Today Cloud Imperium Games released a new update for its growing space simulator Star Citizen, and it comes with plenty of changes and fixes.
First and foremost, Alpha 4.01 can be seen as a big polish pass for Alpha 4.0, which introduced the new Pyro system and static server meshing. While that improved the experience for many, there were also issues, and this update is mainly intended to fix these.
We get polish passes for the new Contested Zones and frontier outposts on top of New Babbage. Stealth components have been nerfed a bit while AI defense turrets have been buffed considerably to counter the criminals out there.
Changes have been made to several ships including the removal of the polarizing charge mechanic from the Crusader Ion, while plenty of ships and vehicles received their internal storage.
Of course, many bugs have been fixed and tons of crash issues have been patched. You can read the full patch notes for more details.
We also get the introduction of the MISC Fortune, which is basically a salvage variant of the popular MISC Prospector mining ship. You can see in action and hear from its developers in the videos below.
We also get two events, the first being the seasonal Red Festival celebrating the Lunar New Year. Among the activities, you can find red pig envelopes in the ‘verse and exchange them for credits. Those who log in during the event will also get a permanent commemorative one to decorate their spaces.
On top of that, a new Free Fly event will start shortly. While the beginning has not yet been mentioned, it should launch over the next few days, allowing people who aren’t ready to pledge money for the game to try it and some of its ships for a limited time at no cost.
The available ships will be the Consolidated Outland Nomad, RSI Constellation Taurus, Anvil Carrack, Drake Cutter, and Drake Cutlass Black.
Last, but not least, we get the Fight for Pyro dynamic event, which is a follow-up to Save Stanton we enjoyed a while ago. This time around, the Frontier Fighters faction has decided to turn Pyro into scorched heart to punish the system for the incursion in Stanton, while the Citizens for Prosperity and Headhunters want to thwart them.
For the first time, players will have to choose the faction they want to support and the decision will have consequences. Those who complete 6 missions of this event will receive a permanent Ripper SMG, while those who have also completed Save Stanton will get faction-specific liveries for the Anvil C8R Pisces, Anvil Carrack, Drake Cutter, and RSI Zeus Mk II.
If you’re unfamiliar with Star Citizen, it’s a crowdfunded project directed by Chris Roberts, whom you may know for the classic Wing Commander series. It’s a multiplayer sandbox space simulator that has been in development for over a decade and in alpha for several years. It will be released exclusively for PC at some point in the future.
The crowdfunding total has passed $780 million and it’s currently at $780,453,023. The game also has 5,518,664 registered users, albeit not all of them are paid customers. Many simply create an account to enjoy the occasional free-to-play periods like the one that’s coming.
2024 was the second-best year ever for Star Citizen’s crowdfunding campaign, missing the record only by roughly one million.
A few months ago, Cloud Imperium Games showcased plenty of features and tech coming to Star Citizen, on top of the overall vision for version 1.0, which will be the full release of the game, albeit it doesn’t yet have a date.
A single-player campaign titled Squadron 42 is also in development, starring an exceptional cast of famous actors including Mark Hamill, Henry Cavill, Gary Oldman, Liam Cunningham, Gillian Anderson, and more. Recently we saw plenty of gameplay and learned that it’ll release in 2026.
Since the project has been in development for over a decade, you can also see how Squadron 42 evolved since its first reveals.
Full disclosure: the author of this article has backed Star Citizen’s crowdfunding campaign.
