Star Citizen Alpha 4.10.2 Patch Notes Guide (Oct 9): RSI Discovery Month, Constellation Rework and Physics Networking

Alpha 4.10.2 landed on the LIVE servers on Friday, October 9, 2026, and it is a bigger drop than a point-release number suggests. There is a Stanton-wide event called RSI Discovery Month, a rebuild of the whole Constellation Mk IV family, a rewrite of how loose cargo and throwables sync over the network, and 71 bug fixes. If you have been away for a patch or two, this guide walks through what shipped, what the event actually asks you to do, how the Constellation rental works, whether your progress is safe, and which parts of the coverage I could confirm against Cloud Imperium's own pages.

What I could verify and what I could not

I want to be upfront about sourcing, because patch-note guides tend to blur this. The RSI Comm-Link patch notes page and the Spectrum release-note threads load their text in the browser with scripts, so I could not read the full patch notes text directly. What I did read directly was the RSI Discovery Month announcement text (Comm-Link 21334), through the Star Citizen Wiki's mirror of it. Everything about the patch notes themselves (bug fix lists, Mk IV changes, physics netcode, VR) comes from secondary write-ups that say they were written from CIG's Spectrum post and the full RSI notes. Where a number or date rests on those write-ups, I say so.

Nothing in this article invents numbers beyond those sources. Where the sources are silent, for example on ship stats for the Mk V Centaurus, I say they are silent rather than guess.

Is Alpha 4.10.2 live, and which build?

Yes. The Spectrum LIVE release notes thread for Alpha 4.10.2 exists on RSI's site, and Timesaver quotes its opening line that Alpha Patch 4.10.2 has been released onto the LIVE environment. Two secondary write-ups give the launcher build as 12881860 (shown in the launcher as 4.10.2-LIVE.12881860 by one of them). If your launcher still shows 4.10.1, fully close it, let it re-check for updates, and if that fails log out and back in.

4.10.2 is a Persistent Universe patch. It does not touch Squadron 42, which is a separate product.

One practical note from the coverage: the first public test build for this cycle went up on September 25 and the release candidates ran through early October, so this is a patch that sat on the PTU for a while. The first day or two after any LIVE push tends to be the roughest for server stability, so adjust expectations accordingly. This is still an alpha.

Is there a wipe in Alpha 4.10.2?

No. Both SCRC and Timesaver, citing the live notes, report that long term persistence is preserved. That means your items, aUEC and reputation carry over from 4.10.1. The Timesaver piece also mentions that the last full wipe was with Alpha 4.8 on May 14, 2026, which I could only find in that one outlet, so treat the exact date as unconfirmed.

There is a line that confuses people each patch. The live notes end with a standing reminder to imprint your ship loadouts before heading out, which is routine housekeeping so your loadouts do not scramble across a version change. It is not a warning that your account is being reset.

The usual caution still applies. aUEC is test currency, and CIG's documentation has long said it can be wiped at any point to start a clean testing cycle and is not reimbursed if lost. Pledged ships are tied to your account. Ships you bought in game with aUEC are the ones exposed when a wipe eventually comes.

RSI Discovery Month: what it is

The official announcement frames the event as RSI inviting pilots across Stanton to celebrate the arrival of the next-generation Constellation, the Mk V Centaurus. You find special RSI installations dedicated to the history of the Constellation Mk IV and the new Mk V (plus its companion, the Skylark), and then you play your way: defend other pilots, collect vital materials, and deliver supplies across the system. Progress shows up in your mobiGlas.

The announcement lists four tracks in the mobiGlas: Defense, Transport, Collection and Overall. Every event mission moves you toward rewards, and each track has four tiers. The announcement says the rewards cover ship paints, flight blades, components, armor, weapons and tools, and that once earned they are yours to keep for good.

Per the Impound's guide, which checked the official event pages on October 9, points from one mission advance both its own category and your overall progress. You can specialize in one career, but a Defense contract will not give you Transport progress.

Where the event is

Discovery Month takes place in Stanton. The Impound's guide says the new RSI installations sit around Hurston, ArcCorp and microTech and their moons, and that Crusader has missions but no nearby RSI installation for the event. That matters in one specific way: a contract that starts near Crusader and needs an RSI drop-off can send you to another planetary region. Read the destination before you load cargo.

SCRC adds that the last PTU build added Starmap records for every event platform, so you can route to the event locations directly from the map.

