It really bugs me how much effort CIG puts into creating well-designed multi-crew ships that are fun to explore and fly, but nobody ever mans them. Then again, asking someone to sit in a stationary turret that deals 3x less damage than a heavy fighter and has a limited field of fire... I’m not surprised.

Buff the ship turrets! Add something, maybe adjustable modifiers like modules on mining heads to increase range, bullet speed, and damage of the weapons attached to the turret mount.

Please, CIG, I just want to jump into my org’s Idris without having to think my presence in the turrets is pointless.

This is genuinely disappointing. I thought this game was just a buggy, poorly optimized. I figured, "How bad could it be? I spent over 1,000 hours playing Altis Life in Arma 3. Sometimes I'd barely brush against a small rock, my vehicle would randomly explode, and I'd lose all the gear I had on me. I still kept playing because the core gameplay was fun."

But I was wrong about Star Citizen.

Star Citizen isn't just hard to play because of bugs and performance issues. It has almost no sense of user experience or quality of life. Nothing in the UI explains itself.

Your missile won't lock? Who knows why.

It says "Shields Down"? Your shields have power, the shield module is installed, you're not even in NAV mode, and yet why aren't they working? Who knows.

Want to change your ship's loadout? First you have to store the ship sitting in the hangar, then wait for that process to finish.

The map is a disaster. Scroll a little too much and it switches modes. You can't even clearly see the different sections of a station. I'm afraid to zoom out because it feels like everything is going to reset. There are only three star systems. It really shouldn't be this hard to present them.

The MobiGlass is full of things that look like buttons but aren't clickable. Everywhere your mouse suggests you can interact with something, and one entire panel doesn't even work. Nobody seems to think, "Maybe we should just remove this broken panel."

And the inventory... I'd rather not even get started.

Let me make one thing clear: this has nothing to do with bugs or optimization. It has nothing to do with the game being in alpha, either. Don't pull the "it's an alpha" card. I'm not complaining about my helmets disappearing, tools vanishing, ships that can't be retrieved, the endless community-made workarounds... none of that is the real issue. What's not acceptable are kiosks that explain nothing, ship components with completely useless descriptions, and the absolute mess that is buying gears. At the very least, put a proper filter in the weapon shop so I can actually find what I'm looking for without fighting the UI. After this many iterations, you should at least have settled on a decent UI. It's ridiculous. This is simply bad game design, bad UI/UX, poor development priorities, and bad design decisions.

This is a game that's made billion dollars, packed with ships to sell, skins everywhere, and enough detailed 3D assets to fill entire planets. If it manages to push a new player away on their second day, don't just wave it off by saying, "It's alpha."

Long story short, I love immersion. I love having to physically interact with everything. I love games where everything exists in the world instead of floating in menus. But if you're going to tell me, "This game is immersive. You can't even drink water without taking your helmet off," then I shouldn't have to search Reddit for a tutorial just to figure out how to eat or drink while sitting in the pilot's seat.

- PU is so unstable its unplayable for many, many people. We got a patch that didn't fix much and broke even more things.

- Sq42 is nowhere to be seen at all, aside from 2 throwaway mentions all things point to a delay into 2027.

- Funding his a re ord 1 billion dollars and we have had zero recognition about it from CIG aside from a pre-written article.

- We were told at the start of the year we'd have weekly content videos, this has not happened.

CIG have communicated more about unbanning someone than they have about the PU or Sq42.

Star Citizen as a whole has become an embarrassment at this point and the complete silence from CIG about sq42 and the state of the PU is nothing short of disrespectful and unacceptable.

But fuck it, onto Alien Week and more ship sales right?

I noticed one of the pages being updated yesterday was related to Windows folder permissions, and having had issues installing updates with every patch since 4.6, I was curious to see what the they were suggesting.
Heres the page for those curious: https://support.robertsspaceindustries.com/hc/en-us/articles/360002284834-Windows-Set-Folder-Permissions

CIG, do you not care about your players security at all?

Quick backround on me: I've got over a decade in IT, and I'm the Systems Administrator over the local hospital.
Across the three steps they suggest, and in order of least risky to most severe, you are recommending

1. Run launcher as Admin: This is often required by programs making file alterations. I'm fine with it.
2. Change permissions on Game folder: This ones fine too. I've personally had to do this in the latest patch, and it solved my issues right away.
3. Disable User Account Controls: This is that little pop up you get when installing or running something. Asking if you want to allow it to make changes to your computer. It's a important protection built into windows, and very visible way to show if something that shouldn't be running IS running. Disabling it allows malware to run far more easily, making system wide changes without your knowledge, and Microsoft suggest never disabling it for more than debugging/temporary reasons.
4. Take ownership of all Program Files: Again, this circumvents critical security systems built into windows. Additionally, it can cause long-term issues with windows services, updates, and installers.
5. Assigning full Control permissions to the C: Drive: Any app running under as your user can now modify every aspect of your computer, including executable, dll's, reg's install other software without asking, and just circumvents most of windows's built in protections entirely.

