If Lovin' This Game is Wrong, I Don't Wanna Be Right...

~or “Bet Your Game Can't do This!”

Me, in my Prospy perched onna rock like a fly onna turd... =]
(Bet you can't do THAT in your game)

So, I play this gods awful scam of a game called Star Citizen. Actually I can only assume insanity runs rampant in my family because if you listen to just a fraction the nay-sayers out there, Star Citizen is nothing but a fancy fleecing machine, a huge scam, a reprehensible cheat, a fancy go-nowhere tech-demonstrator that has been running for over 10 years now.

A scam involving at the very least the 617 hard working employees (per CIG's LinkedIn page), ALL of whom have to be in-on-the-take with Chris Roberts as the Capo di Tutti i Capi of this Gang of Scammers.

And the ONLY reason they are working so very hard is... to separate us poor fools from our money by selling us a game that will never be finished and VERY expensive pixel spaceships.

The Aegis Dynamics Javelin-class Destroyer Pixel Ship
(standalone price, $3,000 US)

I call bull shit.

I have been actively playing this AMAZING game for nearly a year now. I even left EVE Online and Elite (not so) Dangerous after 10 years to focus solely on playing this game. Why? I'll fukkin tell you why...

Immersion, in depth in breadth in detail and in scope that's why. And to make my point, here is what happened to me just today.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Beeep... Beeep... Beeep... Beeep... Beeep...<smack!>
I wake in my new digs in Greencircle, Cloudview Center, Orison.

The view from my rack each morning...
(Bet you don't have THAT in your game)

The night before I'd been watching some bootleg after action reps from a para-military outfit called the Skunk Works Militia. Good group, solid and very strack. This one trooper, Kate, is quite focused with a good story telling quality to her field reports.

This led me to consider looking into similar contracts myself. I went to AcrCorp and accepted one from Tecia "Twitch" Pacheco, a mid level drug dealer out of Area18. It was a contract to take out all BlacJac Security personnel in a bunker on an ArcCorp moon as a diversion for other of her “activities”... Twitch has a chip on her shoulder for BlacJac too, so it'sa two birds, one stone kinda thing for her.

I decided to take out Huston's Comm Array ST1-61 first, that's just a trespassing charge. Then I'll go down and whack the rent-a-cops. The cops deal lightly with the trespass, but they really frown on multiple murders.

Comm Array ST1-61, the UEE Eye-in-the-Sky over Hurston

So, things of course went ass up almost immediately. Flew out in my Herald. Parked her in defilade from the array's auto-guns, powered down, went EVA and made it safely inside... only to find out I could not “use” the Tigerclaw cryptokey I had on my belt. Damn tech glitches... Just goes to show that even after hundreds of years of civilization and development, tech can still be buggy as hell and really screw up your day.

I was warping back to Area18 to acquire other crypkeys when Twitch messaged me that the contract was blown...  Fuckmerunnin. So now I'm depressed, made no credits, and have a Lev2 C-Stat to boot. Well Shit.

I drop out of warp, kill the engines, go in the back, get comfortable, mix a double shot Ruum & Kwafe then sit quietly at comms and contemplate my poor life choices and the never ending vagaries of tech.

Sittin' at comms sippin' tea in my underwear... out in th' black
(Bet you can't do THAT in your game)

Fuck it. With a CS-2 I can't legally land at any station or port of call. Well, you can land outside of the ATC's range at most ports and walk in, but that's damn tedious and I am not up for any tedium. So I decide to go to Grim Hex, anyone can land there... if you're lucky, and can make it past the dock jumpers.

I keep an old Prospector there. I'll go mining out in th' Belt and drown my chagrin with the monotonous sound of the mining laser... and, of course, a drop or two of that sweet Ruum.

So I headed out deep into the Aaron Halo asteroid belt. The belt, right now, is safe as houses. Deep scanning is still in development so no one can, at this moment, scan you down when you  are millions of klicks out. And th' Belt is HUGE... mindbogglingly huge in fact.

To get into the belt you jump from one warpable location to another, then in-flight you manually kill your warp at the right distance (you can't do THAT in EVE!) to drop you inside the belt.

The graphic above shows the distances between CRU-L1 and ARC-L5. So, warping from CRU-L1 to ARC-L5 you want to drop warp between 13.543 Mk and 11.158 Mk. That give you over 2,385,000 kilometers to drop out randomly and you will find yourself surrounded by an actual, fully realized asteroid belt. Nom Nom Nom Nom Nom safely for DAYS.

I usually mine only Quantanium as it is the highest priced ore available, at the time of this post, around 83.64cr per cSCU at Loreville. But it is DAMN dangerous to mine as it is somewhat explody and I am just not down for tedious or explody stuff right now. I need a nice relatively safe, easy way to generate some credits.

