890 Jump Life

I haven’t had and still don’t have much time for gaming. The amount of work and stress in my new role, at my new employer, is a bit staggering. On the bright side is that I enjoy the work, the people, and my role. There’s a lot of satisfaction gained from achieving the level of work that we’re producing. However, lots of process improvements need to take place to reduce the chaos, on top of every team being over-committed and understaffed. That classic corporate tale playing out yet again.

When I have had time to play, the Q3 3.7.x patch has breathed new life into the game with hand mining, in-game ship rentals, ship purchases, caves, the 890 Jump. For me, the Mack Daddy improvement is consistent ship logout and re-spawn. 

One of the things I’ve despised since the PU arrived was the Super Mario re-spawn at a static point mechanic. It’s anathema to being in a so-called persistent universe and forces players to restart their adventure each time they log into the game. This is the opposite of a persistent world and how MMOs work.

Logging out via the bed in your ship has been in Star Citizen for a while but never worked consistently. 3.7 corrected that issue. Once I verified it was working reliably, I wanted to use the mechanic to become acquainted with the first capital sized ship in the game, my Origin 890 Jump. I’m happy to report that I’m still faring the skies of Stanton aboard the same instance of my 890 since the 3.7.x patch.

Learning My Way Around

The 890 is a superyacht that sails in at a whopping 210 meters of pure luxury with 64 rooms at your disposal. You can hear a small overview of the 890 Jump when it was merely a concept, on my YouTube channel. Amenities include sumptuous captain’s quarters, (4) guest suites, bar, dining, executive conference, sauna, swimming pool, fully decked out kitchen, medbay, crew quarters with entertainment areas, cargo bay and a hangar. That’s a whole lot of ship. My only complaint is the overly sterile style and lighting. I wish the entire ship had the ambiance from the sauna and pool area. I’m looking forward to when we can customize the interiors a bit. My plan for the 890 is to do luxury RP style tours, run Murder Mysteries parties, and dinner theater. My goal, for now, is to simply enjoy the ship, become intimately familiar with the layout and how she flies.

Living Among the Stars

I backed Star Citizen to live among the stars with only passing sojourns to exotic planetside locations. I would have been happy with the initial plan of just having the capital cities and hero landing zone locations. I don’t want an apartment or permanent housing situation on a planet – zero interest. Outposts? I’ll be thrilled to build them for others using my Pioneer. For me, I’d only consider it if I can farm produce to supplement the food production I plan to do on the Endeavor.

Having consistent bed logout has been amazing. I’ve done a whole lot of nothing but enjoyed it nevertheless. I loaded my Dragonfly hover-bike and the Prospector mining ship on the 890. With those two on board, I’ve been roaming the skies and moons of Stanton. I hadn’t bothered with the ArcCorp moons. There was nothing of interest for me to do there until now. With the 890, I set her down where I choose and disembark with the Prospector to scan for hand-mined gems. I use the Dragonfly to drift above the planet or moon surface, looking for the new harvestable items.

What I’ve enjoyed the most, however, is merely parking my ship wherever I want when I need to log out. The next time I have a few moments to play, I have, without fail, been returned aboard my ship every time. The amount of time in between sessions doesn’t seem, or the logout doesn’t seem to matter. I’ve logged out parked next to Port Olisar, floating next to an R&R station, in the middle of space or engines off parked on a planet, and it’s been flawless. I even crashed twice and have been successfully recovered aboard the ship – back in the medbay, which seems so apropos. It’s a small but meaningful step forward that the persistent universe is finally starting to actually feel like a universe.