3.5 is LIVE

Game Development Star Citizen
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A new Flight Model, some new ships, a new planet 2 new moons and Female Characters are just the short list of the big changes in this release!

Here is the official patch notes page, check it out and I will see you all in the verse!

EDIT: for those who may be at work and unable to get to the notes:

Star Citizen Patch 3.5.0

Alpha Patch 3.5.0 has been released to live!! Patch should now show: LIVE-1460999.

It is strongly recommended that players delete their USER folder for the Public client after patching, particularly if you start encountering any odd character graphical issues or crash on loading. The USER folder can be found (in default installations) at C:\Program Files\Roberts Space Industries\StarCitize\LIVE. Additionally, due to a complete overhaul of keybindings and updates to the new flight model, it is strongly recommended players start custom bindings from scratch rather than import older bindings.

IMPORTANT: Please be sure you are on launcher version 1.1.1, fully updated, before you begin downloading the patch.

Major Known Issues:

  • When exiting the options menu on the character customizer screen, the options will remain up disabling the players’ control. W/A: Avoid using the options menu during character customization.
  • If the player exits the game with the mobiGlas still open they will return to the universe with a blurry screen. W/A: Close mobiGlas before exiting.
  • Delivery boxes can fall through the flooring of some ships.
  • Ships do not leave behind cargo when destroyed.
  • Ruto’s hologram is missing.
  • Ruto’s entry mission will sometimes fail to complete.
  • Some Area18 labs lack atmospheric pressure.
  • Ships can exceed their speed limits by turning slightly while accelerating.
  • Weapon projectiles/tracers occasionally diverge significantly from the player’s point of aim.
  • Dying with chat open may cause the player to be unable to respawn correctly. W/A: Relaunch client.
  • Trying on clothing at Casaba can sometimes result in the loss of armor pieces.
  • Ship bed logout may be unreliable or inconsistent.
  • Stowed items can sometimes appear attached to the players’ legs.
  • Switching to external camera from the pilot seat and back when reset the HUD and chat.

New Features

General

  • Added DNA face customization system.

Character selection and creation now uses a DNA face customization system. Initially you will be able to choose a gender, then select from a set of currently available characters and customize the blend of their facial features that will be represented in your own character. System includes “Simple” and “Advanced” modes that allows you to customize your face with preferred level of complexity. Additionally, “Eidonomy” selection provides the ability to select individual traits such as eye and hair color, skin tone etc.

  • Added playable female characters.
  • Adding “headphones” setting in audio menu.

Universe

  • Planetary Locations: Planet ArcCorp and its moons Lyria and Wala.

Unlike the other planets in the Stanton system, the ArcCorp has the distinction of being almost entirely developed and built on. Nearly every square kilometer of the planet has been allocated for habitation, commercial use, industrial plants, and massive warehouses. As such, a strict, low level no-fly zone is in place for protection, though many choose to construct their buildings taller than the zone in order to offer landing opportunities. ArcCorp has two moons: Lyria, an icy moon dotted with cryogeysers and cryovolcanoes and Wala, a low density moon notable for its large crystalline outcroppings.

  • Major Landing Zone: Area18.

Area18 happens to be one of the few landing zones designated by ArcCorp for interplanetary traffic and is one of the main commercial ports for the surrounding region. If travelers manage not to be overwhelmed by the hectic sights and sounds of this landing zone, they can find a variety of goods from trusted names as well as unique local providers. ArcCorp has contracted with the PMC group “BlacJac Security” to ensure that their world and its surrounding environs are kept safe and open for business.

  • Added new mission giver: Tecia “Twitch” Pacheco.

Twitch came up as a soldier who transitioned into freelance security work after her service ended. Things seemed to be working out until she suffered nerve damage on a job for BlacJac Securities and they unceremoniously cut her loose. Now, left without employment and with a very specialized skill-set that she couldn’t use, she turned to the criminal element that she used to hunt. These days, she lurks around the back alleys of the megacity Area18, making deals and introducing people or as she calls it “enjoying her retirement.”

  • Added Hurston Security ship variants for areas in and around Hurston.
  • IFCS will now engage autopilot and attempt to turn your ship out and away when intersecting with a no-fly zone.
  • Players can now set quantum travel way-points on members of their party.

Missions

  • Added environmental missions where AI can police unlawful players and track/call in additional support when doing so. The level and ship of the opposing force will depend on the player’s wanted level.
  • Added combat assistance service beacon mission types for AI.
  • Added a patrol mission to Delamar.
  • Added destroy satellite missions into Hurston area.
  • Added additional delivery mission variants.

