Update: Star Citizen Alpha 3.24.0

Star Citizen Alpha 3.24.0 - "Cargo Empires" is a major update for Star Citizen.

3.24.0 added instanced hangars, freight elevators, item banks, and cargo missions to the Persistent Universe.

Major updates

Patch notes

Star Citizen Alpha 3.24 has been released onto the LIVE Environment! Launcher should now show: VERSION 3.24.0-LIVE.9296942

Characters in this new environment have been built from Long Term Persistence(LTP) data.

Currently with LTP, certain player states such as personal hangar layout, custom characters, and in-game purchased consumables are not saved between releases which will cause some items to be lost in the next update.

Items not saved to LTP Include:

• Hangar Decoration Customizations (Decorations will be returned to player's home location inventory)
• Medpens, Ammo, Ongoing Rentals and Refinery Jobs, and Character Customization (Make sure to Export your Custom Character)

• Long Term Persistence: Enabled
• Replication Layer: Enabled
• Server Crash Recovery: Enabled
• Starting aUEC: 20,000

Gameplay

3.24 fundamentally changes how players interact and organize their belongings. From Cargo, to items to ships. Freight Elevators will introduce a new mechanic for retrieving and storing larger items at various locations. Hangars will now be instanced and in case of personal hangars, persist everything within them including the newly added Hangar Decorations. Ships are now spawned via Ship Elevator and Item Banks now replace the omnipresent local inventory.

Introduction of new tech that creates an instance of the player's hangar to allow for uninterrupted management of cargo, inventory, and vehicles. Personal hangars are found at the player's home location and allow for customization and organization of the hangar interior. All hangar types are instanced, meaning they are able to physically stack on each other in the same location without interference. All hangar types have ASOP terminals, Item Banks, and Freight Elevators (SCU fright amount depends on hangar size). All hangar types have ship elevator platforms which will lower when players request a ship to be spawned. Any ships already on the platform will be lowered and then stored via asop. All hangar types should be accessible to party members of the Hangar owner. Personal Hangars exists for the player at the selected home location at all times and is as big as the largest ship on the player’s account (ships purchased in-game don’t increase size of personal hangar at this time). This update includes a polish pass of minimum hangar sizes for all ships. Any items, decorations, and vehicles left inside the Hangar should persist as well as recover their state and move to new shards after a crash recovery, though objects will be cleaned up if left on the ship loading elevator.

Implementation of systems and content for players to physically load and unload cargo to and from their ships by conveying cargo to and from hangars, landing pads, garages, and docking collars. For the new cargo flow we will be storing cargo in the local player inventory and allow them to use the freight elevator in their hangar to access the inventory physically. This will be extended to cover the location inventory access that is currently handled by personal inventory. This means that anything stored to or retrieved from local inventory at a location must be accessed by the freight elevator. Furthermore we will remove the 'invisible' player inventories for vehicles in favor of using physicalized inventory inside the ship. All ships have at least some small personal inventory that the player can put personal items for easy access. Additionally, we will be adding physicalized inventory containers available for purchase that players can use to store and haul larger items in the cargo hold. The freight elevator kiosk will have added functionality for inventory management including sub inventories like these boxes so players can move things around and recall it for manual transfer on/off their ships.

Tractor Beam use on the multi-tool has had its cargo mass balanced to restrict use to cargo sizes under 24 SCU (multi-tool can no-longer move 24 SCU crates) and to reduce usable distance. Both handheld tractor beams have had their movement speeds reduced. Players can find Freight Elevators in personal and staging hangars, as well as outposts and scrapyards. Players can interact with a Freight Elevator Kiosk (FEK) to load items onto the elevator platform. Players can put items on a Freight Elevator platform and then interact with the kiosk to store items to their warehouse. Players can see information about mission relevant items when storing and retrieving them via Freight Elevator Kiosk.

With the introduction of Freight Elevators, we have created a suite of legal missions where players are tasked to move cargo containers between locations. These new hauling missions will generate procedurally across the Stanton system, seeing the player transport goods back and forth to various Jump Points, LEOs, Lagrange Points, Landing Zones, Distribution Centers, and Outposts. These missions can be completed either through the freight elevators in the player’s personal persistent hangar or through the cargo loading areas (currently exclusive to Hull-C pilots).

