The Tragic State Of Ground Vehicles In Star Citizen 

As a lover of the "ground game" in Star Citizen and with an ORG all about acting on the potential of its combined arms, my goal for this video is to raise awareness of ground vehicle's longstanding issues and awkward design choices. There's still so many issues with GV's that i had to leave out, else this would start entering Documentary territory, but i think i covered the main things. Ideally, this video would end up in front of the devs at CIG and help spur some improvements to ground vehicles now and in the future. What do you think? Thanks for watching!

I really hope CIG pays close attention to this video. Dtox you are correct on all points. The sorry state of ground vehicles is the reason I never purchased any except for LTI tokens. After playing mechwarrior for years I can't stand more than a few seconds inside of SC tanks. They are just that awful at everything. Also, I wish that hover bikes would be classified as vehicles or at least treated like vehicles while on the ground since they can't get higher than a few meters. Right now they are detected by turrets making them virtually useless for approaching bunkers.

Star Citizens ground vehicles are also so oversized. While this is also true for ships often, it isn't as much of a problem there as space is big. Like that transport vehicle is huge for the few people it can take with it. It has so much empty space within it, you could probably make a vehicle half the size, that can take as many people.

You forgot an important point: Just like ships with no QT drive, GROUND VEHICLES CAN'T NAVIGATE from A to B.

MUCH needed video. I will say that having higher HP pool wont help ground vehicles if they cant outright mitigate some damage sources with the HEAVY armour they should have being 900 years in the future. Even if these vehicles had 10x the HP they have right now it wouldnt make any difference to the outcome they have, it would just increase the time it takes. Yogi has stated that he wanted armour in the game to work in a way that will make weapon sizes important, while he was saying this about the hammerhead I think it matters to ground vehicles even more. I think he was saying that he wanted certain armour levels to be invulnerable to certain size weapons so that in the example given, the hammerhead can not be solo killed by a arrow because the arrow does not have weapons that can deal damage to it. ALSO my all Ground vehicles should be 100% immune to shutdown by Distortion damage because it should be impossible to build up a charge on an object that is grounded. Distortion weapons on ground vehicles should be used to temporarily increase a vehicles EM signature to the point other vehicles can see it on scanner Cent & Ballista should need S2 missiles, S2 projectile / Laser cannon or S3 Gatling / Laser repeater to damage at all, and 1 size up per category to deal effective damage levels. Storm & especially the Spartan should need S3 missiles, S3 projectile / Laser cannon or S4 Gatling / Laser repeater to damage at all. (you CANNOT put 8 men in a vehicle like the spartan if it can not mitigate even the most basic weaponry carried by every single ship in the game. The Nova Tank is supposed to be the most heavily armoured ground vehicle ever devised, it should need something BIG to take it out, S4 projectiles / laser canon or missiles, S5 Gatling or Laser repeater weapons. but preferably bombs should be its Achilles heel. The sheer time investment of these platforms should demand that their operators have at least a cursory feeling that they arent going to be dead 1 minute after they are detected on the battlefield.

Great video! And, yes, the ROC is now broken. What should be a relatively low speed, high torque, highly mobile vehicle capable of climbing its way up a canyon wall, can now barely make its way up the ramp of a Cutlass Black, and good luck climbing the walls of even a small crater after you've just hit the Motherlode! At this point in time, I've given up on ROC mining, which is a shame, given that it is one of the best ways to experience the oft times beautiful and awe inspiring enviroments of the Verse's planetary surfaces. Another gripe is the way in which CIG seem to have implemented throttle/speed control. In SC, a small throttle input, via my pedal, results in the ROC wanting to accelerate to FULL speed, just taking a little longer to do so when compared to a large input. This is in complete contrast to driving in Elite Dangerous where it is possible to creep along at speeds slower than walking pace, which is more in line with what we, as drivers, experience in the real world.

Controversial take: improving ground vehicles also means improving the actual ground these vehicles are supposed to use.. roads, better poi, exclusive ground missions, actual good reasons to use planet side gameplay.

