Star Citizen 3.9 Tips & Tricks

Welcome to some more Star Citizen with Tips & Useful info for improving your Star Citizen Experience from Performance to Generating more aUEC in Game to what’s in for the meta.

I get asked about Ship Weapon & Equipment Meta all the time, I can give you the basics of what I understand. For Ship Weapons in 3.9 it isn’t mass drivers for all any more, in fact it seems a lot more weapons are at least viable. You can use the Erkul Loadout Tool to work out ship loadouts and DPS. I am really liking laser repeaters just for lots of PEW PEW at the moment especially with auto-gimbals… also auto gimbals are a little slower to track than before, please bare that in mind, tho they are still very powerful! 

The meta seems to be more focused on Ballistic Weapons & Neutrons for highest DPS. 

Shields wise if you have multiple slots you’ll want to mix shields to get the bonuses of them all and cover their weaknesses the for example for S2 Shields the Tevarin Sukoran Shield blocks Ballistic very well & has a high health pool but suffers from low regen & long regen delay it is very useful to mix in with a shield with good regen another good S2 shield to mix with is the Obscura S2.

For Size 1 Shields I really like the Mirage Shields for Regen and it should be a staple shield you use for mixing in. Then the Palisade (great health pool) or FR shields (great all round) can be mixed in with a mirage.

If you are just using a single shield the FR shields of the appropriate size will give you good regen and a health pool that won’t instantly pop.

The Relaints are much more viable as useful ships now. The Tana is a solid fighter..

Some ships have different flight modes & can decouple them from landing or normal flight modes, press J to toggle you flight mode / engine orientation with ships like the Reliant, Prowler, Cutlass etc…

Mining & Trade

I saw SaltEMike doing a mining op on Stream where he found mineables were changing when he would return to the area it’s more of a Bug & CI waiting on the iCache BUT Mineable Asteroids & Rocks do not properly persist and if you and all other players leave an area it will not save the make up / yields of any of the rocks… bare this in mind… if you find a jucy rock you will have to stay by it until it can be mined OR if you find some Q-type asteroids or Quantanium but it’s only a tiny bit you can try leaving the area and returning to see if better yields are to be had.

There is the Mole & Prospector BUT some other Ships can scan for minerals as well and are therefore useful for mining operations.

The Terrapin, Cutlass Red, Carrack and with mixed results the Reliant Sen & Reclaimer. If there are others I’ve missed feel free to comment below. 

You can make a lot of money from Quantanium. I mine it around Yela and sell at PO OR Clio & Euterpe and sell at microTech. You’ll have just over 15 mins typically from when the first bit of Q ore gets in your ship to have it sold… tho it will destabilize with damage and moving around… when you have landed your ship you can despawn it and then sell the quantanium more safely.

If your goal is to make aUEC in the current patch, I would grind up to buy a Prospector then mine quantanium… it’s SOOO much less risky than cargo hauling as you can lose everything to a crash or attack if you have a stocked caterpillar… that’s the risk of leveraging it’s capacity. The Prospector is an obtainable goal and then will make you a lot of money, you can even grab a rented prospector in the short term YOU CAN’T modify rented ships BUT learning to mine while grinding will pay dividends and you can still mine some quantium it’s just without a helix laser you aren’t going to be able to get the larger rocks easily. Just bare that in mind.

On Reddit a post by (hiaws) You can land ships at surface entrances to landing zones like at New Babbage’s Garages and it seems at the moment you can even trade while landed as long as you land close enough. You don’t need to request landing BUT you don’t have the protection of landing in a hangar. You’ll need to interact with the appropriate refinery or trade kiosk deeper in the landing zones tho. Mileage may vary.

You want to know what to trade to make aUEC?
At the moment I am using Gallog.co 

It shows you what each Landing Zone, Station and Outpost Buys and Sells and helps you calculate routes. It’s a really helpful tool USE IT!

Wind will affect your ship and can make it hard to land or move around planets / moons. The Carrack for example at the moment will get pushed around like it’s weightless. Just be careful.

Survival

You can store some food and drink on you if you have storage space, this is based on your armor… heavier armor & armor with backpacks integrated has even more storage. The storage of the food/drink is saved in the actual armor… so you can fill suits full of armor, put them on, have a buffet and then change out of them.

If you drop your PI as a box (in a cargo grid) that will put all items inside it from that suit of armor. Make sure you drop any food and drink separately before you do this so you can pick them back up.

Also when purchasing Food and Drink at food vendors, when you quickly buy if you keep buying without moving it will put that last item in your inventory most of the time, so you don’t have to individually stow each one… just don’t spam the button.

Items in your PI of the suit you are wearing are lost when you die, just be aware of that.

There are new armors that protect you from heat or cold conditions.

There are 2 new heavy armor suits that have big storage capacities & protect you from hot or cold, the Pembroke Suit for extreme heat which you can purchase at Lorville and the Novikov Suit for extreme cold at Port Tressler’s armor shop.

I fill mine full of Hydrating Fruit (Golden Medmons), Drinks (typically Garcia’s Green Shakes).

You are going to be needing hydration more regularly than you are going to need to eat. 

It was said that with maxed out food & drink meters it would take 7 hours to die from thirst 10 hours from hunger BUT that’s if you just stood still BUT Being active will drain this quicker and hydration is something you might need to think about a few times over a play session.

Also if you are doing a group op there are always people that constantly seem to need to eat and drink… I bring a lot extra and share.

Performance

It’s good practice to Install Star Citizen to an SSD… this will save you a lot of initial loading into the game ALSO Deleting your User Folder is good practice to avoid errors OR at least the Shader folder from your Roberts Space Industries\StarCitizen\LIVE\USER

I do have a rough Star Citizen & Windows 10 Performance Guide too I’ll link below.

Check to see if FOIP is active in your options, this can be quite a drain on frame rate!

I hope that was helpful if you have any tips, if you have better meta advice please share it.

Also Congrats to the Star Citizen Reddit for passing 200k Subscribed readers.