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Hello everyone,
Last week the team published the Monthly Studio Report for May, bringing you insight into what all of our studios have been working on. Check it out if you haven’t yet to get yourself up to speed on new systems, ships and features for 3.2 and beyond.
Friday saw the Roadmap updated, where Network Bind Culling and FPS Combat AI moved from the 3.2 column to 3.3, meaning they’ll be added to the game with our Q3 Update. Check our latest Reverse the Verse show, available on YouTube, where Jared and Tyler explain why the decision was made to defer those aspects of 3.2 to 3.3.
This week marks the end of the Hercules promotion. There’s almost nothing this family of ships hasn’t faced, and no situation they can’t handle. The Crusader Industries Hercules Starlifter will be available in the pledge store until Wednesday, June 13 at 11:59pm PDT.
Also, if you’ve got 3 minutes spare, make sure to head over to Spectrum and fill out the Pledge Store Interest Survey, hosted by Turbulent. It only takes 180 seconds and is your chance to have your voice heard, and help make the store a better, and more comprehensive experience. Thank you in advance!
With that, let’s see what’s going on this week:
Every week, designers, engineers and other developers from our five offices around the world answer backer questions submitted on Spectrum and voted on by YOU. Don’t forget you can submit your questions for consideration each and every week here.
On Tuesday, the Lore Team will publish their weekly blog post. If you missed a post in the past, you can read up on all previously released lore posts here.
Thursday will see an all-new episode of Around the Verse, with a PU update and the Weapons Special Pt. II – double the fun with a double barrel sniper! Also: Citizens have reported transmission interruptions from Drake Interplanetary with the date 2018.06.14 on them. Perhaps they have something new to share on this week’s installment of Ship Shape?!
On Friday, Jared sits down with members of Drake’s design team to discuss the previous day’s reveal. We know how citizens can devour every… scrap… of information when it comes to these new additions to Star Citizen. Keep an eye out in the General section of Spectrum for the question gathering post and then tune in on Twitch.tv/StarCitizen at 9am PDT/4pm UTC for a special Reverse the Verse LIVE.
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We are constantly amazed by the contributions made by the Star Citizen community. Whether it’s fan art, a cinematic, a YouTube guide, or even a 3D print of your favorite ship, we love it all! Don’t forget to submit your content to our Community Hub for a chance at seeing it here!
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Terada takes a Razor for a spin. And another one. And another one. And another one.
Enjoy this stunning video and turn up the volume because this Razor LX quartet doesn’t stop at the setting sun.
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NarayanN7 won an Intel® Optane™900P SSD in one of our screenshot contests last month, redeemed the Sabre Raven code and started rolling. 7 pages of script and 27 hours of filming later, we can marvel at the ambitious project he called “The Chase.”
Welcome to Cloud Imperium Games’ Monthly Studio Report for May, bringing you insight into what all of our studios have been working on. This month, the team made updates to Alpha 3.1, and pushed forward on new systems, ships, and features for Alpha 3.2 and beyond. Work also progressed on various aspects of Squadron 42. With that said, let’s dig into the details.
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LOS ANGELES
VEHICLE FEATURES
The Vehicle Features Team’s primary focus this month was working on scanning for the mining feature and making improvements to turrets, both of which will appear in the Alpha 3.2 release. Regarding scanning, the team worked closely with VFX, UI, and other teams to develop the pinging, scanning, and blob work needed for the launch of this feature.
The team also completed the implementation of cameras on remote turrets that can be controlled by players, allowing them to focus their turret target on a ship to see its relevant status.
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The team, consisting of Vehicle Art, Systems Design, and Tech Art, developed vehicles for both Alpha 3.2 and subsequent releases. On the art side, the Anvil Hurricane completed its flight prep pass and has been handed off to the other vehicle disciplines for the 3.2 release. The Art Team has also wrapped up their pass on the Consolidated Outland Mustang Alpha and has begun working on its variants.
Work was also done on the greybox set-up for the Consolidated Outland Mustang Alpha, the RSI Constellation Phoenix, and the Anvil F8 Lightning.
Meanwhile, the Tech Art Team worked on their final flight prep passes, which included damage and landing gear compression on the Anvil Hurricane and the rest of the 3.2 ships: the Aegis Avenger, Aegis Eclipse, Origin 600i, and Vanduul Blade. Additionally, the team took a Tech Art pass in support of the MISC Prospector for the mining feature.
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GAMEPLAY FEATURES
The Gameplay Features Team is working with the Spectrum and Backend teams to sync to the new Spectrum architecture, which will allow players to view and manage their contacts in the mobiGlas Comms app. The team is placing the chat feature directly into the mobiGlas, so players can communicate using both the visor chat and the mobiGlas Comms app. In addition to this, Group creation, destruction, rules, and interaction are now being implemented and improved as the team works alongside Turbulent. The ability to invite contacts to groups by selecting them in interaction mode is being added, as is identifying contacts by name in your visor.
NARRATIVE
A wide variety of tasks kept the Narrative Team busy in May. The month kicked off with a release of a Loremaker’s Guide to the Galaxy segment focused on the Oso System. They also recorded episodes for several upcoming systems. They wrote and released three new lore pieces, including part one of the Subscriber exclusive short story Hostile Negotiations. May’s issue of Jump Point focused on the Crusader Hercules Starlifter, game optimization, a Galactapedia entry on whiskey, and more. Two older Jump Point features also received wide release on the site, including the tragic tale of the Lost Squad and part one of the serialized story The Knowledge of Good and Evil.
The Squadron 42 Team spent part of the month working with Production to organize work on the remaining narrative tasks and started tackling a handful of set dressing documents. These kickoff documents focus on specific areas of the game and list ideas for props that could be used to sell particular story moments.
The team also wrote procedural text for new PU mission types. They drilled down into the specifics of some upcoming locations, which included creating posters to be plastered around Lorville and other locations. They worked with other departments to organize and streamline game documentation essential to inter-office communication, and collaborated with the Community Team on Ciera Brun’s Journal of a Volunteer, which was featured on the Hercules Starlifter sales page.
CHARACTERS
The Character Art Team showcased their work on the Legacy Armor sets for both the Outlaws and Marines in an episode of Around the Verse (both of which will appear in Alpha 3.2).
A considerable amount of effort was put into multiple Squadron 42 characters along with new weapon concepts. The upcoming Mission Givers for PU outfits have made tremendous progress, as have the clothing collections for both Olisar and Hurston. The updated flight suit continues to be developed, and R&D on the pipeline for delivering character heads (including realistic hair for all characters) also received attention. And, as always, bugs were fixed for the Alpha 3.2 release.
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AUSTIN
DESIGN
The team put together features and fixes for Alpha 3.2 and pushed ahead on content for future releases. They refined the recipe system to prepare it for future implementation – early iterations will be simple, but will form the basis of a more complex system that allows players to get into the nuts and bolts of what makes items in the ‘verse tick.
Quantum Linking progressed nicely. Soon it will be synced with the Group System to allow for various interactions between local players and those in a party. Once done, groups can easily Quantum Jump to a shared destination together.
Spline jumps were added, which allow players to travel from one side of a celestial body to another. The team can adjust the parameters to ensure a smooth experience while still allowing for future iterations and tweaks by the Design Team.
With the animations of Battaglia and Klim added, focus has shifted to a pair of new mission givers. The team is also building out the Bartender character, with the goal of instilling a level of life and dynamic activity fitting of a real, hard-working mixologist.
BACKEND SERVICES
Feature creation and bug smashing kept Server Engineering busy in May. With the Persistence Cache being broken up and streamlined, several new features and services were created. Data Cache, Badge Service, GEID Broker, and Character Management Service were previously part of a larger Persistence Cache. They were broken out to allow for higher efficiency and scalability of the Backend Services, ensuring they work within the improved and more efficient Diffusion Service Architecture. The Generic Cache service can now be used by any other service to store data and contain persistence. The Persistence Item Cache grants game items for online players, and will organize and manage the associations of items between each other and provide optimized queries.
The team and Turbulent continue to modify the Gateway Service to support the bridge to Spectrum. This work ensures that Spectrum and Services won’t have trouble when Spectrum becomes integrated into the game. Work was also completed on creating a link from CMake generated services into WAF. Now, developers don’t need CMake to use services and can automate the process of building services using WAF for other developers to quickly integrate with their workflow.
ANIMATION
The PU Animation Team finished their previous set of Mission Givers and NPCs and handed them over to Design for implementation. A new set of Mission Givers is now being worked on, and research was done on the Bartender’s animations to bring as much life to this NPC as possible. They also collaborated with other teams to get the Vanduul fully functional and ready for motion capture.
The Ship Animation Team continued adding a modular system for entering and exiting seats and turrets. By breaking up the existing animations into sequences, the character can use any of the enter/exit templates to interact with any cockpit type. For example, there can now be an animation that uses the Aegis Gladius enter animation, but then has the player grab a dual-stick control scheme. Previously, the team was limited to only using the Gladius enter animation for cockpits that used one specific configuration. They can now use thousands of different combinations, granting more flexibility when creating new ships.
The Ship Animation Team focused on completing the new ships for the 3.2 release. They created new animations for the Origin 600i and the refactored Aegis Avenger, as well as the Aegis Eclipse, Anvil Hurricane, and the Vanduul Blade. Plus, they’ve been fixing various bugs for the 3.2 release. They’re very excited about the improvements made to the ship pipeline and are looking forward to the opportunities that it provides.
ART
Work continues with high polygon and flight-prep modeling of the Constellation Phoenix. In the last few weeks, the team focused on the exterior of the ship, getting it fully fleshed out and finishing the damage setup and LODs. They have also been getting the Constellation Emerald setup and modeled. Constellation variants share most of their parts with each other, but to accommodate the Emerald’s paint job, UV revisions of the original Constellation were required. Once the exterior is done, they will return to the interior to finish various parts such as the floor, guest quarters, and master bedrooms (and the all-important hot tub!).
The high poly and detail modeling phase is complete on the F8 Lightning, and the team have moved on to getting it flight-prep ready. The internal damage has been completed and work on LODs are next. Then they will concentrate on the last polish and efficiency pass before creating marketing material for the ship reveal.
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OPERATIONS
On the Publishing side, QA wrapped up the last of the 3.1 incremental patches by testing fixes and changes to IFCS. In addition, they tested the new Launcher updates and monitored both PTU and Live to report any new issues to the devs.