I remember some long time ago, when CIG wanted to have ground vehicle only planets to make use of the Ursa Rover. While that could make for a unique planet or moon in a system, I don't think forcing the players to use a system makes up for it being poor. I hope they can improve these vehicles before it comes to that, because I want to put down some money on a Ranger (and I hope it can still fit in a MPUV when it is added in).

Great job pointing out the problems and giving some potential solutions. Really hoping to see a world where we have to respect ground assets. I didnt know the Tonk was 6 years old. You used the right word. Tragic.

My biggest frustration is that all of the ground vehicles feel like they're made of cardboard, not metal. I really wish Star Citizen would take inspiration from games like Planetside 2 (game from 2012) where driving vehicles is so pleasant and enjoyable that you could spend the whole gaming session just driving around. The gravity feels just right and flipping the vehicle over is an actual challenge.

I think there should exist strong aa because i feel like that's an easy solution to force ground warfare. The attacking side would have to bring tanks to destroy the aa, so the defensive side would have to bring ground vehicles to defend, so the attacking side would have to bring supporting ground vehicles to help destroy the defenses and protect the air above them when entering aa surveilled territory with their own mobile aa systems, and that would sorta force ground warfare.

The only way I can imagine ground game becoming plausible is to create some sort of scenario in which most ships simply can't operate. Like a large chunk of irradiated land that destabilizes quantum fuel so you are only able to explore it via snubs and ground vehicles. Put some rare loot, maybe a drug lab, inside it to give people a reason to go there and suddenly I think a lot of the less utualized vehicles will get a lot of use.

Peeps will keep giving the "air beats ground deal with it" argument no matter what, even though how misguided that argument really is. In the past, present and most probably our distant future the scariest thing an air asset can face is a dedicated AA platform on the ground. Yes, losing air superiority is bad, but as things are you shouldn't bring any ground assets at all ever for any reason.

If you could somehow compress 2 hours of a rant into 15 minutes, I'm sure you would. I know first hand that this issue has long been past chronic, and it remains to be seen if it's terminal. One symptom has always been acute fits of rage for all involved. Excellent points, thanks for bringing this up.

Everyday I wake up and feel sad about what they have done to the Ballista

Awesome Video! Agree with the opinion and points you got. Ground vehicles need a reason and love to be there. Especially me as a Logistics guy, where is my Ground-Cargo-Truck? Where is my Flatbed? Where is my Rearm+Refuel Truck?

You’re absolutely right on this. Fighters need to basically be useless in areas where AA systems are operating.

What’s needed is strategic level air defence with high kill chance % and some basic radar mechanics, like a sci fi patriot platform. That alone would change the balance between ’air’ assets and ground vehicles, and lead to cool gameplay such as the necessity to fly close to the ground, using the terrain to conceal an approach. Long-range AA is used in modern combat to deny air space access, and orgs in Star Citizen could use them to lock down an area to the extent that competitors would need to engage on the ground -> ground combat Also a mobile ground shield generator platform would be cool

Couldn't agree more. Ground vehicle combat needs massive buffs in order to be viable. As with many of SC's gameplay, we often lack a reason to do or use certain things.

Tank/AA turrets need to be stabilized so it's not as difficult to hit your target while on the move. Also, why are futuristic tank crews not able to use Augmented Reality visors to see through the interior of the vehicle? This is tech we currently have in the f-35 and is coming in the near future to the next gen Abrams X tanks. They really do need to take a look at real world tech we already have in modern tanks and then expand on those capabilities.

Honestly ground to air vehicles just need to be flat out overpowered. Ballistas and centurions should be able to create an iron dome that is inaccessible from the air. This would make the logistics of moving ground vehicles worth it, and make ground combat relevant because the only way to uproot ADA would be to do it with tanks.

I noticed you mentioned awkward AA firing arks at the end. The Centurion cant shoot directly up so all a ship has to do is get directly above it and its useless, so bloody annoying.

Since we are on the topic of the ground vehicule. The fact that CIG never though of designing the storm to fit in Valkyrie, speaks volume of the rule of cool problem. The entire benfit of this vehicle is that it's smaller and easier to carry. Yet it's too big to fit in a Valkyrie (A drop ship with a vehicule hangar). But apparently it's all good because we can fit it in a carrack? (A exploration ship). I mean.. WHAT!?

