Cult Citizen

[icycalm]

Inside Star Citizen: Alpha 4.0 - Playing With Fire
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vaKzp5ZP7Q4

It's getting hot in here, and before you fall into a burning ring of fire, you'll want to join us for this in-depth review of what you can expect from one of the most-anticipated aspects of Alpha 4.0: Fire Gameplay.

As someone who is a firefighter in real life, I'm actually surprised they got it right. This is the most realistic representation *so far* in a game how fire looks and travels. I think the last time I was that amazed was Far Cry 2's fire system.

if you too saw the Disaster Girl meme and you did the Pointing DiCaprio meme

During imminent combat scenarios I'm just going to turn off all oxygen to the interior of the ship and make crew wear spacesuits.

As a former sailor and having fought a shipboard fire, the way you did this made me very happy!! Well done! I can't wait to start training crews on this!

Visuals look amazing once fire has been put out.

Woa, so wait a sec - does that mean the room system is coming online with the fire system?

Life Support and Engineering are meant to come out in 4.0, fire system interacts with both.

Love that opening the doors puts the fires out since there's no O2 in space.

How can multimillion UEC ships not have fire mitigation systems integrated? I can see Drake being like "EH, we will cross that bridge when we get there" but all the others...

The fire suppression system is venting the oxygen.

CIG want to test the fire system first... once tested and confirmed working, they'll add the auto-suppression system (for certain ships, and in certain areas)... as with everything SC, this is fire implementation is not 'final' :p

I can imagine some forms of auto-suppression systems coming online later for larger ships where venting isn't always possible, maybe tied with the life support systems so it vents inert gases inside, but even smaller ships would need quite large liquid or gas tanks so may be unfeasible. But from what I've seen, you can vent the oxygen from individual rooms so it's already built-in, just have to hope there are doors that can enclose it and anyone inside has a suit on. Would be cool to have emergency gas masks alongside the extinguishers for anyone who forgets a helmet.

Not at all, having a fire suppression system on large ships doesn't necessarily save you from extensive damage. You would still have to probably do a lot of work running around and if you don't have a fire suppression system on like a Reclaimer, it doesn't matter if you have 30 firefighters because no one can get up to those extremely high ceilings with their puny fire extinguishers.

There is something so much more tragic and hits you in the heart when something burns. Losing your ship in a one second explosion is just a game. Watching your ship suffer... hurts.

This video is lit.

In all seriousness though, this is technically very impressive. A huge achievement. Well done.

Also, thank god you don't put fires out with a beam.

I love those meme references. Community, suspicious smirking girl, this is fine

I didn't get the community one. Might be from a SaltEMike video. I got the other ones. Something to do with "streets ahead"...

Oh the COMMUNITY reference! Perfection. You guys are streets ahead

Love the Community Chaos Theory episode reference in the beginning!

Oh it's actually from the TV show:

The Darkest Timeline: The '1' Timeline | Community
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=POT3plx0vBs

https://old.reddit.com/r/starcitizen/co ... ne/lh5hrii

They actually did a "This is fine" with Pico also...

https://old.reddit.com/r/starcitizen/co ... ne/lh5d7ml

Someone watched uchuu kyoudai.

No idea what this is.

https://old.reddit.com/r/starcitizen/co ... on/lh4wqri

Apparently, 900 years in the future, all spaceship interiors are made of balsa wood and old newspapers, and soaked in lighter fluid.

I laughed at this. Also props for this guy's name, which is from D&D.

Also time for everyone to learn of USN Class A, B, C, and D fires. Turns out everything can catch on fire even when you're on a water vessel.

[icycalm]

Inside Star Citizen: Alpha 4.0 - Engineering
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h8fKhnp ... XVyolQO3wj



Big ships are about to get far more complicated to run. But also far more powerful. This video gets into the complexity but not really the power boost. They’ve talked about that elsewhere, but basically the goal is for fighters to not really be able to do much harm to large ships without escorting in other large ships or bombers.

