Author: Cereal

Galactic Guide: Kiel System

This Galactic Guide originally appeared in Jump Point 4.11.

The Kiel system was a major hub of military activity during the cold war, but since relations with the Xi’an have improved, the system has worked hard to redefine itself. The Senate’s recent official recognition of the system’s third planet, Severus, is considered proof to many that some of that hard work has started to pay off.

The system was discovered by a Merchant Marine fuel collection vessel operating in the Hadrian system. The ship’s captain, Adhama Schnauss, made it a point to take a different route on each collection trip to keep the crew on their toes. One day in 2514, Schnauss noticed a strange anomaly on their scans and redirected their course to investigate it. What they found was a large jump point connected to a new system with a white, F-type main sequence star surrounded by six planets and an asteroid belt. Schnauss named the system Kiel after a longtime friend who adamantly refused to leave his home planet of Mars. Schnauss hoped the gesture would motivate his friend to finally venture into the stars to see the system that bore his name.

Military pathfinders scanned the system to discover that none of the planets were naturally habitable and only the third one, Severus, was deemed suitable for terraforming. As the terraforming process was underway, jumps to two new systems (Baker and Horus) were discovered, igniting massive public and private interest in the system. Even though it hadn’t been officially inhabited, it was already well connected to the expanding eastern-edge of the empire. It had a mineral-rich asteroid belt, gas giants to be used for refueling and soon, a terraformed world to serve as the system’s nerve center.

Yet, all that changed when in 2542 when Marie Sante discovered a jump into Xi’an space from the Horus system. Being connected to the Perry Line, Kiel was now only one system away from Xi’an territory, so the UPE quickly re-designated the system. Much to the dismay of the companies that had begun prospecting as the terraforming process was completed, rather than opening the system for economic development, the government drafted plans to make Severus a massive military hub, a decision that would define the system for centuries.

Military Machine

Once Severus was habitable, the military moved into the system en masse. Ivar Messer had recently risen to power partially by cultivating fears over the Xi’an, so pouring government funds into Kiel was considered an impressive show of force against the new alien enemies.

Over the decades, the military’s strong presence in Kiel also proved beneficial for domestic pacification purposes. Its proximity to Terra was a noted concern amongst the growing anti-Messer activists, who saw it as a potential staging point for invasion. There were even rumors that Terran Senator, Assan Kieren, who mysteriously disappeared in 2638 after drafting a bill that would grant Terra sovereignty apart from the UEE, had been abducted and taken to a military installation on Kiel II.

Kiel’s military footprint was greatly reduced in the early 29th century after tensions with the Xi’an de-escalated and the Perry Line was dismantled. However, as the military moved out, attracting private sector companies to replace them in the system proved difficult. With large swaths of resources removed by the military, an aging infrastructure in need of repair, and without a significant population, it just didn’t make economic sense for many businesses to expand into Kiel.

That started to change under the guidance of Joona Tzur, who was elected Severus’ Governor in 2903. Tzur was one of only a few hundred people whose Kiel roots extended further than two generations, beginning with his great-grandmother who chose to remain in the system upon retiring from the Army. He knew Severus’ strengths better than anyone else and specifically recruited industries to the planet that could capitalize on the military’s infrastructure and abandoned bases. The strategy worked and numerous giants of the space industry set up factories in the system. In addition, Tzur knew that he needed more than businesses to grow his homeworld, and so he invested heavily in public leisure and green spaces, claiming that a happy population is one that grows.

One of Tzur’s most notable victories came when he convinced the Intergalactic Aerospace Expo to host the event on Severus. Tzur’s main selling point was the numerous decommissioned spacecraft hangars that could house the massive event. After a rapid series of upgrades were made to the facilities, the IAE was held on Severus for the first time in 2916 and has been one of the system’s main economic drivers ever since, creating additional hotels, restaurants, and attractions in its wake. Today, in addition to the Aerospace Expo, many other conferences use the facilities throughout the year, making tourism one of the largest growth sectors for the planet.

The economic turnaround and rebranding of Kiel has been considered a success by many, including the Senate who official recognized Severus in 2937. The system’s population has continued to swell ever since. With plenty of jobs and considerably less congestion than other systems (like Terra), Kiel was recently voted one of the “Top Ten Most Livable Systems” by the editors of New United.

Kiel I

This small mesoplanet is sun-scarred on one side thanks to it being tidally locked.

Kiel II

Kiel II is a rocky planet that features a thin atmosphere and a good deal of mystery. Scans of the planet reveal the presence of resources, yet the UEE has strictly prohibited any mining operations. This has led some to believe the planet may continue to house classified underground military installations.

Kiel III (Severus)

Severus is a rocky planet that was quickly terraformed after the system’s discovery. Named after a famous Navy admiral who distinguished himself during the Second Tevarin War, it served as a key military hub during the cold war with the Xi’an. Once relations thawed, the planet’s permanent residents worked hard to help it find a new identity.

Things started to turn around after RSI agreed to open a large factory to manufacture their improved line of thrusters. RSI brought a fresh flow of people and creds into the system, which encouraged other companies to follow suit. Soon word spread that the planet had plenty of work and an affordable cost of living. Blue collar workers arrived in droves, and the planet saw its populace consistently rise for decades. It wasn’t long before the Governors’ Council applied for and received representation status, with Tzur’s daughter Janna Thurville elected as Severus’ first senator.

The influx of people and business allowed the government to redesign parts of the planet for civic use. The planet’s capital, Eri City, received the most attention. A number of old, drab military structures were demolished and beautiful public parks built in their place. Though the planet still lacks a unique cultural identity, its fine dining scene is surprisingly strong. There have been great strides in making the planet’s soil arable again, and with housing expenses being relatively low, many people are more than willing to splurge on gourmet meals.

