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PU Monthly Report
Welcome to September’s PU Monthly Report, featuring the latest updates from all the various disciplines working on Star Citizen. Read on for all the news from AI Features and Tech, Ships, Community, Core Gameplay, and more.
AI Content
September saw AI Content looking into a new character type for mission gameplay, which will provide additional interactions and personality. They also continued supporting several upcoming missions, adding comms for the new faction reps that have been working their way through the pipeline.
Alongside supporting the social AI placement on planets, the team looked at the existing landing zones to assess what’s working, what isn’t, and how they can make targeted changes to help push each location closer toward the identity established in lore.
AI (Features & Tech)
AI Features and Tech worked on the apex valakkar, committing targeting fixes and bullet-bending refinements. A backstop timer was also introduced when the creature turns to face the player before submerging and emerging to avoid it getting locked.
The team also worked on a number of issues related to Starchitect. For example, ensuring NPCs perform night-time checks and have their flashlights out, and that marok boids spawn correctly. They also improved the nav-mesh to ensure it works with the recent zone changes, including adding a navigation component back to sector clusters.
Animation
Last month, animations were worked on for the apex valakkar, including for major attacks on ship targets. The team also created enter and exit animations for an all-new ship.
Art (Characters)
Last month, Character Art had the final review of a new heavy armor releasing in Alpha 4.10.2. Variations of this will be available as a Wikelo reward and in the store. This release will also include updated brows in the character customizer.
The team is also working on updates to various gangs that will be appearing in Nyx, including First Legion, Salamanders, Shattered Blades, and Moraine. New armor sets will be coming for the First Legion and Salamanders too.
Art (Ships)
In the UK, two unannounced vehicles both had final reviews ahead of their planned release alongside Genesis. Following this, five new projects were kicked off; the first of which made rapid progress considering its size and design.
The second moved through whitebox ahead of its gate review at the end of the month. Following feedback, changes were made to the placement of its main turret and external tractor beam.
The third entered pre-production ahead of its official kick-off, while the fourth and fifth (a pair of ships from a manufacturer not heard from for a while) entered whitebox.
Work also continued on a ship mentioned in recent reports. Last month, it passed through greybox, with the interior now ready for its LOD0 gate review. The exterior is catching up and will be ready for review in early October.
Alongside unannounced vehicles, greybox work on the Anvil Liberator wrapped up, with the formal gate review due in early October. Large areas of the ship that were safe to continue with progressed well into the LOD0 phase, which is due to wrap up in late October.
The RSI Constellation Mk IV Gold Standard progressed, with the devs working through the significant number of minor visual issues across the four variants caused by updating the ship to modern material libraries. They also made user-experience improvements to navigating around and interacting with the ship, with better and more logical placements.
The RSI Galaxy passed its greybox gate review. The team then progressed with LOD0 work, including refining the corridor and wall sections, updating lighting, and adding signage across the ship. Work continued on the modules too.
Finally for the UK, a new ship saw downstream teams, such as UI, VFX, and Audio, do their passes ahead of a combined LOD0/Final review in October.
In North America, production on a new ship wrapped up following internal testing and bug fixing.
Lastly, the Kraken team continued through the LOD0 phase, with efforts spread across the entire ship, from the setup of the integrated transport, like lifts and the tram, to the dedicated capital components located across multiple engineering rooms.
Art (Weapons)
The Weapon Content team completed a new Lightning Bolt Co. rifle alongside paints for upcoming events.
They also continued with seven upcoming weapons, including rifles and a medical pistol, and began updating several ship weapons.
They’re currently planning for 2027, keeping new technology and manufacturer possibilities in mind, and fixing bugs on recently released weapons.
Community
The Community team kicked off an activity-filled September by announcing Ship Showdown 2956's champion, the RSI Perseus. They also published the August Monthly PU Report and began planning for the many events coming throughout autumn and the remainder of the year.
September included the launch of Alpha 4.10: Orison Relief Support, which the team supported with an FAQ outlining how players could take part in rebuilding after the Nine Tails’ attacks. They also published a Q&A for Alpha 4.10’s new vehicles, the Sabre Raven EX and Argo ATLS IKTI Akuma, with answers from the developers themselves.
As Pirate Week sailed into port last month, the team held a treasure hunt with clues hidden across several channels hinting at in-game locations. The team provided a catch-all thread that was updated with the latest clues to the hunt throughout the event. They also challenged the community to flaunt their nefarious deeds by creating custom wanted posters in the Pirate Week 2026 Most Wanted Contest.
