Star Citizen - 3.15

[phil bottle 9,732]

Massive new patch released yesterday evening with the promised inventory wipe. I was pleasantly surprised to find that while my Drake Dragonfly was gone, I seem to have 140,000 UEC. So I can buy a new one pretty quickly 🙂

 

Here's the patch list. Inventory is now a thing, as is dying. Read on citizens 🖖

 

 

 

New Features

 

Hospitals

Addition of unique hospital locations to Orison, New Babbage, and Grim HEX, and medical clinics into space stations. Here players will be able to regenerate, save new regen locations, heal injuries, and buy medical supplies. Emergency medical elevators have also been added to landing zone hangars to aid in transporting injured players directly to the hospital. For this first iteration, players who originally spawn at Area18 or Lorville will have their default regeneration point set to their corresponding orbital stations. Lorville and Area18 will be getting their hospitals in a future release.

 

AI

Unmanned Missile Defense Turrets

Addition of AI controlled missile defense turrets at space stations and underground facilities in the PU.

Gameplay

 

Personal Inventory T0 and Asset Manager APP

With the implementation of Personal Inventory, players will now physically store weapons, gadgets, consumables, healing items, and more on their person and in vehicles via backpacks, pockets, and containers. This utilizes the new iCache for persistence wherever players travel. This new system removes the older Equipment Manager app from the mobiGlas and adds a new local inventory system by pressing ‘I’ on the keyboard (default keybind). Current landing zones share inventories with their low orbit stations above the planets. Tabs allow navigation between Local, Vehicle, External, and Personal inventory. Players can navigate between each tab to move items from one inventory to another (with both sides of the screen displaying an inventory container and the list of available tables). NOTE: Two of the same tabs cannot be open at the same time. When a player places the cursor over any item in their inventory they will be presented with the information given in shops in addition to item specific info; for example ammo displays the remaining bullets in the magazine. Armor and clothing (backpacks, torso and legs) typically have their own inventory container and can be opened by using the inventory system [I]. Placing any of these into a location inventory or into a container will create a nested inventory which can be opened via the RMB over the item. This nested inventory will make it so players are able to store more items onto the player and make space. When right clicking (mouse2) any item in inventory a contextual menu will appear, presenting available interactions, including functions like “split” for stacked items. All armor and clothing can now be carried, dropped, placed and left in the world (currently represented in the environment by carryable boxes); while in this state they can be interacted with using the interaction system, and can be equipped by doing so.

Primary Residence / Initial Location: Before starting the game and initially spawning, a player must now specify their Primary Residence location (where they will initially spawn) via the front end. Friend options to join a party (spawn at their location) are disabled until this location has been set. Any items entitled via store purchases, subscriber rewards etc. will be added to the Primary Residence’s local inventory. Each starting location, Rest stop and Port Olisar have a corresponding local inventory. Items left in the local inventory when the player leaves the location will remain there and cannot be accessed from the inventory UI until the player returns.

Character Inventory: The inventory is no longer restricted to commodities, and can contain any type of FPS armor, clothing, weapon, consumable, and one handed carryable (provided said item fits). The player character is now displayed at the center of the Inventory UI, with a controllable camera (holding mouse2 allows orbit movement via mouse movement, mouse wheel controls zoom), and the ability to drag held and equipped items off of the character into an inventory UI container, and vice versa from an inventory container onto a valid itemport on the character. Items can be dragged and dropped from an inventory container, or from the character, directly onto the floor. Weapon attachments can be dragged directly onto weaponry that is held or equipped to the character. If a player is downed or killed, other players are able to loot items from them via the interaction menu. When a player dies, the items on their body will remain lootable at the location of their death for 2 hours before despawning. Players will be able to choose to loot an individual item by removing just a weapon, armor, container, undersuit, or magazine.

