Space station to planet. A million kilometers travelled. Planet to landing zone. Traversal of Levski in real time, with meetings and deals. Ship boarding, zero-g shootouts, vehicle-to-vehicle ground combat to on foot ground combat, to air superiority over what became pirate paste. No loading screens, no immersion break. All seamless.

The mood in the room was rather jubilant. I can’t recall a single game with so many transitions that didn’t have a pause, a slow down, or a really long elevator ride (yes, I’m looking at you Mass Effect) to hide the shunting of data. In the demo we saw, everything was a single whole. Even No Man’s Sky uses warp travel as a means to load in content - but with Star Citizen, there are no such devices.

Speaking of No Man’s Sky, planetary generation is a topic that is being discussed more and more, with NMS using a “superformula” to create planets. Star Citizen, on the other hand, has opted for a different, more curated route: artist and designer-led. Rather than billions or quintillions of planets, they are opting for only 100 or so systems - with planets in each. This smaller scale allows for a designed density of experience and interaction that should make engaging with each planet a more detailed and repeatable affair.

This is especially pertinent as Alpha 3.0 includes the start of the A.I. system, called Subsumption, which has been more than a year in development. Despite the fact that there are over 1.4 million game accounts, the A.I. will account for 90% of all player interactions thanks to how CIG plans the percentages of player to non-player characters for the final release.

Subsumption 1.0 promises diverse NPC actions, day and night cycles, as well as increased mission complexity driven by economic simulation software. When factored into richer, more detailed planets and locations, that should prove ample fun and content for even the most aggressive planet-hopper.

In addition to this, Star Citizen Alpha 3.0 also brings in StarNetwork 1.0. CryEngine - which has been the base engine upon which Star Citizen was built - has been extended and reworked to ensure that it works as needed for the game in hand. With Alpha 3.0, we will see a revamp of the network code.

If you currently play Star Citizen Alpha 2.4.1 and 2.5, it is clear that we have come to the "touching cloth" stage in regards to player density per instance - and for this to increase into ridiculous numbers, StarNetwork was developed. It is a page-one rewrite of the networking code, designed to allow for hundreds, if not thousands of players engaging together in an intelligent, non-resource-intensive manner.