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Star Citizen Alpha 3.8 State of the Game

Star Citizen Alpha 3.8 has a host of new features and some amazing technical achievements and core tech HOWEVER there are a large number of problems, bugs and what I would deem blockers for a LIVE release that have been left in for the 3.8 build, I think due to the “rush” to get it out for Christmas. I am reliably informed that a good portion of these are being worked on in fact there is a 3.8.x patch planned for January I believe hopefully both fixing some of these and adding in some new armor (we also know that the Cutlass Red is planned for a patch in Jan as well.

However, I was hoping that these wad of game breaking issues wouldn’t of made it into 3.8 and that staggered development would of given us a much more playable patch. Where as I would say in regard to 3.8s playability… it’s more of the same a load of new features but a load of bugs still. Admittedly SOCS and the New Planetary Tech are pretty big additions and clearly that comes with bugs. I said I was going to be more critical with Alpha 3.8 and so I am and this video will mostly focus on bugs and much needed fixes.

Firstly Server Stability is pretty good at the moment, at least for me and according to the Telemetry Data on 3.8. It has a 0.03 stability, where that low number is better and they consider 0.2 stable 3.7.2 had a stability of 0.13. The score takes into account disconnections per hour.

We are now Starting with 0 aUEC PLUS any UEC you have on your RSI account, which was causing some stress to players, you might need to go do some quick missions in your ship before being able to buy anything.

There are QT Changes which have ships being able to travel quicker, effectively making the System a bit smaller BUT also conversely Fuel Depletes quickly and you are required to refuel much more often. This is a change that some will like and may just be something CIG are doing short term what is annoying though is Rearm, Refuel and Repair is Not working on pads properly so you have to hover above the pad and use the services there or land with your landing gear up for a W/A.

You can now QT from 10km away from a planet typically, basically transit times from planets, cities and in space have been cut down significantly. 

The mobiGlas hitching / taking multiple attempts to open IS STILL HERE.

Sometimes the starmap is unresponsive and you can’t plot route.

I’ve seen lots of people complain that the SM is hard to navigate BUT double left and right clicking quick zoom and make it easy to move around, and if you hover your cursor over a planet on the starmap it won’t disappear when you zoom in manually.

They have added a drop shadow to HuD BUT some bits like on the mobiglas starmap are very hard to read sometimes. Some screens, windows, HUDs, Helmets have a big glare problem.

QT causes frame hitching and drops, also you kind of lose a load of important HUD info when you spool for QT. I also think it’s strange we have to QT to planets before we go to their moons… why no straight to moon?

FPS Weapons Not firing or disappearing from your hands when you switch is one of the most annoying problems in this patch – There is a W/A for weapons not firing, set a key to inspect weapon and then, press this and your gun should then have the ability to protect you once again. You can find this keybind in Settings ->Keybindings ->Advanced ->On Foot -All & “Inspect Item”.

When you die with a weapon in your hand as well you permanently lose it too.

These FPS Issues also affect the Mining Tool, so I recommend buying spares and inspecting them if you are unable to fire your laser.

Boxes falling through the ground / ships and disappearing, you cannot use the cargo bay at all on the 300 series. Ship / Vehicles in ships can sometime ghost through them, get stuck, explode. This is obviously frustrating and means you can’t complete some missions or they bug out.

Interactions with Kiosks may sometimes fail to buy/sell.

Selling via the Mining Kiosks seemed to cause crashes… though that seems to have been fixed.

Desync Team Mate locations, their characters can freeze and then be invisible, W/A all respawn / move to another area of space OR change server. Quite often it fixes it self or can present erratically.

Some people are getting stuck in their seats, press Y if you cannot exit via other means. Hold Backspace if you have to respawn.

Some elevators don’t work like at Port Tressler & Everus, though relogging seems to work.

Ship Doors are sometimes janky / unresponsive.

The Comms and Friends lists don’t refresh properly and you have to switch screens.

I find that Ship AI are much more active and responsive which is great AND I actually find ship combat and the updates to the cameras make for a much better combat experience, there are still issues with ESP and sometimes pips go a bit funky but overall it’s better by far that what we have had in the last few patches.

There is concern over Auto-Gimbals still & big problems with shield holes with some of the ships, which renders them fragile and near useless in combat.

Pressurization and Atmosphere is unreliable even in sealed areas.

There are still many issues with missiles & countermeasures, I think we will see a big missile update in 2020 personally.

This is by all means not a full list of bugs and issues with Alpha 3.8 and please bear in mind that the game is in Alpha and CIG are aware of all of these issues and are fixing them on varying levels of priority.

I am in the opinion of that I would of expected 3.8 to have much less in the way of bugs and blockers than it does and would of prefered it to stay in PTU personally until the major ones had been solved. The game is still very fun & playable though as long as you use work arounds or avoid bugs or are lucky.

I love the planets, moons, microtech, the new stations and the missions and gameplay when it works and I actually seem to get a lot less problems than most, I think from play evocati patches and Star Citizen generally for so long that I avoid bugs naturally. I am looking forward to a 3.8.x patch solving some of these issues BUT I hope that 3.9 will see significant improvement with it’s playability at it’s first instance of LIVE. Also 3.9 does have a lot of features currently listed that are essential to the game like an accountancy app which I have wanted forever.