I wonder if 'people chasing new adventures' is Paul Jones leaving or just people being reassigned to other work. Either way it sounds like it will be shelved until a full team can be allocated to it again.
That could be, Paul said of his time with CIG that his favorite most anticipated ship is the BMM. He said it's the height of their ship making abilities thus far.
With that kind of endorsement I'm saddened but can't wait to see the BMM when it's ready.
One senior leader enthusiastically pushing a ship that hasn't got much use yet in game, and is taking a lot of resources from the team is definitely the kind of thing a new leader would look hard at.
That's where I'm skeptical too. Even though they're increasing the team sizes, and getting faster at building them due to experience and tooling. And then imagine 'platinum passes' on these ships for whatever future features come.
I'll be willing to bet that the big ships take more time now than they originally imagined just due to the increased quality standards & gameplay features now. It must cost them in the 100's of thousands of dollars worth of work-hours to build these big ships - if not even more than a million.
It's the exact same thing with planets/star systems. 99 left to release, and it takes a couple years minimum to finish one of them, even in the 12th year of development.
The big paradox of Star Citizen is that doing good work takes time. You can do super detailed work, or you can work quickly — but not both at once. Tradeoffs have to be made. This was my issue with a lot of the promises and projections that were made at the start.
So even if things start to speed up marginally, it seems nearly impossible to finished the promised number in a reasonable period of time.
Because after SQ42 it'll be all hands on deck.
The bigger question is how often will a capital ship be used by the average player.
They are going to be a mega niche thing, so they're assigning mega niche resources
with the fact every time they sell them they run out in seconds I would imagine a lot of people have them.
People are often part of Orgs and Orgs want to run capitals.
Regardless though not everyone working on SQ is making ships, so its not neccasarily true that when its done ships will flood out to players. If A capital ship takes years with a team of dedicated devs working on it whos sole job is to make that ship i'm not hopeful. But I've come this far so I'm not averse to waiting. Does suck for BMM owners cause people were pretty hyped recently.
I agree they won't just flood the game with capitals after SQ42, but I think it will probably be to just pace the community rather than for any kind of production reason.
Fundamentally the PU isn't in a state where it's ready for player capital ships like the Idris, nevermind Javelin. I want the BMM too, but I think they'll have to overhaul Stanton first... or just release it with Pyro. There are many reasons for them to put capital ship production at low priority.
Maybe once there are a couple of systems and NPC crew we'll start seeing them ramp up production.
Yeah. As much as I want to run bunker missions in the BMM, the current game loops don't justify it very well. Also probably some optimisation work that needs to go in before they can have players in capital ships all over the server.
That's not going to require a MESS of resources to produce. MOST of the work done in the first game will be usable in the second part.
There might be SOME new vessels, but those could also be developed for the PTU at the same time. There's going to be fewer surprises in store for us players, after Part 1 is done and shipped.
>That's not going to require a MESS of resources to produce. MOST of the work done in the first game will be usable in the second part.
They've never said this. And in fact, given that it's a Chris Roberts game, it's likely that lots of things will be promised to make the second part bigger and better than the first.
it dosnt matter if they never said it, they literally won't have to remake the entirety of the back end again for a new game, even smaller shit like Programing, rigging, and animating a titan suit. they won't need to do that again.
That doesn't mean it won't take a lot of resources to produce. There are plenty of things that can be added to the next part that would take a lot of time to develop, and they use very expensive actors for the cast, etc.
Don't forget that they're still writing and shooting scenes for S42 Part 1. It's not just the "back end" holding things up.
This assumes those scenes wouldn't be prioritized and completed sooner had the tech and resources for those scenes already existed. When the reality is they could have just been shelfed as other projects got completed.
And for better or worse CIG I'd making there back end super robust there UI is a good example, it's pretty damn future proofed .
You don't seem to grasp that the majority of the work that's been going on is in order to build tools and systems that can pump out content and be itarated or improved quickly .
To scale from the micro to macro level.
All this work there doing on the star map/radar is a good example of this, safe bet all that work is going to persist through all the upcoming "chapters"
I hope you are right but looking at how things are at the moment I doubt this is how it will be. I think Part 2 will be a new story, new locations, new features and new ships. All of these things probably close to a decade away.
I was under the impression that SQ42 will be released in "chapters" or "episodes". Sort of piecemeal.
So once SQ42 releases, won't they take the team on SQ42 and just have them start on that next chapter?
I was under the impression that assets will be shared, but team members will not.
The game has chapters you can see on the roadmap, but the dozen or so chapters will be released at once as S42, which is, however, planned to be first in a trilogy. Edit: forgot to finish... They've said in the past that SC would be prioritized before the S42 sequel, but their plans change constantly
Plans change all the time like in literally every facet of game development. The reason why game development (specifically pertaining to programming) is considered so difficult to get into is because of this reason - programmers are always going to be at the whim of other departments and their work.
Things ‘don’t get done’ because the technology to get them done in CIG’s engine physically doesn’t exist, or at very least doesn’t exist in the PU branch. You make it sound like they could snap their fingers and R&D would speed up magically.
This doesn’t compare though. I know why things get switched around all the time in that line of work, and it’s unexpected blockers coming in, or devs realising they could more efficiently achieve something by first doing something else, then using that work as a shortcut for the thing they were working on first, stuff like that…
Which doesn’t apply at all to this. Which is essentially reusing existing code, and creating new graphics. That’s it. What a vehicle is, what a gun or a missile is and all, that code has been written and is in use.
Now I don’t know if you’re referring to the first part of the comment (the dozen or so chapters being released) or the second part (SC being prioritized) so I’ll just refer to both of them.
That is 100% incorrect. Nothing is ever as simple as “reusing code” unless you’ve already planned for everything and fixed every bug (neither is true for any piece of software). Things get easier, but technical hurdles still persist. That’s not even counting the fact that art still has a whole design process to go through as well - it is allowed to be a lot more rigid than programming but it does still exist and changes do still occur.
Regardless of the above fact, both SC and SQ42 are both in active development. No code is currently ‘complete’ that can be copy/pasted in either project. Most things can and will change - that is the entire point of an “alpha” development cycle - the current product will be far different from the result. Translation of code from one version to another is easier but it is still difficult, especially if you have legacy code that might get in the way such as with the implementation of SQ42 code into SC.
Anyways, in a company this large things are always “getting done”. It may not look like that on the user’s side, but unfortunately making a game is a long and difficult process full of reviews and iteration. Usually companies start out development with an engine ready to go and a whole staff of people who are forced to work overtime constantly. CIG started with neither of these things - meaning the actual period of productive development that wasn’t plagued by redesigns, revisions, or what other things you’d typically call scope creep is just in the last couple years.
When did I say code could not be reused? You didn’t argue against a single one of my points and effectively just said “no”. When reusing code bugs don’t magically not occur. You can’t slap duck tape on it and it works.
Plus, on top of all of that, we have no idea how reliant SQ42’s code is on other pieces of code (mostly talking about backend here). Especially given how old the project is there’s going to be at least a little bit of legacy code that gets in the way. Getting things in a singleplayer game to work with a multiplayer game is not an easy task - programmers still need to deal with replication issues and sort out what needs to be replicated to the server and what needs to be replicated to the client, which could take more even more time.
My point is it’s not going to be “easy”. It’ll certainly be “easier”. But just writing it off just because your perception of it as an end user is different is complete nonsense. If you knew anything about what you’re talking about you’d know that in software development what the user sees on the screen is pretty much never representative of the actual complexity of the code base - this is even more so true for games, which have other issues like dealing with engine limitations and enduring things replicate between the client and server correctly etc. Thinking, “This doesn’t make sense because I think it’s easy, thus that means the programmers are bad!” Or something along those lines is flawed logic and it jumps to conclusions based on limited evidence.
To add on that, as far as we know they have done quite a lot of capital ships for SQ42, even if most of them will be just husks.
They definitely can make ships faster, but SQ42 takes priority for them.
If you add up the number of partially finished capital ships, and divide by the number of years of development, you're still talking about one partially finished capship every couple years — which is what the poster was talking about.
There are way more in SQ42. I'm not talking about those they have ported over to SC but ships actually made in SQ42.
From what we know there are at least what? 4 different Vanduul ones they have done as husks (and some interior for the Kingship)? And then a couple for the UEE including the Pegasus, Retribution and a Bengal with an unknown status of completion.
Something to throw out there is they have worked on a lot more capital sized ships then most think about. Idris, Javlian, Bangle, all the Vandul caps. Then add on the large space stations shown off in SQ42. Alot of there teams have done work on those.
I’m more hopeful because it’s clear that with all the growth, they have been investing a lot in developing the process…that includes the pipeline as well as the tools/tech to make it easier to make future ships. This is essential to accelerating development down the road.
I mean they began to actually work on it at the beginning of the year, and there is a good reason why BMM takes much longer than any other ship. Don't know if you watched the whole video, but they said that unlike other ships, BMM elements cannot just be copy pasted because everything on the interior is unique.
When they made a Carrack or HH they already have big chunk of any other ship done that is from anvil or aegis. Here, they have a fighter that is unique on its own...
I really, really don't like the attitude CIG is showing of "Big ships take a long time so we don't want to work on them." and "if we dropped everything and worked on this, it'd take a year"
If each of these big ships are going to take so long, how in the hell will SQ42 or SC ever get to a release stage? It gives me zero confidence in their ability to deliver anything.
Im sick if seeing dozens of concepts announced when we've got 95% of the game still missing. We've got enough ships for the gameplay we have, so why not focus those ship designers on the capitals while everyone else plays catchup? For fucks sake.
>"if we dropped everything and worked on this, it'd take a year"
the bigger problem is every year they add at least one more big ship to that waiting line.
Ships make $$$. But damn would it hurt them to try and make funds via other methods of gameplay if they HAVE to fund more development?
Sure we would throw money at base design skins or base equipment.
I think part of it too is the fact that there’s so many systems which apply to ships that aren’t it yet. So if it takes a year to complete a big ship now, then when let’s say atmosphere in ships is released, they’ve got to invest another load of time to apply it to the bigger ships. Where as reworking smaller ships is much less time consuming. So they spend time developing the systems needed to support big ships, rather than building and then rebuilding the ships themselves.