The three contract families

Defense is the combat lane. The notes say RSI wants the space around microTech kept clear of pirates while visitors arrive. On the ship side, Defend Ship means protecting a friendly vessel and Patrol sends you through designated areas to investigate possible threats. On foot, contracts split into eliminating a specific target, clearing hostile forces, or taking on a group and killing its leader. Ground work happens at caves, outposts and distribution centers.

Transport has the broadest mix. Ling Family Hauling, Covalex and FTL want goods moved to the expo platform from landing zones, distribution centers and low-orbit stations. Around that sit courier deliveries of event supplies, Recover Item contracts for cargo lost in transit or taken by hostile forces (ship or on foot), and Refueling calls to stranded ships. There is also an RSI Relay Race, where you move golden Constellation Centaurus model boxes between designated locations, and the Constellation Rental Offer, covered next.

Collection is the industrial lane. Salvage contracts ask you to fracture abandoned ships and recover construction materials for delivery to Lagrange points. Resource gathering contracts involve gathering, refining and delivering Iron, Beryl and Quantanium to landing zones. Shubin wants raw and crafted materials for ship manufacturing and Adagio wants hulls broken down for recycling, with the named salvage targets including Kruger Merlins, Archimedes and Constellations. Check that you actually have the fracturing or mining capability a contract needs before you undock.

The Constellation Rental Offer: how the five-day rental works

This is the part most people are here for. The announcement is clear on the core rule: RSI is providing five days of special access to the new Constellation Mk V Centaurus for all pilots who complete the Constellation Rental Offer mission. A separate section of the same page says the Mk V Centaurus and its companion Skylark will be available for every pilot to fly upon completion of the RSI Discovery Month: Constellation Rental Offer mission during Discovery Month, and calls it a chance to experience RSI's vision of the future for free before its release.

What the sources say about the details:

• The contract sits in the Transport missions, and the exact name to look for is RSI Discovery Month: Constellation Rental Offer.
• The rental covers the Constellation Mk V Centaurus and the RSI Skylark snub fighter, for five days.
• The rental is temporary. The paints, blades, components and gear from the reward tracks are permanent, but the ships are not.
• Ships pictured on the reward chart represent paint rewards, not ship grants. The Impound also stresses that completing the rental mission does not turn the Centaurus or Skylark into permanently owned ships.

What the sources do not say: when the five-day clock starts, whether the rental can be earned again after it expires, or whether it can be extended. The Impound states that the published material does not specify a separate rental-start button or an extension rule, and a second help site lists the same open questions. Do not assume the five days can be banked for later.

One thing worth knowing about the announcement page itself: the mirrored text includes older copy variants. One earlier draft said the access came from completing your first Relay Race mission, while the current wording ties it to the Constellation Rental Offer. The Impound is explicit that the Relay Race golden boxes are cargo objectives and the rental is tied to its own named mission, so look at the contract title rather than doing the wrong delivery and walking to the terminal for nothing.

The Mk V Centaurus has not had its stats published in anything I could verify, so I am not listing crew counts, cargo capacity or weapons. One outlet describes it as a four-crew ship, but I could not confirm that against an official page.

Reward tracks in more detail

The Impound's guide reproduces what it describes as the official event chart. The headline items it lists, which I am passing along as secondary information:

• Transport: Grade B coolers in sizes 2 and 3 and the Zeus Mk II flight blade.
• Defense: Grade B power plants in sizes 2 and 3 and the Meteor flight blade.
• Collection: Grade B radars and the Mantis flight blade.
• Overall: starts with size 1 Grade B components and reaches size 1 to 3 Grade A power plants at tier 4, with Aurora Mk II and Constellation Mk IV flight blades along the way.

The chart describes the blades as handling-and-speed parts. I did not find an official points-per-tier breakdown, and one help site explicitly says it could not find one either, so I am not going to quote point thresholds. The mobiGlas Journal shows the live numbers. Trust what your own Journal says over any chart, including this one.

Requirements: Game Package vs Free Fly

Discovery Month is an in-game event for people who already own a game package. It is not a Free Fly. Timesaver and a separate Star Citizen help site both say you need a package to take part, and RSI's own support pages cover the "Missing a Game Package" launcher message that appears when an account has no package.

So what does that mean in practice:

• If you own a Game Package: update to 4.10.2, open the mobiGlas, and the event contracts are there.
• If you have no package on the account: the event is out of reach until a Free Fly window opens, because it is not a trial event.
• Free Fly: no active Free Fly was reported on October 10, and CIG had not announced new dates in the coverage I checked. Timesaver suggests the next big trial window tends to fall around the Intergalactic Aerospace Expo in November, but that is a pattern, not an announcement.

