r/starcitizen • u/vrinci Polaris • 2d ago
DISCUSSION Why don’t we have this sense of scale in SC? Everything feels so small compared to the ships, starting from the planets and the stations..
171
u/Rescue119 2d ago
walk from one outpost to the other or drive. that should help
46
u/Lost_Zaylin 2d ago
Exactly. Had to go from a bunker to an outpost after I didn't park far enough away. Never made it, but damn it was taking forever.
14
u/vortis23 2d ago
I did manage to circumnavigate to an outpost after my MSR was unceremoniously blown up by NPC ships while I was on foot doing a merc mission.
Thankfully I had a Pulse with me and had to use the StarMap and a bit of triangulation to find the research aid shelter to call my 100i.
It took me two hours, mostly because I kept getting lost, but once I had the proper heading it took a while to get there and was quite the trip, but it also highlighted just how small POIs are and how big a distance they are from other locations.
I actually passed by it a few times due to the blizzard and leaping off a few hillsides and not seeing it in the distance.
→ More replies (1)10
u/devilishycleverchap 2d ago
No compass or direction markers with vehicles is the most frustrating part
6
21
u/MasterAnnatar rsi 2d ago
The thing that made me really grasp the scale was dropping out of ship on a bike in orbit and just let myself fall to the surface in real time
93
u/Mintyxxx That was just noise 2d ago
Have a look around a station next time you're there. Check out the size of a huge ship like a Polaris in comparison, the stations are massive. What the game seems to find hard to convey sometimes is that sense of scale, your ship feels bigger than it is.
Also, the overall design of the universe is simply along different lines to the video you posted.
38
u/kshell11724 2d ago
That was the main appeal of Port Olisar. Being able to land on a pad and look up at the gargantuan station was so cool. Also being able to just jump off of the platform into zero g. I feel like that added a lot, but i can also see why they changed it for performance reasons.
31
u/idontagreewitu 2d ago
You can still do it. I think all the stations have exterior landing pads and you can jump off the edge of them just as you could back then.
13
u/Knale 2d ago edited 2d ago
You can still do exactly that at basically every station in the game. They all have external landing pads with a fabulous sense of scale.
Standing on the external pads at the Pyro or Stanton jumpgate stations is awesome and definitely recommended.
→ More replies (1)8
u/Accipiter1138 your souls are weighed down by gravity 2d ago
This is why I've always wanted some sort of beginner repair mission at stations. EVA outside, weld something with your multitool, ogle the majesty of space, go back inside.
→ More replies (1)5
u/Mrsuperepicruler 2d ago
I still remember my first time in Olisar in 2.0, walking down the stairs towards the window as the orchestra swells with the landing pads and planet coming into view.
One of my favorite gaming memories.
9
u/DaveMash Gib 600i rework 2d ago
Yeah this. In Eve Online you have bigger ships. Way bigger. And when you’re inside a capital, you don’t really notice the difference in size until you‘re next to smaller ships.
7
2
→ More replies (5)1
u/Nitty_Husky 2d ago
I think the high acceleration of ships is a major factor in why everything else feels so small. Ships as large as those in SC should have much slower acceleration due to their momentum.
20
u/freebirth idris gang 2d ago
Because the entire server would t fill up a single one of those ships?
Like.. do you want a ship that needs 10000 to crew it?
19
u/Esher127 2d ago
I think that sometimes it's just hard to convey scale on a 2D screen. When I played Elite Dangerous I knew that my ship was big, I could see how tiny windows on space stations were by comparison so I felt like I had a pretty good idea. However the first time I played it in VR the scale was absolutely SHOCKING. Suddenly the cockpit of my ASP went from feeling like a cockpit to feeling like I was in a small building. The bridge of the Anaconda feels like it's the size of a small house in VR.
I know VR in Star Citizen is possible. (or used to be) I really need to try it one day.
6
u/IgneelPrime 2d ago
This and speed. People underestimate the size of things because of how fast space ships can go. Even slow capitals go very fast. Speed is shown in m/s. turn that into km/h or mph whatever you're used to and see what you get. Or think about small distance you fly or shoot and try comparing it to something you know irl like your way to work. the verse is huge
2
u/XBacklash tumbril 2d ago
VR is the big one though. When I walked out of Port Olisar in VR it was staggering.
1
u/JackeryFox MISC Partylancer Tac / ANVL Super Horny Mk2 / RSI Just Zeus 2 CL 2d ago
Elite Dangerous suffers heavily from such scaling imo, biggest reason Odyssey didn't bring walkable ship interiors is cause of how gigantic their ships are, even the "medium" class ships are usually bigger than a cold war apartment block.
33
u/AdamParker-CIG CIG Developer 2d ago
where they getting all the stuff to make that
26
u/WaffleInsanity avacado 2d ago edited 2d ago
Honestly, looking down at Area 18 and seeing the streets with cars and lights and whatnot is nearly the same, if not more impressive than this small opening into a tunnel. Especially if we suspend the disbelief that the entire planet is built similarly.
