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Crusader Hecules Starlifter


Devil Khan

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What irks me about CIG's concept ship sales is that, ever since Warbonding prices were introduced in 2016, it seems like ships have only gotten more expensive. How do we know if Warbond prices are discounted or if they're the normal price, and the Store Credit prices are deliberately higher?

The evidence of this has existed almost from the beginning. The first warbond sale was October 2016 for the RSI Polaris Corvette for $600, or $750 store credit. During the 2016 Holiday Sale, CIG  released the "special edition" variants: the Hornet Wildfire, Sabre Comet, Gladius Valiant, and Avenger Titan Renegade, which were all more expensive than the standard models. The Avenger Titan is $50, the Titan Renegade is $75 and was $65 warbond. WHY? The new ship skin and different weapons weren't worth $15, nevermind $25. The Hornet Wildfire was the worst culprit at $165 warbond and $175 store credit. Those prices were comparable to the Super Hornet, but the Wildfire was just an F7C Hornet with a ball turret, a different ship skin, and different weapons. Those aren't worth $55-65.

CIG increased the prices for new variant models of existing ships, which was a dead giveaway that warbond prices are bullshit! They aren't discount prices. It's the normal price that requires backers to pledge money. The store credit prices are higher to make the warbond prices more appealing and to discourage backers from buying the ships with store credit.

CIG has recently made this price-fixing scheme even more diabolical by only giving warbond ships LTI, whereas concept ships bought with store credits only get 6-month insurance. And with the Hercules VIP Early Access Sale, the M2 Warbond includes a free Tumbril Cyclone (worth $55) and the A2 Warbond includes a free Nova Tank (worth $105).

I understand that CIG needs new money coming in to fund Star Citizen's development, and if backers could buy new concept sale ships with store credit then CIG would earn less money for each sale. I know that because I exploited that ability to buy every concept sale ship. I still bought several warbond ships that I definitely wanted to own, but most concept ships I bought with store credits so I could melt them and bank them as Buybacks, just in case I wanted them later. CIG's new concept sale scheme counters that.

If warbond prices were truly discounted, I wouldn't have a problem with CIG's new concept sale scheme. But there's compelling evidence that CIG is price fixing ships to trick backers into spending cash on warbonds, which isn't right.

I'm genuinely shocked and appalled at how expensive the Hercules M2 and A2 models are. Even the warbond prices are too high. Even when you account for the value of the free Cyclone or Nova Tank, they're priced too high.

The M2 is $480 store credit, $400 warbond, and $345 without the Cyclone. $345 for a military transport ship. That's only $5 less than an Orion mining ship, Carrack exploration ship, and Hull D cargo hauler.

The A2 is $700 store credit, $600 warbond, and $495 without the Nova Tank. That's $100 more expensive than I expected CIG to price the store credit A2, which is extremely disappointing.

CIG has to realize that a $700 or $600 warbond is far beyond what the vast majority of Star Citizen backers will pay for any ship, nevermind a niche ship like the Hercules A2. I think that if CIG was only selling the A2 for this concept ship sale, it would be a bust. If the Hercule concept ship sale is a success it'll be because backers buy the C2 or M2 models, not the A2. I don't understand why anyone would buy the C2 because there are a lot better cargo haulers that cost less than $300. Only the M2 seems worth buying because it's a military transport that is designed to deploy combat vehicles planetside while under fire. I suspect that CIG is pulling the same trick as the did with the 100i and 125a. Like the 100i, the C2 model only exists to get backers thinking about buying the Hercules. Then they realize that M2 (125a) is better and "only" costs $100 more. It skips the internal debate whether to buy a Hercules at all and jumps to choosing between a $300 or $400 ship. Diabolical:gr_devil:

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3 hours ago, Reavern said:

I understand that CIG needs new money coming in to fund Star Citizen's development, and if backers could buy new concept sale ships with store credit then CIG would earn less money for each sale. I know that because I exploited that ability to buy every concept sale ship. I still bought several warbond ships that I definitely wanted to own, but most concept ships I bought with store credits so I could melt them and bank them as Buybacks, just in case I wanted them later. CIG's new concept sale scheme counters that.

