Update: January 4 2023
After further testing of 3.18 and looking over the feature completion list again - Factories, Flotilla Trade and Ship Stealing are actually technically playable. Fuel and Repair are also really close to being considered playable with their precursor elements being in game. This report has been heavily edited to reflect these realizations.
Welcome to the December 2022 Star Citizen Progress Report
This is the 14th progress report about Star Citizen & Squadron 42 in the series.
Information for this report comes from the SC FOCUS features completion page which has been updated again here: https://scfocus.org/star-citizen-s42-features-complete/
Stretch Goal Completion Scoring
Completion for Star Citizen & Squardon 42 is scored based on a total of 104 features that were chosen to represent major gameplay milestones for both projects. The 104 features were selected from the official Stretch Goals.
Previous Star Citizen & S42 reports:
Progress in this reporting period
This report was due in November but due to life circumstances was delayed until December. This also gave us time to check out 3.18 and update the following features as being testable. Therefore this represents completion of these milestones with polish and enhancement being what is left for these features.
Star Citizen & Squadron 42 features completed since last report:
- Ship Boarding
- Ship Zero G
- Persistent Wreckage
- Factories
Star Citizen Only Features:
- Salvage
- Flotilla Trade
- Ship Stealing
Alpha 3.18 brings with it the ability to disable a ship before blowing it up and therefore allowing for boarding / breaching. Salvage is now also in the game with the Reclaimer and Vulture able to turn the outside of ships into scrap. Another major milestone is the release of Persistent Entity Streaming (PES) which allows objects in the Star Citizen universe to persist between sessions and servers. Ships can now lose gravity and the physics grid transformations brought by the delivery of the Hull-A show that foundational tech for the game is pretty much in place. This represents a major milestone as from here on the only technological obstacle left is putting the network together to allow for battles with thousands of players. The rest is content and optimization. The completion of tools required for fast design of the rest of the game seem to be mostly in place. Progress might finally be speeding up (yes this has been said before). The next reports should show if this is, indeed, the case.
Salvage
Alpha 3.18 introduces the Vulture and Reclaimer as well as a hand salvage attachment for the multi tool. This means that players can now salvage wrecks (or soon to be wrecks with their shields down).
Flotilla Trade
Players have been able to use crates with items to sell to other players from their ships. Technically flotilla trade is working.
Ship Stealing
With PES it is now possible to steal a player's ship, hide it and use it or salvage it later.
Ship Boarding
Ship soft death makes it possible to board unwilling ships.
Factories
Ships like the Reclaimer and Vulture are Star Citizen's first version of crafting. Players can salvage material and choose to craft items (such as the multi-tool) that can be used, traded or sold. This functionality can easily be built into outposts or stations so this feature is marked as technically complete / in game.
Update January 4th 2023
PES has actually enabled some more gameplay features we had not originally considered. Also, since quite a while now people have been able to flotilla trade. Players sometimes pull up ships and use ship storage and tractor beams as well as item crates to sell equipment / stuff to each other. Flotilla trade should have been added some time so apologies for this omission. In similar fashion, it is now technically possible to steal and hide or scrap another player's ship. Ship Zero G has been in game since the reclaimer mission where the gravity generator can be deactivated which came out in a Alpha 3.17.x patch and this technology will no doubt be rolled further. This progress tracker tracks technology features that are complete to an acceptable state so these features are being marked as complete.
Star Citizen & Squadron 42 Report Conclusion
Star Citizen is roughly 54% 58% complete as of December 2022 (Alpha 3.18).
The pace of progress seems to be similar to other reports. Keep in mind that this report was a month late which allowed 3.18 to be included in the report. The purpose of these reports is to produce a linear regression based on dates and completion to better predict future progress and completion.
Not included in the features are net technology. Alpha 3.18 brings new rendering tech as well that is not covered in this progress. These progress reports look at content and network technology to measure pace of development but it is worth mentioning that there have been graphical improvements and optimizations ongoing throughout.
Playability Score
Playability Score: 4/5 - Somewhat Playable
- Player Count (2/5)
- The Economy (3/5)
- Flight Model (4/5)
- Dogfighting (4/5)
- FPS Combat (4/5)
- AI (3/5)
Playability - How Playable is Star Citizen Alpha 3.18?
