Star Citizen 2019 Highlights & Expectations
Welcome to some more Star Citizen, looking at a highlight of what is coming in 2019 briefly for Star Citizen, what I am most excited about and what we can expect.
We have patches 3.5 – 3.8 coming out.
- 3.5 – End of March
- 3.6 – End of June
- 3.7 – Between the End of Spet and Mid October.
- 3.8 – End of Dec
We have 3.5 and 3.6 on the Roadmap already BUT nothing beyond that for the PU that’s not just being inferred from the SQ42 Roadmap.
We do know we are getting ArcCorp which is an entire city planet.
They are working on MicroTech, which has different biomes & weather conditions this is planned at coming towards the end of the year.
They are trying to have Orison, the Cloud City and Major Landing Zone for the Crusader Gas Giant done by the end of the year too.
Other New Gameplay includes Salvage Mechanics, Law & Reputation Systems, Repair Mechanics, Physical Inventories, Refueling, a Guilds System with new Missions, NPCs and some new ships including the Banu Defender, 890 Jump, Connie Taurus.
They have said that the Carrack is in Development Currently and is planned for flyable this year too.
The New Flight Model – This for me is the most exciting & important thing coming in 2019.
Star Citizen has seen lots of issues with combat, esp and it’s flight model since 3.0.
The New Flight model aims to be more performance efficient, is designed and implemented by the same team rather than making that a separate task, so it should be less buggy and work more as intended. It’s a simpler more unified model allowing you acceleration and velocity control, the faster you go the less control you have, atmospheric flight will have lift and the like, you’ll be able to feel your ships engines & thrusters much more.
Also most ships will be driven from the rear main engines and velocity will carry, ships will have ww2/modern flight in mind so you’ll have to consider maneuvering more, you have more of a turning circle.
The hope is that AI Ships will be more suited to this model and that it allows for more challenging engaging combat with both them and players from the off.
ESP is being worked on for the new system too, I literally can’t see how ESP could get any worse, just a little bit of normalization of aiming when I am REALLY close to the target so I don’t under or overshoot but it’s more the overshooting I am worried about.
Another part I am looking forward to that is related is improvements to multi-crew more specifically with turrets, which are in a reasonable state as of 3.4.1 (though still need love) and MFDs / Crew Stations the more data they expose to players, the more functions they allow and systems that integrate with the ship the better.
Physicalized components and repair will massively play into this, the Terrapin should be the first ship to have all it’s components physicalized and therefore they can be removed by hand and individually destroyed or repaired but having crew running around repairing and doing more around the ship IS KEY to the multi-crew experience.
They are Trying to get Full Persistence in later this year one of the core pillars of the game they identified at CitizenCon 2018. This will allow you to pick up and leave objects around the Verse and for that info to persist, so you could come back in a day’s time and the object would still be there, assuming nothing has happened to it! This is also tied into progression and is needed before we can less in the way of the aUEC & database Resets.
It’s also part of laying the foundations of Server Meshing, which they will be working on throughout 2019 but Server Meshing IS NOT something that will be done this year.
One of the features in 3.5 allows for increased server caps, so hopefully we should see the 50 player limit per server jump up significantly by 2020 even before server meshing is ready.
The Squadron 42 Roadmap Features will be subsumed into the PU as appropriate too throughout the year. From better AI, to improved HUDs to animation work.
Some highlights of that, that might make it this year are Medical Mechanics, Player Status (meaning eating, drinking and washing will be important), EVA/GravBoot Mechanics with your EVA pack thrusting downwards to simulate gravity, Ragdoll and body dragging, ways of interacting with the environment (mounted weapons, pushing and pulling boxes)
Performance Improvements
There is going to be more performance improvements, the long awaited Vulkan integration should be one of these at some point, we should actually see a bit more polish when it comes to options and such in the game too.
Also expect Server Side Object Container Streaming at some point, this is another one that will help with amount of clients on each server too.
Events
It’s Possible we could see a little something from GamesCom or E3 but it’s likely to be a SQ42 Trailer if they do do anything, gearing up their advertising.
Around the Middle of October there should be CitizenCon 2949 – If the rotation of events is anything to go by it should be in the UK this year, if it is THEN I SHALL 100% be attending. This should be another big fanfest that will also be livestreamed. Expect Concept Sales, Gameplay Reveals, Timeline/Roadmap Updates and Presentations on various aspects of the game.
Late November should be the 2949 Anniversary Expo / Sale – This is where they sell pretty much everything that’s previously been available for a week long period, some of the larger or rare ships are limited by a certain amount too.
They Physicalized the event in 2018 at Lorville so expect something similar this year, this is likely to come with a freeflight at the same time meaning anyone can try the game for free and that might also come with access to all the ships to try in some way during that expo period.
We didn’t get a Holiday Special in 2018 but we didn’t get a huge info dump and the financials of CIG being made public. As Squadron 42 could be pretty close to a launch then I expect we might see some info or a new trailer or a behind the scenes or something from the game.
So yeah Squadron 42 is aimed at being “content & feature” complete by the end of the year or at least be extremely close to it. That is awesome, we have been waiting for the game for years now!
Concept & Ships Sales wise we don’t have that much solid information I’ve got a list of potentials down:
Anvil F8C Civilian Version of the F8 Heavy Fighter
Drake Corsair Exploration Ship (Drake Version of the Constellation)
Cydnus Spider Miner
Titan ExoSuits
RSI Bengal Heavy Carrier
Pegasus Medium Carrier
Vanduul Esperia Converted Ships – Cleaver (Boarding Ship), Void Bomber, Driller (Capital Ship), Stinger (Heavy Fighter), Hunter Corvette
Re-Concepting the Redeemer Gunship
Lots of Potential Ground Vehicles
Some more Alien Ships – Tevarian Fighter, Converted Vanduul Ships, Alien/Hybrid Medium Ships, Xi’an Bomber
Of all of those the Titan ExoSuit is by far the most interesting to me.
Also the 300 Series Rework is something I am quite excited about, mainly because they have said there is a new way they want to sell and customize ships.
You’ll be able to customize your ships color, and loadout, potentially more from the RSI website before you buy, this is premiering with the 300 series and 3.5.
Some will argue it’s more marketing to make more money and that is certainly going to be part of it BUT if it’s allowing for lots of new customization and also the functionality becomes available in game fully at somepoint then it’s actually pretty exciting. We will have to wait and see exactly what’s planned for this though, people have also speculated that naming ships & apply decals may be available at this time as well as interior customization too.
We should have a proper PU Roadmap update within the next few weeks that should expose the updated plans for 3.6, 3.7 and 3.8 we shall go over that in a bit more detail when we know more