The mind numbing thrum of the mining lasers and tractor beam

I take my time and fill my ore bags with Borease @ 17.6cr/cSCU, Hephaestanite @ 7.92cr/cSCU and Titanium @ 4.4cr/cSCU. It was what I found and it was safe & easy mining compared to Quant, relaxing actually.

I powered down the engines, stretched and yawned... went in the back, ate, washed, did the necessaries. Then I changed into an old comfy pair of sweat pants and an old hole ridden, stained and beloved sweater and hit the rack. I slept like a baby in my ship out deep in the belt.

On waking many hours later I shit, showered, shaved, ate, dressed in my undersuit and armor and sat down to plan my day. I still had that buggered CS-2... what to do, what to do... I decided to take a shot at fixing that by, well, fighting my way into a SecDepo and hacking the Imperial Criminal Database. So, off to Security Depot Hurston-1 on Huston.

SecDepo Hurston-1

It's a bit easier to do this planetside as one, one, you can land three or so klicks out to avoid the AA turrets and two, you can breath the air and just walk in. The guards however, would be another thing. If you do this at Security Post Kareah, or any orbital station, well you can't breath in space and there is no way to avoid the AA guns on your way in. So meh.

I get to Hurston and fly down to about 2 klicks out and land. I did get shot at, but my shields held until I was down... I left the flood lights on, a mistake... I'll explain later.

I walked in easy peasy... took the elevator down and... and well, I killed all six of the guards ok? Of course this took me to a CS-5, wanted with a bounty and a beacon on my fukkin head but... I was in and I got to work. I was finally able to use the Tigerclaw crypkey and started the hack. As there were now six murder charges in addition to the two trespassing charges to discharge... it took a while.

Check screen, sweep 12 to 9... Check screen, sweep 12 to 9...
(Bet you can't do THAT in your game)

I was on pins and needles the whole damn time. You have to watch the progress and make sure the hack doesn't abort, then, once in, you have to dismiss each charge... and the whole time I had my head on a swivel, watching and waiting for the bullet... or plasma charge... or grenade from a local bounty hunter to spoil my day.

Please select reason for charge dismissal...

I DID IT!! Hack completed, criminal records cleared and done! Yessiree! I was in the clear. Just a humble old law abiding citizen me! I left the building in high spirits thinking on the credits I was gonna make off of that sweet load of ore. As I jogged back to my ship I noticed the red tracers... wait, what the fuck! red tracers?? Then I saw the explosion just over the next hill as my humble Prospy and all that ore was blown sky high...

I can only assume some bounty hunter got pissed when he saw my wanted beacon go dark, meaning I was no longer a bounty and now he was all depressed and made no credits for his effort so fuck my ship. And leaving the lights on, a nice beacon for him to aim at... boom.

Crap fuck damn shit piss. Now I am marooned on Hurston. I found a way to climb up on top of the SecDepo and I sat for a while scanning the horizon hoping that bounty hunter might come for me anyway. Then maybe I could whack him and take his ship.

Marooned, well armed and a little pissed...

No go. I clearly heard the far off and falling whine of his engines as he pulled up out of atmo. Crap. Well what now bright boy I asked myself. Let's see, I have two, no, make that one bottle of water and... huh, six food bars. Hurston has a breathable atmo, so I am looking at a long slow death from dehydration... great.

And, of course, as I am not shipboard, I have no access to mapping or location finding, course setting, or anything that could help me to find my way to the nearest post or station where I might find deliverance from my predicament. I could, of course wander blindly in the desert until I die miserably of lack of water... but that does not appeal to me at all.

So, I decide to create a Service Beacon, for 5000cr mind you, in the hope that  some kindhearted soul will come and save me... keeping in mind that not all who come to collect the offered payment are kindhearted or there to actually help you. Some come for the fun of shootzing you anyway. There are a LOT of asshats in Stanton.

About here will do

I make my way uphill from the SecDepo and select a location where I have some shelter and a defensible position to watch for whomsoever might come to my dubious ”rescue”. I create the beacon about 50 meters out and get back under cover to wait. The whole time mumbling the prayer for the lost just as my grandmum taught me.

“Oh god get me outta here... Oh god get me outta here... Oh god get me outta here...“

The beacon fails. Or, well I canceled it, nerves you know. The second one fails also... for the same reason. The third one I leave up, it works and is accepted.

Here we go.

I hear him on approach

I wait and eventually get his marker on my hud. He comes in and hovers at like three meters, of course right behind a huge panel of debris. Crap. I edge carefully around the panel and find my self facing a Origin 100i...

I have my trusty FS-9 LMG... of course, and he has two M4A laser cannons and two Strikeforce II missile racks... um, ok... I sling my LMG and wave... what else can I do?

