Tanga System – At the heart of an unusual rectangular planetary nebula, lies Tanga System. The inner planets were engulfed as the star entered the red giant phase. The expanded habitable zone unfroze a small world on the former outer ring and for several hundred million years made it habitable. Life began to emerge and was just reaching a primitive state when the star collapsed into a white dwarf, throwing the planet back into a deep freeze, then blasting the atmosphere away with the resulting planetary nebula. That’s how the system was found: Only two worlds (speculation that there could have been three to four more) but both are dead planets with no atmosphere.
The $38 million milestone will unlock:
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Cano System is home to a G-Type Main Sequence Star that’s almost identical to Earth’s. Of the four planets in the system, only one is inhabited: Carteyna. Located on the edge of habitable zone, Carteyna is a classic waterworld. Fortunately, its planetary axis constantly keeps the northern hemisphere away from the sun, which allowed for the water to freeze into the landmasses used as the initial landing zones in 2587. Multiple attempts have been made to try to convert the thick atmosphere into something breathable, but the process never seemed to stick. In fact, over the years, every time there’s a new technological development in geo-engineering, they test it out here on Carteyna only to yield the same result. Almost fifty years ago, scientists discovered microscopic organisms in the very early phases of life in the depths of the oceans. This caused a massive uproar throughout the UEE at the prospect that they had been attempting to terraform a developing world. Carteyna was immediately placed under the Fair Chance Act. Unfortunately, Humans had been living here for almost over three hundred years and the families that had been here for generations felt that they had earned rights as residents. After years of debate in the political and scientific community, the population was allowed to stay, but only under certain conditions: future terraforming attempts have been outlawed and the Human population has been consolidated to a single arcology to minimize their impact on their environment and the development of whatever species is growing in the deep.
The $39 million milestone will unlock:
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UDS-2943-01-22 System – Breaking news: UEE astrophysicists based at the famed Klavs observatory station have utilized advanced telescopy and other remote sensing technologies to identify a truly unusual star system on the fringes of know space. The object, once thought to be a single massive star, is actually a trinary star consisting of two white dwarfs and an active pulsar orbiting one another. Because of the complex gravitic factors at work, it is now believed that a jump point leading to the system likely exists in or near explored human space. Beyond the bizarre stellar makeup, the composition of the system is all but unknown. Could planets exist in this carefully balanced web? What else might have been drawn there? One thing is certain: the first Citizen to travel to UDS-2943-01-22 will have one hell of a view!
Of interest, apparently the above system is based on a recent real-world discovery.
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Anyways else find the dogfighting footage to look horrible? Hopefully they can work it out, Star Conflict had drastically better flight mechanics.
As Psycnet said, you have to take into account what you are looking at.
What you saw is pre-alpha. You never usually see games at this stage at all, so most people aren't used to seeing things be that unfinished and buggy. The HUD wasn't implemented, the server was bounding, and everything was just very early and unpolished.
The biggest reason is the server backend, but all of it played into their decision to delay release of the DFM for a few months. I expect it will be pretty awesome by March/April.
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The Next Great Starship is a competition to create (conceptualize, design, model, animate, and rig) a starship that will be in the final Star Citizen game. The prizes are impressive:
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GRAND PRIZE:
$30,000 in cash for the team members. Your Great Starship is included in Star Citizen and each member of your team receives the first production models off the press! As well as; Autodesk Entertainment Creation Suite, Maya Premium and one high-end AMD based system with Radeon R9 290X (for each team member).
SECOND PLACE:
$10,000 in cash for the team members. Alienware laptop, Autodesk Maya 2014, AMD Radeon R9 290X (for each team member).
THIRD PLACE:
$5,000 in cash for the team members. Autodesk Maya LT, AMD Radeon R9 290X (for each team member).
SPECIALTY PRIZE :
(to the most valuable player out of the remaining contestants among the final three teams voted on by the judging panel): One Cintiq Companion, the new Windows 8 “Make the World your Studio” tablet from Wacom.
FINALIST TEAMS 4 THROUGH 16
$250 in RSI Credits for each teammate (non-transferable/non-refundable)
The competition is being made into a weekly webcast show. It starts this Friday, January 31st at 4 PM Mountain time. There will be a new show every Friday until the 1st week of June.
For entry into the contest, teams (maximum 3 people) were asked to create a weapon for the game.
Here is the teaser trailer for the show which includes many of these weapon designs:
The type of ship created was left up to the community. These were the results of the poll:
__________________
Huge thanks to Dion for the signature!
Cano System is home to a G-Type Main Sequence Star that’s almost identical to Earth’s. Of the four planets in the system, only one is inhabited: Carteyna. Located on the edge of habitable zone, Carteyna is a classic waterworld. Fortunately, its planetary axis constantly keeps the northern hemisphere away from the sun, which allowed for the water to freeze into the landmasses used as the initial landing zones in 2587. Multiple attempts have been made to try to convert the thick atmosphere into something breathable, but the process never seemed to stick. In fact, over the years, every time there’s a new technological development in geo-engineering, they test it out here on Carteyna only to yield the same result. Almost fifty years ago, scientists discovered microscopic organisms in the very early phases of life in the depths of the oceans. This caused a massive uproar throughout the UEE at the prospect that they had been attempting to terraform a developing world. Carteyna was immediately placed under the Fair Chance Act. Unfortunately, Humans had been living here for almost over three hundred years and the families that had been here for generations felt that they had earned rights as residents. After years of debate in the political and scientific community, the population was allowed to stay, but only under certain conditions: future terraforming attempts have been outlawed and the Human population has been consolidated to a single arcology to minimize their impact on their environment and the development of whatever species is growing in the deep.