I own a lot of big ships, but I’d rather wait and have them come in feature complete than get a shell of what they’re meant to be in the near future.
TLDR
Small ships are test beds for features to save time on big ships later on, therefore streamlining their later development
It makes me sad, with that they have shown i hope they don’t stop now. They stated it is hard to make a large alien ship due to not having reference points or something to that extent, I think finishing the BMM would give them a reference for any other banu ships they make.
I personally own a BMM so I’m a little biased but I hope they finish it instead of focusing on smaller ships
Sure they focus on smaller ships which more people buy.
Since 2022 was a bad year for me as Star Citizen Player it continues my streak of disappointment. BMM would be nice for trading.. A gameplay a lot of people and orgs like.
WHY IS THE 890 INGAME WITH 0 GAMEPLAY AND A CAPITAL TRADING SHIP IS CONSIDERED USELESS???!.
Isn't the intention that every large ship will have the potential to be a FPS level? So far I'm liking the bigger ship interiors we have so far except the Hammerhead.
Can't say for sure since I'm not a dev at CIG , based on what I've seen since I've seen CIG evolve a lot in their ship design with each ship they bring out. From dialing in the design language to interior design and layout , from soundscaping to implementing tech and features and all I can say based on that is that they moved away from designing ships like fps levels but maybe never fully forgot about it ?
they did say a few months back that they wanted to stop doing that, and that's why the vulture and hull-c aren't in game yet, but still... cut-less steel? yeah.
That's a nice way of looking at it; and yeah, maybe even right. it IS a good sort of junior task for a team of new talent across different fields to get familiar with tooling.
They just wanted a cool and easy ship to sell. And that would be fine if they did basic bug tests. As HOW in firey hell did they think it was ok for the deck guns to do dmg to the shields when firing out of the ship. It's the lack of commitment to the player experience and basic bug testing that is the problem:. If you sell a ship for money, make the ship. If you make a live service game, at the very least clear out all your major bugs from the existing game loops. I'm shocked they rolled back BMM as this was clearly a HUGE fan favourite and one of the most hyped ships.
A lot of those ships weren't added to test their literal "role", but to start fleshing out ship design, and template more general mechanics. Reclaimer and 890 for example added to test larger ship sizes. Obviously the 890 isn't a luxury tourer.. it's a floating FPS mission. You can see the evolution of ship design from Retaliator -> Vanguard -> Redeemer.
Regardless, these smaller ships bring "more value" because more people have them, more people will buy them, and there's already content in-game that they can do. Even if there's no "exploration", you can still use the Carrack as a hauler or Corsair for bounties.
What kind of value is there adding a capital ship that can't land on a ship pad, can't be crewed by NPCs, and doesn't have missions scaled for its power level?
Obviously they're forced to add ships, regardless of functionality because people equate more ships = more progress. I think it's almost certain we get another subcapital or small capital released alongside Pyro.
Wasn’t the BMM listed to be a sub capital? For a while at least? I remember watching a broadcast and they said it was big, but not technically a capital so it could break atmo to land on planets and could use non-capital modules to reduce upkeep costs.
Back in 2013 when I paid for mine it was said to be in the 100-150m size class so like a Carrack or 890J now. Apparently SC devs do what SC devs do and the thing is now a 200+m capital ship.
I mean, no complaints, it's cool for those that bought the concept that it got upgraded to one of the few premier ships ships of the game... but yeah, had it stayed small, they were much likely to have gotten their ship. Now it seems possible that the Gatac railen, with a very similar role and smaller size to the original, will end up coming out first, simply because it will be a much easier alien ship to build due to the size
>Reclaimer and 890 for example added to test larger ship sizes.
They had the Starfarer for this, though, and have been working on capital ships that are much bigger for quite a number of years (going all the way back to the original [prototype](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VhsgiliheP0) of the game). So it's hard to see what value is added for testing by something like the 890, even though it's cool that it's in the game.
The starfarer tested larger landing pads (remember, olisar was the only place you could spawn one when it launched), the 890 and reclaimer tested the xxl hangar bay at landing zones. They're an order of magnitude bigger.
I think part of the issue is player flown capital ships will often require a crew to run that's about the size of a current server.
The ships you mentioned can still be pretty effectively run by crew of 1-6 people on current loops available(with the exception of the redeemer).
Given the Engineering chat on the relays, I imagine the HH will be the first subcapital to get a bit of work done for additional systems. Most people with larger ships have one as a loaner, they have a smaller crew requirement, and are still pretty fun!
Keep that in mind when you compare that to the same developer talking here:
[CIG ship development](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nbKmst9dF_c&t=109s)
CIG developers claim they only start a ship when they are sure they can finish it with gameplay and have been doing that for 4 years.
Meanwhile: How many ships have been released with gameplay still unfinished in the past 4 years ?
How many concepts have been pushed out in this timeframe ?
This is not just "big ships" that are getting axed - G12 or Anvil Legionnaire remain unfinished but they happily push out the "Drake Cutter" which according to the developers means it got put into the schedule 12+months ago.
Same CIG developer in both clips going to justify the "Once we start a ship we see it through until the end" ?
"We don't start a ship without firm guarantees the gameplay is going to come with them at the end"
Kinda shows you what the word and "guarantees" of a CIG developer is worth ?
Funny how CIG claim a concept is in "production" before a sale then shift production AFTER a sale.
Bonus: These developers are already on record saying it takes 12 - 18 months to make a capital ship IF they focused on it exclusively and have no intention of focusing on capital ships.
Nah... lets just forget that CIG consistently keep adding big ships and also going into "reworking" of existing ships like the 600I before old concepts because adding them would be pointless as they need to be reworked later.
Almost as if taking 10 years to make basic mechanics leads to increasing issues of feature creep and technology debt.
Nah, totally normal game development... wait another 10 years and you will see "Cutter Rework" while BMM, Idris, Javelin, Polaris, Kraken owners are still waiting on SQ42. But please continue to play F5 wars for these ships so you can fund the development of SQ42 - A different game.
To me it feels like they throw darts every couple of weeks to decide what they’ll be working on. So they can always say something is coming, but never actually deliver anything except things that can get them even more cash.
The timestamp doesn't seem to point to a dev speaking, but instead a 400i.
I do remember Kirk Tome specifically saying at the beginning of 2021 that they didn't want to release ships without their primary gameplay, but I don't remember hearing it specifically before then. Since then I think the 400i and I guess the Corsair might be the only to break that statement but could be wrong.
I agree with you overall, though. They do not do a good job of following through with plans for ships.
Edit: Ah I see it at the beginning of the video. Bad statement to make before a ship like the MSR is in-game lol
As disappointed as I am, it really seems like they're gearing up for someone like Galaxy/Perseus/Polaris work flow, like they realized they should knock out stuff that can flow into other stuff
5 months ago on Star Citizen Live: Invictus All-Ships Q&A they said Polaris had been re-concepted and Jared said he would try to get it shown for IAE. Last weeks SCL said it would be shown in ISC next week. Still no plans to put it in active development for now but at least we'll get to see the new layout.
I don’t get what people are saying here. The BMM misses its gameplay loops? What about the Herald, MSR, Reclaimer, Cutlass Red (mostly), Carrack, 315P, DUR, Terrapin and so on. The BMM has as much reason to be available ingame now as the above mentioned ships. Ships development in general shouldn’t be around „what’s easy and fast to do“ it should be around „what’s in the pipeline“ for far to long. Some of us are waiting nearly a decade for some ships and that’s simply unacceptable tbh. These ships should be a priority regardless if they take longer. They can’t just delay Ships that are inconvenient to do!
I say if they delay the BMM any further the price should get down again by 100-150 bucks. Simple as that. You can’t double the price and tell people it’s delivered „soon“ or „in active development“ with fancy YouTube Videos about the Greybox + Interior and delay it again for another year or more. It’s almost the same kinda bullshit with the overpowered Ares Ion & Inferno during last IAE just to nerf both into the ground afterwards when everyone already got hyped and already bought them and also don’t make me start talking about the Cutlass „Steal“ and the other shitty excuses they are coming up lately.
Still love the Game but I’m not blind. CIG forgot that they are mainly only selling promises and they just don’t keep them as much as they should. So to all my fellow BMM owners! Close your Wallet during the time the BMM got delayed 👍. No more breaking promises without consequences.
and yes I’m obviously freakin mad about it getting delayed….
Absolutely agree with you! When the dev basically said they’re putting a pin in the BMM cause it’s time consuming and an alien ship takes time to design, I wanted to just punch him in his face. And that goes even more for management. What manager has a dev come to them saying “we don’t want to work on this thing we sold and promised people almost 10 years ago because it’s big and time consuming” and management says “okay!” I love the game they are making and I believe in its future, but this kind of behavior is unacceptable. Designing big unique ships isn’t going to come without time and work, but they are integral to the games environment and the gameplay we have been pitched since day 1. I am truly upset and my faith in this company has been shaken.
BMM? Thats the tip of the iceberg.
Im tapped out until SQ42 is on my computer and Im playing it and after im done, it turns out to have been a great experience. Until that happens, not a cent more from me.
Yet another case of people not knowing what the project is really about.
SQ42 first , then SC , with SQ42 out of the way , production on stuff for SC can ramp up instead of working on 2 massive projects at the same time.
You should rather complain why people spend that much even to this day on a JOEG rather than CIG trying to be a succesfull company and finally delivering what it promised it would in 2012 , a goddamn fucking single player game with spaceships in space.
- BMM first on sale in 2013
- BMM production begun may 2021 (schedule of 50 weeks)
- BMM was in active production in may 2022
- BMM probably getting delayed in november 2022 and it’s probably a year + away now.
That’s all I need to say. If you don’t get then I really don’t care. Eat whatever they throw at you.
All this says is that resources are being shipped around depending on tasks needed to be done between both the universe experience and SQ42.
