Released
2021-08-06 - 3 years ago
Star Citizen Alpha 3.14 is a major update focusing on the addition of the Crusader gas giant and its Orison landing zone. In addition, a major dogfighting combat rebalance was undertaken with the addition of ship capacitors and a rebalance of most small and medium ships. See the full patch notes HERE.
Major updates
| Feature | Description |
|---|---|
| Planet - Crusader | Design, creation, and implementation of the Crusader gas giant
While Crusader has previously existed in the game, this card adds Crusader as a proper visitable planet. This beautiful-yet-dangerous gas giant is home to the Orison landing zone, a picturesque city floating on orbital latticework. |
| Orison Landing Zone | Creation and implementation of the floating city of Orison
Comprised of a latticework of platforms suspended in mid-atmosphere, Orison is considered one of the most picturesque locations in Stanton. This task includes creating all areas of the landing zone, including shipyards, habs, gardens, and spaceport. |
| Missiles - Guidance & Control Rework & Missile Operator Mode | Improvement of missile guidance technology and addition of the Missile Operator mode
Convert missiles to use the IFCS guidance and control systems. This will improve missile performance and tracking ability, enabling greater control over general missile behaviors. Missiles will now be controlled under a dedicated missile operator mode, which gives players the option to select and fire specific missiles while operating in ships that allow for different types of missiles and torpedoes. |
| Law System V2: Surrender | System to allow players and NPCs to surrender and be arrested
To allow players to be arrested without losing their life, they will be able to surrender by coming to a halt and powering down their ships when ordered to by security. Security will halt their attack and arrest criminal players (and impound the ship if owned by a criminal). |
| Constellation Taurus |
Implementing and balancing RSI's hauling variant of the Constellation, the Taurus, as a flight ready ship in the game. |
Trailer
Full patch notes
Alpha Patch 3.14.0 has been released to the LIVE environment, and is now available to test!
Patch should now show: VERSION 3.14.0-LIVE.7698044.[1]
Database Reset: YES
Long Term Persistence: Enabled
Starting aUEC: 20,000
Known issues
- Upon launching the game, the player may receive a 16008 error (Most likely requires a character reset and logging out of the launcher)
- After logging out in a ship bed or crashing, logging in can result in Error 20018 or a long loading screen where ship/player spawns at Stanton star (Most likely requires a character reset and logging out of the launcher)
- After a server connection timeout (Error 30K), a "Bad Token" error may be presented, preventing loading back into the Persistent Universe (requires game restart to workaround issue)
- Star Citizen may crash immediately after pressing "Launch Game" in the Launcher (Recent potential app conflicts: Acronis Active Protection, Comodo, Sonic Studio Contact RSI Technical Support if the issue persists)
- Elevators or environment content will occasionally be missing in the PU
- Players are unable to leave a party from the Main Menu (Workaround: Open Star Marine Multiplayer (any mode) > select "Invite" > select "Leave Party" > exit back to main menu)
- The chat window is positioned too low to be fully readable whilst in a vehicle on Ultrawide monitors
- Using a medipen may occasionally have no effect
- Swapping FPS weapons drops or removes the original weapon
- Mineable commodities data in Scan Mode displays incorrect Percentage Values
- The player may become unable to open Hammerhead turret doors, leaving them trapped inside
- Constellation Andromeda co pilot unable to target while in missile operator mode
- Elevators at Grim Hex fails to complete animations and elevator can lose functionality
- Search missions such as shipment lost and lost cargo do not update once the player has collected the cargo box
- Unable to complete box delivery missions in Area18, as kiosk rejects boxes
- Distortion weapons can lead to the friendly fire threshold being met in only a few shots
- Demon Fang Combat Knife asset is missing from the game
- When entering the pilot's seat of the 100i, the animation may not complete, leaving the player facing away from the windscreen
- Occasionally, the Quantum Drive may start spooling with no known cause
- Sometimes, after spooling and calibrating the Quantum Drive and attempting to initiate the jump, nothing happens (Workaround: Move ship reticle away, then move back to recalibrate)
New features
Locations
- New Planet: Crusader
- New City: Orison Landing Zone
- Comprised of a latticework of platforms suspended in mid-atmosphere on the gas giant Crusader, Orison is considered one of the most picturesque locations in Stanton.
- New Babbage Hospital Interior Location
- Adding the interior of the Brentworth Care Center in New Babbage. The first pass of this location will add in the hospital lobby and as well as remodel of the Aspire Grand lobby to accommodate the expansion and future gameplay.