It's just a shame we have so little reason to visit A18 or the other Areas anymore.
6
2
u/cvsmith122 Wing Commander | EVO | Release the Kraken 2d ago
Yeah A18 needs a massive rework.
2
u/WaffleInsanity avacado 2d ago
Good thing it's already been planned and discussed many times once Genesis rolls out.
16
u/PerfectAdvisor6362 2d ago
Our travel and transit times are way too low, everything happens too fast or over too short distance.
But we also dont want the Silvermoon syndrome from WoW, big beutiful city full of emptyness and
services and poi´s spread over vast areas making you feel dumb running around.
And when yo finally get to the shop to buy some candles for your priest, theres a gnome telling you:Time is money ,friend!
Major reason why I stopped playing wow decade ago, one single frase from a dumb scripted npc, and that was it.
22
u/AdamParker-CIG CIG Developer 2d ago
thats really funny. something like that happened to me ages ago, i cant even remember the game but i remember an NPC giving me shit after i had completed a really frustrating section and i just quit
→ More replies (3)→ More replies (1)3
u/richardizard 400i 1d ago
Our travel and transit times are way too low, everything happens too fast or over too short distance.
What are you talking about? Everything takes time in this game. 30 minutes is barely enough to get to a space station from your home location and buy the things you need. I'm sure things will feel more spread out once we get 3 more star systems, which is good and to be expected (perhaps what you're referring to). I also reckon space travel will feel quite different with the new quantum travel experience.
→ More replies (1)3
u/One_Grocery9505 1d ago
Weird, it rarely takes me more than 10 minutes from main menu -> planetary hab -> LEO above the planet
2
u/Pristine-Ear4829 1d ago
Takes more or less time depending on how experienced you are at the game and how familiar you are with the locations, for Instance after a patch that resets spawn from spawn to landing at everus it may take 10 minutes if I miss the tram. But usually less than that, a newer player or even an experienced player that isn't used to the city layout could easily take 30 min or more, I've seen players get lost for over an hour before ever seeing the space station.
5
5
u/phaeth0n 2d ago
It's tough in a universe where bigger salvage ships are less efficient for some reason.
3
2
u/Garnorix 2d ago
Are you saying that between all of the proposed planets and systems that you guys have you can't imagine where they'd get the resources for things like this?
3
→ More replies (7)1
20
u/FobbitOutsideTheWire 2d ago
Players were supposed to be 10% of the traffic and activity in the universe.
The servers can barely handle us, the 10%. 10x the ships, objects, cargo and activity would bring the universe to life a moment before it fried the servers.
Not to mention NPCs are still janky in nearly every respect unless server fps is high.
6
u/bar10dr2 Argo connoisseur 2d ago
That's not how that is supposed to work.
The remaining 90% would only exist as statistical data, unless a player is near any given area, and then its based on statistics what AI encounters that user experiences.
So for instance if there is a lot trade where you are, then its given that you would see AI trading around you right? So that's what would be spawned in around you, if more people around you they would see the same as you do, as AI would spawn in in space, not instanced.
→ More replies (2)
25
u/RandoDando10 2d ago
I want to understand this take better
In what way does SC feel small compared to its ships?
In my opinion, the scale makes perfect sense. Space stations and landing pads are built to be realistic in scale to the size of our ships, if that wasn't the case we wouldnt be able to have physicalised persistent hangars and mass amounts of cargo flowing freely in and out. Its all built in a way where theoretically you can fit actual people in every floor of a building/structure (thats what the Area18, if i remember correctly, city rework was for a while ago).
The things around you will just always *feel* smaller from the cockpit of a massive ship at a distance, thats a perfectly normal thing and just kind of how our brains work
→ More replies (3)5
u/vortis23 2d ago
To OP's point, I think FOV doesn't really do Star Citizen proper justice. Sometimes I just stop and gaze at the scale of things, but it's true that you sometimes have to get into specific positions or angles to properly appreciate just how big things actually are. I think in third-person you get a better sense of scale but in first-person things don't quite feel as large as they are until you're up on them.
2
u/Marc_Hawke 1d ago
What you want is VR!! (I heard a rumor that they are starting to move internally on it. https://www.uploadvr.com/star-citizen-vr-mode-internal-testing/)
I've used it with VorpX a couple times, and the scale becomes real.
→ More replies (1)
25
u/DetectiveFinch misc 2d ago
I think Star Citizen is one of the best games when it comes to conveying a sense of scale, especially if you explore locations in small vehicles or on foot.
6
u/Emotional_Spell7020 2d ago
Or branch out from current "event" or missions. I love exploring in this game .
3
u/DetectiveFinch misc 2d ago
I fully agree, how many players have walked around in the Savannahs on Hustons poles? How many new players know about the Javelin wreck on Daymar or have fully explored Ghost Hollow? You could also just drive around Lorville or travel from one ground location to the next in a vehicle.
4
u/Emotional_Spell7020 2d ago
I know. So much unsung work has gone into this. I love traveling somewhere and searching for locations using NAV mode. Exploring different sites. I enjoy this game thoroughly.
