Alpha 3.5 ArcCorp & Planetary Locations
Welcome to some more Star Citizen with an info dump and summary from Reverse The Verse from the 1st Feb 2019. Going over largely new bits for Alpha 3.5 and some bits beyond. The questions and topics were Submitted from Spectrum & Twitch Chat.
What is going to be the biggest technical challenge of 3.5?
Making ArcCorp look good
The no fly zone is different from Hurston
Graphical improvements with the day night cycle, they want the cities to glow at night from various ranges.
Will you be able to explore all of ArcCorp?
They have a minimum flight height for the no fly zone.
One of the tech things they are building is excusion zones from the no fly zones, so they can have other areas you could land on the ground maybe.
You’ll be able to land on some buildings that are above the zone too.
Some of these buildings will eventually be explorable and will be parts of missions.
They want to improve the no fly zones and this is an example of a planet wide no fly zone.
Outpost, villages and towns won’t have no fly zones typically.
Area 18 will be the only in 3.5 on ArcCorp.
ArcCorp has been terraformed and flattened, the planet is now surfaced with plates that the city springs from.
Automated Gimbal Mounts
They are experimenting with unifying leading and follow pips so that aiming is simplified and weapons converge. They have only just recently been testing this.
It’s something that will be heavily focused on in the PTU phase of 3.5
Friends List Capacity
They will take a look at it and see if there is any technical limits.
More Planetary Locations
They will be adding more locations to explore at Lorville.
They put out first iterations then build on them as time goes on.
They will be using the procedural room tech to make more areas explorable too.
This will roll on to derelicts, towns, outposts and underground bunkers too.
Cargo depots and ports will be added to planets stations in orbit as well as rest areas on the ground for respawns and repair, rearm and refuel
Other points of interest and landing zones will eventually be around planets in game including ArcCorp.
They are focusing on getting New Babbage and Orison out after Area 18 before adding more to those planets where sensible.
Ladders
They will be making ladders BETTER. They are going through the whole of the FPS experience at the moment, they want the core FPS and movement working, then 2ndary movements, crouch mantling ladders will also get some love.
Group System
They are making a lot of QoL improvements for 3.5 in the Groups system.
Mission sharing and Reward sharing is going to happen later down the line (sounds like 3.6)
Size of Area 18
It will have a public transport system
The size has been changed since we last saw it, it’s now similar sized to lorville.
The spaceport will be in a separate location, then you travel to the city via some sort of flight travel.
Ejecting in Atmosphere
There will be parachutes or some form of safe falling
They are focused on SQ42 currently, anything FPS related that is in SQ42 have been prioritized in the shorter term.
Law & Criminality
We might see some of the first iterations of the expanded Law system in 3.5 DEFINITELY by 3.6. It will be based on whether the feature looks like it will be ready in time, typically they have a 4-6 week cut off for deciding 100% what features are in a patch.
They will have different laws on different planets and areas in space.
Later they want prison gameplay too. There will other ways to affect your crime rating too.
Missiles
Missiles will constantly iterated on, they need to be balanced correctly BUT they are trying to fix the collision issues. They will be affected by the new flight model too.
Enhanced Customization
They are building something for the website for Ship Customization
One of the things going forward 1st seen with the 300 rework, they want the players to have more of a choice of loadout and items with the ships when you purchase them.
Non-Lethal
Less Than Lethal Weapons are planned. They are focused on getting different ammo / damage types working first. Then the gadgets, grenades, non lethal.
They will also be looking at what happens to the player when knocked out too, they haven’t decided yet.
Other
Explorable Caves have had some prototyping.
Building modular pieces and seeing how it can all work.
The work looks promising. They need to think about water, vehicles, ai and more.
The Reliant Mako’s Camera will not be for ready gameplay wise for 3.5
Radar & Scanning Improvements – They want to be able to scan stations and structures, that is coming 3.5 or 3.6
They have started internal discussions on Item Insurance.
There are no plans currently to have the ability to walk and use the mobiGlas.
Cargo Trading
They will be adjusting TDDs so that there is a bit more economy gameplay.
Refineries will have you selling them unrefined goods.
Mining outposts will have you buying refined and unrefined goods.
The main Trade hubs will have access to different goods.
Cargo routes will eventually be dynamic and change profitability.
They want black markets so that outlaws can sell stolen or looted goods.
Economy sinks are important, things like item upgrades, repair, insurance to help stimulate the economy.
Players Per Server
Player Server Counts are not being updated in 3.5, they are talking about shards and server meshing soon. They want the servers running well, there are some ship updates to make them more efficient resource wise.
They are reducing draw calls on characters too, the more improvements to these systems the more players they will be able to get in game.
Elevators
They want elevators to be done in a physicalized and realistic way. However they are going to do travelling physically when sensible. Some parts that are not reasonable to do in this manner may be teleporters or “faked”.
Travel times will continue to be iterated on as well, they don’t want players to be waiting ridiculus times, they can always add more trains or increase their speed.
FPS Attachments
Weapon Attachment, ammo & grenade are on their way. We should see them this year. In regard to the attachments there are 4 main ones planned:
- Under Barrel
- Barrel
- Sights
- Mags
Later
Next week there is a planned Large Roadmap Update with Alpha 3.7 and 3.8 being added
For the foreseeable future No Calling All Devs on Monday – They are evaluating what they want to do with the shows this year still.