Gameplay
Law System v2: Surrender
- The addition of Surrender allows players to be arrested without losing their life, an important feature as the game moves closer to mechanics where the decision to surrender or risk death by fighting / fleeing will carry much more weight. Players will be able to surrender by coming to a halt and powering down their ships when ordered to by security. Security will halt their attack and arrest criminal players (and impound the ship if owned by a criminal). Surrendering will give the player a reduced sentence when sent to prison. All players inside a criminal's ship at the time of surrender, regardless of criminal status will be sent to prison when the ship is impounded. In the current implementation, players can not surrender to other players.
- The new Missile Operator Mode will be used to separate the gun and missile/torpedo gameplay within ships. Using this mode will give pilots additional control over what missiles/torpedoes are fired, and give them a more distinct and important role in the overall flow.
- Accessing Missile Operator Mode: Players can toggle in and out of Missile Operator Mode using the default keybind (middle mouse button). Upon accessing the mode, players will lose control of any other ship weapons and gain control of the missile systems. All other weapons will return to neutral gimbal positions, stop tracking, etc., while the missile weapon systems deploy. Activation of Missile Operator Mode will cause the ship to emit increased signal
- Selecting Ordnance: Rather than being limited to a certain size or tracking type, Players will now be restricted to only be able to lock and fire one kind of missile at a time (e.g. Ignite/Rattler/Arrester). In addition, each missile rack will only be able to stock one model of missile. Note that while pre-existing split loadouts might still technically 'work', they are not intended to be supported so there may be UI issues. On entering the mode, one type of missile will be automatically selected, ordered by model for consistency across ships and play sessions. Players can then cycle forward and back through these missile types, with the currently selected missile prominent on the HUD. The display will also show the previous and next missile so the operator is aware of what they will cycle to next. Players can set how many missiles they wish to fire in a burst (G and LAlt+G by default) up to a maximum value. They must then wait for each missile to arm before it can be fired.
- Locking a Target: If a player is in Missile Operator Mode and has a Locked combat target, the missile will automatically begin locking onto the target. The locking process is no longer binary - after a minimum level of lock to acquire the target, the longer you lock for, the ‘better’ the lock becomes, and the harder the missile will become to spoof. This is achieved with a simple multiplier of the targets signal (e.g. a target may have a real signal of 1000, and at full lock the signal amplification may be x5, so the missile would perceive a signal of 5000 instead). This means that the missile requires other contacts to have a significantly larger signal than the original to be distracted by them. A target must be fully resolved (i.e. its signal must be the largest in the detection radius) before a missile will track it, meaning that enemy targets can try and outplay another ship locking a missile to them by releasing countermeasures or flying close to larger targets before the missile is even launched. If the missile's target isn’t fully resolved before launch, it will simply dumbfire forward.
- Firing Ordnance: At any point after the first missile has been armed, the player can initiate the launch procedure, which will fire any currently armed missiles and begin a cooldown until they can next begin arming missiles. If the player begins firing missiles without a lock, the missiles will be dumb-fired. This can be used for ground targets, bombing runs, emergency situations, or to avoid enemy ships being notified about incoming missiles/combat locks. If more than one rack has the same type of missile, then missiles will be expended from the racks in a staggered rotation (e.g. if three racks each have 8 Ignite missiles on, and the player chooses to fire 8 Ignite missiles, the first two racks will each fire 3 missiles and the third will fire 2, in ABC rotation).
Missiles - Guidance & Control Rework
- Converted missiles to use the IFCS guidance and control systems. This will improve missile performance and tracking ability, enabling greater control over general missile behaviors.
Ships and vehicles
- New Ship: RSI Constellation Taurus
Core tech
- Planetary Volumetric Clouds v1
- Initial version of a bespoke system to convincingly render multi-layered, volumetric clouds of varying scale within planetary atmospheres. This initial version is meant for the gas giant, Crusader.
- Graphics Setting Additions
- Added several new graphics settings to help give more control over the player's experience in the PU. Added Volumetric Cloud Graphics options. Added Low/Medium(original default)/High Spawning Distance options to allow the player to pick the distance from the camera at which scattered objects spawn. Also added Low/Medium(original default)/High Terrain Tessellation Distance options.