Additionally, the Community team gathered questions in preparation for 10 From the Community, a new focused video format where every episode features a few developers representing a particular area of development, including gameplay, art, UI, technology, and ships. They also published an RSI Aurora Mk I Retirement Reminder thread and an FAQ explaining the updates to pledge gifting and game access. These changes are in preparation for the new Game Library system launching in October as part of the broader work to create a clearer and more consistent account experience for both Squadron 42 and Star Citizen.
The Bar Citizen World Tour continued with stops in Seattle for PAX West, as well as Milan, Italy, and Porto, Portugal. Preparation continued for October’s Squadron 42 event, where a group of original backers and content creators will get the chance to try the game for the first time.
As always, the team continued gathering feedback from the community, which is shared with the relevant development teams to ensure players’ voices are heard. They also kept up their regular cadence of This Week in Star Citizen and bi-weekly Roadmap updates, providing the community with the latest information from the development teams throughout an eventful September.
Core Gameplay
The last couple of months saw the Core Gameplay teams working through a long list of bugs and quality-of-life items, many of which were highlighted in the Improving the Live Experience Comm-Link.
For vehicle gameplay, refueling now correctly accounts for the position of the docking connection when ships dock to refuel.
The team also fixed fuel nozzles dumping fuel when a transaction was cancelled, and an issue where mismatched item types caused problems with ship engineering screens. Several other issues were also dealt with, including being unable to repair the Grey’s Market Basher at landing pads, modules failing to equip to ships, shields not recharging after crossing a server boundary, on-foot and vehicle compasses reading differently when in a pilot seat, and ship services failing once started.
Alongside this, some newer ships will now become disabled when a critical part is destroyed rather than exploding immediately. Radar can also detect contacts across the connected areas of a location rather than only within the immediate area.
The team finalized Instancing, releasing it in the Alpha 4.10 patch. As part of this, the devs closed several gaps that allowed players who weren't eligible to pass through instance barriers. Now, loading barriers check directly whether the instance has loaded in before letting players through. Removing a player from an instance is also more reliable when the player and the instance are on different servers.
Instancing respawn queues were also reworked. For example, if a respawn bed is occupied, players now spawn next to it, matching how ship medical beds work. Instances now recover more reliably after a server crash or when control passes between servers, and unload when players take an elevator away from them.
The team began research and investigation into porting Instancing technology to Instanced Hangars.
The transport system now prioritizes empty carriages, reducing the chance of summoning one already in use. The setup of the transport and elevator systems were also simplified.
Freight elevators received attention throughout August and September, with various issues being fixed. These include kiosks getting stuck when transferring items in a loop and becoming unusable, Levski’s external elevators behaving as if they were in zero gravity, elevators becoming unusable after trying to retrieve items that weren't requested, newly split item stacks not being tracked correctly during retrieval, and elevators and their doors showing the wrong visual state when loading in and out.
The team added a limit to loose items, as redeeming very large numbers of small items (e.g. 20,000 water bottles) could crash the kiosk. Kiosks now display this limit and show a clear error when it's exceeded.
Missions that need several of the same items can now accept them all in one hand-in, rather than one at a time. Work began on freight elevator loading messages to show the progress of storing and retrieving items too.
For quantum travel and the Starmap, the devs restored collision checks, so routes can no longer pass straight through moons and other large objects.
Space stations blocking Star Map routes when plotting from inside them was fixed, alongside route markers disappearing between destinations and missing markers when routing to rest stops or jump points. A rare issue where a ship could become unresponsive after quantum travel in poor network conditions was solved too. Routes in Stanton can now also go around the sun.
Support was given for Starchitect missions. Players can now accept them directly from mission boards, and rewards are being connected to them. Resource locations can now be shared across multiple active missions, with each mission set to use an exact or ranged amount, while missions with randomized flows can now end on a random outcome, not just move on to a new phase.
Trespass areas not working at Starchitect locations were fixed too.
Updates were made to the Battaglia mission pack. For example, mining missions can now track rocks destroyed by overcharging. The teams fixed a trigger that blocked progression when entering the mission instance, the delivery stage not completing inside the instance, and an issue where the second and third story missions wouldn’t generate due to an entity ID mismatch when multiple shards were active.
Cargo, trading, and hauling missions were supported throughout the past two months. As part of this, cargo pickups are now distributed more sensibly based on each pickup's SCU. Numerous bugs were also fixed for these missions. These include incorrect item spawn and delivery counts in hauling missions, buying certain commodities blocking the purchase of others, the MISC Hull C failing to auto-load while in loading zones, and fixed ore sales failing at commodity traders.
For ship loss and retrieval, Core Gameplay solved the underlying cause of vehicles occasionally disappearing while being flown in or near hangars.
Retrieved ships sometimes spawning while still in a quantum-travel state was also solved, as was retrieved ships sometimes having their landing gear stuck in the hangar, preventing take-off.