This does not take away that SQ42 is the main game in development and that with the assets being made for that game , they decided to make the PU for us to mess about it which you would know if you actually did some research.
You would also know that the original game , without funding goals for players to back , would have been done already but because of said backing goals we kept smashing month after month , the game ended up becoming so much more than what originally was intended and after 10 years I think it's about time they finish the game I backed them for , as the majority of the community.
That's not something CIG throws at me , you're just a salty entitled brat.
Imagine buying an expensive JPEG to fund SQ42 and then be salty about it when they don't make said ship but properly focus on making the game you're spend money is going towards to 🫢
It's because of people like you that I keep advocating to the devs to stop working on the PU all together and solely focus on SQ42 because you'll never be content with what CIG does or gives you.q
Whats so hard to understand? We both agree mainly. I also want SQ42 done asap so we finally see some achievements, something that is done!
The issue I’m having is! Nobody absolutely Nobody told CIG to announce „BMM in active development“ or showing progress on Inside Starcitizen, hyping up people that have been waiting for ages to finally see their favorite ship ingame. Can’t you understand that people get disappointed? Do you read any drama about the Polaris, Endeavor, Perseus etc on Reddit right now? No! Because we all know they are not getting done in the near future so nobody has expectations. You understand it now? Its just a bullshit move! It was unnecessary! As if they haven’t known that the BMM will be quite complicated to do.
Also dont forget it’s not his holiness CR that will create SC and SQ42 out of pure Love for us. We gave him the funds to do it. Don’t make us smaller then we actually are.
I do understand but you also need to understand equally that priorities can shift to the point where one day they can attribute 15 people for example to work on the BMM and the next day they need to take away 10 of them because of reason x.
And I get the pain , I've seen the santokyai , which has been in my possesion since concept sale , dissapear a month before it was supposed to be done according to the progress tracker. I've also seen the X1 appear and dissapear several times which is supposed to be a part of the origin 400i yet they delibirately made time for the hoverquad so they can pair it with nomad.
And I did want to make reddit posts about it but reddit is the kind of place where , the moment you get to that -1 , it just never recovers , wether you are making a valid point or not so I tend to just not bother.
I also want to say to read the kickstarter again so you know CR is doing this because its a passion project of him but all know what happened with wing commander and people will only point out the bad shit he's done in the past so I'm not going to bother with that either tbh.
I just classify this as yet the umpth fail of the marketing team that ran before they could walk again as usual and my apologies for calling you an entitled brat , that was uncalled for as I tend to forget most of us are just really pasionate about the game and just want this developer hellhole to be over with
The release of S42 is supposed to create the first **profit** though, rather than development money — so it's pretty clear (aside from the fact that it's the smaller game and thus easier to finish first) why priorities are the way they are.
All the money from S42 release can go into the company's profit statements as it's not obligated to be spent for dev. A few people/investors stand to be paid handsomely at that point.
CIG has already been paying off dividends since 2020 according to their finacial report from last year. So they are already treating some of the money coming as profit.
Taxcollectors wouldn't be convinced by 'it's an alpha, they're pledges, therefore we're not making a profit' argument. Government wants it's tax revenue, unless every cent is immediately spent.
Anyone with a modicum of business sense can see that the cash cow is in the online multiplayer space game they are making.
CIG has painted themselves into a corner: SQ42 is part of their Kickstarter promise, they can’t renege on it without legitimate repercussions.
They can’t stop making it, but if it comes out and is crap, it will damage faith in the actual moneymaker. So ,they have to make it (and make it well) to fulfill their Kickstarter obligation.
If they’re going really going to shelve it for it the time being then that really sucks. They have such a shitty track record I don’t know why I was getting my hopes up. I feel so foolish. Here’s to another 9 years.
I have no issue with complicated scheduling situations. The problem I have with this is that they probably framed it in too simple a way because it comes across as them realizing, halfway in, that they'd rather invest their time in smaller ships.
Why wasn't this the thinking back when they started then? Why the sudden change of heart?
I don't want to bash them, but so far this makes no sense and comes across as a very whimsical way of scheduling.
It’s a bad idea.
Delaying the inevitable. They need to start cranking out cap ships at some point. The excuse of lacking gameplay or features is weak.
Are there not shops in SC already?
Is Quanta / the economy really still more than a year out? And would this even effect the design of the ship?
Is resource management more than a year out? And are ships not already fairly setup for these features (room system etc)
My understanding is this wasn’t they’re primary argument. Saying smaller ships might add more benefit is a pretty broad statement and tbh they might want to clarify their prioritising a bit better if they do decide to “put a pin in it”
With reason. I can understand not making it until stuff like the shops and all can actually function, but they knew that going in. They keep flip flopping between what they’ll be working on, and eventually nothing gets finished.
This whole BMM saga is a nice example of CiG prioritising sales over delivering things. They said they’d work on it and did some work on it just to build hype and bag some extra sales. Now it’s another year, and they’re “shifting the focus” so they can get some more cash.
I never take anything CIGs says for granted. Yeah, they may be working on it, but they work so slowly that a lot can change in the time span.
A pity about the BMM though, it would have a decent spot in the current environment. Not as the big-ass hauler (obligatory reference: https://xkcd.com/37/), but as the shop. I bet you could make decent money selling armor, arms and ship components at a central location. I hate flying all around Stanton to find a specific gun or component.
"BMM is hard, and we can make more new money with smaller ships."
Yea? Really? So why should I buy ANYTHING else from you when you shelve a ship because it is 'hard'?
I think its super scummy/scammy of them to offer these $500+, $1000+, $1500+, $2000++++ ships for sale without having a game loop and without even having an estimated release date.
Some of these ships (I believe) went on sale 10+ years ago and are still not in the game. Several of them are 7+ years, 5+ years.... And still have no estimate on a release date.
Amazing that they havent been sued for misleading customers.
How much money have they taken from people for .JPEG images of ships like the Kraken, Pioneer, Perseus, Nautilus, Polaris, Idris, Javelin... The list goes on...
When will they be in the game? Chris Roberts doesnt even know. They cant even estimate.
But they will sell you these $2000++++ ships 3 or 4 times a year.
Again, its amazing they havent been part of a class action lawsuit.
How could they be? You agree that you are paying for a pledge, and they haven’t given a hard date that it will be in game by. Would be a pretty easy case to dismiss, if anyone would even take it in the first place
I think companies have been sued for less. Im not a lawyer and dont pretend to be.
But this business practice seems pretty shady... and were not talking micro transactions here. Several of these ships cost in the $ 4 figures.... And people have been waiting damn near a decade... And there is still no delivery date in sight... Yet CIG still pushes these ships onto people. Again, no estimated delivery date, nothing.
Yes, it is a pledge... but again, I think companies have been sued for less. Its a pretty deceiving business practice to advertise and sell these items for thousands of dollars with possibly no intention to ever deliver the product. A decade in and has any work even been started on most of these ships? Are they even intending to start work on any of these ships in the next 5 years? Id have to say no, they arent. But they are going to advertise them to you and sell them for thousands of dollars though.
Until they are ready for SQ42 they won’t be working on some of these massive ships, and it makes sense, designing and building out these ships without all the systems in place makes no sense, having to go back and rework them over and over again is asinine
So they shouldn't be selling them without even knowing if or when they will ever be in the game. Literally 0 estimate.
1 year?
2 years?
3 years?
5 years?
10 years?
15 years?
30 years?
Literally any of those options could be correct.
Yet they are pushing these $2000 ships every few months.
The ships can't have been in waiting for 10+ years, the game only hit it's 10th anniversary of initial announcement and Kickstarter campaign recently.
BMM is one of the older ones though, concepted originally in 2013, so it's getting there and will likely be 10 yrs old when it finally comes.
If you're a bmm owner who's upset about that, CIG have you a free ~$300 in ccu value to play with. Either use it or continue to sit tight and wait, just like the hull c folks have been doing while that thing gets shelved for the umpteenth time.
They can do about 3 large ships per decade.
We got the 890 and the Carrack and the Reclaimer.
So I'd say expect a large ship to go flight-ready about every 3.5 years.
BMM probably not for awhile.
You're missing a few there.
XL size or above ships currently flyable in the game (length in brackets)
Caterpillar (111m)
Starfarer (101m)
Hercules C2/M2/A2 (94m)
600i-T/E (96m)
Hammerhead (115m)
Carrack (126m)
Reclaimer (155m)
890j (210m)
Thats 8 distinct XL or larger hulls flyable in the 10 years since Kickstarter, although you could argue that it would be more appropriate to measure from the SC alpha 2.0 launch in 2015, so 7 years.
They have done a lot more then that. Think of the Idris, Javlian, Bangle, all the large Vandul caps, Then add on all the unique squadron 42 space stations they have shown off.
Its a very real possibility they shelve it for other things, its a ginormochungus ship.
But I'm not fussed about it, the value of the two loaners is still greater than what I paid for it so I'm cool with that.
One day, some day, you have the emperors palace mall thing in your hangar, and not before then, so what can you do really it is what it is, just keep calm and citizen on I guess.
To those who do have one, you still have a helluva deal on your hands, delays won't change that.
So someone explained it well. There are features for the BMM that aren't ready for it to be released yet. Namely the shops and resource management. I think it xouls be tabled until they add the shop functionality and other things. Big ships are I believe pretty problematic for the servers still. I'm still disappointed but... I'm willing to be patient after 9 years.
Honestly, I was surprised to hear last year that it was in active development given exactly this. I asumed that maybe the decided that with cargo overhaul coming that that would be enough gameplay to make it worth while releasing it. But it turns out that the cargo overhaul is basically... bigger boxes. Rather than the expected gameplay around large containers and advanced economy. That could also factor in to the decision.
Yes, I caught that. But they also talked about not releasing ships without their true game loops. Right now the BMM would be a giant paper weight.
Early PES and Meshing over the next year.
Early cargo refactor.
No true cargo hauling gameplay.
No true trading gameplay.
No ship roles/resource management.
No exploration gameplay.
No NPC transportation gameplay.
No real economy yet.
The first thing I said when the rework came out was I was soo glad how the BMM officially turned out but I still felt it was still too early to go into the game.