The current suite includes Cargo Hauling missions of 3 variants: A to B, Multi to Single, and Single to Multi. Each variant can come in 3 different quantity grades: Small-Grade, Supply-Grade, Bulk-Grade. Higher tier hauling missions are reputation gated and will require doing intro and smaller grade missions to progress. Any player with the Contract can view and request the associated mission cargo through any Freight Elevator Kiosk at a pick-up location (even a party member’s personal hangar). When requesting mission cargo at a pick-up location through a Freight Elevator Kiosk, the requested cargo appears on the Freight Elevator. Based on the Contract’s Volume token, the requested containers are capped to different SCU sizes: Small-Grade: 4 SCU containers or smaller. Supply-Grade: 8 SCU containers or smaller / 16 SCU containers or smaller (depending on the mission). Bulk-Grade: No container size limit. All mission cargo containers requested in Small-Grade and Supply-Grade Contracts can be moved by using either the one-handed or two-handed Tractor Beam tool. All mission cargo containers can snap onto a ship’s cargo grid with suitable dimensions. When all Deliver objectives on the HUD and in the mobiGlas are finished, the Contract completes.

Players can buy different SCU-sized containers via Commodity Kiosk. Upon purchase of commodities, players can chose to automatically load them onto a stored ship at a cost of aUEC for the automatic loading service. This will take an amount of time based on amount and size of boxes, during which the ship will be inaccessible for automatic loading process (information on loading progress is visible on ASOP terminal).

Item Bank Kiosks exist in various places in all landing zones and space stations. These kiosks replace the old local inventory. Using these kiosks, players can store, retrieve, and equip FPS items.

3.24 brings decorations into player's hands. These new decorations can be purchased at Kel-To and Dumpers Depot then retreived from their hangar's freight elevator. These decorations can be placed anywhere a player wants in their Hangar and have full interactions like sitting on chairs and couches (caveat that the Ship Platform will delete items stored on the ship elevator while storing ships). Hangar Decoration will persist in personal hangars but will get deleted in staging hangars (Hangars that you don't own outside of your main landing zone)

Set default breach amount for exterior doors to 100% during soft death. Fixed up Cutlass, Freelancer, and Constellation breach amounts.

It is no longer illegal to damage, destroy, tow, scrape, or structurally salvage an unowned vehicle. Made towing hostility only hostile to the owner of the ship. It is no longer illegal to tow ships outside of green zones. Slightly increased the grace period that players are allowed to tow an owned vehicle before they receive a Crime Stat in order to allow blockages to be removed. Added a countdown to the warning for towing.

• Added Carry lowered FPS weapon keybind (ALT + R)
• Added ESP Dampening Strength Modifiers to Game Settings Tab
• mobiGlas Contract App UI Polish

Ships & Vehicles

Master Modes Atmo Flight Controller Re-tuning Made many, ongoing atmospheric flight updates to nearly every ship in the game. This update tunes the atmospheric flight speed and yaw capabilities of ships to most ships as well as flight controller changes to tune afterburn and SCM speeds in and out of atmosphere.

Ship 3rd Person Camera Updated with smoother vibration, along with the same affect changes applied to cockpit to reduce HUD movement.

• Removed SDFs and Shields from Spindles and Attached Cargo of the Hull-C
• Greatly Increased the Hull-C Spindle Strut Health

• Updated Aurora series and Origin 135c cargo physics proxies to help manual loading of cargo
• Increased RSI Mantis Engine Attachment Health
• Reduced RSI Mantis Emissions
• Corrected Erroneously Fast Tuning on the SanTokYai
• Fixed Erroneously Large Starfarer Fuel Tank
• Reduced the Esperia Prowler's Emissions to make it more in line as a Stealth Dropship
• Greatly Increased the Health on All Ship Gimbal Sizes
• Increased Overall Spread Values for Vehicle Cannons
• Reduced Vehicle Laser Damage by 10%
• Ground Vehicles Physics Improvements Polish to help with movement and Tractor Beaming
• Added many new Cargo Hauling Rentals to all Rental Shops around Stanton

Core Tech

Ultrawide UI Updates Ultrawide UI Scaling will Now Base grid sizes on height, not width, and relative to a 16x9 aspect ratio. Stopped markers from not inheriting scale (because that breaks when aspect ratio above 16x9). Removed logic which was offsetting markers up when going more wide-screen.