A few seconds later he lands... well, he bumps along the ground until he comes to a stop as he didn't have his landing gear down... sigh.

He pops the door and I hop in... Whoosh! We take off burn hard and warp out. A few minutes later he lands at Everus Harbor Station, landing gear down this time. He pops the door and I exit the 100i out onto the landing pad. We take the elevator down to the main concourse and part ways.

I look around at the hubbub of the space port, people busily going about thier lives, working, traveling, meeting... all trying to get ahead and get along. I walk slowly over to the concourse windowall and gaze down on the planet Hurston.

As I contemplate the Central Tower in Loreville rising two and a half kilometers into the sky... I also contemplate my life, my ways of trying to get ahead and get along... and my future.

Safe and sound...

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

A side note here, with the upcoming release of Alpha 3.15.0 we will get the first iteration of the “Death of a Spaceman” mechanic, see links below for more detailed info. But, basically, eventually, you die, for good.

Yes, for good and forever. No more immortality. Your character, ie YOU, can only live for but so long, repaired, resuscitated even recreated through the miracle of modern medicine. So your one and only life can be lengthened, even greatly lengthened, but eventually one day you will perma-die and pass on your entire estate to your named heir.  No way around it, just like real life.

So, in the spirit of getting out ahead of the game, I have reset my “Bkspc” key to nothing. I can no longer backspace my way out of a sticky situation, well at least not with a single keypress. And I am playing the game as though suicide is not a viable option. Because one day soon... it won't be.

On a side side note, I have been Turamarth Elrandir in ALL of my gaming days since 1981 when I first created Tur as the namesake of my DOOM toon. I have been lucky to have created Turamarth Elrandir in EVE, Elite Dangerous, Star Citizen and a number of other games over the years, but those first three are by far the most important to me.

And now, now one day I will have to make a new toon in Star Citizen... and I really don't want to. I have been Turamarth Elrandir for FORTY godsdamned YEARS... that's only 21 years less than my whole real life FFS!

Chris Roberts.... This fukkin BETTER be worth it man.

02/05/2013 – Original DOAS post.
10/30/2020 - Calling All Devs - Death of a Spaceman Youtube

I think back on all of the things I saw, did, experienced and took part in during my TEN years in Anoikis and New Eden, in EVE Online... and Nothing, Not One Thing that happened in that game in all those amazing years comes anywhere near Depth, Breadth, Scale and sheer Personal First Person Immersion that I experience everyday in Star Citizen. Not One Damn Thing.

Fly it, ride it, walk it and shoot it like it's REAL
=/|)=

First Person Beats No Person

~or "When Inside is as Amazing as Outside"

As I wake & work, fly & die, eat & sleep through the days of my life in Stanton, I find I am drawn in more and more, deeper and deeper into the immersion, captivated by the detail and the scale of what Star Citizen actually IS...

A true Virtuality.

Burning hard towards the rising sun

I'm serious. My relationship with Turamarth in EVE was... a bit removed. Not just the your Avatar is a Ship third person aspect, but it more like someone you read about, or hear about, and yet I was him, sortof...

When I tried to imagine Tur inside his ships I always went through a certain discord, a certain 'disquiet' in my soul over the "lore" of the Capsuleers (a name for us in EVE that I truly dislike and very rarely used).

That we are clones and we do the whole "wavy-hands-instantaneous-consciousness-ego-mind-soul-etc.-transfer-across-lightyears-in-seconds (without data loss or corruption)(riiiiight) thing" is actually ok with me, I don't wanna actually be dead.

No, it's the whole you are naked, drugged & defenseless with cables and umbilicals plugged into ports all over your body, which is then cocooned away in a lightless, pressurized, goo filled "POD"... which is plugged into the ship... meaning YOU are plugged into the ship... meaning YOU are the ship.

I know this is a re-occurring theme in SciFi and I even truly love some of the stories set in this particular sub-genre, but I don't wanna BE ONE. I want to be ME, I want to be Tur... me in the world, my boots on the ground, wind in my hair, rain on my face, gun in my hand.

So I always dreamed, inside my mind, that Tur actually eschewed the POD, that he preferred to stay in the Real World, to be "in" his ships and "with" his crew (and yes, in EVE we do have crew, we just don't talk about them as we kill them off by the millions).

As long as Tur was in his Captain's Chair on the bridge, all was good. Upon hull breach, the ship's AI would raise and slam the clamshell halves of his modified POD around him and eject the POD all in an instant (...so I could have my cake and eat it too).

But this is not Lore, it is not Cannon and therefore it was... wrong. I mean the lore is The Lore, right? Anything Else is just wishy thinking, even in a game. Because History is History, and Facts are Facts, even in a game world, especially in one you really care about, as I do the Lore of EVE and now, the Lore of Star Citizen.