Kiel IV

A picturesque gas dwarf that’s a striking deep blue color. The planet’s rapid spin means it only takes 16 standard Earth hours to make one complete rotation.

Kiel V

This massive gas giant has a planetary radius of over 57,000 kilometers and an impressive set of planetary rings that extend well beyond that.

Kiel VI

It takes this protoplanet 44,512 standard Earth days (about 122 standard years) to make one trip around the system’s sun. A festival is currently being planned for the next time it reaches its perihelion.

TRAVEL WARNING

Miners have long coveted a chance to pull resources from Kiel II, and over the years, numerous unauthorized attempts have been made. Yet, even though the military no longer dominates the system, it still maintains a strong presence and is quick to go after those who disobey the mining prohibition on Kiel II.

HEARD IN THE WIND

“The true potential of the Kiel system is still untapped and unmolded. I don’t see its lack of an identity as a hindrance, but rather as the ultimate opportunity to create something new.”

– Governor Joona Tzur, inauguration ceremony, 2903

“The boring, nondescript building was originally constructed and used by the military when they controlled the planet. For centuries, it housed stodgy military bureaucrats, but now it’s home to Nocturne, one of the most exciting new restaurants in the UEE. Like much of the Kiel system, what looks dull and unimpressive at first blush becomes much more fascinating upon closer examination.”

– Gloria Budd, New United “Top Ten Most Livable Systems,” 2945

Source: https://robertsspaceindustries.com/comm-link/spectrum-dispatch/16895-Galactic-Guide-Kiel-System

Star Citizen Monthly Report: November 2018

Welcome to November’s monthly Star Citizen report from Cloud Imperium Games. Last month saw the Intergalactic Aerospace Exposition land on Hurston just in time for our annual Anniversary Special. Devs had fun bringing the expo to life, while continuing to forge ahead, sights set on the upcoming release of Alpha 3.4. Read on for Persistent Universe development updates from all of our global studios.

Star Citizen Monthly Report: November 2018

AI

Ship AI’s major focus throughout November was optimizing the Tactical Point System. They now have multiple queries bundled together in a batch from different threads, which allow more control over the cost of the overall system. Several optimizations for the character movement system were submitted, which now update all the components in a multithreaded batch approach and utilize the maximum the CPU resources during the game update. A pass for thread safety of several subsystems was performed, including the attention target component and communication system. This is required to eventually move the Subsumption component update to the multithreaded batch update step.

In FPS Combat, the ‘Defend Area’ assignment was introduced; correctly achieving this behavior requires monitoring the mastergraph transitions to evaluate if the recipients of the Subsumption event can actually process it. In the Defend Area example, they might be executing any regular behavior when receiving the assignment. If the behavior can handle the request in a specific way, great. If not, then the mastergraph takes care of selecting one that can. Alongside this, they’re adding new behaviors to improve combat and patrol to respect this assignment.

Support for stealth gameplay was implemented, with new audio and visual stimuli being added to allow players to draw the attention of guards, prepare traps, and open up otherwise blocked paths.

Work also continued on the bartender for Lorville. To achieve several functionalities of his behavior they implemented the first pass of UseChannel routing and are continuing to expand the usable functionalities.

The Usable Builder Tool received a new feature too: it’s now able to correctly preview different characters using different usables so that designers, animators, and programmers can easily test and verify the content as it’s delivered.

Animation

November saw Animation supporting the Feature Team to bring vault, mantle, and jumping functionality in-line with the game’s quality and play expectations. They’re currently testing a process to allow the efficient integration of different weapon classes, such as pistols and shotguns. The team is also implementing carry options for Zero-G EVA and working towards finalizing player interaction (carriables in particular).

The US Animation Team cleaned and solved data from the amazing performance captures done at this year’s CitizenCon in Austin, Texas. Editing and final work will be completed soon. They continued work on the Ship Dealers that will populate the ‘verse and made sure the new mission givers are available as soon as their locations are ready, such as Wallace Klim in Levski, Tecia Pacheco in Area18, and Constantine Hurston in Lorville.

Exploring the issues that result from re-targeting the male animations to the female skeleton, the team determined that the first step is to achieve 1:1 parity between them. This will allow for the replacement of assets with female-specific versions without hindering female player development. Finishing touches are being added to carriable tech, too.

The Combat AI Team is exploring how to use the stocked weapon asset set as a basis to quickly create pistol versions to give the AI Designers more freedom in the type of weapon encounters they create.

The Ship Content Team is finishing off sequenced animation work. This will enable quicker and more efficient implementation of the design and animation sides of new ships. Weapons-wise, they’re working on the Ravager rifle and the Kahix.

Audio

The Audio department focused on the new flight model and the spaceship audio mix. They implemented tech to allow systemic mixing of NLPC ship bases on priority, size, and threat level, which gives a clearer and more focused mix. This, combined with the implementation of the new ship vibration component, has greatly improved the ship audio experience. During implementation, they made an optimization pass to ensure memory and voice limits remain healthy.

Improvements to the weapon experience continued with the consolidation of assets and the simplification of element implementation to ensure improved translation of audio assets from the digital audio workstation (DAW) into the game. There have also been changes to the Foley system to improve the audio feedback of the player’s traversal on different terrain and surface types.

On the music front, the team worked with the PU composer Pedro Camacho to develop and implement new musical cues to support the planet-side locations on Hurston, such as L19, and upcoming expansions.

With Object Container Streaming (OCS) coming online, the Audio Code Team optimized and polished FOIP to ensure reliability.

Backend Services

Backend Services worked to bring the 2948 Anniversary Event to players. The first order of business was creating the service needed to bring forward the correct overlapped object containers for the different days at the convention center. This ensured a seamless transition between manufacturer days and prevented the need to publish a new build per expo day.

Next, they worked to make sure the rental logic behind the expo correctly traded data between the server, client, and database to ensure players could enjoy the ships they rented.

