Star Citizen News – Idris Removed From 3.9.0

Welcome to some more Star Citizen News, we have disappointments with Alpha 3.9.0 now having the Idris Mission Delayed, there are some new features being added to the Roadmap too, we get to see the Mercury StarRunner WhiteBox. I’ll also give you a quick summary of the other Star Citizen News for the week ending the 5th of April 2020.

There are some delays and disappointments with the Alpha 3.9.0 Branch already, some of them understandable, others a little frustrating, at least for me.

At time of writing we still have 3.9.0 with Evocati and are awaiting a wider PTU release.

This is at least in part to the current global situation and CIG working from home.

BUT there has also been some features pushed back that have caused me some confusion.

The m50 updates are being pushed back to 4.0 with CIG saying:

“While the m50’s improvements are looking really good, we’ve made the call to hold this update back to ensure the changes meet our high standards. As a result of this decision, this card has been moved to the 4.0 Column.”

However it’s the Arlington Bounty Mission the Idris Fight that is also getting pushed to 4.0 that causes me a bit of confusion, CIG said:

“As you may be aware, we’ve been testing the Idris battle with our Evocati test group. Through these tests, we’ve discovered that the mission didn’t feel as good as we wanted it to, therefore we’d like to take a bit more time to ensure battling an Idris for the first time feels great. For these reasons, we’ve moved this card to the 4.0 column.”

I don’t think players would have minded if the mission was broken and only worked some of the time, or if the Idris was derpy or was nearly unkillable… I think that CIG should have put it in 3.9.0 UNLESS it was causing big stability issues. The erratic semi-polished mind set of this is a good enough first iteration REALLY bugs me. My Hot Take, such as it is… is if a mechanic is going to see a lot of change and evolution… then just put it in game as is… it’s going to change anyway, it’s being tested in a branch patch, just put it in if it’s made it that far anyway. I think I may also be annoyed that I can’t do any content on the mission even tho I may have played it in Evocati… due to NDAs.

It’s not all me pissing and moaning there are some welcome additions to the Roadmap as well Contacts List Refactor/Friends List Unification:

This feature has been added to the Alpha 3.9 column. They’ve created a single “Friends/Contacts Service” that both Spectrum AND in Game can pull from in order to display a player’s contacts/friends list. This will allow for things such as “Pending” friend and party invites as well as visibility to whether players are online or not. The Front End UI will be rebuilt in the new Building Block Tech to allow for future expansion of the functionality. Additionally, the main goal is to allow for easier “player to player” connectivity within the SC Universe. By converting this into a unified service, it will also lay the framework to create better lobby functionality in the future for all game modes (with the initial focus being with connecting to other players in the PU).

Space Station – Refinery Deck’s have been added to 4.1 – Refinery Decks are dedicated areas in Rest Stops that serve as mining hubs, where the player can drop off mined materials to be refined, pick up mining missions, or buy new mining equipment.

This Feature and expansion to modular space stations in addition to Cargo Decks should see a lot more economic gameplay and things to do in game as well as more focused space stations for these mechanics.

GrimHEX Improvements are being made for 4.0 – They are Finalizing GrimHEX, making it a complete landing zone. Main changes will include new location-branded utilitarian hangars accessible by the main hub, a scramble race feature, and additional content.

They had previously talked about a Space Scramble Ship Race around the Asteroids by GrimHex. Getting GrimHex in a more functional state seems sensible as the Stanton System looks to be coming to completion this year.

We did get a sneak peek at the Mercury StarRunner and it’s WhiteBox.

The Ship looks much larger than I had envisioned.

The Ship is currently planned for Alpha 4.1 and I hope that 4.1 might see some more Data Running based mechanics / cargos as well.

The Mercury Star Runner is one of the most anticipated ships for Star Citizen being a Data/Cargo Runner and very good as a multi-role mission ship for a small group OR as a smugglers pride…

There was a Question asking to the SC Devs “Are you able to let us log back in to another persons ship, even if they are not logged in yet?” CIG’s ChadMcKinney replied:

“Right now, no, there’s too many corner cases to account for and it would tie up resources from working on the larger features coming down the pipeline. After we’ve gotten SOCS, global persistence, and ideally server meshing nailed down we can revisit things like this to see what the ramifications would be. In general we need to rethink some key behaviors in the full global persistence + server meshing version of the game, and spawning is going to be something that definitely will have some new considerations. This extends beyond ships, but to things like habs, corpses, items, and the ideas from the “Death of a Spaceman”.

RSI Subscribers can take use any of the Avenger’s out during April the Avenger Titan, Stalker, and Warlock are available to them.

In STAR CITIZEN LIVE Art Director Paul Jones explored the process of developing key art that typically accompanies concept ships like the Crusader Ares. They created a scene dropping in art of ships and a city backdrop to aid in Concept Art and promotions for ships and general game direction inspiration.

For April Fools CIG put out an Article saying they were converting the game over to Flat Moons and Planets… it was silly but an appropriate Joke. Some Cool Flat Artwork was made.

CIG highlighted a MINING YIELD CALCULATOR made by TRFF in their Newsletter, which I’ll link down below as well, hopefully it will see updates for 3.9.0 and future builds too.

You can use it to work out the monies you can make in your prospector or mole, very useful.

We also have the Monthly Reports out, I’ve covered the PU one, which I recommend you watch! AND I’ll cover the SQ42-centric one on Sunday. So look out for those.