Star Citizen single-player spin-off boasts planetary flight, destructible cover-based gunplay and Half-Life-style puzzl…
Squadron 42 is the single player campaign of Star Citizen, that is supposed to launch as a separate game. It’s basically a small portion of Star Citizen, but with a story and ending. I’m still not confident; waited too long for that.
Ken Lord was one of those fans, and an early backer of Star Citizen. He’s got a Golden Ticket, a mark on his account that singles him out as an early member of the community. Between April 2013 and April 2018, Ken pledged $4,495 to the project. The game still isn’t out, and Lord wants his money back. RSI wouldn’t refund it, so Lord took the developer to small-claims court in California.
According to the game’s original pitch on Kickstarter, it would be a space sim with a co-op multiplayer game, an offline single-player experience, and a persistent universe. It’s since become a massively multiplayer online game and a separate single-player game with first-person shooter elements called Squadron 42, which RSI originally pitched as “A Wing Commander style single player mode, playable OFFLINE if you want.”
Along with the game—which originally had a targeted release date of 2014—Lord was supposed to have received numerous bits of physical swag. “So aside from [the game], I’m supposed to get a spaceship USB drive, silver collector’s box, CDs, DVDs, spaceship blueprints, models of the spaceship, a hardback book,” he said. “That’s the making of Star Citizen, which—if they end up making this game—might turn into an encyclopedia set.”
So if they still are on the hook to provide all that stuff and many people are in a similar situation to this guy, that’s a lot of merch that they gotta produce after they have done the game.
According to the game’s original pitch on Kickstarter, it would be a space sim with a co-op multiplayer game, an offline single-player experience, and a persistent universe. It’s since become a massively multiplayer online game and a separate single-player game with first-person shooter elements called Squadron 42, which RSI originally pitched as “A Wing Commander style single player mode, playable OFFLINE if you want.”
This is what bugs me the most about this whole fiasco. I paid into the original Kickstarter because Wing Commander through Freelancer were my favorite games and I wanted more of that.
The current project, even if we were to VERY charitably call it a game and call it playable, is nothing like Wing Commander or Freelancer.
If they were still making an actual Wing Commander type game after all this time, my copium might still be in full effect. But this current… THING… isn’t even the game they promised in the first place. It’s so disappointing.
I played Elite for a little bit, maybe a month or two, before it got to the point where it just felt like a job.
I love the X series. I have hundreds of hours in X4. It’s definitely my favorite of the bunch.
Everspace 2 was fun, but never hoked me for some reason.
The most “Wing Commander” game in recent memory was Star Wars: Squadrons, IMHO. Shame they decided to make it CoD in space though… I’m not big on the multplayer aspect and the single player campaign was super short.
Starfield was a huge disappointment. etc etc
I believe they said the last expansion for X4 was the last one. Here’s hoping there’s an X5 coming.
played Elite for a little bit, maybe a month or two, before it got to the point where it just felt like a job
Yeah, it never really clicked for me, and I didn’t like the “faux online” aspect either. I bet that it’s probably pretty in VR, though.
I love the X series. I have hundreds of hours in X4. It’s definitely my favorite of the bunch.
Ah, okay, I didn’t think that that’d be your cup of tea, because while the game does have fighters, it tends to favor large ship combat, and my take is that the dogfighting isn’t too elaborate – like, if you can leverage strafing in X2, the enemy AI isn’t all that great at predicting where you’ll be. There isn’t, I don’t know, breaking missile locks or whatever. Though I guess that exploiting dead zones in fields of fire is a thing. And there’s a management focus, and the ability to indirectly manage many ships. I hadn’t played much of X4 myself, though I did do X3 a fair bit.
Do you enjoy the fleet command aspect of it? There’s a game that I recall that felt more like a fleet naval combat simulator in space, not on the first-person dogfighting aspect. Lots of naval warfare-ish jargon, focus on sensor and counter-sensor stuff – I suspect that people who like something leaning a bit more milsim would like that. It was early access when I played it, but probably enough to have some fun with it. Let me find the name.
