Welcome to the November 2024 Star Citizen Progress Report
This is the 20th 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
Finally there has been some progress and Star Citizen Alpha 4.0 is in EPTU. This reporting period saw very poor stability, economy, performance and many issues with the general playability of Star Citizen. Hopefully Alpha 4.0 and on will bring stability improvements.
Star Citizen is 68% complete as of November 2024 (Alpha 4.0).
Progress is expected to speed up however, for the tracked features in this series or reports many features have been pushed to after Star Citizen 1.0. Future updates to Star Citizen Release Date Estimates and Completion Progress will reflect these changes to long-term goals.
Star Citizen & Squadron 42 Report Summary
Star Citizen is roughly 68% complete as of November 2024 (Alpha 4.0 EPTU).
*Note that Squadron 42 is feature complete. These features represent Squadron 42 features that are shared with Star Citizen and that are either currently playable in Star Citizen or not.
Playability Score
Playability Score: 2/5 - Very buggy
- Playability (2/5)
- Player Count (2/5)
- The Economy (2/5)
- Flight Model (4/5)
- Dogfighting (4/5)
- FPS Combat (3/5)
- AI (3/5)
In this reporting period as of Alpha 4.0 (EPTU)
The Playability Score is staying at 2/5 due to bugs, radical changes, and instability.
Playability - How Playable is Star Citizen Alpha 4.0?
The stability of the game is expected to be very low during the start of the Alpha 4.0 series of patches. Luckily, it should improve from this point forward.
Alpha 4.0 is expected to be a low point in stability but should improve as the game moves from Alpha 4.0 to Star Citizen 1.0.
The playability score is expected to improve for the next report.
Bugs and Instability
Star Citizen Alpha 4.0 still has the Alpha label. As such instability is expected as the game is still some time away from feature complete (Star Citizen 1.0).
This score was expected remain at 2 out of 5 and did. Many game breaking bugs mean that Star Citizen is currently for the most hardcore of testers.
2/5
Player Count
This score remains unchanged even though Server Meshing and EPTU Wave 1 Stanton - Pyro shard had 380 players. 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).
Should the playable universe see 800+ player counts this score could be raised to 3 out of 5.
2/5
The Economy
Alpha 4.0 brings a new economy and for now in EPTU Wave 1 the economy cannot be fully tested. This score is staying the same for this reporting period.
2/5
Flight Model
The score remains unchanged. Flying around is generally an interesting and fun experience.
4/5
Dogfighting
This rating remains unchanged. Dogfights have still been fun and engaging. Multicrew combat is also improving as turrets and large ships are better.
4/5
FPS Combat
FPS still has a lot of bugs making it clunky and often gunfights will get a player killed due to bugs. This score remains unchanged this reporting period.
3/5
AI
With the addition of Fauna and improvements to the combat AI this score should move to 4 out of 5 if it was not for the network issues and the lack of npc crew.
3/5
November 2024 Report Conclusion
The last two Progress Reports saw no progress added and finally there appears to be some movement. Alpha 4.0 hits a major milestone with Pyro and Server Meshing. Progress is finally moving again after a long period with no tracked features being completed.
During this period the game has been very unstable and unplayable which is exactly what we predicted in the previous report. Going forward stability and playability should improve for the next report.
In upcoming reports we will be adding Profession Playability scores. Professions such as Cargo Trucking, Mining, Salvage, Refueling, Mercenary and Piracy will be evaluated separately.
Upcoming Features
This section was removed and is now on the release dates page
Suggestions and Issues that require attention
This report aims to provide suggestions for interested readers to current identified issues with the game. This advice is pure suggestion and might not even be applicable for the game or be something that is already solved internally. These are potential issues we have identified that might help development and the community.
Cargo Running / Trucking RIP?
Cargo Running was butchered during the Cargo Empires Patch (Alpha 3.24). Video game trucking - buying goods at Location A and selling them at Location B - was killed off. Cargo Running was already greatly destroyed before Alpha 3.24 with the majority of players of this type of gameplay stopping playing Star Citizen entirely. Alpha 3.24 (Unfortunately named Cargo Empires) introduced forced micro management of cargo boxes using nerfed tractor beams. With the combination of broken cargo freight elevators (also new) and a plethora of technical issues and limitations Cargo Running (Trucking) was completely killed off. Piracy died with it as there were no more haulers worth pirating.
