Star Citizen fans got a new episode of Around The Verse Thursday evening, and we’re here to recap it. This week focused on the Cyclone and the tech required to make Cloud Imperium Games’ persistent universe come to life.
Before we get to that, though, we’ll quickly touch on the latest updates from CIG’s Austin branch. As detailed by producer Jake Ross, there’s a lot going on. Shopping features have evolved to the point where final asset pricing is being decided and added to spreadsheets. In that same vein, armor can be purchased piece by piece as well. With regard to ships, the Cutlass Black, its variants and the Hornet Andromeda are all being slowly improved and moved toward completion for promotional purposes.
A lot has been done on the character end to make inhabitants feel more realistic too. Mission giver Miles Eckhart continues to be a petri dish for new features, as he now has the ability to respond to players based on their reputation and assign missions with descriptive tags. On the audio side, greetings and other small bits of dialogue called wild lines are being attached to NPCs. This is coupled with adjustments to make individual animations more refined.
What will be most appreciated by fans, however, is the latest update from Cyclone designer Stephen Hosmer about the various classes of the new land vehicle. In the lore it was originally designed for military use but is now leveraged as an all-around land option when compared to the faster Nox bike or slower Ursa Rover. It comes in five varieties:
- Basic Cyclone : A traditional buggy that’s best suited for average travel or carrying cargo.
- Cyclone TR [Top Left] : It’s a military version with a turret and third seat for the turret operator. It’s a good form of cavalry during combat operations.
- Cyclone N [Bottom Left] : This a recon-focused build of the Cyclone, so it’s designed for stealth and navigation. It can lay down beacons at will, so it might be best used to traverse through storms or bad weather.
- Cyclone RC [Top Right] : A racing build of the Cyclone that’s essentially a version of the basic cyclone with speed boost attachments.
- Cyclone Anti-Air [Bottom Right] : Can carry missiles, chaff, flare, smokescreens and an EMP. This is your heavy combat Cyclone.
As far as persistence tech is concerned, there honestly isn’t too much to talk about. In basic terms, it’s the mechanisms through which content returns to the player once they leave an online lobby and come back for another round. In Star Citizen 2.6, most of the persistence is focused on weapon loadouts and basic items. For 3.0, attributes like health, ship damage, ammo count and the status of landing pads will be remembered after each session.
The long term goal for a game like Star Citizen is to eventually make as many attributes as persistent as possible, and that’s where Diffusion comes in. With this technology, the aim is to make sure the universe’s finer attributes, like its economy, missions and AI, accurately respond to changes in the universe as they happen. A safe bet is that persistence of major elements will be shared across individual servers, but a dream would be to move that tracking to a single server where all players can simultaneously contribute.
Star Citizen is available now for Kickstarter backers on PC. Alpha 3.0 is expected to release in August.
What are your thoughts on the Cyclone? Will these persistence dreams actually come true? Tell us in the comments section!