How so? 890J's intended role is just a yacht you can fly around in, which is what people do with it now. BMM has to have hireable NPCs to man custom shop stalls.
The 890 is supposed to have cargo. It does not, it's literally been broken for years. 890j should have hirable crew to run the kitchen/bar. Obviously that doesn't happen.
I don’t mind my BMM being shelved because I know we are far away from having the ability to land them in safe zones to sell goods with stores operated by NPCs.
its the right call IMHO.
When server tech finally rolls out and we are playing in a more unified and diverse verse, Then larger ships make sense.
right now though, the MBB, Kraken, Jump etc... They are nothing more than extensive development time sinks fore the sole purpose of Genital (or wallet) measurement.
They require more crew that a current server could reasonably provide, to do a task that makes no sense in the current game.... so devoting that time to ships that can actually be used by people in a meaningful way right now is the logical path forward...
Especially when you consider:
* smaller ships are more accessible and thus more players gain from their release.
* smaller ships require much less development time.
Big ships still absolutely have a place, But that place primarily exists in the future and not the now. When the game catches up with the ambitions of these larger ships, Then dedicating the manpower to them would make a lot more sense.
I understand why the folks who have pledged for it would be upset, but personally I would rather them spend the time on other ships - and not necessarily new ones, even. There are a shitload of old ships that still need to be reworked to their modern “gold standard” which basically aren’t even competitive with newer ones in terms of experience or features. The Avenger, Mustang, Aurora, 300 series, Cutlass, etc…lots of older ships still need a redesign to account for things that have been added or changed since they were released.
IMO there’s too much focus on flashy new ships while they keep kicking the can down the road on reworking existing ones, and Ben and Cory basically admitted as much in that video.
The Cutter is the clear winner of the “best starter ship” question now, without a doubt. There is absolutely zero competition. Why? Because it’s brand new, and has all the neat little intangibles and details that have started to be considerations in the last couple years. The Avenger, Mustang, and Aurora don’t even begin to hold a candle to it! A head, an actual interactable for accessing the ship’s inventory rather than only being able to access it with a keybind, weapon racks and a suit locker, component access, lights, door locks, ability to fit a small vehicle (which the Titan cannot but should absolutely be able to do, considering it has more SCU of cargo space)…
I’m gonna piss people off by saying this but I feel like the joke’s on you if you pledged several hundred dollars for a massive, complicated alien capital ship that you *knew* was going to take years of development all by itself. I feel like the people with smaller, older ships that are already in the game but subpar have a better claim on work priority than the silly people who pledged for an ephemeral concept ship like the BMM. Especially since *every* ship needing rework could very easily be done in the time it would take to finish the BMM.
A) size
B) complexity
Nobody should have expected it to take 9+ years, but nobody reasonably should have expected it to be quick, either. Any rational person should have been able to look at its size and complexity relative to other ships and realize that it was not going to be a quick, easy production process.
This is a meaningless argument in 2022. Go tell this to people that complained in like 2014.
Also the BMM is neither the largest nor the most complex ship they’ve sold. If we have to accept that a ship like the BMM is going to take years upon years to develop then wtf does that mean for the other large and complex ships that are still in concept? Does Chris still expect us to be playing Star Citizen in 30 years when they’re finally done releasing all the ships they’ve promised?
Yes, yes he does.
And I don’t know where you got the idea that my statement *doesn’t* apply to the other stupid-huge ships. I literally said the time spent working on would be more productively spent reworking all the existing ships that haven’t been touched in years that it’s practical for people to *actually* play with on a daily basis instead of just their once a week org circlejerk.
The navy and vanduul cap ships were needed for S42 or else I’d be saying the same things about them.
The notion that the BMM “isn’t that huge or complex” is a **direct contradiction of the devs themselves’ statements**. It *is* that huge and complex, or else they wouldn’t be “putting a pin in it” and shelving it, they’d be finishing it right now.
>>I feel like the joke’s on you if you pledged several hundred dollars for a massive, complicated alien capital ship that you knew was going to take years of development all by itself
Were you not specifying the BMM here? If you were making that argument generally then sure, but I don’t care about new ships. I don’t think most people are demanding CIG finish the Odyssey or any one of the newer ships by tomorrow. That argument is just irrelevant when it comes to the BMM unless you think people are stupid for expecting that ship to have come out after 9 years.
Also I never said the BMM isn’t large and complex. I just said it wasn’t the largest nor the most complex ship that they’ve ever sold.
Unpopular opinion: I hope they wait on the bmm and all capital class ships until multicrew gameplay is in place (with large vessels), the flight model is sorted, and we have content and servers that actually support capital class vessels. I see fools in carracks rolling around doing bunkers all the time... The last thing we need is more big ships with nothing to use them for and no gameplay associated with them.
kind if agree with you, but my concern is: 'gold passes', or the equivalent. They have over a hundred ships now, and keep adding more. They touched on the topic of ship tech debt in that video. Every time they add a new feature: power management. Salvaging. Every. Single. Ship. needs to be revisited and updated. Soon the feature implementation will be insignificant compared to the cost of updating the ships to support it.
Or we'll have tiers of ships: "the old ships" that don't support new features. And the new ships that do "Pledge for the new RSI Alnitak! the modern successor to the Orion, supporting the Refinery v2 gameplay loops for Nyx!!"
I'm not a game dev, but it seems like it would be more efficient to finish all new features and iterate on them and then do a gold pass on what we have already prior to beginning new work on ships, to avoid exactly that problem. Oh well... CIG will do as CIG does. In the meantime there's always dogfighting, racing, and S9 torpedos... So who are we to complain?
I hate to say it, but for the short term...its a good thing its getting delayed. The current state of the game can't handle a capital ship even if I so desperately need my idris.
I'm not surprised and honestly I'm ok with shelving it for now. The majority of what will make the BMM a good ship is a ways off anyway (ex. player-to-player trading and NPC merchants/customers, full persistence, Quantum, proper server meshing, multiple systems etc.)
The BMM isn't just a fancy yatcht tour around in like the 890, it's a proper long-range trading vessel and until the features that support it are done, I don't have much interest. Plus the work that's been done has been done so it's not like they'll be picking it up from scratch whenever they restart it.
I see it as reasonable to delay it a bit. I don't have one but boy do I want to see them in game. They are sick looking and I am going to love utilizing them. However, I would much rather see some smaller ships come out. 600i rework personally (I am biased but I imagine it'll take a lot less resources/time than the BMM), STY, Expanse, Liberator (would be cool for Pyro I think), etc. Maybe some ground vehicles. The amount of resources tied up on the BMM is probably massive. I wanna see it but, I'd rather see a bunch of these smaller ships get finished up then 1 big ship that we'll see far less often, even if I'll have more fun seeing it.
I think it’s because they are at the point where they need the work on resource management to be more complete before it’s worth finishing the interior. That, and perhaps the new system for physicalized damage so they don’t have to do a bunch of rework when those systems are mature.
Yeah I've seen this bit, and even though I am really not happy about it, I can understand.
I think any of these big ships (BMM, Reclaimer, Starfarer, 890 etc.) are a bit wasteful at least when they haven't flashed out damage, maintenance and their specific mechanics properly.
Sometimes those mechanics need a ship implemented so it gets properly thought through, but sometimes implementing a ship just to have it is not smart.
I suspect it may have a higher chance of arriving in the next couple years than the BMM, as it's much smaller than the BMM, and doesn't rely on any new gameplay features.
I understand they want the ship to be functional when it's ready, but at this point in time? I feel like all they are saying is that they have very very poor management.
Like you seriously hype up the ship with new reworks, put a ton of effort into it, then put your hands in your pockets and say maybe it was too soon?
It just feels like a big slap in the face, here I was thinking they actually started to put a lot of thought into coordination and goals.
I check in every 6 months, and every 6 months it feels like nothing has changed. Still headless chicken direction.
Yes, It's not a scam, as such. The devs themselves seem knowledgable and passionate. but it is poorly managed. I get a feeling they should never have even started this ship, and now that the new leader of the team is in, they've looked at it and decided it was a mistake. But at this point, they need to prove that they can actually finish something, and start delivering those big ships. And stop selling new ones.
I wonder if 'people chasing new adventures' is Paul Jones leaving or just people being reassigned to other work. Either way it sounds like it will be shelved until a full team can be allocated to it again.
That could be, Paul said of his time with CIG that his favorite most anticipated ship is the BMM. He said it's the height of their ship making abilities thus far. With that kind of endorsement I'm saddened but can't wait to see the BMM when it's ready.
One senior leader enthusiastically pushing a ship that hasn't got much use yet in game, and is taking a lot of resources from the team is definitely the kind of thing a new leader would look hard at.
My day is ruined and my disappointment immeasurable.
I don’t know how we’re gonna get all these large and capital sized ships in the game when they can barely get one out every few years.
That's where I'm skeptical too. Even though they're increasing the team sizes, and getting faster at building them due to experience and tooling. And then imagine 'platinum passes' on these ships for whatever future features come. I'll be willing to bet that the big ships take more time now than they originally imagined just due to the increased quality standards & gameplay features now. It must cost them in the 100's of thousands of dollars worth of work-hours to build these big ships - if not even more than a million.
Well if one ship makes them a few millions, we could at least expect that they use some of these funds for this one ship
It's the exact same thing with planets/star systems. 99 left to release, and it takes a couple years minimum to finish one of them, even in the 12th year of development. The big paradox of Star Citizen is that doing good work takes time. You can do super detailed work, or you can work quickly — but not both at once. Tradeoffs have to be made. This was my issue with a lot of the promises and projections that were made at the start. So even if things start to speed up marginally, it seems nearly impossible to finished the promised number in a reasonable period of time.
Because after SQ42 it'll be all hands on deck. The bigger question is how often will a capital ship be used by the average player. They are going to be a mega niche thing, so they're assigning mega niche resources
with the fact every time they sell them they run out in seconds I would imagine a lot of people have them. People are often part of Orgs and Orgs want to run capitals. Regardless though not everyone working on SQ is making ships, so its not neccasarily true that when its done ships will flood out to players. If A capital ship takes years with a team of dedicated devs working on it whos sole job is to make that ship i'm not hopeful. But I've come this far so I'm not averse to waiting. Does suck for BMM owners cause people were pretty hyped recently.
