Star Citizen Alpha 3.18.0 LIVE Patch Notes

Star Citizen Alpha 3.18 has been released to live and in this video we are going to delve into the Patch Notes For The Build… if you’d prefer a much briefer summary or tutorial for the patch then checkout the other videos on my channel.

There is a Full Wipe with this patch including items, aUEC, Ships & Reputation.

You do keep all items that are part of your account, so items built with real money / promos etc…

Physicalized Cargo T0 – This refactor of the ship cargo system allows both found and purchased cargo to be picked up, moved around, and placed into the cargo grid of a ship. The Cargo system has been completely re-written and with this refactor, the cargo boxes that you see in the ship, are actual, individual boxes which can be added to and removed from the grid via the use of a tractor beam and snap to the grid for perfect placement. As part of this refactor, we’ve rebuilt the Commodity Kiosk UI in Building Blocks which will be used to buy/sell cargo to/from the ship/player inventories, and had to update not only the standard trading commodities, but also the harvestable and mineable entities.

Vehicle Soft Death – Introduction of vehicle ‘soft death.’ Now, if one of a ship’s critical components is destroyed, the ship will remain intact but stranded, leaving its contents and crew hanging in the balance. Soft death is key to the Salvage career, as abandoned vehicles can be ripped apart for serious profit by ships like the Aegis Reclaimer and all-new Drake Vulture. During ship Soft Death, players on board will not be killed and left stranded in the nonfunctional ship with MFD, weapons, engines, and thrusters being disabled. Soft Death will allow players to exit pilot and turret seats to leave or enter the ship.

Security Post Kareah Reactivation – Security Post Kareah will be taking a more central role in Stanton’s security. Crusader Security have moved in a full-time staff and have begun storing confiscated contraband aboard. The station will be off limits to all civilians, unless given prior authorization. Kareah has undergone a full art redesign polish. This includes a new evidence and contraband processing office addition with interactable contraband dispenser, new traversal pathways, new color schemes and branding, and updated set dressing and cover around the whole interior. The interior and exterior of Kareah have been updated with armed admin AI and reinforcements including new crusader security loadouts and police detectives in kevlar.

Inside Kareah, criminal players will now be able to trigger a boss to spawn after killing several AI. After this boss has been killed players will be able to loot them and find a code on their body that will unlock a terminal inside the evidence storage room. After unlocking, players will be able to activate the contraband machine to dispense drugs. The player will be able to keep getting drugs out of the dispenser until a set amount of items are generated (randomized amount between 15 and 20 items). Once all items have been retrieved, the security terminal will lock itself, and upon leaving, the contraband room the door should lock not allowing players access to the area.

Along with the Security Post Kareah Reactivation, we are introducing a new mission type called Retake Location. Initially only at Security Post Kareah, this new mission type is generated for players when a location deems itself under attack (e.g. when X amount of a location’s population is killed). This mission will generate for players outside of the location and will allow players to go to that location and lawfully enter and remove all hostile attackers. Each attacker a player kills will give them a bonus after completing the mission. Any players in the area contributing to the mission will get part of the overall reward.

Platform Assault on Orison – Addition of Bounty, Assassinate, Clear All, and other missions that take place on the Inspiration Park platforms created for Siege of Orison. This includes eliminate all missions similar to the current UGF missions. For these islands the player will be tasked with killing everyone in a given building. These Mercenary missions available from Crusader Industries will have three difficulty curves, ranging from an easy clear of one building, to a hard clear of three buildings. Similar to eliminate all missions, Eliminate Specific Missions will task the player with killing single or multiple Bosses based on difficulty. For players to qualify and receive these missions they first need to complete Security Work Assessment for Crusader Security.

New Missions: Time Trials Racing T0 – Racing time trials have finally come to the PU! Players will be able to test their skills versus set times on the newly added Racing tracks around landmarks in the PU, earning rewards based on performance and even unlocking more tracks as they progress. Players can pick up the first racing mission for the outskirts of Lorville and with enough racing prowess, get reputation to move onto the rest of the Time Trials around Stanton! This T0 implementation is focused on Ships and includes reputation progression tracks. (Note for PTU: Currently after completing the Lorville racetrack Time Trial, reputation will unlock the rest of the racetracks at once. This is intended to help test them during PTU and will have normal track unlocking later on in PTU)

Salvage – Hull Scraping – The first implementation of Salvage into the persistent universe, which includes both hull stripping as well as repair. This includes both performing hull stripping and repairs by hand, as well as hull stripping using the systems aboard the Drake Vulture (which is also new with the patch) and Aegis Reclaimer. Using highly advanced compression technology, these tools can break down ship and vehicle exteriors, converting them into Recycled Material Composite (RMC), and store them in the canisters attached. The player then has the option to either use this material to repair their ship using the FPS multi-tool by filling in damaged areas or they can sell this material as a commodity. This feature also has the addition of many new, discoverable derelict ships in space around places like asteroid belts with many more common smaller ships and much rarer larger ships for players to salvage.