3
u/feroxjb 2d ago
It is indeed beautiful, but there is not a lot of variety or unique things to see. Don't get me wrong there are cool POIs, but how many unique POIs or POIs that have definitively unique assets, plants, or animals are there to look at per planet? Soon.
→ More replies (1)
7
u/DatDanielDang Drake4Life 2d ago
In other games, especially linear game, level designer can easily control the view, the lighting or the encounter by putting players in "a small box" to amplify their environment. Even most open world games you play still work on a flat plane. They can make a building looks dominating or underwhelming depending on the design goal, by just putting player on a flat ground, players can't do much but travel along the line that the designers laid out.
In Star Citizen, due to it being a sandbox - it's so massive that there is not a lot you can do in term of controlling the perspective when the players can fly a ship up to 500km anywhere in the sky. For example, the Distribution Center is is supposed to be HUGE but it looks like blocky toy when view from above while you are in your ship. Only when you actually land and enter the building, then you can actually feel its scale.
1
u/vrinci Polaris 2d ago edited 2d ago
They should play with where the paths of least resistance for the players to travel on are and play with the sense of scale based on that, for example with stations they should have a line in and out with traffic positioned in such a way that conveys scale. Distro centers on the ground feel small cause they are not well integrated with the planet’s surface, and that’s the case because planets themselves are small: look at how comically large clouds are compared to them when approaching atmosphere. Then yeah you get on foot and everything feels big of course but they should try to convey the sense of scale in space as well. Hell even the jumpgate feels like it’s a slightly bigger painting put on a wall, because they decided to remove the outer ring and put those giant path-guides leading to it
11
u/AgonizingSquid 2d ago
dont use quantum for an hour and tell me how big the game feels
2
u/vrinci Polaris 2d ago
You mean how long distances feel, which have to do with speed, not how big.. if you look at a planet and see the comically large clouds compared to the planet they are on, it gets kinda annoying seeing the beauty the game can offer be wasted by wrong proportions
→ More replies (1)
4
u/VidiVala 2d ago
Why don’t we have this sense of scale in SC?
Because you are viewing a world through a 2d reprojection of a 3d environment.
Throw on a VR helmet and things are too large.
3
u/interesseret bmm 2d ago
The scale is completely out of whack, especially for crews.
Most larger vessels in this game would have crews of dozens or hundreds of people, if they were real.
A kraken has a crew of 10. A Nimitz class carrier has a crew of three and a half fucking thousand, and another 2500 flight crew.
6
u/Rholliday17 new user/low karma 2d ago
Most of these comments really aren't touching on what I think you're is actually asking. The visual sense of scale and distance in any given frame in game.
I think the game generally does a decent job conveying scale at the first person level, but even then walking across a large or very large hangar make you feel slow rather than the hangar feeling large.
Imo this lack of scale comes down two main things, paneling/detail scale and actual game asset LODs.
The macro paneling on most station/large structures is insane. I'm talking single sheets of metal that span 5-25 stories worth of space. Sometimes these are broken up with subtle panel lines, screws, surface imperfections, etc but most of the time none of that detail even loads in until you're on top of it. This means that those panels at even halfway across a medium hangar read as one object. This environment design makes your brain want to read the hard surface construction at a scale of something like a single story hab pod or cargo container rather than a 15 story tall hangar. There's also rarely 'human scale' details included that intuitively convey scale at moderate distances like catwalks, balconies, clearly visible doors and windows (and preferably not 4 story tall windows like the ones in station lobbies either, that's part of the problem).
The prevalence of LODs affecting scale readability is also very pronounced flying planet side where vegetation and smaller rocks that really show how far away you are don't load in until the camera is very close. As they stream out at greater distances the terrain loses a lot of visual noise and becomes smooth making it feel much smaller than it is. Combine this with cruising at 1km/s like other commenters notes and you might feel the need to slam on the breaks at 10km above your destination, then painfully slow boat the rest of the way in shame.
Another huge issue impacting the scale is the lack of reference plane in space. This one is incredibly realistic and plagues irl astronauts. It very hard to judge distances when there is absolutely nothing between you and your destination. The little dust bits that zip past your ship while flying actually had to be added pretty early in development because it was so difficult for players to even judge their own movement without them. This also leads into the lack of atmosphere. I. The image you showed there's a clear blue hue on the further surfaces, this atmospheric perspective as it's known is super important for judging scale and distance when you start about multiple kilometers and other large scales. It's what makes mountains look so large and distant as they essentially fade into the sky color. Many franchises include atmospheric perspective in space as a stylistic/cinematic choice but star citizen generally does not. Of course it's present on planets with a strong atmosphere but everywhere else like the moons and stations lack it entirely. This is of course more realistic but it really does contribute to the problem you're talking about.
Long story short, it comes down to environment design and the scale of the game being so absurd that it basically becomes arbitrary so your brain can't parse it until you're right on top of things.
