redirishlord

@ SynthetikHD: Awesome find, I thought the Gamescom coupon was for attendees, that's great that it's for everyone. Arena Commander is the dogfighting alpha that's currently available, there's a tutorial so you should be good to go if you've got access. I'm not sure what ships the coupon will unlock for you, normally you would have access to your pledge ship. The Merlin snub fighter is free this week, fun but tiny & short range, it normally docks on the Constellation class ships (4 person mid size craft). The first version of the social module should open end of the month, so citizens can walk around ArcCorp (a planetside environment) for a taste of the MMO side of things. The long awaited FPS module Star Marine goes live for us end of September, check out the weekly updates on the RSI website for more on that.

I don't know about you, but I kept going back to the Freelancer well for a full decade :-) There's a ton of career options & associated mission types, a wide range of single seat fighters and non-combat ships. Once the full persistent universe opens (and that's after the first 20+ hour chapter of the single player campaign) you should be able to find plenty of PvE single person missions scaled to your current ship &/or flight/fps skill level. It should play more like an open world RPG in the sense that you can define your own play type & definition if success (of course it's a sim so no leveling or perk acquisition, but lot's of mini-games to learn - see the mining career document on the comm link tab for an example of just one option). Pledge packages are as cheap as $40 usd, you can earn credits in game for any equipment or ship upgrades you want, so not much risk now or in the future. No reason you shouldn't take time researching the available website content & enjoying that end of things (lots of back story & such in there, can't wait for the darn Galactepedia to make it easier to plow through). I'm loving it so far, and it just keeps getting better as they update it, sounds like they plan to gamemaster & add content for the next decade. Since the retiree end of the community can't stop throwing money at them it doesn't seem like pay to win will be an issue & Chris Roberts really seems to want the enterprise to succeed for his fans.

@ Neovalen: I suggest watching the Around the Verse videos & especially the 10 for the Chairman videos as they cover a lot of ground. You are correct, there is no getting around the sheer amount of content, with ships they actually have an internal design guide for each ship manufacturer, for planetside environments in the 100 or so planned star systems they have an internal guide based on their future historical timeline that covers architectural styles by chronology & colonial expansion during that period. TL;DR research into the back story should be a lot easier once the open their Galactapedia tab on the website. Oh, the Star Marine weekly updates are quite interesting reading (especially for you with the attention to their skeleton rig & animations, thanks again for your Dual Sheath Redux) as are the Monthly Reports (makes me feel like a game publishing executive, but less evil). @ Aiyen: You want the Bengal carrier, and yes those will be rare & player/organization control of them will be rarer still. Last game I played that reminded me of what you want was the X series (I don't count EVE since that's a level based RPG rather than a sim).

You did watch the video, right ;-) ? Two groups fighting in an asteroid field as EVA salvagers reapir and rescue a derelict. MultiCrew uses separate duty stations for crew (my 4 person Constellation class cargo hauler has a weps & engineering station on either side of my captain's chair and a manned turret), at the end of the video an Idris class Corvette (smallest of the capital ships that range up to the Bengal class carrier) flys over the Retaliator bomber that we saw repaired by the salvage team and then operated from cockpit, engineering & turret duty stations. I'm thinking there's enough depth to the simulation to keep you interested, and remember it's dogfighting plus fps plus a deep economic simulation like the 2003 Freelancer game but done right with current tech & informed by the MMO trend and of course no publisher so Chris Roberts & company can make the game they intended instead of whatever can be managed by an arbitrary publish date. Idris Corvette briefing room: Idris Corvette corridor: Bengal Carrier bridge: Bengal carrier hangar: Bengal carrier flight deck:

@ Nomad; you're welcome, just trying to share the love with the STEP community, wouldn't want y'all to miss out. @ EssArrBee: they have thrust driven flight for combat/exploration, "quantum drive" flight for in system rapid transit (I believe that's supposed to be 0.2c) and "jump holes" for flight between star systems. So not "real" but playable, data transmission is forced to follow the same jump mechanic so data courier/pirate is an anticipated career opportunity.

OMG, I'm training that horse at work this week. Applies to Skyrim AI as well, nice one.

@ Aiyen: The dog fighting is available & playable, really terrific physics sim with maneuverability limited by human g-tolerance (grey out / red out). As for throwing money at it, $87,199,763 raised so far by 957,756 citizens. You can see my PC's specs on my STEP profile, Arena Commander plays fine for me and the continual updates are patching the bugs as we find them & post to the forums. Check out their website for more detail on the tech involved.

@ Neovalen: Keep in mind all you need is that initial pledge ship, any thing else you want can be earned in game through playing, no additional $ need be spent. @ Rootsrat: You can be, and I have been, playing SC now ;-) The Arena Commander dog fighting module is out & continually updated. The FPS module is going to be released end of September. I have Elite Dangerous in my Steam wishlist, just waiting for a sale.