Finally, a login queue was created to help organize and throttle the unprecedented number of players attempting to enter the ‘verse and check-out the expo.

Away from the Anniversary Event, work continued on the new architecture for the Persistence Cache to help increase the scalability of the backend as well as link important services to a new database architecture.

Character Art

Character Art’s focus throughout November was to make all armor and undersuits available for female avatars. They also worked on modeling two of our new mission givers to bring more life to the Persistent Universe.

Additionally, they’re creating a new set of outlaw armor (designation ‘Shipjacker’) that will include armor, an undersuit, and subscriber items.

Community

“The Community Team started the month in the Halloween spirit with two spooky contests in anticipation of the holiday. Players joined the festivities and showcased their talent in a pumpkin carving contest and a FOIP screenshot contest depicting the most terrifying and terrified expressions they had to offer. Spooktacular!

The Mustang Commercial Contest put the community’s filmmaking skills to the test. Our bold cinematographers embraced the maverick spirit of Consolidated Outland to create commercials that Silas Koerner himself would be proud of.

During Thanksgiving, Citizens shared what they were thankful for and participated in two holiday contests in honor of Turkey Day. With these two contests, we are now up to 25 total contests run in 2018, and the team still has more planned to go live before the end of the year.

As Alpha 3.3 made its way to the Persistent Universe, we welcomed the first fully-explorable planet and city with Hurston and Lorville respectively. While everyone was exploring the new environments, the bustling landing zone, and four new moons, the Star Citizen content creators outdid themselves, creating beautiful shots of sunsets on Hurston, days out on the beach next to Lorville, and joyrides to Aberdeen. We are proud and thankful for all the content the community shared on social media, Reddit, and the community hub, and are looking forward to seeing even more. Keep on sharing!

The 2948 Anniversary special kicked off our most epic Free-Fly event to date with all flyable ships and vehicles to try out at no extra cost. The Intergalactic Aerospace Expo came a long way and made its in-game debut with their Hurston-based satellite branch. Exclusive reveals at the expo included Anvil’s ‘light fighter of the future’, the Hawk, and the next evolution of Xi’an tech and design innovation with the Aopoa San’tok.yāi.

Lastly, we also reached a significant funding milestone and want to thank our amazing community who made this possible. The amount is the highest total for any project in the history of crowdfunding and is beyond anything we could have imagined. In a letter from the chairman, Chris Roberts shared his thoughts on the fantastic journey so far and the exciting future that lies ahead. Here’s to tomorrow!”

Design

Design got the Anniversary Event’s Convention Center up and running for all backers to enjoy.

To help encourage players to browse the inventories at New Deal and Teach’s Ship Shop, the team began implementing a new type of NPC: the Ship Dealer. The aim is to provide a realistic and interesting ship purchasing experience to further liven up the process of acquiring a dream ship.

“We sincerely hope you got a chance to try out and see the different ships at the Intergalactic Aerospace Expo on Hurston!”

Tuning for the Economy continues, with work going into adjusting prices for various services and goods across Stanton. Work has also started towards the design and implementation of a robust and important Economic Editing Tool to help better visualize and tweak the Economy than ever before.

They also tuned Arena Commander’s REC Reward.

DevOps

November is always one of the busiest months for DevOps due to the Anniversary Event, and this month was no exception, with the team scaling the servers to the highest capacity since the beginning of the project.

To ease the overall DevOps workload, the Publishing Team expanded their internal tools, which allowed most of the team to enjoy a well-deserved break for Thanksgiving (even if they did stay very close to their laptops).

Between PTU & Live, they successfully published 30 times throughout November, with some days seeing 3-4 builds.

Engineering

Engineering teams around the globe worked on OCS throughout November. The first iteration of client-side streaming was released in Alpha 3.3, with an ongoing focus on improving asynchronous entity loading and unloading.

The core OCS and network and backend teams had the Object Container Server Streaming summit this month to plan the next iteration of OCS, which will focus on server-side streaming and full persistent servers.

LA-based Engineering collaborated with the Austin Backend Team to build the tech required for in-game ship rentals. It was premiered during the anniversary promotion and forms the foundation for all in-game rentals.

Development on backend tech moved forward towards allowing persistent EZ Habs and enable players to customize and persist their start location. The Vehicle Team continued to work on Ping & Scanning gameplay, this month focusing on ship scanning. Work has also begun on the new DNA component to integrate the R&D technology into the character pipeline.

Turbulent worked closely with the LA Gamecode Team to further improve the group system, spectrum integration, and FOIP & VOIP.

Engine Tools

The Engine Team spent time supporting the Alpha 3.3 and 3.3.5 releases, bug fixing, profiling, and optimizing code (especially for Object Container Streaming). Work continued on GPU skinning, adding vertex velocity support (for motion blur, etc.), completed several optimizations to skip zero weights (which improved throughput), prepared background data, and made the first pass on memory layout and LOD support.

For physics optimizations, the execution of ray collision checks and the defragmentation of grids run were made to run concurrently. This achieved a 30-50% speedup for physics planet terrain computation, reduced the number of cell queries on planets, and improved proxy mesh generation of terrain ground volumes.

Terrain rendering improvements were made (glow forward pass) as well as fixes for water volume and ocean rendering. The existing hair shader was improved, and a new depth of field algorithm was created, improving quality, performance, and fixing halos around silhouettes.

They completed additional culling refinements in the zone system to submit fewer objects to the renderer, as well as various low-level optimizations to reduce the load on the render thread. Further enhancements were made to engine-side support for the public telemetry page to allow user-specific optimization hints to be displayed to improve the gameplay experience, and a new tool was developed to easily analyze core dumps of Linux dedicated game servers.