After the devs wrapped up work on 3.1, QA focused on updating test documentation and processes in preparation for 3.2, continued verifying bug fixes, tested new tool updates, and trained new hires. As the month progressed, more 3.2 features came online for QA testing. These features included Quantum Travel improvements, new ship testing, Item Kiosk shopping, PMA/VMA improvements, and ship & weapon Power Allocation.
Leadership worked to better incorporate processes into the new development cycle. This includes dedicating testers to specific feature teams and having them create documentation and test cases. They have also been looking at new software to make testing more efficient as the game grows exponentially.
DevOps continued their work on the feature stream process and staging build system. Feature streams are a subset of the main development branches that allow the devs to maintain a tighter focus on specific features without their work interfering with others. DevOps was happy with the rollout, but it hasn’t been easy. The build system has grown so complex that minor updates and adjustments are risky, which is why they’re working closely with the Corp Tech team in Austin on a ‘staging’ build. This new environment will allow engineers to test changes in a safe location rather than apply them directly into the production environment.
The DevOps Publishing Team monitored the live service for stability and performance indicators, providing a constant flow of data to the dev teams. They also prepped the Evocoti and PTU servers for the next publishing cycle (which is right around the corner). The team provisioned more server capacity for all regions in anticipation of a very popular feature publish.
The Player Relations Team helped wrap up 3.1.4 this month, and have already started early preparations for 3.2 testing with the Evocati. The 3.1 publishes were the first of the quarterly testing cycle. It was a tremendous learning experience that will be used during further cycles.
The team was also proud to roll out over 80 articles to the new Knowledge Base – there have already been 25,000 visits in its first month. Players should check it out, as the team continues to add new ‘How To’ articles, patch notes, and live service notifications.
As always, Player Relations would like to remind and encourage everyone to use the Issue Council to help triage and rate bugs and functionality. The team uses this data to prioritize future updates. Plus, participation makes you eligible for earlier PTU waves.
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WILMSLOW & DERBY
ENGINEERING
The Actor Teams have been carrying on with the ‘pickup-and-carry’ work, now concentrating on reducing the animations required for the different combinations of item sizes, grip types, and player states. They did a rough calculation of all these combinations and it came out at roughly 1700 animations. However, with the sensible authoring of assets, combining animations in blend spaces, and layering up, the team should be able to get this down to under 100.
They’ve also been developing new animation time-warping technology using player knockdowns as their test case. The problem with something like a knockdown is that the time the character spends in the air varies based on the force and environment. Normally, you would play a looping animation, but this can look unnatural. This new method calculates the airtime and stretches a single animation to fill it. Used sparingly, it produces much better results, and the technique can also be used on other features like jumping.
The Social AI Team has got a test setup of a ‘usable’ now fully working with the new channels in Subsumption. A ‘use channel’ describes what you can do in a particular ‘usable’ – examples could be eat, drink, mend, and so on. This is a great milestone as the Subsumption setup simplifies how the designers create ‘usables’, whilst at the same time giving them much more flexibility.
The Vehicle Team has implemented the ability to under and overpower ship components, and hooked it into the vehicle’s MFD UI. For example, when you underpower your weapons, they fire slower or the projectiles have less energy. Similarly, your shields will be more effective if they have more power.
The Tools Team has been working on a new check-in request tool. As they get closer to a release, they lock down what does and what doesn’t go into the build to improve stability and reduce the risk of new bugs appearing. To help, they’ve been developing a new tool that can track all change requests and give a nice interface for the leads to be able to approve or reject changes. With the number of requests going into a build every day, the overhead of managing them was becoming very large. The hope is this new process will reduce the workload on the teams and production, as well as giving better visibility on what is and isn’t approved.
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The ships due for 3.2 have really come along with all the final polish and lighting work that’s gone into them this month. The Vanduul Blade has undergone a rework; mainly around the wings so that it can better accommodate weapons after it was decided the underslung position looked too ‘human’ and needed to be more aligned with the Vanduul aesthetic. It’s also had some extensive work done to the landing gear – previously the ship just rested on the wing tips, but with this change, the wing tips now deploy landing gear to accommodate compression under the weight of the ship. The team has continued to optimize the ship and make sure everything is done so they can switch focus to promo shots and trailers.
AUDIO
On the Audio Code side, the preload manager system was optimized to work asynchronously, so that the audio thread isn’t blocked when streaming audio assets. ‘Asynchronous caching’ was also addressed, which keeps audio events in memory after the game has finished with them. Thanks to this work, assets don’t need to be reloaded from the disk each time they’re needed, which will improve overall performance.
As well as bug fixing, debug info was added to the aforementioned preload manager. The music system was improved with a feature to add a further randomized recombination of tracks. The Audio Propagation and Room systems were extended to enable cheaper pressure lookups and allow for room and object-based reverb. Weapons 2.0 audio tech was worked on further, as were the IFCS 2.0 audio set-up and multithreading optimization. Finally, on the code side, the ATL build process was ported over to WAAPI to enable more incremental audio building, improving iteration times for everyone in the team.
In Dialogue, new content was delivered for Alpha 3.2 via an improved dialogue pipeline. Characters now have their vocal output processed in real-time through communication devices, via porting the audio and any local secondary sound and transmitting it much as one would find in the real world.
In Sound Design, the Scalpel sniper rifle underwent further work and is ready for final review. The FPS weapon system is ripe for refactoring and some work was done to improve quality and simplify the system. They also delivered sound design for the Gemini F55 LMG, the Klaus & Werner Demeco LMG, and the Associated Science & Development Distortion Repeater.
The shopping and mining kiosks were polished to increase responsiveness and synchronization. The mining mechanisms have been worked on extensively and are now ready for further implementation and iteration, with work on the fracture and tractor beams for the mining arm receiving a lot of attention. Hangars had some extra improvement work, and ambiance for the Lorville trash biome was prototyped.
On the ships front, the Origin 600i, Aegis Eclipse, Esperia Blade, and the Anvil Hurricane all had sound added for their thrusters, moving parts, and interiors. The conversion to IFCS 2.0 created a big project to bring everything in line with the modifications to that upstream system. Development of the ship-wide audio concept also continued, separating maneuvering and ‘cockpit feedback’ sounds from the thruster burn sounds, and adding more directionality towards rotation sounds. Room tones that react to ship handling and damage states were also added to the Constellation as a proof of concept. The new physics objects system had assets created to put it through its paces, which will give more behavioral fidelity across the game.
In Music, the Vanduul and Xi’an themes were pushed forward for Squadron 42. For the Persistent Universe, new music was created for derelict ship exploration (small, medium and large).
UI
The UI Team primarily focused on feature work for the Item Kiosks, Mining, and QT Linking. The Item Kiosks wireframes were signed off and later implemented into Flash and hooked up on the code side. The team is now finalizing additional branding skins for the terminals alongside bug fixes on the code now that the QA Team have started testing it. The HUD design for mining was finalized and implemented too. The team is also working on a Kiosk terminal that allows players to sell the refined ore gained from mining. Finally, the QT Linking Flash work has been completed in the UK, with the code hookup for this being tackled by engineers in the LA studio.
In addition, work progressed on improving the UI Tech, with the relevant TDDs being written and a proof of concept being created for the building blocks system. Finally, the team supported the Art Team by providing a generic utilitarian branding sheet to be used within the upcoming Rest Stops among other areas.
ANIMATION
Animation tackled the implementation pass for the trained combat set of FPS AI combatants. This included enter and exits from cover as well as combat actions like peeks, reloads, blindfire, and reloads. A previs pass on the untrained combat set was also completed this month. The team took raw motion capture to compare it to the trained set, so combatants would feel distinct and stay true to their character.
The team also worked on improving the looting system and added assets to improve the general look and feel of picking up objects, boxes, and items in Squadron 42 and the Persistent Universe. Work also continued on the weapon recoil improvements. As shown in the recent ATV, the team worked with design and code to develop the look and feel of all FPS weapons.
The team also made some important strides on the Vanduul animation, creating a behavior set to provide a visual guide on how they will move and operate in Squadron 42. Player locomotion sets have been updated to work with an entity-driven system to ensure that client and server animations are exactly the same. The team also made tweaks to some of the poses to allow for better blending between animations and minimize foot sliding.
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This month has seen a similar pattern to last, with the team supporting the ongoing Mining and Scanning sprints. The effects for both are coming along at a rapid pace, improving almost daily – as evidenced by the various WIP footage seen in recent weeks.
Ship VFX received plenty of attention in May, including the luxurious Origin 600i. Work continued on weapons VFX, with visual improvements to legacy ballistic guns, as well as general fix-ups required since the conversion to weapons 2.0 was completed by the Game Code and Systems Design Teams.
Collaboration with the Graphics Team also continued, with spline emitter tech coming along nicely. This continues to open up new ideas, and is likely to prove useful in unexpected areas, such as in Quantum Travel.
GRAPHICS
The Graphics Team worked on multiple features this month, the main focus being mining, which required the expansion of the ship damage-map system to work on new types of assets. It also required completely new visuals to show the cracking and heating of rocks. This work also allowed the team to diagnose and fix some long-standing bugs that should lead to improved texture details.
The multi-resolution gas cloud work is complete, making it possible to combine several gas clouds together at different resolutions and scales. Memory, however, is still the limiting factor, so the team compressed the density fields to just 8 bits per voxel (down from 32 bits). However, the shadowing data is still too large and can’t be compressed as easily. Therefore, research has started on various forms of deep shadow maps that work in 2.5D to try and avoid the memory and performance issues associated with full 3D lighting data.
The foundations of the new multilayer shader system are finished and focus has shifted to adding visual features to the shaders. The first being a new clear coat shading model to achieve convincing paint and anodized metals – both important for high-tech materials. The next is a texture mode called height-variance blending which allows for realistic blending of natural materials (e.g. rock/sand/grass). It supports per-pixel-control of the blend and crucially works at any distance with no aliasing, which is obviously critical with the scale of the game.
Some other tasks included optimizations to the rendering in the editor, a holographic effect for use within Squadron 42, and improved temporal anti-aliasing stability.
