A Star Citizen Parody song about the struggles of partaking in an event during times of server strife.
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Then we 30k
I’m No Rocketman
Star Citizen continues to bring out the best in the gaming community!
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The GamePad
So I did it, after several decades I finally bricked a computer, my trusty i7-4790k. That beast always ran hot and I bricked it testing out the liquid cooling solution I had been using, pushed it past its thermal limits. Not much of a loss since it pretty much just burned juice since ETH mining ended.
With the disaster that was SC 3.18 it seemed like a good time to work on my first SC alt. The idea is simple, along with creating my alt I would add a second pc to run side by side my current pc so that I could use my alt to pilot my larger ships and then use my main to fly from the base ship. Seems that the mini carrier I’ve had on order, a Liberator, is due to be delivered along with the Pyro system so a second platform to run SC is in order. Until then I’ll try living off my Carrack once I get it stocked for extended service.
After replacing the MB and installing a refurbished i7-9700K along with a daring venture into Win11 I had a new PC ready to roll.
I would also later replace the 10yr old power supply and upgrade my GPU to a RTX 3060 gaming edition.
The question remained, how to incorporate the controllers. My desktop space leaves little room for a new HOTAS/HOSAS setup and I am none to hot on the MK combo. Let’s give the GamePad a whirl. As long as I am not engaging in PVP, racing or low flying the GamePad could be a viable option?
Naturally I turned to Google for some hot tips and low and behold the GamePad Elite came with glowing reports, that yes, you could run SC with it without touching your keyboard! Perfect for today’s thumb based device crowd. Several citizens offered up mappings, at least claimed to offer up mappings but I was not interested in shelling out $200 for one of those so called “elite” controllers which are nothing more than a mini-keyboard sandwiched between the mini-joy ports.
After all I had an XBOX ONE controller stashed around here somewhere…
On my first attempt I setup the GamePad using SC’s bindings editor, carefully weighing what to bind to what. It seemed clear up front that while using the left mini joy port for WASD works on the ground, it does not work well in flight. With only 10 buttons the use of the right(RB) and left(LB) modifiers were mandatory. Much to my dismay it turns out that the d-pad could not be modified using the RB so right away I was short bindings.
As pointed out by daddy Papy, SC uses ALL of the keyboard bindings.
So on my next attempt I added a slight of hand provided by JoyStick Gremlin. When configured with vJoy and HidHide you could in theory setup 9 separate profile modes (max allowed vjoys in SC) and extend those 10 buttons to something usable. So I thought. After a week with fighting with the Gremlin UI I finally had a prototype ready to go featuring a base template which mapped all the function keys, overlaid with a flight mode template and a ground mode template.
Well, OK, that worked! Maybe I am on to something. After all SC is rumored to be going big supporting the GamePad with the someday to be released Squadron 42. I see $$$.
Realizing my GamePad was an older model I ran off to BestBuy to pickup one of the new GamePads. That is when the shit hit the fan and I realized just how old my XBOX GamePad really was. Seems that somewhere along the way Microsoft changed the GampePad to use the XInput API and had tossed the older DirectX protocols. This introduced some problems.
The biggest problem is that up front, the GamePad only works in the currently open window. This works just fine for Window’s XBOX Gamebar, but Gremlin gets blocked. So you are forced to use SC’s limited keybinding tool. A quick DM with Gremlin’s author presented little to zero hope that Gremlin would be modified to support XInput. If it did, then there is a mode in XInput that would allow it to run in background albeit with only 4 templates. If that were not enough, it turns out that when your BlueTooth connection times out you lose your connection ID and Gremlin.
By now I had invested a couple of weeks into this experiment, the best I could do is hook my ancient XBOX GamePad and reconfigure all the software once again. Absent a viable product for the SC community perhaps I could still make use of all the work.
And I did. Gremlin was configured to call out “flight mode”, or “ground mode” when I switched to and fro. Indeed I had a nearly sufficient set of bindings that keyboard use was greatly reduced. By now the 3.18.1 patch had arrived so I set out in my alt flying my space truck starter package, the Nomad.
Progressing from simple takeoff and landings I refined my bindings until I had mastered fairly smooth takeoff and landings. So off to a few box missions. Even with a few tweeks use of the GamePad was janky and prone to errors. This would never be as precise as my trusty VPCs, not even with hundreds of hours of muscle memory training.
The biggest issue is of course the mini joy ports. Extremely course granularity due to the very limited throw inherent with a thumb port. Precise aiming is near impossible no matter how practiced or how damped. Certainly running 4DOF(5 axis total) in a 6DOF world hurts. This is definitely a controller that requires aim assist.
After a few successful box missions I thought well maybe, I could use this for flying larger ships, right? Then I ran into pirates. That was the end of the experiment.
Is the GamePad a better controller option than the standard mouse and keyboard. I’d give it a big fat NO. The lack of buttons and the lack of aiming precision squarely position the GamePad in the worthless category.
A grade of D- at best.