Vehicle Inventory: Every vehicle with a traversable interior has its own Vehicle Inventory accessible while inside that vehicle, with each player aboard having their own instanced Vehicle Inventory. When a vehicle is destroyed, a large cargo box will appear containing any items that had been stored in that vehicle’s inventory. Any player will be able to loot the items in this crate via the interaction menu.

 

Nik Nax Asset Manager: The Nik Nax asset manager is a new mobiGlas app designed to keep track of every item or vehicle a player owns in the universe. The app allows sorting by many options including item locations so that you will be able to quickly determine where you left each of your vehicles, weapons, or that Buster’s bar you really wanted.

Loot Generation T0

 

Addition of systemically generated containers (crates/lockers/boxes) stocked with lootable items throughout the world. The content of these boxes are dynamically generated based on their location with random amounts and types of items.

Healing T0 and Actor Status T1

 

Complete overhaul of the Healing and the Actor Health systems. These two systems are intrinsically linked for players to determine the effects of damage on an actor and allow themselves and other players to action on those effects. These effects range from minor visual and audio feedback, to state changes where player control is hindered or removed, up to the death and (in a player’s case) regeneration of a character.

 

Incapacitated State: When a player is damaged enough, they will enter an “Incapacitated” state. Once incapacitated, their character will collapse, be unable to move or interact, their vision will fade in and out, and a time until death will be displayed. Once the timer has expired, the player will die and be regenerated at a medical facility. The duration of the timer can be shortened by receiving additional damage, and by other actor statuses (bleeding, dehydration, extreme temperature etc.). Instant death can be caused by receiving a large amount of damage at once. When a player is incapacitated a button prompt is displayed to trigger a rescue beacon, which if taken up by another player, creates a mission for said player to revive the incapacitated player. Other players can also perform a synced revive on an incapacitated player with a medical pen (mouse2 when close to the downed player) to bring them back to 50% health. The synced revival can be performed on a player that is face down or on their back. The medical gun and multi-tool healing attachment can also be used to administer a healing drug to revive incapacitated players.

 

Death & Regeneration: After a player dies, they will now regenerate in a medical bed instead of a hab bed. By default, the player will regenerate at the hospital at their primary residence location (set via the front end the first time they enter the game). A player may set a different regeneration location by visiting any Tier 1 or Tier 2 facility in a hospital, clinic or vehicle, and navigating the UI on a medical bed, medical bed’s end screen, or dedicated regeneration terminal. A player may reset their regeneration location to their primary residence via the same screens. If a player’s set regeneration location is not available at the time of death (e.g. if a ship is out of range, logged out, or destroyed), the player will respawn at their primary residence instead, and their set regeneration location will remain there until a new location is set. If a player’s set regeneration location is temporarily unavailable due to all beds being full, they will be given the option to regenerate at their primary residence instead, in order to avoid waiting in a queue

Injuries: When an actor’s body part (head, torso, left arm, right arm, left leg, right leg) is damaged, a corresponding amount of wear damage is applied to that same part. When enough wear damage is accrued, an injury is gained. Further wear to the same body part can lead to increased injury severities. Injuries add symptoms that affect gameplay, and introduce audio and visual effects. Injury severity is classified as “Minor”, “Moderate”, and “Severe.” While healing increases HP, it does not affect wear damage. To repair body parts with injuries, players must visit an appropriately tiered medical facility: Tier 3 can remove a Minor injury, Tier 2 can remove Minor and Moderate severity injuries, Tier 1 can remove any injury. Hurt Locomotion is triggered when any body part’s injury reaches Severe, or when a leg injury reaches Moderate. A Severe leg injury forces the player into a prone stance hindering movement. A Severe arm injury forces the player into the ArmsLock state limiting interactions.

