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Star Citizen Alpha 3.19 NOW Wave 1 PTU

Star Citizen Alpha 3.19 is now out to Wave 1 PTU, it’s testing various features and updates BUT not all of what the patch has to offer has turned up yet or is ready for testing. It’s a bit of a surprise that it’s already out to 1st wave PTU but that’s potentially because CI want to push it out to Live as soon as is sensible and then be ready for fleet week.

The patch addresses A LOT of problems that the 3.18 build had.

And tries to get the game in a good state for Fleet Week and various new gameplay.

The Testing Focus Currently

  • General Stability
  • Lorville Skyline 2.0
  • Salvage Contract Missions
  • Tractor Beam – T0.5 – Item Attaching and Detaching
  • Ghost Hollow Reclaimer PVP Mission
  • Mission Density Management

And we can see there are some Coming Soon to PTU

  • Mining Balancing v01
  • New Player Experience at Area 18

So what new features do we have in the patch?

Mission – Salvage Contracts – T0 – Addition of Salvage Contracts to the PU. This new contract called the Salvage Resource Rush is a mission where a faction or mission giver requests the scrapping of a derelict or husk in their possession, either on the ground at a junkyard or in space in a debris field. Players accepting the mission are tasked to scrap the derelict to the best of their ability and sell the RCM to a shop. Once the player is finished with the scrapping of the derelict, they can complete the mission in their MobiGlass. This mission will have three variations:

Lawful: a lawful mission giver or organization requests the scrapping of a derelict. The location is secured by the organization with orbital sentries or Centurions.

Lawless: a mission giver requests the scrapping of a derelict. The location is not secured in any way, risk of being raided by pirates is present.

Unlawful: an unlawful mission giver or organization asks for the salvage of a recent battle, which is not accessible to civilians/cordoned off. The location is secured by hostile orbital sentries or Centurions.

Ghost Hollow Reclaimer PVP Mission – Adding a new mission type to the Ghost Hollow crash site on MicroTech. Making use of the comm-array as well as AI nav-mesh, this mission type will create PVP encounters where players will need to fight for control over terminals for a chance at big credit payouts.

This is a mission with Outlaw UEC terminals in the Reclaimer derelict. When active, they generate UEC that anybody can withdraw, creating PVP encounters between players trying to control the terminals (which are also guarded by Outlaws AI). To start the terminals, the comms array must be disabled. If that is done, the terminals can be activated in the tower next to the derelict ship. To start this event at the Ghost Hollow Crash Site, a player will need to disable the Stanton4 comm array above MicroTech which will enable the terminals and a Mobiglas communication is sent to all nearby players. (The Feature is Not ready for feedback and testing)

Lorville Skyline 2.0 – The major reworking the Lorville skyline to better fit the scale of the city and its distinctive buildings. The goal is to create the visual identity for the high-end, low-end, and generic branding of the city skyline and add navigational signage around the landing zone.

  • Added Updated Volumetric Atmosphere and Clouds to ArcCorp
  • Performance Polish Pass for Atmospheres and Clouds
  • Moved Location of Area18 ASOP Terminals Closer to the Hangar Elevators

Tractor Beam – T0.5 – Item Attaching and Detaching – Enabling hand held tractor beams to attach and detach items such as ship components and allowing players to sell those salvaged items for profit. This iteration of the tractor beam gameplay will add the functionality to the tractor beam attachment of the multitool to detach and attach items from ships itemPorts. This functionality can either be used for component exchange, replacement or restocking or to scavenge other ships to use or make a profit. Players can lock and unlock the ability to remove weapons and components from their ship with a new Port Unlock option in the Inner Thought where which in the cockpit or using the new Port Unlock keybind (unbound by default). While aiming at a component with a tractor beam to detatch it, hold “B” and it will highlight the object with a glow around its perimeter/shape. Left click and drag to pull the component lose from its socket/hardpoint. While attaching components, an AR marker will appear to give players guidance on the correct orientation to attach the component in correctly. If the holo outline is green simply let go of the item and it will attach. If the holo outline is yellow, rotate the item until the outline turns green. If the holo outline is red, the item does not fit the Item port requirements.

Density Manager Mission Updates – Updated the density manager system so that mission entities and things dropped by missions such as corpses, guns, and debris will be cleaned up when the area is streamed out. As we reuse mission locations such as UGFs, the location will then be cleaned up of all mission items when the area is streamed out while player dropped things remain as usual.

Other Balance & Features

  • Reduced/Rebalanced of the amount of ship weapons, missiles, and ship components that are currently sold in Reststops and LEOs
  • Temporarily removed Claim Jumpers and Orison FPS missions for 3.19
  • They have also added the Corsair, Cutter, and C8R Pisces to in game shops.

Known Issues

  • Shop item pictures and descriptions missing from Shopping Kiosks
  • Harvestable Deposits may be invisible to players, cause collisions or become unavailable for scanning, mining or salvage gameplay (mining may be blocked in this build)
  • Players can be injured or killed when getting out of the chair & ReplaceMe Balls in Area 18 Habs
  • High dedicated video memory usage leads to severe framerate drops at Lorville
  • WaitForPlayerSpawn Connection Timeout in AC
  • Redeemer is missing collision on its floor
  • Reclaimer has no rear Elevator interaction from ship exterior
  • Reclaimer main on-elevator control panels do not respond to input
  • ARGO MOLE – interaction prompts for ALL mining turrets are easy to miss/in unintuitive locations for players
  • CNOU HoverQuad can spawn slightly stuck in the ground
  • Hints do not appear when loading into universe on an Ultra Wide setting
  • Mining UI is appearing in Low Resolution
  • The Constellation with the P52 is not usable still.
  • Shards can fail to load after a crash
  • Issues with RMC Canister Multitool reload behavior
  • Enemy combat AI is slow to respond or react
  • Ghost hollow – Extraction terminals cannot be interacted with before and after the comms array has been de-activated
  • Ursa rovers can sometimes spawn under the garages at Klesher Prison, preventing prisoner escape
  • Trams are out of sync with the station timers, causing trams to overlap or not appear on time however, they seem better and wait for each other pretty well.
  • The Salvage attachment has the VFX of the tractor beam and does not function
  • Contraband screens have a visarea issue at SPK
  • Spawning ships causes the requested ship to spawn outside of the hangars
  • Buying Pharmacy Items at Empire Health results in “Invalid Location” error
  • Wallace Klim becomes stuck under the floor near the hangars after being streamed out and streamed back in

So CI are trying to work thru all those issues currently.

The patch however does allow you to spawn ships, move around, do missions, relatively unrestrained, which is great to see again.

We are waiting on

  • Mining Balancing v01
  • New Player Experience at Area 18
  • We know there are things like a economy update potentially
  • Maybe saddle bags
  • The Lynx Rover