Cloud Imperium Games released new videos of its growing space simulator Star Citizen.
One of the coolest gadgets added recently to the game is tractor beams. They already offer a lot of utility and they're fun to use (even to pick up trash) but the developers have big plans for the feature.
In the new video below you can see some of these applications, from towing to unloading and loading weapons and missiles on a ship. Apparently, we might even be able to lift small vehicles and ships.
You can check out the video below.
The second video focuses on introducing the work done for Alpha 3.18 and 3.19 by the Environment Teams at Turbulent in Montréal. You can watch it below.
In the meanwhile, Star Citizen's growing crowdfunding campaign continues to make progress and the game is now at $559 million ($559,719,804 at the moment of this writing) pledged from backers.
The number of registered users has also recently passed 4.4 million and it's now at 4,456,295 albeit not all of them are paying since many register accounts to access the popular free fly events that provide a chance to test the game without pledging any money. According to the latest information that creative director Chris Roberts himself shared in October 2022, 1.7 million players are actually paying customers. Of course, that number is a few months old, so it could be higher now.
The game just recently received a substantial update numbered 3.18, adding new tech and plenty of new features and content, including salvaging and persistence for items placed in the game, including starships, independently from their owner. That being said, there have been widespread issues with the new version and a 3.18.1 update is currently being tested on the Public Testing Universe.
Full disclosure: the author of this post has backed Star Citizen all the way back when its crowdfunding was first launched in September 2012.