Which is exactly why CIG has done things the way they have. They never intended the buyback system to be used in this manner, and time has shown that most people don't bother buying back melted ships or packages unless they intend to try to resell them. When I was at CIG LA I asked them about their issues with buybacks and this was one thing they said they never intended, but were taking measures to try to stop. CIG isn't there to be some kind of weird e-currency platform, they're making and selling ships to fund the game. The longer that they take to release the game, the more people offload ships or packages in order to either get moneyback (buyer's remorse), or use their pledge account as some kind of bank account to either make profits or get money back for other purposes. Each transaction of this kind doesn't actually give CIG much in the way of pledge funding, so CIG is taking strides to keep the money coming to THEM and not going to people playing the e-commerce game. If anything, the grey market is to blame for this, and while CIG could be seen as complicit in the creation of the grey market, they have chosen to stay on the side of customers and NOT go after people for selling/reselling assets, even though it would be well within their rights to do so.

That said, I do find this new ship to be WAY overpriced, but it could also be a way for CIG to make sure there aren't a ton of the particular ship type in-universe before game launch. I was tempted to make a play for one of these, but then realized I could buy a new video card or a VR headset for that price, and have thus cooled my jets a bit. ;)

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:huh: Did anyone else catch this or am I just thinking like a ..... :D

Watch this Reverse the Verse and skip to these Various time stamps........ then tell me if you are thinking the same thing - LOL....

  1. 25:30m
  2. 26:24m
  3. 26:47m
  4. 26:54m
  5. 27:00m
  6. 27:09m
  7. 27:18m

=============

So what do you think after focusing on these time stamps? :huh:

 

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13 hours ago, Chimaera said:

Which is exactly why CIG has done things the way they have. They never intended the buyback system to be used in this manner, and time has shown that most people don't bother buying back melted ships or packages unless they intend to try to resell them. When I was at CIG LA I asked them about their issues with buybacks and this was one thing they said they never intended, but were taking measures to try to stop. CIG isn't there to be some kind of weird e-currency platform, they're making and selling ships to fund the game. The longer that they take to release the game, the more people offload ships or packages in order to either get moneyback (buyer's remorse), or use their pledge account as some kind of bank account to either make profits or get money back for other purposes. Each transaction of this kind doesn't actually give CIG much in the way of pledge funding, so CIG is taking strides to keep the money coming to THEM and not going to people playing the e-commerce game. If anything, the grey market is to blame for this, and while CIG could be seen as complicit in the creation of the grey market, they have chosen to stay on the side of customers and NOT go after people for selling/reselling assets, even though it would be well within their rights to do so.

That said, I do find this new ship to be WAY overpriced, but it could also be a way for CIG to make sure there aren't a ton of the particular ship type in-universe before game launch. I was tempted to make a play for one of these, but then realized I could buy a new video card or a VR headset for that price, and have thus cooled my jets a bit. ;)

3

So basically you're condoning CIG's money-making schemes to entice backers to spend more money on Star Citizen?

CIG created the Chairman's Club for backers who have spent $1000 or more backing Star Citizen and reached Concierge status. One of the "privileges" of the Chairman's Club is we receive newsletters about VIP Early Access sales, usually a week prior to the Concept Ship Sales for all backers.

The Hercules Starlifter, specifically the $600 A2 war-bond ship, seems micro-targeted to "whales" to entice us to buy it. War-bonds have always been shady, for the reasons I explained above (we have no way of knowing if war-bond ships are priced lower, or the store credit ships are simply priced higher), but CIG has now taken it two steps further with war-bond-only LTI and the war-bond bundled free vehicles. These are all insidious marketing and price-fixing schemes intended to trick us into spending more money.

It also gives greater credence to Pay-2-Win accusations, because purchasing ships with $$$ includes bonuses, like LTI and free vehicles, whereas playing the game to earn UECs to buy ships in-game won't include those bonuses. When Concept Sales were introduced 3 years ago, they included LTI and free flair items, like posters and models for our hangars. That free stuff was relatively harmless. But now CIG is including free vehicles with war-bond ships that are worth $50-105. That's very different than a hangar poster that costs the equivalent of a $1 in the Voyager Direct Store.

Another facet of this is that certain ships have come with bonus ships and vehicles in the past. The Constellation Andromeda has the P-52 Merlin snubfighter; the Aquila has the Ursa Rover; the Phoenix has both the Lynx Rover and P-72 Archimedes snubfighter; and the 890 Jump has the 85X. What if CIG had imposed this scheme and made those vehicles/snubs exclusive to war-bond ships? Backers would've been rightfully PO'd. But somehow it's acceptable now, because that's what CIG has done. The CIG apologists dismissively condone it as "CIG has the right to make money, yunno." Yeah, it's called business. But unless you're a sociopath, you don't like it when a business uses psychological warfare-type marketing schemes to manipulate you into spending your hard-earned money on frivolous things.

