Star Citizen Alpha 3.24 "The Cargo Update" & The Harsh Reality of Star Citizen Updates 

I gotta say, man, Morphologis may have the best quality in-game footage (graphically), but you HANDS DOWN have the best quality videos overall, both in editing, production, and informative content structure. No smoke blown here, just stating fact

One thing I really, really think is underappreciated and misunderstood about the cargo overhaul is that it allows CIG to lean more into the fact that bigger does not always mean better. Right now, the best cargo ship in the game is ALWAYS the one with the most SCU capacity. Period. Full stop. With these changes, however, players also have to consider how easily cargo can be loaded or unloaded, whether the ship has tractor beams, and how secure the ship is during operations. For example, 9/10 cargo traders will tell you that right now the C2 is better than the Caterpillar simply for one reason: it holds bigger crates and more of them. With these changes however, the strengths of the Caterpillar are brought more into play: it has a total of nine ingress/egress points for cargo and multiple built in tractor beams. It's going to be a much, much easier process loading and unloading a Caterpillar compared to loading and unloading a C2. The C2 wins in sheer capacity, but the Caterpillar wins in ergonomics. Now, instead of there being a clear and decisive meta pick, there's arguments to be made for both of them. I think that's a very good thing for the health of the game overall. Pick the right ship for the job. Bigger isn't always better. If the cargo contract doesn't require an entire C2 or Caterpillar, maybe consider a Freelancer MAX or C1 or something else that's more manageable.

As an avid space trucker, I've been waiting for this whole thing for years. I'm _very_ hesitantly optimistic. The devil is usually in the details, and CIG suck a lot at stuff like UI/UX, which is crucial for this. And I'm willing to bet cargo in general will be super easy to grief/pirate outside of your hangar, which would just kill the entire thing.

if they made the trolly have a forklift attachment in front so that you can just walk it into the boxes and it picks them up and autostacks it on itself.... And unstacks for you in your ship when you park it there... Then we're talking some serious usefulness!!!

The most important things for me is vibe and stability, with all the new colorful boxes and shapes of cargo and the multiple tiers of tractor beam it this update dilivers on vibe in spades.

2:34 I'll never unsee the breaking of achiles heels, as the back of the hover, crush the operator walking. More intelligent would be operator ALSO RIDES with the cargo

As someone whose career has pretty much been cargo and delivery, I can assure you give hours for something the size of a C2 is actually rather optimistic if you actually worry about things like weight distribution and limits, and the order of deliveries if everything isn't going to one place.

They need to add a game loop where you have to be away from civilization for a while, so you have to know what supplies to load up with before you leave.

CH3COOH if we have to wait hours to load a ship they better put functioning arcade mini games in to the verse at starports and space stations just to keep one occupied. I'm waiting for the Skibidi Gooner Patch.

Great quality and Information as always! Thanks!

The showcase of the nightscope reminds me... when you Ping in a ship you get a second of a sort of nightvision. Why not implement a nightvision using the ping effect as a temporary step until they create the version they want? That would make so many so happy.

Awesome content and take!

These are quality Vids man, nice work.

"eventually your vehicles??1!" I thought ground vehicles can be be retrieved in 3.24...thats what their saying in EVO

People can repeating that 3.24 will greatly effect how you play the game. But if you're not doing cargo, the only change in 3.24 is inventory kiosks. I don't do cargo gameplay. I won't use new cargo loading, freight elevators, whatever else they changed. I won't use personal hangar on a planet, because I set spawn point on the space station. And will inventory kiosks change gemplay a lot? Not really, I gear up for the mission on the station, and then just interact with ship inventory or loot boxes.

Hey Tomato, just want to say I always appreciate your clarity on the state of features, if they are delayed or behind schedule and what to expect from them etc. There's been quite a few times I've come back to Star Citizen only to be frustrated because while the game often appears very impressive the current user experience can often be far from it. You videos get me excited while also setting realistic expectations and allowing me to make an informed decision on when the right time is for me to give it another try. Thank you, you've fast become my go-to for all things Star Citizen!

I love all of this. I have a feeling I'm just going to spend two weeks setting up my hangar and living in it, I do have a giant fishtank that's finally going to see some light, hahaha!

