2024 Is The Watershed Year For Star Citizen
Star Citizen has a rough plan of what’s coming in 2024. Described as The Watershed Year for Star Citizen by Jard Disco Lando Huckaby, Creative Content Lead at Cloud Imperium.
This is partly due to Squadron 42 being Feature Complete, many more teams now moving to SC’s PU Development, various features about to come into the game, Sever Meshing, Alpha 4.0, Pyro, New Combat mechanics…
We’ve heard lofty promises of Star Citizen’s Development many times before.
But I wanted to dig into what CIG are saying is planned for 2024 and what it means.
There are no release dates for SQ42 yet… it is possible it will be completed and release by the end of 2024, we are going to focus on SC and it’s PU here.
In a recent Inside SC: Shipping Out CIG revealed their plans for the first half of 2024:
Master Modes this is really a collection of features for ships including new targeting, flight, balance, ship archetypes and more… the largest change here is Nav / SCM modes you can change into.
In Nav mode you can Quantum Jump & Boost and go above your SCM speeds basically cruising BUT you don’t have access to your weapons or shields.
In SCM mode you have access to your weapons, other systems and shields but you can’t QT or go above your SCM speeds. These MMs may come out in a staggered fashion for some ships first based on how the development goes and you can test them with the Gladius, Vanguard, Super hornet and Buccaneer in various 3.22 experimental modes.
But it is a vast overhaul to ships in the game and a whole host of updates and improvements.
Persistent Hangars & Freight Elevators are basically going to allow you to have a more custom hangar than before and make it easier to manage your ships and plan missions. Customise your ships, prepare your loadout.
Freight elevators allow you to call up items from or put them into storage. It provides a gateway between ships, vehicles, cargo and the Landing Zone you are at via a kiosk.
You can call up vehicles in the elevator and load them onto a ship.
You can unload cargo from your ship and put it into the elevator to store it then sell it.
This will also make times to load/unload with cargo a more important part of the game.
And will herald in new cargo careers.
FPS Combat Updates Animations, Reloading, Misfires, Wear, New Scopes, Dynamic Crosshairs, Charge & Drain for energy weapons and batteries.
Along with this there are plans for Character Feature Updates – EVA is getting fuel for suit and Push/Pull Mechanics, updates visors, lens, loot screens.
A big overhaul of the the Item & Personal Interaction system, more intuitive.
mobiGlas Updates bringing it closer to the SQ42 one, New Shopping & Mission mobiGlas Apps.
New Character Customizer with new interface. Much more flexible customization as well as – Tattoos – Piercings – Scars – Beards.
Distribution Centers – These are going to be mini-major landing zones.
Potentially the most hype is a massive Starmap Overhaul making it actually functional, easy to use, looks much better and has a whole host of navigation and filtering addions.
I am expecting these features to be split between probably 3.23 & 3.24 builds in 2024.
6+ New / Update Ships & Vehicles for the first half of 2024:
We know some of the planned vehicles for 2024 either in the first half of the year or otherwise that being:
Polaris
Zeus MK2
New Hover Bikes
Ursa Rover Variant
Argo MPUV Variant
New Alien Ship
Legionnaire
Retaliator Variant
ALSO CIG have also said that for Summer 2024 they are planning Alpha 4.0s release:
(End June – End Sept Window)
Pyro – Jump Points, New Planets, Moon, Space Stations, Missions & General Lifestyle.
Beyond That CIG are working on various features coming at some point in 2024:
QoL, HuD & MFD work.
Hacking
Resource Management System & Engineering
Quantum Travel 2.0 – There are New Quantum Travel Mechanics and Effects that CIG have been working on.
The biggest difference other than visuals is the ability to do short range Quantum Boosts and those and the acceleration into a longer range Quantum require you to actively keep your ship on course as forces try to pull you out of your Quantum Corridor. After a few seconds you can go hands off BUT it’s a big difference.
Rest Of Year – Rest of the CitizenCon Content:
Bases
Maelstrom
Animals – Space Whals and Cows
Engine Updates
Water Sim
Temporal UpScaling
StarCloth
Control Surfaces / Atmospheric Flight Update