Environment Art

The UK team focused on bug fixing and optimization for the Alpha 3.3 release, mainly for Lorville and Hurston. A focused sprint was completed for the Anniversary Event convention halls, with the aim to provide a versatile and time-economic environment to show off the ships in their best light. Additional Underground Facility interior exteriors and a new Alpha 3.3 splash screen were also made and implemented.

The DE Location Team made great progress on Lorville’s Central Business District (CBD). Here, players can access the Hurston Dynamics Showcase, the flagship store for all weaponry produced by the brand, as well as the Transfers store where players can engage in various trading activities. The CBD has a very different feel to the rest of Lorville and clearly services a different type of clientele. Luxurious materials and modern design set the ambiance for this experience.

The Organics and Planet Team are making great progress on upcoming locations and are currently working on ArcCorp and exploring microTech. Both locations need additional features to be added to the planet tech to make them truly unique, so while it’s still early days, things are steadily moving on.

Facial Animation

The team is actively working on upcoming mission-givers, including Klim, along with ship dealers, bar patrons, and bartenders. They’re also testing the results of the player’s facial animation recordings on the default loadout.

Graphics

This month, the Graphics Team firmly focussed on the release of Alpha 3.3.5 and improving both stability and performance. The PTU was plagued by some quite frequent GPU crashes, but Evocati testing helped them track down the cause and remedy it.

With the release of Lorville, QA saw high video memory usage due to the scale of the environment and number of ships and characters. Due to some bugs, this resulted in serious performance issues as the video driver began to page memory, resulting in noticeable stutters. Fixes were made to the worst offending video memory bugs in Alpha 3.3.5. Looking forward, the team continues to reduce memory usage and optimize the game for the next release.

Issue Council

The Issue Council deployed version 1.1.5 in October. Several issues were fixed including editable fields of the different forms not displaying correctly, versions not ordered from the latest to the oldest, and display names with special characters not showing properly.

Level Design

The Live Team placed and marked-up locations on and around Hurston for mission use. Big improvements to the delivery missions were made – players can now take contracts from companies who operate specific routes and require the player to have a certain level of reputation. The Downed Relay mission (as seen in CitizenCon) now has multiple outcomes, including having other players tasked with destroying the stolen blade before its data is uploaded.

Finally, most of the combat missions found at Crusader are now available at Hurston. Work has begun to define the contractors and progression for them, too.

Lighting

This month, the Lighting Team worked on improving the headlights across almost all ships available in the PU. Due to plenty of issues regarding visibility while flying ships in dark environments, the headlights were improved to provide more visible light from greater distances. There’s still room for improvement, but in the meantime, it’s a positive change that makes the planetary flying experience more enjoyable.

Additionally, the team focused on bug fixing and optimizing the lighting in Lorville to maintain a high degree of quality while improving framerates and lowering drawcall costs.

They also worked on the lighting for the Intergalactic Aerospace Expo to help show off all the amazing ships being featured in the various halls.

Narrative

The Narrative Team pushed heavily on Alpha 3.3 and 3.3.5 tasks to knock out remaining mission text and standardize in-game descriptions for ship components on the terminals. They also continued working on editorial selects for the lower priority lines for NPCs that were captured back in September.

To cover the new convention center and other contexts, they ran a pickup recording session to add additional Lorville announcement lines.

The team also worked closely with Marketing to support the recent IAE expansion event in Lorville. Not only providing written copy but joining some of the roundtable discussions to provide fictional backstory for the various manufacturers.

Lastly, they worked to schedule tasks for the PU and undertook overall team planning for the upcoming year.

Player Relations

Player Relations busily plugged away at the Alpha 3.3 and the Anniversary Event, working alongside the Evocati on several builds to make sure key components were properly tested.

“As always, we’d like to point all players to our growing Knowledge Base, which now has over 100 articles and saw almost 450,000 visitors this month! We will continue to grow this by adding new ‘How To’ articles, patch notes, and live service notifications.”

Props

The Props Team focused on the stands, booths, and branding for the Intergalactic Aerospace Expo and the Anniversary Event. They recently shifted onto closing out the CBD props in Lorville and are currently creating bespoke furniture to help sell the wealth and decadence of the Hurston Central building.

QA

On the publishing side, QA busily tested the Alpha 3.3.0 and 3.3.5 builds for publishing to Evocati and Live. On the game side, the focus was on testing Hurston, its four moons, and city Lorville. They also completed a number of QATRs relating to FOIP & VOIP, ship purchasing in the PU, ship rental in Arena Commander, and improvements to Object Container Streaming.

It was business as usual on the leadership side, with coordinated testing priorities between the UK, LA, and DE.

Two new recruits were welcomed to QA; a dedicated tester in Frankfurt to support the AI Team and an additional tester in the UK. They will be primarily focused on providing day-to-day updates on the state of AI and will report all issues directly to the team to be investigated.

QA also made the decision to do away with the general design tests and instead focus on specific sanity/smoke tests for AI and another test suite specifically for the Transit System and locations. The previous design tests were too broad and covered areas that were not always prevalent to the in-house design teams. Refocusing towards specific in-house feature teams has proven that the testing and information provided is much more valuable.

A fair amount of time was spent on major QA test requests for new animation update optimizations, physics terrain patch optimization changes, and general optimization that will further improve performance in the PU.

Frankfurt’s QA branch supported the Planetary Tech Team in investigating an issue on one of Hurston’s moons. Something in its setup was causing the normals on the moon surface to be very intense. This was tracked down to a lighting issue and further steps were taken (with the assistance of the Graphics Team) to enable the surface to get back to, well, normal.

Services

At CitizenCon, the team was present on the show floor to prepare local environments to run the game backend for both the FOIP LAN demonstration area and the main stage demonstration. This local setup included the entire game backend allowing for the demonstration to represent exactly what is being played in the PTU and the Live environment, including the network of social services that power groups, chat, and FOIP.