People who regularly bitch about the quality of updates hitting the PU (as if it were a released game and not an alpha we pay assist in testing, a different issue) have *of course* immediately switched to kvetching about how Chris just draws things out to avoid ever finishing. Amazing how people who cannot code have opinions on how it should be done. I mean, if entitled folks don't have something to complain about, what ever will they *do* with their time? Well done on this, a simple and to the point vid explaining to new and old alike how things go, in the ways it affects players.

As long as they keep updating and improving the game I'm happy.

i hope the first focus will be game stability !! Lately the server response has be AWEFUL

I just got into star citizen recently and all I want is for them to have the servers not crash every 10 minutes lmao. Already loving the game and have learned alot but cannot be asked to play atm when Im getting booted after doing like 1 small task

The numbers are definitely for marketing as you said, but if they can bring everything that was shown on CitCon last year into the game, before this years' CitCon, I will call it a win. Server meshing getting in will be a huge step forward. It seems quite shaky at this stage but lets see how it goes.

This was a great breakdown for any that would be confused with what would seem like wishy-washy decision making with regards to the updates and numbering conventions

I cant wait to test out 3.14.1 to test it out! I hope this is enough for curing my SC burnout or maby i wait for 4.0 if we see it this year.

I think the update numbers have more to do with internal development teams than what's delivered, for example, their are several teams working to bring server messing, that includes network teams, game teams, persistence teams and last but not least server recovery teams. All these teams imo will need to collaborate on a functioning build, hence 4.0. So imo the difference between 3.0 and 4.0 is an internal development goal and not necessarily a gameplay roadmap goal.

thanks space tomato sir that was an okay presentation although i felt the beginning of the video, first two minutes or so was a blunder and it makes me wonder what happened when recording that segment. kudos kudos

Ill be honest i have not paid any attention to this game since 2017. I backed on initial kickstarter and then later picked up a package as well to help further support the dev team. I am looking forward to 4.0 but until then every single piece of this game till final beta is all subject to be completely changed.. Remember its still Early days alpha. even though they are what year 10 or 11 at this point. Its a marathon not a sprint. In my eyes and the way i feel about this project is i hope they take as long as it needs to to get a good beta. the great thing tho in this stage is most of beta will be done by the time they make it to Gold. I have not felt like i need to kick in any more money and i proly wont till the game is in its final and feature complete stage. Over the years they have really made a crap ton of progress. sometimes its hard for many to notice since they are in it every day. but for some one like me that looks at this project from time to time i can seriously see a huge progress Jump. Cheers and thanks for the tomato pasty Update!

So 4.0 is going to be what we expected for 3.24, and 4.01 is going to be a third of what they announced for 4.0

I can’t even equip my multitool and move boxes - I will revisit again in a years time which sucks because I recently bought my C1 Spirit

I stay quite hands off when it comes to the Star Citizen wait, however your videos serve as a fantastic way for me to quickly learn about what's going on. Thanks for that.

2:15 I'm glad the autoloading mechanic takes so long. It should be longer and more expensive to autoload so that it incentivizes pilots to hire help to speed it up. It will also justify walking around and seeing the sites of a station to include grabbing a drink or two at the local bar which could lead into running into other players and socializing.

Question will the standard Ironclad and Assualt Ironclad will be able to carry tanks drive them on that is why i bought it?

Great video, Tomato! I'll be using this video as a link to help others understand 3.24.

I can't wait for PTU, as an avid mercenary and loot goblin, I need to test it as soon as possible and understand how to most effectively manage my inventory and earn money from loot.

I always wonder as a fairly new player: How come so many scence show the "dropdown" F menu and not the radial one? Is there an Option for it, cause I would rather use the often seen dropdown-list like and not the radial menu (I find it to finicky). As always, thanks for ur vids man!

Wasn't it said that the long loading times where wanted by design? People complained about that back when it was first announced and got yelled down in spectrum and now people realise that its bad? Wow.... I also hope to get rid of the current doll and back to something like before or better something like you showed with Cyberpunk.

Auto loading taking approx. 30s per SCU is very acceptable. You have to take into account a player needs to be able to beat that time otherwise auto loading will ever be the only option used.

