Star Citizen Progress Report April 2023

Persistent Entity Streaming introduced massive amounts of stability issues for the game. The game even was completely unplayable for a while. Latest versions seem somewhat better as seen during the Star Citizen Alpha 3.18.1 Freefly 2023. From what can be played at least, it seems to be somewhat playable again.

Bugs and Instability

Star Citizen Alpha 3.18.1 still has the Alpha label. As such instability is expected as the game is still some time away from feature complete. Alpha 3.18.1 only introduced fixes and no new major gamplay features from Alpha 3.18. This is normal for small patches. What was not normal was the large amount of time taken to fix most of the game breaking issues from the Live test build.

The score remains unchanged.

4/5

Player counts during the April Freefly were seen as high as 150 players per server again. This score remains unchanged. For this score to be a 3/5 player counts per shard will need to be over or near 1000. For a score of 4/5 over 10,000. A 5 out of 5 score represents the maximum universe size for seamless play (100,000s or millions).

2/5

The economy in Star Citizen is still barely functional and almost entirely game-controlled. However, players do trade items but the current server issues are causing Balance, Item, Ship and Reputation wipes. Read our article about Wipes and see Star Citizen wipe history and estimates.

3/5

Flight model score from last report is unchanged. Atmospheric control surfaces and a few other things are still missing. Some dogfighting tournaments have been spotted. Also racing continues to grow. Perfection is near?

4/5

Dogfighting has continued to be in a better state for regular play. More changes to dogfighting have been announced. This rating is unchanged at 4/5.

Fighting ships against ships (players or NPCs) is a playable experience though still unfinished.

4/5

Score unchanged. Certainly playable. Still needs some work to reach fully playable levels but this might be due to server / network issues.

4/5

The April roadmap roundup has missions being developed for Alpha 3.19 which include the following:

• Mining Resource Rush - "Various large clusters of asteroids around Stanton are being sold off by several organizations. For a fee, civilians are given access to these spatial mining claims and allowed to mine until the cluster is depleted, drawing many mining crews, and occasionally pirates, to these hotspots. This deliverable has been added to the Mission Feature Team's schedule."
• Package Extraction - "A new multiplayer mission where players will work together to recover stolen prototype ship components. Crusader Security tasks players with extracting these highly-classified components from the Nine Tails transport ships before they can escape off-world. This deliverable has been added to the Mission Feature and Narrative Teams' schedules."
• Data Heist - "Implementing missions that task players with infiltrating locations (often held by NPCs), reaching data stores, and setting data to upload to offsite handlers. This deliverable has been added to the Mission Feature, Narrative, and VFX Teams' schedules."

At first glance these scripted mission types might seem like a good idea. Sure, adding mining claims is required so if they make missions with mining claim mechanics this feature can be tested. Or perhaps the data mission sounds like it helps to bring in data running.

But the Author of this articles believes it would be easier, better and more fun, if the first thing added was the simple mechanics, instead of more scripted missions. Scripted missions create complexity that must be bug fixed later on. Consider the case for Mining Claims.

CIG's approach according to the roadmap: Create a special cluster of asteroids with special rules surrounding it. Mining claims give controlled access for a period of time. Resources can deplete selectively at this location.

Consider a proposed organic approach: Define probability rules for a location having the required conditions. In this case heavy density of asteroid mineables. Have the game pick one of these locations and generate mining claims players can accept. Location and mission are dynamic. NPCs react accordingly. No special rules required, mining claim is random location so might naturally end up somewhere interesting. This approach allows for more player freedom, less code to maintain, and development of fixes that apply to all missions not just custom created ones.

The main point being, the Author's advice is to move away from scripted missions and integrate the organic nature of play with the mechanics and NPC behaviors. Scripted missions are less fun, likely to break (think box delivery) and do not offer the potential for unimagined gameplay.

Even if scripted missions are a must for this game, the Author still thinks that adding the procedural version first would be better. The scripted missions can come later.

If this was the approach, we believe the economy, mining, and many other aspects of the game would have better / truer economy. Scripted missions seem to have taken over Star Citizen as can be seen in the mobiglas. The space freedom aspect to the game taking a backseat.

Going forward the Author advocates procedural first, scripted second. With this approach, who knows, perhaps quanta might even finish sooner as it wouldn't conflict with the scripted aspects of the game.

In summary, less boxing-in of players, more dynamic and procedural events. Missions should be a sauce not a main ingredient. Perhaps Squadron 42 missions (single payer game) are what is causing the "Unlimited Universe" to be limited.

In any case, the Author expects scripted missions to become even more a thing going forward. Players looking for a universe of freelancers making their own fun will probably have to look elsewhere.