Cloud Imperium has announced that Star Citizen Alpha 3.4 is currently available to all backers. According to the team, this new alpha version comes with several massive technical upgrades to the game.
Going into more details, Alpha 3.4 adds sensitivty controls for headtracking in the options menu under “comms”, Lorville Central Business District, New Mission Giver: Wallace Klim, new armor, helmets, and a new personal weapon, as well as new visual updates to quantum markers and turrets.
Furthermore, Star Citizen Alpha 3.4 brings numeral bug fixes, adds a select/rent ship button to main Arena Commander splash screen, adds a “disband group button” for the party leader, makes the video call feed on direct P2P comms calls less transparent, improves FPS AI strafing behavior and more.
As always, Star Citizen Alpha 3.4 will be auto-downloaded from its client the next time you launch it and you can find its complete changelog below.
Star Citizen Alpha 3.4 Release Notes
New Features
General
- Added sensitivty controls for headtracking in the options menu under “comms”.
- There’s now a keybind for stowing and retrieving mission specific utility items “6”, which may be required for drug and downed relay missions related missions.
Universe
- Added Lorville Central Business District.
The Central Business District at Lorville can be reached via the Central Line transit leaving from Leavsden Station. Within the district you’ll find the Transfers Commodity Exchange, the trading headquarters of the city and the office of Jr. Outsourcing Agent Constantine Hurston. The district also features the Hurston Dynamics Showroom where the latest weapons from the arms manufacturer are proudly on display for purchase.
Missions
- Added New Mission Giver: Wallace Klim
Klim is a chemist and a drug dealer found deep within the bowels of Levski.
- Added Hurston variants for delivery, patrol, bounty/assassination, and ECN missions.
- Added scramble races to Hurston and its moons.
- Added Hurston underground bunker FPS AI missions.
Ships and Vehicles
- Added Anvil Hawk.
- Added 600i Touring Variant.
- Added Freelancer MIS, Freelancer DUR, and Freelancer MAX.
- Added Constellation Phoenix Emerald.
- Added visual deployment states and animations for fracturing vs extracting modes on the Prospector.
FPS
- Added KSAR Ravager Shotgun.
The Ravager Shotgun can be found at LiveFire, Skutters, and Conscientious Objects shops.
- Added Shipjacker armor.
Shipjacker body armor set which includes the Clash armor set (Levski, Lorville, GrimHex), Secondlife undersuit (Levski, GrimHex), The Butcher helmet (GrimHex), Death’s Head helmet (GrimHex) and Why not? helmet (Levski, Lorville, GrimHex).
UI
- Added the ability to scan navigation points while in scanning mode.
- Added an early implementation of sub-system targetting.
Players can cycle target to different ship components using “I/O” for cycling forward/backward (LALT-T/LALT-Y for keyboard advanced) and “P” (LALT+U) to reset back to core target.
- Added turret aim/target direction indicators to both the turret and pilot visor.
A white cone/pyrimid indicates the direction the turret is facing, which will tint red when the turret gunner is firing. If a turret locks onto a target, an orange dashed line will be drawn from the turret toward the target. These are visible to all other turret gunners and the pilot.
Arena Commander
- Added the ability to rent ship weapons and components from the Arena Commander menu set.
Feature Updates
Universe
- Updated party marker.
- Added a unique outline color for untargetted, unscanned rocks when mining.
- Changed the repair and refueling cost at the rest stops to reflect a small degree of scarcity associated with them.
- Smoothed out AI animation to prevent stair bobbing and teleportation.
- Adjusted mining volumes and mineable entity geometry.
Missions
- Updated mission objective marker to be more visible and include a secondary objective where appropriate.
- Bringing an invalid vehicle or placing your vehicle within another should now disqualify you form scramble races.
- Improved FPS AI strafing behavior.
- Increased the time given to the player for delivery missions.
- Improved missile management for AI piloted ships.
- Temporarily disabled the admin at Lorville.
- Updated Battaglia’s mission description to state where she is located.
- Moved the illegal deploy mission to the “personal” tab.
- Temporarily removed the “recover stolen goods” mission due to outdated mission flow.
- Added Eclipse, Arrow, and Terrapin to ship scramble race option.
UI
- Improved 3D ship model preview manipulation controls.
- Added a UI warning for whem attempting to extract with a full hold of mineable ore.
- Players can now hold “F” and use WASD in vehicle seats to quickly flick between MFDs.