But in Star Citizen I AM Me/Tur and I always will be... well, until Death of a Spaceman that is, but that's a whole 'nother blog post.

So In Star Citizen, I am finally me. First Person, my POV, my view of the verse. And I am as happy as a man can be with this virtual version of Me as Spaceman Spiff in Wonderland!

========== BREAK ==========

OK, that was written back in April 2021 and never got posted.

Some Real Life Stuff Happened...
My lady came to quarantine with me down here in Virginia from Chicagoland back when the World Caught Fire and Lost It's Mind. She then retired from a 30 year career teaching HS Spanish in June of The Year That Shall Not Be Named.

In due course in April of 2021, I retired from a 30 year career as an IT Consultant.

And most recently we just returned home after spending all of July up in Chicago prepping her Townhouse for sale and so we are starting the hunt for our liveaboard bluewater sailboat in earnest now... please wish us luck!

As for Star Citizen... well, I do still play fear not, though just not nearly as much as before cause I'm just busier IRL now is all.

Star Citizen Alpha 3.13 went live August 6, 2021.

Bringing us a new Space Port... This time floating in the strange and wonderful skies of the gas giant Crusader, comes The City in the Clouds, Orison.

Another very long awaited, age old Sci-Fi standard, brought beautifully and incredibly to virtual life by CR & CIG. Space whales man... we got SPACE WHALES!!!

Anyhoo... I'm still around, just livin' my best life, well, lives actually... both Real and Virtual.

Fly, and Live, like there is no tomorrow.

=/|)=

The Calm After the Storm

~or "All quiet in Stanton."

A remote location on Hurston...  (OK, no, I did not know where I was)

Just an update. All is well, just been busy is all really and, well... I'm comfortable in Stanton. Not a lot of drama lately. Oh there are 30Ks' and client crashes and just the plain ol weirdness one comes to expect when the game itself is out to get you. You get kinda used to it and in the doing you learn a certain perspective, a certain calm regard for your fate in the verse.

We went through the XenoThreat event. It was really quite a thing. I only joined in once, put my DPS on the Idris and watched it explode... simply the BEST Space SciFi SpaceWar immersive simulation I have ever seen, much less experienced directly. I did not get involved in the cargo/logistics aspect... I desired to but I was late getting off my ass and making the effort to get into an instance, my bad, no one's fault but my own.

The moment the Idris Warp Core goes Critcal

But I have had a feeling ever since the Event closed that all of Stanton was, sortof, taking a communal deep breath and exhale. We all do hope for more events if they can equal or top this one. But it's been nice, for me at least, to settle down and get back to the peacetime grind... Scanning for Quantanium, mining, hopefully not dying... hauling and refining and then off the the bright lights of the Big Cities to sell our wares.

I have been finally getting into running Combat Contracts. Not doing anything shady (yet), I am civic-mindedly focusing on supporting the Law-n-Order types for the 'nonce. I am also finally getting some practice in with all forms of combat in SC (which is a FAR CRY from combat in EVE). For Fighters, I have acquired a Hawk and a Buccaneer. I am very pleased with both. Still have not used my Cutty Black for Combat, though I do hear from everyone that the Black holds her own in combat.

So far in my time in Stanton, The Quest for Quant is still the best solo creditprinter IMHO. Plus I like it. That is SOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO weird to me after 10 years of intense dislike of everything mining related in EVE Online. But I DO like it in SC. I really do.

The mechanics are interesting and consequential and I feel the risk/reward is balanced, well... maybe it's a little safer than it should be when you go out deep in The Belt. But that's more a function of server cap, IE lack of players than any lack of players with the desire to search out, scan down and mess with miners.

Two runs of Refined Quant, 2748cSCU and 3131cSCU worth ~500,000aUEC

I have also been getting involved in Cobra's Twitch streams. Not in a big way, but I'm there and involved and it is...  very interesting, to say the least. But the biggest thing is actually out here in The Real...

I have finally really completed my Gaming Rig.

When I switched over to SC I had to massively upgrade my gear. I got a Dell G7 7700 Gaming Laptop, since then I have added:

R.A.T. 6+ Gaming Mouse

Ipad running GameGlass

Tobii v5 Eye and Head Tracker

And finally I got a HOTAS set (Hands On Throttle And Stick)... and it is a set I had never even heard of before. The Cobra V5 HOTAS by FlashFire.

It is a budget HOTAS set, not a Warthog (those who know, know... those who don't... don't) but for a plastic budget priced (~$150 US) gaming HOTAS it is quite good. Just don't treat it like it's made of steel and you will be fine.

