CitizenCon 2019 Summary

Welcome to a CitizenCon 2019 Summary, I just want to quickly touch on each of the major points and highlights of what was shown and what it means.

I also want to talk about what it was like being there.

There was a huge amount of panels that showed off new Tech & Gameplay.

The Gameplay Demo showed off some near future gameplay that CIG have planned the Carrack and Picses, the carrack has a few differences from it’s concept one of those being it’s rear thrusters, which some people were disappointed with the change.

The Demo showed microTech, the new planet generation and tech, New Babbage it’s landing zone, new biomes and architecture, a helpful hologram, multi part missions that have various ways of completing, stealth and takedowns, cloth and improved item interaction.

We also saw weather and environmental effects, which in turn may require armor or gear to protect you, in the demo this is a warm suit of armor. They also showed off some AI additions and interactions.

One of the huge things they showed off was a Jump Point with a Gate that helps stabilize it, the travelling between Stanton to Pyro via that gate, which has you pushed through the jump point like rapids and requires you to avoid obstacles and steer within the tunnel otherwise take damage.

At the other end was a real new Star System, pretty empty but it had space weather and a different star.

To put this in a bit more context and with the panel throughout the day there was a lot shown for Coming in Alpha 3.8 so before the end of 2019:

Planet Tech v4 – provides big improvements to the procedural generation and rendering of planets and moons, less popping in of assets, better levels of detail and generally more assets and biomes. This will see all moons and planets change and get the improvements.

SOCS – Server Side Object Container Streaming is incredibly important server tech that is having it’s first implementation in 3.8, allowing servers to standby areas that don’t have players proximate, CIG may start now experimenting with higher player caps in servers in the shorter term. This should see various improvements in the Verse too.

There are New Ships coming to 3.8, the Argo Mole a new 4 crew multi-miner with 3 manned mining lasers. The Cutlass Red has been Delayed until Jan, the Carrack Feb and the Prowler March BUT they will all still be in the 3.8 branch.

There were also rumors of a Crusader StarFighter, which I thought was going to be shown at CitizenCon BUT it could be a straight to flyable ship in 3.8 or a concept coming soon.

Platform Persistence – so the ability for aUEC and Ship Purchases to be saved between patches, we are not sure how often we will have resets now BUT it will at least be less and hopefully rarely.

New Missions – There are a slew of new missions coming to 3.8 as well and we should see a very very playable PU.

The plan is to have 3.8 out Mid December if possible.

To Start 2020’s releases and planned to be coming with 3.9

There are even more New Missions coming with 3.9 with plans for new multipart ones as well like what was showed in the Gameplay Demo.

Prison Gameplay was reasonably exciting too. It’s a really developed planned system.

V1 will have the Klesher Automated Prison on the moon of Aberdeen, and will see criminals spawn there if they die to security or bounty hunters.

You can then wait out your sentence which is quantified in merits based on your crimes OR you can work towards you release by earning merits by mining in the facility below.

You can buy better gear with your merits, trade them with other inmates and then use that to earn more merits.

There are potential escape routes and missions associated with prisons too and it’s looking like it’s whole own gamemode almost in game.

Though 2020 they are working towards a lot more.

The Theatres of War Game Mode should be coming early 2020, at least to PTU and Evocati, it’s an objective based Battlefield 5 Rush style arcade mode, 20 v 20 players compete to complete or defend objective in a combined arms combat with the Scale of Star Citizen, it was very rough BUT good fun, there is a huge amount of potential here, I am going to push Sean and CIG to look at UT2003/4 Objective Gameplay too… I used to love that!

Even More Missions

They are working towards Dynamic Weather, Server Meshing & Full Platform Persistence as well as opening up the Pyro System. We should see some of this in 2020, though server meshing might be slightly further out, it did sound like they are going to push for it. I think a new Star System will make everyone very happy though!

They unveiled various Concepts – The Kraken Privateer which is going to be a more mobile spacestation version of the Kraken, replacing a large amount of it’s cargo as well as it’s dragonfly bays and replacing them with 10 modular, custom archetype shops that can be run by NPCs. This should be going on Sale during the Expo.

