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No Aegis = No Sale!

:P

Seriously, who cares if it's big. That's just marketing making an empty statement when they want to charge extra for nothing in my opinion. The Starfarer is big too and could easily handle 40 passengers if CIG made a passenger module for it. But that one was only $175 when I bought it.

 

$400 ($480+ EU-VAT) seems a pretty steep price for playing busdriver on a passenger ship with only 40 seats (40 seats is the capacity of a small mid-range touring bus).
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If they would have done a concept sale for a new Aegis Dynamics Corvette at $600 I would have been a lot more interested than a concept sale of a public transportation ship 'that won't break your budget' ... at $400. ;)

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The 390 jump can carry more than 40?  I am curious about the dynamic of transports. I am wondering if they are combining it with a mechanic to move your avatar. If you wanted to move across the galaxy and not fly for 6 hours you can take a transport and log off...meanwhile your avatar is transported across with all the risk involved.  Sounds legit.  It is also interesting that Players could play a role in the transport, safer players could charge a lot more, safer players with escorts even more.

 

Space combat, FPS, and Trading is familiar to me.  This kind of interaction between players seems new and refreshing to me.

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The Genesis Starliner is the one ship that I'm absolutely certain I'm not going to buy. I just have no interest in ferrying 40 passengers around the galaxy. That's not even as "prestigious" a job as a passenger airline pilot; that's a glorified bus driver. :P Perhaps if there was a larger passenger starship or a luxury cruise starship, the size of a Hull D or Hull E, which carried hundreds or thousands of passengers, I could imagine that ship generating a lot of money.

The only thing that might change my mind about the Genesis is if there's a military troop transport variant model, designed as a boarding craft to deploy dozens of marines to capture capital ships. But even if there is a military transport model, I'd rather wait for the Espera Prowler, because it's a stealth boarding craft, and I'd rather own and operate a ship like that.

Admittedly, I've thought that I wasn't interested in several ships in the past, like the Orion and Reclaimer; then they were revealed in a Concept Sale and I couldn't resist buying them. So I suppose that it's possible that I'll change my mind when the Genesis goes on sale this Friday. It will have to look amazing and serve a useful combat-related role. :)

Edited by Reavern
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The Genesis Starliner is the one ship that I'm absolutely certain I'm not going to buy. I just have no interest in ferrying 40 passengers around the galaxy. That's not even as "prestigious" a job as a passenger airline pilot; that's a glorified bus driver. :P  

But...it is the only shipping job that your customers actually care about.  You will likely be carrying players not just NPCs.  If its just NPCs...then yeah...lame.  But if you are actually serving as the transports for players in an MMO it is really important in a way ...that is important to players.  Like, not dying is important.

I am really curious about how moving player characters and important NPCs will work.

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But...it is the only shipping job that your customers actually care about.  You will likely be carrying players not just NPCs.  If its just NPCs...then yeah...lame.  But if you are actually serving as the transports for players in an MMO it is really important in a way ...that is important to players.  Like, not dying is important.

I am really curious about how moving player characters and important NPCs will work.

I don't understand the distinction you're trying to make between transporting players and transporting cargo. Yes, players need to get around the galaxy, and it won't always be possible for them to fly their own ships, so they'll need to rely on passenger ships. But I fail to see how transporting players will be more "prestigious" or lucrative than transporting cargo.

 

One of the major concerns about multi-crew ships is the trust issue of allowing other players to serve as crew members on the owner's ship. Many people are concerned that crewers could mutiny, kill the ship's owner, and steal the ship. More than likely, the ship's owner will know the crewers; they'll probably be friends or fellow Org members or at least players they've met before in the game. Regardless, trust is a serious concern.

With that in mind, I expect that Starliner captains will be concerned (paranoid) about transporting players as passengers, because they might try to take over the ship.

We don't know how the passenger transport mechanics will work. It's possible that CIG will impose restrictions that make it "impossible" for player-passengers to hijack a ship, but I doubt whatever safeguards CIG has in mind, they won't alleviate everyone's concerns. That's why I think that the Starliner will have limited appeal to backers, and it wouldn't surprise me if the Genesis will have the lowest performing Concept Sale to date.

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From Ben (CIG) on Reddit

http://www.reddit.com/r/starcitizen/comments/3afuzc/genesis_starliner_price_announced_400/csc9dhz

I’m so sick of this joke.

Every concept sale involves thousands of hours of design and art development. The Starliner, for instance, has been in development for eight months. The culmination of that is some very pretty pictures… but the process to get there is significant.