- Added power prioritization to power MFD.
- Interaction mode now has a quick select option.
Pressing “F” quickly will activate the default interaction option of the hightlighted objected. Disabled while in the pilot seat.
- Creating 3D icons for mining.
- Removed unused and unneeded port information from the shopping kiosk.
- Updated quantum travel markers.
Travel markers now have unique symbols for different types of destinations (outposts, major stations moons, planets, ect), a dashed outline to indicate locations on the far-side of a planetary body, and marker size correlated to distance.
- Added a “disband group button” for the party leader.
- Made the video call feed on direct P2P comms calls less transparent.
FPS
- Balance pass for the Karna rifle.
Arena Commander
- Added a select/rent ship button to main Arena Commander splash screen.
- Added manufacturer’s logos to the ship selection screen.
- Updated rental text.
- After successfully renting a ship the selection now shifts to that ship.
- Updated Arrow Arena Commander scoring.
Ships and Vehicles
- Powerplants now have a ramp-up and a ramp-down time before reaching full power or fully shutting down.
- Increased the quantum fuel capacity of all exploration/pathfinder style ships by 20%.
- Extemded Reliant cargo hold to accomodate 6 SCU.
- Ship EMPs now generate heat, make more use of power, and are able to be overclocked.
- Updated the Behring Sawbuck Ballistic Repeaters.
- Ship quantum drives now produce heat and are capable of overheating.
- Updated all turret speeds.
- Reduced cannon damage across all sizes.
- Updated Behring Ballistic Repeater (Sawbuck) and created size 2 and 3 versions
The Ballistic Repeaters can be purchased at Port Olisar’s Dumper’s Depot.
- Updated Joker suckerpunch cannon art and created size 1 and 3 variants.
The Suckerpunch Cannons can be found at the Dumper’s Depot on GrimHex.
- Gravlev vehicles can no longer be spawned at interior hangars.
- Added landing gear compression to the MISC Reliant.
- Moved interaction nodes on the Reliant to fit with interior changes.
- Balance pass on the Joker Distortion Cannon and Behring Ballistic Repeater.
- EMP devices are now default powered off and there is a UI alert to inform the player if they attempt to activate it while off.
Bug Fixes
- Pressing “L” while dead in Star Marine should once again open the loadout screen.
- Rejoining a Star Marine match should no longer disable a player’s ability to capture a point until the following round.
- Proximity alert should no longer cancel the Lorville restricted area warning, causing it to not return.
- The overcharge sensor should properly reset when mining and moving from one rock to another.
- Recco should properly remember that she has met you.
- Impact prediction (pips) now make better use of acceleration.
- When pads are full and a player requests a ship, they should no longer be given a queue position of 0.
- AI contacts should clean up properly on the ship radar.
- The mining laser should no longer become heavily offset on occasion.
- The player’s sit position should now be correct in the Valkyrie’s jump seats.
- QT graphical effects should no longer be visible inside some ships.
- The Dragonfly should now have a self destruct timer and message.
- Ship weapons should now behave correctly according to power distribution.
- Corrected some mislabeled lagrange points.
- Fixed an issue where the GForce blackout effect was stronger than intended.
- FPS AI should no longer get stuck if a player exits through an airlock.
- NPCs at Lorville should no longer be standing on benches.
- Zooming while in interaction mode should now be centered on the cursor.
- The Anvil Arrow’s missiles should no longer be floating beside it.
- The player character should no longer get a boosted jump by jumping a few times in a row.
- Fixed elevators in Levski appearing invisible from certain angles.
- Patrol missions should consistently work now for updates.
- NPCs should now be properly be moving in the borehole corridor.
- Landing rights should now be revoked if the player leaves the ATC area.
- Fixed multiple Lorville guards occupying the same space.
- Fixed some areas of Lorville L19 that had double gravity.
- Ships should no longer be cleaned up/stored at outposts.
- The Anvil Arrow should now consistently appear on the ASOP if the player owns it.
- The Mustang series ships should no longer spawn with the ladder down.
- The landing gear and wing folding should now trigger properly on the Mustang series.
- Larger ships should no longer be occasionally assigned small hangars at Lorville.
- Guns dropped by players should be cleaned up before the next round in Star Marine.
- Flight and throttle animations should play for all ships.
- The player should no longer be transported to map origin when in the driver’s seat of a Greycat when it explodes.