The actual driving physics is what bothers me the most. When a large rover, or tank, has about as much torque as a 50cc scooter when trying to navigate hills, then the fun's over before it even began. Not to mention the floaty physics. I hope they fix these issues and make them FUN to drive. It is a game after all.

The idea of hard to find, tough to kill and actually dangerous air defence sounds great honestly. It's really not a hard argument to make that ground vehicles SHOULD be better. I hope they get the love the deserve. There's a lot of interesting gameplay potential just sitting there, waiting to be made practical/viable. As a Crucible haver, better ground vehicle gameplay means the potential utility of the scarab as a mobile ground garage goes up!

Great video! The multiple screen covering lists of issues succinctly show how very bad the situation is. I really hope CIG start listening to the players that actually use ground vehicles in the game.

As someone who loved to use ballista and nova during jumptown, it also just feels like the vehicles are underdeveloped. Want to stay hidden? Well fck you, you can't turn your lights off, why? Idk, every time I had to park my ass on a rock otherwise my tail lights would give me away. The entire combat lineup is also not thought out well, it feels more like an employee at CIG thinks, "this would look cool in the game" and it gets added. What I'd like to see is a logistics vehicle for rearming vehicles, light AA you can bring down quick and a heavy AA system composed of multiple components (early warning radar, target radar and launchers) for if you really want to shut down airspace. A vehicle with small guns against infantry, maybe some missiles and capacity to transport them. And for heavy vehicles tank is fine but it needs proper range detection

Great video. Aside from everything you mentioned, something I would love to see in the future are situations where ground vehicles are the only infantry support available. For example, large underground facilities with highway access or similar areas that would be all but impossible to access with an aircraft. I think something like that would go a long way.

oh, and don't forget how the tumbril storms would get flung when bombed

You knocked it out the park with this video man. Fully captured my frustrations with vehicles, and it was funny and well edited too. keep it up.

I couldn’t agree more. I just started escaping from Klescher and driving the ursa over aberdine and it’s borderline unplayable and incredibly frustrating. Even the smallest pebble causes it to stop, at best, and spin around and/or flip over, at worst. I hate it. I hate it so much that I’ve walked the 4km to complete the quest, to avoid it. Furthermore, why TF do we not have markers or, at the very least, a compass so that we know what direction we’re driving? It’s just depressingly bad and it’s such a shame because there is so much opportunity for it to be amazing.

Let's not forget that when your Nova's turret gets shot, it breaks almost immediately and becomes impossible to move around. Even if you could move the turret around in a fight though, it wouldn't matter because you can't aim up more than 30 degrees in a game dominated by spaceships...

Great watch, great points! The ballista used to be a bit of a headache and not so much anymore. I think having to deploy ground teams to take them out is a wonderful gameplay loop. The centurion is a joke and is supposed to be AA. I know the Nova used to be a beast and hard to take out from the air however you are 100% correct everything is to weak specially personal carriers. Now even all the speeds are totally messed up...

Thanks for the video! The problem of ground vehicles also relates to another problem: there is still almost no ground game-play at all, besides Jumptown or maybe Ghost Hollow. Ground vehicles are very useful when doing hostile bunkers, but that's it. I wish they had more PvE elements which would require approaching on ground from distance. Just as an example: imagine if there were some missions to penetrate the Klescher? Or smth similar, which can't be really approached from air, and would still require a lot of FPS-action. As a side note: they should finally add an in-game night-vision. It's 2900's, in the end.

It makes me so upset that they don't make the radar signatures of ground vehicles non-existent. They are already so disadvantaged.

Some very Valid points and good ideas they could use to make the whole ground vehicle Exp better.

If they weren't targetable by aircraft until a super close range, but able to target aircraft from a long range they would be useful. That would give any attacking aircraft incentive to deploy their own on foot team to scout for these vehicles

So what we really need is a massively OP surface to air missile defence system,this would then force ground combat to enable air assets to follow up. This should actually be pretty simple to achieve

The Greycat buggy was added to SC Hangar Module way back in the day as an afterthought, "oh cool people would totally pay us to bomb around their hangar in a little car". I feel like both CIG's philosophy to ground vehicles and the driving experience of ground vehicles are literally unchanged since then.

