Star Citizen General BS

[StanTheMan]

So in today's AtV where they were flogging the latest concept ship/bike, they also had a segment (FF to 26:46) about SolEd. Their solar system editor.

It's hilarious that they are showing a tool - outside of the CryEditor that's basically barebones for entity placement. So they've moved away from the procedural worlds now and shown that they have to build the entire game world - by hand. In an editor. Q.E.D.

They use the word "tool" a lot and then there is the mention of the "heavy internal push at 28.40.

Now we are getting to the truth.

[Narrenbart]

Almost as good as this $15 Unity script :D
https://www.assetstore.unity3d.com/en/#!/content/42607

[dsmart]

I knew that Nox bike they put up for sale, looked familiar. Those fuckers at CIG are Archering us now it looks like :D



All Aspect Warfare, circa 2009 (!)

[dsmart]

This video is great because it captures exactly what free eyes see and experience when they try the game.

[StanTheMan]

This video is great because it captures exactly what free eyes see and experience when they try the game.

He got a little bit 14 year old girl seeing a penis giddy at one point  - but very good otherwise.

[Motto]

I don't waste my time with watching these kind of videos completely. His final conclusion segment starts at 28:00 and isn't bad. He captures the current state of SC right on the nose:

"Remember people, never invest more then you're willing to loose. This is doublely true with Star Citizen. It's not a complete product. It's not even a beta. It's an early technical alpha that has great potential to be one of best space games of our time. Or, the most funded failure of all time in video games."

Now we just have to wait the next few months to see his last prediction turning into the correct one.

[StanTheMan]

I don't waste my time with watching these kind of videos completely. His final conclusion segment starts at 28:00 and isn't bad. He captures the current state of SC right on the nose:

"Remember people, never invest more then you're willing to loose. This is doublely true with Star Citizen. It's not a complete product. It's not even a beta. It's an early technical alpha that has great potential to be one of best space games of our time. Or, the most funded failure of all time in video games."

Now we just have to wait the next few months to see his last prediction turning into the correct one.

His analysis is fundamentally flawed and at odds with what he has done. 

I dont know the guy buy he clearly has some intelligent points to make about the game and gamers.

What he seems to be missing is a financial or business understanding of where this is likely headed which is understandable because it is difficult to be expert in all the disciplines required to analyse a project like this.

There is also the fact that his own actions dont really add credence to his position.  He says he has resisted looking at SC all this time despite lots of requests to do so, now he has, he has spent some cash.    Yet he says others should only risk what they are prepared to lose.  The point is any sensible analysis would show people tending to get more and more invested to a point where it would be unreasonable to conclude backers could really "afford" to lose.

Yet the project is likely to fail....on the balance of probabilities it is silly to spend money on it at this point in time.

Do as I say not as I do..

 

[dsmart]

His analysis is fundamentally flawed and at odds with what he has done. 

I dont know the guy buy he clearly has some intelligent points to make about the game and gamers.

What he seems to be missing is a financial or business understanding of where this is likely headed which is understandable because it is difficult to be expert in all the disciplines required to analyse a project like this.

There is also the fact that his own actions dont really add credence to his position.  He says he has resisted looking at SC all this time despite lots of requests to do so, now he has, he has spent some cash.    Yet he says others should only risk what they are prepared to lose.  The point is any sensible analysis would show people tending to get more and more invested to a point where it would be unreasonable to conclude backers could really "afford" to lose.

Yet the project is likely to fail....on the balance of probabilities it is silly to spend money on it at this point in time.

Do as I say not as I do..

I agree with all of this, and those echo my own thoughts exactly.

[Motto]

I doubt he has researched/followed the project as deeply as we (Derek) have overhere. Without that knowlegde, one is apt to stay more neutral I think. I can't imagine him saying this with all the knowlegde we have. That would be rather foolish. Maybe he has said something about it in the first 27 minutes, dunno.

[dsmart]

Yup! New schedule is up. Totally called it. Extended delays. We're now middle of August "release" window. Which means "Road To GamesCom 2017"

Sources were right when I reported they were going to try and push this out in time of GamesCom (Aug 22), one of their biggest fundraising drives.

Notice how ships (the primary money driver) tend to be on schedule. Gee, I wonder why that is happening.

https://robertsspaceindustries.com/schedule-report

DIFF: https://www.diffchecker.com/dx95qRIX



Notice how NONE of the material elements of this patch are completed? And this was due out 7 MONTHS ago back when croberts said Dec 19th, 2016.

8 items "completed"
20 delayed

COMPLETED

INHABITED DERELICT SHIP SITES

PICK UP & CARRY

INSURANCE (Code Complete. Now supporting bugfixing)

CARGO (Code Complete. Now supporting bugfixing.)

KIOSK SUPPORT (Code Complete. Now supporting bugfixing.)