ENVIRONMENT ART
The Environment Art Team started the final pass of the Common Element Utilitarian Hangars. The most critical aspect of this was the setup of the master material to give the artists a fully functional set of textures to pull from when taking the assets to final quality. Each piece used in the hangars will now go through its final art pass where, amongst other things, it will have its finished UVs, textures, custom normals, LODs, and physics proxies. There are lots of assets to get up to final quality, but when complete, the hangars will be considered finished from an Environment Art perspective.
Alongside this, work has been done to get future locations ready for production when the bulk of the Environment Team moves onto them later in the year.
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The QA Team continued daily maintenance of their numerous checklists as well as Subsumption, Editor, and Page Heap regression. Additionally, they took some time to be trained by the Engine Team to better understand how to interpret a callstack, which will ultimately lead to quicker and more reliable bug assignments.
A new quick smoke checklist for the client was setup to provide the Design Team with an overview for specific systems in the Persistent Universe, such as AI turrets and their functionality. With the new checklist in place, when asked for the current state of a system worked on exclusively in the DE office, QA will be able to provide information much faster.
QA has also been working closely with the Cinematics Team to provide specifically requested support and set up test levels for easier reproduction and a quicker turnaround. Testing on a potential Test Case Management Software candidate was also started to determine if this new software would allow QA to more efficiently manage and track our test cases and reports.
SYSTEM DESIGN
The team added mechanics for NPCs to use grenades to flush their opponents out of cover if they remain stationary for too long. Also, more work was done on improving the way the NPCs react to incoming grenades – they now use a navmesh to determine where they can safely escape to. Combat ships now know how to fight as proper gunships and not just fighters. For example, if a ship with numerous turrets engages you, it may fly around while its turrets track you down, as opposed to flying directly at you.
Regarding Vanduul combat, a lot of work was done to previz the way they fight. The emphasis was to make them as different from Humans as possible, so players have a completely different experience when fighting the Vanduul. The team is happy with the current results and are approaching full production for the Vanduul enemies. General population NPCs are also being experimented with as the team tests small, almost cinematic vignettes that the player can experience as they walk around major landing zones. Mining is also progressing as it approaches the bug fixing and polishing phase.
ENVIRONMENT ART
The Environment Art Team continued their push on Hurston, and the second group of ecosystems had their first pass completed. One of the newest ecosystems is the Wasteland Biome, which was first shown during CitizenCon 2017 and will cover a large part of the surface of Hurston. The team took the time to properly update the Wasteland biome to take advantage of the newest planet tech completed this year. The second biome that received proper attention this month was the Strip Mining ecosystem, which too can be found around Hurston. Lorville is also moving forward, with the artists spending their time focusing on the various areas the player will be able to visit, refining the shapes and architecture, adding materials, lights, and assets to further bring these areas to life.
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TECH ART
The Tech Art Team continued to improve the deformation algorithms and asset pipeline of the v2 character customization system. Since the underlying tech for facial/head customization is working as intended now, the focus has shifted towards polishing the corresponding assets (head morph targets, head attachments such as hair and beards, etc.). R&D work on the technical foundations for body customization of both male and female characters has begun. Besides developing suitable deformation methods, the team also needs to determine what range of body shapes they can support without introducing clipping artifacts, and which body types they want to support from an artistic perspective. Time was also spent fixing existing bugs and improving the usability of the internal character editor, Character Tool.
For FPS weapons, they supported the Gemini Light Machine Gun, which is now ready for its final review and sign off.
They also completed Tech Animation work, such as implementing multiple animations into Mannequin for the Cinematics Team, improving the Playblast Tool to speed up reviewing, and improving the binder process to map animations from MotionBuilder onto our Maya rig.
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They also completed Tech Animation work, such as implementing multiple animations into Mannequin for the Cinematics Team, improved the Playblast Tool to speed up the process of creating playblasts for reviewing purposes, and worked on improving the binder process to map animations from MotionBuilder onto our Maya rig.
AI
The AI Team worked on adjusting the AI components with the new API to allow a safer construction in different threads – it’s a fundamental step towards fully achieving Object Container Streaming. The Actor code has always been very dependent on Lua (it’s not easy to make a thread safe with good performance), so all the AI components are now being moved to either be fully C++ or Dataforge components. They also worked on a few core functionalities for Subsumption. Subsumption Missions can now define Event Callbacks: missions can receive and send Subsumption events and logic can be written to be executed in association with specific events as described by designers. This functionality is part of the overall effort to support designers in creating more modular missions, and enforce correct communication between modules that can preserve thread safety and avoid a ‘spaghetti code-like’ logic. They also extended the functionality of supporting multiple Mission Objectives for each Mission module. They continued work on improving the way ‘usables’ are defined and executed: designers can now create behavior logic associated with the different use channels of each usable type. For example, assuming there is a usable bed that might expose the following use channels: ‘Sleep’, ‘Rest’, ‘WatchTV’, ‘SitOnBed’. When an NPC uses a ‘use channel’, it will effectively use some logic written by the designers in a similar way to Subsumption functions: this allows a more modular definition of the actions allowed when interacting with a usable maintaining the context of the behavior that is currently running.
Human combat is progressing with improvements in the grenade handling during combat, so fighters can now react to incoming grenades and try to duck to reduce the damage received by explosions. Vanduul AI progress is also continuing along in the prototype phase. For Ship AI, take-offs and landings have gone through a small refactor to allow AI behaviors to utilize designer placed splines to be more robust and deliver a more cinematic effect. Work was also completed on improving the validation of the navmesh during spawning: this allows designers to easily request spawning of characters in reachable areas where there are multiple navmeshes present.
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The Lighting and Enviroment teams have been working closely to add new whitebox-level lighting to the Lorville landing zone. The goal is to start blocking in a basic mood and ensure the entire location is lit consistently without areas that are unnaturally bright/dark while maintaining visibility along the critical player path. Alongside this, they’ve been continuing work with the Rest Stop’s modular lighting. They also recently received some updated holo-advertising assets from the Props Team in the UK and started to explore how these can drastically influence the lighting and mood wherever they are placed.
As the Hangars common element starts to move into the final art stage, they’ve been experimenting with some variations of lighting for each module, which have similar benefits and drawbacks to the Rest Stops modular system. Each module must be somewhat independently lit so that it looks consistent in every configuration. They also built a new test environment for the Character Team where they can balance skin and armor assets in a completely neutral lighting scene for greater consistency across our wide range of characters.
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WEAPONS
The Weapons Team completed a full polish of the Gemini F55 Light Machine Gun, Klaus & Werner Demeco LMG, and Kastak Arms’ Scalpel sniper rifle in preparation for the 3.2 release.
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LEVEL DESIGN
The PU Level Design team spent a large amount of time working on flagship landing zones, pushing the ways in which they use procedural technology for layouts. They’re currently looking into customizing the various entry points into Lorville, as well as adding content for the immediate areas around the city. Time was spent revisiting Area18 to revamp and fully integrate it into the universe, taking advantage of the new procedural tools in place.
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CINEMATICS
The Cinematics Team worked with the Level Designers on newly created whitebox levels to implement scenes that had not yet been featured in the game. They were brought to an initial implementation stage called PreVis to give visibility on runtime length, coverage of space, as well as the environmental interaction each scene requires. The process is important so that scenes taking place on a traversal path from A to B feel properly paced when level designers lay down paths. It also gives everyone working on a level an early preview of the narrative in that specific level. Since Squadron 42 is a narrative-heavy game, getting that in as early as possible helps ensure everything will work as intended.
The Cinematic Animators have been doing R&D on a sophisticated bit of performance capture manipulation called ‘feather blending’. This technique allows drastic changes to performance capture if needed, so animators can decide from which bone to ‘feather in’ the original performance capture on top of. In addition, they can add an additional animation of him holding his pilot helmet in his left hand at his hip and dial in a certain LookAt-range, so he can look at the player. In total, that means combining 3-4 different separate clips of animation at any given time and blending them seamlessly for a convincing result. The team also went back to a level that has a large cinematic and started overhauling the planet setup and vistas to the latest workflow standards. That level also includes Squadron 42’s way of customizing your character, so work was completed on some assets that will be at the core of that process.
ENGINE
The Engine Team generally work on several areas at the same time and this month was no exception. One long term task that was completed was the refactoring of the Entity Component Scheduler. The system is responsible for managing the ‘update frequency’ of the game logic. As more and more features were added over time, its design degenerated, resulting in a hard to use system. With the refactoring complete, each aspect of the scheduler is now orthogonal to each other, making the code easier to maintain and extend. They also decoupled the ‘IN_RANGE’ and ‘IS_VISIBLE’ events from their component updates, which allows components to receive and react to those events without having their update logic depend on them. More features are planned to be added to the scheduler over time.
The team also spent time improving the threading system. For the background job manager, they added a Fiber-based system. As the system was used more and more for Object Container Streaming, they took the time to clean up all out-threading primitives. Now all those are Fiber-aware, allowing them to schedule another job when a background job is blocked and thus a more efficient resource usage. In the same code area, they adjusted the scheduler to not block on submission to improve runtime performance by preventing the main thread stalling when submitting numerous jobs simultaneously. They also gave some focus to Object Container Streaming, making the 3DEngine loading code thread safe, allowing us to load large parts of our game world in the background. They made several improvements to the shader build pipeline and infrastructure code, started work on the vertex animation processing refactor and optimization (moving it to the GPU), and continued work on the telemetry system, amongst numerous other things.
ENGINE TOOLS
The Engine Tools Team continued working on improving the general game editor stability and usability. New tools were added for designers to improve their workflows, including a new console implementation to easier parse the engine/game logging for warnings and errors, also adding better support for the massive amount of console variables and commands they currently have. Console variables and commands can now be filtered and saved out as favorites and shared between designers.
On top of that, a tool called the Window Outliner was added to make it easier for designers to setup, save, and share their favorite toolsets. Another tool, called the Universe Outliner, was added to better scale with the amount of content inside the universe, which replaces the entity outliner from Lumberyard, including additional information for Subsumption. The level layer handling was also replaced by the Layer Outliner, again for scalability and workflow improvement reasons.
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BUILD ENGINEERING
Flexibility was added for the engineers to produce QATR test builds, either by building their code changes against major builds already distributed to the company, or against their own time. This was an engineer request as it gives them more freedom when building changes and handing off for QA verification. A bug in incremental linking was fixed which allowed us to reduce our output PDB file size by almost 50%, taking it down from 2.5GB for debugging StarCitizen.exe to 1.25Gb. They put finishing touches on unifying the DevOps codebases that are used by TryBuild and the main build system, Transformer, so that there can be one umbrella that covers the continuous integration monitoring. This codebase unification also leverages the tech in the Transformer main build system, which has a more straightforward layout in designing both tasks and jobs.
