Star Citizen Alpha 3.19 Wave 2 – MASSIVE MINING UPDATE

Star Citizen Alpha 3.19.0 is now available to Wave 2 PTU

And it’s added a load more additional features, the New Player Experience, some pretty big Mining Balance & Economy Updates as well as a ton of new fixes for bugs some of which had plagued the game for a while. Also Jumptown 2.1 is finally going to be running on the Live servers from May the 5th.

Wave 2 means that in addition to Evocati, RSI Subs & Concierge a load of players that contribute to the issue council regularly and have very high play time in the PTU also now have access. The Next Wave should be Open PTU shortly (probably next week).

Right 3.19.0 on the PTU has had some more additions and let’s go over them:

New Player Experience – An initiative for improving the initial (first 30 minutes) gameplay experience, which will help players understand the context of the world and introduce them to some of Star Citizen’s basic features. This update focuses on the experience in Area 18 and Baijini Point. As players enter the main menu to join the universe they will be prompted with the option to join as normal or accept the New Player Experience Mission chain which will set their spawn to Area18 and begining a walkthrough. Being the NPE we are going to leave the details off to give you all the experience of doing this as close to a new player as possible without information. This also rewards you a little aUEC when you complete it (15k currently).

A Couple of Location Updates – Lorville LOD, Collision, and Lighting Polish Pass & ArcCorp Atmosphere and Planetary Metalic Gloss Polish Pass

Mining Balancing v01 – With 3.19 comes updates to both Ship and FPS mining with wide-sweeping balance changes to sell prices, refining effectiveness and costs, component stats, multi-crew mining efficiency, mineable difficulties and masses with larger asteroids, resource distribution, as well as the addition of new mineables. The goal in 3.19 is to make multi-crew mining more attractive and even out all materials to make them all more lucrative instead of a select few.

Ship mining

Resource Distribution has been updated to reflect a more distinct distribution of minerals throughout Stanton. Which means that several locations (per planet/moon) now hold exclusive resources rather, than full random resources. Additionally we defined so called “standard” resources that are a given in each minable you will encounter. The rest of the elements have chances to appear in those rocks. The updated resource distribution is also reflected in the trading availability and refining capabilities. Every mining gadget, head, and sub item has had a full balance pass for stats, cost, and efficiencies. Every item that is connected to mining gameplay loop was updated to target specific resources to be mined better or worse depending on the setup of your Mining Head. Multi-crew mining has also been balanced with the Mole getting a buff on instability if the same lasers fire on the same rock, while the Prospector will get a punishment for multiple prospectors firing at the same rock on instability.

Full Mining item rework – You can now detach attach Mining modules, Heads & Sub Items with the tractor beam.

Mining heads now have a min/max laser power

Mining heads have different laser power per size

Mining heads have different extraction speeds where there is also a difference between S1 and S2

Mining heads have different ideal distances

Updated resistance values for all mining items

Updated instability mitigating values for all mining items

Unified properties for all Mining modules and Mining Gadgets

Buffed Active modules drastically

Added new property exclusive to mining gadgets: Called Cluster modifier that clusters element together à if you split a rock it increases the chance that the elements are together in one of the broken pieces)

Filtering on some items that remove the inert from the rocks you are collecting

Sub item slots on Mining Heads are different between S1 and S2

Resistance reduction now is multiplicative

Made Instability updates

UI Update – Difficulty forecast that tells you how easy it is to break the rock you are facing

Reordered some elements of the UI

Details of the mining items you have currently equipped

Details on your current cargo

Clearer scanning display and clearer explanation what is happening during scanning

FPS mining

A new minable is introduced that is only available in the new caves systems (Janalite) and has a high value to encourage players to go mining with their FPS tools outside of prison.

Resource Refining and prices – Updated resource prices and demands at TDDs

The further away from the standard material the more profit

Updated refinery yield and time for certain material to encourage longer distances to travel for the best money/hour

Changes in the Mining Update

Resource Update – Concept of minable rarities for resources:

Standard (base resource of a minable always part of any rock, like Iron

Common (chance to be part of the rock like beryl)

Uncommon (chance to be part of the rock like Gold)

Rare (chance to be part of the rock like Qunatainium)

Dedicated location for resources that have the standard rarity (like Arial having Iron and Quartz)

Updated properties for resources (each resource should affect the properties of the rock based on their amount)

Updated mass for minables (resource composition affects the mass of the rock

More variant rock sizes/masses

Small ones that do not need breaking to massive rocks that require multiple players)

Additional rock types with unique chances for resource compositions

removed Diamonds temporarily

I have not gotten my head around the mining update yet.

The Known issue list is really pretty short now… that’s not to say they are the only issues BUT they have actually addressed a lot of the major ones already.

Bug Fix wise we have:

Fixed – Players are able to attach components and weapons to locked itemports
Fixed – Salvage sub items are not attachable and detachable
Fixed – FPS / Large FPS Mineables – Game Code – Shattered FPS and Large FPS Deposits can fail to spawn Gem Shards
Fixed – Anvil Centurion – Vehicles / Art / Collision – Vehicle Components – A collision wall is blocking the Player from removing Internal components with the tractor beam
Fixed – Planet Tech – Locations / Harvestables – All Harvestable Deposits may be invisible to players, cause collisions and will always become unavailable for scanning, mining or salvage gameplay
Fixed – Multivehicle – Stanton – Vehicle / Components / Tractor Beam / Collision – Taking nose weapons off during soft death causes weapons to disappear into ground
Fixed – Aegis Sabre – Vehicles / Tractor Beam – Some components require the player to look at a specific corner of the component to grab it
Fixed – Reclaimer PVP Mission – Ghost Hollow – Missions / AI – No AI reinforcements spawn
Fixed – Grim Hex – Art / Graphics / Locations – Various screens around the Grim Hex landing zone are blank
Fixed – MULTIVEHICLE – Vehicles/IFCS – When flying near another ship, ship seems to hit an invisible box that kicks it in random directions
Fixed – Multivehicle – Stanton – Weapons / Vehicles / Tractor Beam / Exploit – Player can reattach weapons to hardpoints with 0 health allowing them to become immune to damage and still fire
Fixed 4 Client & 3 Server Crashes

The Known Issues List just has 9 issues with only a few actually being more major.

A WaitForPlayerSpawn Connection Timeout Error.
Reclaimer has no rear Elevator interaction from ship exterior AND the main on-elevator control panels do not respond to input.
ARGO MOLE – The interaction prompts for mining turrets are easy to miss locations.
CNOU HoverQuad spawns slightly stuck in the ground
Mining UI is appearing in Low Resolution
RSI Constellation snub fighter lacks interaction prompts to enter it.
Trams at Cities are out of sync with the station timers, causing trams to overlap or not appear on time
Store kiosks won’t populate locations if certain ships are stored
The Salvage attachment has the VFX of the tractor beam and does not function
SPK – Contraband screens have a visarea issue
Wallace Klim becomes stuck under the floor near the hangars after being streamed out and streamed back in