Today Cloud Imperium Games released an extensive video showcasing some of the big new features coming to Star Citizen with the upcoming Alpha 3.24.
The largest new feature is Personal Hangars. Players will be given an instanced hangar on their home planet that will basically serve as the first instance of personal housing in the game.
They will be able to decorate it by freely placing items and furniture to feel more at “home.” They will also be able to defend themselves without incurring in the wrath of the law should a hostile (or simply unwelcome) player infiltrate their personal space.
The most relevant fixture of each hangar will be the ship elevator in the middle, which will let players “summon” ships and vehicles. Yet, from now on it’ll be done with a nice animation instead of simply having them spawn from thin air.
This is also relevant because it allows players to summon a ship or a vehicle, and then load them into another ship directly into their hangar, without having to go through a complicated process as before.
On top of the personal hangars, albeit still linked to them, we get to take a look at the new changes for inventory and cargo. Inventory will be physicalized and will have to be stored and recovered via dedicated kiosks or freight elevators in the hangars.
Players will also be able to decide whether they would like to load and unload their cargo manually, getting more use out of the game’s handy tractor beams, or have the station’s services do the work for a price.
It’s worth mentioning that these features were initially slated for Alpha 3.23, but they were pinned off into 3.24 as they weren’t ready for prime time. The update is currently being tested, so it shouldn’t be too far off.
If you’re unfamiliar with Star Citizen, it’s a crowdfunded multiplayer open-universe sandbox space sim that has been in development for over a decade. Its development is led by Chris Roberts, father of the beloved Wing Commander series.
It has received almost $715 million in crowdfunding ($714,963,720 at the moment of this writer) and counts 5,300,200 registered users, albeit many of them aren’t paying customers, as they register accounts to participate in the frequent Free Fly events.
A single-player campaign titled Squadron 42 is also in development, boasting a star-studded cast including Mark Hamill, Henry Cavill, Gary Oldman, Liam Cunningham, Gillian Anderson, and many more well-known actors.
If you’re interested in Star Citizen, learning to fly certainly won’t hurt. To that end, you can check out our handy guide on how to get started with flight simulators.
Full disclosure: the author of this article has backed Star Citizen’s crowdfunding campaign.