VFX
The VFX Team worked closely with the Graphics Programmers, Gameplay Programmers, Designers, and Environment Artists on the resource mining feature to create an entire suite of new effects. There’s a primary mining beam which heats up and fractures the rock. There are also effects that play on the surface of the rock to show it being cracked apart. After the rock is destroyed, an explosion effect is parameterized based on how well you did; if you add too much power, you get a much larger explosion than a successful operation. After you break the rock, a secondary extraction mode uses a tractor beam to collect the minerals into your cargo hold.
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PLATFORM: TURBULENT
The team at Turbulent made some massive leaps in development for group services with several Spectrum releases to PTU, and provided platform support for the Community Team.
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On May 24th a new release of Spectrum hit the PTU. This very early patch includes a ‘Friends’ implementation, allowing you to send requests and manage your contacts. Using this early rudimentary version, the team discovered functionality bugs and system limitations, and has been refactoring code to optimize the experience.
Currently, the Spectrum Team is in sprint 4 of 4, which is all about the notifications system. The notifications system will provide the necessary alerts for receiving and sending friends requests. This is the last missing piece to get the friends system feature complete. Calling all Spectrocati, expect a full release on PTU within the month.
RSI PLATFORM
On May 25th, a new European Union Law came into effect, protecting the use of personal data. Turbulent made substantial changes on the backend side to create new tools, ensuring that CIG was compliant with the new rules that came into effect.
The Backend Team also produced new tools for the roadmap. A new Import Console has been created on the backend so that production leads can now easily import all their Jira tasks without any requirements from the Platform Team. This has made the review and publishing of the Roadmap faster and much more efficient.
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Turbulent supported the Starlifter launch, designing the page, and publishing the posts from Ciera Brun and Operation Sword of Hope. They really enjoyed working on this project as it included an exciting twist, and reading all of the community stories made it all more rewarding.
Turbulent’s Front-End and Design Teams have been working on building a page to host the FanKit. The Fankit is still being built, and will include a series of wallpapers, logos, possible 3D models, and audio. It will be an excellent tool for our community to build their personal fan projects, not to mention give out some exclusive items.
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The team launched the Knowledge Base on May 10th, and the Player Relations Team has currently built over 82 articles with FAQs, known issues in patch releases, and many other self-help articles. Based on page views since release, the team already knows that the Knowledge Base has had a positive impact on the community, which will continue as the number of articles increases. Last week when RSI Platform unexpectedly experienced server downtime, the Knowledge Base jumped into action to get a post out and inform the community.
They also released a new series of Contact Us forms that will help optimize and prioritize requests. Ultimately, this will help Player Relations react faster to urgent matters.
GROUP SERVICES
Turbulent has been asked to participate in the build of game code for the Groups services, and the Backend Team has been working furiously to build it. The team has been concentrating on an API service to setup group invitations system and the concept of leadership within a group.
The two releases of the Groups service were completed last month, which included all the necessary calls for the invitations. The system is being implemented and tested by US gameplay teams. The next iterations of the service release will include a call for group leadership.
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Taking into account player feedback and constructive input during Evocati and PTU phases, the Community Team supported a successful publish of Alpha 3.1.4 to the Persistent Universe, with improvements to Gravlev, flight controls, and more.
The public unveiling of the Crusader Industries Hercules was celebrated with a story contest where more than 500 contenders competed to win an M2 military variant. Make sure to check out all the Hercules stories, available to read on Spectrum, which feature the ship in everything from cargo runs to epic space battles.
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The team ran several screenshot contests, in concert with an Intel Streamer Promotion, giving away three Intel® Optane™900P SSDs. If you haven’t seen them already, head over to Spectrum now and check out the beautiful entries depicting the themes of space combat, scenic vistas, and lifestyle.
Also in May, another contest was held, aimed at helping new pilots jump into the verse by giving an overview of the Star Marine and Arena Commander game modes. In this contest, content creators had the chance to win game packages and leave their mark on the Star Citizen website as the winning entries will be added to the How To Play section.
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Subscribers received limited edition finishes for their Devastator shotguns this month, continuing a series of weapon finishes exclusive to subscribers and commemorating the Imperial Cartography Center.
The Community Team is excited to announce a direct and organized process for creators to invite official CIG representatives to their podcasts, videos, streams, and talk shows, as the Invite a Developer form is now live and integrated into the ticket system. Check out the FAQ to find out more.
And don’t forget: on October 10th, the entire CIG team will celebrate current and future developments of Star Citizen and Squadron 42 at the Long Center in Austin, Texas. The first wave of CitizenCon tickets is gone, but stay tuned in the coming months for further details and more chances to get tickets.
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Hello everyone,
I hope you all had a stellar weekend. The team has been hard at work and focused on the remaining tasks at hand in preparation for the release of Alpha 3.2. We’re just as eager as all of you to get this one out and explore the new content it brings.
Are you the competitive type? Maybe you want to find a way to immortalize yourself within the ‘Verse? If so, what you read next is a solid recipe for hype. The Community team has been quietly planning a wide variety of activities for you all to participate in throughout the year and into next, all coupled with some sweet prizes. I am confident when I say that we’ve got some really exciting opportunities coming for you to leave your mark in the Star Citizen universe.
To reiterate last week’s message, CitizenCon 2948 tickets will be available again in the near future if you haven’t picked one up already. Make sure to follow us on Twitter, or subscribe to our newsletter to find out when the next phase of ticket sales will be available.
With that, let’s see what’s going on this week:
Monday is another all-new episode of Calling All Devs, this time with questions about life support, updates to the Phoenix and Freelancer, and some sort of signal interrupti—
Tuesday will introduce another News Update feature, providing new fictional insight on the Star Citizen universe. As a reminder for the lore fanatics out there, you can see the 2018 lore schedule here.
Fast forward to Thursday, get ready for an all new episode of Around the Verse, this time focusing on a PU update, weapons, and another fresh segment of Bugsmashers!.
If ATV wasn’t enough for you, fear not. Thursday will also bring one of my favorite pieces of content we release: the Monthly Studio Update. Prepare your kettle and get ready for another information overload.
Lastly, make sure to tune in on Friday for another episode of Reverse the Verse, broadcast live on our Star Citizen Twitch channel. Stay tuned for further information about who our special guests will be, what time we’ll go live, and keep an eye on Spectrum for the Questions Thread!
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We are constantly amazed by the contributions made by the Star Citizen community. Whether it’s fan art, a cinematic, a YouTube guide, or even a 3D print of your favorite ship, we love it all! Don’t forget to submit your content to our Community Hub for a chance at seeing it here!
Every week, designers, engineers and other developers from our five offices around the world answer backer questions submitted on SPECTRUM and voted on by YOU. This week, we address questions on life support, updates to the Phoenix and Freelancer and some sort of signal interrupti—
You can submit your questions for consideration in future episodes of Calling All Devs here.
Every week, designers, engineers and other developers from our five offices around the world answer backer questions submitted on SPECTRUM and voted on by YOU. This week, we address questions on why ships come dirty, the status of player-facing ship modularity and UI visibility updates.
You can submit your questions for consideration in future episodes of Calling All Devs here
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Hello Citizens,
Last Friday, MISC reflects on its 50 year legacy and looks to the future of speed, both on and off the track, with the release of limited-edition Razor chassis. You can still pick up Warbond versions for a limited time here.
Help us make the How to Play section of the Star Citizen website even better, starting with Star Marine and Arena Commander. Take part in the contest for a chance to win prizes and leave your mark on the official Star Citizen website.
Lastly, CitizenCon 2948 tickets will be available again in the near future if you haven’t picked one up already. Make sure to follow us on Twitter, or subscribe to our newsletter to find out when the next phase of ticket sales will be available.
With that, let’s see what’s going on this week:
Monday is a holiday for US and UK offices, but we’re still releasing a brand new episode of Calling All Devs. Each and every week, developers across our 5 offices answer community-voted questions from our Spectrum Thread.
Tuesday is lore day! The Lore Team will publish another in-fiction story to help cure your craving for more Star Citizen lore. Check out previously published lore posts here.
Thursday, sees a Ship Shape with a focus on the Aegis Eclipse, as well as an exciting new Squadron 42 Project Update in the newest episode of Around the Verse.
Lastly, make sure to tune in on Friday at 12PM PDT / 7PM UTC for another episode of Reverse the Verse, broadcasted live on our Star Citizen Twitch channel. Stay tuned for further information about who our special guests will be and keep an eye on Spectrum for the Questions Thread!
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We are constantly amazed by the contributions made by the Star Citizen community. Whether it’s fan art, a cinematic, a YouTube guide, or even a 3D print of your favorite ship, we love it all! Don’t forget to submit your content to our Community Hub for a chance at seeing it here!
Cloud Imperium Games bietet für das kommende Weltraum-MMORPG Star Citizen ein neues Paket an. Dieses enthält 117 Raumschiffe und diverse Extras. Für dieses Paket müsst ihr satte 27.000 Dollar bezahlen. Kaufen könnt ihr es euch aber nicht einfach so,…
50 years is a major milestone, traditionally commemorated by making adventurous, brave, and occasionally reckless decisions. Choosing to try new experiences, opening life’s throttle and seeing where it takes us.
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Some may refer to this as a mid-life crisis, but here at MISC we embrace it as an expression of individuality and vitality.
In 2898 the New Horizon Speedway opened on Green, ushering in what many consider the modern era of the Murray Cup. That same year, a MISC ship set a time on the new course that is yet to be bested. That ship, a Daedalus mkVIII, didn’t end up bringing the cup home for MISC but it forever associated the company with star racing, and paved the way for Trevor Yuman’s eventual victory in the now-iconic Razor.
Five decades later, MISC is still pushing the boundaries of innovation. As we celebrate the 50th anniversary of that record run on the New Horizon, MISC reflects on its legacy and looks to the future of speed, both on and off the track, with the release of these limited-edition Razor chassis.
