(EDIT: Please see the comments. I ran out of room in this post and am adding additional info in a reply. Thank you for the awesome feedback! Last update 11/29/17 11:30PM. Updates in follow-up comment) (I hope this is a good thing for people to copy/paste as a catch-all for basic questions) Hello everyone, In an effort to try and keep our newer PTU participants informed in an orderly way and get newer participants up to speed on the current state of affairs, I'm making this "survival guide" This has more than just bug fixes. It also has common things you can expect to experience. At this time, some of these things simply do not have a workaround. If this is the case, I will do my best to explain why in layman's terms . Index: 1.) Setting PTU Expectations 2.) Who can test the PTU, how is it different from live, and why can't I log in? 3.) How To Be Helpful 4.) Common Problems and Workarounds ----------------- 1.) Setting PTU Expectations: ----------------- The PTU is a test environment and is primarily designed to work out bugs in (sometimes very) unstable builds. These builds will crash frequently, your FPS will mostly be terrible (barring some exceptions) and you can typically expect about a half hour of gameplay before you get the boot (more on that in the bugs section below). When you participate in a PTU, you should not expect it to be playable. At this time, you are not loading in to play 3.0. You are loading in and accessing 3.0 so that CiG can collect data on what is going wrong, fix it, and patch it. Consequently, you can, and should, expect a lot of things to go wrong, fail, break, crash, freeze and do hilarious other things. For more information on the PTU, Check this out: https://robertsspaceindustries.com/faq/faq-ptu When you load in and experience these inevitable issues, do not let this frustrate you. There are ways you can help things move along more quickly, which we will cover here. However, keep in mind that frustrated forum posts are not the answer. We have a system in place to help work through the bugs, and as a PTU build participant, using it is important. If you find that the bugs are unbearable, and you would not like to participate in the process of documenting and prioritizing these bugs, please do not simply get angry that the product is "unplayable", as playing a functional system should not be what you expect to do. If this is what you want, wait until the bugs are worked out. There will be a point that the game is moved from testing to live, and at that time, the "playing" can begin. ----------------- 2.) Who can test the PTU, how is it different from live, and why can't I log in?: ----------------- At this time, people who can test the PTU are Evocati, Wave 1 testers, subscribers and concierge members. If you aren't sure if you belong to any of these groups, here's some information you can read to catch up: Becoming a subscriber: https://robertsspaceindustries.com/faq/subscriptions What is a concierge member?: https://robertsspaceindustries.com/comm-link/transmission/13135-Customer-Service-FAQ What is a Wave One Tester and Evocati?: https://robertsspaceindustries.com/faq/PTU-Invites The PTU is not accessible to everyone due to the volume of errors and bugs it contains. The people who can access it are the ones that CiG expects will be the most helpful to the development process. If you are not part of one of these groups, hang tight for a more stable build. CiG will most definitely release the PTU to a wider audience when it is ready. If you ARE part of one of the groups who are currently testing the PTU and are just getting involved now, here are some things to keep in mind: 1.) In order to access the PTU, you MUST be using the new launcher. The old launcher will NOT update to the new one. It is a download. It is recommended that you first uninstall your old launcher and files completely, then download the new installer. Bear in mind that the old launcher may still try and pull 3.0 down - if it does, and you try to launch it, you will get a 10002 error. The new launcher can be found here: https://install.robertsspaceindustries.com/star-citizen/RSI-Setup-1.0.0-ptu.25.exe 2.) Once the installer is downloaded, it will require a login, Your regular username and password will not work. You will need to first create a copy of your account onto the PTU servers. To do this, login to your account on the rsi website, Select My RSI --> My Account and under the Settings option, you will see a yellow menu item in the left hand menu that says "Public Test Universe". Select this and copy your account to the PTU. Edit: For quick access to the account copy page, go here: https://robertsspaceindustries.com/account/copy/ptu But, it's good to know where it's housed on the RSI site as well. 3.) After this is complete, you will receive an email with a new password, that is only valid for the PTU. Your username will remain the same, and this email can take some time (for some people, it has taken over 45 minutes) to arrive. Take the password provided, and log into the patcher. 