Patch 3.3.5 Roadmap Changes & The Hammerhead

Welcome to some more Star Citizen with details of the 3.3 & 3.3.5 patch split not to be confused with 3.5 patch, updates to the Star Citizen Roadmap and some info about the Hammerhead Gunship from a Ship Shape & Reverse The Verse.

Roadmap
Some of the Features of the 3.3 Patch have been split off into a separate 3.3.5 patch coming a bit later currently planned for around mid Q4, that is around 6 weeks away though it could come out sooner or later than that.

The Features that have been pushed into that 3.3.5 patch are:
Object Container Streaming
Network Bind Culling
Network Entity Streaming
Hurston & it’s associated Landing Zone Lorville (And new shops there)
So that also means the Hurston Clothing Collection
Clovus Darneely (who I believe resides in Lorville)
The 4 Moons of Hurston and all those biomes associated with them (including water)
No-Fly Zones will be added with this patch, for logistical reasons and to enhance intrigue.
Basically it’s OCS & it’s associated features being pushed back a few weeks.

The 3.3 Patch will now contain:
FOIP & VOIP / Groups System Improvements with Better Chat & Party Support
Weapon System Refactor
Improvement to Planetary Tech – Environmental Blending Shader
New Weapons – Karna Assault Rifle, HD Dominance & Attrition Series of Ship Weapons
FPS AI NPCs both in missions & POI as well as new FPS focused Missions
Improved AI Behaviors for Ships
Scramble Races – The Scramble Race is a mission type that can occur in space or on the ground which sees racers battling to be the first to reach a series of randomly spawned checkpoints. Each race is designed to bring racers into conflict, eliminating competitors by any means is encouraged.
Ship System Degradation – Functionality for upgradable ship components, implementing wear and degradation causing reduced performance and misfire events.
Delivery Lockers and PickUp Mission Improvements
Asteroid Mining & Mining Improvements
Improved Transit Systems – So expect good things with Elevators, Airlocks and Doors
Shipboard Ping & Scanning – Extend shipboard Ping and Scanning to much larger distances, differentiate Ping behavior per signature type, and expand information received from Scanning vehicles.
AC & SM REC Rentals from inside game, so you can rent out ships,  weapons & FPS gear in those modes.
Improvements to Turrets both Manned and Remote.
Item Kiosk Shopping Improvements
Ships wise the Hammerhead Gunship, Constellation Phoenix, Cyclone Variants, Mustang & Variants Rework will all be flyable.

MIA Features
There is no word on Ship Rental in the PU after this split, in the August Monthly Report they said in reference to Environmental Art:

“The team has now completed the art for a host of smaller locations for Lorville, including the new habitation modules, lobbies, and the interiors for Lorville’s bar, admin office, and shops. The first iteration of a security checkpoint and a transit platform (complete with train car) have also been finished. As well as this, they’re almost complete on the Teasa Spaceport interior with its new shop archetype, the Ship Rental store.”

And they had added a general transaction Service to manage rental and store purchases, as well as currency/service transactions for missions and service beacon contracts.

I would assume that this spaceport is part of the Loreville Landing Zone BUT I may be wrong. The Rental of Ships other than this isn’t mention on the roadmap for the Persistent Universe Specifically BUT obtaining ships in game with in game currency is critical to my enjoyment in the shorter term. I would however expect this in the 3.3.5 update now.

Also in Regard to that, the Roadmap says Mid Q4 2018 for 3.3.5 BUT more realistically this is going to be ready when it’s ready, and could be a couple of weeks or months after CitizenCon. They did say that 3.3.5 is planned to be the patch right after 3.3, so there is unlikely going to be a 3.3.1 UNLESS there is something major to hotfix.

Obviously this delay is disappointing BUT the good thing that might come from the delay is better integration of OCS than we would of had, potentially more features might get slipped into the .5 patch & in general the patch might be more refined with bug fixes and optimizations.

Evocati Tests
The Evocati Phase has yet to start for 3.3 (at time of recording anyway) I am suspecting there is a few more teething issues with OCS they want to fix before handing it off to ETF.
I believe that even though they are splitting off OCS to another patch, that the ETF will still have 2 builds of 3.3, one with OCS enable and one without, that could also mean that they get a build with Hurston in it & this could also be present in the OCS build of the PTU when it gets rolled out to more testers.
I am hoping that we see a PTU environment run constantly & parallel to any live builds from 3.3s release to 3.3.5 and maybe even beyond, with that in mind we might not have to wait for OCS in game for as long as we thought, though you’d have to make the concession of mega bugs!

RtV – Hammerhead
The Hammerhead is a Patrol Ship / Defensive GunBoat for Anti-Fighter & Anti-Missile / Torp Support.
The original idea of the ship was to be a Retaliator with more turrets instead of Torps.
The ship has become much bigger from that original idea, for me it’s a Turret Corvette
6x Turrets with 4 Rhino Laser Repeater Size 4 Weapons on each, you can obviously swap those out.
They added a 2nd Top Deck with Kitchen, this was fitted in to the current size of the ship in unused space. There are 8 Escape Pods.
The Ship uses a load of the modular pieces and pipeline of the Idris and Javelin BUT all the rooms are still unique looking (they are all Aegis manufactered) Beds, Corridors, Captain’s Room are all taken from these and slightly edited, the rest are more bespoke to the Hammerhead.
The Landed size of the ship is on the website.
They will have some ways of sharing targets between turrets in the future.
There will be ways the pilot will be able to see who the gunners are targeting & pointing.
Similar to the Starfarer in Speed, a little faster and more agile.
Every angle around the ship has at least 4 turrets that can point at it.
All Turrets can be active and fighting at once. They will tweak it’s default loadout if necessary OR if there are power problems.
You’ll be able to Overpower OR Overclock these weapons too.
Turrets and Missiles will be targetable by all weapons & ships, however the Hammerhead may be rather effective at shooting down this type of target from it’s sheer amount of firepower.
The ship might potentially be more effective at ramming, they are looking into the mechanics of this still.
The Ursa Rover should fit in through the ramp & on the ship
There is 40SCU, the rover would take up most of the space tho.