Evocati 3.18.0 - November 22nd, Build A (EPTU.8295399) Patch Notes

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Star Citizen Alpha 3.18.0a EPTU.8295399 Patch Notes
Alpha Patch 3.18.0a has been released to Evocati, and is now available to test! Patch should now show: VERSION 3.18.0-EPTU.8295399.

It is strongly recommended that players delete their USER folder for the Public client after patching, particularly if you start encountering any odd character graphical issues or crash on loading. The USER folder can be found (in default installations) at C:\Program Files\Roberts Space Industries\StarCitizen\EPTU.

Database Reset: Yes
Long Term Persistence: Enabled
Pledge Copy: Disabled (Players will receive a limited ship list including Vulture/Corsair)
Starting aUEC: n/a

The current build is under NDA
Please log out then back in on the issue council site to see the Evocati environment there. Please make sure to only select the Evocati 3.18 environment when creating IC reports while the builds are Evocati only

Please monitor etf-testing-chat in spectrum for updates and testing instructions.

USER.cfg settings: r_displaySessionInfo = 1

Note: This patch does not contain all of the intended features, which will be added iteratively to the notes as they become available. Additionally, some features may be implemented in a partial state and as such are not ready for testing. When those features reach a playable state they will be detailed on the notes and added to the "Testing Focus". Please issue council all issues related to those in testing focus and in general gameplay.

Testing Focus
Salvage - Hull Scraping
Platform Assault on Orison
Security Post Kareah Reactivation
Courier Delivery Missions Update
Sandbox Prison Activities
Sand Caves
Daymar Crash Site
Stanton Racetrack Locations
Greycat PTV Race Track
New Rivers

Known Issues
Inventory - Equipment - Equipped items are lost from character after 30k
Character Customizer - Stuck on "Saving Character" on the Front End menu after the first time joining PU
PES - Core Tech - Characters not properly stowed after logout ; able to be observed while not logged in by other accounts
Shopping - New Babbage - Pharmacy Kiosk - Pharmacy purchases result in " Failed Invalid Location " error
Economy / Commodity - Ships / Vehicles / FPS - Ships & Vehicles & FPS storage are not detected by commodity or admin kiosks of any kind
Multivehicle - VMA - Vehicles / Ship Components / UI - Unable to customize any ship within the Vehicle Loadout Manager
ASOP terminal hangs on "Please wait while your vehicle is being delivered"
Locations / Hurston/Lorville - Commodity Kiosk - UI - UI may become blurry/illegible while in use
Load / Location - More than one player can load into a habitat bed at the same time
Transit - Elevators and Trams are "Jittery" during transit of Player Character
Derelict - Missing Salvage Wrecks
Multiple Locations - Sand Cave - Locations / Art - Caves have "Scotch Tape" like textures over sections of the entrances and around stalagmite features inside of the cave
UI / Vehicle HUD - It is possible for the Vehicle HUD to vanish for the player during flight and combat
Stanton - Interactions - Terminals are not responsive and some are not resetting
Performance - 3rd person Camera - Massive stutter when using external view / F4 view for first time
Vulture pitches down in atmosphere when locking pitch/yaw
Vehicles / VFX- Drake Vulture missing thruster VFX
The Corsair does not respond to either Expand Configuration or Retract Configuration bindings
Orison - Mission Content / Locations - A hostile AI is stuck inside a wall at HMR-A and one hostile appears missing at BWD-G for Bounty Assignment: Neal Garrison mission
Inventory / Loot Boxes - Loot Boxes will Disappear on Approach or after Opening
Multiple Locations - Actor Feature / UI - Medical - Player unable to heal injuries in med bed

New Features
Locations
Daymar Crash Site
A large derelict settlement on Daymar using parts of the StarRunner & 600i, as well as some habs adapted to the biome, to create a point of interest with included kill all, kill specific, and delivery missions.

Sand Cave Archetype
The addition of the new Sand Cave Archetype across multiple planets and moons in the Stanton System, including Hurston, Magda, Ita, Daymar, and Wala each with their own 20 unique sand cave formations. These new sand caves include the brand new land crustacean known as the Stone Bug with it's new harvestable, the Stone Bug Shell.