I fully agree with you that Ground Vehicles are in a tragic state. I wasn't aware that the visibility of the storm was so limited, and you're so right about having Radar and System UI in the remote turret. I think many in the ground racing community would agree that the current state of ground vehicles is nothing short of a disappointment. Most of the vehicles bar the URSA Rover, Spartan, Ballista, Centurion, STV etc have always felt very squishy, PTVs, Cyclones, Dragonflys, Noxs, and Hoverquads blowing up from the smallest amount of contact with anything at any speed and thus making them less appealing to the overall player base IMO. I will admit that the Cyclone saw an HP buff post 2021, but in recent patches the RC had it's boost disabled and the overall speed of the Buggy is now slower than ever, and it's a shame to see. The Ursa Rovers cooler still dies after like 6 hours which is a big challenge for Truck Division contestants of the Daymar Rally which can take longer than that time. With regards to Grav Lev however, I believe that my lack of decent hardware [GTX 1080, i7-7700k, 16GB DDR 4 RAM on an Intel Optane 900p 2560x1440p on a 165 hz Gsync Asus Gaming Monitor] which results in lower frames, and Server side lag/desync ultimately culminate in a bad experience for me at any speeds over 90 m/s, but it would be nice to see the Grav Levs HP changed or their spring stiffness altered to increase their survivability, which is interesting as the EPTU recently had a change to Grav Lev Spring Stiffness and I watched my friend SanjiSama do a Shubin to Eager practice run, and he still blew up just as much as he normally would do, which made me question the change had even been implemented properly at all. Overall it's sad to see the combat ground vehicles and racing ground vehicles in the state they're in, and I hope CIG have plans to address all of these concerns raised by us backers. Awesome video as always dude. Peace. o7

As you pointed out, the only reason to justify the existence of ground vehicles is marketing tokens, not gameplay. The other elephant in the room is the lack of physics to build on. Another issue is the flight model. Every ship is able to fly stationnary. This shouldn't be the case, especially for light fighters and bombers which should be limited to flyby in atmosphere. As long as this aburd choice persist, ground vehicles will remain preys. Only a few VTOL capable and selected but clumsier ships should remain stationnary while in mid-air, and at a cost. Don't by ground vehicles with real money, only buy in game.

I appreciate this video. I really want ground vehicles to be more of a thing, but as of right now there seems to be little point to having one. I hope that someone at CIG watches this and circulates it around the office!

Amazing video, and I completely agree with everything. I know things are not finished, but they are not even heading in the right direction with their updates!? Please hear us CIG, we (you and us) all want better, lets do it together! I vowed to stop driving Daymar Rally because of the state of ground vehicles, and I know that I am not the only one. That alone is such a shame.

The state and design of ground vehicles is a testament of the entire SC development philosophy

Agreed on all points, though I want to add emphasis to the travesty of the logistics train. The fact there is only one series of ships that can realistically drop anything bigger than an Ursa (The Hercules) is insanity to me. They keep making new ground vehicles seemingly without factoring in any other potential candidates as a dropship like perhaps the Connie or, amazingly, the Valkyrie (which was marketed as a HEAVY dropship). Anvils premier dropship can't drop their own line of combat vehicles or even a light tank. Ridiculous.

Absolutely agree with all of this, great work DTOX bringing attention to it!

So long as the vehicle gameplay team doesn't communicate to the vehicle art/design team, (and vice versa) and the marketing team remains king, this problem will persist.

Hear, hear! This is a very comprehensive review of things. Thanks for putting this together 👍🏻

All vehicles in this game feel like helium balloons!