I am not going to tell you to buy anything to get the rental. If you are on the fence about the game, wait for a Free Fly and see how the event looks in practice.

Constellation Mk IV: the Gold Standard rework

Coverage of the notes says every Mk IV variant (Andromeda, Aquila, Taurus and the VIP Phoenix) was rebuilt to bring the series up to current standards, with a vehicle balance pass on top. That is a full interior and exterior pass, not just paint.

The balance pass is the part nobody has numbers for yet. SCRC says CIG applied a full vehicle balance pass but the summaries do not list values, and I could not read the notes directly to confirm any specific change. If you fly an Aquila or Taurus for cargo or exploration, test it yourself before you plan a run around any guess you read online.

The retirement window

SCRC says the rebuild coincides with the start of the Mk IV's retirement window, which closes on January 27, 2027, after which the ship leaves the pledge store and in-game shops and becomes obtainable in game only. The Impound puts it more softly: October 20 closes Discovery Month, the retirement window ends January 27, 2027, and existing Mk IV ships remain in the game and keep receiving development updates. A help site citing the RSI FAQ gives the same January 27 date. Those two readings are consistent, but I could not read the FAQ myself, so check the official pledge store text before making any account decision.

Community chatter that in-game purchases of the new Constellation hulls are coming in a later patch is unconfirmed, and I would not plan around it.

Physics Networking Overhaul

This is the change most players will feel without ever opening the event. CIG rewrote the netcode that controls how loose physics objects behave across the network. According to the summary of the notes, the old system had the client treat the server's view of an object as either completely right or completely wrong, so one bad state could cascade into persistent desync, rubber-banding, and objects sliding or bouncing for no visible reason.

The new approach works like this:

• Incoming server data gets a trust score. Trust drops when your client has just done something the server cannot know about yet, such as bumping into a crate, or when the server data is stale.
• Corrections arrive as velocity nudges instead of teleports. A teleport is the last resort and only happens after a check confirms the destination is clear.
• Tolerances scale with your latency and the size of the object.
• Throws run from the moment you actually released the object, so what you threw should travel the way you threw it.
• Tractor beams hand control over cleanly on release instead of pulling the item back toward where it was picked up, which was the cause of the slide and bounce when setting something down.
• A separate collision fix stops objects wobbling, hopping or spinning before they settle.

The scope is narrow. It applies to freely simulated objects such as cargo boxes, grenades, throwables and other loose items. Ships, vehicles, characters and anything attached to them still use the previous system. CIG labels it experimental, and per the coverage it has safeguards to revert it on the live servers if it causes major problems. If your hauling runs have felt like fighting a poltergeist, this is the patch to watch, but give it a few days of real play before judging.

VR, armor, eyebrows and Wikelo

VR support is still labelled experimental. The headline change is a new zoom that works by narrowing the field of view. CIG describes it as a temporary solution for scopes until scopes are fully physicalized. It applies to F interaction zooming, aim-down-sights and precision targeting in ships, and FPS weapon scopes. A new Zoom Gameplay Strength option controls how strong the effect is, and setting it to zero turns VR zoom off. Advanced users get console variables for the magnification threshold, head tracking scale, positional tracking, lock angle and smoothing. Two fixes ride along: UI icons no longer vanish after their spawn animation, and mouse smoothing no longer resets when you switch to VR. Grounded Look now uses your aim direction for hand mining, and in Freelook you can aim the tractor beam with your head.

On the character side:

• The Heavy Combat Hunter 3 armor set arrives with its full range of tints.
• Three camouflage variants were added to the RRS armor line.
• Nine new eyebrow options were added to character customization.
• Wikelo now sells recipes for the Gemini LMG and Grey Combat Armour, with a new mission to go with the LMG.
• An RSI Constellation Mk II promotional display and an RSI-branded two-handed crate were added as props.

Bug fixes: the 71 that matter

The live notes close 71 issues since 4.10.1, plus five crash or stability fixes. Thirteen of the 71 came through the Issue Council, CIG's public bug tracker. Multiple exploits were also closed. Here are the fixes most players will notice, again from the secondary summary.

