Here's how Star Citizen is planning to implement survival mechanics

The latest episode of Inside Star Citizen explains how Cloud Imperium plan to implement survival mechanics, with senior FPS systems designer Jonny Jacevicius saying that, while "Star Citizen's not a survival game in the traditional sense," it will have an "actor status system" to cover eating, drinking, and maintaining temperature.

Both hypothermia and hyperthermia are potential outcomes of failing to wear the right suit when you explore a planet, with vision effects and then eventual death if you don't do anything to rectify the situation. There will be buffs and debuffs from food and drink, with the example given of a chocolate bar that might add stamina regeneration, while medicine can provide a small amount of health regeneration.

The video goes on to discuss the way Cloud Imperium Games' quarterly go/no go meetings work, so you can probably skip the rest of it unless you're a really dedicated Citizen.

Jody Macgregor
Weekend/AU Editor

Jody's first computer was a Commodore 64, so he remembers having to use a code wheel to play Pool of Radiance. A former music journalist who interviewed everyone from Giorgio Moroder to Trent Reznor, Jody also co-hosted Australia's first radio show about videogames, Zed Games. He's written for Rock Paper Shotgun, The Big Issue, GamesRadar, Zam, Glixel, Five Out of Ten Magazine, and Playboy.com, whose cheques with the bunny logo made for fun conversations at the bank. Jody's first article for PC Gamer was about the audio of Alien Isolation, published in 2015, and since then he's written about why Silent Hill belongs on PC, why Recettear: An Item Shop's Tale is the best fantasy shopkeeper tycoon game, and how weird Lost Ark can get. Jody edited PC Gamer Indie from 2017 to 2018, and he eventually lived up to his promise to play every Warhammer videogame.