3.15 is fairly big as far as Star Citizen’s alpha updates go, enough to warrant its own name - Deadly Consequences. This alludes to two of the biggest features that have been added in the latest version, those being hospitals with expanded medical gameplay features, and really, really big bombs. Alongside the addition of major and distinct hospital facilities at Orison, New Babbage and Grim HEX that can be used for respawning after deadly encounters or the purchase of life insurance, smaller local clinics have been added to space stations for a quick heal. That said, the gameplay aspect of healing go a lot deeper beyond just a few pretty new locations. The overall injury system has received a planned overhaul, adding greater complexity to the kind of ways your in-game commander can get battered. Different organs and body parts can be injured to different degrees, and you’ll suffer specific side-effects depending on the location and severity of the injury. For example, being hit in the head will blur your vision or induce dizziness, while limb injuries will make movement and interaction more difficult. That said, luckily this is the highly advanced future with super-duper sci-fi technology, including the CuraLife Medical Gun that can cure and heal absolutely any kind of health issue, at a distance. In fact, this Medical Gun is so effective, that prior to a nerf it could easily heal people to death with overdoses, giving players a way to kill each other outside of PvP areas. Update 3.15 adds a slew of healthcare related gameplay features alongside the hospitals and the healing gun, meaning players who planned on building a career as healers in the persistent universe should be really excited about the update - this particular field didn’t get a huge amount of attention before, unlike the more common roles like explorer, fighter, pirate, or trader. Luckily (?) Cloud Imperium Games also made sure that you’ll have plenty of opportunities to practice those field triage and care skills, because the other major feature introduced in 3.15 is bombing. Applicable ships are now outfitted with a role-built bombing interface, allowing pilots or gunners to aim heavy ordinance in combat situations - though we feel like this might have applications for miners as well. The Missile Operator Mode, concerningly referred to as MOM, is a fairly in-depth system which accounts for the advanced, realistic physics simulation underpinning the Star Citizen game world. When aiming your bombs, you’ll need to take a lot of factors into consideration, like gravitational forces, the motion of your ship and so forth. Bombs also don’t really care or understand the concept of friendly fire, so you’ll need to be careful not to pop your mates down below. While bombs and hospitals are oxymoronically the main additions in Star Citizen Alpha 3.15, they’re hardly the only new content brought to bear. A pair of new ships, the Crusader A2 Hercules Starlifter and the Origin 400i can now be flown, and a bunch of items have been added. As always, the update is a bug fix galore, but keep in mind that this is an alpha version. Some smaller but nonetheless significant tweaks have altered the persistent universe. Port Olisar, which backers who have been around for a few years will remember as one of the first places where we could step out of the “module” system and into a small snippet of open space, has been relocated. Orison got expanded, and the Law system went through a bit of tweaking. You can download and play version 3.15 now - full patch notes here - and Cloud Imperium Games suggests deleting your USER folder from the game’s install before you do so to avoid a few visual bugs. This update comes not too long after Star Citizen once again broke crowdfunding records.