Ships and Vehicles

  • Added: MISC Reliant variants Tana, Sen, and Mako.
  • Added Anvil F7C-M Super Hornet Heartseeker.
  • Added automated gimbals

Automated gimbals are an additional setting for gimbals that allow them to attempt and automatically track targets within a cone in front of the ship. The cone is designated by a dashed circle, which is separated into two when the gimbals do not have a lock on the target and closes into a single circle when they develop a lock. This mode can be cycled to via the “R” key

  • Added Tachyon “Singe” cannons.
  • Added new turret UI and sensitivity controls

Turrets now have a UI overlay that shows their position relative to their parent ship (in degrees), the current sensitivity (slider bar), and with the current fire mode. Additionally, there are now interaction nodes for increasing and decreasing turret sensitivity directly from the turret seat.

  • Added voice feedback for events while mining.
  • Items and components now wear at a very slow rate.
  • Items and components can now be repaired.
  • Added ship weapon auto-convergence

Fixed and gimbal weapons now auto-converge disparate weapon velocities and ranges into a single pip based on the slowest and shortest range weapon you have equipped. Additionally, gimbal and fixed weapons have a very small amount of target convergence (still being tuned).

FPS

  • Added: Gemini S71 assault rifle

A well balanced and designed Assault Rifle, favored by wealthier private military professionals who want to make a display.

  • Added: Kastak Arms Coda pistol

A no frills, raw, heavy ballistic pistol that packs a heavy punch if it connects. What it lacks in fire rate and magazine size, it more than makes up for in range and power.

  • FPS weapons now have dry fire audio when out of ammunition.
  • Added color variants to many armors and undersuits.

UI

  • Added UI icons for additional kinds of contacts.
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My own fav’s from the patch notes:

  • Players can now set quantum travel way-points on members of their party.
  • Added environmental missions where AI can police unlawful players and track/call in additional support when doing so. The level and ship of the opposing force will depend on the player’s wanted level.
  • Added: MISC Reliant variants Tana, Sen, and Mako.
  • Added: Kastak Arms Coda pistol

For that second one there, it is pretty cool to see. If someone goes outlaw there is a small contingent of CruSec that shows up. IF they get into too much trouble with the player then they call in support. Eventually if that player is particularly difficult there will be a Hammerhead and multiple support craft that quantum in to take them out. It is the first bits we see of the outlaw system really making life hard for criminals. I love it!

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I am trying it, but can’t currently land anywhere. The mobiglass commo isn’t working.

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I have not had this issue myself but I heard a couple of people mention it in chat.
Something about the MFD for coms not showing the ATC for landing.
But so far using F11 has worked as a work around for everyone that mentioned it.

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Well that’s good to know. I’m gonna download it now, but won’t be able to try it for a while, the fan on my power supply decided it wants to take frequent vacations from it’s job, so now anytime I go into anything with higher level of graphics, it turns itself off after 15 minutes. Going to take me a while to install a new one. But have fun in it everyone who is goign to give it a try.

Mith

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Did they fix the issue of players hanging around the landing pads and jumping into any ship that spawns and going for joyrides?

Unless that is taken care of, I do not even want to try to play, because it is super-frustrating to spawn a ship, run out to the deck, and as soon as a door or ramp is lowered, a random player runs into your ship, beats you to the pilot seat, and takes you and/or your ship for a joyride leaving you with no options but to get a new ship, or wait out the timer if they crash / blow up your ship.

Then, to add insult to injury, IF they decide they are bored and take a spacewalk without a suit, then I become outlawed? W. T. F?!

Kind of pissed. Played for 2 hours on Sunday, and of the 3 instances, ALL of them had this ‘issue’. Asking nicely did not work. ‘Well the game allows it, so I do it.’ was the type of response I got.

–NK.

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I can completely understand your frustration.
As far as I know the current system in 3.5 is this:
Ships are locked to anyone but the owner at the time they are spawned.
Anyone in a group with the owner automatically gets access rights to enter the ship.
The owner can lock and unlock the doors which allows any other players to enter the ship.
When a ship is locked, even if the owner opens a door and allows someone in, they cannot activate the pilot seat to fly the ship.

That is the way it is supposed to work. Anything other than that is a bug. Since the outlaw system is in a patch very close on the roadmap I would expect they will be tackling those kinds of bugs in the patch that updates that system. So if there is a bug it probably wont get addressed until then.

