The EXPANSE Writer ANGRY at Star Citizen – Alpha 3.9 LEAKS & Prisons
Welcome to some more Star Citizen, we have a load of juicy drama, datamined leaks for what appears to be for Alpha 3.9, new gameplay with Prisons. The authors of the science fiction series Expanse their twitter account was very angry at CIG and Star Citizen, there was a little Update to the Crytek v CIG Star Citizen Lawsuit, which might see the parties settle. We have it all… Drama, News & Class!
There was a bit of a brief PR Twitter nightmare for CIG with the James S.A. Corey Twitter account which is owned by the writers of the popular Sci-Fi series Expanse (James SA Corey is just a pen name they use), they were (at least one of them i assume) trying out Star Citizen but immediately uninstalling after discovering their Camera turning on and being used by the game without his express permission.
“Wow @RobertsSpaceInd . I install you and you instantly turn my laptop camera on without explicit permission? Way to volunteer to be uninstalled forever. Nice when people make things easy.”
This turned out to be a known bug with the latest 3.8.1 build, where FOIP was on by default. And CIG did reply:
“We totally agree and that shouldn’t be the case!
This is usually disabled by default and requires enabling in settings – this is a bug that crept up in our latest patch. Our team has been working on a fix already that we’re going to deploy in a patch soon. (1/2)“
“In regards to privacy, no data is stored at all – data captured is used to generate the facial expression for your character, but once it has been used to display your facial expression, it is immediately discarded.
Apologies for any frustration/confusion this caused! (2/2)”
Later James put out a tweet:
“So everyone @RobertsSpaceInd explained the situation and the bug causing it. I take them at their word, and I don’t think anything nefarious was going on. I did uninstall, but more because it takes up a ton of space and I’m not up to playing in an alpha release of anything.”
“The level of annoyance the camera bug caused me definitely indicates I have no patience to help someone debug their game.”
I did see various media sites report that SC fans had attacked the James SA Corey account on twitter… however I could only find a few comments that were a little rude, nothing more… and a lot of them I can’t even confirm are part of the Star Citizen Community. You probably could cherry pick some stuff from Reddit though if you wanted a negative article!
My Experience of the Star Citizen community is largely it’s one of the friendliest and welcoming communities for gaming AND if you find me any popular game I’ll go on it’s Reddit and find you comments that are monstrous within seconds. That is the nature of the internet NOT star citizen’s wider community. Yes there are some uncivil asshats among that community still tho xD
Whatever your thoughts one that my opinion is… well I posted it on twitter as well:
“I am a massive Star Citizen fan but you have a point with the FOIP, it should be off by default or come up with a FOIP message at character creation to make sure you are ok with it being on IMO & they should sort it ASAP.
I don’t think this was a big deal but you do you.”
There was a small bug fix patch which got deployed to the test servers PTU 3.8.1g
Harvestables should no longer be able to be duplicated when stowing in inventory and changing armor. This was one of the major aUEC exploits in game.
Players should no longer get an infinite load or a 30009 error when using bed logout and returning to the game & they Fixed a server crash.
This patch has had a whole load of datamined info & Leaks associated with it though for things possibly coming between now and 3.9 it seems.
Haulage & Expanded Delivery Missions – There were also mentions of potential data hualing. There is a Delivery Mission that has you delivering packages from area to area with rewards and a bonus reward when you complete all of the deliveries from that mission. It’s just a slightly larger scale mission & chained together, the mission listed is to take 3 packages 1 after the other.
We talked about the Cooperative Assissination Missions a while ago, where you had to work with at least 1 other person to take out 2 targets simultaneously at 2 different locations.
There are variants of these missions from both Twitch Pacheco & Miles Eckhart.
There was mentions of an Iterative testing Special mode for testers and devs to try out highly experimental builds, a Dogfighting Test Map is listed for this.
This could just be something internal but could be something more focused for PTU testers to get involved with. It sounds like it’s might be a step between evocati and wave 1.
One of the high speed combat vulnerabilities has been revealed
Missiles Unavailable Above SCM.