Feature updates
Gameplay
Radar, Scanning, and Ping T0
- The Radar, Scanning, and Pinging system has been overhauled. Radar is used to passively locate and track contacts, and display their whereabouts to the player. Scanning is used to obtain information about a specific entity. Pinging using the default keybind (Tab) actively finds additional contacts, or highlights volumes of space to investigate weak signatures, both of which are displayed via the radar and its AR HUD elements. This overhaul also includes new UI elements for Infrared (IR) – emitted by heat-generating entities, Electromagnetic, (EM) – emitted by entities which draw (use) or generate electrical power, and Cross Section (CS) - representing how visible an entity is based on its size and how reflective its surface type(s). The larger a contact is (and the more of its profile it presents), the greater its CS signature is
- Blobs are generated when an entity's signature strength is strong enough to reach the radar but not otherwise strong enough to be detected as a contact. These blobs are visually divided into cuboids and can indicate a volume of space to investigate, where an entity or entities might be located. The size of a blob is determined by the base signature strength of the entity. This means that the larger a blob is, the less accurate its representation of an entity's position.
Power Management v2
- Rebalancing the existing power system and integrating Capacitors into it. Players will have the ability to manage the amount of extra energy that goes into the thrusters, weapons and shields, making critical decisions on the distribution of energy in order to defend, attack or pursue/evade. This also includes added keybindings to control these changes. The assignment via keys (F5, F6, F7, F8-reset) or power triangle will set the regeneration speed for thruster capacitor, shield regeneration, and energy weapon ammo regeneration.
- With the new additions to capacitor gameplay comes wide reworks to ship flight and thruster handling, shield behavior, and weapon damage / ammo counts. This full rework on ships is to bring them closer to their intended roles in the universe which includes changes to many ship loadouts.
Weapons
- Weapon fire rates and damage have increased dramatically. Ammo rates have been significantly reduced. Energy weapons now have limited ammo which is automatically regenerated when the weapon is not being used. Changing assignment to weapons will make energy weapon regenerate ammo faster. Throttling and overclocking is disabled for the time being (will be re-evaluated post 3.14). Manned turrets have their isolated weapon capacitor system which will regenerate weapons faster and provide a deeper pool. Due to ballistic changes, ballistic ammo will no longer restock when claiming a ship after destruction.
Shields
- Full balance rework on all shields below Size 3 to turn them into bubble type shields with 1 shield face. Removed hardening (will be redeveloped at a later point).
Thrusters/Flight
- Added separate regenerable pool for boost (formerly afterburner). Changing assignment to thrusters will make the thruster boost bar fill up faster. Added option to automatically enable/disable boost during space braking.
UI
- Added thruster fuel boost bar. Added weapon readout on the HUD for each weapon showing ammo state. Slightly changed the meaning of the shield display to reflect power triangle assignment, disallowed throttling on the shield display. Legacy Power triangle functionality is removed (it was just a power priority setting that only worked if the power plant could not supply enough power). Power triangle will now work as a pure regen distribution function for shields, energy weapons and thruster boost.
Arena Commander PvP Ammo Pick-up Rework
- With the changes to ship combat and ammo counts, the rate of pickups in Arena Commander has been reduced and are no longer specifically connected to kills. Now, a player must now gain a given score to unlock a pickup which will then spawn on their next kill. (May take approximately 3-4 kills.) All pickups have have been adjusted to give a percentage of the requested resources rather than fixed values. Percentage of ammo replenished is reduced for the amount of ballistics you have on your ship. Fuel pickups have been removed.
Law and Prison Updates
- Removed the trespass zones from underground facilities. Destroying a party member's empty vehicle no longer results in a crime. Updated the prison code entry interface to prevent it from resetting the code on failed attempts to stop a bug that would make it no longer accept codes. Crime for Assaulting a security officer should no longer be given outside of a monitored zone. Knock-outs no longer kill.
Ships and vehicles
- Canvas Sliced Ship HUDs
- Updating all ship HUDs to use the new Canvas Slice system, providing an improved layout that maximizes screen real estate and provides more info and depth to pilots. Players will now see a universal bearing along the top edge. Pitch ladder has moved from the center of the players vision to along the right side. We've added 3D velocity and acceleration meters on the bottom corner.
- IFCS Thruster Wind Volume Effects
- Building on the Thruster Wind Volumes feature to create visual effects for atmospheric flight. This adds the ability for IFCS thruster wind volumes to affect ground materials like dust and snow more accurately, and introduces new dynamic effects when flying low near planet surfaces.
