While the upcoming alpha 3.14 build of Star Citizen has a number of headline features of its own like the Orison landing area, there are other things of note coming as well – namely, some changes to thrusters, shields, and weapons, and more, which were outlined in a pair of forum posts.
Shields are seeing adjustments between sizes one through three: Lower size shields will have lower HP but faster regen and a single “face” (referred to as a bubble shield) that takes damage rather than multi-directional faces, while size three shields will regen more slowly but have more HP and have quad faces or higher. There are also some ship-specific tuning adjustments made to certain vehicle shields.
Next, energy weapons are being changed, with every ship getting an energy ammo capacitor that determines how much of that ammo can be loaded at a time and how fast it regenerates. Any energy weapons that are disengaged will divert their capacitor power to energy weapons that are online, thereby increasing their ammo load and regeneration. The post goes on to further outline how much energy ammo and ammo regen different weapon types have.
Other adjustments in the works include thruster tweaks to grant different craft types a sense of role individuality; changes to boost that are intended to alleviate overuse by way of a capacitor charge mechanic that will replace heat; larger armor HP pools for various ship parts like wings and engine nacelles to make them sturdier and stop them from falling off easily; and some adjustments to the Power Triangle ship HUD element to make diverting power to shields, weapons, or engines feel more impactful depending on player choice.
