Star Citizen Alpha 3.18.1 Update

Hi everyone,

We wanted to give you a quick update on our progress with the upcoming change to how you summon your vehicles in-game, as well as an update on our next patch: 3.18.1. As we revealed in our previous post, we will be implementing a new system that should significantly reduce strain on the backend. We plan to roll out this change onto the PTU in a 3.18.1 patch for testing over the weekend, which also includes a salvo of fixes to assist with performance, connectivity, and stability. We encourage everyone to test the new system and provide any feedback or bug reports you may have.

Additionally, during our testing, we have discovered similar issues related to Arena Commander. To address this, we will be temporarily disabling vehicle customization in Arena Commander on the PTU, and if we see this does indeed alleviate strain on the backend, we’ll carry this change over to the live servers. Again though, this would only be temporary and only impact Arena Commander, while we work on a long term solution which we’d roll out in a follow-up patch soon. For those still eager to get into some action in AC, we’ll also grant everyone a handful of curated vehicles in with upgraded shield generators and weaponry.

In short, we’re doing a bit of experimenting to ensure we can get the service into a better place. As we’ve mentioned, things are already vastly improved, but work continues to get to the level of stability we’re after.

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Lastly, we’d like to put out the call once again for as many of you as possible to join us on the PTU this weekend!

Your participation will greatly assist with gathering vital data to help get this update to the live servers. During this playtest, there isn’t a specific testing focus, other than to play in the Persistent Universe on the PTU servers at the times listed below. Keep an eye out, as you’ll likely see many of us gallivanting around too.

We plan to kick off with 1 hour of testing on Friday at 8pm Central US Time (02:00 UTC Saturday) more playtests throughout the weekend.

Playtest Schedule

Each playtest will run for 1 hour each, starting at the times listed below.

Friday, March 24 – 8pm CDT | Saturday, March 25 – 1am UTC
Saturday, March 25 – 2pm CDT | Saturday, March 25 – 7pm UTC
Saturday, March 25 – 8pm CDT | Sunday, March 26 – 1am UTC
Sunday, March 26 – 2pm CDT | Sunday, March 26 – 7pm UTC
Sunday, March 26 – 8pm CDT | Monday, March 27 – 1am UTC

Thank you for your patience and support! See you in the ‘verse this weekend!