Star Citizen gets multi-crew ships and dedicated peripherals

by Mark Tyson on 10 August 2015, 12:02

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Star Citizen multi-crew ships

At the end of last week, at the Gamescom show, Cloud Imperium showed off a multi-crew demo. In Star Citizen you can play with others to form a crew then, for instance, one of you pilots the star ship while others man turrets or go on space walks.

The multi-crew play is part of the Arena Commander module. With players spawned at a space station a few of them can get together to board a craft and fly off across the universe. PCGamesN says that, in multi-crew games, each player sees unique perspectives of the same events.

What kinds of escapades can you enjoy in multi-crew? Cloud Imperium boss Chris Roberts told PCGamesN that "what we're planning is, we'll just have different areas you can fly in and visit and do things in, or have some AI that will spawn". This could lead to "team-oriented stuff where you could have a combination of the bigger multi-crew ships and the smaller [ones]. A team battle thing. It should be pretty good," claimed Roberts.

At Gamecom there were also details concerning Star Citizen's Star Marine FPS module and a Social module. If you want to know more about these game aspects you can watch the full presentation on YouTube.

Star Citizen peripherals by Saitek

If you are a Star Citizen fan you might be interested by the launch of custom gaming peripherals aimed at players of this game. Cloud Imperium has partnered with Saitek to ready a range of peripherals including joysticks, keyboards and headsets.

According to WCCFTech the Saitek hardware won't simply be stylised to fit in with the Star Citizen universe but will be physically purposed for the specific gameplay available. Separate peripherals will be modular and connectable so you can set up control systems such as; HOTAS (hands on throttle and stick), HOMAK (hands on mouse and keyboard), HOTAK (hands on throttle and keyboard), HOMAS (hands on mouse and stick) and even a HOSAS (hands on stick and stick), for example. With any amount of star craft piloting some kind of stick is always a good choice to integrate into your controls.

HEXUS Forums :: 6 Comments

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Posted by Stuntz - Mon 10 Aug 2015 13:41
SC has had multi-crew ships planned since kickstarter - 2.5 years ago. This was simply the 1st time they were demo'd live with the 64-bit world and zone technology behind them.

The multi-crew module also isn't released yet - and won't be until at least shortly after citizencon (assuming no delays), over 2 months away.

The top end saitek HOTAS for SC is based off their x65 design, but with an OLED display, a trackball for gimbal aiming, and a button panel behind the throttle for ship functions. In keeping with the SC theme, these are modular - detachable from one another, and clip onto other peripherals (such as a keyboard). Images of the current design of the peripherals were shown at gamescom. I can't add URL's since I don't have 5 posts! (i.imgur. com/cpqfPMJ.png)
Posted by D-T - Mon 10 Aug 2015 19:27
Stuntz
The top end saitek HOTAS for SC is based off their x65 design, but with an OLED display, a trackball for gimbal aiming, and a button panel behind the throttle for ship functions. In keeping with the SC theme, these are modular - detachable from one another, and clip onto other peripherals (such as a keyboard). Images of the current design of the peripherals were shown at gamescom. I can't add URL's since I don't have 5 posts! (i.imgur. com/cpqfPMJ.png)

OLED seems like a poor choice for the HUD panel, given the cost & susceptability to burn-in. Apart from that though, all good stuff and I'm excited for more.
Posted by Stuntz - Mon 10 Aug 2015 19:40
D-T
OLED seems like a poor choice for the HUD panel, given the cost & susceptability to burn-in. Apart from that though, all good stuff and I'm excited for more.

Roberts himself mentioned on stage it possibly being a touchscreen panel, or rather, as he put it:

CR: It's touchscreen, at least I think it is… I want it to be touchscreen (laughs).

So you know, could just be him daydreaming, and it's (seemingly) still undergoing revision, so perhaps design's not quite set in stone yet, only under concept atm. Time will tell.
Posted by Ironbuket - Tue 11 Aug 2015 13:55
I may incur the wrath of the fanboys, but SC seems like a very badly run project. They keep adding features without completely finishing what they were working on before. It will either be the biggest best game ever or the biggest games development disaster ever. Seeing as every other developer that has tried to create multiple types of games at once and stick them in to one package has created at least one aspect which brought down the rest no matter how good the rest was, I am very dubious about the outcome even with their huge budget.

They should have focused on one thing, released it and then done the other parts of the game as expansions or updates. At this rate only the original backers grandchildren will get to see a fully fleshed out game. That is if the original backers have enough money left to afford children after they have finished buying all the custom ships, specialised controllers, oculus and who knows what else will be needed to play this to full potential.
Posted by kalniel - Tue 11 Aug 2015 14:16
I have similar concerns Ironbuket, but it's hard to compare how it's run - many games have similar style developments, just they are kept behind closed doors so you don't see in the final product how many things they started, stopped, dropped etc.

The danger here is I don't think they have the nerve to drop things, which is obviously much harder if the thing you might drop is in the public domain already and you are perceived to have the budget for it.

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