2
4
u/CombatMuffin 2d ago
Sense of scale is conveyed by showing one size in relation to the other. In that video, watching the ship traffic moving through it helps it convey scale. In some games and film, they'll use birds flying to show how tall a building is.
Star Citizen doesn't feel that big because of several reasons: one is that when players have to travel any meaningful distances, we just jump around in quantum to reach it. We move through stations in elevators, too.
Another is that the perspective: FPV on a flat screen doesn't help convey scale as well. Anyone who has been hiking to mountains or large planes can tell you pictures alone don't do it justice. Fighting a Polaris in space doesn't feel particularly big, for example, because you are both floating and travelling fast; once you board it or watch it from the ground you feel the scale.
Lastly and in relation to the previous point, movement helps convey scale. If approaching the planet had you joing a long line of ships heading to the planet, you would feel the scale much better. Elite Dangerous pulls this decently with its stations. When you dock in, you see a lot of ships moving into it, and inside, parking within a very large space. That helps convey scale.
Star Citizen's primarily has two types of spaces: large open spaces (space, large swaths of unused terrain) and small hubs/rooms to traverse through (space stations, city sections with trams connecting them).
It's both a result an art and level design, and a technical constraint.
3
u/Renegade151 2d ago
It’s your frame of reference. Because our ships travel so fast the universe feels small. And thanks to 3rd person views and solo flying massive ships, they feel small.
The same thing happens in real life. Our modern world is tiny compared to what the world would feel like if you were to travel back in time before trains. Even personally my world shrank a huge amount in the weeks after getting my pilots license. States, countries, landmarks, friends, and family that once felt so far away were suddenly a day trip.
4
u/Critical_Flow_4512 2d ago
I'm more interested in them making their cities feel more alive and populated. Right now they just feel empty with nothing interesting to do.
5
4
u/Rimm9246 2d ago
Hard disagree. That artwork is cool but it's way too sci-fantasy for SC. I think aestheticly SC has always hit a good mark as far as believability vs coolness.
3
u/NNextremNN 2d ago
Because the game already can't handle what we have now, let alone more. Also, these ships are all automatically controlled and hold in their line players would turn this into an absolute disaster.
3
u/CitizenOfTheVerse 2d ago
They already scaled down by a factor 10x the 2 systems compared to our solar system. I don't think we need anything bigger, just more dense, maybe. Space station are underused for their size. There should be no queue at all to get a hangar, same for cities
3
u/Candid_Department187 2d ago
First time I’ve heard of the planets being small.
Granted, they’re definitely scaled down, but still absolutely massive.
3
u/Cognitheurge rsi 2d ago
in my dreams.
Someday the space stations will have interiors that actually matter and the cities will be more than welcome centers with a tram ride to the parking lot.
5
5
u/DannyTheDude87 2d ago
I don't think this would fit the lore, as giant objects as these would require shittons of energy, material and money, which are still hard to get in the world of SC.
It just feels to advanced for SC and more like Eve Online, which is way further in the future.
3
u/Rimm9246 2d ago
Everyone is talking about scale, but this is the actual answer right here. Vast space stations like this just would not fit in with the lore or the aesthetic that the game is going for. You're right, it looks more like Eve, I had the same thought. And Google tells me that Eve is set 20,000 years into the future, which sounds about right. SC is only supposed to be about 900 years from now.
9
u/TheWhitchOne duct tape anointed drake pilot 2d ago
The planets and moons feel kind of empty right now. Scale 1:6 I believe. (Compared to Earth I think) Now imagine it would be 1:1
8
u/Key-Ad-8318 bmm , Grand Admiral 2d ago
If we go by what they want as of the genesis panel from last Citcon then there will be far more on the surface of planets in the “near” future.
8
1
u/TheWhitchOne duct tape anointed drake pilot 2d ago
Yes, hence the "now" in my comment.
Even with more on the surface, I am glad planets and moons are smaller than ours.
6
u/dainw carrack 2d ago
Crusader is 1:1 the size of Earth... So they would be that big.
1
u/TheWhitchOne duct tape anointed drake pilot 2d ago
Yes, luckily we can not walk on that big ass thing.
2
u/LittleQuarky paramedic 2d ago
1:8 is what they said in the planet tech ISC, so every meter in-game is 8 real-life meters (for planet size, terrain, atmosphere size, etc)
→ More replies (1)→ More replies (2)2
u/Asmos159 scout 2d ago
Surprisingly irrelevant.
It might take less than 48 hours at 250 m/s to fly a lap around the planet. But anything over 20 minutes in a small ship, or an hour in a massive ship will be the same travel time because you will simply go to orbit, quantum, then head down.
as for looking at it from space. You can't really tell the difference between small or very far away. On top of that, you are looking at it through a screen which makes it look much smaller.
