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New Star Citizen Gameplay Loops – Salvage, Cargo 2.0 & Bounty Hunting

Welcome to some more Star Citizen, there are various New Gameplay Loops being worked on during 2021 and I wanted to talk about these Jobs, Roles and Updates to Gameplay and what we might get this year and what they are working towards. 

The long awaited Salvage Mechanics are getting work in 2021 but what might we see from them? What’s currently listed is referred to as Salvage T0 – All back-end tech tasks related to creating the first pass of the salvage feature that will be used in future location and mission updates.

This is further supported by CI’s continued work on physicalized components and the power resource transfer pipelines. This will have the components in ships and them be removable, replaceable.

We also have Cutting T2 – The continued development of the existing Multi-Tool technology will allow players to cut through specific objects. This will primarily include the ability to free-form cut on specific surfaces.

Combine all of this together and you could have some reasonable T0/1 Salvage mechanics.

Cutting out components from ships or otherwise removing them from wrecks… that’s basically salvage…

The more focused hull Stripping that the Vulture will be using that will be coming in the future… and is expected to be similar-ish to mining but on the hulls of ships. Tho we don’t have any indication of work for that type of salvaging yet.

There are other types of salvaging too… syphoning (which is the collection of liquids & gases) and Maw which is large chunks of scrap and metal.

Cargo 2.0 – There are a lot of new cargo updates that will change up hauling and delivery gameplay. There are various new cargo types being worked on, volatiles like timed cargo, quantum sensitive, explosive. They are building larger cargo containers. Ship to Station Docking will allow for focused gameplay around those areas and larger ships to dock.

The potential improvements for iCache, full persistence, more stable servers and work towards a dynamic economy should really change up the cargo gameplay… potentially also allowing for individual cargo containers to be moved with tractor beams.

When we have physical components this opens up boarding and piracy gameplay, actually stealing the loots on another ship.

There’s a Refactor to allow both found and purchased cargo to be picked up, moved around, and placed into the cargo grid of a ship. AND they are Adding timers for loading and unloading cargo as well.

We know they are working on Dangerous Locations for Cargo Drop offs and Missions too.

We know that CI are working on Scanning Updates – Improved signature system, supporting much greater distances, and dampening of signatures by environmental interference and larger signatures. Improved Scanning, driven by the same signature system as the Radar and Ping, available in Ships, ground vehicles, and FPS.

This allows for much deeper mission gameplay, potentially we could get the Tessa Bannister Missions back, it’s needed for exploration, sharing data and targets with other ships AND bounty hunting… in fact Bounty Hunting could be getting a lot more fleshed out in 2021.

They are adding more status effects and deeper medical gameplay this will eventually have players being knocked down and knocked out. Bounty Hunters will be able to grab the bodies and put them in a cryopod. 

CI have said that this might then have the player that’s capture be able to decide if they respawn (in which case it would be in prison if appropriate) or choose to wait and potentially be rescued… the latter i would expect later tho.

CI are working on gameplay for tracking Enabling players to track criminals via a mobiGlas security app linked to distress beacons, comm arrays, air traffic control systems, cameras, and NPC informants. This will rely on various new backend tech, including Virtual AI, the NPC Scheduler, and Security Service.

This will have bounties and criminals be spotted by comm arrays, security, ships and that info shared with bounty hunters.

This all together with the reputation system that allows for guilds to track your rep and give you more appropriate missions (that we have in 3.12 already).

This should really expand out PVE and PVP gameplay.

We know they are working Healing mechanics which will also allow you to heal someone else, so expect missions associated with that as well as more difficult FPS multiplayer missions as you can potentially get each other up again.

There is Hacking with a Mini-Game that is being worked on… but we don’t know to what extent it will be implemented and in what forms. 

As I said earlier There’s Work on the Quantum Simulation that was Revealed at CitizenCon 2019, this will serve as the background economy for Star Citizen. Thousands of unseen simulated entities will carry out trade, commerce, piracy, and security to populate and inform other game systems.

That combined with Recipe Updates Performing an overall polish pass on the economic systems, from commodity trading to item prices to provide a better overall experience for players.

Could really see a lot of economic changes in the game and associated gameplay loops.

Also Personal Inventory is going to change the way we play the game… at least in FPS. Though I would expect at the same time we will have to choose the locations where all our ships are when we start… This should also allow for looting of various items and bodies too.

Lockers T1 introduces a consistent way to store clothes, armor, and items in a physicalized state. Also includes a more robust and tactile method of storing items on shelves and attachment surfaces. This builds on the Personal Inventory, expanding the inventory UI to include lockers.

Bases & Lots of new locations are being worked on too but again we don’t have an indication yet if Pyro OR the start of base are planned for 2021 yet… 

We will in fact be getting a load more information on the 27th of January, this should allow us to look in some more detail at what we are likely to get in 2021 and what forms those features will take more accurately.