Today, Cloud Imperium Games released update Alpha 4.1 for its growing space simulator Star Citizen, bringing new content for players to enjoy.
The update is titled “Orbital Assault,” inspired by the new event “Align and Mine” sandbox activity that prompts players to fight for control of orbital and planetside installations in order to fire massive lasers at the surface of the Daymar and Aberdeen moons.
When that happens, they’ll be able to mine precious resources, but they’ll also have to contend with Juvenile Valakkars (basically small sandworms).
Another very interesting part of the update is Wikelo’s depots, owned by the first Alien to appear in the verse, Wikelo. Wikelo is a Banu who enjoys trading with humans, and bartering with him provides a wide selection of rewards.
On top of that, the overhaul of item loss and looting upon death has also been introduced, alongside two new vehicles, the Drake Golem and the Argo ATLS Geo.
Interestingly, the Drake Golem has been made available with a new “Miner Starter Pack” for those who want to begin the game with a mining ship instead of a combat-oriented one. It’s priced at $75, and at the moment, it’s discounted by 10% at $67.50.
Below, you can check out the trailer of the patch.
We also have a trailer for the Drake Golem.
Lastly, a third video focuses on the Align and Mine event with developer commentary.
You can read the patch notes for the update below.
Features and Gameplay
- AI
- New Fauna: Juvenile Valakkar
- New Dynamic Conversations and NPC Population Updates
- Locations
- New Hathor Alignment Facilities and Orbital Platforms
- Further Moons around the PU have been updated with the latest Cloud tech
- Gameplay
- New Persistent Sandbox Activity: Align & Mine
- Wikelo, Collector Missions, and Asteroid Base
- Full Ground Vehicle and FPS Mining Updates
- Item Recovery T0
- Enabled Place from inventory for Fuses, Keycards and Compboards
- Many Missions have been updated for Server Meshing including: Medical Beacons, Courier, Prison o2 repair, and 890j Boarding Action
- Ships & Vehicles
- Collision Physics Update
- Added Additional Ships to PU Ship Shops
- Heavy Fighter General Archetype Balance Pass
- Modified several ships to behave as if the turrets are slaved by default
- Increased Audio Standard for Corsair, Cutlass, Arrow, and Lightning series ships
- Weapons & Items
- NEW WEAPON: VOLT RIFLE – Paralax
- Grenade Launcher and other Weapon Balance
- Core Tech
- We have made numerous updates to help reduce BWin spikes which caused many delays around the PU
- Further Streaming Radius Improvements and Optimizations
- Arena Commander
- New Map: Crossroads of Crime
- New Map: Astors Clearing
Bug Fixes and Technical Updates
- Star Citizen Alpha 4.1 Contains nearly 130 Bug and Crash fixes that were occurring in 4.0.2-LIVE, 32 of which originated from the Issue Council.
- Fixed 9 Client Crashes
- Fixed 15 Server Crashes
- Fixed a Hybrid-Service Crash
- Fixed an issue causing Nvidia GPUs to crash or cause artifacting while using Vulkan
If you’re unfamiliar with Star Citizen, it’s a crowdfunded project directed by Chris Roberts of Wing Commander fame. It’s a multiplayer sandbox space simulator that has been in development for over a decade and in alpha for several years. It’s available exclusively for PC.
The crowdfunding total has recently passed $796 million, and it’s currently at $796,605,091. The game also has 5,572,097 registered users, albeit not all of them are paid customers. Many simply create an account to enjoy the occasional free-to-play periods.
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.
The single-player campaign titled Squadron 42 is also in active 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 has evolved since its first reveals.
Full disclosure: the author of this article has backed Star Citizen’s crowdfunding campaign.