Finally for Core Gameplay, various inventory bugs were fixed, such as the filter and sort menus not closing properly and overlapping with other elements. They also fixed keycards being equippable, which made them disappear into a hidden slot in the player’s inventory, and Stack All appearing to work and then reverting shortly afterwards. Loadouts not sorting inventory items, being unable to place an item after picking it up, the inventory not being restored when leaving prison, and splitting item stacks causing the inventory to become unresponsive were all fixed too.
Mission Design
Last month, the Mission team rebalanced Bounty missions to bring them more in line with the recent ship updates. This will be committed to the game in a future patch.
A new analytics page was set up so the team can more accurately read and parse data and see UEC and engagement imbalances.
Progress was made on a suite of over 97 new contracts for a future patch, which the devs are very excited about, as it changes the way citizens will play.
Two new factions were recently signed off for development, which represent new non-combat-focused careers.
The team also shipped Battaglia and their initial mining missions alongside Orison Relief Support and the first dedicated crafting mission. The Siege of Orison also returned, utilizing the new Instancing tech.
Narrative
In a very productive month, the Narrative team worked on several upcoming mission packs. In addition to a special event that will be making its debut soon, they continued to help with the multitude of contracts that will become available when Nyx I is released.
Narrative also revised the script for an upcoming story mission that will feature multiple new characters, and began coordinating on new contracts that will expand what missions InterSec offers to mercenary-minded players.
As they often do this time of year, Narrative supported the upcoming Intergalactic Aerospace Expo with new additions. Additionally, work continued on the loading screen headlines that will be featured in upcoming patches.
Online Technology
Live Tools completed part two of the Hex 4.0 feature-parity work. For this, they rebuilt the account detail and listing pages (quick view, rental history, tabbed tables), added group detail views with chat, and reached parity on dataset and chat export. They also completed a UI polish pass, including the search page, drag-and-drop tabs, header support link, and quick view.
For Bootstrap, the devs closed the client-revamp initiation phase, with the technology stack chosen and proof-of-concept built. The client rebuild is now underway.
Live Tools also progressed with Error Reporting, adding advanced crash-listing filters (by type and status) and further pipeline reliability work, including a scheduled Panic Switch database cleanup. Work on crash-pipeline reliability, enrichment, and Panic Switch polish continued.
The Online Services team spent much of September improving the reliability of missions and contracts. They fixed a bug where a mix-up in reputation data could cause players to occasionally be shown the wrong mission, and worked through ongoing efforts to reduce delays players experience before new contracts are available to accept. The team also continued refining how ‘Contract No Longer Available’ errors are communicated to players, aiming for clearer, more immersive in-game messaging instead of generic error text.
The Network team's biggest focus was building a new system called Claims; a smarter way for the game to decide which servers are responsible for which parts of the universe. This includes planets, activities, and instanced events. This groundwork lays the foundation for the servers to handle territory assignments more flexibly and reliably going forward. The team also made progress on grouping instanced activities by their type, so the game can better tailor how content streams in depending on what kind of event or location a player is in.
Alongside this core work, the team continued auditing the network code to prepare for more advanced streaming support. On the reliability side, the team investigated and addressed a warning tied to how debris behaves when a ship is destroyed inside enclosed spaces, like hangars. Finally, several smaller networking code cleanups and performance improvements were completed as part of the team's regular upkeep work.
R&D
The R&D team progressed with volumetric clouds, fixing an issue with occasional stale cloud shadow maps after fast camera movement. Stochastic cloud shadow map filtering was also improved.
Significant work also went into render modes. As part of this, a new quarter-res render mode was added as a non-temporal performance mode, and a new unified guide was introduced covering the half, quarter, and temporal render modes. Filter improvements for the half and quarter res modes now better reconstruct the thin atmosphere silhouette when viewed from far orbit. Within the temporal render mode, the motion sensitivity term was reworked and scene visibility awareness was added to the temporal up-sampling along with the neighborhood bbox hull. Ongoing work included VGPR reductions for the spatio-temporal upsampler, and general cloud ray marcher optimizations.
Shadow map encoding was also improved to reduce occasional banding, which was especially visible on terrain covered by thin ground fog under a low sun angle.
On the integration side, all weather improvements from the past few months, as well as atmosphere and cloud rendering, merged into the development streams. This included fixes for issues found in integration reviews and a follow-up change to migrate the integrated work so it handles and supports streaming of atmosphere, ground fog, and cloud resources.
Finally, investigation began into a proper solution for sky irradiance to take cloud coverage into account, which remains in progress. On the planet atmosphere side, work continued on injecting clouds into the atmosphere model.
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