Star Citizen Now Looks to Increase Server Sizes for 3.17.2 Release
Welcome to some more Star Citizen You can expect Alpha 3.17.2 going to live any day now, could be later today, could be thursday it’s in the hands of the Release Candidate Gods, where CI will look at a PTU patch and go… this is good enough for live.
There is some great news about Server Population Caps and my dreams my be coming true CI said:
Last week, in preparation for the upcoming launch of Alpha 3.17.2, we opened up the Public Test Universe to all players. Those of you who joined the PTU will have also seen that we tested several new player caps from 75 to 120 players per server. Now, I know that we previously said we had no plans for an increase in player cap on the live servers… however the results of said tests have been so promising, that things have changed. For this reason, we are now exploring increasing the cap for the live release of Alpha 3.17.2. We’re still testing/reviewing and will share more information, including what cap we end up going with, very soon.
We don’t know by how much they will rise server caps by for live if they do decide to but expect in the range of new caps being 75 – 100.
I saw a lot of conversations on Spectrum and Reddit of… well if they increase server sizes we should get those sweet capital ships like the Idris and Javelin in our hands soon right?
I actually think the size of those ships and having a lot on a server in players hands could cause a few issues. I think it’s going to be a little while longer before we are able to spawn those ourselves… partly because the setup for them is unlikely completed either.
And realistically we want much larger servers and server meshing to make those ships make sense in the Verse.
I do want to make it clear, that raising the server caps could cause a lot of problems with stability, degradation and unforeseen bugs and the fact that CI are considering raising it on the live build is a really good indication that there aren’t many problems… at least none that are apparent yet…
We have also have a new Star Citizen Alpha 3.17.2t PTU which is pretty close to being a release candidate. There were a few bug fixes
- They Removed 50 player party max text… as they are testing higher servers limits than that.
- Zeta-Prolanide Salvage Claim mission boxes should now all spawn correctly for the player to retrieve
- AI should no longer become stuck in environment and float upwards
- Fixed an issue causing elevators in multiple ships to not function fully
- Players should no longer experience Blinding Lights during planetary flight
- Fixed 4 Client & Server Crashes
They also ran another Siege Test.
There are only a few Known Issues now and some of them aren’t really too major.
- Ships floating in the hangar when stored with the engines left on then retrieved again.
- The Khartu-Al spawn on the hangar floor sideways.
- Some Delivery Boxes Cannot Be Placed to Progress Mission.
- All weapons are held like a pistol whilst moving in EVA.
- Bunker Missions are sometimes missing NPC spawns.
- Weapons holster or un-holster randomly.
- Ships on landing pads can end up in “unknown state”.
Star Citizen Alpha 3.17.2 is in a fantastic place at the moment.
It’s a patch that was supposed to be a more minor one to tide us over until 3.18s release BUT has a treasure trove of features.
But the improved netcode and potential server size increase has been the crown jewel for me. It’s made the Siege Of Orison significantly more fun. But being able to have a lot of players in an area and them to be less jittery and janky than ever before is just great.
The AI aren’t perfect but they are at least not entirely broken. And overall you get the most playable patch for Star Citizen yet. CI are still testing server sizes and netcode / server tweaks so hopefully they won’t break anything… and in fact make everything even better.
Later Tuesday, the Narrative team brings us the monthly Galactapedia update.
Inside Star Citizen is back from hiatus this Thursday, and looks at the Centurion AA Vehicle for Alpha 3.17.2 and new updates to river tech coming online in 3.18.
We will have a SCLive on Friday on the SC Twitch Channel but we don’t know the theme or time of that episode yet. For RSI Subscribers the new issue of Jump Point also will be turning up with a treasure trove of deeper information on the games development.