They flash through a lot of functionality in a few seconds quickly in the demo vids there on steam, but you can see the ship and weapon configuration, fleet and ship commands, system-specific damage control, some of the electronic warfare stuff, things like that.
So, I enjoyed what was there, but I can imagine someone finding the faux-naval jargon a bit opaque. Sort of like operating a naval group, with ships with specialized roles. The graphics are okay, but beauty isn’t their goal – they’re trying to do a combat environment in space.
I actually ran across it when looking for a non-space milsim fleet naval combat game, and was pleasantly-surprised.
I’m not big on the multplayer aspect
Yeah, ditto.
Starfield was a huge disappointment
I liked it, but then I wanted a Skyrim or Fallout 4 out of it, not a space combat game. Yeah, the space combat there isn’t much more than a pretty minigame.
Well to be fair, X4 isn’t my favorite of the bunch because of its (lack of) similarity to Wing Commander. It’s not really that kind of game. But it is fun and scratches the space economy itch more like a Freelancer or Eve.
I hadn’t hard of Nebulous. I see what they’re going for graphically (Homeworld style). I’ll have to keep an eye on it. But yeah the fleet combat part of X4 never quite got me interested beyond “if I make 100 fighters, I should be able to take out pretty much anything”. Controlling large fleets was always a weakness of the game, one of the janky bits. But Building stations, setting up an economy, piracy, and all that stuff is still fun.
But yeah the fleet combat part of X4 never quite got me interested beyond “if I make 100 fighters, I should be able to take out pretty much anything”.
Ah, okay. I was just trying to figure out how it differed from some of the other things you listed, and fleet combat was one. But the economic side is another, and, yeah, I can see the economic side of the X series being appealing if building a big space empire is a goal.
If you’re looking for a space economic sim, that’s entirely-absent from NEBULOUS, and in fact they even mention that up-front on the product page – they’re going for combat simulation. So it won’t fill that slot.
Yeah, probably not my cuppa tea, but I will keep an eye on it. Space ships blowing each other up has potential, even if it’s not my favorite style of said activity.
And I bet it releases before Star Citizen for a fraction of the price!
Sorry to bear the bad news, but Elite: Dangerous has abandoned developing any further VR functionality.
To my knowledge VR still works in ship cockpits and is still amazing there, but the last big expansion’s big draw added new on foot content that doesn’t support VR at all. In VR it displays in headset as a giant 2D screen in front of you, if it chooses to work with the headset at all.
I didn’t quote that bit, but that’s actually what he was upset about too.
For Lord, it’s no longer the game he thought he was getting. The first person mode is an especially hard sell. “I have [multiple sclerosis],” he told me. “My hands shake badly. I have tremors…They just recently confirmed that you have to do the first-person shooter thing to get through Squadron 42. I can’t do that, I just can’t do that. So my money’s stuck in a game I can’t possibly play.”
You are not logged in. However you can subscribe from another Fediverse account, for example Lemmy or Mastodon. To do this, paste the following into the search field of your instance: !gaming@beehaw.org
From video gaming to card games and stuff in between, if it’s gaming you can probably discuss it here!
Please Note: Gaming memes are permitted to be posted on Meme Mondays, but will otherwise be removed in an effort to allow other discussions to take place.
googles
Five years ago, this guy tried suing to get his money back when the thing was a third the size it currently is.
https://www.vice.com/en/article/ne5n7b/star-citizen-court-documents-reveal-the-messy-reality-of-crowdfunding-a-dollar200-million-game
So if they still are on the hook to provide all that stuff and many people are in a similar situation to this guy, that’s a lot of merch that they gotta produce after they have done the game.
This is what bugs me the most about this whole fiasco. I paid into the original Kickstarter because Wing Commander through Freelancer were my favorite games and I wanted more of that.
The current project, even if we were to VERY charitably call it a game and call it playable, is nothing like Wing Commander or Freelancer.
If they were still making an actual Wing Commander type game after all this time, my copium might still be in full effect. But this current… THING… isn’t even the game they promised in the first place. It’s so disappointing.
I didn’t really enjoy it, but did you play Elite: Dangerous?
And I guess that there’s the X series, X4 now, though the focus isn’t really dogfighting.
