Who do you love now? HOVERBIKES. Yes, one of the key bits from this week’s Star Citizen Around the Verse episode focuses on the design and development of hoverbikes. Sorry, “grav-lev vehicles.” The original implementation, CIG says, was actually a bit too easy for the player, a little too detached from the terrain. The new model actually requires the player to react to the terrain underneath as well as monitor the level of thrust to keep on keepin’ on. The episode also covers playable female characters – specifically, the process of mapping and retooling animations to work for the female model, which as the devs note is significantly more complicated than just slapping the male character into girl clothes or porting the female NPCs over and saying boom, you’re playable.
Meanwhile, in a post about the Idris upgrade kit from last month, this week CIG effectively announced an expansion to its insurance system, specifically to cover items, not just ships.
“In the past, insurance was only made available to ship hulls. As we’ve progressed in the development of Star Citizen, we’re getting closer to having a need for a system to insure items as well. This is something that we’re still actively working on, so we don’t have full details to how this system will work just yet, but we’re eager to lock it all down and share that information with you in the future. I do however have an update on the Idris Upgrade Kit. As it currently stands, the kit shows that it has 72 months of insurance, which will be changing and retroactively updated to LTI in the very near future.”
