Star Citizen News – Server Meshing, New Alpha 3.18 Updates & Scorpius Antares Drama

Welcome to some more Star citizen news… we have this week is star citizen’s schedule with all thats happening this week, some new info and leaks on the Scorpius Antares which may cause a little bit of drama and a new 3.18 PTU patch as they plod towards the open PTU.

This Week in Star Citizen

Love is in the air as the ‘verse celebrated Coramor over the weekend, but the celebration for you continues this week! There’s still time to submit your entry into the 2953 Coramor Screenshot Contest, so make sure you get your shots in by the 15th for a chance to win. Head over to the Valentine’s Day landing page for details on the contest and more.

We want to thank the Wave 1 and 2 testers for all their hard work in helping us get Alpha 3.18 out to more players. Despite the challenges we faced in not being able to fully open up to all waves on Friday, the overwhelming volume of reports and player data received over the weekend has significantly helped us pinpoint and address the obstacles preventing a broader release. Our immediate priority remains to resolve the transit issues before opening up to all backers. Please stay tuned on Spectrum for further updates as we inch closer to the launch of Alpha 3.18.

Now, let’s see what’s going on this week:

Later Tuesday, the Narrative team will publish the Portfolio for Clark Defense Systems. Originally focused on environmental armour, the First Tevarin War forever changed the fate of Clark Defense Systems.

Thursday, Inside Star Citizen returns with a discussion with members of the team working on Server Meshing during their recent summit in the UK.

On Friday, Star Citizen Live at 4pm UTC, with guests to be confirmed soon.

There are some more leaks Around the Scorpius Antares the new EMP / QED Hybrid Variant that is being released with Alpha 3.18.

I saw on SCLeaks that they had posted a description of the components that the Scorpius Antares looks to have:

RSI Tidelock QED (S3 Quantum Enforcement Device)

The Tidelock Quantum Enforcement Device was internally designed by Roberts Space Industries specifically for the Scorpius Antares. The carefully crafted design contains both a Quantum Snare for pulling crafts out of quantum travel and a Quantum Dampener for preventing quantum drive activation.

RSI Magstrand (S4) EMP Burst Generator

The Magstrand from RSI is an EMP burst generator designed specifically for the Scorpius Antares. When fully charged, the device creates a powerful wave of distortion damage that can disable electric components within its blast radius.

Now this leak has added somewhat to the drama around the Antares being a bit of a power creep ship… I had recently suggested that maybe the Antares was just going to be able to dampen / jam not also snare but that leak suggests it can do both and it might just be better than the Mantis in most regards.

Star Citizen Alpha 3.18.0 PTU.8365461

We are still wave 2… plodding towards Open PTU… hopefully this week!?

The patch added a few new features:

Set up async spawn wait timer to make sure players loading into the PTU waits for locations to be fully loaded on client before entering

There have been many updates to transit/elevator timings and fixes that have gone into the build today. Please let us know in the comments if you are still seeing issues with them not appearing or running into eachother!

There were a load of other fixes too

Loot boxes spawning inside one another
Emotes not working via chat or PIT
Player HUDs appeared to be smaller and does not fit to the screen.
In Race Time Trials – There were additional incorrect checkpoints
600i Sterling paint makes ship lacked art materials
Fixed 2 Client & 3 Server Crashes

The list of known issues is still big, they have been fixing loads but adding more to the list at the same time the more egregious bugs still around are:

Can’t Buy medical supplies on some kiosks.

The VMA is blurred.

Wallace Klim is missing.

C2 Hercules / high capacity cargo ships can cause crashes at area 18 or super low frame rates.

Flying close to other ships can have you hitting invisible objects.

Issues with selling cargo.

Issues spawning ships.

Ships spawned at docking collars lack collision.

Hopefully the elevator and tram issues are fixed… but if they are not they are the worst!