Star Citizen Coming Features Not On The Roadmap

Welcome to some more Star Citizen, today I wanted to talk about some features that we know about but that are “Not on The Roadmap”. Features and Supporting tech that are being worked on now OR that have the potential to land within the next 12 months BUT are hidden from our view, this could be because CI don’t know when they will land, they are being kept for surprises, they are parts of other features though some might just take longer than the Roadmap shows. Please be aware that with Star Citizen the development changes, evolve & these are my interpretations of what has been said.

There are an array of Party Improvements that CI have been working on.

Sharable Missions, we know they being worked on but they are not going to make Alpha 3.6. The Feature will see the party leader have access to all the party members Missions and then can choose one of these or take a new one that becomes the active one for the group.

There are also Party & Multi-Crew Improvements that they have been working on, various QoL bits, including a permissions system allowing a vehicle owner to give specific players access to doors, MFDs, stations and systems.

This can all be seen as part of the Organization “Features” Pillar that CI are working on, we should be seeing more specific features for group organization both in and out of game. We should at some point be able to see Organization affiliation and other simple Org Features in the near future allowing Orgs to organize and represent themselves in game more appropriately.

We know they want Secure Areas to replace Green/Armistice Zones and they have some features that support phasing these in already on the Roadmap.

Not just the Law System in 3.6, but also Security Systems in 3.8

“The security system controls who has access to areas and objects based on various factors such as reputation, ownership, keycards, and faction. It will automatically issue warnings to people breaking the law and, if ignored, will flag them as criminals to security forces.”

This actually sounds like it is tied to the permissions system for groups & orgs they want to get in as well.

Starting with the Rework of the 300 series variants (apparently coming in 3.5.x) we are getting Website Ship Customization enabling us to make some changes to our ships before we purchase them probably to Loadouts and Paint Schemes. It’s expected that this will propagate to other ships too & eventually all this functionality will be available in game.

We don’t know to what extent this customization will allow for or if it will allow you to customize ships that have already been bought.

Something that you will hear about constantly for the next year or so is Server Improvements some of which are not on the Roadmap BUT should be in (at least in part) during the next 12 months. The main ones being:

SSOCS – The ability for Servers to sleep / standby and turn on object containers

Full Persistence – The ability for servers to save persistent data of objects & entities so that an item or crashed ship will persist on a server, you could leave a teddy bear in the icy tundra on microTech and someone else might find it a week later for example.

Server Meshing – Allows for multiple servers to handle a Star System, from a single room or ship to a planet, and for these servers to handle areas nested in each other.

At first Server Meshing will be static, so multiple set servers for Stanton, Planet Hurston will be on 1 server, Planet ArcCorp on another.

Eventually this will be Dynamic enabling individual object containers to be handled by Server Meshing and for them to be spun up and down based on area population.

An incredibly important part of Star Citizen Ship Combat, Flight & Customization is Physicalized Ship Components we know that they have been working towards this for a while with the Terrapin being the first ship that will have all of its ships systems – Shield Generations, Power Plant & other components all having a physical presence on ships.

This will see the end of ship health pools as well, ships will instead take damage to their components & connections to them causing a ship to be more commonly disabled rather than explode.

Having Physicalized Components is a prerequisite of Sub-Component Modding which would allow you to mod your weapons and ship systems further with sub components you can swap in and out and also allows for hand repairs / patching up of them.

Large Modular Ship Parts & Rooms are still the plan in the future too so we will see modular room changes for the Caterpillar, Retaliator & many other ships too. However some ships are becoming variants and some of their rooms might not be modular between other variants. It sounds like Ship Modules will be treated like components and based on size in the future you would have to have them swapped out potentially at specialist facilities.

At the end of 2018 they originally wanted to get Land Claim Mechanics in to Alpha 3.4.

Something I’ve asked about before is the Looting of NPCs / Players, beyond just taking their guns that they drop. Local Physical Inventories planned for Alpha 3.7 this will have player (and potentially NPC) inventories tracked and actually be what they are carrying and that these items will be lootable. There is also the Law & Black Market Systems that support this planned for 3.6 that will have shopkeepers and security be able to differentiate between stolen & legitimate gear and wares.

Dynamic Weather will be coming in the future, it appears to be being worked on/off with any spare time available by a dev, there is no ETA on that it’s one of those features that could seemingly randomly drop in a major build tho.

They do also want “weather” & related environmental events in space too.

They are getting Planetary Ground Fog Tech in 3.6, we should see better environmental effects and lighting as well from patch to patch.

An expanded Cargo System has been worked on for a while allowing for larger more varied containers a more streamlined entity system, this is important for ships like the Hull C BUT also for optimization in general.

We know that there are some Light Survival Mechanics coming with players needing to or at least being encouraged to Eat, Drink & wash. This is tied to the Player Status System which will track thirst, hunger, rest, inebriation, hygiene, and temperature in addition to health, stamina, and oxygen levels.

CI recently said that once they have finished the implementation of FPS Weapon Customization that they will be expanding out the functionality of the Multi-Tool.

We don’t know for sure if this will make 3.6 nor what functionality they will be adding first we do know tho that the tool is meant to allow for wielding, cutting, repairing, maybe mine & salvage too.

We know that they have been working on procedural Caves though that’s likely quite far out however general Planetary Tech Improvements are coming with each major patch and they are pushing what they can to it’s limits more recently working on the Scaling of Natural Features, so things like canyons, valleys, mountains. They are also working towards better city generation, ArcCorp & Lorville is certainly not finished they want the planet & Landing Zone to look great for all distances and there are additions planned to open these areas a bit more

There are a multitude of New Missions or at least parts of missions for the dynamic mission system and the future. I heard that there may be Junk/ScrapYards that allow for more outlaw gameplay and potentially the selling of salvaging or stolen ships.

Missions are an interesting one as they need to fill out the world with more and more mission content and up till now they have had much more linear missions.

There are a whole host of Character additions & improvements coming, female characters as NPCs populating more than just shops.

The New Hair pipeline, Twitch Pacheco is supposed to have braids.

They are planning on expanding the Character Customizer for Alpha 3.6 with an new User Interface and some additional functionality. We know they are planning to expand the DNA gene pool (the heads and facial features) at some point too.

We know they are planning to have Vulkan Integrated into the game at some point, I am expecting that Q1 or Q2 next year personally at least for the Squadron 42 side of things.