Contracts and missions

• Orison Relief Support salvage contracts could be completed far faster than intended because hand-in quantities were set well below what the reward track was balanced around. Required amounts were raised substantially across the small, medium and large versions, and difficulty ratings were updated to match.
• A family of contracts that reported themselves unavailable the moment you accepted them has been fixed.
• Handing in all cargo at the first stop of a multi-stop hauling contract no longer makes the remaining cargo disappear, and leftover cargo sent down the freight elevator is refunded reliably.
• Legal delivery contracts no longer route you to unlawful sites that marked players as trespassing at Cry-Astro locations.
• Animal hunting missions no longer send players to locations with no Kopion or Marok present.
• Refractor array codes in the Nyx QV Breaker Station Mining Rights missions show the real code instead of zeros.
• Battaglia salvage objectives no longer reach zero percent before the hull has been scraped.
• Eliminate Target bounty titles no longer name a ship type, because the name could be wrong.
• In Siege of Orison, comms towers that would not spin again after a reset were fixed, Command Center airlock doors no longer open during the boss fight before the commander is dead, and the fifth player entering an instance is no longer left behind.
• The holographic skull head is back in Arena Commander's Kill Collector mode during Day of the Vara.

Ships and vehicles

• Shields with flat damage resistance were applying no resistance at all, because a resistance band was only treated as valid when its minimum sat below its maximum. Flat values now work as intended.
• A vehicle that lost control after quantum travel on a poor connection, with the drive stuck part way through shutdown, now gets its thrusters back even when network messages arrive out of order.
• Origin X1 series weapons fire and move again with a gimbal mount fitted.
• Lowering the rear ramp on any Drake Cutlass no longer levers the ship up and puts the side doors out of reach.
• Ground vehicle treads move with the vehicle again.
• The radar on the Mirai Pulse and Pulse LX is no longer inverted, and the Lephari radar is correctly listed as Grade C.
• Magazines on a carried weapon no longer deal fatal collision damage to a snub fighter docked to your ship.
• The MISC Prospector no longer comes out of a hangar tilted, and retrieved ships arrive in the power state they were stored in instead of with engines running.
• Spawning a Drake Caterpillar with a crew manifest now puts an AI pilot in the detachable command module.
• Abandoned vehicles at Everus Harbor, Seraphim Station, Bajini Point and Port Tressler now expire on a timer, freeing landing pads.
• Pixelated landing gear is fixed on all MISC Hull variants, the Kruger Stingray and the Aegis Eclipse, and the Gladius Dunlevy has its rudder and wing decals back.
• Vehicle modules bought with aUEC now have collision and render the interior correctly, and placeholder weapon racks in captain's quarters and armories are interactable again.

Items, locations and stability

Item fixes cover a dropped heavy machine gun falling through the floor, exploration suits showing four consumable leg slots with only two usable, the Monolith Backpack having no storage, the Morozov-CH Stronghold backpack having no name, helmet fit and visual problems, mixed-up names across the Monolith Arms Liquidator set, and crafting blueprints for a Juster quantum drive and a Sasu power plant that produced the wrong part. Distribution Center exteriors now spawn harvestable resources, a strip of the Orison landing pad has collision again, and outdated textures in New Babbage visor reflections were regenerated.

The five crash and stability fixes include a client crash in the landing gear system, a crash while mission modifiers were applied to a mission log, and a hang in the mission generation service that could stall contract creation. The summary also lists hotfixes already applied during the 4.10.1 window, mostly server stability work that CIG says made shard crash loops and early server shutdowns much less common, plus a cap on how many items can be unstowed onto a freight elevator at once, a fix for Battaglia story contracts never appearing on populated shards, and a fix for an audio thread issue that caused frame rate drops.

What is not in 4.10.2

Two things people ask about are not confirmed in the live notes, per the SCRC summary:

• TTK ship balance: a weekend test of new ship Time-to-Kill values ran inside the first PTU build, but CIG said it was a Tech-Preview folded into the build for convenience and not intended to arrive with 4.10.2. The live notes contain no TTK changes beyond the flat shield resistance fix and the Constellation balance pass.
• Duplicate Login kick: an October 5 test build said login stability changes should fix it, but it is not listed separately in the live notes. Treat it as unconfirmed until CIG or players confirm it.

Practical tips for the first few days

• Read the contract name. The rental comes from the contract titled RSI Discovery Month: Constellation Rental Offer, not from every Transport delivery or from the Relay Race.
• Check the drop-off. If you start near Crusader, remember there is no nearby RSI installation for the event, and RSI drop-offs may be on the other three planetary regions.
• Match the ship to the contract. Salvage needs fracturing capability, resource gathering needs mining and refining, and recovery contracts can turn hostile.
• Imprint your loadouts before you log off, as the live notes remind you.
• Do not hoard aUEC you cannot afford to lose. It is test currency.
• Expect rough edges on day one. The physics netcode is flagged as experimental and the first live days are usually the roughest for servers.

