Star Citizen Alpha 2.1 Released on Public Test Universe

Star Citizen's next update, Alpha Patch 2.1.0, is now available on the space game's public test universe.

Among other things, the update adds a new flyable Freelancer base, the Sabre ship, and a handful of fixes for the game's Crusader region. With the patch applied, your Star Citizen launcher should show "2.1.0-308828."

"It is strongly recommended that players delete their USER folder for the Public client after patching, particularly if you start encountering any odd character graphical issues or crash on loading," developer Cloud Imperium Games said in a statement. "The USER folder can be found (in default installations) at C:\Program Files\Cloud Imperium Games\StarCitizen\Text."

The developer added that it's been working "feverishly" to get Alpha 2.1.0 ready, but the existence of a "couple of issues," including significant frame rate drops, means the developer is only making the patch available on the test servers for now.

"The last thing we want is to jeopardize all of the fun everyone's been having with 2.0.0, and certainly not over the entire holiday period," it explained. "With that in mind, we'll be keeping 2.0.0 on the Live service and opening up 2.1.0 on PTU for all players!"

Cloud Imperium also directed people to go over Alpha 2.1.0's known issues in this post to get an idea for what to expect in terms of the current state of the game.

Here are some other points Cloud Imperium says are worth knowing about before diving in,

• Our original EVA system is remaining active for the time being. After testing and feedback on the PTU, we opted to disable the new physical EVA system to allow for more polish and bug fixing.
• Freelancer damage states are not fully implemented and will not be working during the initial 2.1.0 launch.

The full patch notes are available here.

Star Citizen Alpha 2.0 was released earlier this month. Cloud Imperium said at the time that the release represented a "major milestone" in the game's development.

A release date for the final, complete version of Star Citizen has not been announced. In other recent news about the game, it has now crossed $100 million in funding. In addition we recently learned more about the role Star Wars actor Mark Hamill plays in the title.