With the release of Alpha 3.3 and 3.3.5, the team mostly focused on observing and scaling the voice and face transmission solution to the increase of backers in the game. DevOp teams mainly worked to ensure that voice channels created by players during one-to-one calls, group channels, and global server channels were properly sharded to new voice servers, as the number of connected players increased.

With the addition of global chat auto-connect in Alpha 3.3.5, the team also added new systems to monitor and move voice channels between servers when the supported load on a given voice server instance is too high.

“The team has been ecstatic about the use of the technology by players and we hope to keep growing its use with gameplay connected features.”

In order to help with the above tasks, the social game services were moved to a Kubernetes-based orchestration solution that allows easier management of voice and service containers. This new backplane supports continuous integration of service changes and will greatly improve the team velocity when deploying updates and builds.

Working in conjunction with the universe team, Game Services began the development of a web-based administration tool to help manage the runtime state of the game world from a macro level. This is still in the very early stages of development but, using this tool, the designers will ultimately have the ability to inspect social objects like groups and their life cycles, ban, chase, and player controls. Integrating the WebGL Starmap engine will also allow the viewing of commodities, player locations, gameplay analytics, and much more.

Ships

This month, the UK Vehicle Team returned to the Origin 890 Jump after wrapping up the Valkyrie.

What will undoubtedly be well-received news amongst the community is that, after long hiatus, work continues on the greatly-anticipated Anvil Carrack. Since the ship was last worked on around 18 months ago, there have been significant improvements to the ship pipeline and workflow. So, when re-reviewing the previous state, the team decided to undertake a second whitebox pass of the interior to bring it closer to its original concept.

In addition to next year’s larger vehicles, progress was made to the Alpha 3.4 ships, including the Origin 600i Touring. The Freelancer DUR, MAX, and MIS are all receiving the final touches by art.

Ship Art

Lead Vehicle Artist Chris Smith made great progress on the greybox model, interior, and exterior of the 300i rework and began implementing different paint jobs and modeled the modified components for the other three variants. Next, he will move onto an alternative interior to be used in one of them.

3D Modeler Josh Coons recently completed the whitebox model for the Banu Defender and has now moved onto testing some of the modified workflow using Zbrush models, which will be baked down to create the type of detail we are looking for in this ship. He is continually creating new textures and also starting to build up the greybox model with the alternative workflow.

System Design

The System Design Team worked on integrating updated flight mechanics into enemy ship AI, ensuring that with all the changes, they are still engaging to fight against and don’t become unbalanced. They noticed that the updated flight model currently causes too much unwanted ‘jousting behavior’, so are currently looking into ways to modify it.

Work was done on restructuring dialogue wildlines for the ship/FPS/social AI to unify them within the same overall structure. A large amount of work has been done with the audio & writing teams to ensure the system works properly for all systemic dialogue in the game. They are also working to develop tools to automate the setup of dialogue lines.

More work was completed on designing stealth gameplay elements, which in turn requires the AI perception to be upgraded to cater for peripheral vision, as well as various audio events and stimuli from environmental sources, such as throwing a pebble to distract enemies.

Telemetry

Shortly after CitizenCon, the Public Telemetry page was launched. The data presented here reflects the data CIG receives from clients while playing the game. This data is used to assess and improve performance across a variety of hardware. If logged in while on the telemetry page, players will see their stats, including their computer’s GPU and CPU score and average FPS. The heatmap displays other user’s average FPS and the most popular hardware for each GPU and CPU score. On launch, the telemetry page showed a massive improvement between Alpha 3.2 and 3.3 thanks to OCS.

Turbulent

Throughout November, Turbulent supported CitizenCon, the Alpha 3.3. Flyable Ships, the new Anvil Valkyrie, the release of the Drake Kraken, and preparations for the Anniversary Event.

  • CitizenCon: CitizenCon 2948 was an amazing event, with Turbulent supporting many components such as the livestream, merchandise, badges, microsite, and the release of new ships from Drake and Anvil!
  • The Drake Kraken: In October, Turbulent supported the unveiling of Drake’s first capital ship, the Kraken. The Kraken has two multi-purpose hangars, five manned turrets, four remote turrets, a massive cargo capacity, comfortable habs for a full crew, a Dragonfly Bay, and six landing pads. The website showed multiple features such as an interactive cross-section of the ship and a registry for those interested in obtaining one.
  • The Anvil Valkyrie: Turbulent supported the release of the Valkyrie, the new flyable drop ship from Anvil. The Valkyrie contains multiple side guns and turrets and can deploy up to twenty troops as well as a vehicle into combat. The website displayed features such as in-game footage of the Valkyrie and a CitizenCon-exclusive edition called the Valkyrie Liberator. This was also released on October 10th.
  • The 3.3 Flyable: With the release of Alpha 3.3, Turbulent supported the availability of the flyable ships on the website. The ships include the Aegis Hammerhead, Tumbril Cyclone, RSI Constellation Phoenix, and the CO Mustang. An exclusive CitizenCon Mustang was also available, called the Mustang Alpha Vindicator.
  • The 2948 Anniversary Special: The Anniversary Special was launched on Friday, November 23rd. Over the course of the week, a different manufacturer was released each day. On the first day, the Arrow was released, along with the rest of the Anvil ships. RSI day was on the 24th, Origin Jumpworks the 25th, Aegis Dynamics the 26th, Drake Interplanetary the 27th, and the alien ships on the 28th. The new San’tok’yai ship was unveiled by Aopoa too. MISC had its featured day on the 29th, and the new manufacturers on the 30th, including Tumbril, Crusader, CO, Argo, and Kruger. The last days of the Anniversary Special featured discount starter packs.
  • The Anniversary Quiz: With the help of Player Relations, Turbulent executed a quiz featuring three questions for each manufacturer. A passing score awarded a ‘Ship Master’ Spectrum badge and certificate. By passing the quiz, players were entered into a draw to win an Anvil Arrow.
  • The IAE Free-Fly Promotion: For the week of November 23rd until December 1st, five different flyable ships were featured each day of the week according to the featured manufacturer. The page contained information about the Desmond Memorial Convention Center in Lorville and linked to the Knowledge Base, which provided detailed instructions on how to get started. The IAE Free-Fly page also instructed new players on how to make an account and get into the ‘verse.
  • The Aopoa Santok’yāi: Turbulent supported the release of the Santok’yāi, a new Xi’an ship from Aopoa. The Santok’yāi features Yeng’tu Laser Repeaters and the latest Xi’an technology in a light-to-medium fighter chassis.