“The New Horizon run? That was way before To-Ko shook things up with the integration of Xi’an tech, but those late model Daedalus could almost be considered proto-Razors. They introduced a lot of the features and innovations that we’d go on to perfect in the modern models, including an early version of the Proteus system. It was, frankly, way ahead of its time. Nowadays even Origin ships have adaptive intakes, but fifty years ago that was seriously radical stuff. So, with the anniversary of New Horizon and MISCs historic run looming, we figured we should see how far we could really push the Razor frame.“
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The Razor EX is made for those looking to maintain high speeds and low profiles. Outfitted with cutting-edge signature-reducing materials, the EX gives you the jump on the competition, keeps you off their radar, and keeps them on their toes.
With the LX, MISC engineers pushed the chassis to its limits, resulting in a supercharged ship capable of a mind-bending top speed and unparalleled acceleration. The overclocked engine will leave your competition sucking fumes right out of the gate.
Available to the public for a limited time, these ships allow any Citizen to harness MISC’s high speed thrills, taking the spirit of Murray Cup racing off the track and into their own backyard.
“As a kid I always wanted to race in the Murray Cup. Growing up on Kampos, I was immersed in the culture of star racing from a very early age, and by the time I was a teenager I was obsessed. I idolized the greats, obviously – my room was plastered with posters of legends like Red Bakshi and Cane Martin, and in my dreams, I felt the thrill of unadulterated speed and the rush of the adoring masses cheering me on to victory, and the cup. But that’s all they were. Dreams. I grew up, took down my racing posters, got a job at a tech corp and did the normal adult thing. I was good at it, and I was relatively happy, but deep down inside, I still longed for the chase. Now, at 50 years young, even though a career in racing is a distant might-have-been, thanks to the MISC Razor LX, I’ve finally got my speed fix. Flying at full throttle, I’m right back there in those childhood dreams, chasing glory with the Murray Cup legends of days gone by.“
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Some may ask, why would I need so much speed, power, and exotic tech in my hangar? Here at MISC we ask, why not? You never know where adventure’s winds may blow, and with these unrivaled machines, you’ll be ready to take on whatever new challenges and opportunities come your way.
Life is short, live courageously with MISC and join us in celebrating 50 amazing years of innovation, adventure, and speed. Get in your Razor and start flying today.
A small number will be made available under the Warbond program, featuring unique serial numbers, to commemorate MISC’s legacy of innovation.
The Warbond pledges include sequentially numbered limited edition ships. These serial numbers will appear on your ship in-game in a forthcoming patch.
Writer’s Note: Part one of The Knowledge of Good and Evil was published originally in Jump Point 2.9.
Street make you rat, no choice i’ give. Know tha’ truth, an’ live.
Tha’ first rhyme ‘m learn on Bazaar Street. Truth is, street don’ owe null thing ta no one. Jus’ livin’ is debt ta the street. Street come ta collect wheneve’ i’ will. Null stop it. Rat like me got start tha street young. Real young. Innocent? Maybe. Ain’ null long till know ’m poor. So learnin’ suits and comp. Gear ’m fixin is stole most-like, sold on tha Black. My work done clean? Maybe. Know what a know neve’ gone get me none place. Know ‘nough ta stay live. Null know ta much cause that kill rat. ’m rat, an street owns me.
Got bitter in hole like Bazaar Street slum. Got come out tunnels and face sky. Got “practical” after ticks. Me? Got two skills that gear rats has: one skill ta learn tech as ’m take i’ apart, two skill an ‘magination an guess how supposed ta work as a put thing back right. Tha’ suit come from ‘facturer ain’t never heard of? ‘Sure Boss, can fix.’ Tha’ be the way, ta live on Bazaar Street. Or ya die.
Only best like ’m get be “gear rats.” Bazaar bosses won’ get rats in if you ain’ good at business. Rats no’ good at business if ‘em null learn gear. An ‘em can’ none learn tha gear if ‘em weren’ into tha Bazaar. So how ta got good, make an ‘mpression an get be gear rat? Break rules, none get caught, an make good on i’.
Wasn’ gonna be “nothing” workin’ scrap or debt slave. Rats got risk some. Hav’ ta. Get caugh’ breakin’ rules an be off ta slavers null time. Find way pass guards an through holes ta watch from corner an learn business. Them bosses knew we’s there, sure. Them know how Bazaar work. Got caught once time. Guards a‘most gave me ta pack creepers ta watch. “Pay due and the street might none eat you.”
Doin’ a’right as gear rat. Got clients who know me. Some who want more out o’ me ain’ gon’ give em. An’ ‘m only 10 ticks. Sick like creepers them, bu’ pay creds for fixin’. So ’m ‘fix’ ta bazaar shop ‘bout now. Null work fa full rotate. Boss gon’a rage some maybe.
Glint this lady. She been in eve’ fix shop and hack stand down da line, b’for she get ta Boss Dirk shop an me in i’.
“I’m looking for a fixer.” Da lady say.
“Ya found one. Hells lady, you found dem all. Glint i’ all down tha row. Some’n tells you need special fixer an ’m best here ‘round. Wha’ you need?”
She look ‘round, “Shouldn’t I speak to the shopkeeper, young one?”
Lady don’ know then. First time in Bazaar, maybe. EZ creds.
“Boss is out. ’m here, an ’m you fixer. You want somethin or just gawkin’ at street rats? ’m best fixer in Bazaar. None need proof. You got need lady or jus’ suckin’ O2?”
She come up with an old comp glass out her clothes. Almost like lady dress from fash vids but coat like. ‘m got good eyes an ain’ seen no place big ‘nough ta hold that comp. Take scan on it quic’.
“Tha’ oldie? Ain’ even none facture mark on i’. Deal ta sells ya newa one Dirk has in shop.”
Craz Oldie none bite. “No, young one. I need this exact device repaired. So I suppose I’ll have to go elsewhere if all you can do is sell and not fix.”
That some barter talk. From this Oldie? None first time in Bazaar, locked on that now.
“Don’ work for none-names or ‘nonymous. What you tag youself?” Put out my hand to seal i’.
“I’m called Mother Superior by most.”
“Got,” said me an grabbed her hand to seal le-git deal. “’m can fix your comp Mom Super. Hold one.”
So went on i’ and done. Lady watchin’ whole time. Like street rat tryin’ ta learn tech. Simp damge on one board. Old damge some. Othe’s fixe’s prob look lock at i’ an done miss i’.
Lady look an’ gawk some. “I looked a hundred times and never saw that. How did you see such a small thing and know to fix it?”
“Seen once on board like i’ some ‘bout one tick back. Null forget wha’ got once. ‘m bes’ fixer here lady. Know i’ truth.” ‘m got hand out ta get paid.
Lady pays, real creds. An she made outbounds real slow. Glint her spottin tha shop few count. More an once. Craz Oldie that. Boss say late’a tha’ Mom Super is’a Sis-ter. Info Trader. Neve seen one trade none. Sis-ters trade kine’a info Rat don’t need. Thin’s like got rats killed. Things maybe boss gon’ need know.
Craz Oldie, white some in da head hair. ‘m think she know ‘m got fixin for wha’ she gots broke. All razzy show ta go all dem other shops. Knows she gonna get me to work in and on i’. Ain’ null rhyme ta tha razzy show she do. Wha’ ain’ no rhyme for is dead danger. So I glint an lock her in my head. Gon bring Craz with her sum tick. Rat’s gotta sure gut on dat.
She come back aft’ seven day. Got bring me comp, buying favs maybe.
“Wha’ ‘m do with tha’ old comp lady?” Oldie comp, better than I ever had. Old like some comps and gear I fix on.
“Whatever you wish I’d suppose. You seem to have a knack for such things.” Oldie gab like Up’s do. Lookin at me as ‘m null take it.
“Got paid for fixin’ tha comp ya brought last. What this buyin’?”
“An investment in your talents is how I see it.”
Boss Dirk got tell me once tha’ investment means long time debt. Some neve’ collec’. Some collect on i’ big. Null know which when i’ come. Them got risk some. Got profit? Maybe.
Aft’ long think ‘m take i’.
Mom Super don’ say null else. Jus’ smile. Know risk when got some, but lady rub i’ in with tha smilin’.
Casey Gang glint tha comp an Mom Super makin outbound aft’. Should’a ‘magined thems ta come an take tha comp. Boss Dirk only protect his gear rats when tha shop’s open. Nights long som’times. Near snuffed me when Casey boys took i’. Tha chunk one ben’ ove’ me ta gab some.
“You should know better than to try and have nice things.” ‘m got spat on then. “You’ll never be an Up. You’ve got a debt to pay and this street owns you. You’ll always be a street rat.”
Half swole, dim eye an hungry ‘s how got to bosses shop nex’ light up. Boss Dirk don’ say no-thin’. Night business, that. Rat business. Think some ‘bout Mom Super “investment” an’ long debt ‘m got. ‘m know it when ‘m take tha comp. Turned on me boost quick tha risk.
Why tha hell can’ craz Up leave rat like me ‘lone?
Stop tha’ b’for i’ got bigger. Why’s get a rat killed if ‘m look deep. ‘m try an clean in tha sink an’ snatch glint of me in tha reflec.
“Tha color blue and black on bruise look shiney.” ‘m think.
Think then, tha’ blue on black look shiner on them. Smile’n hurt. Tha’ didn’ stop it. Twistin’ trouble back on itself ‘nother skill rats got know no matter what. Learnin’ tha’ figures ta how long ta live ya might got. Slum luck, razzy Up in RSI gear come in tha shop jus’ then. ‘m face all bust an hard ta gab. Up see an went an called out Boss man ‘bout roughen rats.
“Wasn’ Boss” ‘m say.
Up’s none copy wha’ rat saying. Got rage some aft’ look me. Up walk out on Boss Dirk. Boss Dirk don’ ev’n look at me, “Go on walkabout and I don’t want to see you till you make it right.”
Like hearing death, that.
None be in the shop cause ‘m lost him creds. Maybe big creds. Know what game Bazaar boss playin’. Got make up the creds, street debt that, or null work shop more. Work is Safe-ty. Gets rat trade bits, tools. Gear rats snuffed if got null shop an boss. So got ‘magine ta make cred back, boost fast.
‘m got system ta make good. Priorities. Lock wha’ work pays an’ who ‘m owe wha’. Neve owe none long. Nose out ‘thers business until them got in mine. Neve’ start fight. Finish ‘em hard if them come.