Stanton Racetrack Locations
Addition of many new racing locations into Stanton. With this update we are including 3 out of the 6 new and community driven racing locations into the Persistent Universe (with time trials missions and 3 more racing locations coming in future PTU updates) with updated assets and set dressings to make each racing location a unique and rewarding experience for players to test their racing skills. These Racing Tracks include: Daymar - Yadar Valley - 11km at 235deg from The Garden UGF, Orison - Caplan Stadium - 16.5km at 244deg from Orison marker, and Hurston - Lorville Gateways - 6.5km at 290deg from Lorville QT marker.

Greycat PTV Race Track
Implementing a race track into the Orison Vision Centre on Crusader in the same location as the most recent Invictus Launch Week, designed for the Greycat PTV.

Gameplay
Security Post Kareah Reactivation
Security Post Kareah will be taking a more central role in Stanton's security. Crusader Security have moved in a full-time staff and have begun storing confiscated contraband aboard. The station will be off limits to all civilians, unless given prior authorization. Kareah has undergone a full art redesign polish. This includes a new evidence and contraband processing office addition with interactable contraband dispenser, new traversal pathways, new color schemes and branding, and updated set dressing and cover around the whole interior. The interior and exterior of Kareah have been updated with armed admin AI and reinforcements including new crusader security loadouts and police detectives in kevlar.

Inside Kareah, criminal players will now be able to trigger a boss to spawn after killing several AI. After this boss has been killed players will be able to loot them and find a code on their body that will unlock a terminal inside the evidence storage room. After unlocking, players will be able to activate the contraband machine to dispense drugs. The player will be able to keep getting drugs out of the dispenser until a set amount of items are generated (randomized amount between 15 and 20 items). Once all items have been retrieved, the security terminal will lock itself, and upon leaving, the contraband room the door should lock not allowing players access to the area.

Along with the Security Post Kareah Reactivation, we are introducing a new mission type called Retake Location. Initially only at Security Post Kareah, this new mission type is generated for players when a location deems itself under attack (e.g. when X amount of a location’s population is killed). This mission will generate for players outside of the location and will allow players to go to that location and lawfully enter and remove all hostile attackers. Each attacker a player kills will give them a bonus after completing the mission. Any players in the area contributing to the mission will get part of the overall reward.
Platform Assault on Orison
Addition of Bounty, Assassinate, Clear All, and other missions that take place on the Inspiration Park platforms created for Siege of Orison. This includes eliminate all missions similar to the current UGF missions. For these islands the player will be tasked with killing everyone in a given building. These Mercenary missions available from Crusader Industries will have <sic>

Salvage - Hull Scraping
The first implementation of Salvage into the persistent universe, which includes both hull stripping as well as repair. This includes both performing hull stripping and repairs by hand, as well as hull stripping using the systems aboard the Drake Vulture and Aegis Reclaimer. Using highly advanced compression technology, these tools can break down ship and vehicle exteriors, converting them into Recycled Material Composite (RMC), and store them in the canisters attached. The player then has the option to either use this material to repair their ship using the FPS multi-tool by filling in damaged areas or they can sell this material as a commodity.

Vehicle Hull Scraping
Salvaging while in a vehicle is a mode like mining. To be able to scrape the hull of a newly "found" wreck, the target must have it's shields turned off (Indicator in UI will informs about shield state). To enter and exit Salvage mode hit 'm' (Default keybind). Players can right click to cycle through attached Beams in the sub item slot. By Left Clicking players can activate and deactivate the scraper beam. There are 2 modes players can be in while salvaging by pressing 'G' (Default keybind), Converging and Fixed Mode. Fixed mode acts like weapons and points the salvage beams directly where the player aims the ship while Converging mode lets players gimbal the beams independently. Left alt + Mouse wheel will move converging point while Left alt + Right click will switch between vertical and horizontal converging mode. Players will need to manually remove filled storage boxes from the ship's salvaging area using a using a handheld tractor beam or by converting it into RMC canisters for repairing.

FPS Hull Scraping & repair
To utilize FPS Hull scraping mechanics, players will first need to acquire a Grin Multi-tool, the Salvage and repair module for it, and the ammunition canister for the salvage and repair module. As will ship hull scraping, players will be able to strip away the hull of a ship while it's shields are down (Indicator in UI will informs about shield state) and store the Recycled Material Composite (RMC) in the canister. Players can cycle between salvage and repair mode by pressing 'B' (Default keybind) a which will allow them to either scrape away materials or use collected materials to repair the hull of a ship.