UI

The UI Team worked on adding the ability to rent items in Arena Commander, as well as supporting the needs of the Environment Team working on Lorville’s CBD.

Vehicle Features

Based on recent feedback from both internal and external sources, turret improvements have continued throughout November. In addition to bug fixes, there were multiple improvements to turrets including making multi-axis turrets controllable at min/max pitch, fixing the gyro pip offset, and improved aiming methods from a variety of input devices. The foundational mechanics to allow ships to aim at the engines on target ships has also been completed, and the feature itself is nearly ready to be rolled out to the PU, as is scanning nav points for destination info. The rest of the month was rounded out with a clean-up of debris network flow and a variety of vehicle-related crash bugs.

Vehicle Content

Art, Systems Design, and Tech Art worked together to release the Anvil Arrow as part of the November Anniversary Event as well as continuing to work on ships for upcoming releases: The Anvil Hawk is in the release-prep stage with both the Art and System Design Teams, the 300 Series is in greybox with Systems Design, and the Freelancers had entered release-prep with Tech Art.

Additionally, Systems Design and Tech Art worked with the animators on character animation sequencing for vehicles, and Tech Art worked on a thruster pass for the new flight model.

VFX

The VFX Team continued to polish and optimize the many environmental effects of Hurston and implemented general improvements to the various moons throughout the ‘verse. They also finalized VFX for the Anvil Arrow and Anvil Hawk. The VFX Team spent time optimizing existing assets to help with the overall performance of Alpha 3.3.5.

They also cleaned out all unused VFX texture assets in hopes of reducing the amount of memory required to load all the particle textures.

Now that the base work for Lorville is finished, the Level Design Team are focusing on the CBD. The whitebox is already done, with most of the remaining work involving connecting the trains and ensuring all the logistics work.

New Underground Facilities components were added to the procedural tech. These are built with modularity in mind and can be generated in the same way as Rest Stops. Once the modular library has enough content (rooms, connectors, POIs), it will become much easier to provide more variety.

They also continued working on the procedural tech to make sure that it provides everything needed from a design perspective. This can be difficult at times, as compromises are required; what is the most fun to play is not necessarily what looks the best.

Weapons

The Weapon Art Team worked on the Multi-Tool rework, Kastak Arms Ravager-212, and the level two and three upgrades for the Hurston Dynamics Laser Repeaters. They also made minor adjustments to the iron sights on a handful of weapons to improve the sight picture and to make them more user-friendly when no optics are attached.

Conclusion

WE’LL SEE YOU NEXT MONTH…

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   Source: https://robertsspaceindustries.com/comm-link/transmission/16893-Star-Citizen-Monthly-Report-November-2018

The Electric Anniversary


Celebrating Rust’s 5th anniversary with a huge update: electricity is here, enabling players to build elaborate defensive contraptions and other amazing devices. This patch wipes the servers. Enjoy! Source: https://rust.facepunch.com/blog/electric-anniversary/

OP.NET: Combat Haggling

Independent Mercenary News

Welcome to OP.NET. Your single source for all the news, tips, and insights that any independent mercenary could ever want. I’m your host Conva Maynard. And although we’re not Guild affiliated in any way, I’d like to give a special welcome to Local Guild 806 out in Ferron who comm’d in to tell me about their weekly OP.NET gatherings. While it may surprise some of you to learn that Guild members would be fans of the program, in fact, more and more of our audience are people like the 806 who are eager to get their hands on any solid information no matter the source. Basically, what I’m saying is that Skiv’s reviews are useful no matter who you are.

I know a lot of time it can feel like it’s an ‘us versus them’ thing. Independents and Guild members out there scrapping for the same work, arguing about what’s the best way to handle our business, but if you want to know the truth, we all have a lot more in common than not. We’re all trying to do the job the best we can. I’ve always felt an important part of being independent is respecting and learning from the way other people like to operate. Yeah, the Guild may not be for everyone, and it sure as heck ain’t for me, but for a lot of folks it makes sense and that’s okay. OP.NET is all in favor of making the choice that’s right for you, as long as you do the proper research and diligence first.

Speaking of, with this week’s Job Board, research all of these opportunities on your own to make sure they check out square before signing up for anything. We say it every episode, but any merc worth their body armor always vets their leads before making a move.

First up, we got an offer coming all the way out of Oberon. A growing refinery concern, Miguello Extraction, has expanded recently and it seems that a local outfit of marauders has taken notice of Miguello’s success. While the Navy have been flying more ships in system as of late, their priority is definitely dealing with any Vanduul threats, leaving folks like Miguello to fend for themselves. The company has been hit more than a couple times this year and they’re looking to hire a security detail to patrol and protect their spread of collector arrays, ASAP. What’s interesting about this contract is that they aren’t just looking for sluggers to tangle in the field, they’re looking for strategic consultants, someone who can help figure out the logistics of guarding such a large area. So, if planning routes, schedules, and security protocols gets your thrusters boosting, and you don’t mind how isolated the location is, then I’d snatch this one up right quick.