I did have one issue and it was a deal breaker... the joystick "Twist", the "rotational-axis" in the stick itself, was not recognized in SC as the "YAW" axis... it wasn't recognized at all. And, well, without "Twist" in the stick, I do not have "YAW" in flight... and that is that, refundme.

However, I am a geek. So I fixed it.

Actually I did as we all do, I Made My Offerings to The Gods and I Sent My Prayers On High and Awaited The Answers... for all of 0.01 ms... ie I googled it... a lot.

So I found the fix is complex, interesting and actually kinda geeky fun. You download 2 small programs. "vJoy" and "UCR". vJoy is a Programmable Virtual Joystick Driver and UCR is a Universal Controller Remapper.

With vJoy you create and configure a Virtual Joystick, or in my case a "Virtual HOTAS" actually, and make it a button for button copy of the Stick (or HOTAS or HOSAS) you have. Then you Map that "vJoy" as a button for button copy of your Stick/Set/etc.

vJoy                                      Cobra V5 HOTAS

Configure all vJoy controls to mimic your Stick, HOTAS, HOSAS, etc.

MAP ALL vJoy controls to mimic your Stick, HOTAS, HOSAS, etc.

The UCR did recognize the stick's "Twist" (rot-axis) and I was able to map it to a rot-axis the game sees. So the HOTAS send it's inputs to the vJoy... and the vJoy sends it's inputs to the game... and you cannot tell the difference. See: "Stick2_A2_(Twist)_to_YAW" above.

So, I am finding in SC at least, unless you are saving up for that next big shiney ship... and I'm not, I have my little fleet and it does what I want and need, but unless you are grinding and saving... it looks like keeping your wallet balance between 1 and 2 mil aUEC is just about right.

You see at this time in the game, your daily operating, or running costs are... Food & Water for you, Hydro, Quant, Ammo, Missiles and Mining Consumables for the ship and the Occasional and far too common Insurance Claim "Expidite" fees.

On an avg. day I spend something like a low of 2,000 to a high of maybe 10,000 aUEC. With 1 mil in the bank you are actually good for a couple of hundred days of (no-income or ship purchases) game play.

With the ability to net upwards of 1 mil aUEC with as few as 4 "really good" to 6 or so "decent" Quant runs... I lazily hunt Quant out in th' Belt a few nights a week or two... or three. Rinse & repeat until I break 2 mil and then I put the Prospy away, take some time off to run with the Cobros... and lose ships... and lose equipment... and go to prison... sigh.

Those are the over 10,000 aUEC nights...   =\

That said, it is a wonder in this age to me to sit in my ship, knowing I am actually millions of miles deep inside the Aaron Halo Asteroid Belt, aka, The Belt... As cut off from the rest of Stanton's population as one can be. Safe in the deep endless black of interplanetary space.

I split my off-watch hours and sleep cycles between my Mercury Star Runner, SV SERENITATEM (we can name our ships in v3.13!!) and my Drake Herald (not nameable yet)... running silent and on the float deep in Th' Belt... and I am happy.

Will update here as and if things happen worth writing about. Hang in there, I fly with Cobra, stuff ALWAYS happens.

Fly safe my friends

=/|)=

Contentedness

~or "How the Frak am I Enjoying This?"

Limping into station, burnt up and smoking but still flyin'

In this post I am gonna start with an assumption or two...

1. That you, gentle reader, know something of and are interested in online gaming in general and
2. and that you know about and are interested in Star Citizen (SC), a SciFi Space Flight/FPS MMO(RP)G as envisioned by Chris Roberts (CR) and currently (for the last 9 years) in development by Cloud Imperium Games (CIG).

If the above two points are correct then you probably know that there is a truly EPIC amount of rhetoric, discussion, trolling, reasoned argument and some downright vitriolic hate surrounding SC and CIG over how SC has been developed and where it is going in it’s development. Most of the disagreement is over...

1. Money, IE: the crowdfunded business model and accountability, or lack thereof… and
2. That the game is still in active development for 9 years at this writing, with no definitive “publish” date set.

The main point I want to address in this post is the assertion that SC is a scam because it is not finished and polished, that it has not reached “Gold” standard and been published as Completed and Ready to Play for the masses. Specifically that there is no real “playable content”… and the assertion it is a scam because that there won’t ever be any.

I am NOT gonna get into any details and any long drawn out arguments, it’s simply not worth it to me when I can personally and completely honestly say these two things…

First, I have been a serious, devoted and dedicated player of EVE Online for almost exactly 10 years. EVE is indisputably one of the hardest, most beloved, and also among the most reviled MMO’s out there.

EVE holds all kinds of records, some recorded with simple numerical facts such as recently being awarded with two new Guinness World Records bringing the total to four.

