Major Star Citizen Features – What Are We Waiting On?

There are some Major Features for Star Citizen that CI are working on over the next few quarters that are SO IMPORTANT to making Star Citizen into an actual game and I wanted to highlight some of the most important Features that are mentioned and are getting worked on over the next year.

Let’s start with some features that we know where they are likely to fall:

With the Alpha 3.15 or Q3 2020 patch we are planned to be getting

Medical Gameplay – Hospitals, 3rd Party Healing, Healing Tools – This is steps towards player mortality, risk and reward otherwise known as death of a spaceman.

There is Local Inventory, meaning items need to be proximate to you to move between ship, character or landing zone… you can only carry a certain amount… it will change the way we play.

Something that is mega important for me here too is Loot… boxes, crates and rare spawns at locations… give me loot!

Alpha 3.16 the end of Year Patch Plans to have

Salvage T0 & the Tools to do that salvage… it’s hand salvage hull stripping only at this stage as well as using that to repair ships too BUT salvage has been sooo hyped and wanted to so long and it’s likely they mechanics will expand out and get polished over the patches after.

A more minor mechanic Hacking is there too and I suspect that will add quite a lot of interest in missions and how the interact with the game. It will be used to access systems and areas that have been previously closed. The hacking process will be represented via a minigame on your HUD.

Alpha 3.17 the first patch of 2022 has something I’ve been waiting for a long time too. Homesteads & Persistent Hangars.

Homesteads are new outpost and town locations on planets and moons, they potentially might have some customization for player habs or rooms at them too.

Persistent Hangars allow players to have their own hangar, store items their and customize it – This will also bring changes to the Cargo gameplay loop by allowing players to pack their grids manually.

Beyond those features mentioned in the release roadmap there is a load of other features that might turn up in the next few patches and are receiving work.

Game Persistence & Server Meshing probably being the most important. 

Proprietary Server Meshing and Persistence Technology will allow Star Citizen to scale up it’s shared universe across game servers. Eventually this technology will allow thousands of players to co-exist in the verse. Once the first version of this is implemented the number of servers and players will increase over successive versions. Persistence updates could potentially be in game by the end of the year with Static Server Meshing landing sometime in 2022 most likely.

The Gen12 Renderer (and Vulkan Integration) is going to make star citizen much more scalable and resource efficient on Hardware (current work looks to complete at the end of September). Please be integrated this year…

Physical Damage & Physicalized Components are one of the most important things for Star Citizen’s Balance and combat model. Each component being individually targetable & damaged, removable and ships being disabled based on the component taking damage. This allows for boarding, damage control, salvage, repair, even bounty hunting and actual more realistic balance.

New Star Systems Pyro, Nyx & Jump Points – Most of this work is listed roughly for completion by Q1/Q2 2022 BUT it represents the game evolving to Alpha 4.0 when combined with Server Meshing. I am hoping we see this in game Q2/Q3 next year.

We know there are a load of AI Updates being worked on – Animals, AI Modules & even NPCs being more part of missions as wingmen, defenders or buddies on the ground.

Expanded Gameplay Loops & Mission – Bounty Hunter, Comm Array Mission, Hacking, Infiltration & Ground Assaults… as well as search and rescue.

There is a Cargo Refactor – allow both found and purchased cargo to be picked up, moved around, and placed into the cargo grid of a ship. This is also going to be important for looting, piracy and missions not just trade and management.

They were also talking about being able to sell components and other items more freely soon too. The Progress tracker suggests that the start of expanded selling could be ready by the end of the year.

Cloud Imperium are also working on the Dynamic Universe Sim – Quanta – The Dynamic Economy… this will tie missions, encounters, the prices of goods, NPC and Player actions all together and have appropriate content being physicalized and activated based on that data. Price will be driven by, supply, demand and manufacture. Pirates will attack profitable low risk (for them) trade routes… 

Theres new planet tech & POI are getting work to, new derelicts are a focus currently… these will help flesh out the game for lootables, savalageables and general exploration. 

But even Procedural generation tech to create rivers and roads placeable by artists across planets is receiving work and is pegged to have current work completed end of March 2022.

A Few other things… 

We can expect More Event Missions… The Ninetails lockdown isn’t for a limited time like XenoThreat… it’s on and off more erratically throughout 3.14 and beyond… and I think we can expect to see a lot more mission types like this but these will start to be tied to the Dynamic Universe and activate when certain conditions are met. 

There are various tasks that’s rolled into The Greater “Player Experience” that CI are working on, this is things like signposting, hints, ingame tutorials, ergonomics…

A new star map and minimap are being worked on too… for me that’s long over due… but I was thinking about it and I was hoping they might show it at CitizenCon?