Cloud Imperium Games will now call the upcoming Alpha 3.23.2 patch Alpha 3.24. The developers came to this conclusion after they realized the next patch features enough content to make it a major update for Star Citizen.
That being said, with a change in the name of the update, you should not expect any additional content other than what had already been announced for Alpha 3.23.2. With the arrival of Alpha 3.24, players will receive access to Personal and Instanced Hangars, Cargo Hauling Missions, and Storage Access which was previously known as Item Banks.
Personal Hangars will come with Freight Elevators, allowing players to spawn both their ships and ground vehicles inside a single hangar instead of moving to the planet surface to pick up a ground vehicle. Also, the Freight Elevator will be capable of storing cargo boxes and ship weapons, so you can transfer cargo from one ship to another without much headache.
The Storage Access, on the other hand, refers to a series of terminals in major cities and space stations that have already been implemented but will be activated with Alpha 3.24.
These terminals will allow players to access their entire inventory items at any given location, no matter where the items have been stored originally. So, if you have bought a weapon on Everus Harbor, for example, you can now grab it at any space station or city using the Storage Access terminal.
Aside from the aforementioned features, all of which are committed to Alpha 3.24, there is also a Blockade Runner event that is still scheduled for the current patch cycle. Later last month, a CIG developer reassured that Blockade Runner was still aimed to be delivered in the 3.23 patch cycle, which has now changed into 3.24.
However, knowing how long it took the developers to deliver the XenoThreat event with Alpha 3.23.1a, and it still suffers from massive performance issues, the Blockade Runner event might be delayed to an Alpha 3.24.X, though CIG has not commented on it yet.
Alpha 3.24 is expected to launch on the Evocati channel by the end of this week, but it remains unknown how long it will take developers to get rid of the possible bugs and glitches before the new patch launches on the Live servers. Previously, CIG developers claimed that the Evocati/PTU period for Alpha 3.23.2 would be shorter than that of Alpha 3.23.
That being said, the gap between Alpha 3.23.1 and Alpha 3.23.1a patches was pretty long. So, you will never know what would happen with Alpha 3.24.
Currently, the majority of Star Citizen developers are working on Alpha 4.0, slated for release in Q3 2024.
