The Star Citizen team is releasing another patch (alpha 3.14) today, and it’s bringing with it several new features and fixes. One of the new features is a new shield mechanic that will be tested in the upcoming Star Marine FPS module. In this patch, incoming damage will now be applied to shields based on how much kinetic energy you accumulate over time. So, you can now manually balance out your shield to absorb the damage. You can also choose to use a shield-based energy weapon like the Centurion or the Arc Pulse, but you’re not protected from kinetic damage.
Space is a strange place – a vast place where you might need the equivalent of a supercomputer to get the job done. For instance, the ability to move a ship is extremely difficult to do – it requires a lot of processing power, so when you fire up the game and you move your ship, you’re never sure if you’re going to blow up. Beyond that, space is also a dark and dangerous place. When you’re out there and you’re trying to fly your ship, you’re constantly exposed to the hazards of space. Here’s something else that’s strange about space: it’s not that hard to make a good gun, but it’
The upcoming Alpha 3.14 build release of Star Citizen includes a number of important features, such as the Orison landing pad, but there are also other interesting things, namely changes to engines, shields, weapons and more, all of which have been covered in a few forum posts.
The screens show a setting from size one to three: Smaller shields have less HP but recover faster and only have one side (called a bubble shield) that takes damage instead of multiple sides, while third size shields recover slower but have more HP and have four or more sides. In addition, ship-specific changes have been made to the shield settings of some vehicles.
The next thing to change is the energy weapon: Each ship is equipped with an energy capacitor that determines how many bullets can be loaded at once and how quickly they regenerate. Each deactivated energy weapon redirects the energy of its capacitors to the online energy weapon, giving it more ammo and regeneration. The message further shows the amount of energy and regeneration ammunition available for the different weapon types.
Other changes under development include modifications to thrusters to give different ship types their own personality, modifications to bracing to reduce overuse of a capacitor charging mechanism that replaces heat, increased HP armor pools for different parts of the ship like wings and thrusters to make them stronger and prevent them from falling off easily, and some modifications to the HUD element of the ship’s power triangle to redirect energy to shields, weapons, or thrusters.
Source: official forums (1, 2)
Longtime MMORPG fans will know that Star Citizen was originally launched on Kickstarter for over $2 million in 2012 with a planned launch in 2014. As of 2021, the game is still in its unfinished but playable alpha phase, and has raised about $350 million from players over the years through ongoing crowdfunding and the sale of ships and other game assets. It is currently the best-funded video game in history and has endured both the tireless dedication of its proponents and the enormous skepticism of its critics. The jointly developed single player game Squadron 42has also been delayed several times.
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