That's what I dont get...the M1A Abrams, Challenger, and Leopard II are cool tanks. There's enough cool tank designs that they could have gone with and at the same time made them practical. Armor buff is definitely needed, a hitbox redesign would also help as well. A design of shields specific to ground vehicles is a a must to make ground vehicles viable. The heavy Tank should be equiped with a Size 2 Ground Vehicle Shield that's contour forming. With the top being the thicker part of the shielding. Honestly the Spartan should get at least a S1 turret that can hold repeaters. its a troop transport/troop support vehicle. The other vehicles that need to be produced to help in ground combat. A Mobile Field Base that is deployable that can refit and reload ground vehicles. If that's too much a Ship that can act as a MFB to be deployable on the ground to act as a command and control for ground operations would be the 2nd option. You'd just need to buy base materials so it can manufacture and repair from. A actual Main Battle Tank. Talking 65 tons with a Size 8 cannon, and a S1 anti-personnel. Honestly...the best outcome is just hire ex-FPS developers and give them full reign to build the FPS side of Star Citizen. what we have now is sloppy

6:20 I have asked this question about just about every single new ship or vehicle. Cutter releases with 6000 quantum fuels. That stat only required about 5 seconds on ERKUL to determine was ridiculous. How does a Dev put that number into the XML, then send it through PTU, and then put it into live without fixing it? Sure, just 1 ship, not a big deal right? Nope, then they release the Syulen with ~3000 quantum fuels AFTER they reduced the quantum fuel on the similar sized cutter to 1900. Would also like to know where those 3000 quantum fuels fit inside of the Gatac. Cutter is almost believable since it is a literal box, the syulen is a cockpit with hab space directly below it, and then 3 arms that hold the 3 main thrusters, and 3 other arms that hold cargo and missiles. Where is any of the quantum fuel fitting? Do not even think about the hydrogen fuel tanks. The syulen has 50% more capacity than a freelancer, more capacity than Cutlass, and 6 times the capacity of most similar sized starter ships. Where does all that hydrogen fit along with the ridiculous amount of quantum fuel? Then the Argo Raft still holds 28,000 quantum fuels. Half the size ship as a Taurus with similar cargo capacity yet ~10x the quantum fuel. Any other game will usually check stats on similar items to see if the new asset makes sense and can be balanced. The fuel capacity is a literal 5 minute fix by just updating the XML data file. As for ground vehicles. I just wish CIG would stop artificially bloating them so they do not fit in smaller ships. "Scout" Storm is as wide as the MBT Nova. On purpose so it does not fit into something like a freelancer. If they removed the hubs sticking out and made it flush with the track like a normal tank has, it would be practically the same width as an Ursa. The central cab of the storm is about the same size as the Ursa, but the ursa then has an interior and the storm has just a pilot seat. When you look at the Mule which is basically an F150, the Nova is 8m longer and 6m larger than the Mule. In real life an M1 Abrams MBT is only 2m wider and 2m longer than an F150. I understand it is a game but most ground vehicles are grossly oversized.

Just some way to navigate in ground vehicles would be huge

Havent watched the video yet but I feel like allowing ground vehicles to not be detectable by ship radars in 99% of circumstances would solve this immediately.

You don't need self-status in ground vehicles because you have no shield, nor armor to speak off. So the status is either dead or alive :)

Ground vehicle play needs to take ships out of the equation, either by heavily enforced no fly zones (ie: accurate NPC surface to air guns & missiles), dense urban areas where on foot FPS can be supported by ground vehicles for troop transport and tanks or by underground scenarios (ie: caves or larger bunkers) where aircraft cannot fly. I have seen 10 vs 10 player tank battles completely obliterated by a giggling griefer with an A2 who saw it streaming on Twitch. A dragonfly is great for getting to a UGF that is hostile without landing too close and the ROC can be fun (as much fun as MINING gets, which isn’t much), but that’s about it.

Giving vehicals smooth throttle and steering imput instead of binary all or nothing would already be a big step.

I feel that it could be solved with a vehicle that can project a large holographic shield that protects against such brutal aerial threats

Thousands years into future since gyro stabilisation technology was lost. Ever since every single bump or rock mess up turret aim, making the shooter barf in the cabin. Truly a grimdark future.

In addition to a round of buffs accross the board for ground vehicles (including hull/impact resistance for hoverbikes) i think the game really lacks much reason to use them. Personally i would say that somewhere in pyro or stanton there should be missions that feature ground vehicle gameplay like convoys that need to be protected from local bandit gangs while also going under the radar to avoid broader detection. These could be on rails where the win condition is just getting the convoy to its intended location.

