Star Citizen Alpha 3.3 Updates | FPS AI & Asteroid Mining

Welcome to some more Star Citizen with a summary of Around the Verse – Can You Hear Me Now? That went over some of the new features & progress on 3.3 Alpha.

Asteroid Mining is feature complete.
They’ve been making final tweaks to space “friction”
The mechanic has received some tweaks but is essentially the same as as mining on moons.
Find a Rock, analysis it, use the mining laser keeping the power throttle in the optimal zone.
If the Asteroid Explodes due to overcharged mining then the rock will go in every direction, meaning it will be hard to find and extract any of the materials from it.
Keeping your mining laser or extraction beam in the same place will give you great efficiency, you’ll extract quicker than moving it all over the rock.
Useable rocks in space are generally going to be a bit harder to find and they will be further apart.
They have a mixture of new assets and existing ones too that were re-textured.
They look different when they break open too.
New surface side rocks are being introduced as well. They have been working on minable rock formations on the acidic biomes on Hurston and Arial one of it’s moons.
The have been working on various shapes and sizes, this improves existing assets, adding clear differences between the exterior and interior textures too.

The Audio guys have been working on a feature to “focus” your listening. “Listener Focus”
This will allow you to able to keep track of and hear a specific conversation or eavesdrop even in a noisy area.
So the target you are focusing on will be louder and more clear, while other noises dampened.

AI non-combat ships around Hurston have been worked on.
They will take off and land to give more of a sense of a living breathing area.
They will turn up in QT above the planet, travel to landing zones, hang around for a bit, then take off and go back into orbit and then QT again.

More utilitarian hangar props like cabling that will be re-used in various locations have been completed.

FPS Combat AI, an incredibly important part of 3.3 has seen various improvements. Attention is being given to sharp turns, guard and patrol behaviors, which also have new idle animations, hit reactions both in and out of cover AND search path logic.