Hey, do you recommend buying one of the packages and playing the game at this current state? I tried the f2p expo session last year and enjoyed it, although it was a bit laggy. I have a much better PC now so I should not have any issues if I do decide to play it.

This better makes cargo 400% more profitable if the process is that ridiculous. Thats af if you would have to carry the body of any ERT mission back to the station.

It would be nice if ships got night vision lile those new scopes.

They're making Death Stranding. I'm pumped.

I can already see ship/cargo/ground vehicle glitching trough cargo ramp in personal hangar. So can you gram let's say all your armor anad transfer it to station?

The skeptical of us would say that they changed it to avoid a one patch year. With all the SM testing and even this cargo & hangar patch, 4.0 for 2024 will be a disaster waiting to happen. CIG for sure want to make it as smooth as possible of transition, so I suspect the waiting games would continue. 3.23 on the other hand, there are many things that could be said about how they go about presenting it. I agree that they will release the patch when its ready, but on the other hand they also insist on it being a part of 3.23 which was already a substantial patch in itself. Now that it wouldn't make sense for a point patch of Q1 update which won't really iterate on what 3.23 brings, they go fk it, 3.24 it is. I wish they would either just do it like that from the start, or keep their words and make it 3.23.2

This is going to be painful

So will this update allow us to pick and use our owned hangars like the revel and york/aeroview etc?

The fps items terminal should just be a single click on the terminal then back to the papir doll ui . Its so bad in 3.24. Having to move items - then open drawer- then the old papir doll ui

I’ll be happy when my ship doesn’t randomly explode. Or my character doesn’t randomly catch on fire. Or I just randomly can’t eat or drink….. fuck there’s a lot of bugs

Somebody said on Reddit (sorry, whoever you are, I can't find the comment for proper credit) that the clunky item storage may actually be mostly for performance reasons--the items can just be entries in a database until you move them into the drawer, and don't have to be retained in the server. I'm not a programmer, so I don't know if if that's the case, but it might explain why the intermediate step is needed.

I remember when we had 3.9 and the next patch was about to drop and people were like, "Yea, bring on 4.0!", and then CIG were like, "lol jks... here's 3.10" and then people started flipping tables. CIG love trolling the fans.

NGL, this is the coolest patch and the worst patch we get. Personally i love the possibility of grinding scrap, delivering it to a space station and when there's a lot of it then take out cargo ship and sell it all. I can see that some people will be angry, mad, disappointed, sad etc. becasue loading big ships from mining outposts will be a lot of pain as their cargo elevators are heavily limited - You will not load Freelancer Max with one elevator. Pirates will be happy i guess.

Such good information! Almost like you know what you're talking about....hehe.

thanks

Not played the game yet but heard you mention, weight distribution? Is weight distribution a factor on ship handling?

Love your videos but you lost my on the numbers part. A picture with timeline of these numbers and highlighting which you are talking about might help. Can’t wait for this patch in combination with star sim (later?)

It feels like there's more and more maintenance time each patch and less and less time playing the game. I'll try 3.24 but in my experience, moving boxes is as exciting as cleaning my house. SC is gorgeous. I'm just starting to realise I got sucked in by the beauty and missed that we don't have much in common.

Are you kidding me? I won't be able to load my vehicles yet?

Typical CIG they make you wait an extra long wait time at first, then reduce it later so they look reasonable. You will then accept a longer grind because it looks like they relented. All designed to reduce credit earning.

It’s like they forgot it’s supposed to be fun… why the time waster features I don’t get it

I've been a backer since the beginning. I'm a true believer in immersion. However, the direction they are taking the game with hour load times are not going to work for me. I can't invest that kinda time. There has to be a middle ground. Let's find it please before we end up with something dumb.

Sucks that ships like the Carrack, wont benefit from the Cargo stuffs from 3.24 😞

"Party members can access your hangar *even if you're on the other side of the universe*?" Is that still valid in the latest evo?

