Star Citizen Alpha 3.11 Wave 1 Out Now

Star Citizen Alpha 3.11 is out to 1st wave PTU. Let’s take a look at it’s New Features & Patch Notes and what it doesn’t have… yet…

1st Wave PTU gives access to RSI Subscribers & Concierge in addition to the Evocati Testers. It looks like CI are pushing for a Live build for October 10th and we should see wider PTU tests before that. Alpha 3.11 is a pretty light patch content wise BUT does potentially add a lot of interesting gameplay still:

Updated Space Station Interior layouts

Space Station interiors have been adjusted to help players find their way around them. You can use the interior elevators to access multiple levels of the station including the Hangars & Habs, Commons area, and the new Cargo Decks.

Cargo Decks are facilities within Rest Stops where players can handle all their cargo needs. From dropping off and picking up, buying new cargo equipment, and taking on cargo-related missions. Also renting cargo ships & shops for some gear.

These changes are also reflected on the exterior of the Station with huge cargo pylons there.

Something that I think will become one of the biggest things in 3.11 is the removal of the armistice zone around the exterior of Rest Stops allowing players to fire ship weapons in these areas now.

Destructible Defense Turrets have been added around the rest stops. These range from the small S4 turrets placed on landing pads, S6 sentries (seen in the Claim Jumpers missions), ALL new S10 turrets on and around the perimeter of the stations. Once destroyed, these currently respawn after 5 minutes (subject to balancing), they will improve this simplistic system in the future.

There is a Security Response System which adds the CrimeStats of all players in the area (known as “heat”) and spawns security ships of increasing number and strength in response. The system responds quickly to increases in an area’s heat by spawning in new ships and despawning out any weaker ships they replace. In the future the system will also also take into account the type of ship the players are using.

There’s a new infraction – Armistice Violation. This is a felony and is given should players damage other ships or station defenses within the Armistice Zone. Though it does have a warning and grace period, the crime will only remain on that chracters record for 1 day.

If a player enters an Armistice zone while having a CrimeStat or gains one there, they will be shown a warning telling them to leave immediately.

Players attacked by any NPC or player valid to arrest them should have a start/reset arrest timer started on them of between 1 – 3 mins based on the level of NPC engagement. Dying to anything while this timer is active means you’ll be arrested.

This means that a NPC or Player with some form of authority has to actively engage a criminal for them to put in prison.

Players are offered the option to press charges/forgive on crimes committed against them.

Defaulting to press charges if from a non-party member.

Pad ramming will now be ignored as a crime if committed by a party member. This is mainly to not punish party members for small bumps along the way.

You’ll still be able to give a party member a crime stat if the pad ramming is so severe it ends with your death or ship destruction.

There is the lesser crime added of indirect killing of players to manslaughter in some cases. This includes crushing players with a vehicle, killing via triggering an explosion such as an explosive barrel or a ship-self-destruct as well as killing crew on a ship beyond the pilot.

Locking a missile counts as a hostile action and allows that ship to attack you in self-defense. It will cause Security AI to attack you and trigger an “Assaulting an Officer of the Law” infraction.

Quantum snaring now only gives the player an infraction should they snare a ship and it will give one for every ship snared. Quantum interdicting criminals is not a crime.

Commissary Vending machines in prisons updated to use merits to purchase items.

Talking of items there is 2 new weapons both from Berhing, the GP-33 Grenade Launcher that can quickly fire multiple 40mm grenades to really make use of those new force reactions.

Also the BR2 Ballistic Shotgun, this can fired semi-auto.

There are various Planetary Updates – Utilising the new planetary painting tools they’ve gone through all planets and moons in the Stanton System and repainted the ground surfaces and object presets.

Also Updating and expanding our current terrain texture library by adding scanned data. On a per object basis we are now able to support HW tessellation displacement on geology distributed across terrain to give it a more organic appearance.

Ground Cover Buoyancy – Seaweeds and other ground cover elements on water will simulate buoyancy.

Player and External Inventory Interaction T0

Visually manage food, drink, mined rocks and harvested items stored in your personal inventory, moving them between your backpack and suit pockets and any external storage devices (such as the cargo access on certain vehicles). This adds context menus to items by using right click that will allow players to drop and split stacks of items. Players can now interact with the back cargo hold of the Greycat ROC to access its storage and transfer gems between it and the player’s inventory.

Throw T1 – Grenade & items can be thrown and you can see their trajectory displayed, throw overhand (left click) or underhand (right click) as well as holding the corresponding button to prime a grenade before throwing by letting go of the button.

Force Reactions T1 – Reactions are systemically triggered for Players and NPCs when punched, shot, and caught in explosions, experiencing strong winds, or the G-forces of an accelerating ship. Strong enough forces can knock a player down or blow them away.