After the 14 hour “The Massacre at M2-XFE” on Dec 30 & 31 2020, EVE Online was awarded with the following GWR’s. One for the Most Costly Video Game Battle and another for the Most Titans Lost in a Battle of EVE Online.

From "Titan Massacre at M2-XFE" by Wilhelm Arcturus

These were awarded in the wake of two world records earned in Oct of 2020 for the largest multiplayer video game PvP battle, with 8,825 players, and the most concurrent participants in a multiplayer video game PvP battle, with 6,557 active participants.

My point is that I spent 9 and ½ of my 10 years in EVE living, flying and dying in Anoikis, wormhole space, the harshest and hardest of EVE’s 4 levels of security… Hisec, Losec, Nullsec and what I call Negsec (Negative Security Space).

I consider the above, and ALL of this blog’s content from my first post back in Apr. of 2011 to my Goodbye EVE post in Dec of 2020 as my bona fides, my SciFi Sandbox MMO Resume, my Gaming Curriculum Vitae as twere.

That said, I’d like to address the one argument against SC that I consistently see over and over and over…

“Scam Citizen”. The primary argument that Star Citizen has no real content and never will because it’s a money making scam and that the proof is in the fact that it is still under development after 9 years.

I initially financially backed SC back in May of 2015. I started playing SC actively in mid Nov of 2020. I canceled my EVE account in Jan of 2021. I now exclusively play a game that, it is heatedly argued, has no content... and yet I login and play Star Citizen nearly every night and twice on weekends instead of playing EVE, which I think we can all agree does have a pretty rich history of developed and player created content.

So my second point is… I find it fascinating that after 2 months I still have yet to find this “lack of content” the detractors go on about. I’m just too busy playing the game to see it I guess.

Now... how do I boot up SC on this thing?

So, how is it that I am able to logon to SC, spawn into my character in whatever Hab or ship I logged out in last, and spend 2, 4, 6 HOURS doing “things and stuff” in a game without content? Am I making this up? Am I just what, hanging out in space or in a hangar? Just walking around my ship and I guess sucking my thumb?

NO… oh hell no I’m not.

Yesterday I logged on to SC in the afternoon… I am a member of a large org, so I joined the Org Discord, glad to see some of the 2000+ org members playing this no-content game with me. I decided I needed to make some credits because I had spent myself down under 1M aUEC by going on a bit of a buying spree last week.

I seriously gotta stay away from New Babbage, and TBH thank the gods Loreville is gone now… I spend wayyyyy too much in those places!! In just the past two weeks I have bought 2 ships (with aUEC I made IN GAME), a Drake “Herald” and an Anvil “Hawk”...

my Anvil Aerospace Hawk,  =]ISABEAU[=

I bought crap-ton of clothing and weapons & ammo and then ate too much at Whammer's...

Whammer's Burgers, Shakes & Fires

and drank way too much at Wally’s…

Wally's Bar

Nope, no “content” here.

I decided to spend my day lazily mining up some Quantanium. I know, silly me, there is no playable content here but… I did somehow fly out to HUR-L3 and burn hard for the edges of the rock garden that surrounds the station. 120km out I started scanning for ores… I get a hit and off I go!

Rock after rock, scanning, scanning, approach to within 1km, run a detail scan, decide go or no-go? More often it’s a no-go, but then you hit a 27% or a 39% rock and OH YEAH!  Oh, sorry, I know, I must be imagining all of this…

40.32% Quantanium... MMM MMm Mmm

So I settle down and start mining… Heating up the rock, carefully, oh so carefully to get it to that critical stage when it breaks just enough… and it doesn’t always go well. I’m so glad it’s only imaginary content… or the two times my ship was damaged by a too energetic split it would have been… um, uh damaged?

Anyway, so I pop the big rock, then carefully, oh so carefully pop the chunks and voilà... several nice fat 100% Quantanium rocks ready to be nom-nom’ed up and so I do… well, I guess I imagine I do anyway.

I work my way through the purple rocks (rocks small enough to have their ores “extracted” have a purple outline) filling my ore bags with 100% Quantanium, 3,200cSCU (32SCU = EVE 32m3) and I IMMEDIATELY warp back to the CRU-L1 refinery before the Quant EXPLODES… Good thing there is actually no content like that huh?

Nom nom nom nom nom...

I get back to the station and land just like a leaf-on-the-wind… and yup, BOOM… seconds after touch down, as I’m leaving the pilot’s seat… no flashing Yellow and alarm, nope, straight to Fast Flashing RED… and BOOM…  <sigh>. Again, good thing there is actually no content like that huh?

So I sit a moment, take a breath then select repair & refuel and head back to HUR-L3’s rock garden with it’s amazing lack of stuff to do.

