Star Citizen Ship Updates – Carrack, Mercury Star Runner & More!
Welcome to some more Star Citizen we have some updates to the Carrack & Cutlass Blue, early sneak peeks of the Hercules Starlifter, some info on the Mercury Star Runner, more Updates to Alpha 3.9 Features, LTP Testing and More.
In Inside Star Citizen – we saw updated work done to the Carrack, the engines have been tweaked a bit to potentially quell some of the people that were angry at the CitizenCon version of the Carrack. There is a lot more detail on the exterior of the ship.
It’s still not complete and expect more detail, better lighting and that sort of thing.
They showed off some of the areas of the ship we hadn’t seen before. Like a large communal bathroom, various connecting corridors, gangways and even what I believe is a little repair area.
We saw the early white box for the Hercules C2 Starlifer, they are making sure it’s shape is right and all it’s internal rooms fit and are correct for it’s needs, how does the landing gear fit and hold up the ship? Everything is tweaked and scaled appropriately. It will be a while before we see the ship in game HOWEVER I do think it’s possible it may be for 4.2 for the end of 2020 and it makes sense as it was confirmed that the Mercury Star Runner is planned to be in Alpha 4.1 which is Q3 2020s release.
The ship is pretty massive, with escape pods, turrets, cargo areas with lifts, a sleeping birth and large engine room.
The Cutlass Blue is technically still in it’s white box phase, though most of the ship is already done as it’s a variant, they have completed it’s canopy and are currently choose a skin direction, White with Blue Accents, Blue with Grey or White with Black.
I like the Blue one xD
They have a functional boxing ring ready for the Prison in 3.9.
There is also shanks / shivs that have been made out of things like medi-pens, it sounds like these will be found if you search around.
They’ve been developing the Orange Prison Jump Suit and Mining Backpacks, which needs to be both spacious yet mobile or no restrictive.
WhiteBox work has started on Prison Pods, that look like they can store prisoners as cargo.
They have been doing a Geology Asset Rework with their new organic shaders, they showed off some lava fields on Celin with this new look.
This new way of doing things allow for much better looking terrain.
There are new harvestables for microtech – Heart of the Woods type mushrooms for the foresty biomes there.
VFX are doing some cool tests with effects & decorative holograms around microTech’s New Babbage.
They have been working on further improvements to mining, visual cues and mining consumable items.
Also there is working going into new entry effects for ships using SDFs so it wraps around your hull accurately.
LTP Long Term Persistence Testing is underway on the PTU with the 3.8.2 Patch, they are doing database wipes but saving players aUEC, Ships & Equipment between them and it seems to be going well so far.
The Vehicle Experience Team focus on making ship and vehicles more fun.
This has included getting the 3rd and 1st person cameras feeling much better.
It also includes things like subtle head tracking and their look ahead mode having you look realistically towards where you are moving to and turn your head as you move your ship.
They are improving a mixture of lots of small elements but also some core parts of the game, their team is able to reasonably rapidly work on these very specific vehicle tasks.
Players using head tracking will be able to use gimbals more easily.
Expect them to polish ship combat over 2020.
Valentines Sale – The ORIGIN 300I, TUMBRIL CYCLONE RC, HORNET F7C-M HEARTSEEKER & CRUSADER MERCURY STAR RUNNER are all available
With the Star Runner being the most interesting here IMO the Ship is now $225 or $200 Warbond (as an upgrade)
There is a Valentines Screenshot Competition which must feature an image of in-game items arranged in the shape of a heart. Then they want you to Tweet with #StarCitizen and #ValentinesDay Hashtags. There are prizes for the top 3 entries ranging from Super Hornet Heartseeker, Tumbril Cyclone RC & Origin 85X. It ends on the 18th of Feb.
And that’s it for today, though we should be getting more info on some concepts like the Mercury Star Runner later today and a Roadmap Update too looking at the 4.1 Feature Plans.