Star Citizen 4.10.3 hits Release Candidate on the PTU, with fixes for Levski hangars, Battaglia and a Mauler where it shouldn't be

4.10.3 just picked up the two letters that matter: RC. Wakapedia-CIG posted the patch notes for Alpha 4.10.3 PTU RC1 on Spectrum on Tuesday (it’s on the Devtracker too). The game should show VERSION 4.10.3-PTU.13160301. It’s open to All Waves, the PTU channel is still US only, and long-term persistence is on.

RC1 means release candidate one. This is the build CIG thinks could be the one, as long as nothing big breaks on the PTU. CIG calls it “further final performance and logging updates,” and This Week in Star Citizen already said the team is aiming to get 4.10.3 to Live before IAE 2956 opens in New Babbage on November 13. CIG hasn’t posted a Live date yet, so treat that as a target, not a promise.

The fixes worth knowing about

Every item in the notes is listed as a potential fix, so they still need players to confirm them. These are the ones I think most people will notice:

• Stuck hangar platforms. If a hangar platform got stuck partway, the ASOP terminal could leave Retrieve greyed out forever. CIG says the platform now resyncs with its doors, and a pending store or retrieve gets cancelled cleanly instead of leaving you stuck in the ship-swap queue.
• Levski hangars with no way out. Some assigned hangars at Levski had no elevator or elevator panel, which blocked access completely. That one gets a potential fix too.
• A Mauler in an easy contract. Lower-difficulty Vanduul Incursion Defend Ship contracts could spawn a Mauler. That’s a nasty surprise for anyone picking the easy option.
• Battaglia cleanup. Vehicles not spawning for medium salvage contracts, players getting into the Caterpillar’s engine room, clipping past the Command Module barricade in Story 1, and the uplink card getting ejected from the reader in Story 2.
• The Golem’s Quantanium alarm. The Drake Golem wasn’t playing its audio warning when you’re carrying unstable Quantanium.

The full list is in the official RC1 notes.

PPR take: This is the build I was hoping to see this week. Nothing in it is flashy, and that’s fine. The hangar fixes are the big ones for me. When an ASOP terminal won’t let you pull your ship, your whole session is over before it starts, and with IAE Free Fly about to bring in a wave of new players, the hangar is the very first thing they’ll touch. A Levski hangar with no elevator is the kind of thing that makes a first-timer close the game. The Golem fix is small, but anyone who’s hauled unstable Quantanium knows how much you rely on that warning. If RC1 holds up, we should be flying 4.10.3 on Live at the show. If it doesn’t, expect an RC2. Either way, I’m watching the Devtracker, and that 5.0 PTU is still sitting right behind it…