Jared Huckaby receives Persistent Universe director Todd Grandpa live from Star Citizen. He is working with Chris Roberts, Tony Zurovec and the other directors to put together a playable persistent universe. For patch 3.17, Todd considers the biggest advancements to be selling, supplying, backend improvements (the dynamic event scheduler for example), and rivers.
ATC key
With patch 3.17, one key can automatically call the nearest air traffic controller. Until now, you had to open the Mobiglas call application or use the communications tab on the ships’ multifunction screens.
Refueling
Ship tanks will be adjusted following the arrival of refueling gameplay. The developers aim a need for supplies between every hour and a half and every two hours. Todd Grandpa talks about it in the future, so it won’t necessarily be from patch 3.17.
In patch 3.17, there is only one kind of each fuel (Hydrogen and Quantum). In the future there will be different qualities and different fuel options. In the long term, supply gameplay will be improved as mining has been. However, we will have to wait because the team in charge of it will meanwhile be assigned to the power management in the vessels – what is necessary for the engineer gameplay – to ship life support systems (Life support) and at recycling (rescue).
The first iteration of refueling has been implemented now as it is a core feature for Pyro.
There will be no missions to supply non-player ships in patch 3.17. The teams in charge of artificial intelligence are busy developing the functionalities related to combat (landing and evolving on a planet for example), necessary for Squadron 42.
Hull A
At the release of the patch in liveHull A should retain its flight configuration if the player disconnects in the ship.
Sale of items
All items purchased with real money cannot be sold.
In patch 3.17, the base selling price of items will be fixed. In the future, it will be dynamic according to supply and demand.
Items sold to merchants will not be resold to players. The sale makes it possible to eliminate objects from the databases.
wipe
There should be no reset databases (wipes) with patch 3.17.
Ships to buy in game
Cyclone MT and P72 Archimedes are added to in-game shops.Hoverquad and the Cutlass Steel will be in 3.18 at the latest.
Star Citizen vs. Squadron 42
Core gameplay teams are now working on Squadron 42 as a priority. live are not the same. The functionalities developed are therefore studied duringa review to assess the suitability of implementing them in the persistent universe. If so, the persistent universe teams create a variant of the feature in their development environment.
Several teams remain only dedicated to the persistent universe.
Redesigns
In a traditional development, there are few iterations: the objective is to get the features out of the way, then to fix the bugs and round off the player experience. Redesigns are only carried out if necessary.
For Star Citizen that is a long-term project with an environment livesome features need to be reverted entirely because their first implementation was temporary or has become obsolete due to changes in architecture or technology.
coffee seller
This feature is a variation of the bartender made by a junior developer to increase his skills, and which will allow him to go to the merchants on the sly.
rivers
The gameplays associated with rivers are not a priority for the moment. This is why in patch 3.17 the rivers will not offer gameplay.
More rivers will be added in future patches.
Quantum
In patch 3.17, the Quantum economic simulation should set the prices of three goods : repairs, materials and fuel. In the following patches, Quantum will take into account more and more parameters.
Sales kiosks
In patch 3.17, merchants usually sell fewer different objects as for previous patches, and all those not listed must be found in the universe (loot)
The developers are aware that the kiosk sales interface is not ideal. Its improvement is not a priority.
Cargoes
Selling the cargo of a stolen ship requires cargo redesign. We can then transfer by hand cargo from one ship to another, or pick up the cargo of a destroyed ship (if it survived the explosion).
Tasks
There is no new missions in patch 3.17.
Asteroid scan
The feature has received fixes, it will take wait for the transition live to see if the results are there.
Desynchronizations
Desynchronizations are the consequence of a compromise between fluidity of movement (no teleportation or shaking of objects/characters) and position accuracy. In patch 3.17 they are adjusting this feature to improve the position.