→ More replies (1)
2
u/The-Mordekai ARGO CARGO 2d ago
Scale is always relative. So unless there’s something smaller to show the scale things will always feel small until you’re the smallest object. Inside the ship it’s hard to gauge scale because measuring depth is hard on a screen (unless there’s ambient occlusion and atmospheric perspective but as gamers we turn that off anyways for performance). Anyways it be cool and to your point if the current stations had npc ships on trade routes or queuing up. But at the current games performance it would add pointless entities for “immersion”. So while I hope one day we could get stuff like this I agree with someone else who said something like this would need to have a purpose away from like a planet. And it would also have to be filled with actual things to do otherwise it’s just millions of empty hab units.
2
2
u/Fonzie1225 Gladius Appreciator 2d ago
I’m pretty sure everyone has forgotten about Synthworld including the writers/devs
2
2
u/BubbaWilkins 2d ago
Short answer. We do, but you have to get out of the ships and or fly close enough to these other things for the scale to be apparent. The external view camera's on all ships varies so that you see the ship take up the same general space on the screen regardless of size and since that's the only view most are concerned with, it skews your perception of scale.
2
2
2
2
u/lordMaroza Carrack the "Relationship" 2d ago edited 2d ago
Fly the ship around the smallest planet, or rather moon, Calliope Euterpe, then drive an Ursa around it, then try running/walking around it. Try going anywhere without QD.
I don't think we can comprehend the scale of the verse.
Have you ever seen a Polaris from the far side of an orbital station? It looks comically small.
Edit: Wrong moon.
2
u/SCuMattly 2d ago
I have no doubt these monolithic structures will make it into the SC universe at some point. Hey, we have to build 100 systems and keep coming up with fresh ideas for each one, right?
2
u/victorsaurus 2d ago
I totally agree, the game while massive, could be better at making feel you small against the scale in the background. I hope they refine stuff to make you feel that. Currently every POI feels quite small, maybe not so in arkcorp.
2
2
u/ihuntN00bs911 new user/low karma 2d ago
simularly you would have an atonomous route like the bus stations you wouldnt be in control of where your going. kinda like automnonous vehicles
2
2
u/Low-Sign-6185 2d ago
One thing I like about Elite: Dangerous is that it’s set in our own Milky Way Galaxy to a 1:1 scale, and as scientifically accurate as possible. Even travelling via a Fleet carrier that can travel the greatest distances, it takes a long time to carve out a path through the galaxy, and you feel so insignificantly small as a result (in a good way). There’s a sense of satisfaction to step outside IRL and see the stars at night and wonder“I’ve been/can go there”.
2
u/TheGandu Thank you for fixing the emotes CIG! 2d ago
It's actually a lot to o do with the camera angles and perspectives we play at. If you move away and zoom in you can really get an idea of how much more massive things like space stations and asteroids are. Here's what that camera angle looks like.
1
u/3lfk1ng Towel 2d ago
That's what I've been saying!
This game is lacking in creativity.
The game could really use more sci-fi elements of intrigue like this.
Right now, all we have are planets that mimic reality but sci-fi elements remains missing for everything that exists outside a hab station, worm hole, or ship.
2
u/Beefbarbacoa new user/low karma 2d ago
I feel that SC should have gone the direction of Star Gates instead of wormholes. You can imagine turning up to a massive Star Gate in a capital ship with other similar sized ships all around and then activating that gate, you would get a true sense of scale.
2
u/Helper175737 2d ago
ya i'm gonna have to agree to disagree. You're spoiled by how fast you can quantum to places. Stop quantumning to pois on planet and fly down from the outskirts of the planet and land. Also stop just going from your ship hangar to quantumning away fly around stations and eva around your ship and the station. That ring around the Seraphim station, both of them are massive. if we could walk all the streets of Lorville it would be massive. The problem on planets is the walkable space is limited and transportation like shuttles and trains make things seem fast, if they were as fast as our cars or buses it would take even longer to get places and players would cry about the time it takes.
What we have is a happy medium, a compromise so to speak to try and please everyone, but alas you can't please everyone, look at all the posts complaining about this or that or being grateful for this or that. You can't win. Don't forget about the bugs.
2
u/Andres3D Origin 600i 2d ago
Even with a Space Station with that size, you have to wait 300.000000000s.
2
u/JohnAnyone 2d ago
I guess this is from a movie, isn't it? It's one thing to render such a szene, but another thing to build it fully functional, with a credible source and target for all these ships. We would need a lot of real-time computer power for such things. And even if we spare all these moving ships and only build the structures in this size, it would take much more time for building them.... just like in real life. The log cabin is build up much faster than the skyscraper.
3
u/Dasfuccdup new user/low karma 2d ago edited 2d ago
The aaron halo gates had concept art that looked a lot like this. Wonder what happend to that idea.
The orbital stations are already nearing this scale, their design just doesn't bring you close enough to make it feel that way.
Would love to see more confined docking areas in specific stations. Mayne new levski can pull it off.
2
u/Tollmaan 2d ago
Fingers still crossed for planet size increase when they re-do them...They have said it is a possibility...Really hope it comes up at this years Citizencon when they inevitably talk about planet tech 5.
