Cloud Imperium Games and Roberts Space Industries rolled out alpha 3.8 for Star Citizen. The new update comes with a ton of new upgrades to the persistent universe, including dynamic weather, melee combat, and the new Microtech planet, along with the server-side object container streaming.

The object container streaming on the server-side will improve overall frame-rate, load times, and end-user ping. This helps with the draw distance, the amount of objects rendered on-screen and the streamlined experience between ground-to-space travel.

They quickly roll through the features in the alpha 3.8 trailer that you can check out below.

The dynamic weather isn’t just there to be pretty. It’s part of the all new biomes that are attached to
Planet Tech Version 4.0.

The weather can affect visibility, flight control, driving, as well as create some hazards for the players. Now the player hazards aren’t implemented yet. That’s coming in alpha 3.9, where the cold will cause you to freeze to death, or the heat may cause you to burn up and blackout.

However, the biomes are active and you can encounter different kinds of weather, tundra, and environmental changes taking place on Microtech.

Additional missions have also been implemented along with an overhaul for the truck stops, which look and feel a lot more dynamic than they did before. This includes some neat looking neon advertisements and other background accessories to help bring them to life.

You can get a glimpse of what the new truck stops, biomes, and weather effects look like with Morphologis video below.

With all of these small yet significant details, I’m starting to think that Star Citizen is becoming the Gran Turismo of space sims.

Some of the new missions include hostage rescue, and hunting down bandit hijackers, as well as additional bounty and planetary missions.

The all new non-lethal melee combat has been implemented as well, so in addition to being able to take down opponents using knives and close-quarters weapons, you can also switch to your fist and duke it out with some punches, kicks, and elbow strikes. These are essential for knocking out foes in order to capture them alive or avoid killing NPCs on missions where non-lethal engagements are key to success.

And last but not least, there are some new weapons, and a new multi-crew excavation craft so that you and some additional party members can who scavenging for resources together across the galaxy.

The game is slowly starting to morph into a next-gen version of Starbound.

You can learn more about alpha 3.8 by visiting the official Roberts Space Industries website, or you can grab a starter pack and begin exploring the persistent multiplayer universe at your own leisure.