New Star Citizen engineering system will turn the space MMO into FTL

Engineering is going to get a huge overhaul in Star Citizen, with its ramifications meaning bigger ships will need all hands on deck.

There’s a scene in a Star Trek Deep Space 9 episode where the Defiant’s computer is disabled. As a result, all the crew has to do things manually, involving lots of yelling of orders with everyone focused on the task in front of them with no computers helping. It makes you feel like you’re watching a sci-fi version of Master and Commander, and the next big update for Star Citizen may do just the same thing.

Engineering is getting a complete overhaul in Star Citizen thanks to the implementation of the resource network. In the space game, all ship components will become physical objects that talk to each other, supplying or using resources depending on their function. This means that your coolers will exist in real space, alongside relays, life support generators, and everything else you need to make your ship work. It turns your spaceship from a cohesive lump that sort of magically flies through space into a series of components held together by a hull.

When you have components, you also have the chance for them to go awry – and the Alpha 4.0 update will be filled with these events. If something in your ship overheats, is too old, doesn’t get maintained, or simply gets shot by a stray ballistic round from an enemy pirate – it’ll start to malfunction. You may see it stop working altogether, start a fire, be unable to be turned off, or in the case of your power plant – destroy your ship entirely.

This is where having a multi-crew comes in. Each crew member will need to have a specific role, especially when things start to get damaged. Working together you’ll need to diagnose where an issue is coming from before sending crew to deal with it, putting out fires, repairing components, or even replacing them – if you had the foresight to bring spares. Thankfully you’ll have an engineering terminal that shows a 3D visualization of your ship, with all components highlighted, showing how they’re connected and their health, so diagnosis shouldn’t be too much of a guessing game.

While it gives you lots of things to manage and deal with, including rerouting power to the correct place to ensure your ship does exactly what you need it to, there’s also some upsides this new, granular approach will bring. For a start you’ll have more options to deal with things in your ship – such as a fire, or someone unwanted onboard. Vent the area and watch that conflagration burn out or your intruder fly away or suffocate, then restore power to the life support generator and enjoy a nice, normal temperature again.

It also gives more ways to handle spaceships in combat – both for you and your enemy. Ships will no longer be just a pool of health points, instead you’ll be able to find a way to cut or melt through the ship’s hull – weapons will have different armor penetration ratings – in order to slice into various components to be able to disable and destroy what you’re shooting at. It means that every combat encounter will become a game of laser precision targeting, quite literally.

Basically, with the Alpha 4.0 update Star Citizen will become a lot more like FTL, or something akin to Sea of Thieves in space. If that excites you, Star Citizen Alpha 4.0 should launch later in 2024 – though there’s no specific date set just yet.

Should you need something else to while away the time until then, our guides to the best simulation games and the best multiplayer games you can play will send you a ton of joy for the foreseeable future.

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