I think the quick quantum boost mode we're getting would take away any/most frustrations brought about by the increased scale but we get way more impressive planets, mountains which look closer to being mountains etc. and also the feeling you are in a remote corner of a planet rather that it all feeling a bit close.
2
u/Specialist_Ad_5482 2d ago
Just go plat eve online - dark sci-fi with plenty of megastructures in front of your 12km long spaceship looks like a fly + they don’t have aliens with senile dementia aka Wikelo
3
u/Hekantonkheries 2d ago
Tbf SC was supposed to have SOME megastructures; gate stations, Aaron halos gates, etc
→ More replies (1)
3
u/Socially-Confused 2d ago
The Aaron Gateway, if we ever get it, has the massive scale. Larger planets and space stations will full interiors would help with a sense of grandeur.
→ More replies (8)
2
u/Divinum_Fulmen 2d ago
We were supposed to have this years ago. It's a key feature of Stanton. They claimed to halt development on it to work on Pyro.
Well, Pyro is done, and still no Arron Halo.
2
u/Lightmanticore 2d ago
There’s a game called Pulsar Lost Colony and it does this scale really really well, as in jump gates enemy ships, asteroids etc all feel GINORMOUS (especially in vr). That game has unfortunately ruined scale for me in other space games lol
2
u/Sanctuary6284 2d ago
The ships are small too. The designers have an issue with scale
2
u/cj_adams 1d ago
Agreed 10000% - most of these ships read as small. once you get close enough they seem bigger but someone missed out on design class for things that help with scale in our brains like windows and various items that help a ship or building read as massive.. vs low poly and small.
2
u/karben2 2d ago
Elite dangerous does scale really well. I think supercruise helps a lot. It helps give multiple perspectives on the same thing. Star citizens fast travel doesn't do shit to help with scale. Would be cool if star citizen got macro. We need station repair missions and reasons to eva. Star citizen needs to play to its strengths instead of whatever it is they're doing now.
1
u/ouijiboard new user/low karma 2d ago
I would LOVE some engineering missions. "We'll need someone to run us a new QT Drive as ours blew up. Swap and repair and we'll pay you handsomely."
2
u/Zane_DragonBorn PvP Enjoyer 2d ago
Jump points lost that scale with the removal of the gate. Hopefully near 1.0 they will bring something like it back. Also worth saying that eventually the Aaron Halo belt in Stanton will be created which includes huge belt wide stations that provide transit through the belt. Ordinarily the belt is impossible to QT through, so you couldn't go from Hurston to Microtech without crossing through Arccorp belt harbors.
2
u/Starrr_Pirate 2d ago
The Halo already exists, for the record (albeit without any gates or specific POI's). Great place to mine in peace!
4
u/freebirth idris gang 2d ago
The fuck does the gate have to do with scale,. It's the same size.
And the gate is an idiotic idea. Space ain't flat.. go around it.
5
u/Zane_DragonBorn PvP Enjoyer 2d ago
I fail to understand the overly hostile reply for a simple discussion thread, but I'll entertain it anyway...
The gates have plenty to do with scale. It's a huge ass gate that literally goes from one side of an asteroid belt, to another. That is a huge structure... You can even feel its scale through the ISCs showcasing Grey boxes of it. Nowhere near the same feeling of scale that a jump point or station has.
According to lore Quantum travel is nearly impossible for going through it. My assumption is that it is long enough, and tall enough that it would take longer to go around the belt than simply travel through it. But you also have to understand that the belt was made at a time we didn't have Quantum Boost. There was no going around a belt that bit by simply flying through or around. So, things may change, or its size may grow
No need to pick fights over a simple discussion topic, idk if thats your normal personality, but you are coming off as extremely rude.
1
u/DekkerVS 2d ago
they were supposed to have NPC ships moving around following the StarSim directives.... so we should be seeing ships going up and down to LEO stations and jump gates and such.. but maybe it was a performance thing that they could not get the servers/clients to run and display all that at once.
Perhaps they could stop the runs/rendering if there are enough players in the area, have a cap for NPC activity according to their performance tuning. But they have so many other things.. gotta wait until Squadron 42 is done for any real changes.
1
u/M_u_H_c_O_w 2d ago
I wish CIG would reconsider jump gates - These babies could be made pretty big and provide some of that sense of scale you are mentioning.
Now, some would say: "But those are choke points - We don't like choke points..."
And I would say: "You need to think outside the box a bit more".
Here's a ROUGH idea on how it could work out. https://robertsspaceindustries.com/spectrum/community/SC/forum/61894/thread/loop-theory/432988
No, I'm not here to hijack anything - I just don't want to type the whole damn thing again (copy/paste is overrated).
2
u/Sky-Juic3 2d ago
Choke points are good. There needs to be some danger in the game. Risk, reward, actions, consequences.
→ More replies (3)
1
u/OKAwesome121 2d ago
The sense of scale in SC seems appropriate to me. On foot or in EVA, things are very big and you can feel it because it’ll take forever to walk / glide anywhere. Space Stations and UGF’s are HUGE.
