Alpha 3.6 Progress, Features & Delays – Star Citizen Weekly News
Welcome to some more Star Citizen News looking at the week’s updates with Alpha 3.6 delays, a deeper look at some of it’s features, PU Roadmap changes, Crytek v CIG Lawsuit bits and CitizenCon wave 1 tickets sellout within seconds all this takes us up to date with the Project for the weekending the 30th June 2019.
Star Citizen Newsletter Tickets and Testing
Alpha 3.6 remains under extreme scrutiny from the bold and brave Evocati and moves steadily toward a wider PTU release.
Also this week: CitizenCon 2949 tickets, Advocacy Agents make life hard, a new Origin-centric issue of Jump Point, and we wrap up the inaugural season of Inside Star Citizen.
Sold out within a few seconds of each of the 4x 125 ticket batches going live.
It was only wave 1 and only 500 tickets, there is going to be some more tickets available in the future though.
Also I suspect that some of those tickets could fail payment processing or be cancelled and added back to the system.
The tickets were £100 / $125 each but there seemed to be some oddities for pricing in Euros apparently where they were substantially more expensive, I don’t know if it was a Tax thing or mistake yet though.
PU Roadmap
Alpha 3.6 is still with the Evocati currently and has yet to go to even 1st wave PTU.
3.6 has been delayed as it requires more time to get some blockers fixed and the planned features integrated successfully. There is no current date for wider PTU or a LIVE build of 3.6 at this stage BUT the patch could go to wave 1 literally any time once they have solved stuttering and deadlocks that they currently have.
Over the last week for 3.6 the Law System & The Vanguard Warden was completed.
There are 5 features left to complete most are making progress.
Weapon Attachments (which will see the addition of scopes and optics for FPS weapon Customization in 3.6 and later Barrell, underbarrell & magazine will be added to the mix)
The Black Market Economy (which will allow the selling of stolen cargo and items in 3.6 at locations like Scrapyards which will be found around the Stanton System, in the future these locations will allow for the selling of stolen ships too.)
The Shield Systems Refactor & Performance Optimizations haven’t made any progress shown on the Roadmap this week BUT are obviously being tested by Evocati currently.
Ship rentals & the 890 Jump for the 3.6.x patch haven’t made any tangible progress.
The Ship Rental system will allow you to effectively buy a ship for X amount of days something like 1, 3 or 7 days and in the short term will have that ship effectively owned by you until the timer runs out.
For Alpha 3.7 new tasks have been for Rest Stop Space Station Interior Variations & Bartender AI Improvements. Expect to see some changes to 3.7 after 3.6 is released & they more effectively schedule the patch.
Alpha 3.8 has seen lots of progress too with the microTech Collection of clothing and assets almost done and big progress on New Babbage v1, even the Carrack has seen tasks complete. It’s my expectation that some of this work is due to be shown at CitizenCon 2019. They did also show off the Carracks Captain Quarters this week, which was pretty cool.
This week’s Sneak Peek – was some form of FPS Weapon which looks like a pistol bearing the inscription Ferron Smiths since 2921. It’s clearly highly detailed BUT I don’t really know what it actually is xD
Inside Star Citizen & Star Citizen LIVE – Alpha 3.6 Focus
Looked at a lot of features coming in 3.6 in a bit more detail.
The Law System has different areas of the Stanton System have different Laws.
Some Laws are misdemeanors and will get you a fine, which need to be paid off at a kiosk in that local area of space.
Other crimes may get you chased by NPCs and Bounty Hunters as well as shot on sight.
There is much more risk with narcotics and smuggling now.
Hopefully these fines and laws should help prevent things like padramming.
There is hacking gameplay and missions, a hacking chip item,
There are various comms & VOIP improvements with channels to make the system much more ergonomic.
They are trying to cluster more gameplay around each of the planets and their area of space so that you don’t need to move from one planet to another regularly if you don’t want to.
They are constantly iterating on ship, commodity & item prices for the economy. There are ship purchase terminals that will allow you access to buy many more ships than before.
Hover Mode has been added & other Flight Model Tweaks have been made to improve Flight in 3.6, like acceleration control.
A large section of Inside Star Citizen looked at AI and improvements they are making to them for what I assume is Alpha 3.7.
FPS AI have more modular behaviors and they are focusing on getting AI sensibly engaging from cover and in the open and switching between them.
Ship AI Combat Behaviors & Improvements will have ships able to do orbital Strafing maneuvers, flybys and breakaways while trying to coordinate with friendlies and preserve their own lives & they will also are able to navigate their environments more sensibly.
Shopkeepers and more social AI are getting various improvements with the plan that vendors will be engaging and immersive when a player is interacting or watching them.
In regard to the Crytek v Star Citizen Lawsuit there are a couple of minor updates.
There is a settlement conference planned for the 16th of July, potentially this could see the end of the case. If settled it’s likely we won’t know what was actually agreed due to NDAs.
Also connected to this the Bond Request for $2.2m that CIG have been seeking from Crytek has been taken under submission by the court and does not require further oral argument.
We should see the outcome of this shortly, though it looks very likely to be granted imo.
I’ve got a playlist going through the Case in much more detail, that I’ll link below.
And that’s it for this week and really for the end of June. Inside Star Citizen the main Star Citizen weekly news show is taking a break for a few weeks but there will be lots of content from 3.6 and monthly reports to keep us busy in the mean time.