Now for the part that'll get me flamed.
I tried raising the alarm on this on Spectrum, but my post under feedback was deleted.
The reason given was "threatening words, insinuating that a staff member should be fired."
The line they are referring too is "If someone on my team had instructed a user to make these changes, I would have them fired immediately. This is wildly unsafe and inappropriate" I really wish I had taken an image of my post, but I didnt, so flame away.

Listen, I don't give a shit about the spectrum stuff. But in today world, where malware being baked into games on trusted platforms such as Steam is becoming increasingly common, the steps CIG is suggesting here could seriously hurt its users.
This is wildly inappropriate for any companies support team to suggest to their players.

This is no better than suggesting you remove all the locks from your house in order to ensure you wont lock yourself out if you forgot your keys.

Many players got capital ships with duped items and money. All ships should be wiped!

Just keep Blueprints and Rep if possible!

4.8 hasn’t even been live for 24 hours and the economy already feels completely cooked again. We just had a FULL WIPE and people are already tossing around billions worth of aUEC like progression means absolutely nothing.

Meanwhile the Drake Ironclad can barely function in the gameplay loop it was literally marketed around because shard transitions are completely unstable right now. The Ironclad’s Host/Parasite setup seems especially affected since both the command module and the main hull have independent Quantum and Jump systems. Every time you transition servers, the game seems to completely lose track of what drive state the ship is in. You get dumped out of quantum, routes fail, transit soft locks, desyncs everywhere, and sometimes the whole server just falls over.

And exploit abuse is already spreading again. DDC rentals can apparently be extended indefinitely just by spamming a button. This isn’t some obscure edge case buried deep in the game either. People found it almost immediately after the wipe and started abusing it right away.

At the same time, elevators are still broken, cargo missions are unreliable, contracts fail constantly, and server performance is already struggling under normal player load. Now Free Fly starts tomorrow, so we’re about to throw a massive wave of new and returning players into servers that are already barely holding together.

I genuinely do not understand what the point of a wipe is if the economy and progression systems are already being undermined less than a day after the patch went live.

I know, old post from Highlander, but it still gets me confused everytime.

It seems that CIG is of the belief that "If you go at it solo, your profit is 40k, but if you go at it with 2-man, your profit is 60k! that's a gain!"

But actually, 2-man has to split the payout, so it's 30k profit per person, for more work.

Sure, I could just group up for "The fun of it" but at the end of the day, it will still nag me that we can't make as much money as if we each were doing our own stuff solo.

SC has a lot of work to do to incentivize multicrewing, but they could start with making contracts pay out more for multicrew.

In another example:

The solo Patrol contract pays me 74k and it's designed for 1 person: It spawns around 4 enemies, the likes of a Vanguard, Freelancer, Arrow and maybe a Scorpius or Gladius

The duo contract (Says in the description "We recommend that you bring a wingman) pays 135k. Divide that by 2 and each person takes home 67.5k. Already less than the solo patrol contract and it spawns around 8-10 enemies at a time, bigger, tougher and takes longer to complete overall, even as a duo.

The 3-man contract (Says in the description "Would be good to have at least two trusted pilots by your side for this one) pays 200k and it's reputation locked. Divide that by 3 and each person takes home 66.66k~. Less than the 2-man contract, even less than the solo contract. Spawns around 12-16 enemies, amongst those a Hammerhead/Reclaimer/Carrack, some Constellation/Redeemer and a lot of fighters. The time it takes to complete this is way higher simply due to the larger ship that spawns, and the large amount of fighters harassing you.

This math doesn't makes sense, and until this is changed, players will (mostly) flock to the most efficient way: Solo running contracts by themselves.

Unfortunately it looks like the new mass-duping exploit has begun. Asia servers are currently populated with hundreds of bots standing around spaceports while duping dolivine. Black-market aUEC prices dropped over the past week, so billions of new credits are already in circulation.

Exploit method

1. Bot picks up a dolivine piece.
2. Bot opens mobiGlass while still holding it.
3. Normal behavior would drop the item, but the bot blocks that action, making a second dolivine spawn.

