Star Citizen Alpha 3.18 – A Big Focus On New FPS Combat Missions

Welcome to some more Star Citizen. Today we’re talking about New Investigation Missions CI are building out. Various New Missions & Gameplay coming to Alpha 3.18 as well as some general improvements to the game.

In the recent Star Citizen Live: Mission Commission we got to talk to part of the Mission Features Team (MFT):

They are trying to build modular missions which can fill the verse but also have them story rich. Investigation missions are the focus for this currently. A lot of the tech they need they have already and the MFT can build these out without disrupting other teams.

With these missions you won’t be given an precise answer to what happened or an instant completion when you do X… you’ll have to collect various pieces of evidence, read thru data, scan, look around and then come to a conclusion, very little if any hand holding… based on how you do will affect your payout and any bonuses.

This investigation mission set of missions is only being worked on by a couple of devs and the rest of the MFT peeps are building up other interesting mission sets.

Later the props and other teams might get involved.

They said that they see Investigation Missions as a happy diversion rather than a full time in game role. There will only be a limited amount of modular pieces, they will be adding more modules and adding more story elements continuously however… you would be able to beat the system if you just focused on these… that said… if you want to be a speed run detective… sounds like you could do that.

The Siege of Orison was built with little hand holding in mind, give players the tools and a basic goal and some objectives that update when someone completes them and then let them figure the rest out. With Investigations they don’t want them to be easy.

Hints will be given but they won’t mark each objective in the world for you, unless you’ve scanned them down.

They talk about phasing out markers where sensible BUT obviously they want waypoints, scanning ect…

There is a new mobiGlas coming in the future, they are building all their missions to work for both the old and new one…

There are New Missions coming to the Orison Platforms in SC Alpha 3.18… a mixture of combat ones, basically SoO light using the same platforms that Siege uses when the Siege event isn’t on.

The had originally built Siege to be completed in around an hour… very well organised groups can do it in 15 mins.

There will be various combat missions, they describe a mission with an island that’s taken over by ninetails, with 3 of it’s buildings infested with them, it’s intended to be down with a group of players, trying to potentially clear all 3 buildings at once. There are multiple entry points to these islands, via ship, via shuttle, you can land on a buildings roof

Hopefully the Gen12 renderer will improve performance for Orison and SC 3.18 in general.

There are big changes coming to SPK (Security Post Kareah) and criminality in 3.18.

CS (Crime Stat) 1 & 2 will now not mark you as a criminal and you can pay these “crimes” off at a fine terminal, you can land anywhere without getting shot at basically, you can also surrender at these terminals to get 20% off your sentence. CS 3 and above will be a bit more difficult to deal with, SPK is the only place to hack down your rating… They are hoping this focuses PvP players and criminals more into this area.

You can also make a lot of money by stealing contraband / confiscated goods from SPK… the dispenser there is very similar to a JumpTown event but you can trigger it any time.

There is a prison mission they’ve been working on too, to escape prison and wipe your CS.

They wanted to improve various gameplay at Prisons.

They showed some of this gameplay, there are NPCs now moving around the mines, they will drop loot if killed, you will however extend there sentence.

If you get very deep into the mines there is a dark zone and Ruto can contact you… he wants a datachip that’s somewhere in the prison. Upload that data and he’ll then wipe you crimestat. It’s likely the dude that originally had the chip died while he was trying to escape… so you’ll need to go into the escape route and find him… the body can spawn in one of many locations. You’ll then want to escape prison.

They’ve put some weapons in the garage of the prison.

Take the rover to a nearby derelict and transmit the data. However there are security forces around the wreck… so you’ll need to take them out. It’s intended to be completed solo.

In the mission there was also a stealable Cutlass.

There is a spawn terminal at nearby barton flats now too.

So now all the prison gameplay can be done solo if you want.

There are a few other tentative missions and features for 3.18. They are working on a more indepth multiple objective mission for some of those siege islands that they want to get in if possible… no promises if they will make 3.18.

They said Star Citizen Alpha 3.18 Live is roughly scheduled for December 8th… but then said they don’t really know when the date is… so… early – mid December?

As a QoL improvement ASOP terminals will only show ships / vehicles you can spawn at that location.

Mission Rewards, aUEC, rep ect… will be heavily reworked and changed in the future.

You may see works in progress or prototypes of missions with very low payouts… they are totally irrelevant and typically just a random number put in or duplicated from another mission for testing.

Some Other Bits…

CIG will be talking about the Cargo Refactor & RaStar (The Outpost and eventually Base Builder Tool).

The IAE starts November 18th and is going to be a mega ship sale and freefly event… checkout our video on that.

We’ve got a video on the Gen12 Rednerer coming in Alpha 3.18 and work CI are doing on the massive new Underground facilities.

And Boom that’s it!