Star Citizen (Chris Roberts epic space sim) just rocked Gamescom with big reveals, check out their wrap up page here ... or just cut to the chase and watch the MultiCrew Demo. The video showcases the range of what this game covers beautifully. Things to keep in mind; alpha "modules" are being released as progress permits (dogfighting currently available, fps should be released in September with the MultiCrew later this year), a 20-30 hour single player campaign will be included in the final release (release date 2016, it's chapter 1 of 3 with sequels intended to release 2017 & 2018) and a persisent MMO universe opens with the final release (game mastered & continually updated by CIG for ... hopefully the remainder of my life?). Check out their website for answers to any other questions you might have, there are another 935,000 citizens on their forums so just ask if you don't see what you were looking for, some of those citizens play Fallout & Skyrim so link them back here so they can play those games the STEP way. tl;dr Watch the Star Citizen MultiCrew Demo, seriously, you won't regret the 13 minutes spent.

Fun fact: Star Citizen is working with PBR (rendering not hipster beer). Yes, I'm a Star Citizen fanboy, but you can find examples of PBR in action in many of the posts on their website. Looking forward to seeing what you do with this in Skyrim 'Prince.

BtW Steam summer sale is ongoing, the FO3 & FONV GotY editions (DLC!) are currently full price @ $11.99 USD but watch for a deal.

That and our "high priests" EssArrBee & Kelmych need a chance to give it their "blessing" ;~)

@ EnaiSiaion: Very thoughtful rebuttal, I'm going to give Apocalypse Magic another look and consider a new game based on it, glad you posted.

You are a wealth of information, kudos (oh, wait, that's the other website). Thanks! UPDATE: I played Dragon Age Origins back when on console and thought it was the usual effort by Bioware (good story, fair execution of established game mechanic). I played through two opening stories last night (stayed up way past my bed time as a matter of fact) and absolutely loved the game. I don't know if it was the change from console to pc format that made the difference, or if I just gave the game a proper chance, but I'm loving this. Origin may owe EssArrBee a commission on the next two Dragon Age as I'm considering buying them next.

I thought it was a Fallout/FNV mod at first glance. Seems more in keeping with the lore of the Wizardry franchise then TES lore. Considering the quality, maybe I should do a profile that combines Aethernautics/Dwemertech/Wheels in not-so-lore oriented playthrough (and that dwemer chainsword mod, 'cause Chainsword!)

Yur welcome. If you decide to merge various other esp to save slots in the 255 esp limit, remember to avoid navmesh (see the left pane in TES5Edit, navmesh heading), and make sure all plugins to merge are after all masters (in other words, all files selected in the left pane of TES5Edit for merge script are in a block after all unselected masters).

You can right click on the overwrite directory and "create mod" namimg it "merged esps" (or any name you like).

Oh, sweet, we do get free game just need to be patient & maybe win an iPad Air as a bonus. Good looking out Ess! I can amuse myself with that free copy of Tropico 3 - Steam Special Edition, and there's a Crusader Kings II Demo free through the weekend and the full verison is discounted on the Steam store. UPDATE: Well, Crusader Kings, while historically interesting (especially given my genealogical connection to Hardrada) and beautifully presented (my cartographic needs both stimulated and satisfied) was to much a battle of the spreadsheets for me. I did find a demo for the Hegemony Greece game, which was much more to my liking. It retails for $20 usd on Steam and its sequel Hegemony Rome for $30. This franchise hits the Sim/RTS sweet spot for me (I'll spare you an off topic review here, just check out the demo if you have any interest in RTS games). If it goes on sale I'll post a proper link here, right now its inexpensive but not free or cheap (yet).

I got this on completion of voting: "Win an iPad Air You've now been entered into a prize draw to win an iPad Air! We will notify the winner after voting closes on the 20th October 2014." Which is cool, but I'm not seeing anything about free Xcom :-( Thanks for the link anyway :-)

I use the Serenity ENB preset with your ELE, so I've got that already if I understand correctly. There does seem to be several STEP users who run enboost by preference or necessity, I think they would benefit greatly from you including that option in ELE, day/night cycle affecting interiors is very immersive even when the effect is subtle.

Hopefully you are using MO, so you can disable instead of NMM-style uninstalling That being said, the mods tagged Extended are good, stable mods so no worries there. The Extended set go beyond the Core mandate of fixing/enhancing vanilla Skyrim, the Packs go farther still. Were I you I'd install all STEP Core & Extended, see how it plays and what you like and make decisions from there (as you can always uncheck a mod in MO if it doesn't suit you for whatever reason).

For SR:LE + REGS users; Thordir's RS Children patch for ETaC (v12) causes fail on launch if used with ETaC v13. It was in my previous v12 load order so I discovered the incompatibility when I had to track it down by trial and error (TES5Edit didn't find an issue when processing my load order but Skyrim hung without game menu on launch).

It feels like DoD to me, with a deeper/better MCM. I believe it has all the moves DoD had (a few that clipped egregiously or otherwise looked awful might have been cut), same provision to allow decaps to be perk limited. I loved DoD, but I'm glad I switched up to VioLens both for features and continued support. If you copy your current profile you can just continue playing (instead of rigorous testing) after the DoD/VioLens swap, I did and eventually deleted the original profile I favor of the copy once I knew VioLens was safe.

Assuming you are a Mod Organizer user, just use the profile manager menu to copy your existing profile & swap DoD for VioLens on the copied profile. Don't save over any of your old save files and you can always revert at any time, safe & simple.

I switched from DoD (long time user big fan) to VioLens a month or so ago. VioLens seems trouble free and offers a deeper MCM suite.