One idea i hope is floating around is having vehicle retrieval in ur ship like the carrack u could just spawn ur rover instead of wasting so much time to go and retrieve it along with all the stuff that happens along the way. This could apply for fighters within ships too.

Hope CIG sees this cause it highlights SO many of the issues... i want to use ground vehicles so bad.. but they are utter garbage.. Planetside 2 did vehicles right... maybe CIG should take notes from them

This is a more than fair assessment

Last night a couple of my buddies and I filled a C2 with a Centurion and some cyclones and decided to take over Ghost Hollow. We air dropped the vehicles successfully and used the C2 as bait to take out their heavy fighters with the ground vehicles. Probably one of the best sessions we've had.

I just wanted to point out that even though ground vehicles had their detection range increased, air vehicles received a nerf to their ability to detect them. this makes it so ground vehicles can more easily see other ground vehicles

IMO the core problem is the in game price. Buying a vehicle with $ is the silliest thing you can do because they all cost chump change in aUEC. Thus almost no one buys them for cash, and thus CIG does not put many resources into improving them. Also, why use a tonk if you have the same or better firepower and armament in a much more mobile platform?

Even some cheeky no fly zones here and there would be a start to get some dynamic ground based gameplay

Im not so sure about increasing toughness of the balista after the invisible balista debacle ;). Good vid and feedback dtox, hope it arrives on the desks at CIG!

the 1st hurdle with ground vehicals is they have the wrong people working on them, the research is done for them, with games like world of tanks and mechwarrior, and somehow they push out the strangest vehicals, tanks that can hardly look up in the air, or 3rd person mini tanks. ineffective Tumbril AA vehicals. the only ground vehical they got right was the grey cat buggy.... because it had the word BUGGY in its name!

Just give the ballista and centurion enough range and damage that you can't just ignore them. And you shouldn't be able to kill them in a single strafe. Only the best pilots should be able to barely evade AA and get close enough for a gun run and anything with enough firepower to one shot or single strafe should be EXTREMELY vulnerable in atmosphere.

Agree with this D, and you are far kinder with your words than I would have been. Problem 1: Ground vehicle mass/weight! Where is it? TBF none of the vehicles feel like they weigh anything esp. when you see these ships and vehicles move around in atmos/gravity. If we can get this sorted then at least we are no longer driving big massive helium filled blobs. Problem 2: why are the defensive components of a ship different from a ground vehicle when the components are exactly the same! All the other stuff mentioned can be address quicker by increasing locking range on AA giving armoured vehicles better hp pools as they are actually armoured compared to a ship, that needs to be lighter to allow breaking gravity pulls. I could keep bi**ing about this. Instead share the video peeps and get it fixed and you wont have to hear me bleet :)

Excellent video , highlights everything that is wrong with the ground vehicles.

On the positive side, I think CIG is well aware that ground vehicles right now are not in a good spot. On the bad side, I also think that right now, fixing ground vehicles just isn't a very high priority for them. They are working on and testing stuff, see the changes to the Ursa and Atlas driving behavior for example. But I doubt that it is more than just 1-2 devs occasionally tinkering with it when they have the time. I really hope that it will become more of a priority once more of the core game systems are in place and more devs from SQ42 come over to work on SC. This is a really good video btw. One thing I would like to add is that I think the effectiveness of ground-based anti-air platforms should be increased if we really want to get combined arms gameplay. Right now it is not difficult to just supress or destroy a Ballista using ships for a lower investment than setting up an entire ground-based operation to take it out would be. There is no real incentive at all for ground-based operation beyond rule of cool. If we want to see real combined arms gameplay, ground-based AA needs to be able to set up effective no-fly zones where hostile ships can't really operate at all. That neccessitates having to airlift in a ground team in order to take the AA out so that bombers and gunships can come in to clear the enemy out after which the ground team can then secure whatever site you are trying to seize. Without more effective AA, even if ground vehicles get buffed in other ways (more health, better situational awareness etc.), it will always be more effective to secure a site by just sending in an A2 or Redeemer to clear everything out. Because as you mentioned, using ground vehicles involves a lot of logistics and additional crew requirements over just using ships. Ground vehicles need to be able to effectively fight back against heavy bombers and heavily armored gunships like the A2 and the Deemer if we want to see combined arms gameplay. Currently there is no way for ground vehicles to fight back against ships like that. The A2 just drops a bomb and kills you from massive range before you can do anything and the Redeemer just laughs about your puny torpedoes and then proceeds to shred you in seconds with its big guns. And it is not just the Redeemer. Pretty much any ship that has enough shields and/or health to tank some impacts and enough turrets to reliably intercept missiles is impervious to ground-based AA. Ground vehicles just need more bite if they ever want to be a competitive option when ships like that are around.

