Star Citizen Alpha 3.0 | Features & Schedule Overview
Today I wanted to talk about Star Citizen Alpha 3.0 it’s features in detail, what it means for the game, it’s target release dates & anything else we know about it. 3.0 represents possibly the most major milestone for Star Citizen & tangible gameplay for it’s Persistent Universe, there is a huge amount of new content & massive changes to a lot of the backend for the game too. You can watch the Video here if you so wish -
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1uRae-ur8Rc
Target Release Dates
Star Citizen Alpha 3.0 has some targeted release dates it’s current plan is that it could go to Evocati PTU as early as the 5th of June & a LIVE release as early as the 29th.
These are Target dates from CIGs & F42s internal Schedules, so they can & will change BUT we will be kept upto date over at
https://robertsspaceindustries.com/schedule-report every Friday with Blockers encountered, delays & Progress made. It’s also worth mentioning sometime more features will make it into a patch OR some may get removed if they encounter a more long term issue.
"Planetary" Landings v1 - Moons
While not being planets there are a selection of moons & bodies to explore, You’ll be able to enter the atmosphere of these astral bodies (if they have one), explore and land.
These areas will have interesting things to Explore too, Surface Outposts to find on the Moons Surfaces for example as well as mission locations, loot and various Derelict Ships to discover like the Javelin & in space accompanying Debris Fields.
They’ve got Planetary Physics Grids to support orbiting and rotating planets too but let’s talk about the Moons we’ll be able to explore.
Yela
Yela is the most frigid of the Crusader moons. Those bold (or careless) enough to step outside without a spacesuit will be killed instantly by its freezing temperatures. If the cold doesn’t kill you, than any of the treacherous crevasses that crisscross the planet might. Cyrovolcanos have been known to erupt unexpectedly from such crevasses, so be wary when flying at low altitudes. Despite all its danger, there is much beauty to be found on Yela, like the underwater caves hidden beneath the moon’s crust.
Cellin
Burning with volcanic activity, Cellin is the counter to her icy sister. Although the volcanoes have been dormant for hundreds of years, the surface is dotted with thermal geysers that erupt without notice. The largest of such geysers can destroy heavy vehicles. Highly corrosive clouds of gas are regularly released from the moon’s surface, creating low visibility and damaging anything caught outside.
Daymar
Daymar’s surface is like a harmonic blend of Yela and Cellin. It’s mountainous surface is reminiscent of Cellin’s volcanoes, while its craters share a warm likeness to Yela’s frozen crevessases. Known for its dense atmosphere, thick fog and a loose dirt surface makes travel difficult. Lightning storms can help illuminate the fog, just don’t get struck by their flash.
Delamar & the Levski Landing Zone (if ready in time)
The Delamar / Levski Landing Zone shown in the 2016 GamesCom demo will be in 3.0 if they finish it in time, otherwise it will get pushed to 3.1. This would be great to get a major hero landing zone in 3.0.
Expect other bits and pieces in the Verse too, revamps of stations, more POI to discover in space BUT also a good amount of locations to buy & sell items.
The size of these moons - It takes about four and half hours to circumnavigate the Cellin in a Dragonfly at full afterburn or twelve and half days of walking.
You can stand on a Moon as it rotates on its axis, watching the sun rise and fall!
Character Customization
Players will now be able to customize their characters heads, hair, eye color, and skin color - It’s possible we will see the female character here too, if it’s ready. But character customization is a massive step in player expression currently missing from Star Citizen.
We saw the 3lateral database of heads and their early customization of faces BUT we don’t know what exact functionality the Customization will have in 3.0 yet.
Item System 2.0
ItemSystem 2.0 allows for all items in the game to be treated in a similar way & with sizes, hardpoints, requirements for use & various other parameters which govern exactly how the item functions & what it can interact with. For Ship Components that means items can communicate with each other, coolers will take heat from weapons, powerplants will provide power to systems. Item2.0 will open up huge amounts of customization for our ships when choosing components and weapons BUT everything that is a useable OR item is part of the system, down to the clothing on your Character. Alpha 3.0 plans to have a few things fully ready for Item 2.0:
Operator Seats.
Radar System.
Light Control System.
Fuel / Refuel.
Power Supply & Pipes - Pipes carry power around to the various components.
Quantum Drives.
In addition to a Revamp of Power Plants / Shield Generators / Coolers and the Heat & Power System.
Along with the added gameplay & interaction of being able to switch more components around, we will also see more meaningful choices in loadouts with a lot of new ship components coming into the game.
ObjectContainers & Megamap
The PU has been smashed to pieces and Converted to Object Container Setup. This Conversion also is part of the all important Megamap meaning minimal pre-load.
With the transition to Object Containers, the Crusader map was completely re-designed. Each Point of interest is now an object container laid out via the Solar System Editor. This is in preparation for Object Container streaming and seamless transitions from different POI’s and between Star Systems. Mission Flowgraphs are converted over to use Subsumption and the new Mission System.
Missions & Map
The New Mission system in 3.0 is combined with Subsumption Base Functionality, Subsumption drives all of the AI, mission, dynamic content, and conversational logic.
Mission wise we will have missions from Patrols, Assassinations, Cargo, Smuggling, Exploration, Escorts, where some of these missions will be check your mobiglas to receive, go to the mission board OR find a pad to interact with SOME will be “hero” missions from Mission Givers Miles Eckhartand & Ruto. But these missions should also have some dynamic and random elements to them each time too.
The Solar System Mission Service dictates what missions are being offered at various locations and at what price. It is also responsible for specifying when and where dynamic content should be used and how it should be customized.
There are some mobiGlas Apps that support this too:
There will be mobiglas App - system map allowing you to see the PU at large & select POI to Quantum Travel to.
