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Star Citizen 3.3.7 State of the Game & 3.4 in Evocati

Welcome to some more Star Citizen, Alpha 3.4 is out to the Evocati, 3.3.7 is now LIVE, so let’s talk about Alpha 3.3.7 a State of the Game and what needs to be fixed in 3.4 for us to have a good Star Citizen Christmas.

3.3.7 has a quick PTU patch then it went out to LIVE, if you are interested in those patch notes in a bit more detail OR in fact what is planned to be in 3.4 then please checkout my videos on that linked below.

The 3.3.7 addressed some issues and bugs and removed the Expo area & content from the build for the most part.

It reset aUEC & aUEC purchases as well and this is one of the major things I wanted to talk about. The current Economy / Progression Cycle does allow for the purchase of ships and items with in game aUEC, ships that you purchase are covered by insurance and you can reclaim them, so effectively you have them on your account until there is a reset.

Those reset happen currently at least once every 3 months with the major patches.

But also very often with minor patches, meaning that you could have those purchases reset pretty much at any time, yes the game is an Alpha and I understand they are tweaking their databases BUT it would be much better if these resets happened less frequently OR if they ported the databases over in regard to aUEC and purchases.

 

They have talked about Ship Purchases that are in game now at Teachs Levski and New Deal Lorville are being priced toward the final prices that they envision as a good starting metric when there is full persistence. BUT in the meantime accelerating ways of making aUEC from missions.

Actually this is one of the things, missions in game frequently get bugged out with NPCs or Mission Givers become unresponsive BUT some of the more combat oriented ones the Mercenary ones you can get a good run at these, these actually lead onto more profitable missions that I find easier to complete for bounties and such too.

But the other ways to make money are to Cargo Haul with ships upto Constellation Size typically this will be taking Widow from Jumptown on Yela to GrimHex or another location.

This has an interesting gameplay loop of people quite heavily patrolling the JumpTown Location looking to “prevent” players trading drugs OR loot the rements of ships.

This does add a lot more of the risk reward elements I am looking for & makes people call for escorts and backup on the Service Beacons. OR players to threaten to destroy ships on the ground unless you pay some aUEC/hire them.

 

Larger Haulers can make bank trading a range of goods from one place to another, although I have been moving Iodine, Altruciatoxin, Agricultural Supplies & I think Beryl in my Caterpillar to very good aUEC profit, as I said though that require a large hauler to be effective.

Mining seems to me to be extremely low risk at the moment, with very high rewards. Yes you might find a rock that hard to crack, in space I find that blowing some of them up on purpose from a distance can get you some delicious loots still, Agricium is pretty much pay dirt for mining. The mechanic is very hands on, which I really like, means you can’t AFK mine.

With the selling of all these resources there are artificial limits set on the amount they buy it seems, which reset every minute it seems. It seems like an odd mechanic, it’s obviously place holder or is meant to prevent exploiting a crazy price BUT that needs to change imo.

I’ll link Texas Skulls Trade App he made so you can find your own routes and prices, it is pretty damn useful!

The  Turrets with Gyro-Stabilization and those higher frame rates really make using a turret viable now, that said they still need a lot of work though, their movement and tracking is still too slow for attacking faster ships and in general all weapons need a balance pass.

 

We are waiting for the new flight model and that has caused a short term focus to shift too……Object Container Streaming, Performance, getting missions and NPCs working.

I am disappointed with that FM being moved to 3.5 but the focus of getting these QoL improvements in for 3.3/3.4 is important as well… assuming they get these features working.

 

I am impressed with the Performance, Stability and frame rates, in 3.3.7 they seem slightly better to me. Lorville does seem to have a bit more of a normalized less hitchy frame rate when landing. I am still not used to these high frame rates yet, so I am going to enjoy and comment on them until I take them for granted.

 

VOIP and FOIP work inconsistently, which is a shame because these are really fun when they do work well. It just needs to work.

Combat AI were working a bit better in some of the missions, though sometimes they go derpy still, NPCs walking around still seem to do odd things.

 

At the moment there is no reason IMO to make money in 3.3.7 as 3.4 is right around the corner, unless you are doing it to just test… work out how the mechanics work, practice doing things efficient… I take it back there are a lot of reasons to make money in the PU even in 3.3.7, it’s just anything you purchase will be reset probably in a couple of weeks.

 

So gameplay loop wise, we’ve got a large range of mission though they may bug out, recommend mercenary ones!

Missions aren’t locally hooked up for Hurston or it’s Moons yet making that entire section of space for me a tourist attraction money/aUEC wise at the moment. Though it’s very pretty and Hurston/Lorville is a must explore destination.

It is awesome to land in the SpacePort there, travel on the train system, visit New Deal or Shops in the L19 Workers District then go out in the various biomes of Hurston, the Savanna can have very lush forest type areas, there are lakes, seas, wastelands… mostly wastelands, trash areas, acidic, mined out places and underground facilities.

BUT we need scramble races, missions, trade outposts all hooked up for this to be a proper addition to the Stanton System.

 

3.3.7 is certainly a patch but for me there is too much in the way of bits not hooked up or working mission wise & I would recommend players waiting for 3.4 PTU or LIVE for Hurston to be hooked up properly before trying out and downloading especially if they have download limits.

3.4 is in Evocati & should be coming really soon to a wider PTU as soon as the end of next week. It is basically an extension of the 3.3 branch heavily focusing on getting missions in and working across the current gameplay area and a huge range of QoL fixes, that should mean with that patch Star Citizen will be in a very playable state or at least that is the hope… they need to get those missions in and the current ones working no more unresponsive NPCs and uncompletable missions please.

Secondary to that getting Rentals or ways of earning aUEC to buy ships in would be great.