Impromptu Evocati Q&A Session

Has the flight model changed at all in 3.0?
I am not a great pilot, but I would say it is about the very same as in 2.6.3. In atmosphere though it is a different story, depending on the ship it can have quite an influence on how the flight characteristics work out.

Did anything change in Arena commander?
Arena Commander is pretty wonky at this moment, sometimes crashing, sometimes spawning without a ship (just your character) and only allowing you to select the Gladius

Does 3.0 come with some performance upgrades on the game? Can lower end systems run the game better?
Not really, for the lower end systems Star Citizen is not really the game you want to play at this moment...

How does surface to space to quantum to surface feel? :)

Has the Fps increased?
FPS for me is around 20-25 on a good server, but mostly it will average out till 15-20FPS on a high-end system. I think it is about the same as 2.6.3.

Is the vanguard still a sluggish brick?

How well has the build progressed in this first week? How many updates have you got since the first Evocati build?
We are currently up till 3.0c, yesterday we skipped a day so hopefully today we get a big one. :)

How does multiple ship spawning work? Can I spawn a dragonfly to put in my cutlass?
You can, but don’t expect your Cutlass nor Dragonfly to remain intact. ;) The physics grid needs some attention and to give you an idea, I rather not leave my seat when the ship is flying or in Quantum Travel. So to say, it is pretty much the same as in 2.6.3.

You can, though I haven’t tried it yet, I assume the physics grid in a physics grid is pretty wonky.

Do you think anything (planets excluded) has been downgraded from what we saw in GC 2016? Also graphically speaking
No. There is no downgrading in this build, everything looks as you would expect it to look. If you check out the latest Gamescom 2017 livestreams, it looks exactly like that, but then with more moons and more locations to explore.

Has CIG stated anything about performances? Like their target for PTU.
Not as far I am aware, I can imagine to want to get that 30FPS threshold before going to the public, but that is just my personal opinion. With the lack of more robust network features I     would be quite surprised if they are going to do that. Though Erin has stated he wanted to gradually go up from 24 players, to 40, to 60 players in the 3.0 build.

So now the servers are limited to 24 players and not 12 as said by someone in the past days? There was a rumor by which performances where around 80fps and they wanted to increase gradually the players till they reached around 60, this is entirely false then, is that correct?
The current build allows up to 24 people.
On the performance side, I don’t believe 80FPS is even possible, not even in a server which is quite empty. I have a very high end system and I have seen 40FPS at most which was literally a new server. I heard that Erin wants to gradually increase the player count, but to be honest I don’t see that happening in the current state of the build.

This is a bit off topic, but usually how long does it take to become an evocati,does numbers of bugs reported count more than the way you report them? Is it very hard or anyone with enough patience could get into it?
I have no clue on that information, since the Evocati doesn’t even get to know the criteria themselves. I would personally say that if you have like 30 confirmations on reports and some additional reports, you are certainly going into the right direction.






I realized a great question I can use to verify you. About two days ago an update was released. At about what time (EST) was this update released, and what was the size?
Which patch you mean? 2 days ago was patch 3.0c, which was about 50MB as far as I know. Also the patches usually come late, from the top of my head the greenlight was confirmed around 3:30 Berlin time
What number was it?
 3.0C, the latest build currently.
I mean build number.
Is that the number in my launcher? I am afraid I can’t give that, since it could be personalized by person if CIG is really doing their best.
It’s not. Please give me the number. I know it hasn’t been published anywhere yet. No one has asked. I rather give the current error codes Evocati is experiencing 20007/300077
Give me a moment
(It is unclear here who is Evocati and who is asker)

Is walking on heavily sloped inclines buggy? (i.e. lots of slipping and sliding?).
I have walked on a few hills on Delamar, and there was nothing wrong with that. It behaves how you would expect, no weird sliding on glitching. Though the animations can be a bit better (characters still floating above the ground with one foot for example).

In the production report, it is said that Daymar has “Lightning storms can help illuminate the fog”, is that implemented? Or for that matter, any of the weather effects?

I haven’t been on Daymar myself yet, since Delamar with Levski is just a lot more attracting. ;) Also no weather effect I have seen, but the stars definitely look awesome. What I do know is that there is a full day and night cycle for each planet, and also different for each planet, and what is not illuminated by the sun is very dark and awesome. A sad thing though is that in the current build flood lights on the ships are not working, making it quite frustrating to find stuff on the dark side of Delamar, Daymar etc.