Vehicle Hull Scraping – Salvaging while in a vehicle is a mode like mining. To be able to scrape the hull of a newly “found” wreck, the target must have it’s shields turned off (Indicator in UI will informs about shield state). To enter and exit Salvage mode hit ‘m’ (Default keybind). Players can right click to cycle through attached Beams in the sub item slot. By Left Clicking players can activate and deactivate the scraper beam. There are 2 modes players can be in while salvaging by pressing ‘G’ (Default keybind), Converging and Fixed Mode. Fixed mode acts like weapons and points the salvage beams directly where the player aims the ship while Converging mode lets players gimbal the beams independently. Left alt + Mouse wheel will move converging point while Left alt + Right click will switch between vertical and horizontal converging mode. Players will need to manually remove filled storage boxes from the ship’s salvaging area using a using a handheld tractor beam or by converting it into RMC canisters for repairing.

FPS Hull Scraping & repair – To utilize FPS Hull scraping mechanics, players will first need to acquire a Grin Multi-tool, the Salvage and repair module for it, and the ammunition canister for the salvage and repair module. As will ship hull scraping, players will be able to strip away the hull of a ship while it’s shields are down (Indicator in UI will informs about shield state) and store the Recycled Material Composite (RMC) in the canister. Players can cycle between salvage and repair mode by pressing ‘B’ (Default keybind) a which will allow them to either scrape away materials or use collected materials to repair the hull of a ship.

Sandbox Prison Activities – Expansion of prison gameplay with a new suite of missions and sandbox activities to give inmates more opportunities to earn merits or to aid in their escape from prison. The prison and it’s mine are now filled with an emergent population of prison guards and civilian prisoners’ with lootable items. Players will be able to loot contraband located throughout the prison mines and from bodies and sell to the prison kiosk for merits. This includes a brand new Prison Escape Delivery Mission, where players have to find and loot an item in the escape route and then deliver it at the nearest outpost, upon doing this the player then will have their criminal record wiped by the mission giver. Players will now incur a punishment for suiciding in the prison, however if they retrieve their gear from their dead body they can pay off this merit value instantly.

Daymar Crash Site – The Addition of a large derelict settlement on Daymar using parts of the StarRunner & 600i, as well as some habs adapted to the biome, to create a point of interest with included missions.

Sand Cave Archetype – The addition of the new Sand Cave Archetype across multiple planets and moons in the Stanton System, including Hurston, Magda, Ita, Daymar, and Wala each with their own unique sand cave formations. These new sand caves include the brand new land crustacean known as the Stone Bug with it’s new harvestable, the Stone Bug Shell.

Small Derelict Outpost Expansion in Stanton

Addition of 30 new, small Derelict Outpost locations across more planet-side locations in the Stanton System. These are additional variants of those already placed on microTech in 3.17. Each location features a collection of ruined outposts in varying degrees of degrade along with missions and AI inhabitants.

New Rivers in Stanton

Adding dozens of additional rivers and lakes with biome-specific object rulesets around bodies of water and distributing these around microTech and Hurston.

Restricted Areas v3 – Complete rework of the restricted area tech around landing zones. Instead of ships being autopiloted away or destroyed upon entering a Restricted Area, players are now given more freedom to fly and maneuver around cities. Upon entering a Restricted Area, players will now be given a text warning, a countdown, and an arrow pointing towards the exit. If the countdown ends, or they go further into the Restricted Area, the player will be teleported to a safe location, their ship will be impounded and they will receive a misdemeanor crime stat. This feature also applies to Ground Vehicles. Players outside of a vehicle won’t receive a countdown but will be teleported to safety if they venture too far into a Restricted Area.

Caterpillar Crash Sites Improvements V1 – Added base AI to populate caterpillar crash sites. Added kill specific and kill all missions. Including a general polish pass and visual improvements.

Derelict Settlements – Reclaimer V2 – General polish pass to the Reclaimer including additional buildings and general visual improvements.

Stanton Racetrack Locations – Addition of many new racing locations into Stanton. With this update we are including 6 new and community driven racing locations into the Persistent Universe with updated assets and set dressings to make each racing location a unique and rewarding experience for players to test their racing skills. These Racing Tracks include: Hurston – Lorville Gateways (The Start of the Time Trial missions that leads to further track unlocks), Daymar – Yadar Valley, Orison – Caplan Stadium, Grim HEX – Miner’s Lament, Euterpe – Icebreaker, and AcrCorp – The Sky Scraper.

Greycat PTV Race Track – Implementing a race track into the Orison Vision Center on Crusader in the same location as the most recent Invictus Launch Week, designed for the Greycat PTV.