ENGINE TRAILS & CONTRAILS

ASTEROID PHYSICS ( * Feature Complete)

SOLAR SYSTEM MISSION SERVICE V1 “MISSION BROKER”

DELAYED

MISSION GIVERS
Eckhart has been implemented in Subsumption, now just need to polish and iron out the kinks. The team will now start setting up Ruto with the goal that both Mission Givers will be fully setup by the end of the next sprint.
ETA is 14th July (was 30th June)

DELAMAR / LEVSKI
Due to the time required for the correct implementation of the elevators and their local physics grids this date has moved back slightly
ETA is 7th July (was 30th June)

ITEM 2.0 SHIP CONVERSION – PART 2
Due to issues with the last remaining ships we want to make sure all are fixed before implementation.
ETA is 3rd July (was 30th June)

DOORS AND AIRLOCKS
During an internal milestone review that we had this week, we identified further elements of work and polish that we will aim to have completed for next week’s milestone review.
ETA is 5th July (was 30th June)

ROVER AND DRAGONFLY IN SHIPS
The conversion to the Item 2.0 ships and how they work has introduced unforeseen issues with their physics. This will require a combination of Tech Design and Physics code to address the situation. This is proving to be a more in-depth problem than initially anticipated and the code team was pulled to help support elevators and general physics crashes which we necessary for internal review.
ETA is 12th July (was 27th June)

HINT SYSTEM
A few of the required engineering tasks were slightly delayed in their completion this week due to bugfixing being required on other systems.
ETA is 12th July (was 27th June)

ENTITY UPDATE COMPONENT SCHEDULER
Good progress has been made on this feature for 3.0.0, however an issue was discovered that severely affected ships. The LA Engineering team is currently busy supporting the item 2.0 ship conversion and the UI team with the implementation of their features, their support is required for this particular bug so we had to wait until they were available, resulting in a delay.
ETA is 7th July (was 30th June)

ENTITY OWNER MANAGER
Work on this feature was paused in order to support various bugs and feature polish for this week’s milestone review.
ETA is 7th June (was 28th June)


ITEM 2.0 MULTI FUNCTION DISPLAYS
Completion of this task was delayed due to support teams being focused on internal milestone demo review.
ETA is 7th July (was 29th June)

CHARACTER CUSTOMIZATION
Delayed due to team’s focus on priority tasks for internal milestone review.
ETA is 25th July (was 17 July)

PERSONAL MANAGER APP
Work on this task has been postponed so team can focus on resolving other systems.
ETA is 3rd July (was 27th June)

CARGO MANIFEST APP
Delayed due to team’s focus on priority tasks for internal milestone review.
ETA is 7th July (was 3rd July)

VEHICLE CUSTOMIZER APP
Delayed due to team’s focus on priority tasks for internal milestone review, specifically the Hint System.
ETA is 13th July (was 6th July) ETA is 27th July (was 13th July)

SHIP SELECTOR APP & INSURANCE CLAIM
Delayed due to team’s focus polishing the mission manager.
ETA is 19th July (was 5th July)

INVENTORY SYSTEM
ETA is 7th July (was 3rd July)

STARMAP APP
UI will break down feedback from internal milestone review and begin to address issues that came up.
ETA is 7th July (was 29th June)

COMMS SYSTEM UI
Delayed due to team’s focus on priority tasks for internal milestone review.
ETA is 18th July (was 10th July)

MISSION SYSTEM
Some bugs are blocking completion of the mission system which the AI team requires support from the LA Engineering department to resolve. However, LA Engineering are currently closing out their remaining tasks for milestone reviews before they are able to provide support for this.
ETA is 19th July (was 30th June)

RENDER TO TEXTURE
Various other requirements for this system have been discovered in the course of development that were not originally apparent, but are required for building a robust and scalable system for the future.
New ETA is currently being scoped out based on our internal review findings

PHYSICS SERIALIZATION
All work for this feature is currently undergoing a thorough code review between some of the Lead Engineers due to the complexity of the work. So far the review is going well, but is probably not going to be complete until early next week.
ETA is 3rd July (was 30th June)

See LINE 288 of the Diff. Remember back when I reported that the internal milestone schedule wasn't the same as the public one?

Also, this cracks me up:

LAST WEEK:

Delayed due to unforeseen shortage in resources.
ETA is 17th July (was 21st June)

THIS WEEK

Delayed due to team’s focus on priority tasks for internal milestone review.
ETA is 25th July (was 17 July)

[Motto]

So, they ran out of money to make it until their Citizencon and had no option to get a(nother) normal loan. So they took extreme measures by securing a new loan that is covered by a tax rebate. They either wanted a loan as big as the tax rebate, a loan larger than the tax rebate or the bank saw troubles no matter what (or quite possible, all three reasons apply) and so the bank decided to ask for *everything* as a collateral. Just 2B on the safe side.

