Cloud Imperium Games advanced its community-funded sci-fi space sim Star Citizen to Alpha 4.0 just before the start of 2025, adding a whole new system to explore with its own planets and moons. The studio has now returned to offering smaller, more focused content updates. Released today, the Alpha 4.1 - Orbital Assault update brings new locations, sandbox missions, a certain alien mission giver, and even some miniature sandworms.
The main feature of Alpha 4.1 is the new sandbox activity Align and Mine, which lets players work together across two moons to activate an orbital mining beam, all for cracking open a planet for its valuables. Here's a rundown straight from the developer about this new activity:
Players will need to navigate the facility buildings to grab keycards to unlock new areas leading to the final terminal to align the satellite to the orbital station above. Once all 3 ground locations have been aligned and the batteries from each location acquired, players need to navigate the station above and use the batteries to power the Orbital mining beam. Once active, players will then head back down to the ground bunker for the final beam activation that will shoot down from space, breaking open a new Cave with valuable hand and ground vehicle mineables.
While Cloud Imperium has been teasing giant sandworms in videos for many years now, it seems their actual gameplay implementation is near. The latest update has added Juvenile Valakkar for players to battle. Found on some moons, the burrowing worm fauna will attempt to keep their distance while traveling through the ground while throwing rocks.
Meanwhile, Wikelo arrives as the first alien contact players can interact with in Star Citizen. This Banu Collector can be found in the Stanton system, hoping to trade with humans for weapons, armor, and ships.
Other features of this update include two new Arena Commander maps, the Parallax laser assault rifle, ship collision physics updates, many more dynamic conversation lines for NPCs, and much more. The complete patch notes can be found here.
Star Citizen Alpha 4.1 - Orbital Assault update is now available for all backers.
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