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Stick and Rudder: Wingman's Hangar is must-see Star Citizen TV
OK, technically Star Citizen's weekly Wingman's Hangar webcast is must-see YouTube. I mean, does anyone still watch television? On a TV, really? Over the past couple of weeks I've powered through my personal back catalogue of WH episodes, mostly for my own fanbot gratification but also to minimize the knowledge gaps in this column. And as I was watching, the strangest thing happened. I began to care about the people involved. Not care as in I'm-going-to-go-stalk-Eric-Peterson, but care as in the sort of distanced-but-semi-invested attachment that I form with characters in a particularly effective documentary film.
EVE Evolved: Colonising deep space
If you were watching the news coming out of this year's EVE Online Fanfest, you no doubt heard Senior Producer Andie Nordgren's incredibly ambitious five year vision. The past few expansions have been mostly filled with bug fixes and improvements to existing gameplay, but the goal is now to begin delivering an epic vision of deep space exploration, colonisation, and PvP raids on enemy infrastructure. The five year roadmap toward this goal includes the addition of player-built stargates and completely uncharted solar systems to locate, explore and build an empire in. If the very idea of that doesn't make shivers go down your spine, something may be wrong with your central nervous system. CCP has opened new space before with the addition of the drone regions in nullsec and some new lowsec systems for faction warfare, but it wasn't until 2009's Apocrypha expansion that we saw a true exploration and long-term colonisation effort get underway. I think the intoxicating draw of wormhole exploration was primarily due to the fact that the new systems were hidden and the information on them wasn't public. Just adding new solar systems to the existing stargate network wouldn't have had the same effect. Nordgren's vision may take up to 10 expansions to fully realise, but what kinds of features will we need in those expansions to recreate true exploration and deep space colonisation? In this week's EVE Evolved, I look at some of the challenges CCP will have to overcome to make deep space colonisation a reality and what small steps could be taken in each expansion to get us there.
Stick and Rudder: The myth of the PC master race
One of the finest games I've ever played in my life is a console-only title. Last night I finished devouring Naughty Dog's PS3-exclusive The Last of Us, and I've logged more hours in Turn 10's sublime Forza Motorsport series than I care to admit. That said, the PC is and likely always will be my preferred gaming device, and those games I just mentioned would have better served my personal funtime goals if they'd been available on the PC. More importantly for the purposes of this particular column, the PC is the only platform that can do justice to a giant juicy steak of a game like Star Citizen.
Stick and Rudder Extra: Chris Roberts on Star Citizen's persistent world PvE, PvP, and more
At first glance, Star Citizen is a game about internet spaceships. Extremely high-poly pardon-me-while-I-pick-my-jaw-up-off-the-floor internet spaceships, but internet spaceships nonetheless. If you look deeper, though, you'll see a sim that aims to be just as immersive outside the cockpit as in, thanks in no small part to a diverse set of gameplay options wrapped around a dense player-driven economy. Creator Chris Roberts says this was the plan from the beginning. Actually, it was the plan as far back as 1999, when Roberts first spoke publicly about Freelancer and his grand ideas for a persistent universe title. Fast forward 14 years and Roberts sits in the captain's chair at Cloud Imperium, presiding over a small army of talented gamemakers and a ravenous horde of fans who've made Star Citizen the most successful crowdfunding project in history. Will the finished game live up to lofty expectations? I recently interviewed Roberts in an attempt to find out. Join us after the cut as we talk PvE vs. PvP, the passage of in-game time, and much more.
Stick and Rudder: How dare you spend money on Star Citizen!
I've got to perform a public service this week because there's a certain subset of our audience that simply doesn't get Star Citizen. Granted, taking the time to explain things to trolls may do nothing but invite additional trolling, but hey, at least now I'll have a handy link to copy/paste any time I see some of the how-dare-you-bankroll-Star-Citizen bellyaching going forward. And no, today's column isn't addressed to you personally. If you think it is addressed to you personally, though, that's probably a good indication that you should do what well-adjusted people do and refrain from continually posting about games you don't like!
Ship destroyed in EVE Online worth approximately $8,000
It's really hard to get your hands on a Revenant Supercarrier in EVE Online. Darn near impossible, in fact. The ship is worth around 300 billion ISK, coming out to about $8,000 in real currency. The ship is so potent that up until last night, there were thought to be no more than three in the entire game. As of last night, there were two. One of the Revenants was destroyed in a battle between Habitual Euthanasia and Black Legion. Habitual Euthanasia apparently responded to a call for help, fielding the carrier against Black Legion, leading to its destruction. Speculation about whether this was a trap to destroy something valuable or simply a lucky break for the opposing side is being flung around with no conclusive answers. The video recording the destruction is embedded after the cut, although it's zoomed out enough that you cannot enjoy a slow-motion replay of one of the rarest ships in EVE Online going up in flames like a cheap firecracker.
Stick and Rudder: The best bits of Star Citizen's 24-hour livestream
There are livestreams, and then there are livestreams, and Star Citizen's 24-hour marathon that concluded yesterday was a prime example of the latter. The event was crammed full of developer roundtables, celebrity cameos, and enough internet spaceship shenanigans to keep me watching for far longer than I originally intended. Cloud Imperium revealed several new spacecraft, along with additional stretch goals that blew my mind, plenty of slickly produced videos, concept art, and more.