4.) The file download is massive. However thanks to the new patcher, you will only have to go through one major download, and all other downloads will be incremental. So get up and go make a snack. 5.) Log in! If you experience issues, see the issues section below. ----------------- 3.) How To Be Helpful ----------------- So you've made it into an instance, now what? Well, the first thing you should do is catch up on patch notes and see what's going on. You can do that here: https://robertsspaceindustries.com/spectrum/community/SC/forum/4/thread/star-citizen-alpha-3-0-0-aa-ab-ptu-673332-patch-no and also in the "patch notes" section on the launcher. As of right now the patch notes help explain what is currently being tested. Focus on those things. During your gameplay you will run into bugs and crashes. When this happens, we have a place to document them, called the Issue Council. https://ptu.cloudimperiumgames.com/community/issue-council For those of you who have worked with the Issue Council before, NOTE: This Issue Council is in a different place from the 2.6 version and is housed on the PTU website for some reason. So if you went looking for it and couldn't find it, that's why. Do your best to record the things that happen to you and then take them to the IC and submit them. However, I implore you to thoroughly search the Issue Council before submitting. Why? Well, odds are good that your bug has already been submitted. In this case, instead of creating a bug report, the better thing to do is contribute to the existing one and document your experience there. Additionally, it is in your/our best interest to load your PC specifications into the issue council system here: https://ptu.cloudimperiumgames.com/community/issue-council/specs As doing so will post your specs with every report you submit. As a side note, posting issues in the forums that are bugs is generally discouraged, as they should be in the Issue Council. The common sentiment is that the feedback forum should be to debate game mechanics - not report what is broken about them. ----------------- 4.) Common Problems and Workarounds ----------------- 1.) Error 10002 (or any 10k Error): You have the wrong launcher. See section 2. 2.) Errors in the 20000 and 30000 range: This will happen when in a server, or trying to log into a server. It means the server is full, or the instance you were trying to connect to has crashed. This is not your rig, so just try again. Expect this to happen 50% of the time on logins or more at this point. 3.) Error 15006: This is a server authentication issue, and is server-side. If this happens, it's probably happening to all of us. Hop onto the 3.0 chat to see, or just hang tight. This is not your rig, and you cannot fix it. In some instances of this error, there will be steps you will need to take to make the error disappear after it has been resolved server-side. These steps are usually announced by a CiG employee in the 3.0 chat. Any forum post describing "fixes" for this error are coincidental. 4.) An "infinite" black screen when loading into an instance: This is common and is actually not infinite. The loading time is extremely long right now and for some people is taking upwards of 15 minutes. This largely depends on where you live, as the closer to a datacenter you are, the better this gets. Good PC hardware does slightly improve this, but will not fix it. There is nothing software-side that can be edited to fix this right now, and will be addressed in a patch. 5.) My FPS is bad: This is the big one. You (and 98% of the rest of us) are experiencing this, and it has nothing to do with your rig, and what can/cannot run star Citizen. At the time of writing this I am playing on an i17 8700k with 32gigs of DDR4, a PCIe SSD and a 1080. I get 15 FPS. The issue is that FPS is currently being affected by the networking, and the netcode optimizations are only just now being implemented. In other words: if you get 40+ FPS, you won the location lottery of living near a datacenter. If you're getting 25FPS or less (down to 10-15 in most cases) you are in the large majority of users. 6.) I crashed out in 10 minutes!: Yes, you did. This is normal, and we're waiting on a patch to fix it. 7.) I can't quantum travel!: Yes you can. Read the patch notes. There is an issue where QT points will become unaccessible, however. If this happens to you, relog, and report the issue to the issue council. 8.) My ship spawns without doors!: Relog, and IC report. 9.) I can't log in, my password is wrong: See section 2. 10.) I tried transferring cargo and the game crashed. Now I'm broke: This is happening a lot. By repeating the step of recopying your account, you will effectively overwrite the old data and "reset" your cash balance. I would recommend this as your resolution. (See the follow-up in comments for more!)