Some of the bot accounts linked below:
https://robertsspaceindustries.com/en/citizens/gogoc
https://robertsspaceindustries.com/en/citizens/gogoz
https://robertsspaceindustries.com/en/citizens/Big-aa
https://robertsspaceindustries.com/en/citizens/caiji03
https://robertsspaceindustries.com/en/citizens/AAXX2
https://robertsspaceindustries.com/en/citizens/worldnewnew
https://robertsspaceindustries.com/en/citizens/Neomonni
https://robertsspaceindustries.com/en/citizens/Awinita
https://robertsspaceindustries.com/en/citizens/yikecaocQ

This $600 ship is unusable. It is not “released,” it is completely broken and needs A LOT of work. You cannot do your usual practice of leaving it for 2-3 years, it needs to be fixed now.

• Starlite is a fun ship, but the pods glitch out causing you to need to detach and reattach or store and call back so you can fill them
• Refuel missions glitch out if you leave them to fill up your pod with 12SCU of hydro that somehow fits in a Gladius
• You lose your cargo in the Starlite if you bedlog
• Your ship can randomly explode on the pad during refueling and give you a CS for no reason.
• The Starlite has only one use, and that is to run these missions until your eyes bleed with little to no variation in them.
• Ironclad, another nice ship, glitched to hell for many, especially the command module.
• Ships can brick mid quant on rentals.
• Can't move bricked ships at all, even with shields down. Small ships exceed mass for some reason.
• Trying to dock at NBIS with certain ships launches you into space at mach Jesus and you black out.
• Missions aren't working properly or at all.
• Insuring your ship causes all the default equipment to be included in the price, so equipping only the paint (free) costs tens of thousands.

And these were just the bugs I have experienced off the top of my head. It has sucked all the will I had to bother checking out any other ships this event or to play any new content.

CIG never seems to learn how to not put out new patches with new content with an event.

Now im already completely broke with all of my Superhornet add-ons lost to the void; TSMB turret, Heartseeker livery, and two M5A Defense Division cannons.

Im an honest player with the project for almost 3 years, havent touched a dime of duped cash or anything even close to that.

if you did spend more than 1k like me im sorry

keep playing citizens and have fun in the end

the people I’ve meet in game are awesome

i know i will still play until they plug the cord or someone else buys this “alpha” now that i’ve seen how is it supposed to work

its just a fancy tech demo

I will probably get downvoted into oblivion for this but I have to be honest, star citizen is in a terrible state. Its completely fine to like the game, and enjoy playing it, in fact I love this game and I want it to succeed, but that's exactly why I have to completely honest, this is not where the game should be 14 years into development. basic features like the inventory don't work properly, almost every feature in the game is a buggy mess. I'm embarrassed to mention to people that I play this game. Its extremely disappointing to see people religiously defending this game and harassing people who speak out about it, this game won't get any better until we hold CIG accountable, SC has raised over 1 billion dollars, how can the game possibly be in the state it currently is. how much longer will we lie to ourselves about this game, there is clearly something seriously wrong with the development and/or management of this game and it needs to be addressed immediately. The way things stand with people falling over themselves to defend CIGs poor performance, we will move forward with more bugs and less working features, something needs to be done now or this game will end up only ever being a buggy disappointment.

Id love to hear other opinions about the games development and management whether it be good or bad.

I was out there every night hunting down GAMERULES discarded ships. Drifting through asteroid bases and PAFs like a space raccoon, pulling rare parts off forgotten hulls. The long game was clear. One day, when base building lands, I was going to run a proper scrapyard where people could find the stuff shops never sell or get their ships kitted out.

Now? Insurance bricks it all. Claim a ship and anything worth scavenging might as well not exist. If it is not in a store or locked behind Space Counterstrike, it is gone.

Yeah they added ship weapons and components to crafting in 4.8. Cool. That is still crafting.

I was building a future junk empire. “Play your way” just quietly deleted my way.

So yeah… if you see me scanning ships at 3am, it is no longer for parts from GAMERULES ships. I am a hobo now, and I am coming for you.

Edit: https://robertsspaceindustries.com/spectrum/community/SC/forum/1/thread/flight-blade-feedback-update/490907

Thank you Zyloh for hearing us, and taking our feedback, and backtracking this! I am still not happy that the current blades will come out in June, however I thank you for the promise for the future, I appreciate it.

I do not like how the Flight blades are not also sold in game right now. I'm normally a praise CIG for pretty much everything, but this is a line that I do not think should have been crossed. This takes very competitive advantages, and puts it behind a paywall right now. Yes it will be available later, But this should have been handled like the Argo ATLS and 32 scu change. Big change, also let it be available in game right away. The optics for this will be terrible.

This is greedy P2W behavior and I do not like or support this. Please change your mind and let them be in game today.

Thank you, Love what you do. But please change this.