(shame, Yela seems to have underwater caves :(

I could definitely try that out tonight! :)


Missing question about aUEC purchases
You can simply step to any shop in the universe and pay with Alpha UEC, there is no Voyager Direct integration as far as I am aware of. I also think that is something for further down the line, since y (indecipherable)
Dumpers Depot you can simply buy the parts you need and attach them on your ship, though currently the ship attacher on the mobiglas is not functional so there was no way to try it out for me. Maybe there is a workaround for it, but I haven’t heard anyone talking about it.
The stuff for buying weapons simply works, though armor doesn’t work for some reason. In any case, there is no reason to buy anything for the Evocati since most equipment if not all is already given from the start in the inventory menu, and if you want to buy something it has a very low price. The inventory menu in this case, is the inventory menu of your character not the ship, since that is as said not accessible at this time.

Have you tried the Cutlass rework? If yes does the cockpit view still sucks even when the FOV is higher than 2.6? So is the cockpit view same as 2.6 cutlass? Because from Gamescom livestream it looked way worse
Cutlass definitely is the greatest ship of all time, haha! The Cutlass has a very good view for both the pilot and the co-pilot, the only drawback is that you can’t see below you almost, but view on the side and the top are very good. If you fly a Cutlass, you definitely want to stay below your enemy to do some damage. :)

What are the aUEC value rewards like in game right now (if they’re even the live values)? Is it going to take me 10 missions to get a shield?
I have no clue what a shield will cost, nor does any Evocati since the prices are lowered for testing and not for balancing. I do know that a mission usually generated 1000-1500 aUEC and some missions (very few) do 2500 aUEC. That is the only numbers I saw.do

Images of the Star Map had ArcCorp. Can you QT to all 4 planets?
A simple no is the answer. The QT Travel system will simply say “Out of range” and will stay red. Perhaps you could try to fly there, but it will probably take a long, long time. ;) Also if you think you can get with a workaround there, you can’t Quantum Travel anymore into the nothingness like you could in 2.6.3 and reach the edge of the universe, that is not a thing anymore, you always need a certain destination.

Are the cargo missions available in the current build?
Yes they are, but there is not a lot of love for them, since cargo easily bugs out and locks your view for the character so you have to restart the game or do some troubleshooting by opening and closing the mobiglas like a million times.

In your opinion, what needs the most work in this build, and what what will take the longest to iron out?
Ah, glad you asked! :) In my opinion the FPS could be a lot better and is probably the hardest to iron out, especially since some networking stuff got delayed till 3.1 and beyond. The second most important thing for me is making the party system work, make it easy to fly with friends, so let us share aUEC which we generate from missions, let us find each other by a simple beacon and giving us a different color on the map etc. The core foundation of 3.0 is actually pretty good, as far as a mission doesn’t work or gets your field of view stuck or simply bugs out.

Another thing which definitely needs improvement is the navigation system, it is a bit clunky in my opinion, but it is also in the very early stages. Sometimes you see all the navigation points and you can simply travel to that place without opening the map, but sometimes you see no location at all and have to open up the map and set a location first (like 3 clicks just to be able to QT somewhere) to be able to QT. get somewhere)

I read that there are multicrew missions now. Can you confirm that?
I have done quite a few missions, but as far as I am aware all of them are available solo. Could be that there are quests which are multi-crew, but without a working party system for sharing the profit of that certain mission I don’t see how that would work.t

Have you witnessed the plantary rotations yet? How does it look?
I certainly did! :) All planets have their own rotation speed and their own day and night cycle, sometimes I am waiting for daylight and I really have to wait a long time, since the floodlights are not working yet on the ships. So you can imagine that in pitch dark, with only the helmet light to navigate there is no way to find anything. You can look at the stars though, and I kinda wish it would get as dark as it did on Delamar on our current planet, so awesome!  Really gave me the chills.