 

BloodDrugLevel: Blood drug level (BDL) increases when a player drinks alcohol or is given any medicinal drugs (via medgun, multi-tool, medpens or medical beds). As a player’s BDL increases they will eventually enter an intoxicated locomotion state. When their BDL reaches 100% the player will enter the Overdosed state resulting in the player collapsing, being unable to move or interact, and their vision fading in and out. While this is similar to being incapacitated, once their BDL decays to below 100%, the player will exit the Overdosed state and be able to move again. The player takes damage while in the Overdosed state; taking increasingly more damage as BDL increases from 100% to 200% – this can lead to the player becoming Incapacitated, which in turn can lead to death if the BDL does not reach less than 100% before health reaches 0.

Medicinal Drugs: Symptoms from injuries can be temporarily masked, health can be recovered, and overdosed stun effects can be temporarily alleviated with that administration of medicinal drugs. Drugs can be delivered via an injection pen, healing beam (medgun or multi-tool healing attachment) or a medical bed. The player’s BDL will increase per dosage. Drugs remain in a character’s system for a specified duration, with increased doses resulting in increased durations. The delivery method’s efficacy also affects duration, with higher durations for medical beds > medical gun > medicinal pens. These drugs include: Hemozal (MedPen) which heals HP, stops bleeding, and revives from Incapacitated. Roxaphen (OpioPen) which masks Hurt Locomotion, ProneLock, ArmsLock, and the Pain Grunt SFX. Demexatrine (AdrenaPen) which masks reduced stun recovery, reduced impact resistance (force reactions sensitivity), reduced movement speed, increased weapon sway, and decreased ADS enter times. Sterogen (CoricoPen) which masks blood vision, muffled audio effects, reduced stamina regen, reduced max stamina, wheezing audio effects, and reduced melee force. Resurgera (DetoxPen) which revives an overdosed character (provided they are not also in the incapacitated state) but does not exit the Overdosed state, thus damage is still applied to the Overdosed character. While Resurgera is present in a character, all other drug’s decay rates are doubled, resulting in their duration being reduced but the character’s BDL decay rate is alos doubled, resulting in the Overdosed state being exited more quickly. Four new medpens (Roxaphen OpioPen, Demexatrine AdrenaPen, Sterogen CoricoPen, Resurgera DetoxPen) have been added to shops in multiple locations.

 

ParaMed Medical Device & Multi-Tool Medical Attachment: Players are able to administer drugs via a healing beam through the ParaMed medical device and multi-tool healing attachment when within 5m of their target character. Both can display health and actor status information about the character they’re pointed at. The back displays show how much medicine is available, and either the current target character’s health, or the reason they can’t be treated. Two AR UI cards display either side of the target character with the left card displaying information on the specific body part being pointed at (injuries, recommended drugs) and the right card displaying global health information like overall health, actor states such as bleeding or time until death, and the duration of any administered drugs. As a body part is pointed at, the AR UI highlights the body part, displaying a transparent color coded overlay, indicating which tier of injury (if any) the body part has. Both medical tools feature a secondary fire mode that allow self-diagnosis and self-healing. While the multi-tool healing attachment is limited to healing via Hemozal, the ParaMed has two modes – A basic mode that behaves similarly to the multi-tool attachment, and an advanced mode that allows the dosage of each drug to be specified, with the predicted duration of the drugs and the resulting BDL level displayed.

Medical Beds: Players will now regenerate in a medical bed instead of a hab bed. Players that enter a downed state in a landing zone, or are admitted via the Emergency elevators located in landing zone hangars will wake up in a hospital bed with their items stored in the local inventory. Each medical bed has a care facility tier rating (3, 2 or 1) which determines which injuries it can treat, and which it cannot. The Digital Medical Assistant terminals on the bed feature several functions – The Status screen displays a color coded silhouette of the patient showing injuries alongside recommended treatments and medicines. The Treatment screen displays a smaller version of the Status screen, and a list of the available treatments. The Medication screen displays an interface that allows custom drug dosage to be specified. The Regeneration screen will all the patient’s regen location to be set to the current facility or vehicle.