Launching it next week means we’ve worked out a complete system for passenger transportation in the persistent universe and we’ve tested and checked hundreds of different things… BEFORE the art revision process. For instance: can we have forty NPCs on a ship at once? How do you interact with them? Is there enough gameplay to make flying a ship like this fun? Is there enough variety to make missions involving it interesting? How do you abandon ship with so many people? How long is a trip in space? Do you need individual rooms, or seats like an airliner? Settling on rooms, how are they set up? What do you need to keep NPCs alive for that long built into the ship? What can a player who uses one access at any time? What kind of resources will it need when it goes into production? Where does it store cargo? What kind of cargo is it limited to? How does it land? What does a spaceport look like, and can we build one for it? What does the crew look like? Who in our corporation matrix would operate these? How customizable do the interiors need to be? The exteriors? What damage states will we have to build? How does it compare to similar role ships? And so on and so on… and that’s before we get to the marketing part: is it reasonable to sell this ship? Will players want to use it, or should it be part of the background lore? What’s the best way to explain such an odd ship to people? What will the variants be? Etc.

That’s all before we get to the ‘$400 picture’ you’re complaining about. And then those pictures don’t exist without an incredibly high poly concept model, usually created by a noted concept artist. (For folks who wonder why we can have concept sales regularly but not patches, this is because the concept artists we use are contracted to deliver on a deadline unaffected by issues with the game build. They’re building a spaceship that isn’t in engine yet.) Once that concept model exists (which I’m making sound too easy – art goes back and forth back and forth to get the right look), it gets sent off to someone like Chris Olivia to pose cool pictures… and it’s handed back to the design team to prototype all the things we discussed in part one. Do the seats fit where they should? Is it clear how you get in and out, how it loads cargo, etc., etc. By the time a concept ship shows up for sale at the website, it’s been worked on by a dozen members of the team and multiple contractors. It’s a long, difficult process for everyone involved, and they’re pretty darn proud of the pictures you see… because they mean a lot for the game. :)

 
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Based on what it is and also based on the number of Backers there are that are willing to spend $400 on something that will have some broad utility in the PU, I think the price is right.

I'm just waiting for the backers to come out who think it will need guns.

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Trust me it will have guns, everything in starcitizen has to have guns it seems. The starliner will have guns, it will have point defense systems and it will be modular ... Yes modular ... Because every ship in the universe needs to be able to be converted to a military ship / a Q ship / a military transport or as they indicated an AWACS type ship. It seems that in the future it is impossible to design a ship that is only used for 1 thing and it is impossible to fly around space without guns and missiles .......

Seriously, does anyone really think that in the future all spaceships will have guns, missiles and turrets? Yeah lets assume that even in civilized space you are likely to need guns on a frickin' space bus or mining vessel or even worse : gunsonn a hospital or ambulance ship ......

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I don't understand the distinction you're trying to make between transporting players and transporting cargo. Yes, players need to get around the galaxy, and it won't always be possible for them to fly their own ships, so they'll need to rely on passenger ships. But I fail to see how transporting players will be more "prestigious" or lucrative than transporting cargo.

 Well, my thoughts are based on some premises.  I think flying across the galaxy will take a long time, a trip could take 2 to 6 hours or more.  Time players might want to spend doing something else. Players are also under pressure from permadeath.  This means not only could there be a demand for players needing transport, but there would be something driving customers to pay extra (even extravagant) rates to ensure they are not damaged during the transport. A bus driver's reputation becomes more valuable than a Flat bed driver...so to speak.

I really would like it if they included real risk in player avatar transport, but Xoa's post with Ben's reply does seem to indicate that they are going in another direction.

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Hit a sore spot there, he does like a whine.

 

Not a ship for me I think. High price tags are allways questionable but I'm semi intrigued as to the specifics of this ship still.

We do need a big variety of ships and roles to make the Universe complex and diverse though, so I'm all for these continued concept ship releases.

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Glad Ben addressed that concern. While I'm unsure how they've derived prices, the work involved with creating these ships shouldn't be ridiculed. I mean, freedom of speech, go ahead, but please at least appreciate the work dozens of people have put into something that you presumably have backed/following/have appreciated in the past.

I'm pumped to see the Genesis and I'll probably buy a few, if for no reason than for "gifting" value. Though my heart is set on the corvette...

Honestly, it all depends on how the passenger system works out. I'm still uncertain how not having a quick transport system will work out, especially in an MMO. Hmm. But no matter what, the Genesis will be one heck of a transport ship.

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I think the prices are more based on an average than anything else. The Vanguard, Herald and Reliant were below §300. The latter two were sold for significantly less. On the other hand, there was the 890 Jump for a lot more and now we'll see the Genesis for $400. Well that's a wave 4 ship.

