Star Citizen patch 3.1 brings with it character customisation and new ships

You can be a lot of things in Star Citizen. A cosmic freebooter, a laser-loving bounty hunter, an eager explorer, but only now can you add “beautiful” to that list. Or grizzled, hideous, or whatever adjective you want to use to describe your stellar traveller’s appearance. Yes, with the arrival of alpha 3.1 comes character customisation, along with new ships and the beacon system. The update is live now.

We’ve seen the character customisation in action a bit since it was announced way back through the mists of time, and it’s one of the subject’s in last month’s Around the Verse video, which you can slap your eyes on below.

When you make your character, it will be linked across all modes, and you can make tweaks via the Character Customisation tab in the Universe menu.

As well as pretty faces, players also get access to a bunch of flashy new vehicles, five of them to be precise, along with guns of various sizes that you can fit to different types of vessels. New face, new ship—it’s a whole new life.

Then there’s the beacon system, which on the surface sounds less fancy but actually might be the most interesting of 3.1’s additions. Essentially it allows players to leave distress beacons when they need some assistance. It’s not just a matter of dropping a beacon and waiting for help to come, however. First you have to select the beacon type, as well as reputation requirements and any payment that you might be offering.

Essentially, then, these beacons are like player-created missions, complete with prerequisites and rewards. Beacons can also be rated. If you complete a beacon, it will automatically get a positive rating, but if you cancel it, you can give it a positive or negative rating, presumably in an effort to stop players from using beacons to troll people.

This is all in addition to a slew of optimisation tweaks, bug fixes and polish. You can check out the patch notes on the official site.

Fraser is the UK online editor and has actually met The Internet in person. With over a decade of experience, he's been around the block a few times, serving as a freelancer, news editor and prolific reviewer. Strategy games have been a 30-year-long obsession, from tiny RTSs to sprawling political sims, and he never turns down the chance to rave about Total War or Crusader Kings. He's also been known to set up shop in the latest MMO and likes to wind down with an endlessly deep, systemic RPG. These days, when he's not editing, he can usually be found writing features that are 1,000 words too long or talking about his dog.