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Star Citizen, Squadron 42 & Theatres of War News, Guides, Videos & Gameplay by BoredGamer

Star Citizen Alpha 3.9.0 is Now LIVE

Star Citizen Alpha 3.9.0 is Now LIVE. Let’s take a look at the new features and additions. I’ve heavily re-written the patch notes to be more useful & informative for players hopefully as well as give you more of a light guide for how these features are used or will affect you.

There has not been an Asset wipe… so most players should have any aUEC, Ships and Items they bought in game from 3.8s branch still… however expect there to be bugs and edge cases.

There is a flyable ship sale with the Tevarin Prowler & Aves Helmet are on sale as are the MISC Reliants (as they have seen updates in 3.9) the Tana has been designated a Broadcaster now rather than a Newsvan. 

There is a referral bonus on until the 11th of May where if you get a referral point both you and them get a Greycat Buggy.

There is no new straight to flyable ship OR concept yet. There is a 3.9.1 patch already planned.

No confirmation yet if previous owners of the Prowler will get that helmet… I would hope they do tho. 

You’ll notice that Default spawn location choices have been updated to only include major city locations (New Babbage, Area18, Lorville). This actually makes Crusader and the original planetary system we have had in game with Port Olisar the hardest area to reach now really.

The New Babbage Landing Zone is now traversable. There are 3 major areas that are accessible via the trains there. It has the Nest Apartments where you’d spawn as a player. The Commons area with food shops, there is also new clothing stores, weapon and equipment shops for all your ships needs, you can find the trade & refinery kiosks here as well as social areas. 

The other major location is the New Babbage InterStella/Galatic Spaceport where there is a ship rental shop for luxury ships ranging from the Aurora LN to 600i.

Both the Commons area and SpacePort have access to garages that allow for spawning of vehicles and surface exit.

microTech Moons have been added Calliope, Clio, and Euterpe. There are caves and cave missions that have been added to microTech and its moons as well. More generally they have Updated planetary bodies with new visuals and assets.

New Light Survival Mechanics 

Your character will need to eat and drink and has a Nutrition and Hydration Gage. This is not a constantly having to shovel food into your mouth thing… you’ll need to drink more often than eat BUT typically your talking every few hours.

There are Food shops and stands throughout the verse you can quick buy items or read more into them before noming. You can eat appropriate harvestables you find on planets/moon or other locations too, You need a backpack or storage to stow food and drink, not all food items can be stowed… no pocket burritos YET.

If your gages get too low you’ll suffer from some detrimental effects, blurry vision or reduced stamina. The more active you are the more hungry and thirsty you will be.

There are lots of other buffs and debuffs associated with food and drink that you consume now too, giving you reasons to eat or avoid them. Hydrating meaning you won’t lose hydration as fast, energizing will give you quicker stamina recharge. There are negatives too… a burrito may dehydrate you. Golden Medmons and Garcia Greens Shake are what I have been living on both from New Babbage.

You’ll see changes in your status flash on your HUD or you can use the PIT system holding F and Right Click to see your full status at any time.

Extreme Temperatures are also a concern now. MicroTech and it’s moons are extremely cold. Daymar Extremely Hot. Armor and Clothing is rated for different thermal protections, without these you won’t survive long there… you’ll see a estimated time of survival on your hud.

The New Thermal Armors these heavy armor suits Pembroke (extreme heat) can be found at Lorville (Hurston) and the Novikov (extreme cold) ay Port Tressler’s (Space Station above microTech)… why the Novikov is not on microTech is a mystery to me. 

There are Two new surface harvestables, which you can pick up and nom… if you are brave enough OR sell them.

There is a New Updated first person radial menu for personal inner-thought interaction system – The updated Radial menu gives quick access to certain actions which are context specific, such as on foot or in a pilot seat, from emotes, to taking off your helmet to quick switching your weapons. Hold F and Right Click… you can access your Personal inventory here too. You can also set key bindings here BUT if you don’t know a key and you want to do something then this allows for a much easier time than previous patches.

You can also customize weapons with attachments (that you’ve purchased) by looking at the weapon and interacting with F.

Outlaw/Criminal Gameplay Updates

Klescher automated prison – Players who are directly killed by or die within a short distance of security forces or bounty hunters will now go to prison if they have an appropriate crime or crimes warranting it. In prison, all player inventory is inaccessible, and instead players are given a stock prison suit and a multi-tool with a mining attachment. Spare multi-tools can be found at the “commissary kiosk” should their’s be lost. Players can serve their time by waiting (including logging off for the duration) or contribute to society by working in the designated mining areas. Collected materials can be exchanged for “merits” to reduce your sentence using kiosks located near the mines. Once your sentence is complete, look for the “processing” section of the prison and interact with the kiosk. After being released, you will wake up at your last port. You can also escape from Klesher Prison, in this case you will need to hack down your criminal rating after leaving at a Security Depot like SPK UNTIL you have done this you don’t have proper inventory access and if you die then you will respawn in prison… also bounty hunters will be after you.

Your sentence is per appropriate crime, so certain missions might net you 12-24 hours of sentence if detected.

There is a New Criminal Mission: Hijacked Caterpillar Prisoner Transport which pays out a lot of money but there is risk with prison.