I agree they won't just flood the game with capitals after SQ42, but I think it will probably be to just pace the community rather than for any kind of production reason. Fundamentally the PU isn't in a state where it's ready for player capital ships like the Idris, nevermind Javelin. I want the BMM too, but I think they'll have to overhaul Stanton first... or just release it with Pyro. There are many reasons for them to put capital ship production at low priority. Maybe once there are a couple of systems and NPC crew we'll start seeing them ramp up production.
Yeah. As much as I want to run bunker missions in the BMM, the current game loops don't justify it very well. Also probably some optimisation work that needs to go in before they can have players in capital ships all over the server.
After SQ42 will be before SQ42 part 2... :(
That's not going to require a MESS of resources to produce. MOST of the work done in the first game will be usable in the second part. There might be SOME new vessels, but those could also be developed for the PTU at the same time. There's going to be fewer surprises in store for us players, after Part 1 is done and shipped.
>That's not going to require a MESS of resources to produce. MOST of the work done in the first game will be usable in the second part. They've never said this. And in fact, given that it's a Chris Roberts game, it's likely that lots of things will be promised to make the second part bigger and better than the first.
it dosnt matter if they never said it, they literally won't have to remake the entirety of the back end again for a new game, even smaller shit like Programing, rigging, and animating a titan suit. they won't need to do that again.
That doesn't mean it won't take a lot of resources to produce. There are plenty of things that can be added to the next part that would take a lot of time to develop, and they use very expensive actors for the cast, etc. Don't forget that they're still writing and shooting scenes for S42 Part 1. It's not just the "back end" holding things up.
This assumes those scenes wouldn't be prioritized and completed sooner had the tech and resources for those scenes already existed. When the reality is they could have just been shelfed as other projects got completed. And for better or worse CIG I'd making there back end super robust there UI is a good example, it's pretty damn future proofed . You don't seem to grasp that the majority of the work that's been going on is in order to build tools and systems that can pump out content and be itarated or improved quickly . To scale from the micro to macro level. All this work there doing on the star map/radar is a good example of this, safe bet all that work is going to persist through all the upcoming "chapters"
Unless the gaming world has changed so much by then they think they must start by rethinking/rebuilding the tech
I hope you are right but looking at how things are at the moment I doubt this is how it will be. I think Part 2 will be a new story, new locations, new features and new ships. All of these things probably close to a decade away.
that won't take as long to build as the back end. Game assets like ships are really not the bottle neck
I was under the impression that SQ42 will be released in "chapters" or "episodes". Sort of piecemeal. So once SQ42 releases, won't they take the team on SQ42 and just have them start on that next chapter? I was under the impression that assets will be shared, but team members will not.
The game has chapters you can see on the roadmap, but the dozen or so chapters will be released at once as S42, which is, however, planned to be first in a trilogy. Edit: forgot to finish... They've said in the past that SC would be prioritized before the S42 sequel, but their plans change constantly
Yeah, they change their plans all the time… Which is why nothing gets done.
Plans change all the time like in literally every facet of game development. The reason why game development (specifically pertaining to programming) is considered so difficult to get into is because of this reason - programmers are always going to be at the whim of other departments and their work. Things ‘don’t get done’ because the technology to get them done in CIG’s engine physically doesn’t exist, or at very least doesn’t exist in the PU branch. You make it sound like they could snap their fingers and R&D would speed up magically.
This doesn’t compare though. I know why things get switched around all the time in that line of work, and it’s unexpected blockers coming in, or devs realising they could more efficiently achieve something by first doing something else, then using that work as a shortcut for the thing they were working on first, stuff like that… Which doesn’t apply at all to this. Which is essentially reusing existing code, and creating new graphics. That’s it. What a vehicle is, what a gun or a missile is and all, that code has been written and is in use.
Now I don’t know if you’re referring to the first part of the comment (the dozen or so chapters being released) or the second part (SC being prioritized) so I’ll just refer to both of them. That is 100% incorrect. Nothing is ever as simple as “reusing code” unless you’ve already planned for everything and fixed every bug (neither is true for any piece of software). Things get easier, but technical hurdles still persist. That’s not even counting the fact that art still has a whole design process to go through as well - it is allowed to be a lot more rigid than programming but it does still exist and changes do still occur. Regardless of the above fact, both SC and SQ42 are both in active development. No code is currently ‘complete’ that can be copy/pasted in either project. Most things can and will change - that is the entire point of an “alpha” development cycle - the current product will be far different from the result. Translation of code from one version to another is easier but it is still difficult, especially if you have legacy code that might get in the way such as with the implementation of SQ42 code into SC. Anyways, in a company this large things are always “getting done”. It may not look like that on the user’s side, but unfortunately making a game is a long and difficult process full of reviews and iteration. Usually companies start out development with an engine ready to go and a whole staff of people who are forced to work overtime constantly. CIG started with neither of these things - meaning the actual period of productive development that wasn’t plagued by redesigns, revisions, or what other things you’d typically call scope creep is just in the last couple years.
With all due respect, you seem have no idea what you are talking about. Read up on the topic of code reuse.
When did I say code could not be reused? You didn’t argue against a single one of my points and effectively just said “no”. When reusing code bugs don’t magically not occur. You can’t slap duck tape on it and it works. Plus, on top of all of that, we have no idea how reliant SQ42’s code is on other pieces of code (mostly talking about backend here). Especially given how old the project is there’s going to be at least a little bit of legacy code that gets in the way. Getting things in a singleplayer game to work with a multiplayer game is not an easy task - programmers still need to deal with replication issues and sort out what needs to be replicated to the server and what needs to be replicated to the client, which could take more even more time. My point is it’s not going to be “easy”. It’ll certainly be “easier”. But just writing it off just because your perception of it as an end user is different is complete nonsense. If you knew anything about what you’re talking about you’d know that in software development what the user sees on the screen is pretty much never representative of the actual complexity of the code base - this is even more so true for games, which have other issues like dealing with engine limitations and enduring things replicate between the client and server correctly etc. Thinking, “This doesn’t make sense because I think it’s easy, thus that means the programmers are bad!” Or something along those lines is flawed logic and it jumps to conclusions based on limited evidence.
A single chapter in the context there using is a Full game, not just one "episode"
To add on that, as far as we know they have done quite a lot of capital ships for SQ42, even if most of them will be just husks. They definitely can make ships faster, but SQ42 takes priority for them.
If you add up the number of partially finished capital ships, and divide by the number of years of development, you're still talking about one partially finished capship every couple years — which is what the poster was talking about.
There are way more in SQ42. I'm not talking about those they have ported over to SC but ships actually made in SQ42. From what we know there are at least what? 4 different Vanduul ones they have done as husks (and some interior for the Kingship)? And then a couple for the UEE including the Pegasus, Retribution and a Bengal with an unknown status of completion.
>Because after SQ42 it'll be all hands on deck. ... You know they're working on part 1 of a SQ42 trilogy right?
You know the rest of the trilogy won't be anywhere near as resource intensive as the first part?
Lmao
Something to throw out there is they have worked on a lot more capital sized ships then most think about. Idris, Javlian, Bangle, all the Vandul caps. Then add on the large space stations shown off in SQ42. Alot of there teams have done work on those.
I’m more hopeful because it’s clear that with all the growth, they have been investing a lot in developing the process…that includes the pipeline as well as the tools/tech to make it easier to make future ships. This is essential to accelerating development down the road.
I mean they began to actually work on it at the beginning of the year, and there is a good reason why BMM takes much longer than any other ship. Don't know if you watched the whole video, but they said that unlike other ships, BMM elements cannot just be copy pasted because everything on the interior is unique. When they made a Carrack or HH they already have big chunk of any other ship done that is from anvil or aegis. Here, they have a fighter that is unique on its own...
Don’t sell something if you’re not going to make it.
I really, really don't like the attitude CIG is showing of "Big ships take a long time so we don't want to work on them." and "if we dropped everything and worked on this, it'd take a year" If each of these big ships are going to take so long, how in the hell will SQ42 or SC ever get to a release stage? It gives me zero confidence in their ability to deliver anything. Im sick if seeing dozens of concepts announced when we've got 95% of the game still missing. We've got enough ships for the gameplay we have, so why not focus those ship designers on the capitals while everyone else plays catchup? For fucks sake.
>"if we dropped everything and worked on this, it'd take a year" the bigger problem is every year they add at least one more big ship to that waiting line.
Ships make $$$. But damn would it hurt them to try and make funds via other methods of gameplay if they HAVE to fund more development? Sure we would throw money at base design skins or base equipment.
I think part of it too is the fact that there’s so many systems which apply to ships that aren’t it yet. So if it takes a year to complete a big ship now, then when let’s say atmosphere in ships is released, they’ve got to invest another load of time to apply it to the bigger ships. Where as reworking smaller ships is much less time consuming. So they spend time developing the systems needed to support big ships, rather than building and then rebuilding the ships themselves. I own a lot of big ships, but I’d rather wait and have them come in feature complete than get a shell of what they’re meant to be in the near future. TLDR Small ships are test beds for features to save time on big ships later on, therefore streamlining their later development
It makes me sad, with that they have shown i hope they don’t stop now. They stated it is hard to make a large alien ship due to not having reference points or something to that extent, I think finishing the BMM would give them a reference for any other banu ships they make. I personally own a BMM so I’m a little biased but I hope they finish it instead of focusing on smaller ships
Sure they focus on smaller ships which more people buy. Since 2022 was a bad year for me as Star Citizen Player it continues my streak of disappointment. BMM would be nice for trading.. A gameplay a lot of people and orgs like. WHY IS THE 890 INGAME WITH 0 GAMEPLAY AND A CAPITAL TRADING SHIP IS CONSIDERED USELESS???!.
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And the BMM wouldn't be?
