.
What was the advantage HOTAS has over K/M? I found that for complex maneuvers, HOTAS was the way to go. Such as purposely stalling to bleed speed faster than K/M since they can't stall on demand as easily as HOTAS. SC is in space and speed management will be a whole different game so I don't know how HOTAS will have an advantage.
I haven't got a chance to play Arena Commander yet, but from what I see, I predict Arena Commander will suffers the same fate when people find ways to max/min the game play. K/M looks to be the king despite some beginning awkwardness. Even now in this thread, you see people fly in third then view hop into first person to take shots at the Vandul Scavengers. Not to mention with the K/M control scheme, the spaceship is slaved to where ever you point and shoot. I have seen a video of one guy despite not knowing what he was doing, point and shoot the Vandul down with less effort compared to one guy who uses HOTAS. With mouse you just have to point and the auto aim engages for quite a big area on the screen. With HOTAS, you have to align the whole spaceship near the center reticule before auto aim kicks in. It's hard to beat point and shoot.
In War Thunder, K/M have huge advantage because K/M have trainers built into the control scheme. K/M have an automatic turning/banking limiter that prevents you from stalling your aircraft. On the other hand, if you go HOTAS, there is no such computer limiter. This means you often stall your aircraft out and plummets out of the sky and need to recover from it manually. Even if you tune your joystick to max/min joystick sensitivity so you don't stall, it was impossible to keep it tune for every aircraft due to the needing to change aircraft often. Therefore, you just have to rely on sound and hear your airframe shake and rattle to know when you are near stalling. K/M users don't need to do such thing, they can just point the opposite direction and do a 180 and let the computer controls all rudder, aileron, elevators, all that for them at minimum turn radius.
Furthermore. K/M users can just use the mouse to point and shoot. Anywhere they point the mouse, the aircraft auto calculate all flight surfaces to meet that flight vector demand. As a result, K/M were very effectively at sniping you out of the sky from farther distances. Not to mention amazing twitch shooting ability the mouse allows you to do on a fly pass. HOTAS needs you to control yaw and roll separately to point the nose of the plane to where want to fire, twice as much effort to achieve the same goal.
The most advantageous thing K/M have over HOTAS is view hopping. K/M users always just fly in 3rd person for maximum awareness. If they requires finesse, they just hop into first person. With the mouse you can also pan the camera very quickly to look behind and under your aircraft whilst avoiding incoming fire at the same time. That is very difficult to do on HOTAS.
What was the advantage HOTAS has over K/M? I found that for complex maneuvers, HOTAS was the way to go. Such as purposely stalling to bleed speed faster than K/M since they can't stall on demand as easily as HOTAS. SC is in space and speed management will be a whole different game so I don't know how HOTAS will have an advantage.
I haven't got a chance to play Arena Commander yet, but from what I see, I predict Arena Commander will suffers the same fate when people find ways to max/min the game play. K/M looks to be the king despite some beginning awkwardness. Even now in this thread, you see people fly in third then view hop into first person to take shots at the Vandul Scavengers. Not to mention with the K/M control scheme, the spaceship is slaved to where ever you point and shoot. I have seen a video of one guy despite not knowing what he was doing, point and shoot the Vandul down with less effort compared to one guy who uses HOTAS. With mouse you just have to point and the auto aim engages for quite a big area on the screen. With HOTAS, you have to align the whole spaceship near the center reticule before auto aim kicks in. It's hard to beat point and shoot.
Teknopathetic
Member
"The most advantageous thing K/M have over HOTAS is view hopping. K/M users always just fly in 3rd person for maximum awareness. If they requires finesse, they just hop into first person. With the mouse you can also pan the camera very quickly to look behind and under your aircraft whilst avoiding incoming fire at the same time. That is very difficult to do on HOTAS."
This is not as viable as you might think considering space is pretty much black and most of the ships aren't very lit. Ships well within scanner range are barely visible without HUD.
The big difference between Star Citizen (currently) and War Thunder is that Star Citizen doesn't currently have (what the SC forum dips call) "Follow-the-ball" controls. It's virtual joystick with a giant deadzone in the middle of the screen. As I mentioned earlier, most of the ships are currently set up with all gimballed (class-2/class-4) weapons even when ship specs state they should be Class-1 weapons. With the deadzone the way it is, you wouldn't actually be able to aim your class-2 weapons and your class-1 weapons at the same time on a moving target with a mouse. On the 300i in AC, what would normally be a Class-1 weapon (or what would be according to the ship specs page, which is subject to change) hits *significantly* harder than the (normally) class-2 weapon. Like, 3-4 shots to kill a Scythe vs...20-25+ for the other weapon. I can't actually kill a Scythe with the other weapon and it's not because i'm missing shots, it's because it does extremely low damage.
What you see people doing in their webm videos showing off the game's graphics is not indicative of what high level, effective play in Star Citizen will be. Stop reading into it.