Seems to me that on Citizencon, RSI/CIG needs to raise at least enough money to make the required payback, even better would be the whole loan sum and the best would be to even top that and make enough money to make it until the tax rebate. Since this is not very likely, I really would like to know how Citizencon goes and how that effects everything. A bad Citizencon probably means Game Over I think. I doubt there are lots of people left who still will fall for everything CIG puts out there. They've been tricked enough now and the latest events with the loan etc. are now effecting even some of the most hardcore backers. It's killing me by now  :supaburn:

[StanTheMan]

So, they ran out of money to make it until their Citizencon and had no option to get a(nother) normal loan. So they took extreme measures by securing a new loan that is covered by a tax rebate. They either wanted a loan as big as the tax rebate, a loan larger than the tax rebate or the bank saw troubles no matter what (or quite possible, all three reasons apply) and so the bank decided to ask for *everything* as a collateral. Just 2B on the safe side.

Seems to me that on Citizencon, RSI/CIG needs to raise at least enough money to make the required payback, even better would be the whole loan sum and the best would be to even top that and make enough money to make it until the tax rebate. Since this is not very likely, I really would like to know how Citizencon goes and how that effects everything. A bad Citizencon probably means Game Over I think. I doubt there are lots of people left who still will fall for everything CIG puts out there. They've been tricked enough now and the latest events with the loan etc. are now effecting even some of the most hardcore backers. It's killing me by now  :supaburn:

I think that by the end of this year they need to make enough $ to cover their operating costs for another 12 months.

They will be hoping that whatever they release or promise to release will generate enough sales.

As someone else has mentioned, moons might mean selling ground installations for Backers.   I am no expert but I would have thought you could knock them up fairly cheaply and quickly.

Don't underestimate the power of the sunk cost fallacy.  Any whiff of progress and plenty of the Backers lap it up and off they go for another 6 months.

The writing is on the wall but they could slip in (documentation) that whatever they release is the MVP (hoping Backers don't notice much) and carry on till the ship goes down.

If they don't make enough by the end of 2017 they will be left with trying to limp their way to next years major funding rounds or doing even more drastic public stuff - selling more JPEGS and eventually asking for Backer help to save the project.

[Darklegend1]

So, they ran out of money to make it until their Citizencon and had no option to get a(nother) normal loan. So they took extreme measures by securing a new loan that is covered by a tax rebate. They either wanted a loan as big as the tax rebate, a loan larger than the tax rebate or the bank saw troubles no matter what (or quite possible, all three reasons apply) and so the bank decided to ask for *everything* as a collateral. Just 2B on the safe side.

Seems to me that on Citizencon, RSI/CIG needs to raise at least enough money to make the required payback, even better would be the whole loan sum and the best would be to even top that and make enough money to make it until the tax rebate. Since this is not very likely, I really would like to know how Citizencon goes and how that effects everything. A bad Citizencon probably means Game Over I think. I doubt there are lots of people left who still will fall for everything CIG puts out there. They've been tricked enough now and the latest events with the loan etc. are now effecting even some of the most hardcore backers. It's killing me by now  :supaburn:

I think that by the end of this year they need to make enough $ to cover their operating costs for another 12 months.

They will be hoping that whatever they release or promise to release will generate enough sales.

As someone else has mentioned, moons might mean selling ground installations for Backers.   I am no expert but I would have thought you could knock them up fairly cheaply and quickly.

Don't underestimate the power of the sunk cost fallacy.  Any whiff of progress and plenty of the Backers lap it up and off they go for another 6 months.

The writing is on the wall but they could slip in (documentation) that whatever they release is the MVP (hoping Backers don't notice much) and carry on till the ship goes down.

If they don't make enough by the end of 2017 they will be left with trying to limp their way to next years major funding rounds or doing even more drastic public stuff - selling more JPEGS and eventually asking for Backer help to save the project.

By the look of Sandi's cleavage which she is showing more and more each ATV seems to indicate they are desperate....

I will not underestimate the power of moron backer's wallets, whatever they release as 3.0 is guaranteed to bring great funding. its 2016 all over, same deceit  but trust me it will work like a charm. chris will come on stage and wave his hands show some ppt to blind moron backers and they will be fooled.  they spend thousands to attend citizenconn, dont u think they will give much more to keep the taps running..

[dsmart]

I think that by the end of this year they need to make enough $ to cover their operating costs for another 12 months.

How so? Please explain that math to me.

They are averaging about $36m a year. And by the SQ42 financials for 2016, they spending about $2m a month means that worldwide, they have to be burning through $3m.

So it is now Q3/17, and even if they made the same amount as last year, how does that carry them another 12 months, if their spending rate remains constant?

Also, from the funding spreadsheet, new citizen count is way down.

1H2014: $11,838,147 pledged and 145,210 new Citizens (2014: $32,933,205 and 361,200)
1H2015: $16,055,646 pledged and 210,197 new Citizens (2015: $35,961,202 and 433,453)
1H2016: $12,400,064 pledged and 264,240 new Citizens (2016: $36,100,538 and 565,120)
1H2017: $12,669,915 pledged and 129,036 new Citizens

[dsmart]

https://twitter.com/dsmart/status/881908567749558274