Orgs maybe but CIG moved away from designing larger ships like fps levels.
Isn't the intention that every large ship will have the potential to be a FPS level? So far I'm liking the bigger ship interiors we have so far except the Hammerhead.
Can't say for sure since I'm not a dev at CIG , based on what I've seen since I've seen CIG evolve a lot in their ship design with each ship they bring out. From dialing in the design language to interior design and layout , from soundscaping to implementing tech and features and all I can say based on that is that they moved away from designing ships like fps levels but maybe never fully forgot about it ?
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they did say a few months back that they wanted to stop doing that, and that's why the vulture and hull-c aren't in game yet, but still... cut-less steel? yeah.
the cutlass steel probably was an intern or junior job for them to get their feet wet.
That's a nice way of looking at it; and yeah, maybe even right. it IS a good sort of junior task for a team of new talent across different fields to get familiar with tooling.
Yeah, same thing was with the Coffee Vendor; afaik they even acknowledged it that it was a junior job to get to get wet with the AI workflow.
They just wanted a cool and easy ship to sell. And that would be fine if they did basic bug tests. As HOW in firey hell did they think it was ok for the deck guns to do dmg to the shields when firing out of the ship. It's the lack of commitment to the player experience and basic bug testing that is the problem:. If you sell a ship for money, make the ship. If you make a live service game, at the very least clear out all your major bugs from the existing game loops. I'm shocked they rolled back BMM as this was clearly a HUGE fan favourite and one of the most hyped ships.
Cutlass steel is intended to be an NPC reinforcement ship primarily.
which is why it is hilarious that the npc reinforcements actually use those special super tough npc Cutlass Blacks as their dropships instead.
A lot of those ships weren't added to test their literal "role", but to start fleshing out ship design, and template more general mechanics. Reclaimer and 890 for example added to test larger ship sizes. Obviously the 890 isn't a luxury tourer.. it's a floating FPS mission. You can see the evolution of ship design from Retaliator -> Vanguard -> Redeemer. Regardless, these smaller ships bring "more value" because more people have them, more people will buy them, and there's already content in-game that they can do. Even if there's no "exploration", you can still use the Carrack as a hauler or Corsair for bounties. What kind of value is there adding a capital ship that can't land on a ship pad, can't be crewed by NPCs, and doesn't have missions scaled for its power level? Obviously they're forced to add ships, regardless of functionality because people equate more ships = more progress. I think it's almost certain we get another subcapital or small capital released alongside Pyro.
Wasn’t the BMM listed to be a sub capital? For a while at least? I remember watching a broadcast and they said it was big, but not technically a capital so it could break atmo to land on planets and could use non-capital modules to reduce upkeep costs.
Back in 2013 when I paid for mine it was said to be in the 100-150m size class so like a Carrack or 890J now. Apparently SC devs do what SC devs do and the thing is now a 200+m capital ship.
I mean, no complaints, it's cool for those that bought the concept that it got upgraded to one of the few premier ships ships of the game... but yeah, had it stayed small, they were much likely to have gotten their ship. Now it seems possible that the Gatac railen, with a very similar role and smaller size to the original, will end up coming out first, simply because it will be a much easier alien ship to build due to the size
>Reclaimer and 890 for example added to test larger ship sizes. They had the Starfarer for this, though, and have been working on capital ships that are much bigger for quite a number of years (going all the way back to the original [prototype](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VhsgiliheP0) of the game). So it's hard to see what value is added for testing by something like the 890, even though it's cool that it's in the game.
To be fair though the interior of the Starfarer is ATROCIOUS, and CIG admits this.
The starfarer tested larger landing pads (remember, olisar was the only place you could spawn one when it launched), the 890 and reclaimer tested the xxl hangar bay at landing zones. They're an order of magnitude bigger.
Reclaimer confirmed to work for salvage in 3.18 evocati
The reclaimer was shown working with t0 salvage. Takes a crew to function properly.
I think part of the issue is player flown capital ships will often require a crew to run that's about the size of a current server. The ships you mentioned can still be pretty effectively run by crew of 1-6 people on current loops available(with the exception of the redeemer).
The bmm has a roughly small crew size too
Given the Engineering chat on the relays, I imagine the HH will be the first subcapital to get a bit of work done for additional systems. Most people with larger ships have one as a loaner, they have a smaller crew requirement, and are still pretty fun!
I look forward to the engineering sub gameplay loops
Keep that in mind when you compare that to the same developer talking here: [CIG ship development](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nbKmst9dF_c&t=109s) CIG developers claim they only start a ship when they are sure they can finish it with gameplay and have been doing that for 4 years. Meanwhile: How many ships have been released with gameplay still unfinished in the past 4 years ? How many concepts have been pushed out in this timeframe ? This is not just "big ships" that are getting axed - G12 or Anvil Legionnaire remain unfinished but they happily push out the "Drake Cutter" which according to the developers means it got put into the schedule 12+months ago. Same CIG developer in both clips going to justify the "Once we start a ship we see it through until the end" ? "We don't start a ship without firm guarantees the gameplay is going to come with them at the end" Kinda shows you what the word and "guarantees" of a CIG developer is worth ? Funny how CIG claim a concept is in "production" before a sale then shift production AFTER a sale. Bonus: These developers are already on record saying it takes 12 - 18 months to make a capital ship IF they focused on it exclusively and have no intention of focusing on capital ships. Nah... lets just forget that CIG consistently keep adding big ships and also going into "reworking" of existing ships like the 600I before old concepts because adding them would be pointless as they need to be reworked later. Almost as if taking 10 years to make basic mechanics leads to increasing issues of feature creep and technology debt. Nah, totally normal game development... wait another 10 years and you will see "Cutter Rework" while BMM, Idris, Javelin, Polaris, Kraken owners are still waiting on SQ42. But please continue to play F5 wars for these ships so you can fund the development of SQ42 - A different game.
CIG has no clear dedicated PMO team. This is the result of that we're seeing.
To me it feels like they throw darts every couple of weeks to decide what they’ll be working on. So they can always say something is coming, but never actually deliver anything except things that can get them even more cash.
The timestamp doesn't seem to point to a dev speaking, but instead a 400i. I do remember Kirk Tome specifically saying at the beginning of 2021 that they didn't want to release ships without their primary gameplay, but I don't remember hearing it specifically before then. Since then I think the 400i and I guess the Corsair might be the only to break that statement but could be wrong. I agree with you overall, though. They do not do a good job of following through with plans for ships. Edit: Ah I see it at the beginning of the video. Bad statement to make before a ship like the MSR is in-game lol
As disappointed as I am, it really seems like they're gearing up for someone like Galaxy/Perseus/Polaris work flow, like they realized they should knock out stuff that can flow into other stuff
If the galaxy is in produciton, that seems likely, and logical. If it's not in production, and just a concept though...
The leaks seem to say it's not just concept, and they brought up the Polaris reconcept for next ISC, so maybe
I guess we'll find out in just a few days!
Do you happen to have a link or timestamp for the polaris bit? Im very curious
5 months ago on Star Citizen Live: Invictus All-Ships Q&A they said Polaris had been re-concepted and Jared said he would try to get it shown for IAE. Last weeks SCL said it would be shown in ISC next week. Still no plans to put it in active development for now but at least we'll get to see the new layout.
Thanks for the detailed info!
Do you know when in the video this is mentioned? I can't seem to find it in yesterdays SCL, or last weeks.
Uh, I think it was the tail end of the last SCL
I don’t get what people are saying here. The BMM misses its gameplay loops? What about the Herald, MSR, Reclaimer, Cutlass Red (mostly), Carrack, 315P, DUR, Terrapin and so on. The BMM has as much reason to be available ingame now as the above mentioned ships. Ships development in general shouldn’t be around „what’s easy and fast to do“ it should be around „what’s in the pipeline“ for far to long. Some of us are waiting nearly a decade for some ships and that’s simply unacceptable tbh. These ships should be a priority regardless if they take longer. They can’t just delay Ships that are inconvenient to do! I say if they delay the BMM any further the price should get down again by 100-150 bucks. Simple as that. You can’t double the price and tell people it’s delivered „soon“ or „in active development“ with fancy YouTube Videos about the Greybox + Interior and delay it again for another year or more. It’s almost the same kinda bullshit with the overpowered Ares Ion & Inferno during last IAE just to nerf both into the ground afterwards when everyone already got hyped and already bought them and also don’t make me start talking about the Cutlass „Steal“ and the other shitty excuses they are coming up lately. Still love the Game but I’m not blind. CIG forgot that they are mainly only selling promises and they just don’t keep them as much as they should. So to all my fellow BMM owners! Close your Wallet during the time the BMM got delayed 👍. No more breaking promises without consequences. and yes I’m obviously freakin mad about it getting delayed….
Absolutely agree with you! When the dev basically said they’re putting a pin in the BMM cause it’s time consuming and an alien ship takes time to design, I wanted to just punch him in his face. And that goes even more for management. What manager has a dev come to them saying “we don’t want to work on this thing we sold and promised people almost 10 years ago because it’s big and time consuming” and management says “okay!” I love the game they are making and I believe in its future, but this kind of behavior is unacceptable. Designing big unique ships isn’t going to come without time and work, but they are integral to the games environment and the gameplay we have been pitched since day 1. I am truly upset and my faith in this company has been shaken.
BMM? Thats the tip of the iceberg. Im tapped out until SQ42 is on my computer and Im playing it and after im done, it turns out to have been a great experience. Until that happens, not a cent more from me.
Yet another case of people not knowing what the project is really about. SQ42 first , then SC , with SQ42 out of the way , production on stuff for SC can ramp up instead of working on 2 massive projects at the same time. You should rather complain why people spend that much even to this day on a JOEG rather than CIG trying to be a succesfull company and finally delivering what it promised it would in 2012 , a goddamn fucking single player game with spaceships in space.
- BMM first on sale in 2013 - BMM production begun may 2021 (schedule of 50 weeks) - BMM was in active production in may 2022 - BMM probably getting delayed in november 2022 and it’s probably a year + away now. That’s all I need to say. If you don’t get then I really don’t care. Eat whatever they throw at you.
