Star Citizen HOTAS

[TeaLeaf]

Madcatz were the intended manufacturer for the SC HOTAS and were surviving on fairly mundane revenue from 'Rock Band 4'.   Madcatz seem to be in a less than ideal financial situation.  They've restructured, renegotiated their covenants, got rid of the Chairman and the CEO, laid off 37% of their workforce, delisted from the Toronto stock exchange and pushed their financial reporting date back to 2nd June.  

In other, possibly related or unrelated news, something BIG should have happened at CIG within the last fortnight.   Something big enough to have meant Chris & Sandy travelled over to the UK for it to happen.  The problem was the event never happened and they are apparently fuming about it.  

Nothing has been officially confirmed, but I reckon Madcatz just bailed big time on a planned SC HOTAS event and left Chris & Sandy dangling in the wind.    The earnings call on 2nd June should be interesting.

[Galatoni]

That can't be good. I would imagine they've staked a fairly hefty retainer on a product that looks like it might not be being produced now. I can imagine that it won't be an easy task to explain that to the backers! While I imagine they're trying to generate income where they can, and working on things like this while people are still foaming at the mouth to get merchandise is good for their business. I feel they should be focusing on the core game. Just my opinion though.

[Gorion]

Personally, I never wanted Madcatz SC gear.  The worldwide opinion is that Madcatz make rubbish products.

Perhaps this time around they go for a better HOTAS manufacturer.  CH products have the best components.  Mix those with SC branding and modernisation, and we should have peripherals worthy enough.

[Obsydian]

I'd be interested to know the source of this info in order to gauge its accuracy.

i know that Chris is in the UK for Squadron 42, and Sandi came over briefly to perform 'pick ups' for Squadron 42 as well (she plays one of the characters in it), but this is the first I've heard of Madcatz/Saitek bailing (although I can imagine it happening based on the drama they've gone through in the past year or two).

All that said, though, and at the risk of using confirmation bias, it would explain a few things...

[smilodon]

The last that I heard, and this was directly from Chris Roberts himself in the pub in London last year, was that the HOTAS was all but complete. The main sticking point was delivery. The costs of delivering the product to places like Australia, the Far East and to a lesser degree Europe was adding a lot to the cost. Once that had been resolved there seemed to be little that was stopping the stick from going on sale.

[TeaLeaf]

The last that I heard, and this was directly from Chris Roberts himself in the pub in London last year

That'll be January of this year then!

[smilodon]

Just making sure people are paying attention

[albert]

So I had a nice long play around in the Universe last night and I'm very happy to report that I didn't crash in about 3 hours of gameplay.

I setup my Stick and Throttle and tuned the sensitivity and dead zones allowing me to land and not crash into asteroids.

I was lacking some functionality in my rather well button, switch and toggle endowed CH Products HOTAS though.

I resorted to using buttons for yaw (rather than roll) because I'm used to yaw being on my left hand device. That meant no analogue yaw which in SC is a disadvantage as ships, especially fighters can spin yaw pretty quickly giving a big advantage in battle.

I'm going to buy a joystick for my left hand to try out using 2 in SC. I want to have complete analogue control of all thrusters and strafe controls.

Then the real fun starts, how to choose which of the 200+ other functions to map to the joystick.

I split them into a few areas:

Movement - already covered
Tracking and selection - pinning, enemy, friendly, general, missile lock, literally a few dozen option and no tall of them can be used without blowing your brain up.
Weapons, 1-4 fire groups, defensive weapons, missiles, a dozen or so possibilities.
General stuff like Quantum drive, Stability, Flight assist etc. another 6 buttons.

Literally if anyone is expecting to have a pair of sticks do everything in this game right now, without double clicks, hold downs and shift key actions, forget it.

[Obsydian]

Literally if anyone is expecting to have a pair of sticks do everything in this game right now, eithout double clicks, hold downs ans shift key actions, forget it.

And it's only going to get worse! :eyebrow:

Here're a few handy videos by Trip Rodriguez about dual-stick setup: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLGuHeDezfCF9NTMnIqk5tinp4cForenzT

I compiled this list as I'm thinking of going this route myself.

[albert]

And it's only going to get worse! :eyebrow:

Here're a few handy videos by Trip Rodriguez about dual-stick setup: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLGuHeDezfCF9NTMnIqk5tinp4cForenzT

I compiled this list as I'm thinking of going this route myself.

When they add specific function like mining, scrap recovery and boom operation, there will be a keybind menu for every ship as well as the core controls. I suppose it makes the game more involved and interesting but more effort to setup.

[Obsydian]

I don't think they'll go as far as to make a new keybind menu for each ship, rather they'll just add more binding options under new mapping categories such as mining, salvage, repair, etc.

I'm thinking of adding a couple of the Thrustmaster MFDs to my setup to cater for these sorts of things in future.  Either that or use Roccat Power Grid on a companion tablet.

[Lysander]

I've been playing 2.5 for 6 weeks (I think) and I'm slowly setting my Saitek X52 stick and throttle up with minimal difficulty... Its just a little time consuming.

On the flight stick I've got Flight Controls, Targeting, 3 of the 4 fire controls, counter measure deployment (still need keyboard to select counter measure type), and engine mode (ie. Fine, SCM, or Cruise), on the Throttle I simple have main thrust, Boost, and (what I call) RCS thrusters for fine control when landing etc...

In reality a game like this is too almost too keyboard dependent.  My preferred choice (I think) would be to "force" players to actually use the required work station to perform Mining, Scanning, Repairs etc... and make the station operator use their mouse to "physically" interact with the work station, in a similar way to Star Trek.  (Not a huge Star Trek fan, so don;t judge me to harshly)

[TeaLeaf]

I'm thinking of adding a couple of the Thrustmaster MFDs to my setup to cater for these sorts of things in future.  Either that or use Roccat Power Grid on a companion tablet.

I was looking at precisely the same things on Monday!  I reckon more things will develop in this sector of the market as we progress into 2017, so I'm just researching at the moment, but it looks like a viable option.

[OldBloke]

... or use Roccat Power Grid on a companion tablet.

That's what I'm hoping to use.

[Jamoe]

that looks good, I'm going to give that a whirl, just need to steal my tablet back off the kids....