Are the missions still really basic like in 2.6.3 or do they contain more “twists and turns” now?
Most missions are procedurally generated, so for example if you get a delivery some variables will change, so for example sometimes you have to go from Levski to Port Olisar, and sometimes you have to go from Daymar to Yela. You can see it like math, the X is always unknown and it changes. There are some more robust missions as well thought, for example P.I wanted, from the 2.6.3 build. That one is currently still in and you can follow that quest line. Something like that might be hard to procedurally generate with all the voice dialog I can imagine. All missions

Do you see longevity in 3.0, more so than 2.6.3? With the missions I would assume so, now that there is a bigger gameplay loop, but you never know. (Longevity as in playing 3.0 frequently, until the next release) ;)
You can see all the distances to a destination, all distances to locations are done in Kilometres. Though I assume you mean longevity in the cockpit seat, which I am not sure, I can check that out for you soon, since I usually don’t pilot too much.

Ah, replayability it is. Let me put it this way, 3.0 is definitely going to be something I will show to my friends and play a some missions, it is dependent though on the variation of the missions that will actually make it in, but for now there are like 3 types of missions. You have delivery missions, investigations (like missing persons) and another which I forgot about. For example, bounty hunting missions and player generated missions are not in the game yet, which could even stretch that replayability even more in my opinion. But rest assure, that 3.0 is going to be a huge step up and if it has great performance (FPS wise) I can see it as my new go-to game with some friends. Since net though few

What do you think about the driving possibilities of the Dragonfly, Nox and Rover? Is it pretty good like a simulation or more arcade?
I haven’t tried putting ships into ships yet, so there was no way for me to get a Nox, Dragonfly or Rover on the planetside just yet. Though I have tried the Nox in mid air, and it feels fine, it is also super fast, I think it went like 700m/s per second, so that is actually faster then most ships.

No possibility to spawn a vehiclevehicule on the ground?
It is possible on Levski as far as I am aware, but I should try it out, haven’t found the land vehicle hangars just yet. :)

Still no hangar to space transition?
A hard no! But we have some outposts, though they are not functional just yet, you can get inside and stuff but nothing to do. There are a few different one’s, so you have a rescue station with first aid stuff, you have a mining outpost where you can see consoles for mining etc, though they are not operational but I bet it is going to be awesome in 3.1 when finally mining comes in. At last you got farming outposts where you can see agricultural stuff being made, though I haven’t been myself on this one just yet.also no interactions here, but I haven’t been personally (indecipherable)


In the video we saw about the QT, the Vanguard was a bit uncontrollable at the end. Bug or functionality (love the control lost we saw)? This is the video : https://youtu.be/n45dKzJb0aQ?t=18
Maybe link and timestamp the video? Though I haven’t tried out the Vanguard myself.

What’s the quantum drive cooldown? Is it dependent on ship mass, travel time, or some other factor?
It is dependent on the ship, a Cutlass for example has 15 seconds of CD, and a Constellation has in the 30 seconds of QT cooldown. The numbers here can differ, since I am not 100% what the numbers are, but I am sure it is something like that. Also for a small ship like the Gladius it is only 10 seconds. I am not certain if this is measured by size, mass or any other metrics though. (100% sure).

Does the QT CD time differ with the distance?
Nope it doesn’t, QT is QT. Even if you go a few metres, the CD stays the same.

Does spool time differ?
Also not the case, spool time is the same no matter how long you travel.

Any opinion on atmospheric flight? What do you think about it and what would you change?
That is something which is very different for each ship, for example in Cutlass you only feel a slight drift and some noise of turbulence. I have to try it out a bit more and compare everything with each other to give a good comparison about it, but it is defnitely there. Also, when you jump on certain planets with your character on some atmospheres you will fly higher then others, pretty cool. I have yet to (indecipherable)

Are the Oxygen Pylon in and working?
Not sure what a Pilon is, but the Oxygen system is fully integrated. Though sometimes it seems like you hardly using any air, could be a bit bugged still, but I think overall it works pretty good.

How does the interaction system work for you? In ships, shops, etc? Do the ships thrusters now stay on when leaving the cockpit, as advertised?
Unfortunately a lot of the ship stays on for some reason even when powered down. For example if I power down I would say all MFD’s and digital HUD’s would go out as well, but this stays on. I also saw that the thrusters on the back stay yellowish, so that also stays on. When I really want to go dark, like the developers said, I would expect a bit more in this department. Also start up animations for the ships are really not that great, you can feel it’s really in the early stages, especially with the character moving the hand towards the buttons to click it on and such.
There are 2 ways to start flying your ships though, you have the “Flight ready” option which prepares your ships in an instant (with some weird animations), and you can do it by hand like “Power On” ship and “Activate Engines”. Haven’t tried the latter just yet, since I am usually going for the easiest way.