Lots of friendless players will soon be melting their large ships, though NPC crewmembers and AI blades have been promised for the far future.

[icycalm]

https://www.reddit.com/r/starcitizen/co ... nt/luw8p3k

Engineering will really be the piece that forces large multicrew ships to be crewed by more than one person, even for travel purposes.

Naw, they've made it clear that if you're just going from point A to point B, even a single person will be able to handle the largest ships. It's what happens in between that makes the difference, but frankly it would feel awful if merely moving the ship required all hands on deck solving constant engineering issues. Luckily it's not going to be that way; so long as you keep your ship and components well-maintained, it should be smooth sailing.

I do believe you're correct. In-transit tuning and maintenance between runs should do it for most things. Mid-battle is something else entirely as well as potentially having engineering/resource tasks that could temporarily boost certain systems in an emergency.

Absolutely. If they made it so that you'd need an engineer just to get from A to B, even getting a group together for multicrew gameplay would be made much more and unnecessarily difficult.

You'd at the very least want to be able to move the ship to where your friends are.

[icycalm]

Engineering is currently in Tech-Preview and the community is buzzing. I picked some highlights.

https://www.reddit.com/r/starcitizen/co ... eplay_leak

Video from SC PIPELINE Discord.

CIG did say that the reason engineering was so much delayed was that it no longer fit their new standards for new features in terms of functionality and QoL and such.

And seeing this, yeah, they've worked on improving this a lot based on what they said we'd originally get with 4.0. That's some exciting stuff, and the UI looks really good.

And people forget that only a few ships were meant to have engineering in the first release. They've already converted over 70 ships, including big ones, so it's already way more fleshed out than a year ago :)

Seems complex enough you might wanna hire a good engineer.

Are we gonna get ship manuals? I think I might need one to understand what is happening.

Zeus CL Ship Parts: 9

Connie Taurus Ship Parts: 52!!!

Engineering gonna be a disaster for solo players, who bought ships for multiple players. :D

I just hope they remember they sold some larger ships explicitly stating smaller crew requirements (i.e. 1-2 for C2 Hercules, or 1-3 for an M2 Hercules, or 1-2 for the Liberator due to extensive automation of systems) and don't turn around and turn them into clusterfucks just due to their size.

For instance, I got a Carrack knowing full well they intended 4 to be the minimum crew. I'm fine with that, I expected it to be something I mainly or even only used when playing in a group. I did NOT get a C2 expecting needing an entire crew to operate one because that's not how they sold it.

If you can extinguish fires by venting the room by opening the doors to space...

Then all my years of playing FTL has prepared me for this moment.

I expect that anything up to around Corsair/Constellation scale will be soloable, but maybe start benefiting from having someone else to run around dealing with fires and problems.

I seem to remember hearing that fighters would have MFDs for some of this stuff, so you can handle it from the pilot seat, and I expect that a lot of that functionality will be available from the cockpit of larger ships too.

Putting out fires is something you encounter when you have a ship with an interior large enough to have fires.

In basic day to day use you should see no difference out of combat, in combat it should be the death of solo caps as an attacker can basically just repeatedly set them on fire and slowly burn the ship down.

It’s important to note that in the video they are trying to purposely fuck their components up and this wouldn’t be indicative of actual day to day wear and tear.

People will adjust. We playing solo, we will learn to be more cautious, avoiding unnecessary combat and so on. It will be fine. The game will change, ye.

Nobody would bat an eye if this was in the game from the start and we would learn to work with and around it from the start.

Why do people decide to leak this stuff, like do yall not get what a NDA means?

The secret testers club is leaky

so we made a special secret testers club, but that was leaky too

so we made an extra special secret testers club, but that was leaky too

so we made a hyper extra special secret testers club, but that was leaky too

so we made a super hyper extra special secret testers club and are we just not going to learn that using non contracted players as focus testing groups and hoping for them not to be leaky does not work in reality?

