Star Citizen Alpha 3.14.0 PTU.7618230 Patch Notes

Star Citizen Patch 3.14.0

Alpha Patch 3.14.0 has been released to the PTU environment, and is now available to test! Patch should now show: VERSION 3.14.0-PTU.7618230.

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\StarCitizen\PTU.

Database Reset: YES
Long Term Persistence: Enabled
Audience: Wave 1
Pledge Copy: Enabled
Starting aUEC: 15,000,000

Please monitor sc-testing-chat in spectrum for updates and testing instructions.

USER.cfg settings: r_displaySessionInfo = 1

Current cloud tech is still in active development and not yet final. There’s ongoing work on SDF occlusion which should help alleviate the graphical artifacting (visual dots in the clouds). Additionally, we are working towards having local VFX for the clouds (similar to the gas clouds around rest stops) which will make a big difference in overall quality.

Testing Focus

Crusader
Orison Landing Zone
Constellation Taurus
Law System v2: Surrender
Power Management v2 (Capacitor Gameplay)
Missile Operator Mode
Radar, Scanning, and Ping T0

Known Issues

Gas Clouds on Crusader appear to have moving graphical artifacts that appear as dots. Current clouds are still in development and not final. See note at the top of patch notes.
Orison objects & textures loading very slowly
Single location will only appear if the player spools their drive before setting destination on the starmap (Workaround: Spool quantum drive before opening the starmap and then open it and set route)
Various UI markers are faded and hard to read
Unable to scan for FPS or ROC-sized mining deposits until very close
Port Olisar is missing QT marker
Large black cubes and bright light particles can been seen within the snow storm clouds on microTech & in the “dust” storm on Hurston
The AI at UGFs and Kareah will have desync issues
After being approved for a docking request, there is no docking UI present, making docking virtually impossible to complete
Unable to shoot with Hammerhead turrets, ammo displayed as 0/0
Missiles can hit the players ship when they are fired whilst the ship is moving forward
Security Ships do not recognise illegal goods onboard a ship when being carried by a player
Ping Scans are unable to detect FPS and Large FPS Deposits
Calls with players using certain seats or stations will display a grey screen
Players can clip through the exterior door of the 890 Jump whilst it is docked
Missions do not recognize players entering zone and AI are unresponsive or not visible to player during missions
There are uneven physics proxies at the hospital entrance which prevent players from taking trolleys, walking frames, and gurneys in and out of the hospital
Multiple ships can be observed having looping animations with their missile racks, impacting their ability to fire their payload. After the first fire, subsequent attempts to fire a missile can no longer work
The Pilots Weapons HUD will no longer be visible after entering / exiting a Turret
Cave FPS Missions – Mission is Withdrawn when nearing planet / cave
AI Ship Nameplates are missing and show as PLACEHOLDER
Intense fog can be seen in docking port interior at all rest stops with docking
The Player has no Collision when they are Manning the Mining Turret of the ROC-DS preventing damage from Weapons Fire
There is flashing that occurs intermittently when viewing the VMA in the MobiGlas at locations with environmental lighting

New Features

Locations

New Planet: Crusader
New City: Orison Landing Zone

Comprised of a latticework of platforms suspended in mid-atmosphere on the gas giant Crusader, Orison is considered one of the most picturesque locations in Stanton.

New Babbage Hospital Interior Location

Adding in the interior of the New Babbage Hospital. This first pass will add in the location lobby and additional remodeling of the lobby near the habs in New Babbage to accommodate the hospital and gameplay in a future release.

Gameplay

Law System v2: Surrender

The addition of Surrender allows players to be arrested without losing their life, an important feature as the game moves closer to mechanics where the decision to surrender or risk death by fighting / fleeing will carry much more weight. Players will be able to surrender by coming to a halt and powering down their ships when ordered to by security. Security will halt their attack and arrest criminal players (and impound the ship if owned by a criminal). Surrendering will give the player a reduced sentence when sent to prison. All players inside a criminal’s ship at the time of surrender, regardless of criminal status will be sent to prison when the ship is impounded. In the current implementation, players can not surrender to other players.