Vehicle Soft Death
Ships and vehicles will now go into a "soft death" state instead of instantly exploding. This will put the ship into a power down state unlocked doors which allows players to board to take on the crew and cargo inside.

Sandbox Prison Activities
Expansion of prison gameplay with a new suite of missions and sandbox activities to give inmates more opportunities to earn merits or to aid in their escape from prison. The prison and it's mine are now filled with an emergent population of prison guards and civilian prisoners' with lootable items. Players will be able to loot contraband located throughout the prison mines and from bodies and sell to the prison kiosk for merits. This includes a brand new Prison Escape Delivery Mission, where players have to find and loot an item in the escape route and then deliver it at the nearest outpost, upon doing this the player then will have their criminal record wiped by the mission giver. Players will now incur a punishment for suiciding in the prison, however if they retrieve their gear from their dead body they can pay off this merit value instantly.

Request landing has a new default keybinding of ALT + N.

Ships and Vehicles
Drake Vulture
Addition of Drake Interplanetary's light salvage ship known as the Vulture.

Weapons and Items
Greycat Multi-tool Salvage Attachment
Addition of the new multi-tool salvage attachment into the PU. This new attachment attaches to the Grin Multi-tool along with the new salvage ammunition canister to allow players to scrape and repair the hulls of vehicles.

Core Tech
Persistent Entity Streaming
Implementation of the Persistent Entity Streaming core technology into Star Citizen. Making use of services such as the Entity Graph and Replication Layer, this will allow every dynamic object in the game to fully persist across all servers, irrelevant of whether it is owned or held by a player.

Feature Updates
Locations
New Rivers in Stanton
Adding dozens of additional rivers and lakes on microTech and Hurston.Setting up biome-specific object rulesets around bodies of water and distributing those by placing additional rivers and lakes on microTech and Hurston.

Restricted Areas v3
Complete rework of the restricted area tech around landing zones. Instead of ships being autopiloted away or destroyed upon entering a Restricted Area, players are now given more freedom to fly and maneuver around cities. Upon entering a Restricted Area, players will now be given a text warning, a countdown, and an arrow pointing towards the exit. If the countdown ends, or they go further into the Restricted Area, the player will be teleported to a safe location, their ship will be impounded and they will receive a misdemeanor crime stat. This feature also applies to Ground Vehicles. Players outside of a vehicle won’t receive a countdown but will be teleported to safety if they venture too far into a Restricted Area.

Caterpillar Crash Sites Improvements V1
Added base AI to populate caterpillar crash sites. Added kill specific and kill all missions. Including a general polish pass and visual improvements.

Derelict Settlements - Reclaimer V2
General polish pass to the Reclaimer including additional buildings and general visual improvements.

Added Parallax Interior Window Shader for buildings around all landing zones

AI
NPC Loadout Updates
Updated many NPC loadouts throughout Stanton with new Shopkeeper outfits, Earth Fashion Dress, Hospital Surgeon outfits, Service hats and aprons in shops, and armor sets.

Gameplay
Courier Delivery Missions Update
Addition of new Local Courier Delivery Missions around each Stanton planet system. These new missions are based around the local delivery companies for each planet system in Stanton and give players a more focused area for deliveries. There are 4 new Delivery reputations based on the area you are in. Red Wind Local Delivery, Ling Family Local Delivery Route, Covalex Local Delivery Route, and UDM Local Delivery Route. These new missions can be acquired after completing the intro missions for the local delivery company in your area.

QoL Inventory Updates
Added ability for long term persistence (LTP) items to stack in inventory. Added transfer all button to inventories that work based on selected filters. Added visual feedback attempting to quick move an item that won't fit in the target inventory. Implemented toggle option to the top right of the player's inventory to always show/hide item ports for equipping gear.

Law System Improvements
Crime Stat 1 & 2 will no longer be punishable by death and instead allows players to pay them off with a fine.

