In the latest episode of Star Citizen Live, the vehicle team at the Cloud Imperium Games shared some of their latest achievements and upcoming features, including the first iteration of the Engineering gameplay that will drop with Alpha 4.0.
Currently, players can experience a portion of the Engineering gameplay through an experimental mode in Arena Commander, however, the iteration that is supposed to arrive with Alpha 4.0 will include the addition of Life Support and the new fire malfunction.
The experimental mode only allows players to change fuses and repair some of the damage components, but the Alpha 4.0 version will include fire extinguishers, which allows you to put out fire in different parts of your ship.
With the arrival of Life Support component, players will face new challenges when flying their ship in zero-g space. First of all, Life Support will require its unqiue consumable material to operate properly and generate breathable air inside your ship. So, you can probably guess what will happen if you lose this component.
Of course, your oxygen tank could still keep you alive, but fighting is not the only way of loosing your Life Support. Somewhere in the interview, one of the developers iterated that if you open the ships doors or air-locks in zero-g space, all breathable air will be evacuated from the ship, and this will take Life Support some time to generate breathable air again, and that’s when its consumable material comes in to play. If the Life Support runs out of charge, you will need to recharge it.
Maintaining and repairing batteries is the next big part of Engineering gameplay that’s currently aimed to arrive in Alpha 4.0, but due to its complicated and essential role in the Engineering gameplay, the developers might push it back to a later patch if they can’t completely make it ready for Alpha 4.0.
Aside from Engineering, the developers also talked about other aspects and community concerns, including an improvement for the movement of tanks, which has already been implemented internally and will be shipped in the future to the Live build of the game.
Moreover, the developers are seeking more ways to increase the importance and presence of ground vehicles in the game, exploring ideas around missions that can be done easier with ground vehicles than ships or on foot, though these ideas are still far from getting implemented in the game.