I think people forget that the C2 is not built for freight. Its a Transport courier, just like the Liberator. It was built for racing teams, mining crews, etc. small org operations with vehicles and necessities for missions. Ships built specifically for freight transport have tractor beams. Examples would be the Caterpillar, Hull series, Nomad, and etc. The 5 hours issue is related to the ships they are trying to load, and peoples misconception that hand held beams can lift 32 SCU containers. The C2, while able to carry 32 SCU boxes literally has ZERO methods of loading them. Hand held beams are temporarily boosted, and it does not gave a tractor beam. That ship and its crew will rely on something like the Argo Tractor to move 32 SCU boxes and will lose some interior space to make that happen unless they have crew willing to fly separately. So yea, filling 696 SCU by hand could take over 87 of the 8 SCU boxes. Or the 5 hours might consist of putting out a request for a local 315 or Argo Tractor (30 mins to an hour) waiting another 30 mins to an hour for an applicant to quantum or fly to that location, and 1-2 minutes per box, which at 87 boxes would be 1,5 to 3 hours... So, 5 hours is fairly reasonable if you pick a size box that local worker and your ship can't load. I would expect the nuance of loading times to change as well. Ships with 1 or more tractor beam positions should have their loading times cut down by the number of beams. There should also be calculations based on ships shape. A ship with 1 door for all loading like a Starfarer should take much longer than something like a C2 with two doors. A ship like the Caterpillar should be MUCH faster due to the ease of access to all loading positions minus the nose. But I am sure CIG already has a plan for all that. As deliveries have been my chosen gameplay loop for years, I cant wait to finally get the next larger step of those missions. Exciting times ahead!

But do we get cargo on moons, there are no freight elevators...

6210 hours space trucking in Elite Dangerous and still waiting for Star Citizen to be a finished product.

I disagree on the inventory screen. I dont want a modern inventory from a rpg. I want a Kiosk screen and UI that looks and functions like its from a kiosk screen in the future used for item management. I dont want a gamey inventory, thats kind of the whole damn point.

Honestly, the patch names don't matter. Just the content.

Can you even put small boxes into bigger boxes?

Update number issue: this changes how EVERYTHING gets called up - ships to medical pens. I see that as critically important, so don't bemoan the change.

Never expect CIG to do anything properly. Even UI can't be fixed after 12 years. Expect exploits and greifing.

Yeyeeeeeeee! I HATED the recent XT because of the sooky buggers crying about the PVPers because this XT had no mission to fight for the XT so people just seen it as a d**k move when really... some people just want PVP and it was a good source of it.. Glad the takeover has the choice for taking either side. :D

this is all great but how about a stable demo so i dont loose all this after hours of play and something bugs out. I love all the cool things but they all never work right and its always so frustrating because you cant play for long because it breaks.

Confused? Anyone

o7 The game is impossible to play as it is 3.23 , severs crash the game all the time ! i lost more money with servers than Piracy🤬

How are you not evo?

After 11 years ... nothing shocks this backer anymore. Also after all these years: we were talking about physicalized cargo and the need to load/unload your ship either by yourself or pay someone doing it, is really, really old talk. I mean, if I remember correctly, we talked about this in the old RSI forums before they got shut down for Spectrum. 2024 is finally a great year for any backer, old and new alike. We finally got a solid base to work with. Client stability is good, despite few CTDs at distribution centers (for me, at least). Server performance is still degrading over time, so every new patch comes with fresh servers and great memories. After a couple of weeks the servers are back to single digits at best and non-responding at worst. I doubt CIG will get that one fixed until they got all core techs in place, including janitor NPCs cleaning up clutter and wrecks. We also get tons of new features with each patch, all of them impactful. The game itself turns more and more into a systematic experience with every patch CIG provides. We'll get physicalized cargo today, tomorrow we might get factories, using raw materials and spewing out useful stuff. In a year we might no longer get ships from an ASOP terminal and it magically appears, but we might have to pay someone to move it to our place. Not only will this cost some money, but also some time. Instead of watching 10 minutes to tick down, I go back to a bar and listen to random NPCs. Someone tells his buddy something about an abandoned freighter on Yela, near the southern pole. Later I'll give it a shot and scan for the freighter - et voila! There it is. Full of precious cargo. No one nearby to be seen, so I start picking clean that freighter. Another hour later I return to the very same bar. The two NPCs are also present and still talk about their "secret" freighter: someone has cleaned it out and now all they have is a worthless carcass of a freighter. I mean, that's gonna be fun, right? Best 10 minutes spent instead of waiting for some unseen NPC to deliver your ship. That's what I kinda expect from Star Citizen. A massive sandbox, systematic driven personal stories no one else has, because another guy may walk into the bar but no one talks about that freighter, but perhaps about an heist at Jumptown ...

