Cloud Imperium Games shared a colossal roadmap update today, breaking down every piece of new content coming to Star Citizen Alpha 4.0 in Q3 2024.
This is a huge step forward for the game, as players will officially get to step into the next Star System, Pyro while experiencing the first version of Server Meshing arriving with the next major update. Let’s have a quick rundown of everything coming to Alpha 4.0:
- Planets And Moons:
- Pyro 1
- Extremely high temperatures, inhabited by wildlife.
- Pyro 2 – Monox
- Inhabited by outlaw groups and home to Checkmate Station
- Pyro 3 – Bloom
- A heaven for miners with the abandoned processing stations now taken over by outlaws.
- Pyro 4
- An unstable planet that is closing in slowly to crash into Pyro 5 in the far future
- Pyro 5
- A gas giant similar to Stanton’s Crusader with the following 6 moons:
- Ignis: A dried-out moon with large canyons
- Vatra: A cold moon with frozen lakes
- Adir: Filed with rocky cliffs and lacking atmosphere
- Fairo: A dangerous moon with often-occurring earthquakes
- Fuego: A home to Headhunters faction to stash their goods
- Vuur: Unusually warm with plants worthy of researching
- A gas giant similar to Stanton’s Crusader with the following 6 moons:
- Pyro 6 – Terminus
- The home to an abandoned space station.
- Pyro 1
- Other Locations:
- More Space Stations
- Jump Points to Stanton
- Small shelter outposts for AI
- New Gameplay Features:
- Solar Burst
- An environment event that happens in Pyro, where the sun of the system unleashes a high-energy particle wave. Citizens must hide behind objects and stay in the shadows to survive the burst.
- Life Support
- A new ship component that generates breathable air inside the ship.
- Engineering
- The new job offers repairing and maintaining ship components to keep things running smoothly.
- Fire Hazard
- A system to track fire and temperature. It will be implemented on a few vehicles first.
- Fire Extinguisher
- Allowing players to use a Fire Extinguisher to put out a fire.
- Multi-Tool Updates
- Adding cutting and repair abilities
- Improving UI, handling, and battery usage
- Implementing the ability to drain, store, and charge objects with power
- MFD Rework
- A new design and some new customization updates for display screens on ships.
- Character Creator
- Adding face piercing to the character creator as well as more hair and facial hair options.
- New Wildlife
- Quasi Grazers, the large non-hostile animals known as Space Cows.
- Solar Burst
- Tech Updates
- Server Meshing V1
- Mission System Refactor (Server Meshing follow-up)
- Transit System Refactor (Server Meshing follow-up)
- New Ships:
- RSI Zeus Mk 2 ES
This is by far the most exciting roadmap we have ever had for Star Citizen. The Stanton System itself came together in multiple pieces, with each planet arriving with a different update, but now Cloud Imperium Games is planning to launch the entire Pyro system with a single update, which is huge!
There is a lot to expect for Alpha 4.0, of course, but all of that will be available thanks to the arrival of Server Meshing. Currently, the base of Server Meshing, the Replication Layer, operates greatly in Alpha 3.23, preventing players from running into the infamous 30K error, though there are some bugs to be fixed.
Unfortunately, the only new ship that Alpha 4.0 will deliver is the RSI Zeus Mk 2 ES, but this is based on the current version of the roadmap. Usually, more features are being added to the upcoming updates as we get closer to the release, and that could be the case with the 4.0 as well.
Aside from the exciting 4.0 news, the developers also updated the roadmap for Alpha 3.23.1 by adding Aegis Retaliator Gold Standard, which will allow the ship’s owners to customize its modular rooms. This is the first implementation of vehicle modularity, and it will bring Torpedo and Cargo rooms for Retaliator.
