Today, Cloud Imperium Games released Alpha update 3.22 (dubbed ‘Wrecks to Riches’) for Star Citizen. This is the fourth major update launched this year for the slowly but surely growing MMO space simulation game.
Star Citizen Creative Director Chris Roberts touted the development progress in the following statement:
2023 has been one of our biggest years yet for Star Citizen on many fronts. We’re especially proud and excited about the technical milestones we’ve achieved, including bringing Persistent Entity Streaming to Star Citizen, letting players test the Replication Layer Split in our new tech preview channel, and showing a live demo of Server Meshing at this year’s in-person CitizenCon. These foundational technologies and the advancements in StarEngine shown at CitizenCon are now making their way into players’ hands, and over the next 12 months, we’ll deliver even more of the full promise of Star Citizen to our passionate and loyal community, beginning with this latest patch release. The support of our community continues to energize our developers daily, and we’re thrilled to share Star Citizen Alpha 3.22: Wrecks to Riches with them. We hope everyone enjoys this latest update with deeper salvage systems, exciting new vehicles, new diverse hairstyles, a revamped Jumptown, and much more as we close out this year and look toward an even brighter 2024.
Star Citizen Alpha 3.22 adds twenty new hairstyles for character models, all powered by CIG’s proprietary “StarHair” technology for maximum fidelity and physics simulation. There are also several content additions, such as fifteen Derelict Settlements scattered through the Stanton system, a new Jumptown PvP location called Echo Isle, and two PvP maps for the Arena Commander mode.
Moreover, Structural Salvage is now available for the Drake Vulture and Aegis Reclaimer specialized salvage vessels. They can break down the hulls of larger ships into more manageable parts, take them to a material grinder, and collect the processed materials to be sold for credits. CIG said the salvage system would be further enhanced in future patches.
Of course, it wouldn’t be a Star Citizen update if it didn’t include new vehicles. Players will find two ships (the Aopoa San’tok.yai and the Drake Interplanetary’s Cutter Rambler) and a whole line of X1 series luxury hoverbikes.
While there is still no release date in sight for Star Citizen eleven years after the original Kickstarter campaign, it is undeniable that CIG appears to have found a consistent development cadence for the ongoing Alpha. The single player campaign, Squadron 42, was recently deemed feature complete.
Meanwhile, the Star Engine is being continuously improved with impressive results from a visual and technological standpoint.