Burning out to the Rock Garden

By the end of the session, I had mined up four loads of Quant, one I lost on the landing pad (see above) and delivered three safely to the Refinery. And just FYI, I lost that load not to a 30K nor a glitch or bug and not to PVE or even PVP… nope I lost that load to the intended consequences of the Quantanium mining mechanics… you know, if they existed that is.

I mined and started 3 batches today, so now I have a total of 6 runs of Quant in the cookers. From ~1,000 to ~2,000cSCU per batch, with one at 3,131cSCU which is the highest amount of “Q” you can mine, deliver and process, with a Prospector, in a single batch.

Oh and just FYI… that 3,131 batch is worth ~275,000aUEC before refining costs, so call it something north of 250,000aUEC profit for just that one batch. How’s them apples huh? Four batches can potentially reap 1 Million aUEC if you do it right and Bob is smiling on you… Oh, sorry, you know IF it was actually realized content that is.

Starting a batch, 3131sCSU (32CSU) of raw Quantanium ore

So, here’s my point.

Take Point One at the top of this post, that I was a dedicated EVE Online player for 10 years speaks clearly that I have some understanding of what content is in a SciFi Space based MMO… Add to that the detailed description of the gameplay in SC that I personally experienced in the last 24 hours.

There is fully realized, deeply engaging and enjoyable content in Star Citizen right now, and is it amazing in it’s depth, breadth and detail.

IMHO Mining in SC alone far surpasses what EVE offers in this particular arena of gameplay. The Mechanics of Mining in SC are deeply visually and logically satisfying not just as compared to EVE, but as compared to ANY other similar gameplay I have ever personally experienced… and that is JUST mining.

So, I don’t know about you but I think I’m just gonna ignore the naysayers, the butthurt, the Smart, but not-so-smart… and those just piling on cause being an anonasshat online is easy and fun for some poor sad people.

Me? I’m just too busy just enjoying the amazing sandbox that is Star Citizen right now to care what they say, especially in the face of the proof of content I experience every single day.

Fly it like it’s actually there…   =]
=/|)=

Sleeping With The Stars

 ~or "Home Schweet Home"

My Drake "Herald" Data Runner, =]SNOOPY[=

One of the things that I felt the strongest about in my years in EVE Online was the feeling of Home. I wrote on this specifically a number of times.

One of the things I loved most in EVE was when we, our small corp headed by my two sons and myself, decided to move and live full time, into Anoikis… wormhole space, or as I call, it… Negative Sec.

You see in EVE, Anoikis is the Wild West, the Outback, the Wildlands, the Deep Desert… on maps, Anoikis is that place where it simply says, “Here be Dragons”.

There are NO NPC Police, NO NPC Navy, NO gates and NO “local”… IE what happens in Anoikis, stays in Anoikis. You can podkill 10 players and immediately jump a wormhole directly into Amarr and the po-po just wave as you fly by…

Also, there are NO NPC stations in Anoikis. I do not count Thera as Anoikis, Thera is it’s own thing (which I never really liked or bought into). So for you to “live” in Anoikis you had to anchor, fuel, arm, support and maintain a POS, a Planetary Orbital Station. I know they are now called Citadels and those are different in some ways, but I’m vastly more familiar with the old, simpler yet similar POS system.

A POS is, well, was a Space Station you anchored in space near a moon, you had to keep it fueled and, well, you lived in it. In EVE of course this means effectively that your ships, modules, etc. were stored there in relative safety.

Serenity Station, HBHI's Home in Anoikis  (the forcefield is 30km wide)

Once the POS was anchored and the forcefield powered up, and the Warp Interdiction Bubble Wall was anchored, then you could anchor a wide variety of structures inside the forcefield. Ship Maintenance Arrays, Ship Factory Arrays, Refineries, Manufacturing and Research Arrays. And that was where your corpmates & allies could work and live together in “relative” safety.

And that safety was very “relative”… POSes are, of course as are ALL player owned/created things in EVE, not actually “safe”. They had a whole system of passive and active defenses but in the end, if a group wanted your POS dead… it would die. But it wasn’t “easy” and therein lay your security.

In EVE “perfect safety” is found ONLY in NPC stations in highsec, lowsec and nullsec… but there are NO NPC stations in Anoikis. Think about that. We lived in the Wildlands, we lived in the Deep Desert, we lived “Where there be Dragons”. And we loved it. Every second of it.

NPC stations in Star Citizen are pretty much the same. Your Ships are stored “somewhere” inside the variety of ports and stations and NO ONE can get to them (or any cargo or installed modules etc.) until YOU retrieve one to a Landing Pad or Hangar Bay, at that point are they “at risk”, but not until then.

