Star Citizen 3.9 – Quantum Mining
Welcome to some more Star Citizen we had some additional information from a Bar Citizen where Dan Truffin and Ulf from CIG were interviewed about some of the plans for 3.9 and what’s coming a bit beyond that. I translated the Article from a millenium.org article by Wiset, links below to that original.
Let’s start with Dan Truffin who talked a lot about 3.9 Gameplay and Plans in more detail.
Mining is in a good place in the short term for CIG, they want to bring in new gameplay and gameplay loops rather than constantly polishing mining more at this stage, the fracture and extraction game won’t see additional work for a while.
3.9 plans to add mining consumables tho that will be relatively expensive one use items giving you a short boost to whatever the particular consumable you used is supposed to. It can lower resistance of a mineable OR prevent an explosion. It adds risk mitigation at a cost.
It was confirmed that the Volatile Cargo or at least one of them planned in 3.9 is Quantum Ore (potentially referred to as Quantanium). It is a high value mineral and eventually will be needed by the dynamic economy to create quantum fuel.
It will be difficult to mine and unstable. It must be brought to a refinery/sales kiosk quickly once extracted OTHERWISE the cargo will be valueless. ALSO the cargo can explode from bumps or taking damage.
They want to add refining and locating meaningful deposits to the gameplay loop for mining and they want players to share data and work together.
We will in the near future have access to refining that will remove intert materials and low value ore. Refining will take time though… I actually think that Dan was talking about filtering and jettisoning ore in a ship RATHER than actual refining at station which I believe is a bit different.
They want to get the ability to share & sell location data as well as systems for players to transfer goods and money between each other in game ASAP.
This would have ships like the Terrapin or Carrack scanning for asteroids / mineables then selling that info to miners.
More on the transfers of goods, they are working towards getting refueling in game, this is going to require ships to be visibly connected together somehow to then transfer the fuel.
You fuel you will be able to buy, sell, make it and rescue ships with it.
They need special interfaces and for ships to align properly too before this kind of refueling is in game tho.
There are new dangers in the Stanton System in 3.9.
Hot and Cold environments will affect your character and eventually kill you if you are not prepared.
Each moon/planet will have it’s own temperature and atmosphere.
Daymar will be VERY HOT, microTech VERY COLD.
When these environments are dangerous an estimated time before death counter will be shown. You can protect yourself by taking shelter, consuming good/drinks or wearing appropriate clothing and armor.
Further in the future other hazards and effects will be added, radiation and contagions were discussed. Potentially have players/npcs be able to infect each other & that spread.
Again in the future they want to really have the mortality, keeping your character alive and risk/reward to all have a really important part of the game.
This will have you preparing for trips, trying to survive by all means, ejecting from your ship rather than fighting to the last & surrendering.
Ulf one of CIGs Community Managers also shared some info. Communication is incredibly important to they. Calling All Devs is coming back (this Friday in fact) but it may be at a slower pace to start with. We have a AMA on the Survival or Player Status System this week (Wednesday 11th March 4pm UTC).
They want to give more feedback and get more devs interacting on Spectrum. It has indeed evolved a lot from the start and they regularly make adjustments taking into account the feedback from players. For example, they will soon start Calling All Devs again , even if it will be at a slower pace. Or, they recently tried an AMA on prisons, and will soon be doing another on the survival system .
They are looking for more community managers.
There will be more Referral Rewards coming in the future.
SC might look at eSports in the future… BUT it’s a long way off to even see if it’s appropriate for that.
Separately from that Bar Citizen Clive Johnson CIG also confirmed (in response to a question on what server tick rates are aimed at for the future) that “the end goal has always been to have our servers running at 30 ticks per second. As far as I am aware that is still the case and I think it is unlikely to change.”
To be honest a stable constant 30 would be fine and then any extra headroom should be used to expand each servers capacity as this will be one of the bottlenecks when we have server meshing.
And that’s it for a quick summary of those interviews.