Star Citizen Alpha 3.7 Released; Brings Ship Rentals, Caves, Banu Defender, and Much More

Today Cloud Imperium Games released the new major update for its space simulator Star Citizen, numbered 3.7.

The update brings a sizable number of new features which will likely please fans of the game.

These include rental kiosks to play with ships without neededing to purchase them, and much more. Find the full list below directly from the press release.

New features in Star Citizen Alpha 3.7 include:

• Cave Environments: Adding another level of exploration to planets and moons, the addition of caves includes tech that will power the creation of future modular locations, VFX and lighting.
• FPS Mining: Players can buy the all-new Greycat Industrial Pyro multi-tool equipped with a mining attachment and find small deposits of minerals in caves, on the surface of planets, and even in asteroid fields. Once activated, they can fracture and collect highly valuable mineral shards to sell for profit.
• Harvestables: Various locations across the Star Citizen universe now contain items that can be harvested, picked up, and used, consumed, or sold as commodities.
• Commodity Inventory: A personal inventory system allowing players to store various commodities, including items bought from kiosks or stores and harvestables discovered in the environment.
• Player Interdiction: Using the new RSI Mantis, outfitted with a Quantum Enforcement device, players can pull both NPC and player-piloted ships abruptly out of quantum travel. Once caught by the Quantum Snare, a dampener prevents the “interdictee” from fleeing.
• Mission Sharing: Allows players to share missions with members of their party, allowing teams to see, track, and complete objectives together while sharing the rewards.
• Ship Rentals: Allows players to rent ships from selected shops via in-game currency, increasing player choice and ship accessibility.

 New Vehicles & Weapons

• Banu Defender: The first flyable ship from the Banu alien race, the Defender uses combined technology from species across the galaxy including a number of alien components new to Star Citizen. 
• RSI Mantis: Set to debut on the October 10th birthday of the Star Citizen crowdfunding campaign, the Mantis is the game’s first interdiction ship. Interdiction means the Mantis can pull NPC and player-piloted ships out of quantum travel, while creating a distortion field that prevents them from fleeing. The Mantis is lightly armed and should be used by players traveling in groups, since they can’t always predict what it will “catch” in its quantum “net.”
• Aegis Vanguard Harbinger: The UEE’s long-range fighter/bomber, the Harbinger model converts the Warden’s escape pod into a bomb bay. The Vanguard features extended range and a relatively small profile, allowing it to strike where carrier-based ships or larger strategic bombers cannot.
• Aegis Vanguard Sentinel: The Aegis Vanguard Sentinel is an electronic warfare ship designed to “fight smart” rather than taking enemies head-on.
• Hedeby Salvo Frag Pistol: Slow-firing and heavy-hitting, this pistol can fire charged shots with a flat, shotgun-style blast.
• Kroneg FL-33 Laser Cannon: These high-damage, long-range energy weapons are for the ship pilot looking for versatile weapons at medium and longer ranges.

 Quality of Life Fixes & Additional Updates: 

• Arena Commander Improvements: Overhauled the Arena Commander experience, with particular focus on re-balancing the Pirate Swarm mode to make it more challenging, with several new boss-fights, and new rewards players accumulate over time.
• Character customizer v2: Improvements to the character customization feature, including iterations on the facial blending system and significant updates to the user interface.
• Human AI Combat v2: Improvements to the AI’s initial reactions to various stimuli (such as seeing an enemy, hearing a sound, etc.) with systemic transitions into those behaviors from normally scheduled activities. Also, AI combat behavior has been refactored to include multiple tactics that can be evaluated and selected according to the situation.
• AI Dogfight Combat v2: A new AI profile for “average ship pilots,” including behavior and skill differentiation by faction (pirates, law enforcement, etc.) to create a more diverse and varied combat experience for players in PVE gameplay.
• Flight Improvements: The all new “proximity assist” feature automatically detects when players fly close to obstacles and will slow the ship’s accelerations down and allow for softer, more fine control and landings. This feature is “intelligent” and based on player-context, automatically activating when needed to ensure players are still able to fly at high speed while low to the ground.
• Weapon Attachments v2: Further development of player-controlled customization for personal weapons, including new attachments to guns such as suppressors, compensators and under-barrel gadgets. This feature will allow for customization of the player’s FPS arsenal in real time.

The full patch notes can be found here.

Interestingly, we learn that those who beat the renewed Pirate Swarm mode of Arena Commander will also unlock the ability to purchase a pirate variant of the Gladius.

Star Citizen is a crowdfunded game, and crowdfunding total has amost reached 237 million dollars. To be more precise it’s at $236,739,139 at the moment of this writing. 

The number of registered accounts is currently at 2,377,283.

Below you can enjoy a few new screenshots, and three trailers introducing the update and the newly-flyable Banu Defender and RSI Mantis.

If you want to see more of the Banu Defender, you can also enjoy a video released a little while ago.

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