My current solution:
And in the if I had thought of this in the first place I could have saved myself some time, a simple USB switch. Of course, I did learn more than I expected about Joystick Gremlin and the GamePad controller including taking Window’s XBOX Gamebar for a spin. It’s kinda of cool, I was able to tune in Star Citizen radio!
And a big thank you to redlir for his vids on Gremlin!
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The Streamer’s Patch 3.18.0
I was really, really looking forward to the release of the PU patch 3.18.0 as my experience in the PTU was lots of fun. As expected, when launched Friday March 10, 2023 we experienced the anticipated log jam trying to access the game. We saw the same ridiculous queue times of over 500,000 seconds(138hrs) during wave 3 of the PTU. So that happened, again.
Finally Saturday morning I cleared the login jam and started jamming! This was going to be great! I had ironed out my starting strategy in the PTU and was eager to start grinding to earn enough creds to upgrade the couple of dozen ships in my fleet.
Then the shit hit the fan as I 30k’d, got UNSTOWED, never to access the game again.
I was reduced to angrily watching twitch streamers whom other than janky gameplay, didn’t seem to have trouble getting into and out of the verse. The only streamer I noticed having issues was Avenger__1 who recently published a vid exposing the NightCity hackers. So it remains.
Mercy me, after two sessions in the 3.18.1 PTU – I checked the PU and I am no longer UNSTOWED banned!
Total banned time was
Yes, players other than streamers have made it into the game only to be met with DB issues affecting inventory services, the ASOP terminals, and the missions. Still, you can eek out a good time if you try hard enough and if you are lucky enough to squeeze through the gates of the current partial outage.
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Raven Owners Club Event
Members of the Raven Owners Club got together today for their latest Org meeting and coupled it with a King of the Hill contest streamed by RedMonsterSC.
During the event over 2 dozen Raven owners participated in a formation landing at Orison, posed for a few, conducted business and then executed a scramble drill for a quick exit above Orison’s atmosphere.
Members then regrouped in a group EMP formation and 2 dozen Ravens let it rip. Then a few of the more PVP oriented members once again regrouped to practice some 1v1 and 2v1. TheShooter dominated the competition.
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You can’t go back
Didn’t matter what CIG added to the 3.17 PU to stir the pot, those of us fortunate to have fought our way through the 3.18 PTU, well 98% of us, never logged the PU again.
PES is a game changer!
Despite frequent wipes, with a little luck you could spin up some rep and spend hours running the bunker missions on Orison. Collecting enemy armor and guns is a popular hobby with citizens lugging large crates behind their operations to collect the stuff. And yeah, friendly fire is a CS3 offense where GrimHex will be your only shelter to ponder your life choices.
The security terminals at the newly renovated Security Post Kareah are heavy guarded by Crusader and a successful takeover of the station will grant you free and clear of your CS and if you work it, some easter eggs too.
SPK is now the only location where a Crime Stat(CS3+) can be hacked. CS1 and CS2 are resolved via fines.
The Transporter
This role is a nice blend of basic piloting skills and a progressively dicey mix of FPS. Getting started is a snap and can be a lot of fun with just the right amount of challenge for Citizens looking to round out their skills.
PES allows for some interesting emergent game play in the event of your death or loss of ship. You can, after all, go back and cleanup any mess you might inadvertently make.
Anything to save that rep.
- Delivery: Loot your way to a supply surplus while you transport packages from protected POI to protected POI. Any starter ship with some accessible cargo space will work. Work your contracts quickly for the best chance to avoid needless entanglements. Contracts start at 4000 aUEC.
- Derelict outposts: Liven up your deliveries by including derelict POIs where you will need to get past the local “bad mens” to grab the package. Shoot from the sky or land and pick off the guards from the ground. But work quickly as a support cutlass will inbound shortly to check out your incursion. Get caught with your pants down and you will lose your ship. That is when things get interesting. Contracts starting at 4000 aUEC. BONUS: npc loot, cutlass.
- Recovery missions: None of that needless loot here save some npc armor. Get in, grab the package and get out. Enemy Cutlass support craft highly likely. Scenic roof top deliveries! Contracts starting at 4000 aUEC. BONUS: npc loot, cutlass.
- Advanced weapons(protect sites): bolster your merc rep and your armory by signing up for the site protection missions. You’ll have but 15 mics after you clear the facility to collect your loot and run, assuming you avoid friendly fire – a CS3 offense.
- Recommended ship: While any starter ship with cargo space can get you started, the preferred ride is the Avenger Titan. Upgrade to hard weapon mounts(Rhino/Panther), or mount an AD4B ballistic gatling if you want to toss some serious bullets around. The additional upgrades to mil spec shields/power/coolers and an Atlas QD to kit out will add another $110k aUEC.
These upgrades should give you a fighting chance against both PVE and PVP interdictions and allow you to easily quickly travel Stanton end to end with a bare minimum of fuel.
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The Transporter
Get your Jason Statham on in Star Citizen’s 3.18 patch. Wave 1 has been in the wind for several weeks now and if you are lucky enough to get a higher frame rate server, things look good. New missions for the delivery profession have emerged into a new profession – The Transporter. Hiring yourself out as a mercenary transporter who moves goods from one place to another. No questions asked.
