Alpha 3.18 Has A Lot More Features Than You Might Think
Star Citizen Alpha 3.18 is very nearly here after a long delay and it has a load new features… BUT it probably has a lot more features than you realise that are not listed on the Roadmap or that CI have only briefly discussed… today we are going to take a look at the mass of lesser known features that 3.18 has and how they affect the upcoming release.
The Scorpius Antares was recently announced as a new variant ship flyable in Alpha 3.18.
It’s a combination EMP / QED ship that looks like it loses it’s 2nd seat and turret in favour of those disruption systems. We don’t have a huge amount of detail on the ship BUT the hope is it isn’t overpowered… you can expect it to be on sale when 3.18 goes live.
Talking about Ships they have added Added a load to the In Game Shop
Avenger Renegade, Sabre Comet, Gladius Valiant, C8 Pisces, F7C Wildfire, MISC Hull A & RSI Scorpius as well as a few ground vehicles the STV, Centurion & Mule
CI had also originally added the Cutter, Corsair and C8R to the PTU but later removed them saying they would be in the shops a little later… still it’s a load of new ships that are obtainable in game in 3.18.
Might as well stay on the topic of ships there is some big changes to Weapons & Ballistics
Ballistic Weapon damage almost entirely passes thru shields now BUT Ship Armor (which originally was going to be 50% reduction across the board, now looks like it will be balanced per ship for the patch) has a straight damage mitigation to Ballistic… this means that each of the ballistic shots you land will be normally dealing direct damage to a ship without needing it’s shields down… Larger Ships do get somewhat pelted by ballistics and really need higher damage resistance to them imo.
Also the health of ship items has been increased to have less chance of being immediately destroyed by a single missile hit or high damage shot.
Distortion Damage is changing to not affect coolers, so you can’t deadlock ships.
Power Plants shutdown when taking too much distortion damage.
It looks like QED / EMPs might of received some love for the patch.,
There are various Law Updates & QoL improvements – if you are upto a CS2 you can still land at stations and pay off your crimes at a fine terminal you are not an auto hostile. You are less likely (hopefully) going to get an erroneous CS.
There is also a ton of new gameplay for PvP and Criminal Players with PES, salvage, looting, boarding… as well as Prison Updates & SPK Updates. New ways to escape prison, more things to do there, NPCs in the tunnels you can beatdown and rob.
SPK is basically running a constant PvE Jumptown for criminal players, you can dispense confiscated items that are worth a lot. There are some defences and guards… and once you take down a boss guard you can access the dispenser for loots.
It’s the only place to hackdown a criminal rating. BUT also players will get missions to come stop rampant criminals in these areas in some lawful PvP missions.
One of the most exciting features of 3.18 is the Soft Destruction System.
This has ships mostly not entirely explode when reduced to 0 health BUT persist as a disabled ship with the cargo intact… NPCs on board are killed by this BUT player crew will survive… enabling interesting gameplay, boarding, rescue, looting all to occur.
Stations don’t work and all doors are unlocked during this process.
The is Crafting on Salvage Ships, the dispensers in the back of the Reclaimer / Vulture allow you to turn salvaged material into Multi-Tools, Gravity / Salvage Attachments as well as RMC canisters to be used as repair material… which is just incredibly useful.
Jumptown 2.1 is a new event that’s coming to Alpha 3.18… well a rescaled one… the Jumptown locations have doubled in size and are very different, there are 2 dispensaries at the sites as well… this along with the other changes with PES, soft destruction, salvage and more in the patch should make for a more interesting event.
And that’s worth mentioning 3.18’s Effects on XenoThreat & Other Events… PES, soft destruction, salvage really does make a huge difference to XenoThreat and the way it plays… and even SoO… ships that get shot down don’t necessarily blow up when they land… so marines will more often survive. It’s all really good fun!
There have been a load of AI/NPC & Network Updates going into 3.18… there might also be some additional bugs with the patch and PES but when the NPCs work they work well, on the SoO platform missions they are much more fluid and dangerous… this is true of dogfighting too (when the AI are working properly) Xenothreat tests have been a ton of fun with a huge amount of NPCs ships constantly attacking!
There are a load of Arena Commander Improvements too, ahead of the larger updates that CI are planning to make later in the year for the mode. It may well bring some people back to the mode.
Race Tracks are quite cool POI… even if you aren’t interested in racing, you can go exploring there instead.
There are a loads of Kiosk QoL Updates buying / selling / spawning and moving terminals.
BOOM!