The $39 million milestone will unlock:
Quote:
UDS-2943-01-22 System – Breaking news: UEE astrophysicists based at the famed Klavs observatory station have utilized advanced telescopy and other remote sensing technologies to identify a truly unusual star system on the fringes of know space. The object, once thought to be a single massive star, is actually a trinary star consisting of two white dwarfs and an active pulsar orbiting one another. Because of the complex gravitic factors at work, it is now believed that a jump point leading to the system likely exists in or near explored human space. Beyond the bizarre stellar makeup, the composition of the system is all but unknown. Could planets exist in this carefully balanced web? What else might have been drawn there? One thing is certain: the first Citizen to travel to UDS-2943-01-22 will have one hell of a view!
The $40 million milestone will unlock (the vote was essentially tied so they decided to include both the Tevarin Ghost World and Lost Human Colony):
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Kabal System – The discovery of a new system is always an exciting time. Even the most jaded NavJumpers can’t help entertaining the possibilities for scientific understanding or new species or even a new home that could await them on the other side of a new jump point. The discovery of Kabal was certainly something new. By all outward appearances, the system seemed empty. It was only during when a UEE Surveying team began to assess Kabal III, did they find something disturbing; old uninhabited Tevarin cities. How could an entire Tevarin system escape detection all these years? Did the Tevarin that were assimilated into the UEE know about it? How was it kept a secret? The questions multiplied when a detachment of Marines, sent to secure the planet ended up discovering a cache of old Tevarin war machines. Among the rows and rows of weapons, they made an even more disturbing discovery; some of the technology was made in the last ten years…
Oretani System – Oretani was just one of many systems that were being discovered during the rapid Expansion era of the 25th century. The surveyors noticed nothing in the system’s six worlds of immediate importance. Only one planet seemed to be a viable candidate for terraforming. The terraforming Corp that won the bid sent a mid-level team (and their families) into the system to start processing when the only jump point into the system collapsed. Scientists scrambled to figure out a solution, but it was the first time an incident like this had occurred. As years stretched into decades, people studied the area around the former jump point, hoping for a sign that it had reopened, but after time they gave up. After all this time, Oretani is only ever debated among select number of historians. Most believe that without support, the initial terraformers probably died out, but no one really knows what to expect on the other side if that jump point ever reopens.
Important note from the letter:
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That’s it for the additional star system stretch goals. At $39 million, we’ll announce a new goal that will help chart the course for the future of Star Citizen in a different way… and it’s one I’m personally very excited about, so be sure to check back then and learn more!
New artwork for the Banu Merchantman: (click to embiggen)
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Huge thanks to Dion for the signature!
Star Citizen dogfighting module will be uneviled at PAX East on the weekend of April 11th. It will be released to backers shortly afterwards. 2 months and counting!
__________________
Huge thanks to Dion for the signature!
will it support occulus rift? because that would be amazing
Perfect timing for this question.
Star Citizen has been developed all along with Oculus Rift in mind.
In fact, the next hangar patch will add Oculus Rift support to the game!
Other news:
The next hangar patch will also include removing Christmas decorations, updating the firing range, adding some more animations to the Cutlass, and some general maintenance/updates.
CIG will be hiring a full time economist to help them work on the in-game economy.
They are working hard on the Idris right now and also integrating some changes based on community feedback.
CIG is launching the cloud server today for internal dogfighting and they will begin testing dogfighting matches between offices.
CIG asked Crytek to modify Cryengine to better support PBR (physically-based rendering). Crytek delivered those modifications last week. Thus begins a period of CIG reworking all textures in the game utilizing PBR.
Because of the transition to PBR, all of the ships need to undergo another pass. This will take some time and therefore after the next hangar patch, it might be awhile until we see another one.
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My prime concern with this game is that it will be like Eve Online or Earth and Beyond where huge portions of game time is spent sitting around waiting or warping. Drove me crazy having to warp all across the galaxy for 5 minutes of action.
My prime concern with this game is that it will be like Eve Online or Earth and Beyond where huge portions of game time is spent sitting around waiting or warping. Drove me crazy having to warp all across the galaxy for 5 minutes of action.
Honestly it is WAY too early to definitively speak to how that part of the game will play. We won't really know what the ratio of travel to action you can expect, until probably the beta of the persistent universe.
Some of the things we DO know are that there will be three distinct speeds in the game:
Jump Point - Travel through a wormhole-type anomaly in space which effectively allows you to travel faster than light from one system to another.
Auto Pilot - This system will be used when you are going from one specific point to another specific point within a system. The maximum speed here is 0.2c (20% of the speed of light).
Combat - Much slower speeds here, because of the need for maneuverability and the like.
It is uncertain what speed you will use for exploration and the like, I expect that is TBD.
Speaking in general terms though I would certainly expect this game to be significantly more engaging than EVE Online. I have a lot of respect for EVE but it is really not quite the same type of game.
All of this said, I imagine you will be able to participate in a lot of continuous action and combat if you want... but also spend hours exploring the depths of space for derelicts, jump points, or artifacts.
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Huge thanks to Dion for the signature!
Anyone else getting spammed by organization requests? Given that I have zero activity on the forums there some people must be pretty desperate to be asking random players to join their organizations.