- Fix for HMC Ryder having no waypoint on ITA.
- Fix for HDMS Anderson being missing on Aberdeen.
- Players should no longer be able to eject from Valkyrie as it isn’t intended.
- The ship HUD and MFDs should no longer reload when the player switches from 3rd to 1st person.
- Admin clerks at rest stops should now interact with players.
- Chat lines should longer exceed the bounding box of the mobiGlas comms app.
- The Venture Executive flight suit should no longer function as an invisibility suit.
- Blade entry animations should now be properly aligned.
- The Cyclone should now have surface sound effects when maneuvering.
- Slightly toned down the heat haze effect on Daymar.
- The snow effect on Yela should no longer appear inside outposts and ships.
- 100% full mining container indicator should now have a consistent color.
- Adjusted the rear door of the Avenger’s ramp so it reaches the ground.
- Toned down the Lorville hangar ambient audio.
- Ship loadouts should no longer be locked permanently after spawning a ship in the PU.
- The Arrow turret can no longer be placed onto any weapon hardpoint.
- The targetting UI should no longer remain on after a target is destroyed.
- The shield display on the CVI should no longer be significantly delayed updating from real time.
- ATC audio should play correctly when requesting landing at Lorville.
- Fixed markers not appearing for some delivery and bounty missions.
- Fixed objectives not updating for some delivery missions.
- Vehicles spawned should no longer appear to move erratically.
- ATC should no longer be buried at the bottom of your contacts on the ship comms MFD.
- Turrets should no longer experience snapping when rotating while their parent ship is rotating.
- Ship turrets should no longer snap rotation to the other limit when crossing 180 degrees.
- Turret slots should now be editable for the Constellation, Caterpillar, and Cyclone TR on the VMA.
- The Karna magazine should no longer be mislabeled as Demeco.
- Rifles should no longer clip into the player when they are crouched.
- Players should no longer take damage on stairs, when mantling, or when making small jumps.
- MFD focus should no longer cause the screen to become blurred.
- The UI alert “shields down” should no longer get stuck.
- The admin office at Lorville should now have atmospheric pressure.
- Patrol missions should now update after the “hold” instruction.
- Orbital markers (OMs) should now properly rotate with the parent planetary body.
- Adjusted no-fly zone visual so it should no longer clip into hangars.
- The admin clerk’s idle animation should no longer be dramatic enough to cause the player to select the wrong interaction.
- Players should no longer be able to lose their box if they immediately place it back in the delivery locker.
- The player should no longer be placed underground after ship cleanup at Lorville.
- There should no longer be replaceme balls inside Teach’s Ship Shop.
- While searching for a player the FPS combat AI should no longer stop frequently and hitch.
- Respawn text should no longer appear after game has ended in Star Marine.
- FPS combat AI should no longer shoot at the floor instead of at the player when in cover.
- The “warning restricted area” message should now show when taking off rom Lorville.
- Players should no longer occasionally cause recovery to return them to their previous position when they decline.
- The “distraction” mission should no longer occasionally set the now defunct CryAstro as a location.
- Fixed party invites showing the party leader joining.
- FPS combat AI should now aim correctly when leaning around cover.
- “0m” markers should no longer remain on the screen after scanning a mineable rock.
- Prices on the mobiGlas should now correctly match those on the shopping kiosk.
- Players should now be able to change fire-modes on their weapon while in ADS.
- Fix for liquid like shadows appearing on planetary bodies.
- The underground facility defense turrets should eventually self-repair.
- Fixed EMP audio loop after usage.
- Newer ship weapons should now correctly mount and fire in the correct direction in Arena Commander.
- UI elements that included the wave counter in swarm modes, the capture UI in Star Marine, and the race UI in classic race should now be present.
Technical
- Fixed 7 client crashes.
- Fixed a server crash.
- Various performance tweaks.
John is the founder and Editor in Chief at DSOGaming. He is a PC gaming fan and highly supports the modding and indie communities. Before creating DSOGaming, John worked on numerous gaming websites. While he is a die-hard PC gamer, his gaming roots can be found on consoles. John loved – and still does – the 16-bit consoles, and considers SNES to be one of the best consoles. Still, the PC platform won him over consoles. That was mainly due to 3DFX and its iconic dedicated 3D accelerator graphics card, Voodoo 2. John has also written a higher degree thesis on the “The Evolution of PC graphics cards.”
Contact: Email