Dangerous complications ensue.
As a Jr. Runner you can choose between local delivery routes or retrieval ops. Complete 5 of them and you earn Runner status and access to higher paying missions and ops. In order to complete your Jr. level training you will need to settle on two issues. Which ship? Which weapons?
It’s tempting to call up the Cutter, Pisces, or the Mustang Alpha for the deliveries to protected space. It’s all fun and games popping baddies with your blasters from the comfort of your cockpit, that is, until reinforcements arrive – in a cutlass. You’ll want a bit more fire power!
The Cutlass is a solid choice but I found another look at the Avenger was in order. A GT-220 Mantis coupled with a pair of badgers bring it. The all varipuck mounting makes aiming a breeze. And the Avenger can easily pull 20Gs. Aegis’s radar is clearly superior to anything Drake can offer.
Runners can’t avoid FPS, so it helps to equip a gun that works for you. Find a gun that works at the ranges you are comfortable with. As a starter profession you are unlikely to have acquired more advanced weapons, so choose wisely. The P4 works for me. Note, the NPCs on high tick servers are deadly. And don’t forget the loot boxes!
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Where Master Mode goes to die
As nothing more than a teaser, little was learned today on Star Citizen’s Twitch stream. Much of the stream was laced with assurances that CIG has thoroughly vetted the user community in their design of master mode. And as if to wipe our face in it, Sir Richard once again declared that speed was the issue because two fighters cannot engage in battle if they approach each other at 1000m/s.
Really, he went there AGAIN? It is hardly worth deciphering a heavy british accent for those types of words of wisdom.
The only thing we really know is that the FM was split in two to prevent problems when ships start moving past a certain velocity. I posited this issue way back in the pre 3.0 days and today this was the one and only piece of info presented ringing of some truth.
So the real reason they are shutting down the shields at higher velocities is to prevent coding obstacles. Likewise hitreg is bound to improve at lower velocities, more coding issues. And still, not one word of the velocities we can expect to see for both our ships and our ship’s weapons.
Amongst all the patronage we have a classic corporate tight rope walk as this team was required to assure the entire company, that this project wouldn’t break everything in the universe. Believe it, there are some careers in play.
Of course nearly two years into the project there are only but a handful of ships tuned to Master Mode. All for Squadron, which we have once again been assured has more than a handful of ships in game! There has been ZERO work on the UI, which makes it hard to imagine any game speed testing is even possible. We are also told that porting all these changes to ALL of CIG’s ship will be a long and arduous task taking what? Years?
Right now I tend to view Master Mode as the mechanism that will allow implementation of easy, medium, hard, and expert modes for playing Squadron 42. Several times they mentioned a speed dial of sorts.
The first we are likely to see of Master Mode is in Squadron 42.
By the time it rolls out to the PU(years) there are likely to be more elegant and less intrusive algorithms devised after studying the problem divided. Master Mode may be no more.
And we have seen nothing of patch 3.18 other than to the evocati. More than a few statements from CIG employees lay recent delays to problems with the build pipelines which seem to be producing a number of unusable builds. Sean was almost in tears over the issues on Thursday’s Journey to 4.0. The triage protocols are sound, versions of these protocols have been in use for decades.
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IAE 2952
It’s that time of year again, a time in which everyone can test out and fly any of the ships currently flyable in the Star Citizen universe. The galaxy’s premier annual event, the Intergalactic Aerospace Expo (IAE) is in full swing on microTech!
Of course, some of us play a game within a game, the juggling of LTI ships.
What is a LTI ship? A LTI ship is a ship that comes with Lifetime Insurance. So what do folks like us accomplish during IAE, beside get a chuckle over Jaq Whitely’s misadventures and the opportunity to grab a few overpriced t-shirts and hats?
We get to dump our loser ships, ships that completely failed to deliver. Two such ships I dumped were two of the heavy fighters. These birds not only did not live up to expectations, but are terrible fighters.
We all know which ships we are talking about, the Ares Ion, the Ares Inferno, and the RSI Scorpius. The Ares were promised to be something that was initially delivered, but in large part due to citizen outrage, were nerfed to oblivion. The Scorpius never delivered period as the promise of controlling the turret by the pilot was just too much for the persistent universe to bear. At most, the Scorpius should have been a medium fighter, as it is it is far to sluggish to hold it’s own in a dog fight. Same can be said about the Ares, far to heavy and sluggish. In addition, the weapons of the Area Ion were nerfed to the point where landing a direct hit in AC barely scratch the enemy’s shields.
So what to do with these very expensive worthless fighters? Can you say CCU Banu Merchantman? Although the price was jacked up another $50 bucks, that is a small price to pay to clean the garbage out of my hangar.
Enjoy the show!
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Sabre Raven Owner’s Club
It seems my Raven was right where I left it! Now I am a proud member of the exclusive Sabre Raven Owner’s Club!
Do you own a Raven? If so, come join us at the Sabre Raven Owner’s Club.
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