Next, we got something for those of you who might be a little less cerebral. An individual wishing to remain anonymous had their estate robbed of a so-called “sensitive item” by a local gang. Now, they’re being blackmailed for the return of said item unless they pay up. For various reasons, paying the ransom is not palatable, so they’re looking to hire a recovery team. Now you can see why there aren’t a lot of public details on this one. The crooks catch wind that their mark is hiring mercs and you can bet they’ll retaliate. For my creds, a job like this requires either a very light touch or a very heavy hand – i.e. sneak in so they don’t know you’re there or hit them so hard and fast they don’t have time to do anything but panic. Hard to say which is best without some more information but that’ll be up to you to acquire. Understandably, this contract’s looking to staff up fast, so if you’re interested, don’t wait long.

Finally, we’ve got an escort contract protecting a hauling convoy doing regular runs out to Tal. What makes this job a little bit different than your standard fly-along is that the escorts will be expected to directly interface with the Xi’an criminal houses in control of the sectors the route travels through. Since the passage of HuXa, I have seen more and more of these kinds of requests popping up, and I don’t know about you, but I pretty much know next to nothing about navigating the intricacies of Xi’an politics. Figured that it was about time I do something about my ignorance and hopefully help out any of you interested in operating in Xi’an space.

Please join me in welcoming to the show our special guest for today, former MISC security officer Jack Leong.

Jack Leong: Pleasure to be on the show.

Thanks for taking the time out of your well-deserved retirement to talk with us.

Jack Leong: Don’t worry, I’m having my granddaughter keep an eye on the fish for me until I can get back to my boat.

So, just for a little bit of history, my understanding is that you worked for MISC going on sixty-two years?

Jack Leong: Correct. Joined them right out of equivalency as an off-shift factory guard and worked my way up from there. I’m one of those odd people you meet who’ve only ever worked one job in their life. Didn’t even have to bother with the whole Guild or Independent debate. Just always been MISC.

Now, I’m sure with six decades in security we could fill a couple episodes with your advice and wisdom, but for today I wanted to talk to you specifically about your experience operating in Xi’an space.

Jack Leong: I’m happy to tell you what I can.

You were one of the first civilian Human pilots to officially be permitted to fly a combat ship through their territory correct?

Jack Leong: That’s right. Back in 2910. MISC had just signed their partnership deal and was going to be sending some execs and techs out to Tal on a regular basis. I was the lucky guy picked to go along and make sure all the important people got there and back in one piece.

What was that like? Flying into Xi’an space for the first time?

Jack Leong: Security-wise? Pretty darn easy to tell the truth. It was a big deal and all eyes were on us and the Xi’an to see how this whole thing would shake out. Nobody was going to risk anything happening to us. We got a military escort everywhere we went. For the first five years at least.

Turned out, that was all the initial lendlease agreement covered. After that, we were on our own and let me just say it was a damn pretty steep learning curve.

Sounds a bit like my dad teaching me to EVA by kicking me out an airlock.

Jack Leong: Not too far from the truth. First flight after our government protection ended, we ran into a collector for one of the major criminal houses, the Kuang.

Let me see, I have a list of terms here. That’s a yu’at.ōngh’uitā, correct?

Jack Leong: You’ll have to excuse me, I never did learn to speak much Xi’an. Blame it on me relying on my extremely competent translators too much.

No worries. We’ll post a bunch of terms to our spectrum page for anyone who’s inclined to look it up. For now, would you mind explaining a bit more about these criminal houses?

Jack Leong: Basically, the Xi’an have legal crime. I know that doesn’t sound like it makes much sense but that’s the way they do things. Criminal houses get permission from the government to run what amounts to a protection scheme; pay us and we’ll leave you alone.

I heard that’s what they do, but I still have a hard time believing it.

Jack Leong: I did too at first, but after having to deal with the system for a few decades I’ll admit the logic of it all is appealing. The Xi’an will tell you that they have just come to terms with crime being a fact of life and since there’s no way to get rid of it, why not try to control it?

The criminals have to follow certain rules, right?

Jack Leong: Exactly. For example, they’re limited to only taking a certain amount of profit every cycle. They’re not allowed to kill. They can’t take all your cargo. They can’t hit the same people too often. And that’s just a few of the rules. As with all things Xi’an, the list is long and complicated. One of the more interesting things is that a lot of the time these criminal houses wind up acting like security forces since it’s usually them who hunt down and catch rogue outlaw Xi’an who break the rules.

That thing about not being able to take all the cargo has to be pretty nice for haulers.

Jack Leong: Well, to risk sounding like the retired old dodder that I am, it’s a bit like fishing. Take all the fish out of lake in one go, and next time there won’t be anything for you to catch.

Wish some of the gangs out here showed that kind of restraint.

Jack Leong: It’s all a numbers game with the Xi’an. In fact, another way to think of Xi’an crime is almost like a second tax or an alternate form of insurance. Depending on how much you fly you can choose to risk being held up, or you can plan ahead and pay a fee. After being robbed a few times, MISC eventually figure out that it was smarter to just make regular payments to the Kuang.

Sounds like it would all be pretty straightforward after that.

Jack Leong: It would have been if it weren’t for the renegotiations. It was never clear if it was because we were Humans or if it was just because we were seen as valuable targets, but more often than I’d like our payments were refused.

Let me guess. They wanted more money?

Jack Leong: Yup. It meant that we would have to settle on a new price en route. Or as one of my associates called it, “Combat Haggling.”

Okay, definitely want to hear more on this, but I’m gonna have to ask you to hold that thought right there, Jack, as we need to take a quick break.

When we come back, we will have plenty more insights from Mr. Leong and Skiv will be by to provide his hot-take on the newly available fighter from Aopoa, the San’tok.yāi. All that and more as OP.NET continues.

Source: https://robertsspaceindustries.com/comm-link/spectrum-dispatch/16892-OPNET-Combat-Haggling

Q&A: Anvil Arrow

Q&A: Anvil Arrow

Following the launch of the Arrow from Anvil, we took your community-voted questions to our designers to give you more information on the recently unveiled light fighter.