The worst thing is that CIG is targeting existing backers with big, expensive concept ship sales, like the Hercules Starlifter, instead of attracting new backers and broadening the base of the Star Citizen community. I know they sorta did that with Origin 100 series. That was a new starter ship and the backer counter did increase by about 30,000 new players in April when the sale was on. But CIG didn't make any kind of a marketing campaign outside of the RSI website -- at least not that I'm aware of. In the past, CIG has reached out to game news sites leading up to Gamescon and Citizencon, and the games sites published articles about Star Citizen, which spread awareness and probably attracted new backers. There was none of that for the Origin 100 concept sale. I said at the beginning of the 100i sale that CIG should do a marketing campaign because the Origin 100 is a stylish ship that would appeal to mainstream gamers -- unlike the Aurora or Reliant, even the original Mustang. But CIG didn't do that. The 100i sale came and went without any video game site that I frequent ever mentioning the new starter ship. That's partly CIG's fault for failing to do any kind of PR. Instead, CIG seems to be milking existing backers for more money, and we're getting fed up with it.

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On 5/5/2018 at 6:36 AM, Chimaera said:

Which is exactly why CIG has done things the way they have. They never intended the buyback system to be used in this manner, and time has shown that most people don't bother buying back melted ships or packages unless they intend to try to resell them. When I was at CIG LA I asked them about their issues with buybacks and this was one thing they said they never intended, but were taking measures to try to stop. CIG isn't there to be some kind of weird e-currency platform, they're making and selling ships to fund the game. The longer that they take to release the game, the more people offload ships or packages in order to either get moneyback (buyer's remorse), or use their pledge account as some kind of bank account to either make profits or get money back for other purposes. Each transaction of this kind doesn't actually give CIG much in the way of pledge funding, so CIG is taking strides to keep the money coming to THEM and not going to people playing the e-commerce game. If anything, the grey market is to blame for this, and while CIG could be seen as complicit in the creation of the grey market, they have chosen to stay on the side of customers and NOT go after people for selling/reselling assets, even though it would be well within their rights to do so.

That said, I do find this new ship to be WAY overpriced, but it could also be a way for CIG to make sure there aren't a ton of the particular ship type in-universe before game launch. I was tempted to make a play for one of these, but then realized I could buy a new video card or a VR headset for that price, and have thus cooled my jets a bit. ;)

Hercules is a bit overpriced in general, but what is absolutely out of the frame in this sale is the difference of price between the base model and the gunship one. The latter one - in a non warbond sale - will end up in the same price range of a 890 Jump ...

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On 5/5/2018 at 2:16 AM, Sky Captain said:

The A2 is a game changer.  Sell Pioneer and say good bye to now-hopeless ground defense game.  Buy A2 and play the now more-promising ground attack game.

Cool ships.

no, cause the next concept going on sale (of course for 1000 bucks) will be a uberwtfpwnz ground-air missle system!

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Size 5 weapons on the A2 seem nice, but getting this brick planetside will be tricky. Is it just me or does this ship be very vulnerable to attacks from above?

I like the firearcs on the Hammerhead much more.

I bet both ships would cooperate quite well...;)

