Star Citizen 3.10 Approaches
We are still waiting on Star Citizen 3.10 to go to 1st wave PTU and as soon as any remaining designated blockers are cleaned up in the evocati patch it will get pushed out, that could literally be anytime tho, today, the weekend, early next week.
We saw the last Inside Star Citizen for 3 week with: Alpha 3.10 Approaches. ISC should start up again July 24th with a focus on Alpha 3.11.
We had a Patch Report going over some of the features of 3.10 in a bit more detail:
Vehicle Impounding will warn you then give you fines or move your ship if it’s blocking access to stations and more aggressive repercussions if you padram.
Delivery Missions have started to see a big overhaul. There are plenty of new missions and processes for them, having you taking packages around to a few locations, new narcotics deliveries, bonuses and hopefully this will make the missions more viable as a way to earn the big bucks.
Vehicle Paint Schemes are being added to in game shops like Dumpers Depot. That means yes you can buy customizations with aUEC.
Electron Damage and associated Lightning Bolt Co Pistol and Sniper are going to be electrifying.
Body Dragging can move stunned or dead Characters around.
Restricted Area improvements will see flight corridors for landing and Lorville and Area 18.
No more ugly red/orange no fly zones.
AI will be using cover a lot more effectively and be able to assault you with more of a variety of weapons. They are also a lot less derpy.
M50 is getting Visual improvements and a host of ships are getting QoL Updates.
GrimHex 2.0 sees the zone expanded out with a new shop, viewing area, internal hangars and in a future patch will support the new space scramble races.
New Babbage is getting high tech hangars and the new factory line shop selling things like new mobiGlas variants that players can purchase.
They are updating & re-dropping derelicts, caves, and outposts POI across the stanton system.
Something of a more meaty segment was the Updates to the Flight & Combat Model in 3.10 are the next step in an evolving experience they will not be the last. They are trying to move away from min-maxing stats and DPS races.
The Vehicle Experience Team was formed in Jan 2020 and focus on improving ship and vehicle gameplay from patch to patch trying to build towards the flight model, ships and combat reach their full potential.
There workflow has lots of short small iterations for their testing and implementation.
This has certain “added to the timeline”
Atmospheric Flight will feel completely different to space flight with that WW2 Flight close range combat Captured.
They act a more like planes than previously… they are still very much not planes tho…
Landing and taking off with larger ships may not be the best idea.
The Ship shape and wings will really change the aerodynamics (Lift & Drag) of your ship and IFCS will not be able to stabilize/correct your ship as well while it atmosphere.
There will be ship races on planets in atmosphere in the future.
Smaller ships will typically be a lot more nimble and suited to atmospheric flight.
Thrusters will be weaker in atmosphere based on it’s gravity and composition.
That said on planets with lots of storms or high winds a heavy ship may help you not get bumped/blown around so much.
Weather will play a big part in the new model.
If you have damage to your ship you may have to really have to fight with the forces pulling your ship around.
They want combat to be varied in its meta with ship, loadout, engagement, environment, skill, and more all being important. They want to avoid a 1 SIZE FITS ALL BEST LOADOUT.
There are targeting improvements and changes moving towards a more look-based system over an aim one. Head Tracking or free looking at targets then lock or pin them.
Locking gives you all the information you would expect but you can only have one main target at a time.
You can pin more tho and then switch between them as the main target, these pins and targets can be shared with your crew/other operators in your ship. In the future this will also be shareable with other friendly ships even.
But for 3.10 being able to coordinate with pinned targets will allow you to focus fire much more easily.
Turrets are much more effective here now as well and are a threat to ships, they have changed the way they move, you change change their rotation velocity with your mouse wheel, you can even effectively control them with a hotas setup.
They have a basic UI which tells you where they are pointing and what mode they are in. You can switch between stabilization modes and staggered fire as well as recentre your turret.
Fixed assist helps with fixed weapons and turret gunners it takes an angular offset between your current aim and the aim direction of your target and can help nudge your projectiles a little towards the target.
Larger Ships should be more effective against smaller fighters now.
If you are moving above SCM speeds your gimbals will move slower and lock-ons will take more time, this should help start to bring combat engagements closer.
They mentioned that there was some other stuff that’s coming to 3.10 but said we would have to work it out and I can tell you there is a lot more going on with Alpha 3.10 additions beyond what is shown on the roadmap, lots of minor things that add up to some big improvements, new things available at shops, visual improvements to planetary tech, the player trading app is a huge change imo allowing for aUEC to be sent to another player easily and maybe just maybe there is that GreyCat ROC buggy that we have been talking about recently.