Another quarterly major update has hit Star Citizen"s Live track with the launch of Alpha 3.14.0, which comes after a rather long stint in the Public Test Universe. The latest content being introduced to the in-development title by Cloud Imperium Games includes the appearence of Crusader as a fully realized gas giant, the floating city of Orison, new volumetric clouds, an updated ship power management system, and much more.
Easily the biggest aspect of 3.14 is overhaul of Crusader, one of the planets orbiting Stanton, which is finally letting players dip into its massive cloud layers. But also, now it has a city floating inside of it. As the planet is a gas giant, the brand-new city of Orison is suspended in mid-atmosphere inside of it in a latticework structure surrounded by the developer"s latest planetary volumetric cloud tech. This new cloud rendering system will be expanded to other areas of the universe going forward as well.
Finishing off novel places to visit, the New Babbage trading hub in the planet of microTech now has a hospital lobby in the form of the Brentworth Care Center. The Aspire Grand lobby has also gone through a remodel.
Heading into gameplay, the missile and torpedo firing system has been overhauled. Players now have more control over the system, like being able to select which specific armament to fire, while those being targeted have more ways to avoid getting hit by utilizing countermeasures or maneuvering near larger signatures that can mess up the missile tracking.
As usual, a new ship has entered the universe too, with the RSI Constellation Taurus arriving as a freighter class variant with high cargo capacity for long-range hauling.
Other features in the update include an updated ship HUD system for better use of available space, a surrender to security option for players that can be initiated by powering down the offending ship, overhauls to radar, scanning, and pinging systems, another dynamic event: "Nine Tails Lockdown", and more.
The complete patch notes for Star Citizen Alpha 3.14.0 update can be seen here. After blowing past the $350 million mark in March earlier this year, the ongoing project"s crowd funding tracker stands at an impressive $378 million at the time of writing.