With an emphasis on Persistent Entity Streaming, ship salvaging gameplay, new missions and more – the developers of the long-in-alpha crowdfunded Sci-Fi game Star Citizen, Cloud Imperium Games, have confirmed that Alpha 3.18 will soon be available to an initial wave of NDA-bound Evocati Testers. While it is uncertain how long this period will last, with previous periods ranging from a couple of days or approximately a month, it will then be rolled out onto Public Test Universe (PTU) servers for a wider audiences, before going live on main servers.
Want to become an Evocati tester? Unfortunately there is no one way of being guaranteed entry, with the testers being described as “a small group of technically-minded players” and are a mix of players who participate in different facets of Star Citizen including “contributing to Issue Council, racing, running missions, and more”.
Potential features of the Star Citizen Alpha 3.18 update include:
Locations
Daymar Crash Site
A derelict settlement on Daymar using parts of the StarRunner & 600i, as well as some habs adapted to the biome, to create a point of interest with some type of activity (puzzle, traversal, hostile AI, missions, etc.) as well as rewards for completion.
New Rivers in Stanton
Setting up biome-specific object rulesets around bodies of water and distributing those by placing additional rivers and lakes on microTech and Hurston.
Sand Cave Archetype
Establishing the visual language, creation pipeline and quality standard for a new sand cave archetype. With this release, cave networks using this archetype will be placed throughout the Stanton system.
Greycat PTV Race Track
Implementing a race track in the Orison Vision Centre on Crusader in the same location as the most recent Invictus Launch Week, designed for the Greycat PTV.
Gameplay Features
Cargo System Refactor
This refactor of the ship cargo system will allow both found and purchased cargo to be picked up, moved around, and placed into the cargo grid of a ship.
Sandbox Prison Activities
Expansion of prison gameplay with a new suite of missions and sandbox activities to give inmates more opportunities to earn merits or to aid in their escape from prison.
Security Post Kareah Reactivation
Security Post Kareah will be taking a more central role in Stanton’s security. Crusader Security have moved in a full-time staff and have begun storing confiscated contraband aboard. The station will be off limits to all civilians, unless given prior authorization.
New Missions – Orison
Bounty, Assassinate, Clear All and other missions to take place on the platforms created for Siege of Orison which, in future, will be distributed across the planet of Crusader to create further content.
Salvage – Hull Stripping
The first implementation of Salvage into the persistent universe, which includes both hull stripping as well as repair. This will include both performing hull stripping and repairs by hand, as well as hull stripping using the systems aboard the Drake Vulture and Aegis Reclaimer.
New Ships
Drake Vulture
Building, balancing, and implementing Drake Interplanetary’s light salvage ship, the Vulture, into the game.
Drake Corsair
Building, balancing, and implementing Drake Interplanetary’s multi-crew explorer, the Corsair, into the game.
Weapons and Items
Greycat Multi-tool Salvage Attachment
Designing and creating the multi-tool salvage attachment. Includes asset creation, animation, and balancing.
Core Technology
Persistent Entity Streaming
Implementation of the Persistent Entity Streaming core technology into Star Citizen. Making use of services such as the Entity Graph and Replication Layer, this will allow every dynamic object in the game to fully persist across all servers, irrelevant of whether it is owned or held by a player.
