CitizenCon 2951 Overview – What You Need To Know
Welcome to the Highlights of CitizenCon 2021… what happened, what was important, what do you need to know about the presentations that were shown?
Pyro & Gameplay Demo
CitizenCon had a much more understated gameplay demo this time around tho it was near future gameplay and not faked at all.
It had the player showing 3 different ways of completing a new mission in Pyro to Acquire a Hadesian Artifact. This showed off New Clouds, a Pyro Planet, New Homestead Outposts and the difference between passive, smash and grab and stealth/combat ways of playing the game.
There have been a whole host of planetary updates, new biomes and stations for Pyro.
Lots of work on Rivers too.
CI are also working on an RTS style tool for player base placement.
There are 2 new ships that were shown off at CitizenCon the 400i was part of that aforementioned Gameplay demo and is a luxury exploration ship similar to a Constellation with room for an X1 bike and a crew of 3… it’s flyable in Alpha 3.15 and is available to purchase from $220.
The Other new ship they showed was a concept ship the Anvil Liberator. It is a Transport / Light Carrier Ship that has limited defense but a focus on transporting a mix of cargo, vehicles, small ships and marines. It’s quite expensive from $500 but we don’t know when it will be in game.
CI also showed off 4 new rough concepts that might make it game at some point:
A – Large Explorer ship – that may be competition to the carrack
B – A Ground Vehicle – Potentially an APC
C – A hover vehicle – New Grav-lev bike
D – A Single Seater Ground Bomber Ship
They did also mention a mobile refiner ship that they said they’d show us later, assumedly at the IAE later in November.
There was a major concept update of the Banu Merchantman shown off too, with the ship being made larger and a hangar bay for a Defender being added… the ship is now in production.
One presentation focused on the Gen 12 Render and Timeline. Alpha 3.15 and 3.16 will have various elements of the new Gen12 render in… CI are working towards having a full Gen12 build, then phasing Vulkan in over the next few quarters.
Server Meshing is a major part of making Star Citizen an MMO. There are lots of associated features coming online with this. iCache is starting to be more used in Alpha 3.15 for example.
They are going to be sharding the Verse so that there are multiple copies of it that players move between that can share persistent data and all affect the greater simulation.
You are not locked to a shard and it’s a passive transition BUT it also allows for server to crash less and regenerate as well as save states more readily. Objects and data are very modular in their system allowing for a lot of redundancy and control.
CI are planning for some of this work to be completed internally by the end of the year in regards to Sharding, Persistence and the Replication Layer and how the Dedicated Game Servers Share data.
3.16 – Universe Sim
A major highlight of the presentations was Systemic Gameplay – Stream of Thought, this covered.
Plans for Physical Cargo, which will come in stages first making it interactable and lootable.
Cargo will need to be moved off and on your ship when you buy it, and costs / times will be associated to that based on the facilities of the location.
Reputation is one of the main ways to progress in game. Missions, Gear & Locations may require you to have certain reps… and factions will treat you differently or attack you based on your rep.
The JumpTown v2 event is coming soon (potentially Alpha 3.16) this has outposts spawn crates of drugs that players can pickup and make large profit on BUT locations change and the outpost only produces them for a limited time.
XenoThreat maybe returning again with more improvements and potentially PvP integration.
They have working prototypes of NPC escort and rescue missions too.
Selling more of our gear like looted items, weapons, FPS gear and then things like ships and their systems are starting to be more readily sell-able by players potentially later this year.
Something else planned for 3.16 is the start of some Dynamic Universe integration.
This will affect the prices of fuel and repairs, the probability and type of encounters you get will be affected by what’s happening in the area and combat beacons will be generated dynamically.
We also saw a mention of a “Pyromania” potentially a New Event Maybe in the Future – Probably including the Fire Rats in Pyro is my guess.
Kind of on a side note Alpha 3.15 went to first wave ptu at CitizenCon… we are waiting on it to go to wider PTU and live over the coming days.
So What Was Missing?
For me there was not as Much WOW Factor as previous CitizenCons… but this potentially shows CI working on getting things in to players hands… the demo wasn’t faked, they focused on presentations of things they are working on now and that the community are asking about.
There were No Squadron 42 Updates… I would of liked to of heard something BUT it’s possible we could see a little update at the end of the year… maybe?
Again there was no ToW (Theaters of War) updates… which is a shame… We know they are working on it BUT the lack of updates leaves us all a little in limbo.
Other than that I thought it was a pretty good event. Not the best event… not the worst… nothing went wrong… my Kel-to in lore ad got shown which was a highlight for me.
Also everyone that’s a “backer” so I believe thats if you have spent any money on your account, should be getting a digital goodies pack of a suit of armor, citizencon trophy and knife.