Star Citizen’s XenoThreat PlayTest
Welcome to Star Citizen today talking about the XenoThreat Playtest how the mission is laid out and my thoughts on how it plays.
So when the XenoThreat Mission is active you’ll be contacted to say the event is on and that a New Mission is in your General Priority Missions.
Just as a side note… also be sure to Accept the Call to Arms Mission as you might get some more money.
This is a System Wide Mission that I believe anyone can join throughout the mission… though there might and eventually will be some restrictions based on reputation and criminality. Expect to see a lot of players working together even if you don’t know them.
You’ll now want to set a waypoint and fly to Jericho Station on your Starmap tho…
It’s a Good idea to go to the L1 Rest Stop to set it as your respawn point and then.
The first part of the mission has you assisting in the pick up and delivery of cargo from a nearby crash site as well as clearing all of the Starfarer Wrecks of FPS Pirates.
There is a Wreck Site around 500-600km from Jericho
And multiple Starfarer Wrecks…
You’ll need to find the correct entry point on each of the wrecks, basically this is different for each of them, some have busted doors or rubble, once you have gained entry and been able to get to the Cargo Area you’ll have to clear out the pirates that are in the cargo area too (I recommend doing this from the balcony above then jumping over)
You’ll then want to Open the Cargo Doors with the Little Generator next to the door panel… basically want to interact with the button on it.
You now have the cargo doors open on the Starfarer and a load of different cargo in cages.
You can interact with the buttons on the cages to release the cargo.
There are 3 types of Cargo here Timed, Explosive and Quantum Sensitive
They each look visually different BUT also have a display showing what they are with the The Green Glowing one is Time Sensitive Cargo showing it’s stability and over a few mins it will become useless.
The Blue Glowing one is Explosive… if your ship takes too much damage you can expect these to explode.
The Ball in the Cylinder is Quantum Sensitive… you can’t carry this in quantum otherwise it’s supposed to explode… so you have to ferry it over without QT.
You take these cargo boxes in ship to Jericho, land there and use the Trade Terminal there to “sell” the Cargo to them.
Things to Note about the Cargo Portion of this mission.
XenoThreat Attacks in waves Around the Wrecks
XenoThreat Targets Cargo Carrying Ships & Can Attack the Ships on the Way back to Jericho.
XenoThreat with an Idris can assault the Docked Javelin while you are still ferrying cargo… so you will need players responding quickly to the Attacks at Jericho, Wreck Sites and Cargo Ships – Damaging the XenoThreat Idris will cause them to retreat.
If the UEE Javelin takes TOO much damage during the event, it is failed.
You need to clear ALL of the Starfarer Wrecks of Pirates but they are all within the Gas Cloud Wreck Field.
Once you as a group with everyone else have delivered enough cargo and cleared the Starfarers this is done you need to then the Javelin will be active and a Large XenoThreat Fleet will attack and you’ll need to take out their Idris and Ships. The Javelin will join you in the fight HOWEVER it can still get overly damaged and need to retreat resulting in a failed/withdrawn mission.
Some Other Points of Note
The Javelin doesn’t like you getting too close EVA or Ship wise… in fact I was Zoomed away in my ship anytime I tried to leave my cockpit when too close.
You’ll get paid based on your participation whether that be fighting xenothreat ships, gathering and delivering cargo, tho most people seem to share the mission with their group… I haven’t really explored if it worth doing in terms of aUEC yet… that said it will get balanced by CI for the LIVE build and I would hope it was more than generous for a payout.
During the playtest you are kind of fighting against the clock as it’s a window of 3 hours… we don’t know if the XenoThreat Mission will have a hard time associated with it beyond if the Javelin takes too much damage it’s a “fail”.
Some of my thoughts on this are… it’s pretty cool BUT too slow if you are just on a random server and only a few people are interested in doing the event… However with an Org it’s focused and efficient. Me and zin joined up with Synchronisers for the PlayTest and gave little bits of advice but there is a huge amount of fun in learning how to do the mission and how to do it efficiently… like as someone said during the event clearing a Boss in WOW for the first time.
It does need refinement, my frame rates… ughhhh my PC was struggling… I cannot wait for my Graphics Card and CPU to actually arrive… I have been waiting for months after ordering them… that is a whole other rant BUT yeah the performance around the wreck sites ESPECIALLY is terrible at the moment.
It’s hard to tell if the amount of boxes is too many to transport or not. I think I would prefer less boxes and more action personally BUT playtesting over a limited time is different from how it will play out over a longer period. You’d have to be an organized group of 25+ imo knowing what you are doing to be able to do this in 2-3 hours… but people will learn that and be efficient quickly…
Greifers & PvP players… so the first server I jumped in while waiting for Sync to start their event I was messing around and Space Cutlet turned up, declaring it was Cutlet Threat to PvP players that were trying to complete the quest (I will not PvP shame, at this stage it’s testing)… a little annoying maybe… mainly because it was was playtest for the event however it did at the very least highlight some points… PvP is going to be a thing, so maybe a countermission for the Criminal Players.
HOWEVER There needs to be in game systems to not allow player Opposition to the Event to ruin it or make it unviable. This at the moment is a PVE event and systems that hinder someone trying to hinder the event rather than help would be welcome.
Whether that be UEE Security Turning Up… a quantum dampening field stopping the criminal players moving around that area so easily… incredibly aggressive criminality and fine penalties. Just some form of in game systems for it are necessary… otherwise you are going to have someone turnup and shoot at cargo ships constantly detonating the explosive cargo and lolling off into the distance. At least give the PvPers reason to do that AND then take that into account for the peeps wanting to help the UEE… neither side should just be able to walk it in GG EZ… What I would like to see most is a reason for PvPers to disrupt rather than ruin… so maybe PvPERs are trying to attack the Javelin and raid Jericho maybe…
Another concern is, how replayable will this be? Will there be some variance each time, is the payout good enough for me to want to grind it? Is it too prohibitive to play without an Org… I mean you can also avoid griefers if you jump in and max out the server.
I’d like single players and small groups to want to actively jump into to this mission when it’s there knowing that their is a good chance they can complete it and it will be fun… I also want orgs to know they can do this mission and others will also come help them… a cool social event. Servers were knocked down to 40 players for the playtest but I would expect it to be back up to 50 for live PROBABLY…