The big issue with joystick controls right now is that they're extremely inconsistent and simple yaw inputs go all over the place. Someone on the forum described it as "squirrely" and that's a good word to use for it.
This is not as viable as you might think considering space is pretty much black and most of the ships aren't very lit. Ships well within scanner range are barely visible without HUD.
The big difference between Star Citizen (currently) and War Thunder is that Star Citizen doesn't currently have (what the SC forum dips call) "Follow-the-ball" controls. It's virtual joystick with a giant deadzone in the middle of the screen. As I mentioned earlier, most of the ships are currently set up with all gimballed (class-2/class-4) weapons even when ship specs state they should be Class-1 weapons. With the deadzone the way it is, you wouldn't actually be able to aim your class-2 weapons and your class-1 weapons at the same time on a moving target with a mouse. On the 300i in AC, what would normally be a Class-1 weapon (or what would be according to the ship specs page, which is subject to change) hits *significantly* harder than the (normally) class-2 weapon. Like, 3-4 shots to kill a Scythe vs...20-25+ for the other weapon. I can't actually kill a Scythe with the other weapon and it's not because i'm missing shots, it's because it does extremely low damage.
What you see people doing in their webm videos showing off the game's graphics is not indicative of what high level, effective play in Star Citizen will be. Stop reading into it.
The big issue with joystick controls right now is that they're extremely inconsistent and simple yaw inputs go all over the place. Someone on the forum described it as "squirrely" and that's a good word to use for it.
BeekleMatter
Member
What is up with these pathetic DL speeds? I can certainly confirm that I do not get 200kb/s when I download other stuff.
Teknopathetic
Member
Go to launcher settings, tick advanced options, and make sure max upload speed *isn't* set to unlimited or it could be completely saturating your bandwidth and killing your download speed.
BeekleMatter
Member
Thanks for the good idea, but it didn't change anything. I wonder if they just have crappy servers or something.
Hit CTRL - F to correctly mouse steer
kutthoat5150
Member
I think you just hold it down without using the trigger, could be wrong though
Downloaded and started playing, but when i head from the hanger into arena commander (any mode) models start disappearing after about 20 seconds of play, and gets progressively worse till im left with a few asteroids and "parts" of my ship.
trying a repair right now hoping it will fix it, maybe driver related.
trying a repair right now hoping it will fix it, maybe driver related.
Fantastic. :/
:/
If that happens to me after literally downloading all day (on a 100mbit line) I'll be a sad panda.
Cool, I will try this out.
IMACOMPUTA
Member
petethepanda
Member
So I backed at a lower level and I have an Aurora. Let's say I decide to buy a 300i for $55. Does it actually make sense to do so? My (practically nonexistent) understanding of Insurance is that my original backer Aurora has Lifetime Insurance but a new ship purchased today would not, so one could potentially lose it for good? Does that mean it'd possibly be better to just wait until the final game (someday) and just buy ships with in-game currency the normal way instead of dropping extra money on something I could lose?
MrChowderClams
Member
Well, I don't know how to eject but there is a platform on this map where you can land (landing is a bit tricky though since you have to decouple and strafe down slowly) and get out.
I was trying to land my hornet and be all cool like this, but I think I did something wrong:
http://a.pomf.se/gwaooq.webm
and then my landing gear started freaking out:
http://a.pomf.se/gtdnas.webm
VisceralBowl
Member
I am stuck forever loading the hangar level now.
I just upgraded an Aurora LN to a 300i for $20 and kept the insurance and everything. It's under Store -> Pledge -> Cross Chassis Upgrade.
Someone else can correct me if I've made a horrible mistake and it had consequences. Seemed to work fine.
You can use the cross-chassis upgrade option to keep your LTI but get a bigger ship: https://robertsspaceindustries.com/pledge/cross-chassis-upgrades
Doesn't look like there's any going back from a 300i to an Aurora, though, so make sure it's what you want.
The 300i is a pretty cool ship. I have both in my hangar but I haven't flown either of them yet, so I can't tell you which I'd choose based on flight and combat.
[edit] Beaten
Pops Maellard
Member
This is a painfully stupid question, but how does one go about accessing Arena Commander? I haven't had any of the SC stuff installed on my PC since shortly after the hangar module launched since I didn't really see myself doing anything with it until the dogfighting module.
Teknopathetic
Member
"This is a painfully stupid question, but how does one go about accessing Arena Commander? I haven't had any of the SC stuff installed on my PC since shortly after the hangar module launched since I didn't really see myself doing anything with it until the dogfighting module."
There's a pedestal in your hangar with a visor on it. Go to the pedestal, pick it up, then enter your ship. If you have a 300-series ship you will have a white 300i, go to that one instead of your normal one. When you sit in the cockpit, the arena commander menu will pop up.
There's a pedestal in your hangar with a visor on it. Go to the pedestal, pick it up, then enter your ship. If you have a 300-series ship you will have a white 300i, go to that one instead of your normal one. When you sit in the cockpit, the arena commander menu will pop up.
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