Persistence is fully on ? Like place in the space and other things ?
Nope, persistence for ships is on, but persistence for location is still off. So every time your game crashes, or a server error occurs you are back in Port Olisar or Levski, depending on where you where the closest to .(I believe, or you may have to laydown once in the bed in Levski first, nvm, you can’t even lay in a bed in Levski without being dead first.).

Does the reworked Cutlass still have gimbals on it?
It certainly does! :)

What’s your longest playtime session, without any crash?
I believe it’s around 3 hours.

Can we still make a random Quantum Travel?
No. You always need a destination to QT to.

I heard it takes a decently long time to travel from QT into atmosphere (after QTing to the planet). Have they fixed it to make this quicker, or do you still have to slowly travel down to the surface at SCM/CRU speeds?
It takes quite a bit, I would say it takes about 5-10 minutes depending on the distance you have to do. But they also said somewhere that they are working on this, and on some locations QT doesn’t go far enough. I was a bit surprised by this, since when they showed Universe to Surface travel in Gamescom 2016 I believe it felt pretty quick.

Could you blow up if you go too fast on surface?
I always go maximum speed when in atmosphere and I haven’t blown up yet. ;)

I know it may be hard to tell, but are the Star Marine animations in 3.0 yet (vaulting, weapon moving against wall, etc)?
Vaulting is as far as I am aware is definitely not in the game, though I haven’t really tried it yet, but I can give definitive confirmation about this later. Weapon moving against wall, that stuff was already in 2.6.3 I believe. this in a later

Planets seems empty or are there any things to fill a little bit that?
Yeah, if you just go around flying on planets they can feel really empty, and for some reason CIG really made navigating on planets a chore. So for example you can’t see any Points of Interest when in atmosphere, but only when you land and walk outside, then you suddenly see all the POI’s. Then you have to remember them where they are, since you can’t set a waypoint etc. It feels very clunky, but once you are able to find an outpost or a wreck for example it is pretty satisfying. The trick here for me is to not go just explore planets, but try to get some missions done (even when most of the missions are currently bugged), since they lead you to POIs.

This may be a weird question, but can you tell us a little bit about the main menu screen when you boot up the game itself? Are there any general differences between the 2.6.3 version and the 3.0 version?
For me the text which used to be white is now very darkish almost purply blue. The background is just black and if you press Universe you will see a static image of Area 18 (with the ArcCorp globe) on the background. Not moving anymore like was the case in 2.63.  For me the main menu is just black with blue text all

No one ask the real question… have they removed those fuc**ing big benny machine around Yela? :)
Don’t touch the Big Benny !

Missing question – asking about subsumption
In the start of 3.0 on Evocati NPC’s were moving around and doing their thing, but still very buggy, like using their repair tool on air etc. Now in the current build NPC’s don’t work at all and are just standing in line next to each other, quite a weird thing.

Do you cross somebody easily in this vast universe with so few people?
Yeah it is not that hard really, radars seem pretty strong and I had no trouble finding people even on the same spots.  I can imagine when the radar and scanning mechanics are properly implemented it will be harder.

Have you tried to play with your power to make some Silent Running?
I have switched the buttons a bit, but haven’t tried to use momentum and go dark just to travel along nicely. Definitely something I want to try in my next play session.





Prospector is in?
Yeap. :)
Idris is in? :P
Nope. And even if it was the case, Performance > Idris.

Best place and best thing to do in 3.0 for you?
Would be Levski and watching the stars the skybox at night. Especially the latter makes me really excited for VR!

Does the landing system with ATC work well?
It works alright but ATC currently doesn’t work with the RTT (Render-to-texture) as shown before. Currently it’s only voice talking to you and a green mark at the landing pad, and on Levski it’s even worse, there you can only see the hangar opening (vertical hangars) with no indication it actually opens for you. So yeah, the ATC can really be improved.
A nice catch here is though, if you land on a landing pad without asking permissions first, you get a bounty status. Thought it was pretty cool. :)

What happens if you run out of fuel in atmosphere?
Haven’t experienced this yet, so can’t tell. As far as I am aware only Quantum Fuel is currently in the build.

I heard something about gravitational fields and not being able to QT to specific locations if it’s too deep inside a gravity well. True?
I haven’t encountered such a thing yet.

Can you QT to say directly above a specific outpost?
No, you can’t.