So, if you sum up all the prices for the wave 3 ships, divided by the number of total ships, you end up with an average of $298.5. Wave 4: Vanguard $250 + Genesis $400 + Reliant $50 and we have an average of "only" 233.33. Though there is now one more concept ship, no actually there's two, since the Drake Dragonfly is now also part of it. This is a total of 8 ships for wave 4 vs. 6 ships for wave 3

(Not separated by waves, the average drops to $283.46, because of the Reliant) I expect the rest of the wave 4 ships to be around the usual $350, except for the Drake Dragonfly and maybe the Crucible. The prowler could also be a little lower, similar to the Vanguard. In conclusion, this would mean the Endeavor and Hope class will cost more.

And while I'm at it, the next concept sale (after the Genesis Class this Friday) will be end of July. Unless they skip it in favor of a bigger sale around gamescom or maybe we'll see both

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Comm-Link Schedule for the Week of June 22

As you’ve heard, the Genesis Starliner sale is this next weekend. We’re putting together some cool stuff to show off the ship, including an interactive experience from Turbulent and a selection of artwork that’s a little more interesting than the usual sale. I think that the Starliner is going to be a ship that only a select number of backers actually want to fly… but everybody will get to learn about its role in the persistent universe and some of the gameplay we’re developing for it. Next week, we’ll follow with at least two Q&A threads. One of the reasons we really like events like this isn't so much that we're selling a new ship, but more that we get to do some creative stuff (like the web games) that don't take time from the folks' working on the patch.

Friday, June 26th
- Crusader Industries Starliner Sale

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Why Concept sale now...

 
  
 
 
Posted: June 22
 
 
 

I thought that there wasn't going to be another sale until FPS came out..? Wasn't there a communication like "we're not comfortable having a big sale (before delivering on FPS - ad-libbed based on what I believed - )"

Hey! I think that's a quote from me, so I can certainly comment on it. :) It's 100% accurate: no one is happy to have a concept sale before we've delivered a major patch... but because the two things aren't logistically related, it's hard to keep pushing one away out of respect for the other. If you follow our regular cadence, you'll know we were 'scheduled' for the next concept sale several weeks ago. We opted to push it back and spend the time creating some additional resources (concept images, design explorations, etc.)... but here we are with that content being finished off and waiting to go out, and other work in line after it that needs to be addressed. 

Would I rather release the Starliner after FPS hits? Abso-fluffing-lutely! It would probably mean more support from happier backers... and you wouldn't have any of this sturm und drang that risks overshadowing folks just enjoying a pretty cool ship that a lot of people put their sweat and tears into. But the reality is that delaying concept sales forever can't work: existing ships will pile up, we'll lose contract artists who'd pick up movie projects if there weren't another concept for them... and to be perfectly honest, at the end of the day we have to keep bringing in some amount of revenue to operate the way we are right now. That's not because we haven't raised a heck of a lot of money... but there are a number of fairly dull business reasons why it has to continue in some way (the largest has to do with, per my understanding, credit... anyone remember how hard it was to secure the lease in Austin with such an odd business model?)

Modular Starliner

 
  
 
 
Posted: June 22
 
 
 
Without spoiling too much, I can address this. 40 NPCs is not a hard technical limit, although it is about what we imagine people will WANT to deal with for the gameplay we've come up with. One thing you'll see Friday is that the interior is very modular, much like a real jetliner... so you can go from one that seats ten people in luxury cabin to one that seats a hundred, cattle style. :) 

As for airliner versus cruise ship... it's a little of both! The impetus at first of course was to go the 2001 Orion spaceplane route, where it's literally an airplane in space... but when we got into the guts of the thing we realized that didn't make sense much of the time. A plane trip is (at most) twenty hours... a trip between star systems might be several days. So we had to come up with something that allows for more onboard stores, gives people places to sleep as well as sit and so on.

 

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https://forums.robertsspaceindustries.com/discussion/comment/5221258/#Comment_5221258

 
  
 
 
Posted: 5:42AM
 
 
 
We have a special treat for those interested in the Genesis Starliner in this week's ATV. Something special we've never done before. Be sure you check it out if you're considering picking up this ship...
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Well... I thought I could resist buying the Starliner..... but after seeing it on ATV today --- its a lost cause....:blush:  I've said this for a few of the concept ships but so far I purchaced every single one of them.  Now that I hear there will be a luxury variant of the Starliner.... I am going to "have to have it" (and yes I already have a Phoenix and 890 Jump :) )

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