Star Citizen Alpha 3.18 Preparing To Open Up To More Waves
Welcome some more Star citizen News… We have what’s happening this week in star citizen as we move into February, the latest Alpha 3.18 Updates and some dev responses too…
Let’s start with this week in Star citizen CI Said : Happy Monday, everyone!
Or shall we say, Moon Day? Yes, we’re mad about moons this week as we celebrate the final days of Red Festival 2953! For those who haven’t yet, you can still claim your collectible crowers to adorn your cockpits. Also, if you’re feeling confident that your envelope-collecting exploits will eclipse everyone else’s, you can show them off in the currently ongoing Moons of Fortune contest, and maybe even snag a cool prize!
Racing enthusiasts that are itching to push the pedal to the metal can look forward to two upcoming community-organized events, the Crux Cup and 2953 System 7. Registrations are still open, so don’t forget to head on over to their official sites to sign up and show us your driving skills.
For those in Florida, USA, this weekend, swing by the Tampa BBQ Citizen Expo Party in Clearwater for two days of Star Citizen goodness, starting on Friday, February 3. We hear it’s going to be a smashing good time! If you’re organizing an event or are simply looking for a get-together near you, check out the community-run Bar Citizen site.
In Alpha 3.18 news, as mentioned in last week’s Star Citizen Live: All About Alpha 3.18, the dev team is making some tweaks in preparation for opening up further testing waves in the PTU, so keep your eyes peeled.
Now, let’s see what’s going on this week:
This Tuesday, the Narrative team brings us the latest monthly Galactapedia update.
Wednesday will see the publish of January’s PU Monthly Report Comm-Link, and the Squadron 42 report sent out via email. Stay in the loop with the latest development information by subscribing to the Squadron 42 newsletter.
Thursday’s episode of Inside Star Citizen is All About Arena Commander. Meet the newly formed Arena Commander Feature team as they take you through some of the first exciting changes coming online later this year.
On Friday, Star Citizen Live will have members of the Mission Feature team discussing their work on Alpha 3.18 and beyond. Catch it on twitch.tv/starcitizen at 16:00 UTC / 8:00 am Pacific. You’ll also receive our weekly RSI Newsletter delivered to your inbox.
CI also confirmed some details of their next roadmap update with CIG’s Jake Acappella saying: Hey folks! We’re planning on an updated view of 3.19 with our next roadmap publish on February 8. Being said, Inside Star Citizen is covering 3.19 currently! Definitely check it out if you haven’t: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c3z9C-VuEgQ
- Reverted GForce Values back to 3.17 model
- Added Avenger Renegade, Sabre Comet, Gladius Valiant, C8 Pisces, F7C Wildfire, MISC Hull A, STV, and RSI Scorpius into in-game shops… this combined with the other ships added recently in the 3.18 PTU should mean all ships other than the vulture and some promo ships that are flyabe are available in the in game shops.
Widescreen QoL Changes
Addition of some quality of life changes for Widescreen monitor players. Keep vertical FOV but scale horizontal FOV if resolution becomes ultra-wide. Updated FOV slider with new values for current resolution. Added new 32:9 Aspect Ratio in FovGlobalSettings which had a too narrow one being calculated resulting in a clipped visor. Completely disabled the behaviour that the chat moves down when entering a ship, since it’s not very useful and can even be reset when resolution changes. Inventory overhaul for widescreen with items and scaling no longer being cropped on ultra widescreen resolutions.
Coincidentally I saw a Spectrum thread with CIG talking about multi monitor and ultra wide support, in the short term it won’t change at least in the way they do it now BUT Silvan said they are planning to integrate Vulkans Multiview eventually and look at better rendering to multiple monitors as well.
Bug Fixes
- When flying near another ship, ship seems to hit an invisible box that kicks it in random directions
- Caterpillar body has a large Visarea when viewed from the Cockpit
- Refinery Decks have multiple ReplaceMe textures
- Prison escape mission is lacking text on the waypoint for the Datachip collection
- If player enters prison naked they will leave prison with prison loadout equipped
- Vehicle tires sink into planet surface and are no longer able to move
- Players can sell unequipped stock vehicle components and claim the vehicle to repeat sale indefinitely
- There are numerous panels and doors throughout the 890j that exhibit VisArea Issues
- If a player with CS3+ pays off their fines they are still able to surrender to the terminal
- Accepting a mission while in party removes party markers
- The Mission Boarding Action in Progress can become uncompletable
- Crusader C2 Hercules – Some sections of the hull are exceedingly difficult/impossible to salvage
- The boss does not spawn in Kareah after a number of enemies have been eliminated
- Retrieving a ship can potentially spawn it on the wrong pad instead of where it should be
- Mercenary Missions – Remaining Hostile NPCs Not Spawning In
- Security Post Kareah – Evidence room datapad will not display the 0 in the door code if it is the first digit
- Fixed 6 Client Crashes, 10 Server Crashes & a Server Deadlock
There were a few Spectrum threads I saw with dev responses that ill summarise:
I saw in a thread CI talked about the new player experience:
We’ve got a New Player Experience initiative in the works as we speak! We’ll be talking more about it soon, and you can follow it on Progress Tracker as well.
We know that CI plan to implement a New Player Experience this year that would take new players thru the basics of their first time playing… and potentially this will grow into something that teaches that basics of all game mechanics while you play.
There was a thread Can we get some girly stuff in the pledge shop?
There’s a serious lack of pinks and purples. I would definitely buy some girl themed paints and gear.
Jake Acapella responded – Stay tuned…
Zin very much loves purple… so she is happy about this…
I like the idea of more variety! But I want to be able to paint, design and apply skins easily and to my own items.