 

Hospital Gameplay: Players can enter a hospital lobby, reserve a room via a check-in screen (to make use of its medical beds), change their regeneration location, purchase all medical items from the pharmacy, and use the elevators to reach the floor their assigned room is on. Landing Zone hangars have been updated to include an emergency drop-off elevator where downed, injured, or overdosed players can be dragged by another player and sent to the hospital via the interface outside of the elevator. Once the elevator doors close, the rescued player will wake up in a hospital.

Infiltrate and Defend Missions

 

Implementing a series of new missions at Underground Facilities (UGF) to replace the old ones along with the addition of several new UGF locations. These new missions come in 5 types along with lawful and unlawful variants with more difficult types unlocked through reputation gains.

Eliminate Specific (Lawful / Unlawful): This mission is the most simple in that the player is given the task of going to the UGF to kill a specific target inside. Other enemy AI will spawn at the location but they do not necessarily need to be dealt with.
Eliminate All (Lawful / Unlawful): Here the player must go to the UGF and kill all the targets that spawn. A counter should display at the top center of their screen indicating the remaining targets when they head down the elevator of the UGF.
Eliminate Boss (Lawful / Unlawful): This mission begins the same as the ‘Eliminate All’ mission – the player must first clear the number of hostile AI as indicated by the counter on the top center of their UI. After they have done this, a boss AI with increased health will spawn with some guards. The player must then kill this boss to complete the mission.
Defend: This mission begins with a one minute timer when the player goes down the elevator of the UGF, where they should observe friendly AI waiting around. Once the timer finishes, wave 1 of 3 begins an a series of enemy AI spawn. The player should work together with the friendly AI to take out all of this hostile wave. Once this is done, another minute timer will begin to prepare for wave 2. This process repeats and once wave 3 is wiped out, the mission is complete. The player should receive bonuses based on the amount of friendly AI that are alive by the end of wave 3.
Collect: This mission requires the player to enter the UGF with the instruction of locating, and extracting 3 boxes based on reference numbers provided via the contracts manager. There are lots of boxes with random numbers within the UGF which the player must sift through until they find the correct boxes. During this process, the player will need to deal with spawning enemy AI in order too be able to extract the boxes safely. These boxes should be taken back up to the surface, loaded onto the player’s ship and delivered back to the drop off point.

 

Bombs

The addition of Bombing mechanics into Star Citizen which allows ships, such as the new Starlifter A2, to drop devastating bombs. This system is accessed using the current Missile Operator Mode if your ship is equipped with bombs. While active, it will give players a selection marker by holding T (Default keybind) that allows them to define an area where they want the bomb to drop. As these bombs drop with gravity and are not controlled after release, players will get a new UI alignment and drop HUD feature after selecting a target location on the ground that they can follow to get as close to the center of their targeted area as possible. All the other behavior(s) of MOM will apply here, such as increasing number of bombs to drop at once, waiting for them to arm, using the same keybinds. Initially, only the A2 will have bombs, and it will not have any missiles, so this idea of being able to cycle between missiles and bombs won’t apply. We’ve also brought back the cinematic missile camera mode which will attach and follow missiles and bombs. This feature is unbound by default but can be enabled in the options menu under the Vehicle – Missiles keybind section.

 

Ships and Vehicles

Added New Ship: Crusader A2 Hercules Starlifter

Added New Ship: Origin 400i

Weapons and Items

Added FPS item: CureLife ParaMed Medical Device

Added FPS item: Greycat LifeGuard Multi-Tool Medical Attachment

Core Tech

Added Ship Server Crash Recovery

Player ships should now be recoverable after experiencing a server crash. This new system will give the option on the ASOP to respawn the ship landing pad without loss of inventory or equipment instead of having to file a claim. This new system works on a heartbeat system to save a snapshot of the ship status and may take up to a few minutes after rejoining the server for the ASOP to switch from claim to a normal spawn.