Everspace 2? I disliked one of those, can’t remember if that was it, but it is fighter-ish space combat.
There are also atmospheric fighter combat games.
I played Elite for a little bit, maybe a month or two, before it got to the point where it just felt like a job.
I love the X series. I have hundreds of hours in X4. It’s definitely my favorite of the bunch.
Everspace 2 was fun, but never hoked me for some reason.
The most “Wing Commander” game in recent memory was Star Wars: Squadrons, IMHO. Shame they decided to make it CoD in space though… I’m not big on the multplayer aspect and the single player campaign was super short.
Starfield was a huge disappointment. etc etc
I believe they said the last expansion for X4 was the last one. Here’s hoping there’s an X5 coming.
Yeah, it never really clicked for me, and I didn’t like the “faux online” aspect either. I bet that it’s probably pretty in VR, though.
Ah, okay, I didn’t think that that’d be your cup of tea, because while the game does have fighters, it tends to favor large ship combat, and my take is that the dogfighting isn’t too elaborate – like, if you can leverage strafing in X2, the enemy AI isn’t all that great at predicting where you’ll be. There isn’t, I don’t know, breaking missile locks or whatever. Though I guess that exploiting dead zones in fields of fire is a thing. And there’s a management focus, and the ability to indirectly manage many ships. I hadn’t played much of X4 myself, though I did do X3 a fair bit.
Do you enjoy the fleet command aspect of it? There’s a game that I recall that felt more like a fleet naval combat simulator in space, not on the first-person dogfighting aspect. Lots of naval warfare-ish jargon, focus on sensor and counter-sensor stuff – I suspect that people who like something leaning a bit more milsim would like that. It was early access when I played it, but probably enough to have some fun with it. Let me find the name.
googles
Got it. NEBULOUS: Fleet Command.
They flash through a lot of functionality in a few seconds quickly in the demo vids there on steam, but you can see the ship and weapon configuration, fleet and ship commands, system-specific damage control, some of the electronic warfare stuff, things like that.
So, I enjoyed what was there, but I can imagine someone finding the faux-naval jargon a bit opaque. Sort of like operating a naval group, with ships with specialized roles. The graphics are okay, but beauty isn’t their goal – they’re trying to do a combat environment in space.
I actually ran across it when looking for a non-space milsim fleet naval combat game, and was pleasantly-surprised.
Yeah, ditto.
I liked it, but then I wanted a Skyrim or Fallout 4 out of it, not a space combat game. Yeah, the space combat there isn’t much more than a pretty minigame.
Well to be fair, X4 isn’t my favorite of the bunch because of its (lack of) similarity to Wing Commander. It’s not really that kind of game. But it is fun and scratches the space economy itch more like a Freelancer or Eve.
I hadn’t hard of Nebulous. I see what they’re going for graphically (Homeworld style). I’ll have to keep an eye on it. But yeah the fleet combat part of X4 never quite got me interested beyond “if I make 100 fighters, I should be able to take out pretty much anything”. Controlling large fleets was always a weakness of the game, one of the janky bits. But Building stations, setting up an economy, piracy, and all that stuff is still fun.
Ah, gotcha, fair-enough.
Ah, okay. I was just trying to figure out how it differed from some of the other things you listed, and fleet combat was one. But the economic side is another, and, yeah, I can see the economic side of the X series being appealing if building a big space empire is a goal.
If you’re looking for a space economic sim, that’s entirely-absent from NEBULOUS, and in fact they even mention that up-front on the product page – they’re going for combat simulation. So it won’t fill that slot.
Yeah, probably not my cuppa tea, but I will keep an eye on it. Space ships blowing each other up has potential, even if it’s not my favorite style of said activity.
And I bet it releases before Star Citizen for a fraction of the price!
Sorry to bear the bad news, but Elite: Dangerous has abandoned developing any further VR functionality.
To my knowledge VR still works in ship cockpits and is still amazing there, but the last big expansion’s big draw added new on foot content that doesn’t support VR at all. In VR it displays in headset as a giant 2D screen in front of you, if it chooses to work with the headset at all.
I didn’t quote that bit, but that’s actually what he was upset about too.