There are a host of Missile and Countermeasure QOL improvements

Missiles will react to all countermeasures. Missiles will lose the lock during the locking process if the pilot does not keep the target in the locking cone. Missiles do not have perfect target knowledge anymore. Fixed missile selection keybinds. Added missile selection HUD widget. Players can select which missiles they launch by cycling, which is shown on the HUD (bindable in the menu). Players can only simultaneously lock missiles of the same type if equipped to multiple racks, with a maximum of 4. There is a minimum distance for acquiring a lock with missiles and torpedoes based on size, S1 – 1000m, S2 – 1500m, S3 – 2000m, and S4 – 2500m. Size 5+ torpedos use a different method and have a slower release, as these are Torpedos, and all are set to 1000 meters. There is now a UI indication for in and out of lock range along with the HUD showing the ranges if the target is out of range. A lock will be lost if the locked target goes under minimum range.

For countermeasures, players can now either deploy, decoys or noise fields. A decoy is a projectile that emits a very strong signal to spoof missiles (works on all seekers). A noise field is a limited jamming space which affects all kinds of sensor readouts (including the launching ship if contained in the field). These have new VFX.

Replaced countermeasure keybinds.

Added countermeasure ammo counter to HUD.

Extended missile warning HUD widgets with shortest time to impact display for each incoming seeker/missile type.

Slightly rebalanced all countermeasures so big ships, like the Carrack, have less ammo per launcher but heavier countermeasure projectiles with longer effects.

Ships and Vehicles

Greycat ROC to be purchasable in a ship store in the PU

Increased the Constellation thrusters in atmosphere to help with angular rotation and slightly reduced its linear drag for a small acceleration increase.

This patch does not currently have the Origin 100 series, this should be added in the PTU in the next few days.

Also the Mercury Star Runner will be released after 3.11 live in a 3.11.x patch.

Core

There is a Front End Refactor with Menus. Adding options to the friends list to pin to the side of the screen and button to remove all notifications.

The character creator has been updated to use new head designs.

There are some Major Bug Fixes

Players should no longer be able to avoid security scans by getting out of their seat.

They fixed several ATC/pad loitering and impounding bugs.

Mining nodes should no longer change composition
Players can no longer sell Commodities with a bug allowing them to do it an any distance.
Diamond icons should no longer remain displayed after surface deposits have been mined.
Fixed missing geometry and collisions with various ships and POI
Various fixes to the mobiGlas and UI. The mobiGlas and Management Apps Should update properly.
Various Fixes to EVA and Ragdolls
ASOP terminals should now correctly show the landing pad the ship is spawned on.
Various Ships should no longer be missing SDFs on the nose of the ship.
Players should now teleport into the spaceport instead of a hangar after the ship they are in is impounded.
Shop Keepers should be in the correct positions.
Updated Placeholder Texts to be accurate.
They fixed various ships pitching up when taking off.
Players should now drop their weapons when being killed by a take down melee attack.
Boxes should no longer fall through things as much!
Various Ships shields should now cover their items and doors better.
The intractable items such as cups, magazines, and teddy’s should no longer be missing from habs.
Multi-Tool should now be stored in LTP correctly and persist between resets.
Loose Commodity Boxes should be sellable
Combat AI Fixed for Various Missions and missions should correctly progress.
Ship cameras should no longer be off position.

That’s it for the additions on the Initial 1st Wave PTU build for 3.11… as I said they still need to add the 100 series and There are a slew of Known Issues:

Deadlocks may be likely and CPU usage can reach 100% and bottleneck.
Mission givers are leaving their designated areas / wandering from their posts
Characters can be different from what was picked at the creation screen.
Some NPCs are not posing correctly.
Ships landed at Lorville cannot be stored
HUD elements for enemy ships are massively offset at ultrawide resolutions causing them to be invisible to the player
Ship NavMarkers and Target Highlight can become detached from Ships when Pitching Up and Down and traveling forwards
The Player Can Spawn in a Dead State unable to interact or Respawn
The Mantis Snare will not prevent the other player from completing their QT (Short Range QT)
Turrets don’t always open fire after respawning
Purchasing OxyPens or MedPens from the shelf will not place the item in the player’s inventory
Players are timed out of using a Kiosk or an ASOP terminal after 1 minute when interacting with it
Commodities kiosks at Grim HEX and Lorville don’t let the user select commodities to sell.
Some sentry turrets take no damage against missiles & torpedos
Global Chat text is not always displayed in mobiGlas or visor
No charges are given to a player that rams and destroys another ship with players
Pilot of a ship containing a passenger will be charged with Negligent Homicide if their ship is rammed and destroyed by another player
Ramming and destroying another player with a ship does not generate a crime
Various tables and chairs around Promenade and Commons have template chairs and replaceme texture
Some ships and vehicles can be left in a broken state after spawning or show as unknown status.

Those issues are being worked through currently and some are causing major problems in playability of the patch.

Frame rates and performance is pretty bad due to the CPU problems here.

Stability isn’t awful but I’ve had a couple of 30ks while recording.

There are a lot of random kill zones and places I’ve got stuck in this patch even just trying to leave a Landing Zone. So a lot to work through for sure.

As far as I am aware as well there is not a planned reset for 3.10 – 3.11 but we won’t know for sure until it’s in our hands!