But :(

I've been playing this too long to have any faith this will work, but fingers crossed.

Are the elevators working yet btw? Or the ladders?

https://www.reddit.com/r/starcitizen/co ... j/i_had_to




(Evocati NDA) Star Citizen Alpha Engineering Tech-Preview Playtest!
https://www.reddit.com/r/starcitizen/co ... ngineering

Finally, fully 3D FTL is here.

Finally, a reason for the SRV to exist! I could imagine players initiating contracts to have their ships towed to a port for repairs.

So what we need now is a R2D2 astromech droid to repair stuff while we're dogfighting.

Thankfully us OG backers get one! ;)

https://starcitizen.tools/AMX-1_Repair_Bot

The SQ42 Mission Disk has evolved - and become the SQ42 sequel (and iirc yes us early backers do still get it for free).

From what Evos have said regarding singler seaters, this is technically in. Single-seater fighters have a one-time-single-use repair button for components that fully break.

Wow, only disappointment I see is lack of armor.

But "Armour of ships is not yet in (did not make it in time)" means it really wasn't too far.

Pyro solar flares didn't make it in time...

I mean, Engineering was supposed to be in last December... so "almost in" in CiG time can mean forever.

I really don't think it's going to be as problematic as you think.

A Connie won't lose its guns or shields. The pilot inside won't be without a space suit. So unless the large ship is in a prolonged combat situation against another multicrew ship (which has crew), or some PVP scenario, the procedure will just be:

• vent the ship/ turn off life support to stop fire from forming
  
  
• pew pew
  
  
• take a break and repair ship and turn on life support.

It may require the storage of multiple spare parts, which could get expensive, but that's about it.

Was honestly not expecting to get engineering gameplay with all the features attached. I expected to get relays first. Then component repair. Then heat and life. Then fire.

Good to see they are implementing a major feature in a mostly complete state. (Which is what they promised a bit ago).

The amount of complexity this will add to an existing insanely complex game... breathable atmosphere, fire spreading, vents of the ship will affect this, components relying on each other. In one way I think it's awesome CIG has the balls to implement something like this in a MMO, but at the same time... will it make the game even more time consuming and not fun?

Definitely excited about this, but also damn impressed if they pull off this kind of complexity in a big game like this.

Why leave a ship un-vented? Do an Expanse when you enter combat. Much safer.

They haven't said anything about it in this version of engineering but this eventually will also tie into the resource system where your suits will consume resources probably some kind of battery charge mechanic and if you have your helmet on it's going to drain your suit's battery generating life support so ideally you keep your life support on your ship and your helmet off until it's necessary to put it on.

In the future you wont be able to fly with backpacks on or heavy armor and you will be limited with medium armor. So light, medium and flight suits don't hold up in cold temperatures or have a lot of oxygen. One of the big features, suit lockers, lets you change between sets quickly.

Last talked about in last year's CitCon during Dress to Kill presentation: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dvzitYTukmQ

Well, in reality you wouldn't do it because your components couldn't transfer heat without atmosphere, thus making them overheat and fail. Not sure if they are planning on doing that in game, but that would be the reason for it.

It'll ignite the moment you want air again, and I think the air suits have is limited.

Seems engineering will create a shift in the meta of ship combat where everyone and their uncle are going to be running ballistics builds so they can just knock out components or light them up; doesn't really matter how good a pilot you are if someone gets a good ballistics shot on you, sneaks up on you (stealth) or just fires first and trashes your powerplant or sets it on fire.

Maybe they are going to make shields mitigate more ballistic damage than now?

Don't get caught lacking. A lot of the time in real fights, the one who gets off the first shot is the one who wins.

Armour system will mitigate that concern you have BTW. You won't be able to one-shot a TAC for example unless your ballistic cannon is a size 6 or above.

You'll be able to one-shot a Gladius in say a size 4 or 5 but those guns are normally on heavy fighters, not if it's a Gladius vs Gladius fight. The ballistic will take a few shots to damage your hull armour.