• Added slight boundary violation grace time to Planet Kill Volumes for vehicles. (This may help with many random deaths while flying close to planet surfaces and water)
• Made Further Ship Debris Collision Physics Performance Improvements
• Vulkan Performance - Reuse the GPUBuffer, instead of re-creating them to improve performance and memory fragmentation

Bug Fixes

• Fixed Planetary Rocks and Asteroids becoming invisible and causing player collision and explosions
• Fixed an issue causing excessive performance degradation on clients and servers when some vehicles were obliterated into parts
• Fixed an issue causing docking arms to not extend at space stations when docking or retrieving ships
• Fixed an issue causing hangar doors to becoming desynced and appear as open for clients when they are actually closed
• Fixed an issue where players could become desynced when transitioning in and out of EVA from a ship
• Atmosphere in an area should no longer be temporarily missing after a Server Recovery
• Fixed an issue that could cause Vulkan Renderer performance to degrade over time
• Fixed an issue causing large Party Launches to fail with a Server Full Error when there is room on the shard
• Fixed an issue blocking planetside plotted routes to be used while in orbit
• The mobiGlas should no longer break the UI when switching to other casings
• Fixed an issue that sometimes caused backpack reloading to fail to function
• Fixed an issue causing FPS AI to target and fire at players through buildings instead of attempting to gain Line of Sight
• Active Armistice Zone icon should no longer be oversized
• Fixed an issue causing the Greycat ROC to be unable to climb hills
• The MISC Prospector mining laser gimbal should no longer be always fixed
• Fixed the MISC Prospector having an invulnerable spot for its nose leading to no damage taken
• The Origin 300 Series ships should no longer pitch down upon engaging cruise mode
• The Origin 400i maneuvering thrusters should now be correctly rotated in position
• Fixed an issue blocking use of the Hull-C and Spirt internal weapon racks
• Fixed an issue causing the Moving Rail Turrets on the Scorpius and A1 Spirit to not move
• Fixed an issue blocking players from activating the EMP on the Scorpius Antares
• The Size 3 nose turret on the Anvil Valkyrie should no longer be restricted to S2 guns despite having S3 guns equipped by default
• Fixed an issue blocking the Constellation snub fighter from requesting docking back onto the ship
• Fixed an issue causing the Drake Caterpillar side cargo doors from opening when the ship is soft deathed
• Oxygen should no longer deplete excessively fast whilst in Klescher's Work Mines or Prison Escape
• Oxygen kiosk in Klescher should now give players the correct amount of oxygen that is displayed during a refill
• Changing vehicle components in VMA should no longer cause all the ships internals to be deleted from loadout and inventory, including thrusters and components
• The Hornet F7A Mk2 Canard nose turret and ball turret should no longer have an incorrectly low health pool
• Fixed an issue blocking Handheld Tractor Beams from being used inside of ships
• Friendly FPS AI on board the 'Boarding Action in Progress' mission's 890j should no longer cause hostile AI ships to attack
• Fixed - Fixed the Origin 400i's interior doors and compartments opening automatically when they shouldn't
• Fixed an issue causing the Scorpius turret to be locked on Y and X axis
• Fixed an issue causing Kopion creatures to not move or attack players
• Players should now be able to sell Kopion Horns and Marok Gems
• Fixed an issue causing the quantum travel effect to break some ship HUD UIs
• It should no longer be difficult to select/choose a floor on the elevator panel in the GrimHex clinic elevator
• Fixed an issue causing Certain Area18/Orison Social AI to be considered criminals and cause local security to shoot at them constantly
• Using a medpen should no longer cause players to drop their FPS weapon on the ground
• Players should no longer be able to shoot FPS weapons through glass while in EVA
• AI should no longer desync out of position during combat inside UGFs
• Fixed an issue that could cause a player's head to go missing after respawning
• The insert interaction for the cryptokey should no longer be lost on server crash recovery during re-uplink
• The RSI Ursa Rover side door should now have proper interactions to open and close
• Fixed multiple areas around the Retaliator interior where atmosphere didn't exist
• Fixed an issue causing the looting prompt to sometimes not exist on player and AI corpses
• The toggle for "Interaction prompt: Display input icon" should no longer revert back to "yes" upon game restart
• Fixed an issue causing most paints on the Drake Vulture to appear incorrectly
• Restore comm link missions should no longer be able to be accepted multiple times for a single completion
• Hornet Ghost should no longer be missing it's reduced signature multipliers
• Fixed an issue causing players to not be able to get up from the pilot seat after a bed logout
• Fixed the Hercules Starlifter Habitation door button being misplaced
• The Sabre Firebird should not correctly appear in Arena Commander
• Fixed an issue causing friendly players to show up as enemies in AC Squadron Battles

