Star Citizen Alpha 3.5.1 Wave 2 & Patch Notes
Hello & Welcome to some more Star Citizen, the 3.5.1c PTU is out to Wave 2 which is some of the most engaged Backers in addition to Evocati, RSI Subs & Concierge.
Let’s take a look at the patch notes & the state of the PTU.
The new 3.5.1c PTU Patch is out it’s Testing Focus is Ship customization, the 300 series ships & servers despawning the player’s ships.
New Updates & Bug Fixes
- Ship item prices have been updated to reflect changes to item pool.
- Increased thruster performance and reduced drag for the 350r.
- Auto-land should once again work properly.
- Ships should no longer lose their texture/paint when destroyed.
- Players should no longer be able to walk onto the 300 series bed and become stuck.
- Purchasable ships should now be restored to the New Deal ship shop.
- Fixed issues with loadout pack items overheating and powering down.
- Swapping pilots should no longer cause the MFDs to go blank.
- Claiming insurance on a destroyed ship should no longer occasionally cause it to be returned with no items.
- Changed the range limiter on the Siren quantum drive to fix short range jump issue.
- Destroyed ships are now read only in the VMA, including in the hangar, preventing them from going into a bad state.
- Passengers on other ships should now have their spawn location saved upon arrival at a new station.
- The cargo bay exterior color of the 300 series should now match the paint of the ship.
- Fixed a client crash.
There are still some Known Issues they are working through:
- NPC assist beacons no longer function correctly if the server has been up for awhile.
- AI pilots may not react to players.
- Bed logout doesn’t work on planetary surfaces and may be inconsistent elsewhere.
- Voice chat and facial tracking do not transmit to other players in direct calls.
- Ships upgraded to a 300 series currently can not be customized properly.
- The “customize” option under “my hangar” doesn’t always function.
- Customizations sometimes don’t display in “my hangar” if ship is in a package.
- CPU spikes may occur near Lorville, resulting in a stall.
- Leaving floor 1 elevator at Adira Falls in Area18 may instantly kill the player.
With the Customization system there are some known issues
Theres a NoActiveStoreFront for the Ship Customizer launch if user hasn’t visited the Store
Hangar: Customization can be forcably applied to a ship of the same type when customizating another & there are Missing layers on the 300i.
The Customization System has seen updates too
- Account/billing: Customization items are now displayed on the order summary and on the invoice
- Hangar: Upgraded ships can now be customized
- Store Checkout: you can now buy back a melted customized ship
- Store Checkout: Customization choices now appear in the Order Created / Payment Received emails
- Pledge Store: Navigating in Pledge Store carousel no longer breaks it
- Ship Customizer: 300i – Seat image is no longer “invisible” for Sport / White Leather / Carbon Fiber Yellow
- Various Packages Updated with correct pictures
- Hangar: Selecting “Show customization detail” now works properly
- Ship Customizer: All images are now showing up on the 325a and 350r
- Store Cart: Using the customize button from the shopping cart no longer spawns an extra ship in the cart
- Store Checkout: taxes are now applied when buying only a customization
With that customization system looking at it, they could easily put the skins and flair items in game so that they could be customized from the Ship Loadout Manager (which supports different skins even now) and they could make it all available for in game credits, I am hoping that is something they consider putting in for 3.6/3.7 as aftermarket customization maybe.
I want to talk about some of how the patch plays & the state of the PTU.
The problem with weapons deviating from where you are aiming has returned BUT only occurs sometimes.
Combat works in some areas much better, hits register on ships, ships are much less rubberbandyness, but there is still jitter this seems to be hit and miss depending on what server I am on, the jitter really makes all over aspects of aiming not work as intended. Missiles work much better at actually hit targets. But Fixed weapons still have problems, however there seems to be a concerted effort to get combat in a good place.
However AI pilots do go afk at times or at least don’t fire much and even if they do engage they don’t provide any real challenge.
They need to fix the AI, the problems are partly due to server degradation and them being overloaded and also because they are currently building the AI for the game, so I suspect anything they get in now will be a bodge job / temporary fix until we get deeper server optimization, some of which is planned for 3.6 BUT we don’t know until it’s in our hands.
The Origin 350r was awful in the previous patch (basically performing like any other 300 series) BUT they appear to be aware of that are trying to balance it to be a viable racer and useful ship in the PU.
In the PTU at the moment when you copy your account over you are given $175 of store credit to use in the current PTU phase for purposes of testing the 300 series customization.
As I have previously said, one of the best things this 3.5.1 branch is the fact any ship changes persist, this gives many more reasons to actually play and toil for something.
Insurance will evolve in the future and these kind of mechanics are placeholder until then.
Passengers on ships now get the location the pilot lands at as a spawn is super useful as is MFDs working more consistently for crew.
We are moving towards a more dynamic economy with shop inventories being more appropriately represented.
The 300 series all seem to have issues with cargo falling through the floor.
Performance is pretty good frame rate wise. Planets, Moons and Lighting looks a bit better to me, the new buildings and assets on ArcCorp are pretty cool, it’s good to see them expand it out further.
Access to missions is good, the servers are a little unstable though.
Generally there are a lot of QoL improvements in current 3.5.1 PTU that do go a way to fix the problems that the 3.5 has BUT it still has more to solve if they can power through those know issues and get something in place for the AI in the next couple of days I suspect we will have a very playable 3.5.1 live for the weekend and until 3.6 is released.