Ground/floaty vehicles in SC are indeed dire, whether it be floaty, or bouncy, the physics vs terrain is immersion breaking. I must admit to playing more , or in fact daily since 3.19., and enjoying it immensely. Yet the rigors of either floaty/bouncy vehicles are testing to say the least. That being said, i'll definitely pass on the X1

You sounds like a professional documentary narrator! Subbed!

OMG! There are ground vehicles in Star Citizen? I have never seen one in the verse.

Great summery! It's truly tragic.

Great video and awesome editing. Thanks for making this video for all to see, CIG needs to change things for the better and make it more fun to play the ground game.

Based, I don't but vehicles because they are cheap in game and more importantly they stuck

The light tank is the only full military vehicle I'd want, something to bring to any org operations should a bit of armor be needed. I would personally use rovers and scouts more, but sensor gameplay is bearly there so even they don't have much use still. Even if they're systems were working, they're going to still be lacking their stealthier capabilities and a ship would still be faster at getting readings. Guess we'll have to wait and see if vehicles will ever be that useful.

Keep in mind, ships are going to be much, much slower with the new flight model. And when armor gets implemented, it's likely that a ship like the A1 Spirit will be knocked out of the sky before they can even get a bomb off by a single well placed missile. The real issue is that combat in Star Citizen, as you would expect from a universe where combat aircraft can fly out of atmosphere and back at will, you can't 'screen' a location with anti-air because ships can come from literally anywhere, even directly above the target location. In a realistic combat scenario, there's an invisible line drawn. This line dictates what is enemy territory, and what is allied territory. That line would typically be covered in all kinds of detection equipment to alert either side long before an aircraft crosses the line, and defenses are in place such as anti-air to take down those targets that cross that line. On top of this, an aircraft carrying any sort of payload is very, VERY expensive. In contrast, in Star Citizen, 'target locations' are typically an isolated, neutral location that is constantly changing who controls it. There is no battle line because it's just a single location, maybe even a single building in the middle of nowhere. Any faction can approach from any direction, there is no detection until a target is within like 10km which at that point, a bomber has pretty much already dropped its payload, and missiles don't even travel that far to begin with despite the fact that in real life, missiles are fired at aircraft from hundreds of miles away if necessary. Personally I would like ground vehicles to lean more toward being overpowered, the kind of thing where, you can't take an aircraft near anti-air because it's that good at its job. So you have to send in ground vehicles to deal with it. This would need to be in the future though... not one person sitting in an AA at Brios completely locking it down from the entire server.

Also, why can't you just drop down vehicles from low orbit? People can para-drop tanks right now, surely in the sci-fi future people'll come up with more efficient way to deliver vehicles right into combat.

But you forgot one thing, it's not only the ben ground vehicles but also the spaceships are still too strong which will change with master modes etc. the ships won't be able to hover in the atmo for long unless they have Vtol but yes the ground vehicles have received too little attention so far. Just like the FPS combat for air defense e.g. why is the railgun and the rocket launcher rare and not purchasable? In the Ptu 3.22 patch there are now NPCs with railguns that are quite dangerous when they work.

I wouldn't consider this tragic. I see CIG ranking this as a low priority for the PU. Hang in there, they'll work it out. Cheers

Its the tragic state of Star Citizen, its vehicles are just a symptom.

I rekon they'll want to fully simulate storms - so dynamic cloud systyems will be needed first

Don't forget nothing has mass. Or mass simulation at all. After seeing cog progress for 12 yrs . Alot of sc is very neish. Guns don't depress. Almost no suspension travel. More arcady then most arcade games.

