The run-up to alpha 3.18’s arrival to the wider Star Citizen playerbase continues as the returning Star Citizen Live video series zeroes in on the upcoming build, bringing on several devs to discuss its feature set and answer player questions about the update.
A huge part of this new patch is the addition of persistent entity streaming, which naturally meant much of the video talked up the tech: The team remarks that its addition will mean the end of wholesale progress resets if the servers crash, the opportunity for players to join a server that has signs of being “lived in” (a given example is seeing a racetrack that’s littered with wreckage), and chances for players to change their approach to mission completion by setting up and placing vehicles outside of a mission location. The devs even go so far as to claim that 3.18 is one of the biggest updates in terms of impact since 3.0.
The devs further discussed how and when they would handle cleaning up debris, talked up server stability improvements already in place and planned for alpha 3.18.1, and persistence helping to combat players using a reset button to retrieve long distance inventory. As for 3.18’s next alpha wave, the team was non-committal beyond sometime soon™.
