Star Citizen Alpha 3.7 New Features

Star Citizen Alpha 3.7.0 is Now LIVE let’s take a look at the new features and additions in this new major patch to the game, highlights of the patch notes and the known issues which you should know about and need to be fixed ASAP.

New Features
They Added some new ships the Aegis Vanguard Variants Harbinger & Sentinel.

The Banu Defender – which has a special shield that is best operated by two people via advanced hardening mechanics. The best way to utilize this feature is with a co-pilot adjusting hardening on their MFD while the pilot focuses on flying and engaging enemies.

They Removed size 1 and 3 Tachyon cannons from the game. The size 2 Tachyon cannons can now only be equipped to the Banu Defender so it has some unique hit scan weapons.

The RSI Mantis and player interdiction gameplay – From the pilot seat of the Mantis, players can activate a dampening field via interaction, labeled “QED”, which will prevent ships from quantum traveling if they are within a short range. You can also begin charging the quantum snare via interaction “Q Snare Charge”. Once charged, activate the snare with “Q Snare Initiate”. Once activated, an enforcement bubble of 20km will be put in place that will pull ships passing through out of quantum. When a ship is “snared”, the location of the snare will be shown to the pilot and all players within their party. The snared ship will have its quantum drive dampened within the bubble. Note, this is the location of the snare not the ship itself which can move from that position. Charging and maintaining the snare costs significant power and cooling resources.

An exclusion zone around major stations where the snare can be be activated has been put in place and activating the snare within monitored space is an imperial offense and will raise the player’s crimestat.

ATC will now restrict landing privileges based on crimestat.

Most major landing areas will now not grant landing privileges to anyone with a crimestat of one or more. GrimHex will allow anyone to land, including those in stolen ships. Rest stops, Port Olisar, and Levski will allow anyone up to crimestat level three to land but will not allow stolen ships.

They Added ship rental kiosks at Spaceports in Lorville (Vantage Rentals) Area18 (Traveller Rentals).  Players can specify the duration (1, 3, or 30 days real time). Rented ships are insured and customizable. 

Harvestable objects can now be found and collected on various planetary bodies.

Harvestable objects are valuable and can be stowed in the player’s inventory for later sale at commodity kiosks. Currently, harvestables can be found on the surface of Hurston, Ariel, Aberdeen and Daymar as well as within all caves AND there are New missing person “investigation” mission for these caves.

For the purpose of gathering and exploring they have added high capacity armor, the MacFlex “Rucksack” Core, is now available at Levski, Area18, and Lorville & Flares that can be purchased in those locations and Port Olisar too.

Flares can be equipped to utility slots, manually activated with by holding F and interacting with them when held.

Players can now mine small rocks for valuable commodities while on foot, these nodes appear by mineable asteroids, in caves and on the surface of moons and planets and are quite valuable..

To mine minerals and crystals while on foot players will need the multi-tool plus a ore-mining attachment, both can be found at Area18, Lorville, and Levski.  Once equipped players will be shown a UI interface for mining laser strength and fracture window similar to the mining mechanic on the Prospector. Once the rock is fractured, valuable minerals will be broken off and can be collected.

The New Player personal inventory is where you store harvestables & mineables and can be accessed using interaction mode and selecting an activation dot in the player’s view or by using the “i” key.  From there a radial menu will appear showing the overall storage available, the percentage fill, and what items are stored. The amount a player can carry is based on the type of armor they are wearing, with storage capacities shown on kiosks and shop displays. Players can also highlight and drop items as well as “store all” items in a carriable box, provided they are standing within the cargo grid of a vehicle.  Both the cargo grid stored box and the inventory itself can be sold at commodity kiosks.

Players can now share missions.

Accepted missions now have the “share” option, which shares the mission with all members of the player’s current party.  Upon mission completion, the total payout is divided up among the party members.

They have added the IFCS Proximity Assist which will now replace hover mode for near surface control, dampens ship acceleration when near surfaces to give the pilot better fine control and is enabled by default.  Proximity assist can be disabled in the options menu.

They Added a keybind “J” to manually toggle compatible ships into VTOL mode.

Some small ships can now mount size 2 gimbals into size 1 hardpoints, allowing them to gimbal size 1 weapons.  Those ships include the Auroras, Mustangs, Merlin, Archimedes, 85x, Nox, Dragonfly, and Prospector allowing Starter Ships to use manual and auto gimballed modes more readily.

Fixed assisted gimbals so it only requires the firing solution to be in the cone as originally intended.

