🛰️ PU Monthly Report – January 2026

CIG’s global studio returned from the break firing on all cylinders, ready to tackle the wealth of content coming in Alpha 4.6 and throughout the year. Here’s how key teams started 2026 — from AI Features & Tech to Online Technology.

🤖 AI Content

Right after the winter break, AI Content focused on closing out Alpha 4.6, including:

• adding new Spectrum content for the Stanton system
• working with the Environment team to install screens around Levski for use by the People’s Alliance

As with any release, the team also tackled various bugs impacting social AI and mission providers.

Elsewhere, they walked through their overall plan for the year, outlined goals for 2026, and identified which supporting teams would be needed. The remainder of the month continued work on initiatives started last year.

🧠 AI (Features & Tech)

The year began with fixing a blocker that caused NPCs to incorrectly break out of combat to investigate, resulting in human combatants not firing across missions in Stanton, Pyro, and Nyx. Another issue was fixed that caused NPCs to get stuck in a cowering pose.

Key improvements included:

• improved firing validation
• reworked NPC trigger-switch logic to give devs more control
  (e.g., NPCs using burst-fire-capable weapons can be forced to always switch to burst fire)
• improved aim-direction handling when targets are no longer visible, reducing cases where NPCs would occasionally aim through walls

🐾 Creature work (Valakkar)

• Adult valakkar will no longer try to close in on targets
• Apex valakkar can no longer hear while traversing underground
• ‘BurrowToPosition’ behavior updated to a string instead of a fixed type, passing animation fragment tags directly → faster iteration
• Apex valakkar can now freely move around planetary nav-mesh, enabling deeper underground movement
  (pathfinding improved so large creatures can travel long distances, even when not near players)

🎯 Tactical points & generators

• Improvements to tactical point generation in boxes overlapping multiple nav-meshes/action areas, including a new way to evaluate whether tactical points are too expensive
• Ongoing improvements to the Cone TPS Generator, including apex-motive port and overall apex valakkar movement

Additional notes:

• Support for Star Paws is planned in the near future
• Serialized debug variables were refactored so they no longer propagate on release PU builds
• NPCs can now play different jump animations based on ledge height
• Jump height can be restricted per NPC without changing the navigation link
  (e.g., only NPCs capable of a 4m jump will use a 4m navigation link)

Current work: merging the 3D Voxel Grid pathfinder into the PU.

🎭 Animation

The Facial Animation team worked through remaining motion-capture content recorded late last year. As part of this:

• a new voicepack will be released in Alpha 4.7
• additional content is coming for James Herriman, returning with a new (but somewhat familiar) design

🧑‍🎨 Art (Characters)

The Character Art team began the year by:

• finalizing new gang outfits
• progressing combat armors planned for the year

The Concept Art team iterated on an upcoming variant and explored ideas for new armors.

🚀 Art (Ships) – UK Team

The UK ship team progressed on five unannounced vehicles:

• Vehicle 1: final reviews completed; downstream teams adding finishing touches ahead of release. Shared chassis geometry was updated to a higher standard.
• After finishing Hammerhead gold-standard tasks, groundwork began for Vehicle 2.
• Vehicle 3: passed its whitebox gate review strongly.
• Vehicle 4: whitebox gate review flagged issues with its core gameplay feature; investigation resolved the issue and the ship passed review.
• Vehicle 5: approaching whitebox review; scope and timeframe were reviewed to smooth the process for all teams.

Other ship progress:

• Gatac Railen moved through whitebox toward a gate review in February.
• Greycat UTV continued development; its planned mo-cap session shifted to February due to external factors, but it’s still aiming for an early-month gate review.
• MISC Hull B passed greybox review without issues and is deep into LOD0, with artists adding detail throughout.

🧱 Ships2

Development continued on Drake’s Ironclad, Ironclad Assault, and the Command Module, leveraging Drake’s modular kit. This allows sweeping updates across the ships and enables much faster progress than prior builds.

🇺🇸 Ships1

The North American team continued work on an unannounced ship progressing through whitebox. Last month, its variants were blocked out to prevent surprises later. Interior spaces were adjusted based on feedback, including more windows between rooms.

Meanwhile, the Drake Kraken continued through whitebox. The first gate review is set for mid-February, a major milestone. Additional Concept support was scheduled to help refine areas that evolved since the original concept or weren’t fully refined during the initial concept phase.

🌐 Community

Community kicked off 2026 by publishing the November and December PU Monthly Reports, covering the work that closed out 2025.

Throughout January, they supported Alpha 4.6: Lifeline for Levski, including:

• an FAQ for the Clearing the Air event (how to participate, where to go, rewards)
• a catch-all post highlighting Alpha 4.6’s major features
• a detailed Q&A for the RSI Hermes
• updates to the Cargo Hauling Guide
• refreshed New Player Guide and Welcome Back, Pilot pages with current in-game content and events

As always, Community served as a bridge between players and development through sentiment reports and feedback analysis from Spectrum and social channels.

Additional highlights:

• planned and published the Bar Citizen World Tour 2026 (more events to be added)
• supported ATMO esports’ Daymar Rally 2956
• published a Comm-Link spotlighting major February events
• ongoing evergreen work: This Week in Star Citizen, bi-weekly Roadmap updates and Roundups
• announced the winners of the Luminalia 2955 Greeting Card Contest

🧩 Mission Design

After the holidays, Mission Design continued work for content coming this year.

Industrial Collections missions

These will:

• add reputation to mining-based factions
• expand salvage gameplay
• complement mining loops (e.g., if a mission requires iron, mining may produce extra that can be stored, used later, or sold)

Salvage missions will task players with retrieving components, weapons, CM, and RM, and can be paired with salvage rights players already purchase to maximize profit.

The team also supported Clearing the Air, providing varied mission types that let players work for a chosen company (or all of them) and earn rewards.

Looking forward:

• design work was completed on the revival of Siege of Orison
• followed by rapid iteration to ensure this first instanced content is a strong step forward
• additional Nyx missions are underway, including the return of courier and delivery missions as a ladder toward hauling

✍️ Narrative

Narrative hit the ground running, supporting the final closeout for Alpha 4.6, including:

• mission, objective, item, and vehicle descriptions
• addressing bugs that arose during testing

Much of the work centered on upcoming missions, events, and characters requiring further Narrative input throughout the year.

They also began outlining the first performance-capture shoot of the year, writing scripts and reviewing with Design to ensure the right content is captured.

Narrative and Tech Design also discussed the Location Scattering tool from the CitizenCon 2954 presentation, focusing on how generated settlements can be themed in a way that feels scalable yet specific.

🖧 Online Technology

The Network team updated the DGS manager class so it’s aware of DGSs that no longer have groups streamed in. This provides buffer time between a DGS streaming out its last group and being released back to Fleet. A new class was also created to evolve through their transition from static meshing/instancing to quasi-DSM and then full DSM.

Other work included testing in-development technologies and ongoing maintenance/improvements.

Live Tools:

• continued surveying Bootstrap users (local game environment tool) to improve stability, speed, and usability
• continued development of the ticket assignment workflow web-app tool (targeting end of February)
• implementation of the validated UI design for Hex, with modern navigation and improved layout to boost workflow efficiency

🧪 R&D

After the optimization push at the end of 2025, January saw the revival of the improved ground prototype, with work beginning to make it production-ready for both PU and SQ42. Once complete:

• ground details will be cheaper to evaluate and render
• ground fog modeling will improve
• lighting will self-shadow and cast shadows similar to rain volumes and clouds

This work also includes various atmosphere optimizations.