Got debt ta street an know tha’ good. Know null ask questions. Know ta dodge tha creeper. Know drugs kill some, but bein’ desperate be better at killing. Know ta steal fast, run an null fight, cheat fair, deal double an null trus’. Trus’ sa kinna deal get you killed while ‘em all smiles. Slums got say, “Killed by kindness.” Learn tha’ boost quick.
P‘rent leave them crier kid on tha streets at five ticks old. Mine did. Tha’ when a ‘come rat an could beg ‘n steal my live. Same tick p’rent don’ have ta take tha crier ta Gov medics none more. Gov Medics give shots and make sure rats got ID. Gov Blues got to know who they arresting is. Gov cares bout lookin like they care. Lookin like Up’s don’ ignore packs a rats ‘round Bazaar.
When ‘m five ticks them camp up and in ‘gether. Crawl tunnels. Oldies be too big ta get through. ‘s when my learn tha rhymes. Street rat learnin’ them. “Learn tha rhymes, live long times.” Youngie’s makes safe camps in tunnels. Safe nights, mostly. Seen my first murder at seven ticks, over pride. Honor worth killin for when rat got null else.
When ‘m nine ticks, beat some seven tick with mu slag cause them stole my las’ food. Two ticks or three more an seven, you gettin’ too big too ta get in tunnels. Ones dat stay, after them “grow up”? Them dead. Might find ‘em after. Maybe long aft’. Ones dat got stuck tryin to get out da wors’. Ain’ none soul in ’em eyes. Null.
Rats ride rails some time. Mos’ runners on Up business. Gov Blues that glint rats ‘ll lock on an then drop off long as ya don’ spook. Been here rails most two hours null-stop. Even seen one Sister, like Mom Super. Jus’ two Up’s on this rail now. One look’n like them wanna live Bazaar style, but like Up mus’ think i’ like.
Ain’ found null mark ta pick till this ripe come on. Up punk got loose pocks an ‘m scan cred chit on him. Bad idea them chits. Thems way ta buy easier on the Black an no get flagged by central. Or get picked.
Nex rail stop come up now an make my pick. Least try ta. Hands in tha marks pock an gots pain on my wrist. Aint none feel like it. Know quick what is. Honey pot. Gov Blue sting, an fell for honey. Blue grab me an latch on my shirt.
“Well what do we have here? And why is your hand in that pocket do you think?” He gabbed.
Got my words workin pas’ pain. “Glint lock ya chit gonna fall out an gon make sure i’ don’ Mr. Up.”
“Mr. Up is it? Not Mr. Blue? I’m out here to catch scabs like you. Either you’re a dumb street rat or you think I’m a sap.” Him eye scan’n me at that. “You know I’ve caught you red handed. That’s a conviction right there.” Lookin’ a my hand. Stuck in the Blue’s pock. Made ta catch a snatch like ‘m be.
Know solid ‘m on lock down. Null shake Blue’s Vid and Gab. Ticks in pris. Pris means knowin’ too much. Neve’ come back, rats tha’ got pris ticks.
Got try juke this. Heard some Blues barter. “What i’ take ta not be red handed.”
Blue come real close. “Well now, since you ask.” he say in hush say. Real close.
Don’ eve’ think as I hit tha Blue. Ain’t got my slag, none on rails. Hit him same as any creeper. Then pain come. Blue’s suit lights come on. He din’ have his Vid rig capt’ing till now. Think ‘m deep in now. An he shocks me with his spark-stick. An world goes black.
* * *
Got none lock on how got ta Judge time. Most blur. Shock? Maybe. Craz Oldie come outa none-where. Like lady didn’ do ‘nough ta rat like me ‘ready. Thinkin’ maybe like she know how street works. She come in an on it.
“Wha’ else you wan’ from me, Oldie? Ain’ got none else!” Aft’ I say it Judge tell me null ta “out-burst” ‘gain.
Mom Super only look me once. ‘m stand there cuffs on an Judge gabbin at her like ‘m understan’. Craz Oldie goes on i’ hard. “This child has rights, Your Honor, and though guilty of a petty crime, this one is the victim of a crime much more heinous . . .” Gabbed in Up talk for me ta Judge. Fel’ like hours she gab at him. An got some Vid too. Can’ jist half it. An Judge got quiet some. Rats know when an Up got quiet some’ bad wrong.
Then i’ come, “The child is remanded into your custody and an investigation will be opened.”
Krac Krac
Courthouse Blue got my cuffs off. ‘an Mom Super take my hand like sealin’ deal. Leg-it.
“Come along, young one.” She say. An I got go with her Blue say.
Understand sealed deals. Le-git. Some-else callin’ shots an ‘m jus’ rat.
* * *
Neve’ been this deep in bad ‘fore. “Ride the wave, you be okay. Don figh’ back, or be dead fas’” Got ride i’ an’ Trip ta tha Hall ‘s all blur an flashes some. Think nev been this far from Bazaar ‘for. Got ta i’ an all I has ‘s me and gov clothes. Indust kind door closin behind us. More like wall movin. ‘Bout time i’ close looked like just wall. Hallway we in ‘s dim lit. Tried lock where door is an what’s ‘round. So I won’ lose it. Doin’ i’ maked me stare.
Lady catch me at it.
“The only way in or out of here, young one.” She say.
Lady know how ta make you feel “at home.” That what she’d called it. On the rails ride. Said it’s “home.” Cage? Maybe. I’m in deep grav well. Null booster. I got the one-in one-out as challenge an half threat. Well, would call i’ threat if didn’ think tha oldie was tellin’ truth. From tha look, place been built out the hull an old cryo-sleep. Kind ta carry all the gear, raw mat’erial an people ta build station an colony tha world. Some these been used. Once, long time gone. Jump tech made ‘em dead tech ‘fore some reached their destin.
Is’n small hallway. Got be least five meter tall an three wide. Hall’s brown an dus’y. Dus’ floatin’ the air. Light come from clear roof an some non-stan wall tech. Eve’y two meters pillar come out the wall some. Lady starts down hall leavin me. I ain’ realize till ‘m left some. Cause I starin’ more. Got catch ta her an made I didn’ lose lock to tha door in my head.
“I’ll show you to your room and where the meal hall and necessary are.” Mom Super sayin’ like tour Vid or some.
“Is ‘m prisoner here? An guards?” Got ask. Got get tha lay here.
Craz Oldie ‘most choked on laugh.
“Ha! A prisoner are you?” Lookin at me over her shoulder. “No, young one. No guards to bribe here. No chains. Not even a mean look from your fellow inmates, as there are none. Just me and my fellow Sisters.”
Like she read minds ‘bout bribes the guards. I got quick feel wrong for asking. Why’s she lookin at me tha’ like? Got my eye out a lookin’ at hers. Eye scanned blank wall I could find. “Ain’ this punishment, right? I got caught bustin’ up that Blue an now I gotta delta.”
“None of that street slang here, young one. The word is ‘change,’ not ‘delta.’ The magistrate owed me a favor and released you to me under the condition that I maintain custody of you until your majority. So you are under my watch, yes. A prisoner? Hardly. You will find all the things here you will need to live and, if you so choose, learn.”
She don’ say more for ‘while. I got some wha’ she gabbed but i’ don’ copy.
“Ahh here we are.” She stop nex’ ta door look like metal sticking out. She pull on tha metal with her hand an i’ opened. A’hind i’ ‘s room with chairs an table. Walls right an left got four more doors.
“The second on the left will be yours, young one.” She said.
“Mine wha’?”
“Your room, of course.”
“Like shop?”
Some’ mus’a mean somethin’ ta tha craz old lady. Like she got dus’ blinked an rubbed her eyes.
“Of course. How could I be so foolish. This is obviously not something you’re used to. Each one of us here has our own place to sleep and have our own things.” She smiled like hidin’ think.
We walk to the second left door an open it. I glint in tha place. Rooms bright. None like tha hall. Pair stan’ lights on ceilin’. Desk, chair at tha desk, an comp on tha desk. Jus like the one Casey Gang got took from me. Mom Super point ta ‘nother short table.
“This will be your bed. I hope you find it to your liking.” She say i’ smiling at me. Big think ‘hind them eyes now.
“You mean I get cot like tha Up folk?”
Why I got feel wrong for asking ‘nother question? Null trying ta make Craz Oldie cry. She just was. I’m none gonna let this get beyond me. “Get out your depth, get dead.” That the way things work an look like gettin’ close. Got get handle on it. Old lady sittin on the cot an just lookin at me walkin around. Makin I got what this oth’ small room for. Two doors on i’ an pipe at the top. Some things hanging from tha pipe. Strange hook things. Trying not ta look close at ‘em an get caught starin’. Made over ta tha comp on the desk. Wanted lay hands on i’ an over since I locked on it. Don wan’a giveway that too fas’. Gear rat knows tha’ much abou’ business. Neve give too much ‘way. Is’n old as i’ look. Tap tha switch ta turn i’ on. Got greet by blinkin error lights ‘long the edge. Know this types, local fab. Lights come same order, ‘lways. Pre-boot got stuck. I go in an on it.
Pop tha case secure clip on tha left edge.
Run finger ‘long tha top an add pressure as I twist tha top half counter-clock.
* * *
My hand reached ta my tool belt. Lookin for contact bridgers pass tha anti-tamp sec switch. Hand missed. Got stop. Don feel the tab metal. My hand nev miss.
Look down ta my left hand. Ones supposed to got that tab tool I need. Ain’ got my belt. Come ta me realz I ain’ eve’ in my own clothes. ‘m in somewhere wreck old ship . . .
An someone behind me.
Scream comes, null stoppin’ it. Long an hard an made old lady jump. i’ was tha lady a’hind me. She come up ta see what I’m doing. Got caught in wantin’ ta work on i’ an lost my ‘wareness. Los’ track surroundin’s. Let someone get ‘round behind. Wasn’ her wrong. I broke street rule an rhyme. “Back ta wall or them take all.” So you don get mugged, or creeper on you, or get got by slavers or just ‘cause.
