Cloud Imperium Games and Roberts Space Industries rolled out the latest alpha for Star Citizen. For those of you who purchased a persistent universe package of the game, you’ll be able to dive into the latest version of the game right now.
For those of you who have been playing the game since 3.8, all of your progress and equipment will carry over to 3.9.0. There has been no asset wipe for this iteration of the alpha… yet.
The only new ship addition for 3.9.0 is the new Esperia Prowler, which is a transport class warship.
The new survival mechanics have been added to the game, including the ability to eat and drink to maintain hydration. It’s not a pervasive mechanic, but Bored Gamer did a breakdown of the feature and noted that you will need to hydrate every couple of hours, but it all depends on how strenuous your activity is. Obviously, someone doing a lot of mining, melee combat, or adventuring will need to eat more frequently.
Different foods and hydration provide different stat buffs, so you will need to find out what sort of foods do what before just stockpiling a bunch of 2801 Whammer’s into your backpack.
Additional survival mechanics have been implemented as well, including environmental hazards. This includes blizzards, extreme cold, extreme heat, and negative atmosphere effects.
This will affect what sort of armor you will need to have equipped.
Armor that insulates you from cold or heat will be required for environments with extreme heat or cold. If you have a suit that does not regulate for extreme weather conditions, then you will suffer the negative effects of said atmosphere.
Prison Time
The prison and security system is pretty cool.
If you do criminal missions then you will raise your criminal rating. The more crimes you commit the more your wanted rating goes up. Players or NPCs can put a bounty on your head and it can be collected… dead or alive.
If the security forces managed to apprehend you then they’ll send you to the prison colony on a remote planet. You’ll either have to work in the mines to whittle down your time in prison or attempt to hack the system, or your mates can attempt a prison break; but if you fail any of the nefarious means to get out your jail time, then that time is extended.
Additionally, you can run missions to acquire crypto keys you can use to hack into your criminal profile within the given solar system and attempt to lower your criminal rating. So there’s an ebb and flow to the criminal system to avoid prison time, if you’re good enough.
Also, doing stupid stuff like purposely ramming player ships, shooting NPCs, or engaging in typical GTA-style behavior will raise your criminal rating, so be prepared to either skip town or stay on the run if you’re keen on being a public nuisance.
One other neat future of the criminal rating system is that there are com arrays located around planets to monitor criminal activity. You can technically disable the com arrays, which is sort of like disabling planet-scale cameras in order to commit a crime, such as a heist, or stealing a ship, or smuggling illegal goods into or out of the planet.
Another neat update in Star Citizen 3.9.0 is a rare new ore that is highly volatile but also extremely expensive. It degrades rather quickly once mined, and any heavy rocking or combat can cause the volatile ore to explode and destroy your ship. So there’s a huge risk/reward feature for mining the material.
They also overhauled a lot of the balancing issues regarding ship maneuvering, AI behavior, ship stats, and gimbal mechanics.
As cool as some of these features are, I should note that there are still a lot of bugs and glitches present in 3.9.0 based on feedback from the gaming community who have played the latest version of the game.
A lot of people are reporting that they’ve lost some inventory items, that some of their ships are glitchy during combat, and that some of the UI bugged out on them.
However, there are also a lot of people talking about how awesome it is exploring some of the new locations, using the Prowler as a dropship, and making mad dosh with their mining ships. So it’s a give and take based on your setup and what you expect from the game.
You can learn more about Star Citizen alpha 3.9.0 by visiting the official website.