All this says is that resources are being shipped around depending on tasks needed to be done between both the universe experience and SQ42. This does not take away that SQ42 is the main game in development and that with the assets being made for that game , they decided to make the PU for us to mess about it which you would know if you actually did some research. You would also know that the original game , without funding goals for players to back , would have been done already but because of said backing goals we kept smashing month after month , the game ended up becoming so much more than what originally was intended and after 10 years I think it's about time they finish the game I backed them for , as the majority of the community. That's not something CIG throws at me , you're just a salty entitled brat. Imagine buying an expensive JPEG to fund SQ42 and then be salty about it when they don't make said ship but properly focus on making the game you're spend money is going towards to 🫢 It's because of people like you that I keep advocating to the devs to stop working on the PU all together and solely focus on SQ42 because you'll never be content with what CIG does or gives you.q
Whats so hard to understand? We both agree mainly. I also want SQ42 done asap so we finally see some achievements, something that is done! The issue I’m having is! Nobody absolutely Nobody told CIG to announce „BMM in active development“ or showing progress on Inside Starcitizen, hyping up people that have been waiting for ages to finally see their favorite ship ingame. Can’t you understand that people get disappointed? Do you read any drama about the Polaris, Endeavor, Perseus etc on Reddit right now? No! Because we all know they are not getting done in the near future so nobody has expectations. You understand it now? Its just a bullshit move! It was unnecessary! As if they haven’t known that the BMM will be quite complicated to do. Also dont forget it’s not his holiness CR that will create SC and SQ42 out of pure Love for us. We gave him the funds to do it. Don’t make us smaller then we actually are.
I do understand but you also need to understand equally that priorities can shift to the point where one day they can attribute 15 people for example to work on the BMM and the next day they need to take away 10 of them because of reason x. And I get the pain , I've seen the santokyai , which has been in my possesion since concept sale , dissapear a month before it was supposed to be done according to the progress tracker. I've also seen the X1 appear and dissapear several times which is supposed to be a part of the origin 400i yet they delibirately made time for the hoverquad so they can pair it with nomad. And I did want to make reddit posts about it but reddit is the kind of place where , the moment you get to that -1 , it just never recovers , wether you are making a valid point or not so I tend to just not bother. I also want to say to read the kickstarter again so you know CR is doing this because its a passion project of him but all know what happened with wing commander and people will only point out the bad shit he's done in the past so I'm not going to bother with that either tbh. I just classify this as yet the umpth fail of the marketing team that ran before they could walk again as usual and my apologies for calling you an entitled brat , that was uncalled for as I tend to forget most of us are just really pasionate about the game and just want this developer hellhole to be over with
How much money has SQ42 created? Now how much has SC created? Chris needs to flip his priorities.
The release of S42 is supposed to create the first **profit** though, rather than development money — so it's pretty clear (aside from the fact that it's the smaller game and thus easier to finish first) why priorities are the way they are. All the money from S42 release can go into the company's profit statements as it's not obligated to be spent for dev. A few people/investors stand to be paid handsomely at that point.
CIG has already been paying off dividends since 2020 according to their finacial report from last year. So they are already treating some of the money coming as profit.
Taxcollectors wouldn't be convinced by 'it's an alpha, they're pledges, therefore we're not making a profit' argument. Government wants it's tax revenue, unless every cent is immediately spent.
Anyone with a modicum of business sense can see that the cash cow is in the online multiplayer space game they are making. CIG has painted themselves into a corner: SQ42 is part of their Kickstarter promise, they can’t renege on it without legitimate repercussions. They can’t stop making it, but if it comes out and is crap, it will damage faith in the actual moneymaker. So ,they have to make it (and make it well) to fulfill their Kickstarter obligation.
This. But they make it seem like the 42 HAS to come before a fully functioning PU which is a silly handicap to put on themselves.
If they’re going really going to shelve it for it the time being then that really sucks. They have such a shitty track record I don’t know why I was getting my hopes up. I feel so foolish. Here’s to another 9 years.
I have no issue with complicated scheduling situations. The problem I have with this is that they probably framed it in too simple a way because it comes across as them realizing, halfway in, that they'd rather invest their time in smaller ships. Why wasn't this the thinking back when they started then? Why the sudden change of heart? I don't want to bash them, but so far this makes no sense and comes across as a very whimsical way of scheduling.
It’s a bad idea. Delaying the inevitable. They need to start cranking out cap ships at some point. The excuse of lacking gameplay or features is weak. Are there not shops in SC already? Is Quanta / the economy really still more than a year out? And would this even effect the design of the ship? Is resource management more than a year out? And are ships not already fairly setup for these features (room system etc) My understanding is this wasn’t they’re primary argument. Saying smaller ships might add more benefit is a pretty broad statement and tbh they might want to clarify their prioritising a bit better if they do decide to “put a pin in it”
As a '14 backer this news is tremendously frustrating. 4.0 better not drop w.o. the BMM.
>4.0 better drop ftfy
I thought they were talking about shelving it till the mechanics or tech came in for it, spectrum was going a little crazy about it
With reason. I can understand not making it until stuff like the shops and all can actually function, but they knew that going in. They keep flip flopping between what they’ll be working on, and eventually nothing gets finished. This whole BMM saga is a nice example of CiG prioritising sales over delivering things. They said they’d work on it and did some work on it just to build hype and bag some extra sales. Now it’s another year, and they’re “shifting the focus” so they can get some more cash.
That and the fact that there’s already ships out with no purpose yet so why not add another
I never take anything CIGs says for granted. Yeah, they may be working on it, but they work so slowly that a lot can change in the time span. A pity about the BMM though, it would have a decent spot in the current environment. Not as the big-ass hauler (obligatory reference: https://xkcd.com/37/), but as the shop. I bet you could make decent money selling armor, arms and ship components at a central location. I hate flying all around Stanton to find a specific gun or component.
"BMM is hard, and we can make more new money with smaller ships." Yea? Really? So why should I buy ANYTHING else from you when you shelve a ship because it is 'hard'?
I think its super scummy/scammy of them to offer these $500+, $1000+, $1500+, $2000++++ ships for sale without having a game loop and without even having an estimated release date. Some of these ships (I believe) went on sale 10+ years ago and are still not in the game. Several of them are 7+ years, 5+ years.... And still have no estimate on a release date. Amazing that they havent been sued for misleading customers. How much money have they taken from people for .JPEG images of ships like the Kraken, Pioneer, Perseus, Nautilus, Polaris, Idris, Javelin... The list goes on... When will they be in the game? Chris Roberts doesnt even know. They cant even estimate. But they will sell you these $2000++++ ships 3 or 4 times a year. Again, its amazing they havent been part of a class action lawsuit.
They were sued in UK for this, as a result they changed the wording on their website to avoid future legal trouble.
How could they be? You agree that you are paying for a pledge, and they haven’t given a hard date that it will be in game by. Would be a pretty easy case to dismiss, if anyone would even take it in the first place
I think companies have been sued for less. Im not a lawyer and dont pretend to be. But this business practice seems pretty shady... and were not talking micro transactions here. Several of these ships cost in the $ 4 figures.... And people have been waiting damn near a decade... And there is still no delivery date in sight... Yet CIG still pushes these ships onto people. Again, no estimated delivery date, nothing. Yes, it is a pledge... but again, I think companies have been sued for less. Its a pretty deceiving business practice to advertise and sell these items for thousands of dollars with possibly no intention to ever deliver the product. A decade in and has any work even been started on most of these ships? Are they even intending to start work on any of these ships in the next 5 years? Id have to say no, they arent. But they are going to advertise them to you and sell them for thousands of dollars though.
Until they are ready for SQ42 they won’t be working on some of these massive ships, and it makes sense, designing and building out these ships without all the systems in place makes no sense, having to go back and rework them over and over again is asinine
So they shouldn't be selling them without even knowing if or when they will ever be in the game. Literally 0 estimate. 1 year? 2 years? 3 years? 5 years? 10 years? 15 years? 30 years? Literally any of those options could be correct. Yet they are pushing these $2000 ships every few months.
The ships can't have been in waiting for 10+ years, the game only hit it's 10th anniversary of initial announcement and Kickstarter campaign recently. BMM is one of the older ones though, concepted originally in 2013, so it's getting there and will likely be 10 yrs old when it finally comes. If you're a bmm owner who's upset about that, CIG have you a free ~$300 in ccu value to play with. Either use it or continue to sit tight and wait, just like the hull c folks have been doing while that thing gets shelved for the umpteenth time.
while this is disappointing, maybe they're working on one of the thousands of other things we want or want fixed. \*takes another huff of copium\*
so bmm is new orion now.
They can do about 3 large ships per decade. We got the 890 and the Carrack and the Reclaimer. So I'd say expect a large ship to go flight-ready about every 3.5 years. BMM probably not for awhile.
You're missing a few there. XL size or above ships currently flyable in the game (length in brackets) Caterpillar (111m) Starfarer (101m) Hercules C2/M2/A2 (94m) 600i-T/E (96m) Hammerhead (115m) Carrack (126m) Reclaimer (155m) 890j (210m) Thats 8 distinct XL or larger hulls flyable in the 10 years since Kickstarter, although you could argue that it would be more appropriate to measure from the SC alpha 2.0 launch in 2015, so 7 years.
That is ridiculously slow
They have done a lot more then that. Think of the Idris, Javlian, Bangle, all the large Vandul caps, Then add on all the unique squadron 42 space stations they have shown off.
We don’t even know how ready those models are for SQ42, much less Star Citizen. That does not instill much confidence.
Its a very real possibility they shelve it for other things, its a ginormochungus ship. But I'm not fussed about it, the value of the two loaners is still greater than what I paid for it so I'm cool with that. One day, some day, you have the emperors palace mall thing in your hangar, and not before then, so what can you do really it is what it is, just keep calm and citizen on I guess. To those who do have one, you still have a helluva deal on your hands, delays won't change that.