I believe there was one of the early CitizenCons where 3 hornets attacked a Constellation. They fired a missile at it, and the missile tore a hole into the side of the Constellation and sucked Chris Roberts' character out into space by accident. I am hoping something similar to that will be possible after engineering is out.

What is the armor that didn't make it in? There's been no talk of Maelstrom, so is it just a value?

The last big ISC on engineering said that it would act to reduce the penetration from ballistics, and be eaten away faster by energy weapons. So still a magic number, but one with better integration with the engineering systems instead of just space health points. And we have no info on whether that's still the implementation goal.

https://www.reddit.com/r/starcitizen/co ... ngineering

TECH-PREVIEW: Engineering

De Bilt is based on the previous TECH-PREVIEW.

I first tried out the Carrack. I stood in front of the Terminal and was completely overwhelmed. The first thing that opened was a view showing all the rooms with their temperatures. I saw around 30 rooms or so — the entire screen was filled with symbols. So I tried to get a bit of an overview of what everything was.

In the top left, you have a display showing three values: life support, cooling system, and full power. On the right side, you get notifications. Below that is the actual Terminal you work with, which also has three tabs on the left side.

• The first tab is a new feature that lets you control all the doors and similar systems.
  
  
• The second tab is the one we already know — it’s for managing energy.
  
  
• The third tab is for setting up configurations. You can create multiple setups and save them however you like.

At the bottom, there are five new buttons:

• The first shows how the power lines are routed.
  
  
• The second shows all the doors.
  
  
• The third shows all the components.
  
  
• The fourth shows the temperatures in all rooms.
  
  
• The fifth shows which components are damaged.

All the way to the right, there’s a button to lock and unlock all doors.

So I was inside the Carrack and honestly a bit overwhelmed by everything I was seeing. I started playing around with the doors — you can open, close, and block them all independently. Then I moved on to the rooms, where you can toggle whether air is supplied or not. I’m not sure if it worked or if it was because I was still on Area 18. But you can at least see the temperature and status of each room.

Then I checked the components, and some were damaged. Everything was displayed clearly and nicely.

Because it all felt a bit complex, I thought about trying a smaller ship — the Cutter. Unfortunately, the buttons didn’t work to open the door. So I grabbed my railgun and shot the door. The effects are new too — the impact was really beautiful, a perfect round hole. I probably caused too much damage with that one shot, because the components caught fire. I grabbed a fire extinguisher to put it out.

Then I took my multitool to try and repair the components. There’s a new interface showing which component it is and how much damage it has. Unfortunately, I couldn’t refill my multitool to test the repairs.

After that, I tried two other ships — the Cutlass Black and the Hull C — but they didn’t work. (We were already told that only about 70 ships are currently functional.)

Then I tried the Corsair. That was much more manageable. I ran the same tests again. This time, I also shot at components to set them completely on fire. The fire kept growing, and the temperature rose significantly. I also tried a few tests to remove the air from the room, but that didn’t work either. Not sure if it’s broken or if it’s because I was still on Area 18.

Luckily, the damage wasn’t too bad, so I tried flying out to space to repeat the test. I flew upward, and I’m not sure what happened, but suddenly the ship lost all power and I crashed.

I reclaimed the same ship and tried flying farther away using a Quantum Jump. As I was flying, I noticed the temperature rising in the bottom left corner. I was about to report it as an issue, but after the Quantum Jump, my entire ship shut down. I walked to the engineering terminal and saw that the power plants were over 200 degrees. Luckily, the temperature was already dropping. I went back to the pilot seat, and suddenly I had power again on all systems. I scrolled through the settings and saw that the cooling system was turned off. I turned it on, and the problem was solved.

I was heading to an ASD Facility to refill my multitool so I could test component repairs. But when I landed, the hangar disappeared and I fell through the ground. After logging back in, I kept getting server errors. After an hour, I unfortunately gave up.

