In Star Citizen, players will soon be able to do what everyone wished for in Starfield: Fly to a new system themselves instead of seeing loading screens.
What was the wish for Starfield? When Starfield was released in 2023, many players had great hopes of being able to travel freely through space. However, shortly after the release, disillusionment set in.
In Starfield, you are not truly free; you mainly travel back and forth between planets and star systems with a loading screen. Even landing on a planet is just a video sequence. This disappointed many players.
What is Star Citizen doing now? In Star Citizen, Alpha version 4.0 is expected to be released in the third quarter of 2024. The update is also set to introduce a new system: Pyro. The space MMO needed a new travel system so that you can travel from the already known system “Stanton” to Pyro.
Unlike in Starfield, you will definitely have to fly yourself when switching systems in Star Citizen. You can’t just press a button, put your feet up, and watch a video sequence.
If you want to travel to Pyro, you need to go to a so-called jump point. There, you will enter a kind of tunnel that connects the two systems and functions like an intergalactic highway. You will also need to fly through this tunnel yourself.
What else do we know about it? Initially, there is only one permanent, stable jump point. More jump points are expected to be added in the future, which will differ – permanent and temporary.
During the flight, you must try to avoid the walls of the tunnel. Additionally, you will experience turbulence, which is stronger the smaller your ship is. A larger ship, however, may be more difficult to maneuver through the tunnel.
If you take too much damage while flying through such a tunnel, your “jump” will be aborted, and you can “fall out” of this tunnel. You may then find yourself far from your destination and must hope to reach a safe harbor with your remaining fuel and the damage you have sustained. Alternatively, you might just die directly and find yourself at a respawn.
In addition to the “Pyro” system and the jump points, Alpha 4.0 will bring several other new features to Star Citizen.
With 4.0, it is expected that flammable materials on your ships can catch fire if the environmental temperature rises extremely. On planets where it is incredibly hot, specific areas of the interior could catch fire when the extremely hot air from the planet flows into your spacecraft: If you land on a really hot planet in Star Citizen, your spacecraft could burst into flames when you open the hatch
