Well, talk about a huge disappointment. After many attempts, adjustments and some general stubbornness, I'm going to have to admit it. Star Citizen I just can't run on my hardware. Or at least not as neatly as I would like.
I must point out that the game works. It works almost well. But the problem I face is the fact that if I want to play Star Citizenso it's all which I am allowed to do on my PC. If I have the temerity to use my rig for something else while the game is running, I'm pretty much hosed.
The few times I was able to access the game, things were… fine, I guess? It reminded me how life in the Verse is simply about going from place to place to reach my spaceship, and then moving it to an intended destination. As much as I like some deep levels of immersion, I'm now starting to understand that verisimilitude doesn't have to constantly get in the way of trying to have fun.
And I tried to have fun. Or at least try to complete a few missions, anyway. I've done delivery missions many times before, so I wasn't immediately interested in doing it at the moment, especially without the cargo refactor and other more industrial sized updates that the game should receive later, so I chose to try my hand at doing bounty hunting missions. Especially since I wanted to get back into space combat. It's been a long time, after all.
Once I landed the contract I wanted to get (which came with a 500 credit fee, sure why not), I walked, took a flying bus, then walked again to the kiosk which allowed me to summon my ship. And this is where I found a few surprises on my list. I apparently owned a San'tok.yai and one Khartu-Altwo ships I never remembered buying or melting down other ships to get to.
Sure why not? I'm going to see what the San'tok is for.
It was here that, despite all the chore of standing in front of the ship, I remembered one of the SC coolest features. Honestly, no one does design like CIG, and the alien ships perfectly encapsulate the incredible skill of the designers, artists, and developers. This thing is controlled by moving floating balls. The ship floats out of the cockpit for you to sit down so it can return you to the cockpit. It's a wild boat.
Unfortunately, I wasn't actually able to carry her into combat simply because I misjudged the jump range of the objective I needed to go to, and when I redirected to a nearby location, things started happening to embarrass myself and I chose to do so. reset. This meant, of course, that the ship was lost in the wilderness and needed time to return to me in Area 18.
So, once again, I made the literal trek to the hangars and summoned the Anvil Arrow that I'm much more familiar with to take on a different bounty hunting target. Of course, it would seem that this target was in a much closer location, but it doesn't matter. I figured it would probably be best for me to go with a ship I'm familiar with anyway.
Once I arrived at the location of my bounty target, I engaged in combat with two escort fighters. Here I began to struggle, as the dogfight was taking place just above the surface of the moon I was on, and the flight controls felt…squirrelsome. Things were not as stable as I had first recalled. So, as I struggled with the new sensation of flying while trying to hit my enemy, the bounty target seemingly left. Or something? I'm not entirely sure what happened, all I know is that the contract fell through.
But since I was already doing aerial combat, I figured I'd join up. Here I started experiencing hardware issues again to the point where a pause in the frame rate caused me to crash my ship on the planet's surface. This was, I assumed, the time to log off and come back another day.
Third time's the charm, right? Another ride, another bounty contract, another attempt at using the San'tok.yai. This time, however, the target was on the same moon I was on during that dogfight earlier. Maybe now I'll have the chance to see what this ship is capable of!
No. Once again, frame rate issues (and admittedly high speed) once again blew me away. I think I crashed? Or maybe a turret shot me down. I really can't tell you what happened; one minute I was in the air, the next I was watching my ship burst.
So I guess, despite my improvements and adjustments, Star Citizen and my equipment just can't work. And I'm frustrated.
For reference, my rig has 32GB of RAM, a 3.61GHz Intel i7 CPU, and an Nvidia GeForce RTX 3070 GPU. Now there may be a number of additional hardware upgrades that I could use to make my experience even more fluid. Maybe my SSD wasn't fast enough read/write. Maybe I still don't have the right GPU. But honestly, after a certain point, software has to catch up too. And I don't make enough money to turn my computer into Star Citizen-box only, no matter how much CIG would probably want me to.
In addition, Dawn Trail be there soon. Either way, it's best to reserve those GB of SSD space for this.
So yes, despite my hopes and efforts, it seems I have to put the kibosh on this return to Star Citizen. Maybe later I can afford to buy the other parts I apparently need to play this game. And have other programs running at the same time, but I was clearly told to keep running. And so that means we move on to the next adventure instead. I'm ready to move on.
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Voting will close at 1 p.m. standard time (EDT) on Friday, June 21. I'm sorry it happened like that, and maybe I'll come back if I find out if there's anything else I'm missing. But in the meantime, I will ensure that this next CMA cycle is much longer in order to make up for the shortfall that I unfortunately have to report on.
welcome to Choose my adventure, the column in which you join Chris each week as he travels through mystical lands on fantastical adventures – and you decide his fate. Which is good because he can often be a pretty indecisive person unless he's ordering a burger.Advertisement