Jump up from tha chair leavin tha begin’ work behind an ran tha three steps ta tha’ smaller room. Duck in an close tha door. Dark. Dark can be good an can be bad. This is good. Got four walls an only one vector in. I know what was ‘round me. I’d knew when I saw i’ that this was my ‘secure’ when things went. A’ways gota have secure. If the Gov come on round up. If gangs got bad war. If druggies got them hands on some new. That when eve’ rat who knows street goes secure. Sometime you go ta secure an find som else there. Some secure ain’ good an you get caught out an’ways. A’ways got have at leas’ one.
This is mine. Now I need ta stable an find out. I tried to get my breath down. Don’ want pass out. Breath hard an you pass out on street. All the CO2 dump from tha scrapworks were at the streets near Bazaar Street. Breath hard an ya pass out sure. Tha’ level tha odds ‘tween tha street rats an tha oldies in fight or chase.
Null thing do but wait till pain come. A’ways does. I got fast breath. Stupid me ta got that way. CO2 hurt ‘ll kill fast some. Tha zone, fog CO2 tha’ collects ‘round tha’ cluster shops an alleys tha’ are all I know.
Pain neve’ comes. Tha’ means I’m pas’ tha zone. Tha’ hits me square an hard. I’m shiverin’ but i’ wasn’ cold. For dark as i’ is, like in tha hall i’ warm dark with red and orange colors too.
“Are you all right, young one?” Oldie ask through tha door.
“Fine, lady!” I got shout back.
“That’s good, dear.” She say back through tha door. “And you can call me Mother Superior whenever you like.”
I don’ remember fallin sleep.
I waked up screamin though.
Tha’ happen twice in week one bein’ here. Sleep in tha closet-room got so warm feels like was somethin’ on top me. Aft’ second time like tha’ I left tha door open some bit, i’ let me see out into tha room too.
“Seeing what way someone could come at you from was good.” ‘s what I thought.
Sometimes I scream so loud i’ wakes all tha Sisters near with me. Maybe i’ woke more othe’s but I don’ leave ta find out. Neve asked. Didn’ care, what I told myself. Can’ say ‘m ‘mbarrassed an didn’ wan’a look weak.
Got clothes now that didn’ itch. Can sleep night an null wake up coughin. Got food 3 times day.
I’m in deep slag.
Tha angle hasn’ come yet. Can’ eve’ see tha angle them Sisters playin’ to. Been ‘while an i’ start ta come clear tha’ Mom Super an ‘em Sisters want me in debt deep so I never get out. “Honor slave” like, cheap an EZ. So debt tha’ work for rest my life won’ pay back my owed.
‘m got ‘most dead screwed.
Mom Super come ‘fore an walk me ta tha meal hall. Theres chairs ‘nough for ‘round hundred in tha meal hall. Sisters only fill ‘bout three fourths it. Mom Super got me sit by her ‘cause that way I wouldn’ be crowd-in with some Sister or come up on like she had on me. Clothes ‘m got eve’ got pocket ‘nough ta snatch food back ta room. Mom Super neve’ caugh’ me. Rat neve’ know when food gone got rare.
Tried count eve’ time I ate food. i’ got more an more. Couldn’ pay that much back. Couldn’ not eat it. Real food hard got mos’ times. Breakfast some toastbread an paste an cheese.
Soup lunch with cracker an’ plate real vegetable cooked in oil. My first real vegs that. I ate food paste sometime on at meal hall but eve’ tha’ was paste with flavor in i’ an came with cracker an cheese. Tha real food got tha kick though. Only fool rat turn down real food. If they gon’ hit me with bill I couldn’ pay, i’ gon’ be on full stomach.
Full stomach. “‘m got soft.” Had say i’ out ta make i’ real.
On street rats only got full stomach on spec days. Like when Gov paste dispenser malfunctioned. Or cargo food crashed near. Couldn’ sell tha goods no more so we rats got eat real tha’ time. Sick for days aft’. Couldn’ handle all that real food.
Now I got real eatin’ eve’ day. Warm of i’ gone out. Or may jus’ didn’ have ta fight chill here. Don’ matter none way. “Loss ya edge an you got dead.” ‘m get soft an got ta fight.
Got my plan to make good too. First got grab up tha bits tools made out some scrap, tha food got hid under tha bed, an all the clothes. Second gotta outbound my room got pas’ them doors an then to tha wall door. Or where I’m lock i’ ta be. Got tools ta get pas’ it. Got find tha control box. Null hard. Simp that. Pop tha door an out.
None need detail figured. ‘s long as got ‘magination I’m gon’ got this. An got my honor back mine aft’. ‘m none gon’ be prisoner an neve’ slave. Let ‘em take my rep an say I don’ pay debts. I’m gon’ be free.
Time make my out.
A’most ‘sleep when I figure late i’ is. Gettin’ up an an got my things out ‘s lot more work than my practice. Opened tha door ta my room null makes sound but tha’ one into tha hall ‘s tricky.
Got i’ jus’ open ‘nough ta squeeze an pull my gear through. Risky ta try an close tha darn door ‘gain. If I wrong, it might wake up tha whole place. Jus’ lef’ i’ part open tha’ way. Gon’ be obvious ta a’one tha’ scan it. I’m be long gone then.
Sneak-move down tha halls. Heart pound’in like hammer. I come up on tha scratch an ding tha’ give ‘way where door come out in tha hall. Scan tha wall ta find control box. Foun’ place where control should be. Near tha floo. All’s in i’ relay module. Like for remote. Ain’ doin’ much ta help ‘less I got tha code or find tha oth’ end tha link.
Tha’s bad news. Could be an’where. Like tha library that I couldn’ go in or outside where’m tryin’ go but can’ get. Got search eve’where an tha’ means ‘m gon’ get caught sure. An I ain’ eve start tha work ta bypass secure tha’ be on it! ‘M deeper in i’ an null way out, lock sure.
I jump ‘cause tha door start open all on ‘s own. Rumbled an rack some an stop ‘bout half open. Blink tha dus’ out eyes tryin ta figure how tha’ happened. Null one outside. Blink mo’ dus an thought abou’ it. Miracle? Maybe, but rats none got tha’ luck.
Out my instinct I turn ‘round.
Mom Super standing three meters ‘way. She got mobiGlas on an up. Prob’y use ta open tha door. Craz Oldie lookin’ right at me.
“I wondered when you would make your first try for the door, young one. I’m actually quite surprised it took so long.” Mom Super voice cut air like glass now. “You look prepared. That’s good. You may even have a plan. Planning and patience. Strong qualities for one so young to have.”
“Wha’ you wan’?” I ask like she some kin’a spook.
“To give you a choice, young one. Choosing is a sacred thing to us; In it we are free. It is obvious you have not felt as free as you truly are.” She say back.
“Wha’ deal you got?” I say more sure ‘m in barter now. Barter ‘m got, solid.
“I mean that you have a choice. You may leave and make the 20 kilometer trek back to the scrap yards and Bazaar and that life which you know, or you may stay and learn what the streets cannot teach you. What they do not want you to know.”
‘s not real deal, that. Thought tha’ get ta here been long but ain’ thought i’ 20 k-meters. I had ‘nough food for day, maybe two. Got caught by null knowing ‘nough. Rookie mis’ake that.
20 k-meters. Trouble still with Boss Dirk in tha Bazaar when got there. An empty stomach.
“None much choice.” I said out aft’ I think i’. Mom Super smile sad a’ me.
“But it is a choice. One I offer you because I am a Sister of this Hall before I am your caretaker.” She say i’ slow like.
‘m none buyin’ it. “You haven’ show me wha’ angle ya playin’. Maybe ya jus’ makin’ me fat an you high dollar slaver an’ all. How ‘m know!”
“You must be free to choose or I am not worthy to be a Sister, let alone the Mother Superior of these many here. We can give you what you need and more if you stay.”
“I know right. Debt ‘s debt.” Eve’ rat know that.
She stop cold. “You think that you are incurring a debt by staying here?”
“Ain’ I? Wha’ I’m suppose think? An I see one an’ ‘m null gon’ jus’ be here an’ . . . null tha’ . . . I won’ be your slave!” Start lookin for way out tha hall ta secure.
I stop cause Mom Super raise her hand. Slow like. Like she do ta quiet tha meal hall ‘fore meal. Hadn’ expected her ta be calm like tha’.
“If I gave a way to repay your debt, would you stay?”
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Hello Citizens,
Over the years, the Star Citizen community has enjoyed the opportunity to interact with CIG employees in a variety of unique ways. We’re now excited to offer a direct and organized process for creators to invite official CIG representatives to their podcasts, videos, streams, and talk shows. Head over to our FAQ to learn more.
Help us make the How to Play section of the Star Citizen website even better, starting with Star Marine and Arena Commander. Take part in the contest for a chance to win prizes and leave your mark on the official Star Citizen website.
Lastly, if you haven’t picked up a ticket for CitizenCon 2948, we still have Standard Access tickets available here. Join us at the Long Center, in Austin, Texas, for a full day of presentations and interactions, exploring the current and future developments in Star Citizen and Squadron 42.
With that, let’s see what’s going on this week:
Monday is another all-new episode of Calling All Devs, this time with questions about animations, VTOL changes, linking multiple quantum jumps as waypoints, Death of a Spaceman and the future of a potential career as a capital ship navigator. You won’t want to miss this one.
Tuesday is lore day! The Lore Team will publish another in-fiction story to help cure your craving for more Star Citizen lore. Check out previously published lore posts here.
Thursday, we’ll receive an update on the latest developments in the PU, and talk about the Legacy Armor in an all-new episode of Around the Verse. The embedded Loremaker’s Guide to the Galaxy will explore the lore, science and behind-the-scenes decisions involved in the design of the Osiris System.
Lastly, make sure to tune in on Friday at 12PM PDT / 7PM UTC for another episode of Reverse the Verse, broadcasted live on our Star Citizen Twitch channel. Stay tuned for further information about who our special guests will be and keep an eye on Spectrum for the Questions Thread!
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We are constantly amazed by the contributions made by the Star Citizen community. Whether it’s fan art, a cinematic, a YouTube guide, or even a 3D print of your favorite ship, we love it all! Don’t forget to submit your content to our Community Hub for a chance at seeing it here!
Cloud Imperium Games hat sich wieder mit einer neuen Folge der Around-the-Verse-Video-Reihe zum kommenden Weltraum-MMORPG Star Citizen gemeldet. In dieser Folge dreht sich alles um das neue Schiff Vanduul Blade, den Kiosk, über den ihr euer Schiff…
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Hello Citizens,
Last week, we introduced the Crusader Hercules to the lineup of ships you’ll come across while exploring the Star Citizen universe. The entire Hercules family excels in numerous military, civilian, and humanitarian aid applications. If you’re looking to discover more information about the Hercules, you can head over to our Q&A Spectrum thread to ask your burning questions.