- Increased Inner Thought Text Size for Ship Medical Bed "Set as preferred ICU"
- Adjusted Pilot/Co-Pilot Seat Animations and Height in the Hammerhead
- Increased Detection Range of Mineable Rocks
- Added New Display Options for Party Nameplates
Core tech
- Updated Main Menu Background Video
Major bug fixes
- Player friends list in game should no longer be capped at a maximum of 50 players
- The Loading screens should no longer be enlarged and zoomed in on aspect ratios higher than 16:9 (i.e. 21:9 and 32:9)
- Fixed an issue that could cause a Player's cursor to get stuck on the game screen
- Player emotes should now correctly play through slash commands and the inner thought wheel
- Fixed an issue causing purchased carryable items to disappear very quickly after they are dropped or placed on the ground
- Quantum Traveling to a party member close to a planet surface should no longer sometimes cause the player to fly into the planet
- Miles Eckhart should now function correctly and update the mission
- Ramming another player while in the borders of your own pad should no longer impound your ship
- Ships should no longer fail to restock ammo and missiles/torpedoes when using restocking services
- Player's oxygen levels should no longer start to deplete after using QT in a ship
- Fixed an issue causing players to damage their ships If the player exits their seat and re-enters their seat during quantum travel and then later exits the ship
- Fixed an issue causing players to not spawn back inside their ship if their client crashed within an armistice zone.
- Fixed the multi-tool dispensed from the Commissary units so that it will show the Orebit attachment in the PMA after they are stowed
- Workaround fix for the SCU amount displayed for the 890's cargo capacity so it should no longer be incorrectly at 32
- Fixed an issue causing the ECN alert mission countdown timer to not display
- Weapons placed in ship weapon lockers should now persist in all ships correctly when it has been stored and retrieved
- Large ships attempting to autoland in Rest Stop/Orbital Station hangars should no longer become stuck
- Mission givers AI will no longer break if an NPC sits in their designated seat before they do
- There should no longer be very obstructive reflections on the 85X Canopy
- When you throw a grenade it should no longer have a chance to reappear in your hand, or throw with a desync and with no VFX on the explosion
- Vehicles with weapon gimbals should now correctly default to fixed mode when the setting is turned on
- Fixed an issue where players could not fire an FPS weapon directly after reloading or switching weapons until the second ( LMB ) press
- Players should no longer remain in ADS when reloading an FPS weapon and have let go of ADS key
- NPCs should no longer be able to push a player away from kiosks / ASOP terminals while using them
- The Hot tub in the Constellation Phoenix should no longer be missing some geometry
- The 2951 Auspicious Red Paint should no longer be displayed as -PLACEHOLDER- in the VMA and should now correctly change the appearance of the ship when applied to it
- Friendly AI ships during missions should now quantum away correctly after all hostile AI ships in the area have been destroyed and the user completed the mission
- Fixed an issue causing many inner thought prompts to be missing or broken from ship beds and non-pilot seats which may prevent standing up or logging out functions
- Tevarin War Dress White Uniform Jacket texture should no longer appear zoomed in
- Bartenders should no longer be missing from Rest Stop bars
- Fixed an issue causing players to be unable to claim their ships using the ASOP terminal's claim button
- When performing an Unlawful delivery mission, pilot's drug box should now get despawned correctly after a Security AI ship finishes scanning their vehicle
- Armor shop mannequins should no longer be T-posed in Garrity Defense and other armor stores
- Underground Facility turrets should no longer be missing
- Cruise Control speed should no longer ignore the limiter when player is not in the pilot seat
- Player's head should now correctly remain looking at ceiling upon respawning in a bed
- Wiping the helmet visor should now correctly clear Icing VFX impairing player vision
- Fixed a noticeable performance drop of up to 10 FPS when navigating around the lower rear section of the Prowler when on a planetary surface
- The power triangle should now function and be interacted with within the MFD inside ships
- SparkJet Pro power plants should now show the correct size and grade
- Turning ship into no fly zones at Area18 should no longer result in auto pilot pulling player to the ground
- Ships should no longer be able to continue to throttle when their hydrogen fuel has been depleted completely
- Fixed an issue that sometimes caused ship parts to duplicate when blown off of the ship
- CryAstro services should now function correctly at the New Babbage Commons Garage
- Fixed an issue causing players to not be able to stand up from New Babbage tram seats
- Fixed an issue causing players to desync inside the Constellation Taurus and the Constellation Aquila
Technical
- Fixed 8 Client crashes
- Fixed 5 Server crashes
- Fixed a Server Deadlock
- Made Multiple Backend Service stability fixes and optimizations
Reference
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