 

Feature Updates

 

Orison – Landing Zone V2

The addition of more shops across the various platforms to expand the services available in Orison. This includes the Crusader Industries Showroom which displays the Hercules Starlifter, Ares Star Fighter and Mercury Star Runner, Cousin Crow’s Custom Crafts which sells ship components, and Providence Surplus which sells industrial clothing and gear.

Port Olisar Relocation

Port Olisar has been moved closer to Crusader and in synchronous orbit above Orison to make it more in line with other low orbit stations.

Arena Commander and Broken Moon Revamp

The scoreboards in Arena Commander and Star Marine have been converted to work with Building Blocks. The new interface will give players real-time access to position, name, rank, score, objectives, kills, deaths, assists, and ping. Arena Commander’s Broken Moon map has also been updated by increasing its overall size, adding new playable areas, more cover options, and new space assets.

 

Gameplay

 

FPS and Ship Combat AI Polish

Made several AI sync improvements to help reduce them teleporting short distances and to be more reactive in FPS combat. Increased the distance at which FPS AI will fire upon players. Made hit prediction performance improvements to help with ship AI hit prediction.

 

Law System Updates

Updated most crimestat 1 crimes to be misdemeanors which will still grant the same crimestat but can now be paid off at a fine terminal to remove. (note, the stations will still shoot at you with a CS1) Not paying off a crime at a terminal will escalate the fine and CS impact after a week. Reduced the cooldown between crimes for assaults so they will impact your crimestat more if they happen in succession. Greatly increased the crimestat contribution for all misdemeanors so that fines are much more important to pay off. Updated law system to automatically forgive crimes against players unless they actively accept to press charges.

 

Quantum QOL

Made multiple fixes to help Quantum Drive engage consistently. This should greatly help with issues related to aligning and spooling to a quantum target.

 

Assisted Gimbal Updates

We replaced assisted gimbal code. It is now a lot more stable and the fire solution will now exclude gimbals which are disabled or otherwise non-functional.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Major Bug Fixes

Fixed an issue causing some players to repeatedly encounter 30009 errors when attempting to join the PU

Fixed an issue causing less than the intended number of trees to appear around microTech

Ships on landing pads should no longer end up in “unknown state” for location and have to be reclaimed after the ship is stored or streamed out

Quantum paths should no longer lead you under terrain at Area18 and other locations causing you to explode

Ships on landing pads should no longer end up in an “unknown state” for location after the ship stored

Using the inverted FPS pitch mode will no longer invert the interaction mode cursor

Fixed an issue that was causing Bartenders to never interact with players

Prison escapees should no longer be sent back to prison upon death if they are in uncontrolled space

There should no longer be two Inner Thought Prompts for Opening and Closing the Pilot Canopy in multiple ships

Fixed an issue causing aUEC and unequipped items to randomly disappear from player’s inventories

There should no longer be a color difference between player character heads and bodies

Fixed an issue causing ASOP terminals to not function on the first interaction

Fixed an issue causing players to sometimes take collision damage when entering ships

Asteroid FPS Deposits should now be able to be scanned

FPS AI should no longer continue to shoot through other enemy AI while attacking a player

New Deal Ship Shop stairs leading down near the Hammerhead should no longer be missing collision

Players should no longer be able to auto dock a parasite ship into the Constellation from above which would cause it to collide into it

Multiple player checkpoints should no longer display at the same time in Arena Commander Race modes

Trolleys found in Area18 hangars should no longer be clipping through the floor, removing functionality

Fixed an issue with character Resets on accounts with a large number of items having multiple in-game issues

Technical

Fixed 6 Client crashes

Fixed 5 Server crashes

Backend service timeout fix

Server and Client Performance Optimizations

Player character networking optimizations to help reduce players sliding and teleporting while on foot

[BO7H B4RRELS 2,452]

Dayum... that's a lot of stuff!  I'm definitely due to re-install this bad boy and check it out.  Thanks for the informative post, Phil.  

 

[phil bottle 9,732]

There's going to be an update to the patch this week with more things to be added, plus volumetric clouds.