EVE Evolved: Fitting battleships for PvP in Odyssey
Tech 1 ships in EVE Online used to be arranged in tiers that determined the cost and power of the ship and what level of the appropriate skill was required to fly it. This gave a sense of progression back in 2004 when all we had was frigates, cruisers, and battleships, but developers have since filled in the gaps between ship classes with destroyers, battlecruisers, strategic cruisers, and tech 2 ships of all shapes and sizes. In a recent game design initiative, CCP has been removing the tiers from within each tech 1 ship class by buffing the lower-tier ships up to the same rough power level as the largest ship in its class. The recent Odyssey expansion saw the humble battleship buffed beyond all recognition. The Megathron, Raven, Tempest, and Apocalypse all became extreme damage-dealing powerhouses, but the Dominix, Scorpion, Typhoon, and Armageddon were buffed the most. Each of them can now fit several monster setups, dealing upward of 1,000 damage per second or completely disabling enemy ships with energy neutralisers and electronic warfare. The build costs of these tier one battleships were more than doubled in the expansion, but prices are only slowly rising due to the existing stock on the market. That makes the tier one battleships incredibly cost-effective PvP powerhouses at the moment, and players are beginning to take advantage of it. In this week's EVE Evolved, I experiment with PvP setups for the newly revamped Typhoon, Armageddon, Scorpion, and Dominix battleships.
Stick and Rudder: On Star Citizen's E3 absence
So E3 happened this past week. If you're a Massively regular, you're no doubt aware of that since we spammed up our front page and your RSS feed with gobs of hands-on coverage including everything from racing games to The Elder Scrolls Online. One thing we didn't cover was Star Citizen, because thankfully, Cloud Imperium's upcoming space sim sandbox didn't bother with an official E3 presence.
Stick and Rudder: The five types of Star Citizen guys
I've been through my share of alphas, betas, and early release communities over the years, and without exception, every one of them is chock-full of the same five guys. Oh sure, these guys have hundreds of different forum handles, and in the case of a nostalgia-drenched core title like Star Citizen, some of them may even be old enough to know better. But they're still the same five guys. These guys are in the good pre-release communities and the bad, and while their passion is largely laudible, their busy-body forum hijinks are nothing if not high-lariously predictable.
Stick and Rudder: Why all the love for Roberts and Star Citizen?
I was talking with a gaming buddy recently who missed the whole space sim experience in the 1990s. He's a Star Wars fan and a real-life pilot pushing 40, so it surprised me to learn that he'd never heard of Wing Commander, Freespace, X-Wing, and the like. My jaw really hit the floor as our conversation turned to current games and I began to evangelize about Star Citizen and Chris Roberts. "Who's Chris Roberts?" he asked, with a straight face.
Lenovo's Intel-powered K900 smartphone on sale now in China, ships internationally this summer
It arrived with a bang, but it's been dead silence ever since. Lenovo's Intel Clover Trail+ smartphone, the Android-based K900, is finally ready to make its grand entrance into the consumer realm. The 5.5-inch powerhouse will ship with a dual-core Atom Z2580 CPU (2.0GHz) within, a PowerVR SGX 544MP2 GPU, a 1080p IPS panel slipped behind a coating of Gorilla Glass 2 and a 13 megapixel camera. Despite the sizable display, it weighs just 162 grams and measures 6.9 millimeters thick, and should be available across greater China right now for RMB 3,299 (around $536) -- or RMB 2,999 if you're lucky. For those outside of Lenovo's homeland, you'll need to wait until summer for it to hit an unspecified amount of "international markets."
Stick and Rudder: Star Citizen celebrates $9 million with Auroras, space suits, and LTI
You know, Star Citizen occasionally seems too good to be true. Take this past week, for example. It saw not one, not two, but three major news releases focused on the fledgling space sandbox, all of which were well-received by most in the community and all of which generated even more buzz and positive word-of-mouth for Chris Roberts' crowdfunded juggernaut. I'm certainly not complaining, mind you; it's just that Cloud Imperium's game is doing a damned fine job of turning a cynic hardened by years of sub-standard MMO releases into a wide-eyed game-loving kid again. So let's talk after the cut about the Aurora, our new space suits, and lifetime insurance, shall we?
Stick and Rudder: Why Star Citizen's development model matters
Chris Roberts' Star Citizen crowdfunding colossus exploded onto the gaming scene late in 2012 with a chip on its shoulder and a certain can-do attitude that resonated with gamers because of its conspicuous absence over the past decade. "I am a PC game, and I am a space sim," the game's trailer defiantly proclaimed. PC games and space sims, of course, were long past the prime of their 1990s golden years, according to most industry pundits, so how and why did Star Citizen make such a successful splash (over $8.5 million in crowdfunding as of press time, with an additional $5,000 to $10,000 gained on a daily basis)? More importantly why is the title's development model so integral to the future of gaming?