Burning hard for the "safety" of a Lagrange Point Refinery Station

At this time in the game, ALL of the “things you own”, your weapons, armor, ship modules, etc. are not physicalized into the world while stored. Until retrieved and/or equipped they exist only in your “personal inventory”, not as an object in the verse that can be manipulated… and therefore stolen or destroyed.

So how does all this relate to my gameplay and desire for a Home in the UEE?

So the mechanics of being in First Person, in a physicalized human form all the time, changes how you go about things like logging off. In EVE, you either docked in an NPC or Player Owned Station or you “parked” your ship inside the Forcefield of a POS and, well, just logged off.

One thing I used to do in my early days in Anoikis, was to warp out to a deep bookmark and log off there. I mean your “body” was packed away inside a pressurized goo filled sardine can… you couldn’t “go to bed” if you wanted to… ever.  Meh.

But you may have heard or seen how we in SC “wake up” on login. Meaning on login the first screen you get is a view from your “head” down to your feet as you lie in a bed in the last place you landed or logged in at.

Wakee, wakee, eggs and bakey... a Suite at The Nest in ArcCorp

IE you wake up in a bed, schweet! How immersive, how real-lifelike right?. So I’d like very much to “go to bed” when I’m ready to log off, it just makes sense right? But in the stations and cities and Habs and such, we can’t. At least not yet.

So as I understand it, in the future we are supposed to be able to have our own place in the verse. We will be able to rent a Hab unit in New Babbage, or one in Loreville, maybe one day BUY a penthouse in Arcorp! And the one I want most, one day we will be able to buy a piece of land and BUILD our own pioneer settlement!!

But today? Well, we do wake up in a Hab as a standard thing, but once you leave the Hab and that door closes behind you, the door locks. ALL the doors are locked because the rental/purchase mechanics are still to be implemented.

So where does one log off? I mean do you sit your character down on a random bench in the food court and just crap out like a homeless person? I mean you OWN A SPACESHIP FFS!! But we can’t go back to the Hab we woke up in, or ANY Hab…

Just ignore the sleeping Homeless Millionaire Spaceship Captain

But we can bed-log (lie down on and log off in a bed) in any ship that has beds! I immediately tried this and you wake up in the same bed in the same ship and at the same place you logged off in. This holds true even out on a landing pad (I have not tried this in a Hangar yet)... Except that so far in my testing when you login on a landing pad you have no more than 1 to 2 minutes until your ship is auto-stored, if that long. And that transports "you" instantly to the ASOP Terminals in whatever port or station you are at, awkward if you sleep in your skivvies...  =]

But... if you log off at some random place in space, when you log back in, you find yourself and your ship exactly where you logged off and NO Scotty the Snotty Traffic Controller to hassle you! The only thing that can mess with you is the inactivity timer, and that's not a bad thing.

I LOVE THIS. I have bought several ships now and ALL have beds and a few have wet heads (toilet/sink/shower combo) and food processing units… IE if it was REAL, you could LIVE in these ships as long as you had food & water.

On a related aside… I am a sailor. I crew on racing and cruising sailing yachts in the southern Chesapeake Bay during the regatta season. I grew up on the bay boating and sailing and it is one of my great lifelong passions. My lady and I are planning and working to buy and move aboard and travel on a 40’ bluewater capable (meaning it can safely cross oceans) sailboat.

So, I am very familiar with living in a small space in a vessel designed to travel far and wide, one that is designed for that very purpose.

And in Star Citizen… I get to do just that.

As I said I own several ships all of which have beds and most of which have at least minimal bathroom and galley facilities. I have tested a theory and found it excellent.

One other thing we do not have in SC (and I do not know if we will) is Bookmarking in Space. IE the ability to create a “bookmark” or an exact X/Y/Z coordinate location anywhere in space that you can warp to as one would a Sun, a world, a moon, an Orbital Marker or a city etc. So we cannot make bookmarks in space… and, as I understand it right now, there is no ability/mechanic for scanning down and finding ships in space… Hmmmm.

So at the end of a long day of mining Quant and getting it safely into the cookers, I put away my Prospector, and retrieve my Herald, I then take an elevator up to the landing pad and walk out, enter the ship and take off...

Done for the day...

…I set a warp to a random distant warpable, anything I can warp to will do, but it has to be more than 5 minutes out from where I am, and I then head out. I usually pick a random number (between 1 and 5) and manually drop out of warp after that many minutes of travel, then I pick a warpable as close to right angles from my last Rhumb Line (line of travel), I pick another random number and “Engage”… again dropping out after the requisite number of minutes has passed.

This drops me in a fairly random place in space. I am well off of the main spacelanes… and therefore… I am as safe as if I was not even logged in, as safe as in any NPC Station. I am in my own place, beholden and responsible only to myself for my safety and well-being and here… out here in the deep black, I am at peace.

My Home is in Space… where is yours?
=/|)=