Previous reports predicted and noted improvements in gameplay and stability and this trend continues. Even though the experience is starting to feel more like a game the bugs still remind us that we are in Alpha development cycle.
Bugs and Instability
Star Citizen Alpha 3.18 still has the Alpha label. As such instability is expected as the game is still some time away from feature complete. Alpha 3.18 brings technology that allows entities to persist between gameplay sessions. This is expected to cause instability during the transition but will be optimized and fixed during the Alpha 3.18.x patch cycle and beyond.
Overall playability score for Star Citizen stays in this report at 4/5. With Alpha 3.18 bringing many new major and smaller features there is a lot to do in game (when it is working).
2022 was another record year in funding for Star Citizen and the trend is expected to continue as more gameplay features come online.
The game continues to be for testers due to bugs and fast development cycle (including resets) but the proportion of non-testers looking just to play the game as it is continues to grow.
Alpha 3.18 brings the foundations for things like Server Meshing that will allow for Pyro and other star systems to be added. Additionally, it brings foundational tech that allows for wrecks to persist and in the future for features like escape pods. While the game is still very unstable, gameplay and features are given a score of 4/5. For a 5/5 score the game will have to become stable for long play sessions and with enough features for the base game to be there. This update shows that it is getting close to feature complete. Feature complete means the start of Beta (after 4.0). Star Citizen is currently mid-alpha on the way to late-alpha development.
4/5
Player Count
Player counts were increased during this reporting period from 50 to between 75 and 160 but usually 100. This is still far from being an MMORPG but progress seems to have resumed on the network side of things.
This is no longer the area of this report with least progress. This score was increased from 1/5 to 2/5.
2/5
The Economy
The economy in Star Citizen is still a mess. Alpha 3.18 brings salvage and new cargo refactor but mission pricing models seem largely unchanged. Fake supply and demand in the Persistent Universe was making trading commodities very unprofitable and too unrewarding. Hopefully this changes with the Alpha 3.18 series of patches. Purchase limits, bugs and piracy might completely kill off trading in Star Citizen.
The score from the last report was not increased as the changes have not been enough to warrant it but this might change (up or down) in the next report.
3/5
Flight Model
Flight model score from last report unchanged. Atmospheric control surfaces and a few other things are still missing.
4/5
Dogfighting
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
FPS Combat
Certainly playable. Still needs some work to reach fully playable levels but this might be due to server / network issues.
4/5
AI
In the last report we expected little progress in terms of AI in the Persistent Universe and little to no progress was noticed. This score remains unchanged. For a score of 4/5 the universe will need to feel more alive with NPCs and fauna. For a score of 5/5 NPC will be able to be hired as crew on ships and perform useful functions. This score is expected to remain unchanged beyond 2023.
3/5
December 2022 Report Conclusion
Alpha 3.18 brings major required tech online to push Star Citizen to new levels. Lots of instability is expected during the next few months but should result in a near-beta state in terms of performance and playability.
Progress seems about on par considering the longer delay between patches during 2022 than recent years.
This brings the total completion for both games to 58%.
Progress had been estimated to be speeding up but only hints of this being the case were noticed. Will progress be shown to be speeding up in the next report?
Release Date Estimate Changes
We are moving away from a release date estimate model (not before dates). Instead, we will be showing feature completion estimates for both games. In this case Star Citizen will go from Not Before 2025 to 58% complete and Squadron 42 from Soon to 69% complete. These numbers might better represent progress and completion estimate time frames than just saying that either game might not be finished before a certain date with confidence.
Caveats
The list of 104 features used to track "progress" in this report are listed at the Star Citizen Completion Features Percentage Page. This is a highly simplified list of features out of thousands of technical, art and gameplay features that the game(s) will end up having. 104 features were chosen as a simplified average set of gameplay features that the author guesses are plausibly required in the final games to be considered "complete".
The data is gathered as objectively as possible and is non-promotional in nature. This information is purely speculative based on personal criteria. Opinion can and should vary. It is provided for free and actually costs time and money to maintain.
Disclaimer
As always, this article does not represent the official views of Star Citizen. It is provided as speculation to help SC FOCUS org plan the strategy going forward. This information is provided to readers openly and freely and each reader is free to form their own opinion.