Star Citizen News – 3.5 Banu Defender Delay, Caves & Lawsuit Updates

Welcome to some more Star Citizen News with Project & Roadmap Progress a Summary of AtV, RtV, Newsletter and Rest of the News this week including updates to the Crytek v CIG Lawsuit this time for the week ending the 10th of March 2019.

Star Citizen currently has 3.5 Alpha in Evocati Phase, they are testing the new flight model before adding more content and going to wider PTU. The 3.5 LIVE build is planned for the end of March.
Star Citizen is at over $219.3 Million in Funding & has over 2.25 Million Accounts.

Roadmap Updates
With the Persistent Universe & for 3.5 we have had the Banu Defender slip from 3.5 to 3.6, so we won’t be seeing the ship until June now. This is because they want to get the looking and feel of the Banu’s Semi-Organic look right.

The Hornet HeartSeeker F7C-M has appeared here now and it’s in Polishing.

In regard to the rest of the Patch DNA Face Customization, Twitch the new mission giver, Voip / Foip Improvements, Projectile Manager & Reliant Variants have all made significant progress.

Additional new tasks with Lyria, Wala, the Heat System & Ship Systems Degradation have been added.

With AI Stuff Collision Avoidance, Gunship Behavior & Combat Behavior Improvements all require 1 last task for completion.

3.6 has seen the addition of the Banu Defender and progress on Rest Stop Space Stations Exterior Variations.

3.8 has seen progress on Eddie Parr a New Mission Giver at Planet microTech.

For Squadron 42 Updates
Weapons Effects v2 & Atmospheric Effects v2 have move to Q2 & Q3 Respectively

The now Q2 Weapons Effects v2 however appears to already be completed (so it’s movement might be an error) the feature is a series of weapon projectile effect improvements, including a general visual quality increase to make different weapons and energy types more distinct to the player and to help weapon-based combat look and feel more visceral.

Q3 Atmospheric Improvements v2 this feature is a series of improvements to the atmospheric flight effects, such as entry, exit, and contrails. Some of the elements that are going to be worked on include smoother, systemic transitions from space to planet, contrails variance within a gas cloud, improved turbulence effects, and use of signed distance fields for atmospheric burn effects.

The Newsletter this week
We’re now weeks away from the live release of Alpha 3.5, and we’ve received a lot of great feedback from the Evocati as they put the new flight model through its paces.

Whether you’re new to Star Citizen or a seasoned vet, our new tutorial video series is here to help you get into the ‘verse, get out of your hab, and hone your skills.

Also, cold war memories in the system formerly known as Hadur, Rusty duds for trusty subs, SRV pulls ships like weight, and ATV introduces an intriguing new mission giver.

Thank you for your continued support,

There is a 7 Part Video Tutorial Series that CIG have brought out BUT it’s a little late in the day for 3.4.3 tutorials. There is a bit of information that is out of date in them too THOUGH as a tester for them doing video tutorials in the future IF they can get them out in a timely manner and they are accurate then I wouldn’t be too opposed.

The Sneak Peek this week is for some UI/Visuals for the ArcCorp Spaceport.

March Subscriber Update
This month’s RSI Flyable Ship is the Buccaneer.

Flair this month is for Arm Armor, Centurion will receive the Venture Arms and Imperator will receive the Venture Arms and MacFlex Arms. If it interests you should subscribe no later than the 17th of this month to get your hands on these truly unique items.

They are also running a Subscriber Feedback Thread asking the questions:

1. Do you enjoy Jump Point?
2. What kind of images do you want to see in the Vault?
3. Are we making good picks for Ship of the Month?
4. How are you enjoying the Usable Flair Items?

The most important Question did seem to be missing, which is anything regarding video content & community engagement that Subscribers funds are supposed to support. I feel that maybe Subscriptions have started to take the view of “what perks can we give to backers to encourage them to subscribe” rather than how can we use the money we have for Subs to create quality & more content.

Around The Verse
The AtV – Depth of Character looked at

Twitch Pacheco the new Mission Giver in 3.5, she’s related to outlaw missions and hates ArcCorps Private Security.

New FPS 3.5 Weapons the S71 Assault Rifle has a scope, single fire and burst modes BUT no full auto. The Coda Pistol has a big recoil and is a high damage 6 shooter.

Caves are being R&Dd now, they use the same procedural tech as space stations currently, it creates an entrance that’s either a sinkhole (which may be large enough for a ship) or a cave (that may be large enough for a vehicle) then in the same way rooms and corridors are added to stations it places modular pieces together to make a unique cave. This also creates walkways for players to traverse and marks areas to spawn assets, rocks, mineables OR areas to keep clear. There will be climbables, little tunnels you need to crawl through OR even swim. Caves are not on the Roadmap yet and are a way out.

 

Reverse The Verse
On RtV – they had a GameDev Special – What Makes A Helmet?

They made a Banu Helmet Live with feedback from the Community. It was pretty cool to see how they could make a reasonably detailed model in such a short period of time.

They do have the tools now to make their pipeline for models, assets and more incredibly quick compared to what they had previously.

Other News
The Crytek Lawsuit is still going through the motions, on thursday the Crytek vs CIG case had a date set for Pretrial Conference set for 2/25/2020 & Jury Trial set for 3/24/2020. This is for the last points remaining in Crytek’s case that were not dismissed. The assumption is that Crytek are trying to go for a small settlement & that CIG would likely pay just to get the matter dealt with.

With that in mind there is also a Settlement Conference that looks to have a date no later that the end of July 2019 and a Report re-settlement sent to the Judge by the 2nd of August 2019.

Hopefully around that time we will be able to tell if the matter is done or if it’s going to trial. I know that a lot of backers will want CIG to fight to get their legal fees back BUT bear in mind that it might be a better business decision for them to just have it done with Squadron 42 coming out in the near future. I’ll keep up to date with the case as it moves forward.