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Star Citizen Alpha 3.7.0 State of the Game

Welcome to a Star Citizen 3.7.0 State of the Game. Alpha 3.7 is probably the most playable Star Citizen Update we have had, however there are still some major bugs and issues with the game & it certainly isn’t for everyone.

General Playability

The Game has exploration of Caves, Mining on Foot and in the Prospector mining ship, Lootables and Harvestables all adds a huge amount of Gameplay and Busy work. The Mechanics are not gated by price like with the Prospector, you can get a backpack, mining tool and then go. They are testing caves at only a few moons/planets currently and a lot of the harvestables like fruit on trees and bushes are currently missing from the game.

Caves are really good fun and a good use of CIG tech, they are a bit empty with out enemy NPCs there though and more out of them, this is true of a huge portion of Star Citizen currently, some good early implementations of things, I just want more.

Cargo Hauling, seems like a legitimate way of making funds still and should be fun for players, that have those ships. You have been able to buy ships in game for a while now BUT it would of been quite difficult to grind the funds up in starter ships to get a Prospector HOWEVER you can now also rent ships like a Prospector and that allows you to try the gameplay out and leverage it’s mechanics to make more money.

Not all ships are currently rentable though… And I want the ability to rent the Caterpillar added here so players can do larger cargo runs. More ships added to rentals please.

Also with Cargo Hauling I wish they made trade routes to Levski and more out of the way RestStops profitable, encourage players to go there.

Jump Town gameplay we had a few patches ago was awesome and losing that, knowing that it had good gameplay seems a huge shame.

The game has an ever expanding set of missions Missions Ranging from Find Missing Persons to Take Out Navy Ships to Narcotics Running. Mission Sharing is a fantastic addition and there are a couple of missions that make use of harder difficulties that I have seen BUT I would like there to be a good amount more… there is just not enough, have some really hard missions with big payouts OR POI generated with those encounters that have some good loot that make it more profitable to group and take on a larger mission together.

The Player quantum interdiction with the Mantis has very little range and would benefit from more players on a server and being able to fully loot cargos of ships as well as sell stolen ships. They could tweak it’s range & maybe have a mission associated with it.

Pirate Swarm and the New Star Marine Map are very good fun, the improvements to AI in AC are great to be able to messing around in and having these game modes in a good state without taking time away from other parts of development I think is a good shout.

Hover Mode has been replaced with Proximity Assist, which allows you to easily move and land when on a planet or moon BUT has ships at the moment flying like floating turrets, they do have plans to improve this with having thrusters having less power in atmosphere, generate more heat, nom up more hydrogen fuel… I welcome those changes, I wasn’t a fan of Hover Mode when trying to land at landing zones BUT I don’t want ships to be floating turrets either, somewhere in between maybe… I look forward to more updates.

I wish they would make the mining tool available at PO, having to travel to Levski or further is a little annoying. I understand that CIG want to give us reasons to travel BUT for me that is basic gear… that said some of that criticism is based on my having to do that once a day during EVO and PTU phases.

Travel Times have stayed the same but with the potential of multiple interdictions… Travel times are an interesting topics, if you are traveling to ArcCorp from Port Olisar in a small ship with a trash Quantum Drive you can be looking at 15-16 mins of travel BUT in a larger ship that could be cut down to 5 mins. For me as long as you are not constantly moving from one planetary system to another then it’s fine, there is no real need to constantly move these large distances either imo & we will have more ease to access to movement in the verse in the future.

The Law System does prevent a good amount of trolling and gives some solid additional gameplay in the Verse with fines, smuggling, security forces, hacking your crime rating down, preventing criminals landing at certain Landing Zone gameplay all being supported.

Major Issues

There are still major issues with mission accessibility though.

  • Delivery Mission & NPC Mission givers not being interactable and failing to complete.
  • There are issues with NPC & Combat AI, they can break, stop responding.
  • Customizing your Character causing CTD.
  • There are still issues with certain ships, Reclaiming your ship can cause it to have missing doors and items.
  • Interdiction can happen all the time even over short distances.
  • Problems with QT, getting out of your chair and then sometimes getting back in will teleport you to where you were originally BUT now you are a dude floating in space…
  • The Singe Tachyon Cannons are weird and have bugs BUT I like them.
  • Items can disappear from your inventory and sometimes you can’t pull out or shoot equipped weapons.

Star Citizen Alpha 3.7 does need a mini-patch to address some of these issues ASAP IMO. Mission Accessibility & AI need to be in a good state AND fixing these problems would put 3.7 in a very good state without them I go through a range of emotions from elated and excited to annoyed when I can’t complete a mission OR I get interdicted by an NPC for the 3rd time in a jump.

Staggered Development has started for Star Citizen and Alpha 3.8 is the first full patch we will see under this “model” CIG have said it will allow for more playable, less buggy and more meaty patch features. Alpha 3.7 is the most playable and fun Star Citizen patch I have played so far and it has a lot of cool & QoL feature BUT it still has a lot of issues, admittedly they are still very much in Alpha and still building the core tech out for the game

A lot of what holds Star Citizen back is the fact that a lot of the systems they implement are dependant on some other systems that are yet to be in the game.

Star Citizen does not have progression yet, you will have your progress reset with 3.8 LIVE, though they could potentially start having money made in game and purchases carry over from 3.8 onwards… that’s not a confrimation but it is a hope.

Permanent Progression or at least LESS in the way of resets is needed for the game to be more interesting to play for longer periods.

Star Citizen is great fun in a group… with mission sharing and a few extra mission really helping improve this further. Finding an Org to play with could turn a few hours of gameplay with 3.7 in to 100s.

Other players can be jittery still and FPS combat needs better networking code/tech, getting optimizations done there will make it much more fun for me. 

But SC is not ready for prime time yet for most people, it’s a tourist destination and with each patch it’s getting more and more content.

Alpha 3.7 has issues that it needs to solve, Alpha 3.8 is planned for Mid December 2019 and the level of the games playability and access to everything needs to improve with this release by a magnitude as CIG have said that’s what their Staggered Development changes should allow for.

CIG seem a little juxtaposed & confused in their development processes for certain things, obviously I don’t have the full picture BUT I wish that we could see the basic planned features, a roadmap to completion of features for Star Citizen and a quick run down the the T0 plans for each of them, to get them into context. The Roadmap and Roundup that CIG put up is really useful as is all of their video & community content BUT I do think we need a bit more, that could potentially be true of anything they give me though… I’ll always want more because I am hungry for knowledge and info! The Game is extremely great looking and worth buying a starter pack if you want to get involved in bug reporting and having your say, visiting with each major patch as a tourist OR even getting involved with an Org and doing regular gameplay.