The mission board App allows players to see the service beacons that have been set up around the universe by other players or NPCs calling for assistance OR Missions.
A Redesign of the current Mission Manager App giving players more control over their mission tracking.
Also even if you make your own story, seeking emergent gameplay or just running cargo, the AI may generate challenging encounters for you on the fly anyway.
Shopping & Cargo
There is an expanded Shopping & Trade System, Cargo & Various Commodities can be purchased via Kiosks, then sold at other kiosks. After buying items at a Kiosk, players will be able to head to their ship and check their cargo manifest, Players will also be able to check their personal inventories as well as full UIs for those too. There will be a lot of updates to the Apps for the mobiglas allowing ease of access to these functions.
The Solar System Shop Service dictates what retail products, natural resources, and services shops are willing to buy and sell. It also decides their current level of inventory and prices, all of which may vary over time.
Players will be able to manually interact with their cargo to load and unload it properly on their ships.
Tho not confirmed on the schedule report, I expect the Expanding Shopping system to include the ability to purchase ships with aUEC as well as a huge amount more weapons & equipment for both FPS & Ships.
Ships
They have confirmed a few new vehicles useable in 3.0:
Drake Dragonfly for both Space Flight & on Ground combat / exploration
The long awaited Cutlass Black Rework
Constellation Aquila - Exploration Variant of the Connie
RSI Ursa Rover - Ground Exploration Vehicle
MISC Prospector - Single Seat Mining Ship
FPS Gear
We may see various items, weapons and equipment turn up for both ship & FPS BUT they have confirmed a rework of the current FPS weapons as well as additions in the form of the:
Apocalypse Arms Scourge Railgun - A shoulder mounted railgun capable of providing high levels of damage at a long range. BEHRING P8-SC An SMG for mid-range fighting.
As well as some new Heavy Marine Armor & the Explorer Suit Armor. Item 2.0 also affects Characters & in 3.0 we should have a large amount of customization of our loadouts, possibly down to scopes, sights, barrels and stocks on our guns as well as inventory management too.
Other New Mechanics
Stamina will be in 3.0, this will mean that actions will have consequences, continuing to sprint will drain the stamina of your character, causing loss of breath and difficulty in aiming a weapon.
An alpha version of the insurance system will be implemented, if your current ship becomes damaged beyond repair, you will be able to request a replacement ship (with basic loadout) from the insurance provider.
Deeper Persistence - ensures that your vehicle state is saved between sessions from ship damage to cargo & ammo.
AI will be able to operate turrets in the PU & also that they will track and fire upon the correct targets, they are also improving player manned turrets too.
FOV Slider - allowing players to narrow or widen the field of view to their liking.
Improved Airlocks & Doors - The room system governs pressure, composition of air in areas, is their oxygen, environmental hazards. The 1st iteration of this in 3.0 will allow airlocks to know if a room beyond them is depressurized and would stay shut for safety.
Performance & Improvements
There are a huge amount of performance improvements on paper, tho we need our hands on patch before we can make an informed decision.
RenderTarget refactor - This saves over 50% of video memory usage.
More efficient Planetary Scale Shadows.
New Light Controllers making 1000s of light entities into 100s.
Optimized vertex and position format for all geometry.
Massively improved LOD computation and average face sizes for ships.
Better render & item culling.
Implemented v2 of their HumanSkinShader further optimizing memory usage.
There are a huge amount more improvements that should make SC a much more easily accessible game for player’s PCs to enjoy.
Volumentric Fog, better FX, Render-to-Texture enabling less pre-rendering & saving harddrive space.
Vehicles No Longer Use Lua - This is a huge step forward on the code side.
Network Optimizations
Some of the major Performance gains we will see will be from the Network Improvements.
Message Queue - allowing the game to send and receive messages with less overhead. The new message queue also has a few extra features to better handle packet loss and jitter, helping reduce average bandwidth and latency.
Physics Serialization - Fixing a few long standing threading issues between the network and physics code. Improves separation of physics and netcode for better maintainability.
Entity Update Scheduler- This Will allow entities further away from or less important to a player to be updated less frequently, which should improve the overall framerate and allow us to add more content to the universe. As a stretch goal also Network Bind/Unbind this Eliminates network updates for entities far away from clients. Should greatly reduce the amount of work the netcode has to do, helping improve server performance.
The Entity Owner Manager will track entities that are moved around the universe, making sure we spawn and unspawn them at the correct time.
Mining
Mining is being worked on but has not been listed on the Schedules as they have no firm date yet, it is a feature that may make 3.0 - 3.2.
Isn’t this 2.7?
A while ago we talked about a 2.7 patch as a bridge between 2.6 and 3.0 having some of the features of 3.0 that were ready for testing. And this 3.0 that has been scheduled is pretty similar to that. It’s a 3.0 light BUT it’s important to remember that some of these additions are so drastic that they fundamentally change the PU. 2.6 focused on Star Marine & Arena Commander BUT 3.0 focuses on the PU & represents a giant jump in gameplay potential from the code in the 2.x branch it contains 9 months of our main development branch beyond 2.6.x as well as almost two years of Planetary Tech development. We’ll have to wait and see the exact level of persistence we have in 3.0 & how interactive items 2.0 makes cockpits & ships.
Important Sources
You Can Read this Article here -
https://www.redacted.tv/star-citizen-alpha-3-0-features-target-dates/
Letter from Chris Roberts -
https://robertsspaceindustries.com/comm-link//15842-Letter-From-The-Chairman-The-Road-Ahead
Schedule Report -
https://robertsspaceindustries.com/schedule-report
How Schedules are Made -
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qOjXfNnhxf0
edit - 2017 changed to 2016 typo referring to Delamar.
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