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The Hercules Starlifter is an interesting ship that seems to have been specifically created to transport and deploy the Nova Tank planetside. It obviously has other uses in cargo hauling and close air support roles, but I don't think the Hercules would exist without the Nova Tank.
I'm pleased that CIG has already created 3 models of the Hercules and is selling them all in the upcoming Concept Sale. This is preferable to what CIG did with the Vanguard by basically having two concept sales: the first for the Warden and then a second for the Sentinel and Harbinger models, about 6 months later. The reason I bring this up is that the Vanguard was overpriced at $250, which caused the Sentinel and Harbinger to be priced even higher. By releasing the 3 Hercules variants together, they won't be overpriced, hopefully. The C2 should be reasonably priced because it's the civilian cargo hauling model, and the M2 and A2 will be priced higher because they are the military models.
If CIG was smart, they'd price the Hercules lower and go for bulk sales, rather premium pricing the Hercules to increase its rarity. I think the following would be fair concept prices for the Hercules models:
C2 = $225 / $200 warbond
M2 = $275 / $250 warbond
A2 = $300 / $270 warbond
I know those prices seem too low, but there are historical precedences for those prices.
The Hercules appears to be comparable in size to the Starfarer, based on the size of the people in some of the concept art. I think the Hercules is about the same length as the Starfarer, but wider and shorter. They appear to have the same internal cargo capacity, but the Starfarer has much greater capacity overall because of the external fuel storage tanks. Considering that the Hercules C2 is just a cargo hauler, not a fuel harvester, mobile refinery, and refueling ship, it should be priced less than the Starfarer, because it can harvest fuel for FREE, refine it, and sell it for 100% profit. Therefore, it wouldn't make sense if the C2 ended up at $300. It should be $250 max. It should be less than that for a concept sale and warbond price, hence the $225 and $200 price points, respectively.
The Hercules M2 is basically the militarized Gemini variant of the C2. The Gemini ended up at $340, $40 more than the Starfarer. That's why I think the M2 will be $50 more than the C2.
The Hercule A2 is the gunship model and has a modified hull. It's loaded for bear and has bomb bays that significantly reduce its cargo capacity to only one Nova Tank. The A2 will obviously be the "premium" model of the Hercules and CIG will price it accordingly. I wouldn't be surprised if CIG charges $400 for the A2, but I think they should price it at $300 for the concept sale. The A2's price will probably jump to $350 after the concept sale, like for this November's Anniversary Sale, and it'll probably jump to the final price of $400 when it's flyable.
I believe that the prices I've given are reasonable, and CIG would be smarter to price the Hercules lower to go for bulk sales rather than higher for premium sales. However, based on how CIG has been pricing ships recently, I think the Hercules models will be at least $50 more than the prices that I estimated.
 
Something else I want to mention is that back when the Pioneer mobile construction ship was announced last November, I suggested that Star Citizen needed a "heavy lifter" ship that could pick up the outpost modules manufactured by the Pioneer and place them on the ground. This would be better than having to move the Pioneer after it placed a few modules. The Hercules isn't exactly the heavy lifter ship that I had in mind -- I thought the outpost lifter should be small enough to land on the Pioneer's landing pad -- but I believe the Hercules could serve the same purpose. The C2 model would be the logical choice. It could be used to both pick up outpost modules manufactured by a landed Pioneer, as well as transport outpost modules from space. I imagine a Hull C/D/E would transport numerous outpost modules through space and the C2 could load one module at a time on its belly -- probably using electromagnetic clamps -- ferry it down to the planet and place it on the surface.
I'm definitely going to submit a question like that for the Hercules Q&A.

Lol
These prices

Agree but CIG is now massively overcharging
And i now quit buying after 13,000 spent

Thats it!
Jean



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First They screw me by releasing "rare" ships every year, after the kickstarter they said they would not do...

Second, they screw me on all my CCU's I got in 2017 from Aquila to Multiple ships.. $ 4,000 spent and now all messed up; i.e. Aquila to prowler, over 8 ships at least..

and now, this mess

prices through the roof, so out of control I dont even know where to start.. This C2/M2 , this is Polaris/Pioneer territory; are they nuts ?

Wallet is closed for a long time, maybe forever until I see a real game like SQ42

Regards

JM

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From my perspective buy or dont buy thats your option ajd CIG will live or die based on their merrits.
As for the ship at had id pay 360 for the C2 and even 480 for the M2 if its equipped with the advertized armour, weapons and milspec components. But the A2 no no no....way too expensive, ill stay with my hammerhead which has far more going for it IMO.
AJ

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From my perspective buy or dont buy thats your option ajd CIG will live or die based on their merrits.
As for the ship at had id pay 360 for the C2 and even 480 for the M2 if its equipped with the advertized armour, weapons and milspec components. But the A2 no no no....way too expensive, ill stay with my hammerhead which has far more going for it IMO.
AJ

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So best deal, the hilariously overpriced C2 base model ? My god, I paid § 175 for my Starfarer, how much for my original Orion?

You’re right, HammerHead and Polaris, even 890J as a Capship is priced properly
This?

It’s nuts, and I’ve spent over $13,000 already over the years..
Take care
Jean


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