Are ORG hangers a thing?

I'm not a fan of the extremely long wait times. I think it should be balanced around a credit sink more so than essentially being locked out of using that ship for potentially an entire game session. I hope we see some more changes on how this works because harsh time gating seems like bad game design

Honestly, going through the comments and seeing people complain about load times being to long is actually pretty funny. Basically all it comes down to is *boohoo i cant load 700scu in 2 seconds so i cant crash to economy for everyone else anymore* If anything its justice to us low/medium freight haulers. We might actually be able to sell things now without every place being out of stock to buy/sell

"it's supposed to be the last patch before 4.0" how many patches has this been the case now ? How many years I should say ? Anyone wanna bet money with me that there will be a 3.25, another CitCon centered around Pyro and still no Pyro release by the end of the year ?

Sometimes this development feels a bit like twitch plays pokemon. I feel things are getting more robustly and permanently laid down now this year Thats not to everyones taste. The try everything, evolutionary approach with endless budget was going pretty well i thought.

Bring it on! LOGISTICS AT LAST Amazes me that even long term backers seem to be clueless to what SC is about and is working towards...CIG have talked about it for years but some people just seem to want to ignore it (Shrug) Stuff like this is what I kickstarted for

I never expect stability, only surprised when it is so BRING IT ON!!! Also confirmed I’m so happy party members can access their inventory and call up via freight elevators in personal/instanced hangers very handy

Great video! Star Citizen itself... well, it's a scam, plain and simple. I'm sure some of the gameplay is amazing, but it's wasted +600M USD since 2011 and they're nowhere close to releasing anything official or bug free. I am amazed by how much money it still makes--all with overpromising and underdelivering year by year.

its weird some people want to make this amazing immersive space sim-like into a lame gamey arcade game. People scream out loud when things happen in this game...not from anger but the shock of being yanked out if the matrix. Keeping people immersed should be the focus not cheap and easy gamey crap.

Whoever thought loading your own cargo would be fun? Would be a pain in the ass in real life so why would I want to do it in a game?

I do not want to have a second job playing a game. With how long things will take how expensive things will get all this "game" is doing is making us have to play for so long just to do the simplest tasks. Who wants to get off a long job and say, "Oh yeah, let's go work for hours in a game just to get ready to leave the base?

Yeah who is going to wait hours to load your ship? I'd just log out and play another game.

This update is for the pirates.

I am liking this game less and less as it nears completion. There are so many "features" designed to slow down the player and waste our time.

With every update the game becomes less of a game and more of a job. CIG has lost sight of the idea of video games being fun.

What a disaster.

Dude what’s a tomato talk?

Why are CIG trying to force game play, in what could be an awesome game they are making it overly complex, and if it's overly complicated by stupid little time wasting stuff, new players will give up day one.

I just hope the multitool will get severely nerfed in the future. I WANT to use the trolleys !

I blame management for the bad state of the game!

Really, the autoload timers are the most egregious part.

I cant wait for this to hit live. I know people love to bitch about this game but whatever the reason its currently not finished and its super frustrating to complaining about something you're creating before its even done. Its like mixing some eggs and flour together and having someone bitching at you because you aren't making the chocolate chip cookies you promised because they don't see any chocolate chips. Also, I need that cargo guild jumpsuit. NEED.

SC loves making the game harder and less enjoyable to play, in the end it just wastes my time

So many Things they implemented are Not working right i have No doubt this Game will for ever be a Buggy mess

Honestly they are moving in the direction of destroying the game.. The only game loop that will be left is pvp. No one is going to take minutes to hours to load a ship only for some pad ramming clown to destroy it all. It's already bad enough to lose a load that is loaded instantly.