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📑 PU Monthly Report – November & December 2025

Welcome to the first Monthly Report of 2026!
As usual, we’re starting by looking back at the final two months of the outgoing year, when teams across CIG finalized features and pushed content forward for Alpha 4.5, 4.6, and beyond.

We’ll be back soon with January’s report, offering a look at how Star Citizen development kicked off in 2026.

🤖 AI Content

AI Content closed out the year supporting the release of Alpha 4.5.
With the addition of Nyx, the team revisited social behaviors in Levski to ensure NPCs properly use the available interactable objects (“usables”).

They also implemented new Nyx-specific voice packs, representing a new approach to ambient, dynamic conversations. While early sets were designed to work anywhere, the goal now is to create location-targeted voice packs so conversations deliver more unique narrative flavor depending on where you are.

AI Content also worked with the Missions team to support new mission reps and story-driven content for upcoming releases.

🤖 AI (Tech & Features)

Across November and December, AI Tech & Features focused on the Valakkar, improving its ability to use submerge positions while avoiding terrain issues such as hills. They also refreshed (“unrotted”) the ChaseTarget behavior and removed the movement hearing filter concept. The Valakkar can now also attack inanimate objects, and new placeholder behaviors were introduced and expanded.

For the creature pipeline (Star Paws), the team worked on:

  • AI Triggered Actor State
  • Porting radial formations from SQ42
  • Refactoring and renaming AI Skill Extender into “AI Motive”
  • Adding a boss condition: “health lost this phase”

Updates were made to the anti-personnel turret, fixing an issue that caused shots to fire above a target’s head. Numerous missing hints were added to Subsumption activity tasks, while general bug fixing continued across navigation links and traversal behaviors.

Planetary navigation improvements were also made to allow easier changes to physics terrain patch resolution. This is currently only active for the Valakkar but is planned for release in Alpha 4.6.

🧠 AI (Game Intelligence Development)

In November and December, the Game Intelligence Development (GID) team primarily worked toward the next milestone of Mission System v2.

This included:

  • Prototype validation before MVP fine-tuning
  • Integrating the UX script prior to building out prototype infrastructure
  • A visual refresh to the mission system dashboard prototype

The team also worked on a reactive expression prototype, including design and an icon-driven visual interface per category. This will serve as a template for additional tools that let designers easily create triggerable expressions.

GID also supported integrating Tiny Machine into the Starscript UX to unify visual language across tools.

As usual, bugs were fixed and Starscript features were expanded based on designer feedback.

🎭 Animation

In November, the Facial Animation team returned to the performance-capture stage alongside Narrative for their final shoot of the year, capturing content for two new characters and two new voice packs that will populate Nyx NPCs.

Off-set, they completed animation work for ArcCorp’s Ella Tieno, who will appear during comms calls. In December, they began processing captured content, starting with one of the new named characters appearing in an upcoming release.

On the gameplay side, the team pushed toward finalizing:

  • Spec-ops AI combat set
  • Two additional human animation sets
  • Melee and mechanized enemy improvements
  • Player swimming and navigation
  • New weapon animations
  • Creature improvements for the kopion-type enemy
  • Continued background-life AI development

🎨 Art (Characters)

The Character Art team wrapped the year by finalizing event rewards and promo items while progressing with new gangs planned for 2026.

Concept Art explored ideas for new armor sets and finalized handoff sheets for Subscriber flair items.

🚀 Art (Ships)

November and December were extremely busy, with Ships teams completing multiple vehicles for IAE and supporting the first release of Engineering. Key IAE completions included:

  • RSI Perseus
  • RSI Salvation
  • Drake Clipper
  • Drake Golem OX
  • Greycat MDC
  • Kruger L-22 Alpha Wolf

The Ships team also gave a major shout-out to Vehicle Content, Design, and QA for fleet-wide sweeps supporting fire, dynamic room atmosphere, resource networks, and engineering features.

🇬🇧 UK Teams

  • Gatac Railen entered production mid-November.
  • Aegis Hammerhead gold-standard work continued, with parts broken out into an Aegis kit for future ships.
  • MISC Hull B passed whitebox and moved into greybox.
  • Drake Ironclad, Ironclad Assault, and Command Module progressed toward greybox reviews. The Command Module’s first playable functionality gate was completed mid-December.
  • Greycat UTV continued development, including dashboard updates (in collaboration with UI) and a mocap session for a new enter/exit animation.
  • RSI Galaxy entered pre-production.

Four unannounced vehicles advanced through the pipeline:

  • One passed both whitebox and greybox with only minor technical iteration remaining.
  • Another moved quickly thanks to an existing brand kit.
  • A third passed whitebox after a successful concept phase.
  • A fourth entered production after concept work resolved interior-component issues.

🇺🇸 North America

Work on the Drake Kraken continued in whitebox, with a target whitebox review in February. Interior layout changes improved navigation and simplified vehicle/cargo movement. Care was taken to ensure no negative impact on the future Privateer variant. A walkthrough meeting helped prepare downstream teams for the scope ahead.

Two unannounced vehicles progressed as well:

  • One finished 2025 with a review gate supporting an early-2026 release.
  • The other moved through whitebox focusing on its unique hero rooms.

🌐 Community

In November, Community prepared players for Nyx with a Traveler’s Guide, followed by a catch-all post after release. To celebrate Nyx, Star Citizen launched its first-ever Twitch Drops campaign. CIG also partnered with CLX Gaming for a custom PC giveaway built during a livestream.

