Star Citizen Alpha 3.16 Now Live

Star Citizen Alpha 3.16 is now LIVE so what do you need to know about the release and what’s new?

There hasn’t been a Persistent Reset so you should have all your hard earned ships and aUEC from 3.15.

JumpTown 2.0 is a new dynamic event in 3.16 and where a lot of the focus of the patch is.

There are 3 Drug Labs that can individually become active as part of the event.

They produce narcotics and you can confiscated them turning them in to local security at the closet Planetary Space Stations or sell them to smugglers at GrimHex.

You can grab the mission under the Priority Tab of you MobiGlas in general or Personal. This will give you the HUD marker

Once you arrive at the lab, your goal is to find the drug spawner inside . This device will pump out one box of contraband every 30 seconds. This timer doesn’t start until you grab the previous box, so you’ll have to hold your position against anyone else looking for the same payday if you want to maximize your earnings.

There is a big old schedule with when the event is on in a mix of 6 or 48 hour bursts starting the 23rd of December.

Also the NineTails Lockdown is also coming back from December 28th.

That is a lot of Eventy goodness.

At some point you can expect events like these to be dynamic rather than scheduled.

There is a Jumptown 2.0 ship sale going on as well from Dropships ot air support to ground cover there is a lot to purchase… but pretty much all of it can be grabbed in game too and it gives you something to actually send your aUEC on!

The Cutlass Steel is flyable in 3.16 as well and it’s available from $210 warbond or $235 store credit. There are also a selection of Cutlass Paints in store currently.

The video and role of the Steel I really like… tho it’s a little over the top with room on the ship for over 50% of a servers worth of players currently on a small ship.

It’s got room for 18 marines, a pilot, a copilot / gunner, a separate manned turret, 5 s 1 mannable door turrets and 2 beds.The Q&A states that is pretty much a cutlass black component wise. The ship has no dedicated cargo storage. Short Range, high capacity light assault dropship. Tho a little on the pricey side… I’d prefer multiple Cutlass Blacks.

Beyond that there is various other features in the patch.

There has been a big overhaul of the Grav-lev mechanics, you can use control and space to set the bikes height with being closer to the ground meaning you go a lot fast BUT you should have a much better, less glitchy and less collide experience. Doing jumps on your bike should be possible as it is cushioned on impact too.

The Law System has seen many improvements, you can retaliate against targets that are firing at you and friends more readily without getting crime stats when not appropriate. 

You’ll get notified of the player or AI name when referring to crimes.

Criminals we have a less forgiving FF allowance.

Prison Tresspass zones, reducing their size and severity, allowing bounty hunters to fight there BUT not camp. Locking and continuing to lock ships with missiles will make you hostile to them.

There are Bounty Targets above Planetary Locations now.

The Area 18 Hospital has been added.

Unfortunately the Ares Ion Balance pass has made it into the live build in the worst possible timeline giving it a higher RPM and lower per hit damage as well as changing is aiming… I don’t like the changes personally. But it’s alpha… it will change more in the future.

Turrets on the Redeemer move a bit slower.

They’ve also Tweaked mounted guns to be more in line as an infantry suppression weapon. You’ll be able to fire them for longer periods of time and they will be less accurate but more pew pew.

The Dying Star AC map has had updates making it much larger… really it’s a whole new map replacing the old one.

There have been a massive amount of bug fixes especially with UI, mobiGlas, Bounties and mission accessibility among others. I have yet to play enough of the live build to know about stability yet…

On a side note… The new Hover Bike was also revealed as well it appears to be quite a chonky CNOU bike BUT it’s not currently in the 3.16 build… maybe we will see it in 3.16.1?

You can see in the trailers of 3.16 that they had wanted to get the new Derelict POI, Puzzles, trip mines and rewards for ground exploration in BUT they have slipped to 3.16.1 which you can expect probably in January for 2022.