There were 4 Other Ships they were talking about that are in concept.

A Tevarin Fighter, a ground mining vehicle, a mobile refinery ship and a Xi’An Cargo Ship.

There is a massive amount that I got to see, participate in and people I got to meet by being at the event so I wanted to talk about my Hots & Nots of actually attending:

Hots

The Shop and Community booth area was fantastic, it had a bar, various food options, merch, silly in lore stuff all from in game and brought to life. The Bar had a Fizz Hologram. It was big enough that I didn’t feel packed in like sardines and could get served at the bar.

Being there and meeting people was amazing, I love community events like this a proper fanfest where I can talk to nerds about computer games and drink!

Not having to buy my own drink, I had to actively almost angrily buy LBM and a couple of other drinks.

Being in the first group to test Theatres of War, seeing Sean Tracy VERY Happy, winning both those games and coming 2nd and then first on my team #TryHard.

Getting to talk to Luke Presley, Sean Tracy and Dave Colson at some length.

Hugging JLee for like 10 mins, the dude is a legend.

Appearing on the Community Stream.

Seeing the End Keynote LIVE as well as the 2nd Stages Prison & Ship Presentations were AWESOME. Seeing the Volunteers work soooo hard!

Meeting

I got to meet Morpholigis, Rexzilla, Weyland and loads of Corp Members, the Matadors, Capt. Richard, the French & Spanish Community guys. I saw moistnoodle, cagedgeek, TexasSkulls, TheFew. Lots of friends that I hadn’t met before like Harbinger who has just released a best selling fantasy book. Hamish who I hadn’t seen in ages!

The girl that shook my hand for like 5 mins, saying that she had met me in Frankfurt… they had not xD I don’t think I’ve been to Frankfurt xD I had to say… this handshake is longer than I was expecting… BUT I am enjoying it xD

Andies, so I chatted to GameGlass Andy & MyRadar Andy they are both awesome people, I hope to shill or work with them in the future.

A load of CIG staff came up and said hi, which was awesome cause I got to ask them loads of questions… loads of them watch my videos and some said they are only working at CIG today because they got into the game by watching me, that was some big ego stroking.

There was cake, some people thought it was a lie but there was a massive Star Citizen Anniversary Chocolate Cake.

Nots

CIG were clearly going for extravagant and there was an Ice Sculpture of a Carrack BUT How much was spent on the ice sculpture of the Carrack? I am much happier when they make things they can reuse… but I suppose they don’t have to store the Carrack once it’s melted… I think I am more annoyed that I didn’t take the water that had melted and sell bottled Carrack or bathed in it or something.

I was extremely tired. I went out on the Friday and drank a bit too much!

The price of alcohol in the “official” Pre-Party was ridiculous.

There was not enough time to watch the panels and meet everyone, I would actually like CitizenCon across 2-3 days with less overlaps of panels, I haven’t even seen the UI one or the Cosplay or the Language one yet.

I was disappointed we didn’t see Titan Suits or anything tangible in Pyro.

I was expecting more ships to go on concept sale, like a big Anvil Ship.

Squadron 42 stuff or lack thereof was probably the biggest disappointment for me though, I really thought they were going to start their marketing campaign for it at CitizenCon this year… and I do think they need to start thinking about putting the game out within the next 18 months. Most of my other expectations were met other than that.

I would like to mention that personally I would of prefered the main Keynote to be at the start of the day so that we can put the whole of CitizenCon into context, it also meant that I could interview devs properly or on camera in most cases at least for content that I would want on my channel as they hadn’t revealed bits that I want to ask about… you see what I mean.

There could well of been time issues for being in the UK though, that they wanted the main presentation when more of the world was awake… I am just moaning because I can xD

Would I have gone to CitizenCon if it had been in the US… maybe not, it’s a little to far for me to travel and I do want to be able to cover the event in a timely manner.

UK and Frankfurt are much more doable for me.

But it was awesome being there and I’d always like to do a watch party or something

I would like to see a Star Citizen PU roadmap to completion, so listing all the planned features, ordering them in some logical order roughly based on their prerequisites and priority, nothing concrete BUT then we can see all the planned features on a page together… that said… it sounds like content I can do!