Sources and reading list

Primary pages (read directly where noted):

• RSI Discovery Month announcement text, Comm-Link 21334 (via the Star Citizen Wiki mirror), read directly.
• Star Citizen Alpha 4.10.2 patch notes, RSI Comm-Link, page loads its text with scripts, not readable here.
• Alpha 4.10.2 LIVE Release Notes, Spectrum, not readable here, quoted by secondary outlets.
• Alpha 4.10.2 RSI Discovery Month, Spectrum, not readable here.

Secondary pages used to cross-check, and for all patch-note detail:

• Star Citizen Referral Codes: Alpha 4.10.2 patch notes
• The Impound: RSI Discovery Month guide
• Timesaver: Alpha 4.10.2 patch notes, dated October 10
• Star Citizen Help: RSI Discovery Month

Frequently Asked Questions

Is Star Citizen Alpha 4.10.2 live?

Yes. CIG released Alpha 4.10.2 to the LIVE environment on October 9, 2026. Secondary coverage lists the build as 12881860. If your launcher still shows 4.10.1, close it completely and let it re-check, and log out and back in if the update does not appear.

Is there a wipe in Alpha 4.10.2?

No wipe was reported. Coverage of the live notes says long term persistence is preserved, so your aUEC, items and reputation carry over from 4.10.1. The reminder to imprint your ship loadouts in the notes is routine housekeeping. aUEC remains test currency that CIG can wipe in a future patch without reimbursement.

What is RSI Discovery Month?

It is a Stanton-wide event that arrived with 4.10.2 to celebrate the new Constellation Mk V Centaurus. You take RSI-themed contracts in mobiGlas across Defense, Transport and Collection, earn progress on four reward tracks (Defense, Transport, Collection and Overall), and unlock ship paints, flight blades, components, armor, weapons and tools that you keep permanently.

How long does RSI Discovery Month last?

Most coverage says it runs through October 20, 2026, citing CIG's event FAQ. I could not open the FAQ directly, and one help site reported no official end date on October 9, so check the in-game Journal and RSI's pages before the final weekend if you are chasing a top reward tier.

How do I get the Constellation Mk V Centaurus rental?

Complete the contract named RSI Discovery Month: Constellation Rental Offer, which sits in the Transport missions. RSI's announcement says every pilot who completes it gets five days of special rental access to the Mk V Centaurus and the Skylark. The sources do not say when the five days begin counting or whether you can repeat it.

Do I keep the Constellation Mk V Centaurus after the rental ends?

No. It is a five-day rental, and the Impound's guide stresses that completing the mission does not turn the Centaurus or Skylark into permanently owned ships. The paints, flight blades, components and gear you earn from the reward tracks are the permanent part. The ship has not been published as buyable in anything I could verify.

Do I need a Game Package for Discovery Month, or is it a Free Fly?

You need a Game Package. Discovery Month is an in-game event, not a Free Fly, and accounts without a package cannot join. As of October 10 there was no active Free Fly, and CIG had not announced dates in the coverage I checked.

What changed on the Constellation Mk IV in 4.10.2?

The Andromeda, Aquila, Taurus and Phoenix were rebuilt to current standards. Per the secondary summary, that means remade bridge canopy glass with the big struts removed, a new cargo lift and cargo grid, a rebuilt Taurus cargo bay, new airlock layouts with a side airlock on the Phoenix, reworked habitation and VIP interiors, turret displays, a full exterior art pass with a retirement livery and an emerald livery, and a vehicle balance pass. No balance values have been published in the sources I could read.

What does the Physics Networking Overhaul fix?

It targets desync, rubber-banding and sliding for loose physics objects such as cargo boxes, grenades and throwables. The new system uses a trust score for server data, applies corrections as velocity nudges rather than teleports, runs throws from the moment of release, and changes tractor beam handoff so objects stop snapping back to the pickup point. Ships, vehicles and characters still use the old system, and CIG calls the change experimental.

What bug fixes shipped in 4.10.2?

CIG closed 71 bugs and five crash or stability issues. Examples include contracts reporting themselves unavailable on acceptance, vehicles going unresponsive after quantum travel, multi-stop hauling cargo vanishing at the first drop-off, ships leaving hangars tilted or with engines running, flat shield damage resistance not applying, and an Orison Relief Support salvage exploit that was balanced by raising hand-in amounts. Thirteen of the fixes came from the Issue Council.