Star Citizen Alpha 3.17 is now FINALLY in 1st Wave PTU
Star Citizen Alpha 3.17 is now FINALLY in 1st Wave PTU… this adds Concierge and RSI Subscribers to the citizens that have access to this latest patch BUT it’s a bit different from previous build and patches this one is not for the faint of heart.
We are opening up Star Citizen Alpha 3.17 to Wave 1 testers. We want to note that the build we are rolling out is quite unstable and suffers from a variety of performance related issues. We’re going to put this one out regardless in an effort to capture/monitor needed data. In short, this build will not be for the faint of heart!
We’re also going to refrain from opening PTU Feedback threads for this build, specifically because the feedback on this build would not be as valuable as something more stable.
With all of that said, for those still interested in jumping into the fray, it is very much appreciated! Our engineers in the UK will be monitoring closely once we open up to wave 1, so your participation directly helps us resolve issues holding 3.17 back from hitting the LIVE servers.
So as you can imagine this build is a little unstable. The main testing focus for the patch is:
General Stability and backend testing, so you don’t need to leave feedback on anything accept…
The Ship Positional Desync which is also a major focus – In 3.17.0 CI have put in a networking update that should reduce ship to ship desync. They would like to know how well this update works and if there are any observable knock-ons. Relative to 3.16, you should feel as though the facing direction and position of other player ships are much more accurate and real time. They have created a feedback thread in spectrum so please let us know about any potential issues with this that could include ship jittering, rubberbanding, jittering, and other effects of that nature.
Let’s take a look at the Patch Notes for this 3.17.0 PTU patch:
They have added Maria Pure of Heart hospital in Lorville, where players can be healed and revived, as well as purchase medical supplies.
They have also Updated all current space station clinics with new additional modules and layouts to make each space station clinic unique.
There is the Initial implementation of River Tech to enhance the ecosystems of planets. This first iteration will add a single river with harvestables nearby onto microTech as a showcase with the intention of expanding on this in future releases.
We have the addition of a fully interactable coffee shop vendor in Area18. The AI will interact with three new usables – Hot drink dispenser, soft drink dispenser, and drinks fridge – to serve the player with a variety of new drinks.
Ship to Ship Refueling – Implementing the systems that will allow players flying specific ships to refuel other ships and get paid for it. The player can fill those specific ships’ fuel tanks from a station using the newly updated Rearm, Restock, and Refuel interface at Landing Zones and Space Stations. The Starfarer has 6 external fuel pods, and each individual pod can be filled with one fuel type of the player’s choosing (hydrogen or quantum). This allows players to carry varying amounts of fuel to cater to refueling needs.
You can deploy your fuel arm and then have ships request docking to receive fuel then using a mixture of the mobiGlas Vehicle Services App and the Consoles on the Starfarer pump fuel across.
I’ve just released a guide on Refuelling and exactly how to do it on my channel, go check that out.
There is Expanded Selling – Giving players the ability to sell items from their local inventory to shops using a new interface powered by Building Blocks. This supports the recently added Loot Generation feature, allowing these items to be sold for money. This includes kiosk and service support for sale of non-commodities. The shops will now dictate which items they will buy based on the type of weapons or armor that they sell. Pricing algorithm takes into account state of item, price of closest retail equivalent, etc. This update also bring in wide sweeping changes to what each weapon and armor shop sells. Many higher end items have been removed from weapon and armor shops and can now be found exclusively out in the PU through looting corpses and exploring locations for loot crates.
As part of this they also Separated Low Orbit Stations and Landing Zones to each have their own inventories AND Greatly increased landing zone storage.
Carryable Storage Containers have been added to shops in the PU, which you can put other items in.
There’s been a Major overhaul of the ship’s personal inventory storage to allow for ship components to be stored and transported inside ships. Increased the capacity of Landing zone storage from 100 SCU to 1000 SCU. Added inventory size values to all purchasable ship items along with volume and dimensions which will require certain size ships to transport larger size components that wouldn’t normally fit inside the smaller ships. Updated all ships to have more internal storage to accommodate this change. Added inventory filters for components.
- Mining Gadgets
Mining Gadgets are tools to help modify the a rock’s properties and assist the player with mining a Deposit. There are many differing gadgets that include stats that will positively or negatively modify rock Resistance, Optimal Charge Rate, Overcharge Rate, Instability, Optimal Charge Window, Optimal Charge Rate, and Shatter Damage.