We saw some new commodities, mineables and narcotics in leaks a while ago BUT there is Quantanium Deposits coming and Q-Type Asteroids. CIG have previously talked about Mining Quantum Matter and in the future having it refine-able into Quantum Fuel. Where exactly this leaves the Starfarer is a little less clear with CIG saying that it would potentially be able to refine & store the fuel BUT we will have to wait and see, there are no confirmations of additional mechanics for the Starfarer in game yet at least nothing on the Roadmap.
There are various new clothing & armories and it appears that backpacks will be their own separate items & attachment points.
Prison Backpack, Undersuit & Helmet
Pembroke Armor, Novikov “Expo” Armor & Warm-Weather Armor as well as a backpack for each of these.
987 & Ops Clothing.
This gear is likely to be useful with the player status system coming online and temperature being an important factor in your character’s survival.
There looks to be a faction Mission set for Protection Services, I would presume escorting NPCs.
A description of the Carrack was spotted – Adventure calls and Anvil Aerospace answers with the Carrack. Built to endure extreme conditions in both space and atmosphere, this self-sustaining explorer has more than earned its long-standing status as the go-to pathfinder for both military and civilian service.
Klesher Prison looks to have it’s own Jurisdiction in the Law System though we haven’t seen exactly what’s different from standard UEE law there is a description of the prison:
Klescher Rehabilitation Facilities is a private corrections provider who’s committed to providing safe, secure rehabilitation facilities for local planets. Our fully automated correction sites include housing, security, and work release opportunities to allow our guests to be productive while paying their debt to society.
Updates & a Summary from Inside Star Citizen
They are building a new friends to add to the ingame group service that both spectrum and in game uses and eventually will be truly unified. This will start to give us more ability to actually group up and organize more appropriately and they will be adding more and more features.
This is starting with a new contact structure and ability to group up and jump into lobbies together easily.
Prisons are coming in 3.9, they are both a deterrent but have a lot of interesting gameplay associated with them. The Gameplay inside a prison is a little more focused and de-tacthed from the rest of the Verse with an enclosed gameplay loop.
Prison takes away all of your inventory during your stay, you’ll have to serve your sentence to get this back. All you’ll have in prison to start is a mining tool, flight suit and helmet in prison orange. Earn merits to buy your freedom.
Klesher is a single cell block of 50 cells, that are around a central watch tower. This tower has automated anti-personel turrets. Under that are info terminals with details on your “visit”.
The mines are deeper in the facility, the commissary (a set of vending machines) is at the entrance allowing you to purchase gear with your merits. Things like Oxypens, MediPens, food, drink & that sort of thing.
There is a boxing ring & escape routes in the mines, we should find out more about these soon.
The Crytek v CIG Star Citizen Lawsuit was supposed to have a ruling today on a Motion for Crytek to Dismiss their own case. However it appears there has been some movement in a potential settlement.
“During a status conference with the Court on January 10, 2020, the Court directed the Parties to meet and confer to try to resolve the Motion without Court intervention and
to promptly notify the Court if they were successful.
As requested by the Court, the parties have been working to resolve the Motion, have made significant progress, and believe they are close to reaching a resolution of the Motion
.
In light of the above, the parties jointly request that the hearing set for February 7, 2020 be continued to February 21, 2020 or to such later date set by the Court.
The parties will promptly notify the Court if and when they resolve the Motion prior to the rescheduled hearing.”
This could see Crytek and CIG settle, which may be a sensible business decision. Even if you believe that CIG are in the strongest position there is no guarantee that the Court would dismiss with prejudice & Crytek wouldn’t just bring back the case in the future. A settlement guaranteeing no further actions and costs would lead to stability. I think a lot of people will want CIG to fight a case BUT even if they did win entirely it might be hard to get any funds beyond the $500k bond back in expenses… Lawsuits are expensive for all involved.
We will continue to follow this and hopefully will have a resolution by the 21st.
And that’s it for this Star Citizen Update, I hope that was suitably informative.
I am very much looking forward to Alpha 3.8.2 with the Carrack and more bug fixes, 3.9 with Prisons and lots more gameplay as well as an end to that Lawsuit.