My overall impression: it’s insanely cool. And the gameplay for engineers is really starting to get fun.

So the Expanse combat method of making every room a vacuum and wearing space suits is going to be valid in SC?

No because your components will overheat. It’s a temporary measure only, the devs don’t want this to be the meta.

Oddly that's realistic though. With no air for convective cooling, components designed to work in a pressurized environment would absolutely overheat.

Inside Star Citizen: Alpha 4.0 - Engineering
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h8fKhnphE68



This ISC is a year old, but very much looks and feels like this playtest. There's a few minor graphical changes to the presets, as well as a new MFD screen for the pilot that I didn't see in the video (edit, it's at 4:18), I will say that ships are starting to feel a lot harder to manage on your own. It feels like there will be a HUGE skill difference between someone who doesn't know what they're doing, vs someone who sorta knows how the systems work, vs someone who knows 'this' ship, inside and out.

I'm starting to think that combat solo will be scary.. and you're going to WANT to hire someone to crew your ships... Will anyone WANT to be your engineer? It's going to be a special breed.. like medics. I'm starting to re-think my ships and where components are, and how many coolers/power plants there are... redundancy will be king. Things currently feel like they go from "A-Ok" to "Oh $!%# the Power Plant's on fire" really fast.

Might also give a slight advantage to folk who stick with a single ship, vs those that hop to the current 'meta' every time it changes, etc...

Cool to actually hear that you were a bit overwhelmed by the Carrack. Makes me hopeful there will be some depth to it. Does the door tab allow you to keep certain doors open permanently? Can you configure the doors and save it?

Would be pretty convenient to be able to lock doors open!

Aaaaaand inevitably someone's going to forget that fact and vent their whole ship out in space while not wearing a helmet.

Once this update goes public, Wuxry will have so much material for his Clip of the Day series.

Well, I imagine with large enough ships, it will be important to have a plethora of engineers. The sheer amount of things happening in the larger ships during combat would be impossible for one person to manage. In that way, there will be a nice skill ceiling because better engineers will be better at managing more ship space and delegating repair tasks.

Fantastic write-up. I was able to get a bit of testing as well and was able to kick off a few fires on the Prowler. If someone wants a close representation, I would recommend watching the Inside Star Citizen: Alpha 4.0 - Engineering episode.

Luckily, I was able to find full canisters for the Cambio-Lite at Tammany & Sons. They listed 2 variants (One full, other empty) where both are the same price and naming. I would check the other refining/mining locations that sell equipment to see if they are available.

Look like we get physicalised dmg with engineering. At least the T0 of Maelstrom. John Crewe told us it was linked to engineering.

This is where the fun begins.

I like how based on everything I hear about the tech preview, they have added a lot of QoL and such to what they initially planned to ship with 4.0.

And it fits with what they said, their standards for new features were increased, and so they wanted to work more on engineering.

Now everyone needs to find their Scotty.

Really good writeup - it was great to hear how each bit worked and how you explored it all.

The bit about the cooler being off and it causing the power loss is amazing - it's really exciting to imagine having this in game!!

I like that the engineering component sounds deep, and that being an engineer on a bigger ship might actually be something you need to learn about and gain experience of, just like dogfighting.

It really makes me hopeful for engineering!

To recharge an empty multi-tool, simply scrape the hull of a ship.

I know. I told you it doesn't work ;)

Can't scrape in the hangar anymore because people were farming RMC that way, which would be why you could not sadly.

If I recall correctly filled canisters can be purchased at most landing zones, though.

The amount of energy that goes into figuring out how not to play the game is quite amazing. Farming RMC in a hangar... ok. Sounds fun.

You have to leave your hangar and go somewhere outside the armistice.

If doors fail can we pry them open manually? This was one of the most requested features in the engineering feedback thread when we did the AC module.

If this isn't there it means on some ships you can still lock crew inside the bridge.