You attach the gadget onto a mineable in FPS, set the singal wave on the device and then you can return to your ship and mine.
The player can attach a device physically to a mineable deposit in FPS to modify its stats, making mining either easier and safer, or quicker and riskier. Players can currently buy these in New Babbage, Lorville, and Port Olisar and attach them to their backpacks as an equipped item that can be held in the hands by pressing 4 (default keybind) and re-stored by holding R. Once a player finds a minable rock/asteroid they want to mine, they can attach the gadget onto it by walking or EVAing up to it, holding it in their hands, and holding left mouse button to place it on the rock. This will allow players to then modify the signal waves to align them on the mining gadget screen and activate it. Once back in their mining ship, the player can scan the rock and will notice an improvement based on the gadget used. Gadgets are retrievable after successfully mining but will take damage and can be destroyed if going above safe mining levels or overcharging a rock.
Some additional Vehicle Updates:
- Ground Vehicle Signature Emissions Changes
Adjusted ground vehicle signature emissions so that they are more difficult to detect at higher ranges.
- Shield Face Balance Pass
Converted heavy fighter and larger ships with size 2 shields to have front-back shield faces instead of bubble shields.
There’s been a Ship Weapons Polish Pass that has Increased stagger fire threshold to include all weapons up to 750 RPM to allow the option to be stagger fired.
They Added keybind option to request ATC landing and takeoff (unbound by default)
There’s a GPU Particle Performance Pass – they Converted Xi’an Scout and Aopoa Nox thruster particles to render through GPU instead of CPU
For Characters there is a DNA Head Textures Update – Art updates for DNA archetype heads that greatly improve the quality of all DNA heads, both for players and common NPCs. This update brings additional archetype heads, while also updating base textures, wrinkle maps, and irises for the original heads.
Player Injury Polish Pass – overhauling 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.
They Increased the decay rate of hunger and thirst values.
There has been an FPS Weapon Refactor – Ongoing updates to make procedural animations more natural for holding FPS weapons. Adjusted weapon sway and recoil values across a wide range of rifles, SMGs, shotguns, and sniper rifles.
Many Bug Fixes were made too with
Repairing and Restocking not working
Ship storage and Spawning
Quantum Drives being fiddly or not working or not being able to set destinations
There are various Elevator fixes
You shouldn’t be able to insta-death someone by shooting them and there have been various medical fixes with medbeds and respawning
Inventory delay and desync issues
There have been lots of environment fixes preventing falling thru the world or getting stuck as well as giving areas atmosphere and pressure that didn’t previously have it.
Various fixes to the law system.
There are many many more minor fixes too.
However this build is reasonably unstable and there are a load of Known Issues
- All doorways in Orison can kill players if repeatedly walked through
- Equipment can disappear when trying to equip and is lost permanently
- Custom mobiGlas Casings breaks the mobiGlas functionality
- The Player is unable to Place the Mining Gadget on a minable rock
- Large hangers are missing collisions
- Starfarer Boom Arm not repairing if destroyed
- When loading into the PU after customizing the character, the player may become stuck in a staging state
- Character customization is saved inconsistently, sometimes falling back to a miscellaneous male head
- Turret HUD – Aiming elements are lagging behind
- Shubin Interstellar kiosk in New Babbage still using the old Shop UI
- Players cannot buy components directly into ship storage (will be coming later in the PTU cycle)
- The ‘Sell’ page at Live Fire Weapons will not update properly
- ASOP Terminals can be accessed by other players while in-use by another player
- ASOP terminal displays successful retrieval with designated hangar number; however, there is no ship marker and designated hangar is empty
- Cave interiors on planets with breathable atmospheres do not have an atmosphere which will cause the player to die from suffocation
- Underwater river fog effect is missing
- AR Markers are present when opening the mobiGlas which can make it hard to read
- Ships can explode after players exit them
- The player is respawning with their loadout pre-death, and the medical gown equipped. The player also leaves no corpse present
- The player sees an infinite black screen upon death
So yeah… Alpha 3.17 is in 1st wave PTU now but it’s in quite a limited state. Expect CI to be rapidly trying to fix those known issues and get everything in a much more playable state for next week. In the mean time those of you with access can go checkout that new content BUT be aware that it’s very much early testing. And there should be some more content coming to this patch a little bit later in the PTU cycle too.