Missile Operator Mode

Missile Operator Mode is a new operator mode that will be used to separate the gun and missile/torpedo gameplay within ships. Using this mode will give pilots more control over what missiles/torpedoes are fired, and give them more character and purpose in combat. They should no longer be viewed as ‘just another weapon’, but have a more distinct and important role in the overall flow.

Accessing the Operator Mode: Access to the operator mode is given by a keybind (default middle mouse button), on a toggle (toggling out of the mode will enter the default mode for the seat). Upon accessing the mode, players will lose control of any other ship weapons and gain control of the missile systems. All other weapons will return to neutral gimbal positions, stop tracking, etc, while the missile weapon systems will deploy and the ship will emit increased signals

Selecting Ordnance: Players will only be able to lock and fire one kind of missile class at a time (e.g. Ignite/Rattler/Arrester, not just size or tracking type). In addition, each missile rack will only be able to stock one model of missile (pre-existing split loadouts will still ‘work’ technically but are not intended to be supported so there may be UI issues). On entering the mode, one type of missile will be automatically selected, ordered by class for consistency across ships and play sessions. Players can then cycle forward and back over these missile types, with the currently selected missile prominent on the HUD, and the previous and next class of missiles also visible so the player knows what they will cycle to next. Players can set how many missiles they wish to fire in a burst (G and LAlt+G by default up to a maximum value). They must then wait for each missile to arm before it can be fired.

Locking a Target: If a player is in Missile Operator Mode and has a Locked combat target, the missile will automatically begin locking onto the target. The locking process is no longer binary – after a minimum level of lock to acquire the target, the longer you lock for, the ‘better’ the lock becomes, and the harder the missile will become to spoof. This is achieved with a simple multiplier of the targets signal (e.g. a target may have a real signal of 1000, and at full lock the signal amplification may be x5, so the missile would perceive a signal of 5000 instead). This means that the missile requires other contacts to have a significantly larger signal than the original to be distracted by them. A target must be fully resolved (i.e. its signal must be the largest in the detection radius) before a missile will track it, meaning that enemy targets can try and outplay another ship locking a missile to them by releasing countermeasures or flying close to larger targets before the missile is even launched. If the missile’s target isn’t fully resolved before launch, it will simply dumbfire forward.

Firing Ordnance: At any point after the first missile has been armed, the player can initiate the launch procedure, which will fire any currently armed missiles and begin a cooldown until they can next begin arming missiles. If the player begins firing missiles without a lock, the missiles will be dumb-fired. This can be used for ground targets, bombing runs, emergency situations, or to avoid enemy ships being notified about incoming missiles/combat locks. If more than one rack has the same type of missile, then missiles will be expended from the racks in a staggered rotation (e.g. if three racks each have 8 Ignite missiles on, and the player chooses to fire 8 Ignite missiles, the first two racks will each fire 3 missiles and the third will fire 2, in ABC rotation).

Missiles – Guidance & Control Rework

Converted missiles to use the IFCS guidance and control systems. This will improve missile performance and tracking ability, enabling greater control over general missile behaviors.

Ships and Vehicles

New Ship: RSI Constellation Taurus

Core Tech

Planetary Volumetric Clouds v1

Initial version of a bespoke system to convincingly render multi layered, volumetric clouds of varying scale within planetary atmospheres. This initial version is meant for the Gas Giant, Crusader.

Feature Updates

Gameplay

Radar, Scanning, and Ping T0

We have overhauled the Radar, Scanning, and Pinging system. Tab (default) now does a ping from your ship that will Radar is used to passively locate and track contacts, and display their whereabouts to the player. Scanning is used to obtain information about a specific entity. Ping actively finds additional contacts, or highlights volumes of space to investigate weak signatures, both of which are displayed via the radar and its AR HUD elements. This includes a new UI element for Infrared (IR) – emitted by heat-generating entities Electromagnetic, (EM) – emitted by entities which draw (use) or generate electrical power, and Cross Section (CS) representing how visible an entity is, based on its size and how reflective its surface type(s). The larger a contact is (and the more of its profile it presents), the greater its CS signature is.