When the power went out I had to shoot the doors open.

Oh, I'm not sure if you answered already, but do pilots get access to some sort of maybe limited Engineering panel themselves? Solo ships would suffer immensely if pilots can't rapidly adjust things in a stressful situation without leaving their seats.

Pilots get the simplified power-control panel...

... but I don't think they're intended to get the other capabilities (simplified or otherwise). They may get a status screen (so they can tell if something is on fire, or if a component is damaged / destroyed), but they likely won't be able to do anything about it from their pilot seat.

(note: this is my speculation based on what CIG have said/shown in the past, rather than any personal experience with the current Tech Preview).

The pilot and co-pilot also have access. To something similar, but a much more simplified version.

FTL IN SC... LFG!!!

I feel like this is just going to add sooooo many places where bugs can creep in and just brick your ship randomly... the more moving parts they add to the game, the more fail points there are to ruin your day, and if everything does work as intended it'll absolutely tank the servers... great idea but can't imagine it ever working as intended.

Bear in mind that engineering it an iteration/evolution of their existing 'Pipe' system (which has been running for years). There is zero reason why Engineering would 'tank' the servers.

At the same time, systems like this are surprisingly simple underneath - the complexity and headaches are usually in the UIs to display the information in a consistent way, and wiring in the (remote) controls, etc.

So whilst I have no doubt that there will be bugs in the initial release, equally I don't think it'll be 'impossible' to make stable/functional.

Of course, if you're still trying to run a multi-crew ship on your own, then yeah - even if it works 'perfectly', engineering is gonna add a lot of new ways to 'ruin your day'... almost as if CIG want multi-crew ships to be crewed by multiple people.

Sounds like progress! Great update that will cripple ships for many patches to come but progress! Tbh I thought it was going to just be fuses but they're really going all Scotty on this one!

I wonder if you can damage the engineering station itself?

Probably not. It would be too awesome. You have to play Starbase for this.

Be nice to finally find out what ships are good for solo and duo, be nice to sort my fleet properly.

That's where my sorting vehicles into ranks comes in. I've already pretty much done this, and will be able to fine-tune it as we get to know engineering.

This makes me wonder how setting configurations will affect things like EM/IR emissions. I hope there is a measurable effect of shutting systems down strategically to minimize your emissions for more emergent stealth gameplay. My hope is that by using the engineering terminal in this way will give you more options to lower emissions or boost other systems more so than the static effects of power management that the pilot has.

Obviously this doesn't mean much for already stealthy single seater ships, but for something like a Paladin, outfitting it with stealth components and strategically powering down systems to allow for a proper stealth approach/ambush would be really really neat and would provide a much needed element to multicrew gameplay.

We'll need at least a very simple autopilot for ships that are like the size of the Cutlass. We need the ability to set altitude, heading, and speed so we can fix things in the back of my favorite rust bucket, while on the go or running.

Can you scan for intruders? By way of their body temperature or expenditure of oxygen so the CO2 levels are rising (they use that method to scan trucks for stowaways who try to cross the channel between France and Britain).

When I heard you can remove oxygen from certain rooms and lock the doors for those rooms gave me a idea if a person gets onto your ship you can lock them in a room and turn oxygen off in that room making them suffocate to death or I hope they make it were you can pressurize an airlock and fling the person out the airlock would be awesome.

Thanks for sharing your experience.

I have a question that I don't was ever talked about by devs that to me is the first thing that comes to mind what happens when, for example, you're in a vented room and open a door to a room with atmo, and vice versa?

Is there any visual clue near or at a door to inform the state of the atmo behind that door?

No, only the engineer can see that via Terminal.

https://www.reddit.com/r/starcitizen/co ... nt/nlz02fo

Ooooh, will we get it by end of year?

Depends a lot on what year you mean.

That's the only problem. Since they kept all this out of CitCon, it means they probably don't plan to add it in 2026. Unless it's one of the surprise additions they mentioned. We'll see.