Star Citizen 3.8.1 State of the Game – IT’S STILL AN ALPHA!
Welcome to a Star Citizen 3.8.1 State of The Game. The 3.8 branch of Star Citizen had various bugs and issues… some game breaking and 3.8.1 addressed some of these HOWEVER there are still a lot more and although there is some improvement, there needs to be more.
There are plans for a 3.8.2 to address more of these issues but also assumedly to release the Carrack to Flyable as well by the end of February.
Beyond that there have been various Leaks with new Missions having players having to work together to take down 2 targets in 2 different areas at the same time, new commodities, Quantanium for Quantum Fuel, Lots of New Narcotics for Smuggling.
We don’t know when and if those leaks will fall tho, it might be some for 3.8.2 or 3.9 or later.
3.8.1 did add MedBed Gameplay, allowing the Medical Beds in the 890 Jump and Cutlass Red to be set as spawn points as well as stations that can heal you. They do have limitations, the ship has to exist, it can’t be despawned or destroyed & you also have to be within 4 million meters of the ship when you die OTHERWISE you’ll spawn at a LZ.
Platform Persistence is something that the 3.8 branch brings more readily… this takes the form of CIG being able to more easily have progression of aUEC / Purchases between patches HOWEVER we have actually had loads of resets recently and I would expect 3.8.2 to also have a wipe due to The Lunar Envelopes Money Printer Exploit… aUEC exploits, bugs and database issues all can cause CIG to reset… I wouldn’t expect anything imo to come of Platform Persistence now until at the earliest 3.9 starts…
Some Major fixes we done with rental ships now remaining after you relog.
You can climb ladders with boxes again (at least I was able to).
Players get the correct amount of starting aUEC.
FPS Weapons actually fire and don’t disappear when you change them (tho you still lose what was in your hands when you die)
There was a Film Grain problem a lot of people were having, so CIG have added the option to toggle it in Graphics-Options.
More generally there were lots of fixes for ships, universe traversal, mission accessibility / completion.
There are a load of Issues with 3.8.1 and I want to discuss those;
Firstly Tho not a bug… rather a design choice… Rented ships in the persistent universe can no longer be modified. Which would be fine IF we could customize them before we rented them… some ships like the Prospector are much less useful now when rented as they can’t change their mining head. Some Combat ships are going to be really left wanting.
CIG are discussing REC ships not being customizable and looking through feedback for this too. One of the reasons they did this tho was to prevent the movement of rented items off ships and then onto ones you owned… it wasn’t intended and caused database issues too.
Major issues for me in the current patch are Hit Reg & Desync… playing with a group is reasonably hard when members are not where they appear to be, if they are manning a turret then it looks like it’s shooting in an odd direction… PvP is a lot more erratic and just silly in FPS. CIG are looking at ways to solve Desync currently.
There were a Lot of fixes with the Mole but there are still many issues with it.
Asteroids as well often disappear when mining them.
Shield Holes still are there… I am not expecting proper fixes for this until the New Shield Systems Update in 4.0
EMPs just permanently AFK NPCs
FPS AI will often all spawn in each other, so trying to take one out can have this Russian Doll effect going on where it was actually 3 NPCs.
Ship Pad Services are still broken and you have to normally hover over the pad, or land with your landing gear UP to be able to use the facilities, even then it’s best practice to do each service individually as sometimes doing more than 1 can just not have anything work.
Some people are having issues when their ships are destroyed, them not being spawnable.
Ghost Trains & broken elevators can block movement and will have to have you relog.
Servers that degrade over a bit from time or have low tick rates… may have the AI go a bit derpy… AFK and even hits may not register correctly.
There is an issue sometimes when you change gear on the PMA or Ship loadouts on the VMA that sometimes they vanish. Also ships can spawn with missing components even after a claim has been filed.
There were a few bugs and workarounds as well I was unaware of, an incorrect system clock can lead to:
Incorrect insurance claim display times.
Errors when retrieving a ship that was recently recovered from an insurance claim.
Base and landing pad turrets firing on a player attempting to fly a recently claimed or recovered ship.
There are some major issues with players disconnecting on loading, getting infinite loading screens these seem to clear up after time, they have a fix in mind for this for 3.8.2 already.
CIG have acknowledged all of those issues to some degree, though we don’t know what will be fixed for 3.8.2 and 3.9 there after. Beyond these CIG are also investigating some other issues:
- The ship 3D ship radars (usually a globe) showing up as a D20
- Crusader routing OM-1 through the Stanton star
- Issues with mining and rocks vanishing
- High CPU utilization
- Heavy pirate AI spawning around major stations
- They are also discussing tweaks and feedback to the Flight Model;
- Imprecise interaction system
- Fines for legally parked ships and fines in general
- Size 1 gimbals not being in shops
- General Starmap & quantum travel issues
For me the 3.8 branch has had some cool stuff in it BUT has also had a lot of disappointment, staggered development has yet to pay dividends, patches are more of the same, yes there is good progress now BUT there are a ton of bugs… which CIG did say they would try and iron out better before a release.
Star Citizen still remains very much an Alpha something that I hope can feel a bit more mainstream this year… that for me requires playability without game breaking bugs and hopefully persistence so I can have a bit more progression.
That said I am loving Star Citizen despite it’s bugs… but I am looking forward to when I can play it more easily with a group without issue!