I'm so glad someone is saying this

The relation in armour is completely unrealistic. It makes sense that 0G spaceships could be more heavily armoured, but just like irl, no way should any atmospheric somewhat agile aircraft be more heavily armoured than any military ground vehicle. On the other hand, it also wouldn't make sense for a comparatively tiny APC to have shields as strong as a large spaceship, which has massive generators and power supply. A tank should also be far less expensive than a spaceship, but this will only become relevant once a vehicle loss in itself is a significant cost (and you can't just claim it back for free) and there are large battles with many casualties. The vehicles themselves need improvement, but I'm not sure balancing alone can make them worthwhile without making them more powerful than they realistically should be. The most important thing to make ground vehicles relevant is to create worthwhile ground targets. Things that need boots on the ground, rather than just bombarding from the air, but on a scale where ground transport will be necessary or at least helpful. Missions involving large areas of heavily defended airspace for instance, or large complexes that need to be entered whose defences can't be eliminated by simple bombardment. Think sensitive data/items inside a large surface base with heavy AA. You can't just shoot at everything from the air, because you risk damaging what you want, or just because it's in bunkers, but the area of hostiles is so large that going on foot won't work, and the cannon and armour of an IFV would really help. They really just need to look at why ground combat is still a thing in the real world, and create those scenarios in game.

i'm still waiting for a throttle control, AKA mouse wheel

Video well articulated and points agreed with tenfold! Nice job spotlighting the ground play Mr. 'Tox, hopefully the points are taken note of.

Absolutely correct on ALL points. Worst combat fighting vehicle design of any game I have ever played. Take the storm with front entry/exit, shit FOV, and fully exposed weapon rack so that if you do survive a hit on the front and then exit the vehicle into no cover and somehow manage to survive, then have to get your weapon out of a fully exposed locker... FFS CIG ... "rule of cool" doesn't work when "Dumb by design" is in play.... please get some design advisory staff that have actual military experience... and I don't mean 300 hours on call of duty lol... IRL military experience.

I couldn't care less about combat vehicles. The only ground vehicle I would buy would be a civilian or science truck with a trailer that contains a hab, and maybe a small lab. I've been waiting for that since 3.0. But CIG still think in combat terns only.... and that very incompetently.

Good Video, just the balancing aspect needs a complete rework. The way it currently works makes it impossible to balance. If you make the Vehicles tanky then you have the problem that they're a impenetrable wall as as ground combat, making the players then stronger leads to the question: "Why can I make a spaceship explode with 9mm?". In my humble opinion, they need to add specific modifiers to weapons and specific ground items. For example: Imagine a ground effect shield, which is a lot stronger against large caliber weapons and basically negated them to that make energy type weapon be ineffective in atmosphere and give ballistics less range or more falloff. To that we now give the Vehicles Surface to Air missiles that are better at their job, a lot better, so that you either have to bomb them or flank them with small fighters, so they have a use. Or push them with a ground strike force. An Anti-Air installation should be a nogo zone for large ships, like in real life. The US Army probably wouldn't put a C17 close to an AA installation, that would be suicide. This would accomplish three things: Make Ground Combat viable, give rockets a use, and gives small flaking craft a use

Maybe thats why they are changing the flight model. No more ships hovering in air aiming down and searching for target on ground.

I think that the idea that ground vehicles could fight ships is impossible in this game, with how things are going, and my only hope is that they make them at least much more useful for certain game loops than ships. At least give players an actual good reason to use them, even if it's not possibly fighting ships.

I wonder if the Ballista nerf had something to do with light fighters, which would naturally be one shot by a ballista, and some of the less than savory people who might pilot them.

Cig Fails Every Time on ground vehicles. They don't even know WTF they are doing

If I was a developer of this rubbish, I'd be ashamed.

“Makes me wonder what their intentions were in the first place.” EXACTLY -whaaat are they thinking half the time?

this. This. THIS. THIIIIIIISSSSSSSSSS!!!! All of this!!!!!!! it's not like we don't have a century's worth of historical data to help game designers understand how tanks/IFVs/LAVs are supposed to work