Star Citizen 4.10.2 PTU: October Contract, Refinery and VR Changes

Finding the job, collecting its cargo and getting paid all need to work before a contract becomes a dependable evening in the ’verse. Star Citizen’s October 4.10.2 PTU builds tackle several breaks in that chain: event platforms gain direct Starmap routes, a courier contract can award a rental ship, and hauling cargo missing from a freight elevator receives a potential fix. Mining, salvage, loose-object physics and experimental VR have changes of their own.

These changes are still on the PTU. The latest verified build is 4.10.2-PTU.12878398, released on 7 October, with access open to all waves on the US channel and Long Term Persistence enabled. The October builds below are a dated account of that testing, rather than a claim that 4.10.2 has reached Live.

Getting to the job, getting the rental, keeping the salvage

The Stanton event contracts have received several changes that should make an evening’s work easier to follow. RC2 adds quantum-travel Starmap records for every event platform. You can select a platform and plot a route straight to it, rather than having to work around a missing destination.

Rental ships can now be awarded directly by a contract. The one-time courier job was changed to use that reward system instead of a mission modifier on 3 October, following an earlier adjustment to the rental contract and its rental duration. The published changes do not give a new duration, so there is no verified number of rental hours to promise here.

Watch what a contract asks you to hand over. Mining and salvage descriptions now warn that excess materials will not be refunded. Salvage descriptions also confirm that recovered RMC can be kept. Those two instructions concern different parts of the job: retaining material you recover does not mean a surplus submitted to fulfil a contract will be returned.

The event’s mining, salvage and logistics rewards were rebalanced on 1 October, followed by another salvage adjustment on 3 October and a further mining-and-salvage pass in RC1 on 6 October. Journal points were adjusted too. Additional unmanned ships joined the contract pool, event reward components were added, and event locations received props and dressing updates. Reward values remain subject to these PTU revisions.

More room at the refinery

All refineries received a substantial capacity increase in the 1 October build. Their capacities also became data-driven, allowing the economy team to adjust them without issuing a game patch. For a miner planning the next delivery, that means refinery capacity can change independently of the client version.

The announcement concerns capacity. It does not establish a new refining speed, yield or material-quality bonus, and supplies no per-station figures. A larger capacity should therefore not be used to calculate a faster job or better-quality output. Outside Distribution Centers, meanwhile, new harvestable slots allow lootable harvestables to spawn in exterior areas as well as indoors.

Loose boxes should need fewer sudden corrections

A recent bump against a crate can reach your client before the server. The rewritten physics networking uses a trust score to account for that disagreement, giving less weight to stale server information or a state that cannot yet include your local action. Small velocity adjustments bring the object back towards agreement; teleporting it is a last resort, preceded by a sweep to check that the destination is clear. The tolerances scale with latency and object size.

This tackles the persistent desynchronisation, rubber-banding, sliding and bouncing that could follow a bad state under the previous all-or-nothing approach. It applies to freely simulated rigid bodies. Ships and vehicles retain their existing networking, so smoother loose cargo does not establish a fix for ship desync. The new system is enabled through a CVAR and is intended to remain active unless testing uncovers a catastrophic problem.

VR zoom that follows your view

Experimental VR receives StereoZoom 2.0, which activates when the headset view lines up with the target and adds customisation CVars. Grounded look with decoupled aim now aligns zoom with the scope, while positional tracking remains available during zoom instead of locking the headset’s movement.

The 5 October changes also stop mouse-smoothing and acceleration settings from being reset to zero when switching to VR. That is a settings-preservation change, not a guarantee that smoothing is applied in every VR control mode. Wearing the headset counts as activity, preventing an inactivity kick while a player watches without other input, and the invisible 3D UI actor icons received a fix.

The fixes to watch in your next session

The October notes label the following repairs as potential fixes. They are candidates for verification on the PTU, rather than promises that every occurrence has disappeared. The contract changes range from missing delivery destinations to absent mission ships; the equipment changes cover storage, interaction prompts, armour and weapon racks.

Contracts and rewards

• Scavenger Hunt progression received a potential fix on 1 October; missing drop-off markers received another on 5 October.
• Event patrol comms and an event refuelling-contract issue were addressed on 1 October.
• Missing account reward badges and a hostile missile turret at a courier pickup were addressed on 3 October.
• RC1 targets hauling cargo absent from the pickup freight elevator, a missing protection target in Easy Defend Ship contracts, incomplete Eliminate Boss details in mobiGlas before and after acceptance, and rank-three reward HUD text that should name the RS-30.

Ships, stored vehicles and carried equipment

• Lost or stowed, undestroyed vehicles could become unclaimable with “Remove From Storage” showing at ASOP. The 1 October build includes a potential fix.
• Origin X1 and X1 Force weapons could stop moving or firing when a gimbal component was fitted. That configuration received a potential fix.
• Equipped and holstered items now adjust their drop height to their dimensions, targeting the stowed Super Heavy HMG falling nose-first through the ground in some locations.
• A carried weapon’s magazine could inflict heavy or fatal collision damage on a ship as the player left a seat. The 5 October build targets that failure.
• RC1 targets the lost “F (Carry)” prompt that prevented hand pickup after an item was placed on a cargo grid.
• Weapon-rack work covers ReplaceMe balls in the Captain’s Quarters and Armoury, plus a non-interactive two-row rack in the 1 October notes, followed by missing racks across multiple ships in RC1.

Armour, inventory and presentation

• Monolith backpacks and variants received a potential storage-capacity fix. The Monolith helmet received a prop helper, corrected flashlight placement and interior visor geometry.
• Exploration suits could show four leg consumable slots although only two worked; the 3 October build targets the misleading display.
• Other 3 October candidates cover transparent female Doom undersuit helmets at multiple LODs, Shiny White and Shiny Black Hunter 3 cores, arms and legs showing the base Grey and Charcoal variants, and the crate-carry animation appearing while holding Hunter 3 arms or legs.
• The Pembroke Star Chaser preview should show white and purple rather than the base orange. Some Zeus Exploration Helmet flashlights were also missing their LED asset and did not match the reference image.
• All Heavy Combat Hunter 3 helmet variants received a potential snoopy-cap and necksock fix on 5 October. Ship-component manufacturer logos missing from the inventory and vehicle-loadout screens and the Hyaoklo Meditation Focus incorrectly named “Ochelo” were addressed in the same build.
• RC1 targets the blank inventory title and description on the Morozov-CH Stronghold backpack. Some flight-blade names and descriptions displaying only “Flight Blade” were addressed on 1 October.

Collision and stability

The 3 October build targets a strip of Orison landing pad with no collision and adds invisible collision at exterior lobby doorways to maintain physics across the interior/exterior grid transition. The 5 October build also lists one fixed entity-component client crash. Stability, bug fixes and persistence between PTU releases remain testing priorities alongside the event, physics networking and experimental VR.