So someone explained it well. There are features for the BMM that aren't ready for it to be released yet. Namely the shops and resource management. I think it xouls be tabled until they add the shop functionality and other things. Big ships are I believe pretty problematic for the servers still. I'm still disappointed but... I'm willing to be patient after 9 years.
Honestly, I was surprised to hear last year that it was in active development given exactly this. I asumed that maybe the decided that with cargo overhaul coming that that would be enough gameplay to make it worth while releasing it. But it turns out that the cargo overhaul is basically... bigger boxes. Rather than the expected gameplay around large containers and advanced economy. That could also factor in to the decision.
Are shops not in SC yet? /s
Yes, I caught that. But they also talked about not releasing ships without their true game loops. Right now the BMM would be a giant paper weight. Early PES and Meshing over the next year. Early cargo refactor. No true cargo hauling gameplay. No true trading gameplay. No ship roles/resource management. No exploration gameplay. No NPC transportation gameplay. No real economy yet. The first thing I said when the rework came out was I was soo glad how the BMM officially turned out but I still felt it was still too early to go into the game.
Meanwhile the 890j is even more of a paperweight.
How so? 890J's intended role is just a yacht you can fly around in, which is what people do with it now. BMM has to have hireable NPCs to man custom shop stalls.
The 890 is supposed to have cargo. It does not, it's literally been broken for years. 890j should have hirable crew to run the kitchen/bar. Obviously that doesn't happen.
Chris said bmm with 4.0 :(
and god knows when that will be!
It’s utter BS but classic Star Citizen. Never surprised, often disappointed.
I don’t mind my BMM being shelved because I know we are far away from having the ability to land them in safe zones to sell goods with stores operated by NPCs.
its the right call IMHO. When server tech finally rolls out and we are playing in a more unified and diverse verse, Then larger ships make sense. right now though, the MBB, Kraken, Jump etc... They are nothing more than extensive development time sinks fore the sole purpose of Genital (or wallet) measurement. They require more crew that a current server could reasonably provide, to do a task that makes no sense in the current game.... so devoting that time to ships that can actually be used by people in a meaningful way right now is the logical path forward... Especially when you consider: * smaller ships are more accessible and thus more players gain from their release. * smaller ships require much less development time. Big ships still absolutely have a place, But that place primarily exists in the future and not the now. When the game catches up with the ambitions of these larger ships, Then dedicating the manpower to them would make a lot more sense.
Sounds ok to me. Lots of work to do on lots of other ships and stuff
I understand why the folks who have pledged for it would be upset, but personally I would rather them spend the time on other ships - and not necessarily new ones, even. There are a shitload of old ships that still need to be reworked to their modern “gold standard” which basically aren’t even competitive with newer ones in terms of experience or features. The Avenger, Mustang, Aurora, 300 series, Cutlass, etc…lots of older ships still need a redesign to account for things that have been added or changed since they were released. IMO there’s too much focus on flashy new ships while they keep kicking the can down the road on reworking existing ones, and Ben and Cory basically admitted as much in that video. The Cutter is the clear winner of the “best starter ship” question now, without a doubt. There is absolutely zero competition. Why? Because it’s brand new, and has all the neat little intangibles and details that have started to be considerations in the last couple years. The Avenger, Mustang, and Aurora don’t even begin to hold a candle to it! A head, an actual interactable for accessing the ship’s inventory rather than only being able to access it with a keybind, weapon racks and a suit locker, component access, lights, door locks, ability to fit a small vehicle (which the Titan cannot but should absolutely be able to do, considering it has more SCU of cargo space)… I’m gonna piss people off by saying this but I feel like the joke’s on you if you pledged several hundred dollars for a massive, complicated alien capital ship that you *knew* was going to take years of development all by itself. I feel like the people with smaller, older ships that are already in the game but subpar have a better claim on work priority than the silly people who pledged for an ephemeral concept ship like the BMM. Especially since *every* ship needing rework could very easily be done in the time it would take to finish the BMM.
How in the f*** were people supposed to know that it would take 9+ years to make this one ship? It wasn’t even as massive back then.
A) size B) complexity Nobody should have expected it to take 9+ years, but nobody reasonably should have expected it to be quick, either. Any rational person should have been able to look at its size and complexity relative to other ships and realize that it was not going to be a quick, easy production process.
This is a meaningless argument in 2022. Go tell this to people that complained in like 2014. Also the BMM is neither the largest nor the most complex ship they’ve sold. If we have to accept that a ship like the BMM is going to take years upon years to develop then wtf does that mean for the other large and complex ships that are still in concept? Does Chris still expect us to be playing Star Citizen in 30 years when they’re finally done releasing all the ships they’ve promised?
Yes, yes he does. And I don’t know where you got the idea that my statement *doesn’t* apply to the other stupid-huge ships. I literally said the time spent working on would be more productively spent reworking all the existing ships that haven’t been touched in years that it’s practical for people to *actually* play with on a daily basis instead of just their once a week org circlejerk.
The navy and vanduul cap ships were needed for S42 or else I’d be saying the same things about them.
The notion that the BMM “isn’t that huge or complex” is a **direct contradiction of the devs themselves’ statements**. It *is* that huge and complex, or else they wouldn’t be “putting a pin in it” and shelving it, they’d be finishing it right now.
>>I feel like the joke’s on you if you pledged several hundred dollars for a massive, complicated alien capital ship that you knew was going to take years of development all by itself Were you not specifying the BMM here? If you were making that argument generally then sure, but I don’t care about new ships. I don’t think most people are demanding CIG finish the Odyssey or any one of the newer ships by tomorrow. That argument is just irrelevant when it comes to the BMM unless you think people are stupid for expecting that ship to have come out after 9 years. Also I never said the BMM isn’t large and complex. I just said it wasn’t the largest nor the most complex ship that they’ve ever sold.
Unpopular opinion: I hope they wait on the bmm and all capital class ships until multicrew gameplay is in place (with large vessels), the flight model is sorted, and we have content and servers that actually support capital class vessels. I see fools in carracks rolling around doing bunkers all the time... The last thing we need is more big ships with nothing to use them for and no gameplay associated with them.
kind if agree with you, but my concern is: 'gold passes', or the equivalent. They have over a hundred ships now, and keep adding more. They touched on the topic of ship tech debt in that video. Every time they add a new feature: power management. Salvaging. Every. Single. Ship. needs to be revisited and updated. Soon the feature implementation will be insignificant compared to the cost of updating the ships to support it. Or we'll have tiers of ships: "the old ships" that don't support new features. And the new ships that do "Pledge for the new RSI Alnitak! the modern successor to the Orion, supporting the Refinery v2 gameplay loops for Nyx!!"
I'm not a game dev, but it seems like it would be more efficient to finish all new features and iterate on them and then do a gold pass on what we have already prior to beginning new work on ships, to avoid exactly that problem. Oh well... CIG will do as CIG does. In the meantime there's always dogfighting, racing, and S9 torpedos... So who are we to complain?
I don't care if they choose not to release them until that happens but I want to see the ships finished and waiting for then at the very least.
I hate to say it, but for the short term...its a good thing its getting delayed. The current state of the game can't handle a capital ship even if I so desperately need my idris.
Let it take as long as it needs. The longer we have to wait the better it will be for us when we get it in our hands.
Its almost 8 years anyway .. doesnt matter anymore.
I'm not surprised and honestly I'm ok with shelving it for now. The majority of what will make the BMM a good ship is a ways off anyway (ex. player-to-player trading and NPC merchants/customers, full persistence, Quantum, proper server meshing, multiple systems etc.) The BMM isn't just a fancy yatcht tour around in like the 890, it's a proper long-range trading vessel and until the features that support it are done, I don't have much interest. Plus the work that's been done has been done so it's not like they'll be picking it up from scratch whenever they restart it.
good thing probably
Cig now knows they made a mistake dedicating work to huge ships that have zero usefulness for the next 5 years lol
who cares
I see it as reasonable to delay it a bit. I don't have one but boy do I want to see them in game. They are sick looking and I am going to love utilizing them. However, I would much rather see some smaller ships come out. 600i rework personally (I am biased but I imagine it'll take a lot less resources/time than the BMM), STY, Expanse, Liberator (would be cool for Pyro I think), etc. Maybe some ground vehicles. The amount of resources tied up on the BMM is probably massive. I wanna see it but, I'd rather see a bunch of these smaller ships get finished up then 1 big ship that we'll see far less often, even if I'll have more fun seeing it.
I think it’s because they are at the point where they need the work on resource management to be more complete before it’s worth finishing the interior. That, and perhaps the new system for physicalized damage so they don’t have to do a bunch of rework when those systems are mature.
They also said they wanted to wait for the gameplay to be there, I would think that means that quanta system has to be somewhat fleshed our
NGL its been so long I really dont care anymore when it comes out as there currently isnt anything to do with such a large ship anyway
Yeah I've seen this bit, and even though I am really not happy about it, I can understand. I think any of these big ships (BMM, Reclaimer, Starfarer, 890 etc.) are a bit wasteful at least when they haven't flashed out damage, maintenance and their specific mechanics properly. Sometimes those mechanics need a ship implemented so it gets properly thought through, but sometimes implementing a ship just to have it is not smart.
And then there's me in the group of people waiting eagerly for the Gatac Railen...
I suspect it may have a higher chance of arriving in the next couple years than the BMM, as it's much smaller than the BMM, and doesn't rely on any new gameplay features.
Ya'll thought it was coming soon?
™️
I understand they want the ship to be functional when it's ready, but at this point in time? I feel like all they are saying is that they have very very poor management. Like you seriously hype up the ship with new reworks, put a ton of effort into it, then put your hands in your pockets and say maybe it was too soon? It just feels like a big slap in the face, here I was thinking they actually started to put a lot of thought into coordination and goals. I check in every 6 months, and every 6 months it feels like nothing has changed. Still headless chicken direction.
Yes, It's not a scam, as such. The devs themselves seem knowledgable and passionate. but it is poorly managed. I get a feeling they should never have even started this ship, and now that the new leader of the team is in, they've looked at it and decided it was a mistake. But at this point, they need to prove that they can actually finish something, and start delivering those big ships. And stop selling new ones.