  • Doubled the payout of all criminal missions
  • Added infraction to immediately impound player ships that collide with ships with the right to be within a landing area
  • Shifted the threshold to obtain lvl 4 and 5 crime stats
  • Made murder and inmate murder against party members be automatically forgiven
  • Crashing a ship with players aboard will no longer award the pilot with a homicide crime stat
  • Placed comm arrays around planets and moons and reduced their monitoring radius to cover just those sectors… it’s also now in outlaws interests to disable these when doing missions nearby so that their crimes are undetected and they don’t have so much prison risk.

Mining Updates for the Mole & Prospector

Mining Consumables OR Mining sub-items are limited use components which can be attached to some mining laser heads to provide a temporary buff for up to 30 seconds. These can reduce energy in a rock to prevent an explosion OR increase the green mineable window amongst other things. You need to equip these to your ship in the VMA before spawning it and then activate them while mining by holding F and using the appropriate button on your “dash board”. You can purchase these most places you can buy mining heads.

There is a new volatile mineable ore Quantainium. Once it is mined, care must be used in the speed and manner in which it is transported. Not only does it degrade over time, but any impact will cause it to deteriorate further. The more degraded the quantainium, the more unstable it is and the higher the risk of it exploding. When a dangerous threshold is crossed, the player will receive a visual/audio warning and will have the option to eject all cargo. Failing to eject risks the ship taking damage or being destroyed. Given the risk, successful delivery of quantainium will be a lucrative endeavor.

Quantanium is very valuable and reasonably difficult to mine, I recommend a helix laser. You’ll have around 15 mins after mining it to get it somewhere you can sell it. Though bumping your ship or getting shot will reduce this!

You can find it around Yela’s Asteroid Field as well as microTech Moons Clio and Euterpe on the ground. There might be lots of other places too, that’s just where I have seen it.

The Argo Mole can now attach size 1 mining lasers as well.

Ship & Balance Updates

Esperia Prowler – The first Tevarin ship in game. It’s a Focused Troop Transport allowing for quick EVA deployment of upto 16 troops… (plus a pilot / co-pilot). The Prowlers doors can be open without depresiring the ship using it’s airshields.

With this there is new Ship weapons that other ships can use the Esperia Lightstrike Energy Cannons in sizes 1 to 3 and are designed for medium to long ranges.

AND Esperia Deadbolt Ballistic Cannons from size 4 to sized 6 and are designed for short range engagements during drops. Go to places like Centre Mass to pick those up.

  • Updated ship AI behavior to include greater speed ranges and improved avoidance You should notice AI ships being active and not going AFK or not spawning. 
  • AI ships should no longer spin wildly when in combat
  • FPS AI should no longer aim in a random direction prior to aiming at the player
  • Manned turrets should no longer appear out of sync and to not move to other players
  • Players should no longer encounter invisible players who are out of sync
  • CryAstro repair services should now work normally without the need to hover prior to landing.
  • Lots of fixes and accessibility to Missions and Ships.
  • Tweaked combat damage of S2 mass drivers to bring them more in line with similar sized weapons
  • To temporarily offset some of the issues with shield holes, damage to some ship components (some weapons and turrets) no longer passes through to the ship hull
  • Streamlined some aim and flying controls to reduce complexity in preparing for future updates.
  • They Lowered assisted/auto gimbal slew speed
  • Added size 1 gimbals to all shops that have gimbals for sale
  • Reliants got a lot of updates – Increasing their wing health, adding missiles they also Added a second gimbal turret to Reliant Kore.
  • There have been lots of updates and fixes to various ships HuD & MFDs.

This is all in an aid to get Star Citizen more balanced, hopefully moving away from Mass Driver Meta, broken shields, making auto gimbals track a bit slower while also improving ai in ships and in FPS.

Finally for “features” they added the New Unified contact list and party system, your spectrum and in game friends are now the same and shared in real time so you can add them to either, you have a notifications tab with recovery options and party/friends requests. Your friends list is now a max of 800.

There is some Known Issues still tho:

  • The Cutlass “Best in Show” version has an opaque canopy. Note: We will be providing a Cutlass Black loaner soon.
  • Duplicate, static trains may appear at Lorville or New Babbage.
  • Ground vehicles can not be spawned at outpost ASOP terminals (still spawnable at Levski, Lorville, and New Babbage)
  • Players can become stuck when jumping over some railings
  • Ships can hitch or teleport at times when observing their motion
  • For ECN alerts, the rescued Starfarer will sometimes circle endlessly after all waves are cleared
  • The player can spawn with their prison suit still on after ending their sentence
  • Being in a large party can cause party markers to fail to appear when inside a ship
  • If a player crashes while transitioning into prison they will be unable to use their multitool
  • Players can not see through the scope of the Arrowhead or P6-LR when crouched
  • FOIP animations are not transmitting to others nearby
  • Cargo boxes left behind after a ship explodes appear to blink in and out while the player is moving
  • Player inner-thought and interaction system is off-set in wide screen resolutions
  • Autopilot sometimes does not disengage after triggered by no-fly zone
  • Heavy environmental suit armors block portions of the mobiGlas