This is necromancied but I guess it was a good time to do that. Compared to where it was left here, game actually moved quite a lot. And current patch (3.21) is in good condition to play after a rough start this year. I expect it to be work good until new year as they are trying to jump to the Pyro patch. I have no doubt that 4.0 patch will be, again, quite broken at launch.
But right now, pretty much every profession works alright and implemented enough to be enjoyable. Here's a diff list for people who wonders what's new (compared to 2021)
Bounty Hunting
Ship bounties are reworked and enhanced. New ship bounty missions are added as Service Beacons. Tons of new FPS missions with more bunkers, derelicts, caves and even locations on gas clouds. You can loot everything now, npcs, people, boxes or even ships and make good profit out of them. This includes ship cargo as well. Bounty hunting worked before and continues to work. We have even more ships now and gun and missile options are a little better. Most unique addition to this is bombing. You can now drop bombs on planet. It has very little use case but quite fun to do so on some missions and of course on Jumptown. So, JT is safe as ever.
Pirating
Pirating is now a valid profession as it is not just a slight burden for hunted players anymore. First of all, your target cannot just quit out since combat log timer is introduced. This also applies to pirates as well so no chickining out when bounty hunters are on your ass. But as a reward you can now completely disable ships and infiltrate inside to stole valueables or simply destroy it to salvage surviving cargo/ship/components. Moving cargo is possible now and it actually works great. You can place them nicely on cargo grid on top of each other or just squeezed them inside somehow if you dont have time for that. Of course you can now also sell the cargo you stole. Also you can just snatch ship parts like repeaters, cannons and sell them for extra profit.
With trade routes working and illegal cargo being everywhere, pirating is risky but very profitable. Servers are now for 110~ players instead of 50 so you have more chance to find a hunt aswell.
Racing
Ship racing was introduced with 3.18. It is simple as you just race against a clock but it is here. Since flying in SC is actually fun and skill based without too many artificial limiters (looking at you ED) racing is very challenging and satisfying when you try to push better and better times. It is not too profitable as a profession but it is very fun to race time to time. You can race on high atmosphere, low gravity or in space on a selection of racing tracks. You can also live your dream of carrying your vehicle to track on a trailer with ships like merlin and fury (new) as they dont have quantum drives. Just take it slowly and learn the track before pushing it. Crashing and dying is still annoying as before.
Cargo hauling
Very limited trade options were becoming quite boring in older patches. But with the lootable cargo on NPC and player ships, big haulers became extremely valuable. Almost every profession enjoys a party member with a nice cargo space in their ships. Of course you can still play the buy cheap, sell expensive game on kiosks yourself, but scavenging for cargo is much more profitable. Being able to move boxes with multitool opened up this game loop nicely. Illegal cargo running is also there with many NPC ships carrying drugs on missions. Fun as a solo, fun as a group. Just be careful as you will the n1 target for pirates. Lastly, 30K crash recovery works now so you dont need to pray to reach and store your ship safely once you done hauling. Definitely a godsend to everyone.
Mining
It is basically the same with mostly balance changes. You can still handmine, ROC mine or ship mine. Addition of mining gadgets made it possible to break every rock, regardless of size as long as you are up for it. You are also more on pirates radar like haulers now, better be prepared. Crash recovery also saves miners as they used to rush to sell their valuable quantanium finger crossed.
Salvaging
It is finally here. Long awaited salvage gameplay. This was a meme for long time but it just works now. You can salvage ships with a handtool or a salvaging ship. Quest are available both on legal and illegal sides with illegal ones also having cargo onboard to loot if you want. But make it quick as you may have company. It is mostly hull munching, gun snatching and cargo looting. You can sell what you salvaged like everything else. It is not the most engaging profession but you can definitely make living out of it.
Medical
This also exist now. You can ask people to rescue you by creating a rescue beacon. You basically go into a soft death situation and have a timer to die and respawn on your respawn location once you are downed. You can be saved until timer runs out (depends on your situation). There are orgs like medrunners who specialized on this type of gameloop but anyone can accept your beacon and come to help. Being able to save other players also make group gameplay very engaging. We also got ailments that you can postpone by applying different types of drugs. Those can help you stay up on your feet until you are treated on a medical bed.
Apart from professions, game also had many improvements.
Graphically, game now runs on Dx12 renderer. So performance on CPU side is much improved and you can actually see three digit FPS numbers now. Many POIs were added as well as things like caves, valleys and rivers and lakes. Volumetric clouds are present on every planet. Lorville was reworked and looks much better now. Orison doesnt suck and optimized FPS-wise. Also it has lower atmo altitude now so you dont spend 10 minutes to fly out. Port Olisar is gone and replaced with more generic yet useful and future proof Seraphim Station. You can finally set your respawn point there.
Arena Commander is now up for testing future improvements. Master Mode (next flight model) is available there. There are also new game modes to choose from with pretty much everything is reworked/balanced.
Tons of new ships/vehicles are added. Even the long awaited F8C is now available! Pretty much every type of gameplay loop have new options. I wont name everything but honorable mentions are Fury (snub), Pisces (Starter/Medical), Vulture (salvage), Hull C (cargo), Ares and Scorpius (H.Fighter), Corsair (general purpose) and Mule (pickup truck?)
General snappiness of screens and missions are improved greatly. They are still tied to server performance and can suffer on busy hours but they are at least more responsive now.
Elevators dont kill you as much. Honestly, I never died in one since 3.18. But I still dont trust them and probably never will.
FPS action is much less buggy. Weapons dont stick to your hands or they dont refuse to reload, most of the time. Honestly I dont go into too many FPS action but never had these problems since 3.18.
These are the ones I remembered off the top of my head. Surely, I missed many big or small but important reworks/QoL changes.
So what about bugs you ask? They are still here, time to time, new and old ones. SC always had a steep learning curve and a steeper learning curve around the bugs. This has not changed. If this was a deal breaker for you back then, it will still be the same. However I advise everyone to give it another chance. Maybe one of the new loops/things is worth to wrestle with bugs this time around. You definitely have more options now.
Wipes? They do happen but it is always in reason. If you start now, I'm 95% sure that you can expect no wipe until Pyro patch (in 3 months at least but could easily be 6). And I'm also 100% sure that we'll get a wipe on Pyro patch. So I say, there is enough time to enjoy it thoroughly. Dont worry about wipes.
I dont really like to live off by hopium so I exclusively tried to avoid mentioning "soonTM improvements". What I wrote here IS in the game and available right now. With everything said, I DO think it is a great time to play SC right now. Current patch is stable. Maybe the most stable since 3.15~ And it is way richer than what we had before.
Fly safe~
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