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There are some places on some ship models where you can slip between the walls. Just like at Olisar you can slip through the back wall of the bed and land outside on the launch pads. I saw some one last night zipping around over the launch pads where connies get spawned trying to land on one as it took off.

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Ok now to vent a little. I know its ALPHA, but what I can’t stand is when you get out of your ship to run a mission, someone comes along and blows up your ship for you. What kind of thrill you could possibly get from that? I mean the very definition of low class. Then a player started to ram me as I was sitting inside the no-guns zone at olisar figuring out the new controls. Seriously annoying.

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Yeah that is pretty lame.
But there is no game mechanic to fix asshat.

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Well after quite the bumpy launch, it seems that 3.5 is now pretty stable.

Last night I was able to log in and play at a steady 50-60fps even in Port Olisar. Played for a few hours without any trouble, no crashes or errors.

I highly recommend trying it out, but be warned - The new Flight Model is easy to use but the controls have quite the learning curve. I suggest going into settings and customizing from the start. It helps you to learn the controls and forces you to put things where you will remember and know how to use them. Things like the Cruise Control and Speed Limiter Toggle are good ones to have handy if you are a HOTAS/HOSAS pilot.

I ran in to Toruk the other day in Discord and it made me realize we need to plan more stuff as a guild. So look for some events and contests to come soon.

Until then I hope I get to see some of you flying about in the PU.

Have fun!

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Well what’s available for groups so far as missions go are we group up, take one ship and each pick up a delivery mission. See if we can all get the same pick up point. Then there is we each get a patrol/BH or investigate mission and we all escort each other to said missions around the system. We could all go to Hurston and get a remove the trespassers mission where we do FPS/squad kill missions. There is plenty to do as a group. Just gotta figure out how we want to do them.

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All great ideas.
We can also script some things with other orgs. We have very few combat pilots in our group, but a there are one or two here. We DO have lots of cargo haulers and people who want to run turrets and stations on ships. Right now, the way heat and power work, it is good to have at least one person on a ship in charge of a station to handle shields/power/heat. In some cases I would say have one shield operator and one power/heat operator.

If there is enough interest, I can set up an event with Legacy. My idea is that we would bring a cargo hauler and a couple of our own escorts, 2 at most. We would set up a route, from location X to location Y, which may have multiple stops along the way. Legacy would bring an escort group, 3-5 pilots and ships I am thinking. We would have them also bring a pirate group, another 4-8 pilots depending on how hard we want this to be. The pirates would know 3 of the stops on our route. They would attack at one of the stops randomly.

It would be a fun test of how well we can handle combat even for those who are not going to be engaging in a lot of combat.

I will post about it, see if we get any interest.

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Just to note, the hardest part of doing something like this is getting everyone on to the same server. After that it is easy peasy. The servers have been solid since last weekend.

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Apparently you didn’t play today lol, they all crashed.

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Been playing every day. No issues when I was on…

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IT might have been local. But all the servers were down for awhile yesterday. Turok and I were on when it happened. I was on spectrum afterwards and heard that using a HDD is going to cause sync and update problems. That’s an issue with me as I don’t make enough money to afford high end anything. We will see though.

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You don’t need high end stuff. Just a small SSD that can fit Star Citizen.
Here is an option that is reasonably priced:

Even if you have an older PC that does not have SATA III there are comparable options with SATA II which has been a standard on PC motherboards for many years now.

So there are options if it comes down to absolutely having to have a solid state drive.

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My primary is an SSD, but after spending the morning trying to free up the 40+ GB of space, its not happening.

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So I spent about an hour flying to Area 18 and looking around, went afk for about 20 min then came back to find I’d been timed out. Not a big deal just unexpected, I’ve never been afk that long in SC before so not sure if it is something new or not. Anyway after jumping back into the game I make my way back to the spaceport where my ship is, go to retrieve it and have the thing tells me all my ships are destroyed. I stare at the screen thinking WTF happened cause I only flew one and actually landed without crashing, (which I was really surprised since I had to drop to just a few feet off the ground then move foward into a hanger to get over the pad to activate auto land) then as I’m debating doing a bug report or finding if my account was hacked they all popup as being stored. I’m guessing this is an issue with having ships at multiple locations.

Edit: I wanted to ask: I grabbed the teddy bear that was in my room where I woke up after being afk, now the thing is constantly hanging on my ankle, how do I stop ‘carrying’ the bear around?