Today Star Citizen developer Cloud Imperium Games announced the release of alpha 3.16 for the growing space simulator.
The update, which releases at 10:00 am PST, brings a new dynamic event, a new ship, the overhaul of gravlev vehicles mechanics, and more.
Here’s a list of features:
- umptown 2.0: Inspired by the popular PvP community event where players waged war over valuable drug resources, Jumptown 2.0 seeks to introduce the excitement and chaos of largescale PvP ground conflicts in Star Citizen. During this event, both Lawful and Criminal players will race to battle over control of valuable drug crates at various outposts in the Stanton system.
- Drake Cutlass Steel: This dropship variant of the Drake Cutlass replaces cargo capacity with room for 18 jump seats to transport troops to the frontlines of battle, along with a variety of weaponry, including door-mounted guns, manned and remote turrets, ballistic Gatling guns, laser repeaters, and a powerful payload of missiles.
- Grav-Lev Physics Rework: Hover bikes will see major improvements following a significant rework of the flight and driving model for grav-lev vehicles. The result is improved handling, stability, and a far better experience for hover bikes moving forward.
- Atmospheric Bounties: Bounty hunters can now pursue contracts above the caves on microTech, outposts on ArcCorp, and more with new bounties across Stanton, including targets hiding in-atmosphere across all of the system’s major planets.
On top of that, we hear of a feature that will be released with alpha 3.16.1 at the end of January.
- Derelict Puzzles: A number of derelict ships have been discovered throughout the Stanton region. Explore and navigate through the wreckage, avoid deadly laser trip mines, and recover valuable cargo in these new derelict variants.
With the press release, we received a comment from Creative Director Chris Roberts:
“2021 has been another fantastic year for Star Citizen and our amazing community, and I’m excited for us to end the year with another explosive Dynamic Event in Alpha 3.16: Return to Jumptown.
Long-term players remember the emergent PvP Jumptown battles from the early days of the Persistent Universe. We’ve taken the intense action from the old event as inspiration for Jumptown 2.0, which promises to deliver the exhilarating and large-scale battlefields we want to see more of in Star Citizen. On top of that, today in 3.16.0 we are also adding big improvements to the handling of hover vehicles, a new Cutlass Steel dropship, and a few more surprises for our players. And later in January in 3.16.1, we’ll be adding Derelict Ship Graveyards and hidden treasures protected by deadly traps.”
Below you can check out a trailer for the update, one specifically for the Cutlass Steel, and a few screenshots.
In other Star Citizen news, the crowdfunding total has just passed $423 million and it’s currently sitting on $423,452,037.
The number of registered accounts has recently passed 3.4 million, and it’s at 3,440,939 at the moment of this writing.
As usual, you should keep in mind that it’s known that not all of them are paying players. The number includes free accounts created for a variety of reasons, including Free Fly events like the one that recently ended.
Recently, we got an extensive look at what’s coming to Star Citizen with several panels hosted at CitizenCon.
If you’re wondering whether the game is actually fun to play, this is a good place to start. A star-studded single-player campaign titled “Squadron 42” is in development.
For the sake of full disclosure, do keep in mind that the author of this article has been a Star Citizen backer since the original Kickstarter campaign several years ago.