Persistent Entity Streaming – Implementation of the Persistent Entity Streaming core technology into Star Citizen. Making use of services such as the Entity Graph and Replication Layer, this will allow every dynamic object in a shard to persist within that shard, irrelevant of whether it is owned or held by a player.

Courier Delivery Missions Update – Addition of new Local Courier Delivery Missions around each Stanton planet system. These new missions are based around the local delivery companies for each planet system in Stanton and give players a more focused area for deliveries. There are 4 new Delivery reputations based on the area you are in. Red Wind Local Delivery, Ling Family Local Delivery Route, Covalex Local Delivery Route, and UDM Local Delivery Route. These new missions can be acquired after completing the intro missions for the local delivery company in your area.

QoL Inventory Updates – Added ability for long term persistence (LTP) items to stack in inventory. Added transfer all button to inventories that work based on selected filters. Added visual feedback attempting to quick move an item that won’t fit in the target inventory. Implemented toggle option to the top right of the player’s inventory to always show/hide item ports for equipping gear.

Law System Improvements – We have overhauled many aspects of the law system to be less punishing for players with lower level crimes.

Players with a Crime Stat (CS) 1-2 can no longer be attacked lawfully nor will they be shot on sight and can still land at Stations & LZs.

The vast majority of crimes can now be paid off as fines rather than needing prison time. However, more serious crimes are very expensive. All crimes accumulate many minor crimes, you will still reach CS3 though you can still pay it off should you be able to reach a fine terminal (difficult as you will be shot at by defenses and not be permitted to land). As is the case already, security will attack a CS3 player while requesting their surrender and players can power down their ship to surrender.

Players are now able to surrender at Fine Kiosks found in rest stops and landing zones, should they not be able to afford to pay off their fines. As before, surrendering gives the player a 25% discount of prison sentence. We have lowered the threshold for CS1 so that it displays when the player gets any minor crime. This is to show the player they have a law issue that needs taking care of. The threshold for CS2 remains where it was and warns players they are either getting dangerously close to CS3 or, if they got it from a single crime, tells them that was a particular serious crime.

Players have 1 week to pay off fines for a more reasonable price. Should they allow the fine to escalate, it doubles in price. Given we have made hacking Crime Stats more challenging by limiting it to Kareah, we have greatly reduced the time it takes to remove each infraction.

Balance Tweaks – Greatly increased Ballistic weapon shield penetration. Ship armor now grants 50% physical resistance, increasing ship durability against incoming ballistic fire. EM and IR adjustments to shields to support more accurate missiles, reduced overall signal strength, and made them more consistent. Increased shield down delay from 5 to 10 seconds. Distortion does not scale the power output of power plants. Distortion weapon explosive radius has been increased. Distortion weapon heat development has been decreased. Distortion health pool has been increased, it should take a good while longer now to disable a ship. Power plants will turn off binary and take 300 seconds to recover. Coolers cannot be distorted. Item health has been balanced so that a single missile hit cannot instantly kill them. Updated component damage for coolers and power plants.

Other Changes

Request landing has a new default keybinding of ALT + N
Disabled bed log around Outposts
Improved layout of commodity price alerts journal entry to list by commodity type rather than location
Removed Physical Pressure from Distortion Weapons
Scoprius Antares QED / EMP Fighter
Parallax Interior Window Shader for Buildings Around All Landing Zones
NPC Loadout Updates – New Shop Keeper, Civilian Outfits & Armors
They’ve Enabled Gen12 Rendering, Physics Optimizations, Server Performance Improvements and Updated Commodity Kiosks to Use Building Blocks Tech
Bed log out is now blocked in landing areas
Claim Jumper Missions have been temporarily disabled for 3.18
Ground Vehicle Speed Changes
Greatly increased the hull health of the 600i

Arena Commander 3.18 Updates

With 3.18 Arena Commander (inc. Star Marine) has been the start of a focus of Quality of Life and bug fixing following discussions & feedback from players. As well as the successful integration of Persistence Entity Streaming into the module. We are extremely excited to elevate AC to a better state and encourage players to contribute to IC Reports and Feedback threads so we can continue improvements to the Arena Commander module.

There are balance and scoring chances

Many New Ships are now rentable and useable in AC

Usage of items should not affect its availability.

Increased player limit of FreeFlight from 8 to 24

Decreased required player count for Last Stand from 6 to 2

Duel, Battle Royale & Squadron Battle have been limited to Light & Medium Combat Ships

Dying Star has undergone a visibility pass, reducing cloud density, glare and size of smoke particle effects which lead to poor visibility and motion sickness for some players

There are various known issues with the patch and CI are planning on an Alpha 3.18.1 patch ASAP to address some of these issues and various server problems.

There were also a lot of problems with players connecting and login queues.

Boom, that’s it for your deeper delve into the Alpha 3.18 patch notes…