At this time Star Citizen does not cater to truckers who want to move goods around and make a profit. This has been replaced with scripted hauling contracts with goods that are not worth pirating. A deathblow was dealt to cargo and piracy also died along with it. It will remain to be seen if Space Trucking returns to Star Citizen. Given the emphasis on heavy scripting and sequential actions it is unlikely that Cargo Running will return to its former glory, profitability or fun. Stay tuned in future reports as we continue to investigate the state of this currently dead profession that was once one of the biggest and best the game offered.
Hopefully with Pyro and a new economy scheduled for Alpha 4.0 cargo running will see some needed improvements.
Cargo Running / Trucking RIP?
Cargo Running was butchered during the Cargo Empires Patch (Alpha 3.24). Video game trucking - buying goods at Location A and selling them at Location B - was killed off. Cargo Running was already greatly destroyed before Alpha 3.24 with the majority of players of this type of gameplay stopping playing Star Citizen entirely. Alpha 3.24 (Unfortunately and ironically named Cargo Empires) introduced forced micro management of cargo boxes using nerfed tractor beams. With the combination of broken cargo freight elevators (also new) and a plethora of technical issues and limitations Cargo Running (Trucking) was completely killed off. Piracy died with it as there were no more haulers worth pirating.
At this time Star Citizen does not cater to truckers who want to move goods around and make a profit. This has been replaced with scripted hauling contracts with goods that are not worth pirating. A deathblow was dealt to cargo and piracy also died along with it. It will remain to be seen if Space Trucking returns to Star Citizen. Given the emphasis on heavy scripting and sequential actions it is unlikely that Cargo Running will return to its former glory, profitability or fun. Stay tuned in future reports as we continue to investigate the state of this currently dead profession that was one of the biggest and best the game offered.
It has been about a year since cargo running (not to be confused with cargo hauling) started to get nerfed. Space Truckers do not want to move boxes by tractor beam, they want to easily load and unload and focus instead on the fun part of trucking.
What Could Have Been Done Better?
Freight and Ship Elevators were introduced in a disjointed fashion. Instead of simply having a ship go down the elevator and come back loaded / unloaded, the cargo must be loaded manually after retrieving it from a Freight Elevator. A much better solution that would work with Truckers would be to have the entire ship go down the elevator and and come back up loaded. This would 1) fit in with the magic elevator theme and 2) would make it easy enough for Truckers to play the game instead of alienating an entire genre of gamers.
How does this look like in game?
- Player lands on outpost pad that is an elevator
- Player gets out of ship
- Player sends ship elevator down
- Player buys goods from terminal
- Player sends ship up (loaded)
This would utilize existing ship elevator technology and auto/load unload. Manual moving of boxes could be limited to specialized situations (piracy) and types of cargo. Why alienate space truckers entirely? This seems like a critical mistake and a very large missed market opportunity.
Proposed Solution
Provide space truckers the option to send the ship down a freight elevator for full loading / unloading instead of forcing players to use two elevators (Freight and Ship) to achieve the same task.
Another Issue
Instanced hangars mean the player is isolated from the game world. Forcing players to move cargo boxes inside instanced hangars is not rewarding or exciting or dangerous. It is unnecessary and clunky. Make use of the ship elevator to handle cargo loading unloading in instanced spaces instead.
Scripted Missions Plague The Game
Emphasis continues on scripting missions. The game needs dynamic, player driven content. The focus on scripting instead of allowing players to make the events is turning out to be a fun-killer as well as being incredibly development-resource intensive. Events like Jumptown continue to highlight the issue. We will break it down here again for further understanding for the community and CIG.
What Made Jumptown Great?
The profitability of goods that players could buy at drug labs caused other players to show up to take their goods from them (real piracy). The high reward of the goods being bought and sold allowed for emergent and fun gameplay as well as high risk reward. This was fun.
What Went Wrong?
Things started to to south as drug running was tampered with continuously via many kinds of nerfs and eventually complete removal from the game. The dynamic nature of drug running was lost entirely and replaced with a scripted event called Jumptown that used developer resources to turn one of the best features of Star Citizen into not just a dead profession but also a dead event that requires constant development to even keep running in a poor state.
What Could Be Better?
A focus on dynamic rewards and allowing players to enjoy the game mechanics. Controlling which outposts are profitable and adding dynamic rewards. Let the players fight over resources. Make cargo running profitable again. Abandoning the scripted event of Jumptown and retuning commodity running to its former organic glory.
With Pyro it appears there are new types of hybrid dynamic / scripted locations and we look forward to reporting how Alpha 4.0 performs.
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.