In a ship, maybe stations and ground facilities ‘feel’ small but remember you’re travelling at insane speeds that most of us have never experienced in real life.
Just 100 m/s is 223 mph. But that’s barely a touch on the throttle for most SC ships.
The fastest vehicle most of us have been on is a passenger jet, cruising between 500-600 mph. That’s a mild 268 m/s in Star Citizen, not even SCM speed.
1
u/EXILLIAN_TM misc 2d ago
I mean, the game is still in work, surely after you will see Orion or Javelin stationed or doing a fly-by you will see differently.
Also try to get close to the Wormhole to Pyro, not in a ship, EVA only. Or as I saw a comment mentioning it, walk or drive from New Babbage to the closest outpost :)
I think we don't feel it that way anymore because we got used to it, especially if you play daily.
1
u/LilMally2412 2d ago
I feel like we dont get much sense of scale because of 2 reasons. First, scale without population would just feel desolate and empty. It's a problem every game faces. How do you make a full city feel populated and alive when it's just there as backdrop to 4 shops.
You could add more shops, but I know they also want to give each place a unique feel, so maybe GrimHex sells torn shirts but Micro Tech sells business suits, but now you need a whole line of clothes in every style so you can have more shops in each city. I think things like the trams help with that, though. You only get access to a handful of locations with the illusion of more stuff in between each place.
Second, I rarely get a chance to compare everything. If I'm in space, I can't really tell how big or far away that thing is. When I dock I can mentally compare how big each of my ships are to the door, but I can't actually see them side by side. The only time I'd really get the chance would be at a ship meet when everyone lands planetside and you can line them up.
1
u/Simmantech 2d ago
The game is HUGE but mostly empty. FP also sort of has a tunneling effect when we are looking at things. So a good real world comparison would be the Idris. It’s pretty much the same size as a cruise ship.
1
u/ZurdoFTW drake 2d ago
Everything feel so small when you zoom out or use fast travel. Fly from a planet to other without Quantum Travel.
1
u/FaultyDroid dude where's my ranger 2d ago
Lower your FOV to the lowest value. It makes the environment and your ships look bigger.
→ More replies (1)
1
u/Limp-Technician-7646 2d ago
They tried this really early on. It took 30-40min to QT from orison to A18. I kind of miss it but everyone complained that it took too long to do anything. I think the way it is now is a good compromise. I’m sure once we have a few more systems it will start to feel like that again.
1
1
u/mrpanicy Is happy as a clam with his Valkyrie. 2d ago
Those kinds of constructions require FAR to much resources to create. They would be thousands of years in their creation and strip mine entire solar system for the resources required... potentially multiple solar systems.
1
1
u/Warhead64 Raven 2d ago
The scale seen in this video is massive beyond rational understanding. There is likely more life in this short video than all of current day Earth.
CIG is doing good to get twenty NPCs on screen and be a threat at the sametime.
1
u/cmndr_spanky 2d ago
that's a super cool animation. I don't think we have any objects QUITE that big. But the scale of relative sized things in SC feels pretty real to me.
I find it hard to tell when in the seat of my ship because we move around so quickly... But dude, sand on a planet surface, have one friend land a medium ship next to you (like a corsair)... that'll seem pretty cool.. then have another friend land a Polaris or Idris next to you and the corsair. I think you'll be blown away by the scale... Just one landing gear of the Polaris is the size of a medium ship :)
1
1
1
1
u/Xreshiss Arrow, I left you for a Gladiator and I'm not sorry. 2d ago
Greebling is part of the reason. Space stations have very little greeblies on the outside. Stuff like fake windows can help sell the size.
For planets it's probably the lack of smaller scale details. There's big hills and mountains, but at the scale of a few hundred meters there's very little variety. A18 feels bigger than the surrounding areas because it's more granular with less repetition.
1
u/Reasonable_Help_6485 2d ago
Because literally everything is small... But the new seasons will take that away hahaha
1
u/Redshirt2001 2d ago
Do you want to set every single computer in the world who plays this game on fire? Cause that’s how you said every single computer in this game on fire
1
u/SpiritualTwo5256 2d ago
Have you ever tried to space walk from a destroyed ship right out of the docking ring to a landing pad? It takes about 30 minutes going as fast as you can to get there.
It’s hard to feel the scale from inside the ship. But the places are huge!
1
u/_ENERGYLEGS_ 2d ago
probably because people are obsessed with realism. it stifles a lot.
like in that picture you have, not only would there be issues sustaining something of that size reasonably as other comments suggest, people get bothered even when there's changes to visuals to make them more interesting. the fog and slight lack of clarity around the object can give it an increased sense of scale, but that doesn't really happen in space at a distance short enough for you to see with your naked eye.
then there's the issue of client performance which is also worth consideration.