Core Tech
Updated to new Gen12 Rendering
Updated Commodity Kiosks to Use Building Blocks Tech

Bug Fixes
Fixed - DRAKE Corsair - Core Tech / Physics - When flying in a straight line in atmosphere, the Corsair will nose down without pilot input making it hard to control when at speed
Fixed - Commodity Trading / Selling / UI - Commodities will not appear in the Commodity Kiosks and cannot be sold
Fixed - Orison - Transit - Shuttle to vision center never arrives / gets stuck
Fixed - Character / Loadout - After exiting Klescher, player will have no head or mobiglas
Fixed - Ship drops out of quantum when Pressing B or Missile Mode
Fixed - QT markers disappear when travelling between planetary markers until QT drive finishes spooling
Fixed - Security Post Kareah - AI / Mission Content - Security AI are not spawning in their correct loadouts causing them to cower/surrender
Fixed - Mission Content / AI - Infiltrate Orison - AI are not leaving their spawn closets
Fixed - AC - Loadout / Ship Customization - Owned items not displayed in the list of equippable items
Fixed - Inner Thought wheel Back / Exit button UI is missing, and replaced with an " X "
Closure rate marker fixed to give correct velocity towards target rather than full relative speed

Technical
Fixed 8 Client Crashes
Fixed 6 Server Crashes
Fixed 1 Gen12 GPU Crash

Arena Commander
Arena Commander Quality of Life Updates

System / Balance
PES Successfully Integrated Into Arena Commander
Added Grey Screen effect when dead for all modes
The system used to white/blacklist ships from gamemodes has been compeletely reworked
BleedOut will now award the shooter, both for causing the bleed out and for all bleeding damage inflicted afterwards
Several UI systems have upgraded to Building Blocks
The 3 top most scoring players in all game modes now gain an additional 2000, 1500, and 1000 score respectively. While all other players gain a 500 score participation award
In team game modes Victory now awards 2000 score, while defeat awards 500 score
The top scoring player in any game mode is now awarded MVP, awarding additional score & displaying in the GameFeed
Hemorrhage now displays as a secondary scoring event
Items & Vehicle should now appear alphabetically in the Rental/Customization screens

Modes
Increased player limit of FreeFlight from 8 to 24
Decreased required player count for Last Stand from 6 to 4
Removed 3rd Person Camera from Elimination
Last Stand now displays your objective in the top right of the screen

Maps
Adjusted skybox in Dying Star to match the upcoming Pyro System
Dying Star has underwent a visibility pass, greatly reducing cloud density, glare and size of smoke particle effects which lead to poor visibility and motion sickness for some players
Reduced the density of the yellow glowing gas cloud plus the lights that made it appear more opaque than it needed to be, reduced the size, frequency and opacity of the black ash particles that, along with the previously brightly-lit gas cloud, made flight direction disorientating and basic visibility really difficult. There is still a bit of glare when staring directly at the star going supernova, but I still really like this. It's the other 99% of the map that has had its visibility generally improved.

Bug Fixes
(GameWide) Closure rate marker fixed to give correct velocity towards target rather than full relative speed
Damaging a friendly with a missile now correctly gives negative score based on the damage dealt
Damaging a friendly with a missile in modes where friendly fire is disabled will no longer damage the friendly target
Explosions and Collisions now follow friendly fire rules
Last Stand will no longer respawn an already spawned player at the start of a round
Duel Mode should no longer affect the Battle Royale Leaderboards
Fixed various issues with collisions of asteroids in Broken Moon & Dying Star
Fixed various issues with missing geometry in Dying Star
Fixed various issues causing poor performance in Dying Star
Fixed various vis-area issues across OP Station Demien, Echo11 and The Good Doctor
Fixed various issues where killing a player would not award the full score pool, most notiably when getting headshots
Fixed an issue where ships would duplicate repeatedly for players who were stuck on the loading screen
Fixed an issue where players would spawn into ships with missing components
Fixed an issue where a player could spawn into a ship that had no seat, causing the players character to get into a bad state
Fixed an issue where the player would retain the recoil camera shake from death to their respawn
Fixed an issue where destroying another ship in Squadron Battle would award 10k team points rather than the value of the destroyed ship
Fixed an issue where players who killed themselves in Squadron Battle would give their team -10k points
Fixed an issue where friendly fire would affect the team score
Fixed an issue where occasionally when renting an item you would experience a large hang
Fixed an issue where bleedout kills displayed incorrectly in the game-feed
Fixed a crash when loading into an empty team-based game mode
Fixed an issue where self-destructing awarded positive points
Fixed an issue where an attacker would receive -1 kill if the target bled out
Fixed an issue where the marker for medpen & ammo containers was not appearing
Fixed a crash when acquiring pick-ups
Fixed a crash on finishing an Elimination match
Fixed a crash when joining Team game modes

Technical
Fixed 7 Arena Commander Crashes
Various optimizations to systems including PlayableArea, GameRules, and Rental Services

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