Update:Star Citizen Alpha 3.6.0

Star Citizen Alpha 3.6.0 is an upcoming Star Citizen update planned to be released around June 2019 (Q2). As per the roadmap, the content in the update is subject to change.

Characters
Glass Visor and HUD Improvements

An overhaul to Visors and helmet HUDs, providing a more intuitive and immersive experience.

Locations
Rest Stop Space Stations: Exterior Variations

Expanding the size and diversity of core space station exterior components, along with thematic variations for Rest Stops.

AI
Ship AI: 3D Pathfinding v2

Building the foundational technology that allows AI to navigate in 3D space by utilizing the physics grid. The path search will be hierarchical and will use other factors alongside the physical data, such as the graph connection of QT points. The system will scale to the size of the universe and accommodate all content, including asteroid fields, planets, and space stations.

NPC Improvements: Bartender

Improvements to the Bartender AI archetype, including additional interactions for the player as well as other NPCs. This will include passes from animation and audio.

NPC Improvements: Civilian

Improvements to the Civilian AI archetype, including additional interactions for the player as well as other NPCs. This will include passes from animation and audio.

FPS: Cover Usage v1

Expanding the cover system to correctly evaluate dynamic cover in the environmental queries used by the AI behaviors. Dynamic cover options include destructible objects and environmental elements that can be manipulated to be used as cover. Players will also be able to destroy objects in the world while NPCs are using them as cover, and engage in specific behavior to detect these situations and react accordingly.

Gameplay
Hover Mode

Hover mode will vastly improve the behavior of ships flying at low speeds in gravity and atmosphere. Players will be able to manually control the state of VTOL thrusters as ships enter a special mode in which players must focus on balancing the ship as it hovers. This will make hovering more realistic and add depth to atmospheric flight gameplay.

Weapon Attachments

Implementation of player controlled customization for personal weapons which includes adding different attachments to guns, such as scopes and grips. This feature will allow the customization of the player's FPS arsenal in real time.

Black Market Economy

Security forces will search for stolen and illicit items and respond appropriately, while NPCs and shops will distinguish between legitimate and stolen merchandise.

Ship Rentals

Players can rent ships from select shops for limited periods of time.

Player Free Look

Introducing the ability for the player to look away from where their weapon is aiming, giving them more situational awareness while keeping their weapon trained on a known threat.

Ragdoll Improvements

Improving ragdoll properties such as joint limits, collision, and other physical parameters to make the simulation react appropriately and accurately in all situations, including zero-g.

Player Jump v2

Improving the look and feel of the current jump mechanic (including falling and landing) with new animation time-warping tech that reduces the number of individual animations.

Ship System: Degradation Improvements v2

Improvements to degradation gameplay tying misfire rates to the amount of wear on an item. Includes visualizing the wear/degradation on items.

System: Misfires

Adding momentary misfire events which can cause items to cease working or perform unexpectedly. Overheated and degraded items have a higher chance of misfire.

Player Carriables v2

Developing the look, feel, and depth of player item handling. Includes the creation of a carriable tool, setting up key carriable items (e.g. helmets), and setting up dynamic grips so the player can correctly hold several types of object.

Transit Systems v2

Improvements to the systems that allow players to transfer between various map sections such as doors, elevators, and airlocks.

Law System v1

A hierarchical jurisdictional system that allow areas to be associated with a set of laws, each of which may specify a variety of penalties. Detection and dispatch mechanics will, in turn, accordingly enable local security and bounty hunters to make living a life of crime a dicey, if potentially lucrative, proposition.

Ships and Vehicles

 * AEGIS Vanguard Warden Update

Implementing and balancing the updated base model of the Aegis Vanguard Warden.


 * Kruger Intergalactic P-72 Archimedes

Building, balancing, and implementing Kruger's snub craft into the game.


 * Origin 890 Jump

Building, balancing, and implementing Origin's biggest and most luxurious ship into the game.


 * Banu Defender

Building, balancing, and implementing the Banu Defender as a flight-ready ship.


 * Kruger P52 Merlin Improvements

Building, balancing, and implementing the improved Kruger P52 Merlin into the game. Work includes general improvements to the landing gear compression.

Weapon and Items
Apocalypse Arms Animus Missile Launcher

Designing and creating the Apocalypse Arms Animus missile launcher. Includes asset creation, animation, and balancing.

Behring S38 Pistol

Designing and creating the Behring S38 pistol. Includes asset creation, animation, and balancing.

MaxOx Neutron Repeaters

Design and creation of the new MaxOx NN Series neutron repeater ship weapon. Includes asset creation, animation, and balancing.

Core Dev Tech and Systems
Client to Server Actor Networking Rework

Improvements to the upstream part of the actor networking responsible for communicating player actions from the local client to the server. This will pave the way for downstream improvements and solve a variety of validation issues.

Planetary Ground Fog Tech

Planetary ground fog will create varying layers of fog on top of planetary terrain to further intensify local ambiance and a sense of visual depth.

Asynchronous Disconnection Refactor

This refactor aims to improve efficiency and usability of the asynchronous disconnection code. Refactoring this will clean-up a lot of bugs such as infinite loading screens, server crashes, and client crashes, while also helping to assure that more of these issues don't occur in the future.

Distribution and Ecosystem Improvements

Several distribution and ecosystem pipeline improvements. Unification of terrain and distribution maps, ecosystem modeling at a global planetary level and several improvements to terrain blending.

Shield Systems Tech Replacement

Replacement of the legacy shield setup system with the new Signed Distance Field tech to allow for the future implementation of more dynamic, form-fitting visuals and effects, as well as improved performance for collision.

Harvestable Entity Spawning

Underlining tech development to allow for an automated system to spawn harvestable entities on planets, moons, and asteroid fields.

Performance Optimization

General optimization and engine improvements to increase stability and performance for the players. This includes continued transition of gameplay systems to Item 2.0 as well as investigation and resolution of possible memory leaks and performance spikes.