Today Cloud Imperium Games released the alpha 3.2 version of Star Citizen to the backer community, bringing quite a few new goodies to the game as part of the regular quarterly updates that the team has been delivering starting this year.
One of the biggest updates coming with the new alpha version is mining gameplay, that will allow players to prospect and scan deposits, fracture the rock with their mining lasers (via minigame that requires them to manipulate the energy levels), extract the ore, and sell it.
The new group system will also be implemented alongside the ability of quantum travel as a party.
A new “destroy probe” mission type has been added, on top of quite a few new ships. Players will be able to fly the Anvil Hurricane, the Aopoa Blade, the Aegis Eclipse, and the Origin 600i. All ships now have functional scanners with ping capabilities.
New weapons and armor for FPS gameplay have also been introduced, and a ton of features have been updated, tweaked, and fixed. You can find the full patch notes here.
Yesterday, Project Director Chris Roberts himself also confirmed in an episode of Reverse the Verse Live (which you can watch at the bottom of the post, for a pretty candid discussion on the state of development), that the single-player campaign Squadron 42 won’t come in 2018. While this won’t surprise many, it’s good to have official confirmation.
Below you can also watch a few trailers for the new ships. If you want to see more, you can check out the previous update on Squadron 42. You can also read our recent interview with Global Head of Development and Foundry 42 Studio Director Erin Roberts.
For the sake of full disclosure, keep in mind that the author of this article is one of the backers of the game since the times of the original Kickstarter campaign.