Blobs are generated when an entity’s signature strength is strong enough to reach the radar but not otherwise strong enough to be detected as a contact. These blobs are visually divided into cuboids the ship’s display and indicate a volume of space to investigate, where an entity, or entities might be located. The size of a Blob is determined based on the base signature strength of the entity meaning the larger a blob is, the less accurate its representation of an entity’s position.

Power Management v2

Rebalancing the existing power system and integrating Capacitors into it. Players will have the ability to manage the amount of extra energy that goes into the thrusters, weapons and shields, making critical decisions on the distribution of energy in order to defend, attack or pursue/evade. This also includes added keybindings to control these changes. The assignment via keys (F5, F6, F7, F8-reset) or power triangle will set the regeneration speed for thruster capacitor, shield regeneration, and energy weapon ammo regeneration.

With the new additions to capacitor gameplay comes wide reworks to ship flight and thruster handling, shield behavior, and weapon damage / ammo counts. This full rework on ships is to bring them closer to their intended roles in the universe.

Weapons: Weapon fire rates and damage have increased dramatically. Ammo rates have been significantly reduced. Energy weapons now have limited ammo which is automatically regenerated when the weapon is not being used. Changing assignment to weapons will make energy weapon regenerate ammo faster. Throttling and overclocking is disabled for the time being (will be re-evaluated post 3.14). Manned turrets have their isolated weapon capacitor system which will regenerate weapons faster and provide a deeper pool.

Shields: Full balance rework on all shields below Size 3 to turn them into bubble type shields with 1 shield face. Removed hardening (will be redeveloped at a later point).

Thrusters/Flight: Added separate regenerable pool for boost (formerly afterburner). Changing assignment to thrusters will make the thruster boost bar fill up faster. Added option to automatically enable/disable boost during space braking.

UI: Added thruster fuel boost bar. Added weapon readout on the HUD for each weapon showing ammo state. Slightly changed the meaning of the shield display to reflect power triangle assignment, disallowed throttling on the shield display. Legacy Power triangle functionality is removed (it was just a power priority setting that only worked if the power plant could not supply enough power). Power triangle will now work as a pure regen distribution function for shields, energy weapons and thruster boost.

Increased detection range of mineable rocks
Added new display options for party nameplates

Ships and Vehicles

Canvas Sliced Ship HUDs

Updating all ship HUDs to use the new Canvas Slice system, providing an improved layout that maximizes screen real estate and provides more info and depth to pilots. Players will now see a universal bearing along the top edge. Pitch ladder has moved from the center of the players vision to along the right side. We’ve added 3D velocity and acceleration meters on the bottom corner.

IFCS Thruster Wind Volume Effects

Building on the Thruster Wind Volumes feature to create visual effects for atmospheric flight. This adds the ability for IFCS thruster wind volumes to affect ground materials like dust and snow more accurately and with new dynamic effects when flying low to planet surfaces.

Claiming a ship no longer restocks missiles / torpedoes

We’ve made missiles and torpedoes no longer restock when a ship is claimed through insurance on the ASOP terminal. Players will now need to restock the ship manually through the landing services after reclaiming. With this change we have reduced the base wait time for all insurance claims.

Law and Prison updates

Removed the trespass zones from underground facilities. Destroying a party member’s empty vehicle no longer results in a crime. Updated the prison code entry interface to prevent it from resetting the code on failed attempts to stop a bug that would make it no longer accept codes. Crime for Assaulting a security officer should no longer be given outside of a monitored zone. Knock-outs no longer kill.

