Salvage Delayed AGAIN & Where is Star Citizen 3.8?

 Welcome to some more Star Citizen. There are some more delays with the Salvage mechanics and we are still awaiting the 3.8.0 LIVE build, there is also some Holiday Promotions from Star Citizen as well. Let’s Start with the Roadmap Delays then talk about Where 3.8 is.

Salvage v1 & the Drake Vulture have been temporarily removed from the Roadmap while discussions continue about where it’s most likely to land (previously they had been planned for Alpha 4.0 and 3.9 respectively). Mining improvements and other tasks related to Alpha 3.8 took priority over recent Salvage work. Additionally, they’ve made the decision to have the team scheduled to work on Salvage shift focus to a number of features that will greatly benefit Squadron 42. They aim to have more information in the new year.

It makes sense to delay the Vulture until Salvage is ready and release it at the same time BUT Salvage has seen sooo many delays as a feature and it’s a little heartbreaking. CIG are certainly making progress now on core features, 3.9 and 2020 more generally has some amazing features and progress lined up BUT more Gameplay Loops & Jobs are some of the most exciting things about the game and whole swathes of the community are waiting for the gameplay loop they are most interested in and when you expect it in a coming patch it’s a little annoying to see it get delayed and something new or different take priority.

There is certainly a focus on Squadron 42 Episode for 2020 and getting a feature complete beta done. The Dynamic Mission System & Start of the Dynamic Economy, New Star System, Jump Points, Theatres of War, Server Meshing, lots of new and core gameplay are all looking to take a focus in 2020. Hopefully we will see salvage and other gameplay loops here too, salvage being one of the most wanted!

Going forward I think that CIG have to have more stable Roadmaps, with the key features really taking focus BUT with the new staggered development model we should start to see this from now on… only time will tell tho.

The Crusader Hercules Starlifter has also been removed from the roadmap, it was previously planned for Alpha 4.0, there was a bug I saw that had it moved to 4.1 briefly… but then that disappeared

Apparently After re-evaluating priorities, the decision was made to temporarily remove this card off of the Roadmap until discussions about its debut wrap up and a new target date is decided upon. CIG had recently said that they wanted to have the C2 done first BUT they might do the other Hercules Starlifters at the same or more of the Crusader line up and were considering rescheduling the ships completion date. Hopefully this means we will see a glut of Crusader Ships Q3/4 of 2020 completed.

Star Citizen Alpha 3.8 is still in OPEN PTU and they are working towards the LIVE build currently the latest patch 3.8.0q added and fixed a couple more things

• Increased the firing arc of sentry turrets.
• Breathing should now be affected by the dialogue audio slider in the options menu.

• Filling the Caterpillar with cargo should no longer cause intense game lag.
• Players doing unlawful destroy probe missions should no longer get an assault on security personal infraction for attacking the probes.
• Swapping weapons should no longer occasionally cause one to vanish.
• Fixed 2 client crashes & 3 server crashes.

There is still a variety of bugs they need to solve with 16 known issues listed.

I think there are some dedicated workers at CIG pushing patches out over the weekend and it’s very possible that they will have people in the office up until Xmas Eve working on 3.8 deployment. It’s possible we will see a LIVE build go up with a few more bugs left to fix and then they will hotfix that, they will need to make sure the servers don’t crash often though if they do that. They typically have a go/nogo meeting each day when they are close to a release working out if the build is ready to be pushed, so it literally could be any day now.

We are still waiting on the Argo Mole to go on Sale as well BUT that’s not pretty much confirmed as being sold when 3.8.0 hits LIVE.

The Sneak Peek this week was of some shanks, I love these, they are made from discarded medi/oxy-pens and I suspect they will be available in prison gameplay that’s coming in 3.9.

There is a holiday promotion currently as well with discounts on Starter & Game Packages.

Giving a discount of $5 on the Aurora and Mustang but they also have Avenger Titan, Arrow, Cutlass Black, Freelancer and Constellation Andromeda with discounts available too.

There is some merch available too, with some Server Side Object Container Streaming Socks or SOCS Socks being my fav offering. 

There are various Christmas Gifts that you will find around the verse in 3.8 during the holiday period as well.

Some of the major hubs throughout the Stanton system are getting festive, with hidden gifts popping up. Snatch up any presents you come across and use them to turn your ship into a winter wonderland, or sell them at your local commodity trading kiosk for profit!

There are also a couple of competitions going on from CIG to get a Christmassy Screenshot & to make a Christmas Card. I’ll link the whole holiday promotion post below for those of you that are interested.

And that’s it, I’ll be taking a look at the CIG financials and some of the news around that in the next couple of days. CIG have reported record breaking funding and that sort of jazz, so it will be interesting to see a breakdown of that.