The MMO Star Citizen will soon receive a major update that completely changes your spaceships. If you’re not careful and don’t take care of your ships, they will soon turn into expensive space junk, and your friends should help you.
What kind of update is this? In Star Citizen, the engineering update comes with Alpha 4.0. This update focuses on spaceships and adds more depth to space battles and the control of your ships, as the developers explain on YouTube. With the update, all ships will have modules that can be damaged and need to be replaced.
Things will also change for your friends. Star Citizen brings you a real Star Trek feeling with the update. Whoever owns one of the large ships in Star Citizen will suddenly become the commander who must command their crew to emerge victorious in battle.
With the new update, your own hangar will also become more important:
From Pilot to Commander
Why does one go from a pilot to a commander? The new update 4.0 is titled “Engineering Update.” The developers introduce destructible ship components with the new version, which can even catch fire. In a battle, you can, just like your opponents, destroy modules of ships and cause system failures. If a system gets damaged, it needs to be repaired.
Thus, instead of flying through space as a single pilot, it will soon make much more sense to have a whole crew aboard your ship. Your friends will then be responsible during the flight for performing repairs, extinguishing fires, and checking the ship. Sometimes, it will even be necessary to replace a component. On a new control center, you’ll see damage to the ship but will still have to find and repair it.
Why is this significant for the MMORPG genre? As the developers show in the video, your group must work very well together to ensure their survival. Already at the start of the flight, roles must be assigned, the ship must be ideally divided, and continuously checked.
The ship will become the crew’s home, and the players working inside it will quickly build a personal bond with it. For the genre, it is unique that a group of players must collaborate so closely to achieve a common goal, and each individual matters to emerge unscathed from critical situations.
While other MMORPGs still rely on a system that works well with strangers, the developers of Star Citizen are taking a path that ensures that you and your comrades become truly welded together. If a player fails in their role, it can quickly become a problem for the entire team.
You can watch the presentation of the new update by the developers here:
Components and Repairs
How can the systems be fully repaired? Once your modules are damaged, they will likely never return to full performance. To get your systems completely fit again, you must land and replace the damaged modules.
However, you must also pay attention to the weight of the modules. For some things, you need a cargo robot in Star Citizen, which is more expensive than the game itself. Once you have replaced your system on the ground, you are quickly ready for the next battle. But even here, you will need to do more from the new update.
What should be considered? With the new update, you will receive a new control center for the power supply of your spaceship. You can freely decide how to distribute the power on board. Damage to the ship can also be read from it. Especially if you have damaged parts, it is worth redirecting power from there to other areas of the ship.
Anyone who fights a lot should not just put their energy into the weapons, however. With the new update, these can also overheat like all other parts on board. This can lead to a system failure.
To prevent the spaceship from overheating, you can allocate more power to the ventilation in the control center and cool down the ship and especially your weapons. For this, you will not be able to use that power for other areas.
How far does the simulation go? The developers of Star Citizen are clearly placing more emphasis on simulation with their new update, adding depth to their space combat. Fires that can occur onboard if the ship is hit in battle are also intriguing.
As a pilot or crew member, you are then forced to extinguish the fire before it causes more damage. In the developers’ video, you can see how the fire can spread across the ship. The entire ship can thus take damage if you do not act in time.
While Star Citizen is bringing interesting innovations with the update Alpha 4.0, the developers might simultaneously be working on another title. The rumor mill has been churning for several weeks, and now some first hints of another title can also be found: Are the developers of Star Citizen working in parallel on a fantasy MMO? Players find hints
