Chatter - Page 4 of 11 - Citizens of Interest

March 20, 2023March 7, 2024

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.

Use referral code STAR-62W5-FRT9 and join us in the stars. And be sure to claim your additional 50,000 credit bonus!

February 20, 2023March 7, 2024

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.

Use referral code STAR-62W5-FRT9 and join us in the stars. And be sure to claim your additional 50,000 credit bonus!

February 15, 2023March 7, 2024

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.

Use referral code STAR-62W5-FRT9 and join us in the stars. And be sure to claim your additional 50,000 credit bonus!

January 15, 2023March 7, 2024

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 Avenger is the Transporter’s ship of choice.*

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!

Use referral code STAR-62W5-FRT9 and join us in the stars. And be sure to claim your additional 50,000 credit bonus!

December 10, 2022March 7, 2024

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.

Use referral code STAR-62W5-FRT9 and join us in the stars. And be sure to claim your additional 50,000 credit bonus!

November 21, 2022March 7, 2024

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!

Use referral code STAR-62W5-FRT9 and join us in the stars. And be sure to claim your additional 50,000 credit bonus!

November 14, 2022March 7, 2024

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!

Proof of Ownership

Do you own a Raven? If so, come join us at the Sabre Raven Owner’s Club.

Use referral code STAR-62W5-FRT9 and join us in the stars. And be sure to claim your additional 50,000 credit bonus!

November 5, 2022April 22, 2024

I don’t seem to remember ever owning a droid

BD-1 recommends bringing my XBox controller.

WOW! 3.17 has been a nice ride. As I took a breather, I ran into a droid that claimed it knew me, that I had been severed from the force for far too long. Fascism was rapidly consuming our galaxy and I was needed elsewhere.

Fascism is thought to have started in a forgotten place, long ago buried by the ocean. A place called Florida.

BD-1 reminded me that the upcoming 3.18 patch included a wipe, so gains from further grinding would soon be lost along with several million aUEC (credits) spent on numerous ship upgrades and personal gear. Further pilot training has certainly been clouded by “Master Mode” and its state of flux – kept out of site as a well guarded CIG secret.

I first learned the ways of the force in “Knights of The Old Republic”, an XBox classic. It was the last time I held a controller other than to check out Battlefront and Squadrons, neither which impressed. But KOTOR left vivid images in my dreams.

Update: The remake of KOTOR appears to be dead.

None of the on-rails based Star Wars PC titles found early on could compete, although I took some solace in “Star Wars Galactic Wars” and “Empire at War”, both strategy game play(RTS). Of course along came “Star Wars the Old Republic” and I experienced my first MMO.

“Jedi Fallen Order” plays like “KOTOR” but on a much faster scale. While not a new release, it certainly looks great and playable. I look forward to reestablishing my connection to the force.

Use referral code STAR-62W5-FRT9 and join us in the stars. And be sure to claim your additional 50,000 credit bonus!

October 16, 2022March 7, 2024

Day of the Vara Spooktacular 2952

This “Terror Never Sleeps” event can be played by all, all month long. A bit of exploration required! Just fly to any POI and if you can land without getting shot – explore the various buildings. Inside look for the infamous “loot” crates which generally come in three flavors.

This is a great way for beginners to “loot” their way gaining food, clothes, weapons, and armor. And of the course, the grand prizes “Horrific Helmets”. And who knows, along the way you will have learned to land at many of Stanton’s points of interest.

Get your Vala Mal Doran on with your share of the loot!

Use referral code STAR-62W5-FRT9 and join us in the stars. And be sure to claim your additional 50,000 credit bonus!

October 15, 2022March 7, 2024

Disengagement theory

OK, as if learning to play Star Citizen wasn’t hard enough. Now we have to learn something called disengagement theory. One of the coolest things about theories is that they are generally far easier to disprove then they are to prove. It is clear some are rolling it back on just hard it will be to disengage under Master mode. Not that anyone clearly understands exactly how Master mode will play out.

I was actually a bit surprised to hear claim that under the current FM larger ships can never disengage. It always will be an energy management problem. Larger ships bring far more energy to the table.

“Throttle to full, spool up QT. Full power to shields. Lock onto the nearest waypoint, helm evasive pattern corkscrew, keep us in that synchronization window. Ready countermeasures. All right steady, steady, and PUNCH IT”

Of course you could also drop out mid jump if you wanted to get lost. So yes, disengagement is possible under the current FM.

I also believe most folks completely understand quantum travel. And have also come to understand that when spooling up, their shields would continue to work.

With Master mode we now have an added short qt jump. How does that change queuing up a normal QT jump? And why would I want to use a short qt jump over a normal QT jump during disengagement?

In the new FM ships will only be able to pass each other in the night in three speed ranges. QT, QT/10, or SCM.

And these deadly long range orbital attacks? Sure, if you have an hour to blow. Feel free to down that Hammerhead. I crewed a Hammerhead in the PU in previous patches, I don’t seem to remember any fighters surviving long. So I am not feeling it. Get a new pilot dude.

Most folks run orbital attacks close up, around 500m. Why? Because that is the only range HitReg reliably works.

Going up against a Hammerhead is much more fun when you’re lobbing torpedoes!

Use referral code STAR-62W5-FRT9 and join us in the stars. And be sure to claim your additional 50,000 credit bonus!