Star Citizen New Mining & Cargo Updates

Star Citizen’s Persistent Universe is getting some work on some New Gameplay Features, which suggests to me they are planned for Alpha 3.8 / 3.9, from Deeper Mining Gameplay to Volatile Cargo. We also have some details of other bits CIG have been working on and additional CitizenCon Hype Info too.

Gameplay & associated Features have seen lots of work over the last few weeks.

Quantum fuel mining and Refining Mechanics are being worked on, so far CIG have tackled

several smaller features, such as introducing new mining lasers with different properties and consumables that can alter the mining process. The consumables may allow you to mine a particular type of rock or asteroid that would otherwise be unaccessible OR instantly cool / reduce the energy in a rock to prevent an explosion OR even add a burst of energy to quickly break a rock down.

Mining lasers could allow you to again consistently allow you to mine a particular type of rock or allow you to mine it more easily. We know that Quantum Fuel may well be something that mining ships can mine too, expect the lasers to mostly allow for efficiency and have stats that are better for dealing with resistance, volatility or even potentially getting more useable yield ect… but with downsides like overheating quicker OR slower mining.

We should start to see more and more mineables and commodities in the near future.

The VFX artists started on mining improvements as well, including VFX for different beam types and modifiers to the existing beams.

A related but as-yet-undetermined feature is how to deal with dangerous and volatile cargo. They are building a management interface to allow players to monitor the status of their cargo. They also began designing the station refining UI which will allow players to take refining jobs, choose which elements they want to refine from their mixed materials, and how they want to refine it. Refining will take raw materials, some aUEC and time to make potentially much more valuable materials, eventually this could be part of a larger crafting mechanic.

We know that there are new missions coming to Alpha 3.8, with the 890 Jump Prevent a Hijack being recently confirmed.

There has also been work on various upcoming actor features and how the player character responds to temperature. Alpha 3.8 will also see a full Close Combat system added to the game with blocking, dodging, knockdowns, takedowns both armed and unarmed, heavy & light hits.

We know that CIG are working on Prison Gameplay for 3.9, we should have some more details of that both next week and at CitizenCon the week after.

A big push was made on the in-progress procedural Rest Stops

Two major upcoming ships received thruster, ambiance, spot SFX, and weapon audio. 

Quantum travel was revamped across all ships to better support shorter jumps too.

They also completed their work on the ongoing physics proxy refactor.

Also they continued work on soft-body physics simulation for both character and cloth, and adding physics-level support to planetary wind.

Several optimizations to backend persistence were also deployed to ensure all players can get into and enjoy the game.

They continued to work on the new graphics pipeline and render interface, this contains various optimizations and improvements and is a prerequisite for Vulkan Integration for the future.

The unified deployment of all services developed and maintained by Turbulent was also completed, this will enable smoother future deployments & reliability of services. 

There has been some further polish on VoIP/FoIP.

There is a new ‘actor status’ display, this is a new way to display a player character’s health and will eventually form part of the updated visors. 

They also refined the upcoming Rest Stop interior effects, weapons, and ships.

Props worked alongside several other teams to create physicalized cloth assets. The development of large-size ship items continued and will be completed shortly, giving the PU its first proper large quantum and jump drives.

They have been setting up annunciator panels for ships, which included adapting the process for different models and brands. They also finished the latest restricted area implementation. Players can expect new UI messaging and guide tunnels to help them approach spaceports when it goes live. They’re currently experimenting with improvements to atmospheric flight.

The New Esperia’s Ship ballistic and laser cannons are well into production & will be finished soon.

For FPS Gear the Behring P6-LR ballistic sniper rifle is heading into it’s final art stage, they also fixed a few issues with the combat knife and Animus missile launcher.

For Character’s they have started a refactor of the engine code base for the DNA system pipeline (DNA v2) and the facial runtime rig logic system. Both systems have gone through phases of heavy R&D and subsequent tech-hardening, so a refactor that will lead to greater modularity and versatility is the next logical step. The methodology and code behind the existing facial runtime rig logic for human heads will be generalized so that it can be applied not only to the face rigs of other alien species, but also to their bodies. It will even work with the arbitrary rigs that drive creatures and other animated entities that will eventually populate planets and the wider universe in general. This will allow the team to dynamically and procedurally create unique-looking variants from a limited-size pool of manually authored assets.

There was some CitizenCon Information:

They have worked on getting a beloved spectrum star prepared for his return to the limelight and worked on various things for CitizenCon and beyond. That will be Jax McCleary who is basically space Jermey Clarkson from Top Gear and is going to be used for promo & ship videos during CitizenCon and Anniversary Expo.

They have spent some time finalizing a few “important” ships for upcoming patches releases and CitizenCon.

Audio worked closely with their upstream departments on something very cool for CitizenCon.

Alongside some incredibly exciting but equally secret “things” for CitizenCon that they have been working on for that last few months, they are prototyping features for next year’s releases.

The Narrative team spent some time working on a couple of upcoming events. The specifics of CitizenCon can’t be discussed yet, but since so much of the event takes place in-lore, Narrative provided vital backstory, scripts and more to help support the events and the content that will be shown. The team will also have several members attending CitizenCon and they look forward to sharing their presentations with everyone.

There has been a suggestion that Port Olisar may be destroyed at and potentially replaced at CitizenCon with a new Space Station.

There has been a lot of rumors of something attacking and destroying the station, that could just be rumor OR there might be something more to it…