Special thanks to John Crewe and Stephen Hosmer for answering our questions.

What gives it the designation “Stealth” on the ship page?

This is an error on the webstore due to a mix up on the internal design page and it should say Light Fighter and has been corrected. However the Stealth part is still valid, in reference to the class of components with which the Arrow can be fitted. Utilizing stealth components could allow the Arrow to be used as a patrol craft without being seen, or in an ambush to surprise one’s enemies.

The commercial states that this ship is one of the fastest and most agile in its class. However, once you try it in game, it handles like a turtle. Is this a bug?

It is intended to have agile handling as described. The current handling is a result of a bug in the current IFCS system that affects all ships randomly. The Arrow seems particularly prone to this bug, but cycling the landing gear often fixes it. We’re working towards making the Arrow true to its intent.

How does the Arrow compare to Aegis’ Gladius and Anvil’s own Hawk in the light fighter role?

The Arrow is more maneuverable than the Gladius, but isn’t as fast. The Hawk is slightly harder to compare, as it is intended to have above-average maneuverability and speed but not in an extreme capacity. Therefore, the Hawk will also be faster than the Arrow (to chase down its bounties), but not as maneuverable.

Given Anvil’s boast that the Arrow is the “most agile fighter in its class”, and that it is smaller and cheaper than the Gladius, with identical maximum hardpoints and components, why would I want a Gladius instead?

Anvil Aerospace built the Arrow to compete with the Gladius for a lucrative military contract. Anvil’s marketing team would have you believe it outperforms the competition in every way, but that isn’t exactly the case. The Gladius has superior missile hardpoints and its dual engines should out-accelerate the Arrow in a straight line. To get the price that low, Anvil included a cheaper turret mount with Size-1 weapons, and users may want to purchase larger weapons to get the most from the Arrow’s hardpoints. As always, balance is still being worked on and is subject to change.

Which ships will the Arrow fit in and how many could each ship carry (Carrack/Idris/Javelin/ Bengal-carrier)?

The Arrow was designed to have a small form factor and folding wings to accommodate fitting them in a carrier. Any ship that is built to be a dedicated carrier, such as the Idris, Kraken, or Bengal, will be able to fit an Arrow. Many other ships will be able to carry at least one such as the Javelin, Endeavor (with Hangar module), 890 Jump, and Polaris. The folding wings prevent it from being stored in a Carrack as that bay is designed specifically for the Pisces. As always, until the parent ship has been completed it is always tricky to confirm/deny some of the older options.

Is the Arrow tuned with the new FM in mind?

The Arrow was tuned and built in the IFCS 1.0 system and will need to be converted to the new IFCS flight model when it is released to the public, as such its current handling (bugs aside) is not fully representative of the finished product.

Will the Arrow have storage space for personal items such as a survival kit, weapons and armor?

In the future, we would like for each ship to be able to store a personal weapon for the player. Currently, the Arrow does not allow for these items, but may include a slot for a personal weapon or emergency kit in the future.

How do you plan to create meaningful balance for light fighters considering the class now has 9 ships: Arrow, Gladius, Hawk, Aurora LN, Reliant Tana, Mustang Delta, 125A, Blade and Khartu-al?

The Arrow, Gladius, Mustang Delta, and Blade are all dedicated fighters and their flight characteristics and loadouts differ. The Aurora LN and 125A can both carry cargo while having combat capabilities. The Hawk can carry a prisoner and packs an EMP, making it ideal for bounty hunting. The Reliant Tana is meant for long range combat and features multi-crew gameplay. The Khartu-al is a scout ship meant to get in and out and use its agility rather than firepower. The light fighter category encompasses many ships, but the role and capabilities of each of these ships vary. We hope each one will fill a niche for different play styles.

What options will we see from the turret? Will there be utility options such as stor-all?

The top turret mount was designed to only accommodate weapons. Currently the attached turret can hold two Size-1 weapons, but it can also be removed to add either a single fixed Size-3 weapon or a gimballed Size-2 weapon. The mount was designed to be flexible in this aspect. There are no plans to allow other utility options.

The ship matrix indicates that the Arrow has 8 joint maneuvering thrusters, against the Gladius 8 gimballed thrusters. The shipyard post on thrusters, however, only discuses gimballed and fixed maneuvering. What are Joint thrusters?

A gimballed thruster has multiple vectors of thrust whereas a fixed thruster has a single vector of thrust. A joint thruster is a subset of gimballed thrusters and refers to the range of movement. A few examples of gimballed thrusters we use are joint, roll, and flex. The Arrow uses joint thrusters, which means the thrusters can change their pitch in a 90-degree arc. The Aurora uses roll thrusters, which pitch in a 180-degree arc. The Hornet uses flex thrusters, which pitch and yaw in 90-degree arcs. There are more configurations of thrusters, but these are the most common. The more vectors a thruster can hit, the more complexity it adds, and generally reduces maneuverability.

Please state which of the component lines (civilian, industrial, stealth, performance, military) the Arrow can equip and what it comes equipped with stock. Are certain components limited to X line while others are limited to Y line (example being: powerplant can be industrial or civilian but the rest of the systems can only be civilian).

The Arrow can use Military, Stealth and Civilian components and comes stock with Military components.

Can we blade the turret for pds?

Yes you can use a Computer Blade to turn the turret into a AI Controlled Turret akin to a Point Defense System, however on such a small ship you may be using up all (or more than 50%) of the blade slots to do this leaving you with no other options to upgrade.

Is the very limited fuel capacity something actively being looked into, or is this the dev team’s intent?

The Arrow was built to be a short-range fighter and mainly to act as a ship deployed from a carrier where it can refuel and restock.

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Source: https://robertsspaceindustries.com/comm-link/engineering/16883-Q-A-Anvil-Arrow