How to avoid the worst bugs in Star Citizen (as of v4.0.2)
The first trick you'll need to learn is how to Server/Region Hop. Some of the worst bugs require just leaving the current server and going to a different one.
To force a server change you'll need to exit back to menu and change your region to something else.
Note: If you attempt to start the game in the same region, the game leans toward placing you in the server where you've been most recently.
Elevators
- Bed log as often as you can to avoid current hangar instance issues and set your spawn at a less popular station. Most hangar instance issues have been fixed by now, but they occassionally pop back up in busier stations (such as Checkmate) on certain servers.
- If the elevator to your hangar isn't working, try all the other elevators. If none of the elevators work, you'll either need to go to a "Pad" and hitch a ride with someone, or server hop to find a working server.
To avoid losing cargo, always store your ship (completely) before leaving your hangar.
There's a nasty bug where leaving your hangar by elevator doesn't properly store your ship, so it often will lose cargo, or else it will need to be reclaimed before you can retrieve it.
Wait for the elevator to completely store your ship (either the ship icon dissappears or the hangar lights turn back on) before leaving.
To avoid losing refinery jobs, retrieve your ship first, then store it before collecting any cargo from the refinery.
Refineries are still using old tech, so you can't send the cargo directly to the station inventory. You need to make sure that your hangar has been instanced first by spawning (and then storing) a ship.
If you collect a refinery job and the cargo doesn't appear on the ship, store and then re-retrieve the ship to get the cargo to appear.
I have had to do this a few times in a row to get the cargo to finally appear (well I haven't had to do it more than 2 times in a row... Yet).
If you happen to be using a Hull-A for this, I would recommend extending the spindle first before storing the ship.
Always turn off engines when landing anywhere with gravity.
Ships have a bad habit of becoming airborne, if it does become air-borne, try to climb a nearby structure and jump to your ship... If it's barely off the ground you can remove certain armor components and stack them as boxes to try to get a little higher.
Note: The only exception to this is if you're bed logging while landed on a planet. In that case, the next time you load in, there's a chance that your ship spawns in before the ground does, and you will fall under the planet's surface. So leave your engines on if you plan to bed log while landed (or in atmosphere in general).
Always leave engines on when exiting your ship anywhere without gravity.
As long as your engines are on in space (and you're in the default coupled mode) your ship will slow to a stop even if something crashes into it.
Don't Alt+F4 in hangars ever.
Particularly in hangars, if your game crashes, or you Alt-F4, this will cause your hangar to become "unstowed"
https://issue-council.robertsspaceindustries.com/projects/STAR-CITIZEN/issues/STARC-159288
Do not enter an elevator immediately, always wait for the doors to open and verify that the elevator is actually there.
There was only ever one exception to this at a particular Lagrange point station where an elevator would always open up to a black void, but crossing the wall of black would reveal that the elevator was actually there. 99% of the time this is not the case. If you're truly curious, just try to put half of your body over the line, if your body dips down a foot or two, there is no elevator.
Don't sprint into an elevator full of other players.
Particularly in some of the executive hangar locations, at worst you risk glitching your buddy into the station interior. At best, nothing happens or you only slightly injure someone else in the elevator.
Do not land on asteroids (particularly the ones outside of the Pyro asteroid bases).
This has a decent chance of causing a "purple glow" to highlight your ship just as the server decides that something is wrong and it needs to clean up your ship. After this, your ship will be considered lost or destroyed.
How to not die when using the ATLS.
Stand in front of the ATLS, wait a few seconds for the game to register your current location properly, then enter the ATLS and don't move anything while the animation for getting in the ATLS plays out.
The ATLS currently has a bad habit of glitch teleporting into walls/vehicles/containers if you're moving around too much as you get in.
Jump when exiting a structure at any Pyro outpost.
There is an occassional issue where you will fall through the map where the edge of a structure's base meets the ground. It doesn't happen very often... But it is incredibly frustrating when it does.
If you're unable to jump through a wormhole...
There's a bug where the jump drive gets removed from the quantum drive if you ever swap it out. You can buy another jump drive at the station on either end of the wormhole.
Store and then retrieve your ship after refueling to avoid being stranded without fuel mid-jump.
There's a bug where your ship "appears" to be refueled, but when you quantum travel to a distant planet as soon as you cross the barrier over into a different server the fuel level in your ship will revert to pre-refueling levels and you will run out of quantum mid-transit. Storing your ship forces the fuel level to be applied/updated across all servers in the shard.
If you get stuck in a wall/rock...
Take off your arm armor first and place it at your feet. Sometimes this is enough to push you out.
If that's not enough, attempt to use a multi-tool tractor beam to pick up the armor box and then pull it in close to your character's body. If you have a friend nearby they can also attempt to throw boxes at you (if some portion of you is sticking out) or they can incapacitate you, then drag your body out with a tractor beam, then revive you.
Don't send/receive party invites while the sender/recipient are in an instanced location (any elevator or hangar) or else you will not see their marker.
Something about how you are in a different dimension messes around with the party markers and then you'll need to kick/reinvite the player to have their marker show up again.
Don't stand up immediately from your seat the second you enter quantum.
This is a quick way to get thrown from your ship and be stranded in space. Give your ship a few seconds to completely enter quantum before getting up.
Don't suicide immediately after setting your spawn to a different hospital/location.
This is a particularly account breaking bug where, if you do this, there's a chance that you brick your character. What will happen is that you will always die immediately after you try to get up from the hospital bed. Checking your game log will show that you are constantly committing suicide the second you get up. This issue will persist across all servers, and probably only goes away with requesting some sort of account reset, or waiting until the next patch is delivered.
I have a few requests:
I went salvaging, had 12 Scu in boxes on my ships storage grid and stored the ship. The boxes were then gone. - is say just move the boxes of the grid to the elevator and into the warehouse to prevent this but I am not sure about the reliability and feasibility for bigger loads.
The 'sike we didn't fill up your fuel' issue. Where you fill up at a station and then Quantumjump to somewhere only to be left stranded because the fuel resetted to what it was.
And lastly as a returning player, didn't play since 3.17. What the hell happened to the personal beacons?
For the salvaging issue, did you pump out the salvage into physicalized crates first, or just store the ship without physicalizing the cargo?
I covered the fuel issue with the third to last point:
Personal beacons are mostly gone with the new mobiglass. You can still put out medical beacons by holding 'M' when you're incapacitated (there's a prompt for this). I would expect to see the other beacons return along with the guild features that we'll probably see sometime later this year.
Thanks so much! Didn't realise the stashing ship one was for the fuel.
Yes physicalised it in the Boxes. The 13SCU in internal Vulture Storage were kept just the Boxes from the grid Vanished.
I forgot to include the way to avoid the cargo loss bug, I'll add it in now. Basically this bug happens when you leave your hangar before storing your ship. So the way to avoid it is to always store your ship (wait for the hangar to completely store it before leaving), or else send the cargo down the freight elevator before leaving.