Star Citizen's Persistent Universe is a massively multiplayer simulation with players and NPCs. Within the game, there are many activities for players to engage in such as (but not limited to):
- Missions
- Cargo Delivery
- Piracy
- Bounty Hunting
- Planetary Landings
- First-Person Combat
- Mining
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For new players, please see the following helpful guides for getting access to Star Citizen and taking your first spaceflight:
Locations of Interest
Stanton is the first available system for players to explore, and it contains the following points of interest:
- Crusader - Stanton's largest planet. This gas giant was the focal point for the Persistent Universe in Star Citizen Alpha 3.0, orbited by three landable moons and the starting point of Port Olisar. Later updates added more locations that could be chosen as the starting points for new players and in patches where player locations were reset.
- Orison (added to the Persistent Universe in Star Citizen Alpha 3.14)
- Port Olisar
- Yela
- Daymar
- Cellin
- Hurston - Closest planet to the star Stanton. Added to the Persistent Universe in Star Citizen Alpha 3.3.5, orbited by four landable moons and the city Lorville located on the planet.
- ArcCorp - The third planet in Stanton's orbit. Added to the Persistent Universe in Star Citizen Alpha 3.5, this planet is completely covered by buildings and factories, making it the most uniquely looking planet in the system. Its orbited by two landable moons and has one major landing location, Area 18.
- MicroTech - The farthest planet in Stanton's orbit. Added to the Persistent Universe in Star Citizen Alpha 3.8, this planet has three moons and a landing zone.
Types of Persistence
In the Star Citizen Alpha, item and progression persistence are managed by two server-side systems: the universe database and the long-term persistence ledger.
- The database stores certain character information such as character location, location and status of ships, character customization, and player and ship loadouts.
- The long-term persistence ledger stores purchase and currency records, such as earned aUEC, ship purchases, ship equipment purchases, and most FPS item purchases.
When a new patch is released, typically there is a database reset and characters and ships are returned to their default configurations. This is indicated as Database Reset: YES in the patch notes. Long-term persistence is often carried over across multiple patches and is indicated by Long Term Persistence: Enabled in the patch notes. CIG has reserved the right to reset or disable long-term persistence (thereby deleting all earned currency and items purchased in-game) depending on the needs of the project (and if certain exploits or database issues occur), and has stated their intent to carry out a long-term persistence reset at the end of the alpha or beta stages of Star Citizen's development. When Long Term Persistence is reset, it is indicated in the patch notes by Long Term Persistence: Disabled (Full Long Term Persistence Wipe).
Missions
As of Alpha 3.0, a number of different missions are available to players. Not all Careers have their own missions yet but most are procedurally generated, although some designer-crafted story missions are also available. Missions accessed via the Contracts app on the MobiGlas.
Story Missions
These missions are available in the Personal tab of the Contracts MobiGlas app.
Cargo Delivery
At its core, Cargo Delivery is a simple task: Buy cargo at one location and sell it in another for more than you paid. Naturally, enterprising traders will have to contend with various dangers, such as pirates.
Piracy
Interdiction
During Quantum travel, there is a chance that a traveling ship will be "interdicted" by pirates or other violent criminals. These outlaws are able to pull targets out of quantum travel in order to attack them and steal their cargo.
Bounty Hunting
Planetary Landings
Many planets, moons, and other bodies in a star system may be freely landed on and explored. Most planets and moons have a number of outposts and derelict ships to discover and explore, and some planets even have cities to explore. The different planets and moons have different environmental conditions, resources, and points of interest.
First-Person Combat
First-person combat encompasses any fighting done by the player while they are not in-flight. This usually involves the use of Personal Weapons and can take place on enemy ships, on your own ship, in space, or under gravity on stations or planets.[1]
Ship Mining
As of Star Citizen Alpha 3.8, ship mining can only be done with two ships, the MISC Prospector and the Argo MOLE. Mining can be done planet/moon side and in space. Mined minerals can be sold at any major landing zones i.e. Port Olisar and at the rest stops that are in orbit of Stanton.
First Person Mining
Star citizen Alpha 3.7 debuted a new feature of first person mining with the Pyro RYT Multi-Tool.
Key Game-play How To's
- Ship Start Up: Approach the entry point of your ship, then press and hold "F" to activate the interaction system. Select from the various inner thought prompts using the cursor or mouse wheel to move between them. Once inside your ship, again press and hold "F" and select the "Flight Ready" prompt to run through complete ship start up. Alternatively, there are hotkeys available for quick start-up which you can find under "Advanced Controls Customization"
- Landing: Landing now takes place through an Air Traffic Control (ATC) system. When close to a landing location, request a landing by navigating to to the "Friends" section of the "Comms" menu on the MobiGlas and clicking the hail button (wifi symbol). Wait a moment, and ATC should assign you a landing location.
- Quantum Travel: To quantum travel to a destination, open your MobiGlas (F1) and select the Starmap App (diamond shaped symbol). From there, use the mouse to select a destination. Whether or not an object can be selected for QT is determined by gravitational values (The larger the object the further away you can detect it, large objects with small objects in orbit drown out their detection capabilities at long ranges). Meaning you will not be able to travel from point A to B at all times, but instead may need to move into orbit of a larger body to detect destinations also in orbit. For example, to get to a station orbiting a moon that orbits a planet, the route is Planet>Moon>Station. Once you have a destination selected you can "set destination" on your MobiGlas to bring up a quantum travel target. As before, align with the QT target and press "B" to travel.
- Changes to Default Keybindings: Controls now default to a "basic" mapping that only includes core functions and leaves many things unbound. The "basic" mapping is meant to be simplified controls for beginners. Players can then go through keybinds and bind how they wish or import an "advanced" binding from among several presets. Experienced players will most likely want to do one of those two things to gain full functionality. Advanced profiles can be found under Keybindings→Advanced Controls Customization→Control Profiles.
- Afterburner: There is now a single afterburner with the ability to achieve higher top velocity under certain conditions, giving us AB SCM and AB Cruise with the only distinction being two different speeds. You can only enter AB Cruise if your flight path is a straight, forward line. Otherwise you're limited to AB SCM, i.e. while maneuvering/strafing. Once in AB Cruise you can release the afterburner key and go into an AB idle mode to maintain your current speed. Throttle setting and y-axis strafe level allows incremental speeds, but you will decelerate if you change your vector. If you continue to hold AB and maneuver, you drop to AB SCM speed until you return to straight-line flight. AB Idle holds your current velocity as long as you're not maneuvering and decoupled rotation is allowed while in AB idle.
References
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Comm-Link:Chris Roberts on Multiplayer, Single Player and Instancing. Engineering - Comm-Link