IAE 2955 arrived in November and received extensive support:

  • Save-the-Date announcement
  • IAE FAQ
  • Manufacturer + Free Fly schedule
  • IAE Showtime contest
  • IAE Referral Bonus (bringing back the Dragonfly Star Kitten for the first time since 2017)
  • Q&As for all six new vessels
  • Salvage & Repair Guide updates
  • Best in Show prize announcement

December delivered Alpha 4.5: Dawn of Engineering, supported by a detailed Engineering Gameplay Guide and release catch-all post. The team also celebrated Luminalia 2955, including:

  • catch-all post
  • “13 Days of Luminalia” daily gifts calendar
  • return of the Luminalia Greeting Card Contest

The Bar Citizen World Tour 2025 concluded in Prague on November 8, followed by a call for suggestions for 2026 tour locations.

Evergreen efforts continued throughout both months:

  • This Week in Star Citizen
  • bi-weekly Roadmap Updates & Roundups
  • Monthly Reports
  • Arena Commander schedule updates
  • updates to the New Player Guide and Welcome Back, Pilot pages
  • ongoing feedback coordination across teams

🕹️ Core Gameplay

Core Gameplay supported multiple releases and progressed several major features.

For Alpha 4.4, they collaborated on the release of the Boomtube rocket launcher and addressed weapon issues, including ongoing work to improve weapon feel (such as ADS) and exposing more controls to designers.

Engineering gameplay went through multiple Tech Preview publishes and shipped in its first iteration with Alpha 4.5, including many changes based on feedback:

  • MFDs now enter an emergency state instead of fully powering off when out of power
  • Relay behavior updated: destroyed fuses no longer break the resource network, but limit effectiveness
  • Automatic Power Pip reassignment is now optional (default requires unassigning power before reassignment)
  • Improved audio/visual feedback for ship light states during emergencies
  • First implementation of Ship Armor and Life Support, adding depth to multicrew

Crafting progressed to Tech Preview readiness and enabled a limited Evocati test round. The initial loop covered crafting items and adjusting stats based on material quality. Additional work included:

  • shop support for material quality
  • selling partially full or mixed containers
  • crafting UI progress (queue, delivery destination selection, material refunds, dismantling crafted items)

Flight gameplay continued toward an improved flight model, including adjustments to control surfaces and more options exposed to design for atmospheric behavior.

Work also continued on the Command Module (Caterpillar/Ironclad), demonstrating a playable handover of controls between host ship and command module. This helped address docking issues and improve debug tooling.

Late in the year, the team worked on major problems affecting transit and freight elevators, prioritizing high-repro and potentially “permanent” issues. More fixes remain ongoing.

Mission System improvements included conditional completions (objective A or objective B), investigation into drop-off locker issues, support for new mission content, and progress tracker improvements for events.

Inventory rework continued (reviews and bug hunts). Early work began on capital ship refueling (task breakdown and scheduling).

Finally, Core Gameplay delivered a feature-complete version of cockpit light amplification for better visibility in low-light conditions.

💹 Economy

Based on feedback, the Economy team overhauled Wikelo rewards:

  • fewer ingredients required for most recipes
  • some items redistributed into the general loot pool
  • Idris and Wolf added as holiday-period rewards

The commodity price boost generated broad feedback, especially around increased profitability of previously undervalued free-trade resources. These insights are being incorporated into future balancing.

Contested zones received additional vehicles as possible drops.

In December, the team worked on a Nyx social station to support safe trading zones and economic incentives.

They also began reviewing ballistic vehicle weapons to ensure appropriate caliber designations and operating costs based on weapon size and type.

🧭 Mission Design

Mission Design ended the year focusing on quality-of-life fixes for Alpha 4.5, including bringing derelict space station missions back to Stanton. Work then continued on content planned for 2026.

📖 Narrative

Narrative had a busy end-of-year period supporting the release of Star Citizen’s third star system: Nyx. The team wrote dozens of new missions, helped bring the Shattered Blade outlaw faction to life, and supported the return of classic characters to Levski.

They also supported content shown during IAE and the rollout of system-to-system hauling missions.

In December, they focused on setting up for success in the new year, including the PTU launch of Alpha 4.6, and wrote several NPC scripts for upcoming mechanics and missions.

🌐 Online Technology

Online Services shared an internal tech demo for Item Recovery T1, helping establish priority needs for downstream teams.

Instancing work continued, with the Instance Manager acting as a cornerstone for validating how the feature functions internally.

Live Tools successfully launched the new error-reporting pipeline. Development on the WebApp tool expanded beyond crash ownership rules and now aims to automate ticket assignment workflows, replacing manual and hard-to-maintain routing processes.

Hex audit logs are now live in production, improving tracking and monitoring capabilities.

🔬 R&D

In November, R&D’s PU focus remained on optimization:

  • texture streaming support for volumetric cloud and ground fog, including 3D volume textures
  • optimizations enabling better inlining of C++ lambdas and reducing allocations
  • improved runtime performance in IFCS thruster updates, Subsumption mission updates, and item resource generation/consumption

Read access to voxel trees can now be concurrent, supporting CPU reads for gas cloud radiation volumes, atmospheric flight data, door hazard state updates, and more. Lowercase CRC32 computations were significantly optimized.

Threading-related OS call overheads were reduced when updating vehicle parts and checking damage-map impacts. AI tactical query overheads were fixed, and the refactor of gas cloud light updates (removing temporary allocations) was brought to the PU, significantly lowering CPU costs.

In December, further optimizations landed:

  • improved context capture for immediately executed lambdas
  • cleanup of priority and deferred action queues
  • more compact entity class storage and faster lookups
  • reduced allocation/locking costs for AI local variables
  • improved time slicing for monitored zone updates (mission updates)
  • more efficient closest shadow-region-node search
  • ongoing work to speed up projected decal rendering and save interpolators

End of PU Monthly Report summary for November & December 2025.

Author: Fhexy
Published 16:42 26.01.2026