So, Star Citizen alpha 3.0. Around the Verse. Does anyone read these, or do you just skip to the comments with your popcorn? Let’s find out! In this episode, CIG’s Eric Kieron Davis, dressed inexplicably like a Star Trek character, says the team checked in 756 updates to the 3.0 alpha over the past week, as it’s focused specifically on mobiGlas, missions, traversal, shopping, and stability. No, the patch still isn’t on the PTU. They’re working on it. But seriously, what’s with the Spock shirt.
The meat of the episode is on quantum travel, and no, there won’t be a physics exam at the end (although I could actually arrange that if you want). Alpha 3.0 will overhaul that system with distance in mind; instead of just clicking your destination and be greeted with the “same experience regardless of where you were going,” alpha 3.0 players will find that long trips feel quite different from short ones.
“What that gave us is no matter where we choose on the Star Map, whatever location, we’d get that nice little curve,” CIG’s Mark Abent explains. “So if I were going to Mars, I would accelerate and max the speed and then decelerate again, but if I were going to Pluto, I’d go all the way up, even higher speed, cruise a little bit, and then go down. […] When you’re accelerating up, if you don’t hit a certain speed, you don’t get the tunnel effect. You just get these little sparkles ’cause you’re not hitting [the] sound barrier of the quantum. […] But if you go a little further out, you hit the barrier, so we trigger on the effects, and it makes it much a more dramatic thing.”