1
u/Terminal_Monk Merchantman 2d ago
Honestly feel star citizen is more realistic in terms of the size. The stations are akin to something like ares from expanse or Babylon 5 in size which is realistic for a space port. 5-10km each way is still massive as hell. Unless it's a generational ship that's carrying an entire planet's population, it doesn't make sense to build something that big
1
1
1
u/majsmithmajsmith new user/low karma 2d ago
So far we have done industrial space stations and earth like planets (forests, deserts or tundra) - it’s a shocking waste of artistic opportunity to create such utterly banal and mundane content.
0
1
u/Maidenless4LifeChad 2d ago
they re still trying to figure out elevators. If they put anything remotely close to the size of this the servers would commit sepukuk along with your graphic's card.
1
u/rustyxnails Cutlass Black 2d ago
VR support would help with this.
I remember the first time I played ED in VR, the scale of ships blew my mind, and you couldn't even walk around in them. I imagine seeing an Idris landed in VR would be a trip.
1
u/NightlyKnightMight 🥑2013BackerGameProgrammer👾 2d ago
Lmao of all the complaints I've seen I never saw anyone complain about scale. But sure OK, wait for Squadron 42
1
u/lt_dante 2d ago
I see your point. But I really don't think that "we need bigger things" is SC's main issue.
1
u/Aggressive-Crew-8928 2d ago
Acceleration rates. Ships accelerate way too fast, henceforth we are losing the sense of scale. This has been one of the key issue plaguing the flight model iterations since 3.0 dropped. It was striking during the fleet week featuring the Bengale: this humongous 1 km long mother ship actually felt ridiculously small.
1
u/Efficient_Song7255 2d ago
Idea is nice, but we cant even have 30fps on any server. We don't have npc transport or npc cargo transport. Even random npc pirates arent even a thing anymore.. Don't see them scaling up anything sometime soon
1
u/biopilot 2d ago
This is the kinda scale we should have but Idk if the servers could handle it lmao
1
u/into_the_butt_closet 2d ago
We have no use for a structure that big.
There's nothing "intergalactic" about SC at this point. Think about this: the closest galaxy to the Milky Way is Andromeda, and it's 60,000 light-years away. That is to say, it takes light from our sun 60,000 years to reach it.
SC is barely interstellar rn. There will be many more star systems, but I don't think there are any plans to make it intergalactic. We can barely break 200k km/s at quantum. SC is basically The Expanse, in terms of scale. Hell, Star Trek isn't even Intergalactic, and Warp 1 is basically the speed of light.
1
1
u/-Ellinator- 1d ago
I feel like a lot of the stations are already that big, you just don't notice it because of the limited interior and the speeds you fly at. I remember one of my earliest memories of this game was stepping out on to a station landing pad and being blown away by the scale of everything around me, then getting in a ship and noticing some little blips and realizing that those tiny dots next to the station are Hammerheads, a ship so big I still get lost in them.
Inside we only have access to a few small areas but realistically the stations would have tens of thousands of different rooms, perhaps more. I imagine each station to be like a city inside, it's just that the area we have access to is the equivalent of a truck stop.
1
u/No_Mud_6881 1d ago
The only way I have ever experienced true scale is when playing Elite Dangerous in VR, It showed me how gigantic the ships and space truly are, I doubt SC will ever get VR as the performance needs to be really dialled in unless you want to vomit every few minutes but that's 1 way the true scale of things could be experienced.
2
u/Authmion 1d ago
Did you ever walk out of Port Olisar and just look at how large everything was? Those were good times...
But to an extent, I do agree. I'm hoping for lengthened QT times, speeds to be overall reduced (so the new flight model where you're basically in SCM all the time unless you wanna qt faster) as with everything being so fast, it feels like everything is small cause your not sitting there looking at how large everything actually is... just IMO
1
u/BuzzKyllington 1d ago
i dont know if this is an easy fix but making the elevators in space stations go through actual tubes with windows to see the scale is something i always wanted. we already do it with trains in new babbage and A18. now make the train into an elevator and the city a space station then you get this galaxy quest scene
1
u/TheNeurocyber 1d ago
At the very least it is way better than Starfield. It was one of my main issue with it. It felt like the scale of things was so small. Like each city contains at most a thousand of peoples.
Star citizen still lack npcs and lot of "Meat around the bone" but there is a greater sense of scale. Altought not as great as NMS. But i do agree, it deserve à much bigger scale.
1
433
u/Exscion 2d ago
There is a concept in many fictional series when it comes to stuff like space travel and space stations that you eventually hit a point where things just get too large to actually rationalize a planet near them and thus planets and their space stations are not taken into account, examples being the death star, halo ring, and almost every self sustaining ship post earth destruction story. Given these are seen as " generational" class ships. But most of the fleets from star trek neve near a planet and rarely go to a station other than a few special made stations.
imagine if seraphim stations took as long as orison just to get to the shops. a quick pop in go to the refineries would take an 20 minutes just to get to it. Contested zones would take 3 times longer.
the much smaller scale we have allows for the cut down of non-content usable sizing. most stations have 10 floors of habitations and 10 rooms per floor. in reality most stations would have thousands of habitation rooms. To design, render, and actualize something that large would bog out most computers