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Even More Updates & Features In Star Citizen Alpha 3.17

When is 3.17 going to wider PTU… From what I’ve heard from CI there is a rough goal of trying to get 3.17 to first wave PTU Thursday / Friday if possible, but there are potential blockers with the patch. I was hoping it was going to already be out BUT it’s ready when it’s ready.

CI have given us a Patch Watch Post talking about various additions to Alpha 3.17 in regards to FPS Weapon Updates, Turrets, Desync as well as ATC, Player Injury and Survival Changes. 

Alpha 3.17 Patch Watch | Weapon Refactor, ATC, and More

FPS Weapon Refactor

This is part of the ongoing refactor to make procedural animations appear more natural when holding weapons in FPS view. For Alpha 3.17, we adjusted the weapon sway and recoil values across a wide range of rifles, SMGs, shotguns, and sniper rifles. Now, your character will move their hands and weapons in a more aesthetically pleasing way, providing some of the weight and movement you expect from Star Citizen’s weaponry.

Alongside this, we also updated some weapon recoil and behaviours. So, you can expect some of the guns to feel a lot heavier and punchier, while some will behave entirely differently than before. For example, the Gallant rifle is now a deadly three-round-burst rifle with an optional five-round burst (with longer shot downtime).

Turret Acceleration

We’ve introduced more realistic acceleration to turret movement; turrets now don’t instantly reach max speed based on the current input deflection but accelerate towards it.

Ship Positional Desync

In Alpha 3.17, we added a networking update to reduce ship-to-ship desync. We found that ships were desynchronizing, so we made changes to reduce the networking time delay so that ships are synced closer to the correct moment in time, which should reduce a lot of visible desync issues. Compared to Alpha 3.16, you should feel as though the facing direction and position of other players’ ships are much more accurate.

Air Traffic Control (ATC) Landing

We’ve added a keybind option to request ATC landing (unbound by default). To assign a keybinding please launch the game, click Options, Keybindings, and then on Advanced Controls Customization at the bottom left. In the Flight – Movement tab, you’ll find Request Landing.

Player Injury Polish Pass

We have overhauled the injury system to increase the likelihood of injuries occurring during repeated combat encounters and decrease the chance of instant death. There is now a scaling percent chance of triggering early injuries when taking damage to a body part. This is assessed each time the body part receives additional wear and has a short cooldown between triggers to prevent it from occurring too frequently.

The Bleed Actor state has been updated to be less severe. Previously, each body part would bleed individually and stack accumulative damage. Based on feedback that this was too severe, the Bleed state now prevents stacking and its damage rate has been reduced. Bleed functionality will likely change again at a later date to be affected by injuries but, for now, this change better represents the intended experience.

Balance Update for Hunger and Thirst rates

Hunger and thirst rates are now slightly more aggressive, taking a little less time to progress towards starvation and dehydration. Actions such as sprinting, jumping, punching, etc. also have a slightly increased effect on hunger & thirst. This change moves us closer to the intended experience now that inventory storage (and thus easier access to food and drink) is available.

For the rest of the Week On Thursday, CI release a new Inside Star Citizen Youtube Video that welcomes the Player Experience team and also has a Sprint Report.
You can expect a lot of 3.17 and 3.18 patch cycle features as well as probably more environment and Pyro updates.

Friday, CI are making good on the postponed Q&A with the EU Gameplay team with a Star Citizen Live on the SC Twitch channel @ 4pm UTC. I am really looking forward to this episode as it’s likely going to have some pretty juicy information on a large array of Gameplay Mechanics and CI have had a bit longer to look thru questions that have been asked on the original thread and should better be able to answer!

Boom, that’s it for your Star Citizen update today.