Technical Updates

• Fixed an Issue Causing Excessive Network Spam While Salvaging
• Fixed 8 Client Crashes
• Fixed 2 Vulkan Specific Client Crashes
• Fixed a Client Crash Related to Intel 13/14th gen CPUs
• Fixed 6 Server Crashes
• Fixed a Server Deadlock
• Fixed a Hybrid Crash

Known Issues & Information

For 3.24, Server Crash Recovery will remove all current missions and mark them as abandoned. This behavior is not the intended outcome in the long term and will be changed in an upcoming refactor. This will not reduce reputation when this occurs. This could cause a few trespassing issues in locations like UGFs. There are several known Vulkan Renderer related GPU crashes currently in the build. If you experience frequent crashes while playing and are on Vulkan, test swapping back to DirectX to see if these still occur.

• PU - Stanton - ASOP / Fleet Manager / UI - Players are unable to Retrieve Ships from ASOP
• PU - Multiple Locations - Storage Access Kiosk / UI / Locations - Opening the Storage Access Kiosk will cover the player's POV
• PU - Stanton - Multiple Locations - Inventory / Storage Access / Item Bank - There is a chance when accessing Storage Access that the inventory wont appear and or disappear when accessed/opened
• PU - Stanton - Multiple Locations - Server Recovery / Locations / Transit - Shuttles and Trams for all Major Landing Zones will disappear after server recovery causing the player to fall to their death at certain positions along their route
• PU - Stanton - Cargo Hauling - Mission Content / Game Code - After abandoning mission, returned cargo on freight elevator causes "Elevator Obstructed" error
• PU - Mission / Cargo Hauling - Hull C cargo loads one box and stops loading the rest of cargo mission boxes and remains at 00:00 time
• PU - Stanton - Locations / Performance - Client framerate drops to single digits at ArcCorp Mining Area 157 on Yela
• PU - Stanton - Cargo Hauling - Mission Content / Reputation - Players are still able to reaccept the Intro mission despite being "not eligible"
• PU - Stanton - Locations / Graphics / Personal Hangars - There is a noticeable streaming issues on the exterior geometry of the freight elevator depending on the players location in Self Land Hangars
• PU - Locations - Transit - Elevator won't show up at Spaceport with high traffic
• PU - Locations - Personal Hangars / Medical Hangars / Art - Medical elevator panels inside hangars are missing geometry
• PU - Orison - Locations / Inventory - Storage Access kiosks at The Vision Center at Orison do not display any inventory
• PU - Kiosks - UI - Item Bank / Freight Manager - Moving items will fail when the dragged item transitions between the two inventories unless you move the item quickly
• PU - Stanton - Landing Zone (LZ) - Lorville / Area18 / Orison - Freight Elevators - Locations / Art / Graphics - There is a noticeable delay in loading the player's persistent hangar when they arrive via the elevator.

Crusader Hercules Starlifter ALL Variants - PU - Vehicles / Animation / Art - Personnel elevator is detached from vehicle and elevator doors do not open

• PU - Stanton - Location / Mission - Klescher Rehabilitation Facility - Player is sent back to Klescher after completing "Need An Out" prison escape mission
• PU - Tractor Beam / Physics - Multiple Active Tractor or Tow beams on the same object can make it float without an active tractor beam on it
• PU - Lorville - Locations - Transit - HAB Elevators - There is a chance that the HAB elevators do not arrive when called

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