Also, if you havn’t picked up a ticket for CitizenCon 2948, we still have Standard Access tickets available here. See a live presentation from Chris Roberts, and meet the team behind the game. We’ll also have plenty of activities and demonstrations around the venue, throughout the day to keep you entertained. We can’t wait to see you all there!
Today sees a brand new episode of Calling All Devs, the show answering the questions asked and voted on by you, the Star Citizen community. This week, we address questions on the party system, scanning ranges, cargo encumbrance, and more.
On Tuesday, the Lore Team has prepared another original piece of content, providing new fictional insight on the Star Citizen universe. If you’re looking to fully immerse yourself, these are definitely for you.
Every Thursday, we welcome an all new episode of Around the Verse. This week, not only are we going to dive into Shop Item Kiosks, but we’ll also release a Vanduul Blade themed Ship Shape segment as a special treat, no summoning thread required!
Lastly, make sure to tune in on Friday at 9AM PDT / 4PM UTC for another episode of Reverse the Verse, broadcasted live on our Star Citizen Twitch channel. This week, we’ll continue the discussion of Shop Item Kiosks and the Vanduul Blade as seen on Around the Verse.
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We are constantly amazed by the contributions made by the Star Citizen community. Whether it’s fan art, a cinematic, a YouTube guide, or even a 3D print of your favorite ship, we love it all! Don’t forget to submit your content to our Community Hub for a chance at seeing it here!
Im Rahmen eines neuen Entwickler-Videos sprechen einige Mitarbeiter von Cloud Imperium Games über einige Aspekte des Weltraumspiels Star Citizen. In dieser Episode kommt unter anderem der Systems Designer Jonny Jacevivius zu Wort, um ein das…
Das Team von Cloud Imperium Games hat kürzlich eine neue Ausgabe von "Around the Verse" zu Star Citizen veröffentlicht. Darin sprechen Sandi Gardiner, Chris Roberts und mehrere Mitarbeiter des Studios über den aktuellen Stand der Entwicklung des Sci-Fi…
This week’s episode features a Star Citizen project update, takes a look at the development of Service Beacons, and welcomes Bugsmashers back into the ATV fold.
For almost three centuries, Squadron 88 delivered on its motto — “Stand and Deliver.” The squadron’s lineage goes back to the Second Tevarin War, though it didn’t see any action in that conflict. It has spent time along the Perry Line and, most famously, made the ultimate sacrifice during the Fall of Caliban. It was there the 88th earned its famous and fateful nickname “The Lost Squad.”
The 88th was formed in 2608 as the Tevarin military was pushing their way through the Empire for a second time. Their leader, Corath’Thal, was expertly using guerilla tactics to terrorize the Human public and force the UEE Navy to divide their more powerful military resources. In response, the Navy reorganized its ranks to better respond to the Tevarin’s asymmetrical warfare. It was as part of this restructuring that the 88th came into existence.
Classified as a support squadron, the 88th provided logistical help to both forces fighting along the front lines and civilian populations ravaged by unexpected Tevarin attacks. The diverse workload birthed a squadron that became known as a jack-of-all-trades but master of none. It was capable of efficiently establishing a secure supply line, setting up and managing sensor beacons, or swooping into battle at a moment’s notice.
While the 88th was never known for its fighter pilots, it groomed some of the best logistic officers. The squadron’s wide range of assignments gave its members an understanding of the Navy’s many roles, birthing a culture of starmen dedicated to making the Navy better in every capacity.
With the Tevarin conflict resolved, the 88th was reassigned to the Castra System in the mid-27th century as the cold war with the Xi’an intensified. Though technically not on the Perry Line, documents released under Imperator Costigan’s Historical Truth Act of 2941 revealed that the 88th participated in at least 50 missions in Perry Line systems. They assumed many roles, but mainly provided logistical support and resupplied squadrons patrolling the borders.
After the Akari/Kray Treaty eased tensions with the Xi’an and effectively ended the cold war, the 88th became an integral part of Castra’s transition from a closed military system to one open to the public. When the first civilian convoys entered the system, members of the 88th were given the honor of leading them to Sherman’s perch atop Mount Olympus. For many outside the Navy, it was the first time they had heard of the 88th, but tragically, it would not be the last.
The Next Assignment
After its help transitioning Castra into an open system, Squadron 88 was once again transferred. The squadron was relocated to the Caliban System and established operations on Crion (Caliban II). Though it had been almost 70 years since the Vanduul had ripped Virgil from Humanity’s hands, Caliban was still under threat. The system faced sporadic attacks from small clans. Even though those attacks were repelled, it was clear the system was a target and things were only getting worse.
The 88th’s presence was heralded as a sign that the UEE was serious about keeping the Vanduul out of the system, yet behind the scenes, things were far from perfect. Though the squadron was charged with maintaining and repairing the system’s aging sensor grid, leaked documents following the Fall of Caliban showed that the 88th’s commanders often fought with Navy brass over funding and resources. In 2878, Avery Sinaga, the squadron’s commanding officer, even requested a transfer unless she received the assets necessary to protect Caliban. She was subsequently sent to a different squadron, though in later years she would state she regretted not being there when her troops needed her most.
The Fall of Caliban
On record, Caliban had everything it needed to defend itself: a vast network of early warning sensors, anti-aircraft weaponry built into the asteroid belt, and even supplemental patrols by competent local militias to augment Squadron 88’s routine watch throughout the system. The infrastructure was there to prevent a tragedy; yet one still occurred on July 7, 2884.
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It is still not exactly known how the massive Vanduul clan slipped past early warning sensors to enter the system, but the 88th’s pilots on patrol near Caliban IV were the first to spot the aggressors. A distress signal was sent, but the accompanying message was cut off. The rest of the squadron mobilized to engage the threat, not knowing how overpowering it would be.
It was only when the faster scout ships neared the approaching clan that they realized the true scope of the raid. At the heart of the Vanduul force loomed a Kingship, kilometers long and with more than enough firepower to eliminate a full fleet, let alone a single squadron. The 88th immediately dispatched comm drones requesting reinforcements. Based on the distance and response time, the squadron knew it would be, at least, a day or two before they received any support.
Commander Randall, Squadron 88’s CO, quickly shifted the strategy away from defending Crion to organizing and defending civilian convoys evacuating the system. As she climbed into her ship to lead the effort, Commander Randall told the 88th that the goal wasn’t to track confirmed kills, but count the number of people they saved, “We must stand firm in the face of the enemy, and deliver these people to safety. We’re the 88th. If it needs to be done, we’re the ones to do it.”
For two long and brutal days the men and women of the 88th fought a fearless delaying action, waiting for the reinforcements to arrive. Though completely outnumbered and outclassed, they gave everything they had to slow down the encroaching attackers. When the 2nd Fleet finally made their approach to Crion, they were shocked to discover any survivors at all amidst the utter devastation and the planet-wide flames. Civilian losses were heavy, and the brave pilots of the 88th suffered even worse. However, thanks to the squadron’s incredible sacrifice, millions of civilians were able to escape the system. The 2nd Fleet quickly moved to rescue any remaining Humans they could find before they too abandoned the system. Caliban has been under Vanduul control ever since.
Out of respect to the families of those who died, exact casualty reports have remained classified, but from what historians have been able to piece together, the losses were among the most devastating in Naval history. Most telling is that following the Fall of Caliban, the UEE Navy officially retired Squadron 88, cementing its legacy as having made the ultimate sacrifice for their Empire, and leading to the evocative moniker, bestowed upon it by the public, of “The Lost Squad.”
Wie genau wird das überarbeitete Waffensystem in Star Citizen funktionieren? Diese und weitere Fragen haben Mitarbeiter von Cloud Imperium Games jetzt beantwortet. Im Rahmen einer neuen Video-Episode von "Call All Devs" kommen unter anderem Jonny…
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Hello Citizens,
Last week, CitizenCon 2948 was all the buzz with tickets going on sale in waves on Wednesday and Thursday. Didn’t pick up a ticket? Fear not, for we still have Standard Access tickets available here. We can’t wait to see many of you in October!
Also, we were stunned by your ability to capture awe-inspiring scenic vistas for Round 2 of our Screenshot Contest on Spectrum. Congratulations to citizen NarayanN7 for winning and grabbing an Intel® Optane™ SSD 900P. This week’s theme is Lifestyle. We want to see what a day in the life of your character is all about. Lounging at the bar, dance parties, shopping for your latest wardrobe, and more! You can enter the contest in this Spectrum thread.
With that, let’s see what’s going on this week:
Today sees a brand new episode of Calling All Devs, the show answering the questions asked and voted on by you, the Star Citizen community. This week is our longest Calling All Devs yet, with an in-depth discussion about Gravlev, atmospheric flight, IFCS and more.
On Tuesday, the Lore Team opens up the Jump Point Vault and publishes either a Galactic Guide or Portfolio article that was previously available to Subscribers in our monthly Jump Point magazine.
Every Thursday, we welcome an all new episode of Around the Verse. Throughout Star Citizen’s development, we’ve brought you the latest news in a variety of formats, refining our process as we go. The goal is always to serve the community with the most up-to-date information possible, while still being sensitive to the demands of our developers. This Thursday’s show, we’ll also be featuring an additional segment, that will rotate between Bugsmashers, Loremaker’s Guide to the Galaxy, and two Ship Shapes a month.
Lastly, make sure to tune in on Friday at 12pm PDT / 7pm UTC for another episode of Reverse the Verse, broadcasted live on our Star Citizen Twitch channel. This week will continue the discussion of Service Beacons from Around the Verse with Tony Zurovec!
And that’s our schedule for this week, citizens. We’ll see you in the ‘Verse!
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We are constantly amazed by the contributions made by the Star Citizen community. Whether it’s fan art, a cinematic, a YouTube guide, or even a 3D print of your favorite ship, we love it all! Don’t forget to submit your content to our Community Hub for a chance at seeing it here!
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Thanks to a recent update to the Director’s Camera, Narayan was able to improve off his original Timelapse video and all the shots are absolutely stunning!