Increased Inner Thought text size for ship medical bed “Set as preferred ICU”
Adjusted Pilot/Co-Pilot seat animations and height in the Hammerhead

Core Tech

Updated Main Menu background video
Graphics Setting Additions

We’ve added a few new graphics settings that will help give more control over your experience in the PU. Added volumetric Cloud graphics options. We’ve added Low/Medium(original default)/High spawning distance for scattered objects. This setting allows you to pick the distance from the camera at which scattered objects spawn. We’ve also added Terrain Tessellation Distance for Low/Medium(original default)/High.

Major Bug Fixes

Player friends list in game should no longer be capped at a maximum of 50 players
The Loading screens should no longer be enlarged and zoomed in on aspect ratios higher than 16:9 (i.e. 21:9 and 32:9)
Player emotes should now correctly play through slash commands and the inner thought wheel
Fixed an issue causing purchased carryable items to disappear very quickly after they are dropped or placed on the ground
Miles Eckhart should now function correctly and update the mission
Ramming another player while in the borders of your own pad should no longer impound your ship
Ships should no longer fail to restock ammo and missiles/torpedoes when using restocking services
Player’s oxygen levels should no longer start to deplete after using QT in a ship
Fixed an issue causing players to damage their ships If the player exits their seat and re-enters their seat during quantum travel and then later exits the ship
Fixed an issue causing players to not persistent spawn back inside their ship, making them have to claim it, if their client crashes within an armistice zone
Fixed the multiTool dispensed from the Commissary units so that it will show the Orebit attachment in the PMA after they are stowed
Workaround fix for the SCU amount displayed for the 890’s cargo capacity so it should no longer be incorrectly at 32
Fixed an issue causing the ECN alert mission countdown timer to not display
Weapons placed in ship weapon lockers should now persist in all ships correctly when it has been stored and retrieved
Large ships attempting to autoland in Rest Stop/Orbital Station hangars should no longer become stuck
Mission givers AI will no longer break if an NPC sits in their designated seat before they do
There should no longer be very obstructive reflections on the 85X Canopy
When you throw a grenade it should no longer have a chance to reappear in your hand, or throw with a desync and the explosion has no VFX
Vehicles with weapon gimbals should now correctly default to fixed mode when the setting is turned on
Fixed an issue where players could not fire an FPS weapon directly after Switching/ reloading the weapon until the second ( LMB ) press
Players should no longer remain in ADS when reloading an FPS weapon and have let go of ADS key
NPCs should no longer be able to push a player away from kiosks / ASOP terminals while using them
The Hot tub in the Constellation Phoenix should no longer be missing some geometry
The 2951 Auspicious Red Paint should no longer be displayed as -PLACEHOLDER- in the VMA and should now correctly change the appearance of the ship when applied to it
Friendly AI ships during missions should now quantum away correctly after all hostile AI ships in the area have been destroyed and the user completed the mission
Fixed an issue causing many inner thought prompts to be missing or broken from ship beds and non-pilot seats which may prevent standing up or logging out functions
Tevarin War Dress White Uniform Jacket texture should no longer appear zoomed in
Bartenders should no longer be missing from Rest Stop bars
Fixed an issue causing players to unable to claim their ships from the ASOP terminals claim button
When performing an Unlawful delivery mission, pilot’s drug box should now get despawned correctly after a Security AI ship finishes scanning their vehicle
Armor shop mannequins should no longer be T-posed in Garrity Defense and other armor stores
Underground Facility turrets should no longer be missing
Cruise Control speed should no longer ignore the limiter when player is not in the pilot seat
Players head should now correctly remain looking at ceiling upon respawning in a bed
Wiping the helmet visor should now correctly clear Icing VFX impairing player vision
Fixed a noticeable performance drop of up to 10 FPS when navigating around the lower rear section of the Prowler when on a moon
The power triangle should now function and be interacted with within the MFD inside ships
SparkJet Pro Power plants should now show the correct size grade the component is
Turning ship into no fly zones at Area18 should no longer result in auto pilot pulling player to the ground
Ships should no longer be able to continue to throttle when their hydrogen fuel has been depleted completely
Fixed an issue that sometimes caused ship parts to duplicate when blown off of the ship