Hello & Welcome to This Week In Star Citizen… we take a look at this weeks schedule for what CI are putting out content wise, check in with the Alpha 3.18 PTU patch and delve into some dev responses… actually they are all from Zyloh this time, so community manager responses on some player questions!

From the CIG post This Week In Star Citizen

Last week we put out the call for the Bar Citizen World Tour 2023! Last year’s tour was incredibly successful, as we were able to see thousands of you in person for food, drinks, fun, and prizes. We’re looking for new places to visit this year, so if you’re putting an event together, let us know as soon as you can. We’re gathering suggestions on the announcement thread, so if you have one, drop us a comment!

Thanks once again to everyone who has been hammering away on the PTU. The data we have collected from the increased traffic after opening it to all waves has proven to be extremely valuable. Although we’re making good progress, there are still a few blockers preventing us from deploying to the Live servers, including transit and AI issues, as well as some server crashes. We’re in the home stretch, and the team is really excited to get this one out the door and on to the live servers. 

We’re also considering holding a couple of stress tests in the lead-up to the big launch, so be sure to stay tuned to Spectrum. Your support and participation is super appreciated!

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

Wednesday has the latest Roadmap Update… let’s hope there is a bit more this week… maybe some updates to the progress tracker as well as more on Alpha 3.19

Thursday, on this week’s episode of Inside Star Citizen, we mine for materials on the multitude of new mining improvements coming with Alpha 3.19 later this year.

On Friday, our weekly chance to meet the people behind the making of Star Citizen continues at 8am Pacific / 4pm UTC. Guests to be announced later this week. Plus, stay up-to-date with our weekly RSI Newsletter, delivered straight to your inbox.

Star Citizen Alpha 3.18.0 PTU

• “Reset to SCM” binding set vehicle speed to ~80% of the vehicles top-speed instead of the vehicles max SCM speed
• Fixed 2 Server Crashes & a Server Deadlock

It appears that there are still a load of 30ks plaguing this patch tho… let’s hope that CI can get that solved ASAP as that’s the biggest blocker for a live build.

On this week’s episode of Inside Star Citizen, we mine for materials on the multitude of new mining improvements coming with Alpha 3.19 later this year. ???? Alpha 3.19 later this year???

Is patch 3.19 coming out by the end of the year??

I think the last time I mentioned it was before Invictus.

Zyloh – Alpha 3.19 will indeed bring Invictus Launch Week, which will go down in the second half of May. The patch would need to be released ahead of that time.

New Player Experience

I have tried multiple times but its a big learning curve to start the game whens the new player experience coming out.

Zyloh – There’s a lot of work to be done on our side to make those first steps a bit easier. I think you’ll find some great improvements to ArcCorp coming in Alpha 3.19.

Small reward at Go Live for players with a lot of PTU playtime ?

Hello CIG, would it be possible and perhaps even desirable that players with a lot of playtime on the PTU receive a small boost in Start AUEC when the patch goes live?

Or is this not wanted? It would be a nice little thank you to the patience and commitment of the players and will be deleted again at some point anyway.

Zyloh – we do indeed plan to reward our Test Universe Champions once 3.18 is out the door.

We did this back in 3.17 and found it was very well received: https://robertsspaceindustries.com/comm-link/transmission/18801-Test-Universe-Champions

Here CIG rewarded a load of players for being active on the issue council, completing missions and taking out AI in a load of different categories with some ships as rewards.

So expect to see that again!

Non lethal ammo types.

So how hard would it be to add a stamina state as a knock out health bar that is effected by non lethal ammo types, (rubber bullets, bean bags, tranq, shock) for weapon groups that will down a player but they will be incapped for only 30 seconds or maybe a few mins depending on how many knock downs or if it’s a tranq ammo.

so as bounty hunting is getting its fps tacking etc, we need suppression weapon types but ammo types would be more ideal instead of wasting time making a new weapon range. Ammo types and a 2nd health bar for stamina damage is the most viable option.

a downed player can be body dragged and tractor beamed also, so this would make removing pirates or suppressing crew of a hijacked ship a gameplay mechanic.

Zyloh Responded – We have non-lethal ammo types already! Haven’t you heard of the WowBlast Desperado Toy Pistol?!

In all seriousness though, non-lethal weapons are indeed planned. A certain taser we showed off quite some time ago comes to mind:

Drake needs a dedicated Heavy fighter..

Zyloh Responds – But what would you call it?
I would actually really like a dedicated Drake Heavy Fighter… and I would love to know what you think one should be called..

Personally I like Drake Man-O-War