Star Citizen Alpha 3.6 Released with Plenty of New Features; New Anvil Ballista Vehicle Revealed

Today Cloud Imperium Games made Star Citizen’s Alpha 3.6 update available to all backers on top of revealing a new vehicle.

Alpha 3.6 comes with tons of new features, including the law system that will finally hold misbehaving players accountable for their actions. On the other hand, a new black market system will also make the misbehaving more profitable. Interestingly, different planets and areas of space will have different laws (which of course also means different ways to break the law).

The accompanying press release included a comment by Game Director Chris Roberts himself about the law system.

“Star Citizen has always been about player choice and playing the way you want to play, but that doesn’t mean it’s a lawless universe.

The new law system brings a much more systemic approach to law and order throughout the Star Citizen universe; different locations and factions can have different rules which will be enforced by AI or even other players as the crime becomes more serious. It’s yet another step on the road to a fully breathing dynamic universe that reacts to and is shaped by the players actions.”

Space stations are getting new variants, and new terminals will make over 90 ships purchasable for the currency that you can acquire in the game.

The Face over IP and Voice over IP features have been improved and expanded upon, helping out wth communication among players.

Ships and flight systems have seen improvements as well with a new behavior for shields and the dedicated hover mode.

On top of the addition of new guns a brand new vehicle has been revealed, the Anvil Ballista. It’s self-propelled air defense system armed with Gatling guns and powerful missiles able to engage both ground and air targets. You can see what it looks like in the pictures below.

You can find detailed patch notes here, and a video showcasing the new features alongside a trailer of the remodeled Kruger P-52 Merling and P-72 Archimedes at the bottom of the post. You can also hear more about the update in a batch of older videos.

Speaking of ships, the Aegis Vanguard also received a considerable redesign, and it looks as badass as ever.

Star Citizen is a crowdfunded game, and it’s currently sitting on $229,717,841 in pledges at the moment of this writing, counting 2,347,903 registered users.

For the sake of full disclosure, you should keep in mind that the author of this article is among the backers of the game since the original Kickstarter campaign a long time ago.