They have added the Kroneg FL33-Series Laser Cannons, long range, high damage Ship Weapons.

The Hedeby Salva Frag Pistol is an FPS weapon that is high damage and accurate over mid range and has a secondary shotgun like fire mode it can be bought across the verse including at Port Olisar.

There are new scopes & under-barrel attachments a flashlight, laser sight, suppressor, flash hider, compensator), and energy stabilizer.  Activate attachments with the “U” key. Note: Weapon descriptions give the compatible sizes for all available attachment slots.

Gameplay

• The Character Customizer has been updated to v2 to allow more customization of characters more easily.
• Improved the fuel consumption of the 890 Jump, fixed it’s over consumption & invulnerability bug, adjusted it’s health pool so it has more hull durability & Updated usables in the 890 Jump.
• Improved AI combat ship behavior for more dynamic target selection and engagement based on relevant threats.
• FPS combat AI will now prioritize targets based on distance, visibility, and incoming damage and should engage the player more aggressively.

• Adjusted misdemeanor fine values including a significant reduction in illegal parking fee.
• Updated all mission rewards to better balance risk and time.
• Temporarily disabled escort style missions.
• Made crimestat restrictions more lenient for mission offerings.
• Updated AI service beacons with new sequenced waves of enemies, more challenging opponents, and kill rewards.
• Reworked and reintroduced the level 5 crimestat mission.
• Temporarily removed several city locations from the delivery system.
• The Flashlight has seen updates.
• Updated stamina usage to increase sprint time and regeneration rates.

• Temporarily removed rest stop HUR L2.
• Beds should work more consistently logging out and give you feedback messages if there was an issue when you back in.
• Delivery missions should now complete more consistently as well.
• There should no longer appear to be blurring inside of ships during quantum travel.
• Ships should no longer have shield holes.

There have been VOIP Improvements and they added new chat group and party interaction functionality.

Chat groups can now be created in the commlink app and will persist between sessions.  Chat groups are cross server, so anyone in game will see text from that group regardless which server they are on.  Additionally, players can invite their entire current party into a group or invite an entire group into an existing party.

Electronic Access Updates
Arena Commander and the Persistent Universe now use separate ship databases & Loadout customization is specific to each game mode.

Pirate swarm has been updated to 10 waves and now has a new suite of opponent ships and a challenging final wave with Hammerhead Boss. Completing Pirate Swarm will get you access to the Pirate Caterpillar & Gladius to purchase.

New Star Marine Elimination Map: The Good Doctor

Radical Outsiders cult has taken over an old terraforming facility on Leir II. Join the Marine task force and attempt to take it back, or join the loyal cultists and defend the honor of the good doctor himself, Dr. Marcus Fayel.

Even though the patch was pushed live it has there are various Known Issues which I will go through lot of which seem to be centred around QT

• Quantum travel sometimes doesn’t work when too close to group members.

Work around: Spread out from other group members, then quantum travel or spool and go one at a time.

• Quantum travel target selection does not always update when aligned.

Work around: Aim the nose of the ship away from the marker, and then re-target the marker to reset.

• The quantum travel HUD will vanish if the player exits the seat while in quantum travel.
• Interdictions can happen twice in a row and sometimes spawn an asteroid very close to the player.

• Invisible rocks are present on the surfaces of planetary bodies and can sometimes block FPS mineable resources.
• Kiosks and terminals are lightly flickering & could negatively impact those sensitive to flashing screens.
• REC rentals for Star Marine fail to process but still subtract REC.

• The Combine cannon does function correctly in multiplayer.
• Player’s can’t quantum travel in the Banu Defender with a copilot seated.
• Ultra wide aspect ratios cause misalignment for personal inventory and Skyline icons.
• Missile countermeasures are not working consistently.
• Distortion damage does not apply correctly.
• Duplicates of ship system components can appear listed in the VMA which, when equipped, will not function.
• In Star Marine’s OP Station Demien level, enemy indicators can sometimes be seen through walls.
• Players may experience a stall when loading and firing weapons in Star Marine.
• AI ships can get stuck and not continue on their route.
• NPC beacons will sometimes display an incorrect distance.
• Attempting to quantum travel to destinations from orbit of ArcCorp or its moons may result in the player colliding with the surface.
• Ships can spin excessively out of control when their wing is clipped.
• Landing illegally and having your ship despawn while a mission box is inside will break mission progress.

I would expect some of these issues to be able to be fixed server side without a patch potetnially BUT really they do need a quick mini-patch 3.7.1 to fix the remaining issues, I’d expect to see something like that by the end of next week.