Stick and Rudder: A guide to Star Citizen's community
Welcome aboard pilots, privateers, and pillaging pirate queens; you've found Stick and Rudder, the gaming press' first Star Citizen column! I'm putting all pretenses of objectivity aside today because I'm terribly frackin' excited for this game. That's why we're here, now, talking about it way out in front of its release. With all of this expectation comes the potential for massive disappointment, of course, but the good news is that Cloud Imperium is being pretty open about its development process. This has the added benefit of giving us lots to chew on while we sit through the agonizing months leading up to launch. Anyway, now that some of my fanboy gushing is out of the way, let's get down to brass tacks and carry on the time-honored Massively tradition of kicking off a new game column with a community guide.
Learn about the ships of Kartuga with this new video
Boats! Who doesn't love 'em? If you just answered "me," you're probably not the key demographic for the upcoming pirate battle game Kartuga. But if you do like boats, oh boy have we got news for you. Three different ship sizes and 40 visual types -- it's ship heaven in there. Small ships are speedy but can't really take a hit, large ships are virtually unsinkable but not so quick at maneuvering into position, and medium ships take all things in moderation. You don't just get to look at these ships, oh no! You get to fight in 'em. At the core of Kartuga is cooperative PvP. You'll go head-to-head with other captains in teams of four. The game goes into closed beta at the end of February, and you can preregister now. Skip below the cut to take a good, hard look at the boats. [Source: InnoGames press release]
Pebble smartwatches begin shipping to backers this afternoon, iOS app still pending (update: app ready)
Pebble has just informed backers that the very first orders will begin shipping today, though the iOS app is still pending approval from Apple. In the meantime, Android users will have access to a compatible app in Google Play beginning tomorrow -- just in time to start using those freshly unboxed smartwatches. iPhone, iPad and iPod touch users will be able to display notifications and control music in the meantime, though advanced features like watchface and OS updates won't be possible until the app is ready for download. Now, a bit more bad news: the Pebble team reportedly jumped the gun on shipment notifications, so even though you may have received word that your watch is on the way, it may not be in the first batch of 500. If you've also received a tracking number, however, your device is likely to be in the mail. We're holding out hope that our Pebbles fall within that latter group -- stay tuned for a review just as soon as we've had time to put the device through its paces. In the meantime, hit up the source link for some more pics from factory. Update: That was quick -- the iOS app is ready to go.
SAIC shows how DARPA's submarine-tracking drone ship finds its silent targets (video)
Some of us have been feeding advice to DARPA's ACTUV sub-tracking drone project for more than a year, but we haven't had a in-depth look at how the autonomous ship will go about its business, especially when chasing very silent diesel-electric subs. Thankfully, craft designer SAIC has stepped in with a detailed video tour. If there's suspicions that a diesel sub is in the area, the US Navy can deploy sonar buoys that give the ACTUV an inkling of where to go first. After that, the drone takes over with both long-range and short-range sonar. The vehicle can gauge the intent of ships in its path (with human failsafes) and hound a target for up to 13 weeks -- either letting the Navy close in for an attack or, ideally, spooking the sub into avoiding conflict in the first place. While ACTUV won't hit the waves for years, there's a promise that we'll always know about underwater threats and deal with them on our own terms.
EVE Evolved: Retribution is freaking awesome!
Shortly after the Retribution expansion's deployment, a thread popped up on the EVE Online forums that proved to me that the expansion had been a massive success. In the thread titled So that's what victory in this game feels like, miner Tiberius StarGazer explained that he has always felt like he had no way to get back at people who wronged him. After losing millions of ISK in ships to pirate attacks, he was almost ready to give up on EVE. But when Retribution landed, he was able to sell his kill rights to the public so that every player vigilante who crossed his attacker's path could try to take him down without warning. After just a few hours, Tiberius got a notification that put a smile on his face: He had his first taste of revenge. He'd dealt more damage back to his attacker by clicking a button than had ever been done to him, and the attacker wasn't happy about it. He threatened to find Tiberius and kill him again, and that simple miner's reply said all I needed to know about how successful Retribution has been: "I have deep pockets. Every kill you make on me, I will add as a bounty on your corp; every kill right, I will sell. I can't fight you but others can and you will have to lose five times my loss for wronging me." Retribution has finally given industrialists a reliable way to get revenge and use their wealth as a weapon! In this week's EVE Evolved, I look at the PvP that's springing up in empire space, how the new flagging mechanics affect baiting, and what the ship revamp means for new players.
Captain's Log: The low-tier ships of Star Trek Online
It seems as if most MMOs have their own version of the "mount," something that allows for faster travel from one area of the game's world to another. Mounts are known as being one of the key "shinies" that players can buy in a game, and they come with different costumes or extended health parameters to allow a player to escape a surprise attack from an unseen enemy. For the most part, they're meant to be modes of transportation only. But in Star Trek Online, the game's mounts -- its ships -- are far more than just a means of getting from one area of sector space to another. They are the player's second character, a complementary entity that engages in battle in a very different way than the characters created at the beginning of the game. In this installment of my series of tips for new players, I will begin to address the ships of Star Trek Online, specifically the Federation ships available to the first three ranks in the game.
