Disclaimer: What works for me in-game may not necessarily work for you as there is a list of Star Citizen issues and bugs that affect player accounts differently.

This is a collection of notes, tips, and playingtesting knowhow some people may find useful.

The Issue Council

https://issue-council.robertsspaceindustries.com/projects/STAR-CITIZEN
The Issue Council is where playtesters go to report bugs they find in Star Citizen. It's the only real way to ensure the bugs and issues you encounter get seen by developers. The more repros and confirmations, the more chance it may end up on the Known Issues list.

How to Use the Issue Council
https://pleasefix.notion.site/Getting-Started-With-PleaseFix-4dc30ce218614634909e12f6beac97d7

How to Use the Issue Council (effectively) to Search for Issues
- Enter your query into the Search bar using the most relevant keywords
- Go to the Filters icon (the icon with three sliders) next to the Search Button. At the top, check the boxes for Open, Under Investigation, and Confirmed and hit Show Search Results at the bottom. By checking those three boxes, you'll only see the active bug report and won't see all the Archived reports and have a cleaner query experience.

In case you all weren't aware, you can "save" your Issue Council Search filters by using the URL generated after you setup your filters. For example this url is setup to sort issues only by Open, Confirmed, and Under Investigation and omits archived reports: https://issue-council.robertsspaceindustries.com/projects/STAR-CITIZEN/issues?sort=relevance&statuses=open,confirmed,underinvestigation

Video: https://youtu.be/4Xk_1hIMtY8

After creating your bug report, if it is a very specific bug, it may be difficult to get repros, so it is best practice to post a link in sc-testing-chat of your bug report on a regular basis to get more views and thus potentially get the minimum contributions necessary.

Example of a user-friendly IC format showing both issue title and link:
Planets and moons texture glitched https://issue-council.robertsspaceindustries.com/projects/STAR-CITIZEN/issues/STARC-104367

#sc-testing chat

https://robertsspaceindustries.com/spectrum/community/SC/lobby/38230
If you want the latest development news, this is the place to be. It's located on the right side of the forum in the Chat Lobbies. However, before you go galavanting into that chat, know there is an etiquette to follow to get the most of out of it.

Sc-testing-chat best practices:

1. Please read the Message of the Day (MOTD can by found in the upper right corner by clicking Channel Info).
2. When you enter this chat take a minute to scroll up in chat to see what people are discussing. If you're there to report a rather common bug affecting lots of users, your question may have already been asked and answered.
3. Feedback regarding the project development is very valuable and will get much better visibility and chance of being read in the Feedback forum rather than this subforum with a scrolling chat. The focus here is to expediently share specific issues for troubleshooting and reproduction.
4. You can search for dev comments to get info that may not be mentioned in MOTD (look up Wakapedia-CIG and Bault-CIG).
5. Come prepared after already doing a search in the Issue Council for the issues you are running into. Post Issue Council links showing the title and the link to save everyone time for a faster contribution and response.
6. No update on MOTD news means the issues are being worked on. It is not necessary to ask "when" questions. You will see an update when an update is ready to be shared.
7. Alpha testing can be frustrating but sc-testing-chat is not the place to vent, it's place to discuss bugs and look for solutions. Take a breath and enter testing-chat when you're calm. If you want to vent, you can do so in the appropriate forums (ie. General or Feedback) as it is disruptive and prevents people from discussing actual testing matters and/or helping others with their issues.
8. Being antagonistic towards other backers, CIG staff, and moderation, and disrupting testing chat on purpose will get you put on probation for misconduct. Don't assume you can get away with misuing a purpose-driven chat just because you're bored and think the mods aren't around.

How to find Waka's latest comments:
Click the speech bubble on the top right of the sc-testing-chat forum, then click Wakapedia-CIG's name and View Posts. Bault-CIG and Ahmed-CIG also post ocassionally. Alternatively, there are many Star Citizen orgs and discord groups that have webhooks for developer and MOTD messaging, that will make it much easier to find these comments all in one place.

How to avoid the "bad" servers by using your Friend's List as a Server List

Shard Degradation Explained
In current state (Static SM), Star Citizen shards slowly degrade over time and they degrade faster the more populated they are. The more degraded a shard is, it will manifest an amalgam of bugs that is different on a per-shard basis. A shard that was healthy when you last logged out may no longer be that way the next time you login. You can choose to deal with and workaround the bugs existing on the shard you're currently in or you can opt to join another shard with possibly less severe bugs.

What you want to avoid is using Star Citizen's default Region Matchmaking that initially tries to place you in the server you were on last (which may have since degraded or is offline) or on some other random shard without taking into account the current server health, meaning it can put you in "dead" or "dying" shards repeatedly. This is how people end up with 60030/16 error codes and running into all sorts of bugs like black screens and long loading times because they are unwittingly trying to load into a degraded or offline server.

Instead, grow your Friends List, which gives you more visibility and access to more servers per region depending on what regions your friends typically play in. Right clicking your friend's names in the Main Menu lets you see server populations so you can pick and choose more populated shards which are usually the more stable ones. Personally, I try to only join shards with 500+ players. I avoid low population shards because there's no telling if they are low population because it's a "fresh" server or a degraded server.

Video: https://youtu.be/SBopXNSlmoo

How to Quickly Diagnose if a Shard is stable with a few preliminary Login / Shard Health Tests

1. Inventory Food / Drink delay test (can I get a drink from inventory to my hand and drink without any input delays or do I have to drop items to eat/drink)
2. Mission delay test
3. Door panel input delay test
4. Transit / Elevator delay test
5. ASOP / ATC delay test

If a shard has been up for a while and is on the decline, generally service delays worsen and can herald game breaking bugs or worse if you stay in them. If a shard has service delays lasting 2-5 seconds, or in more severe cases, lasting minutes or transit and elevators aren't working, I switch shards.

4.0 Preview Purpose and Intent

There seems to be some confusion on what the purpose and intent of the 4.0 Preview is. It is Static Server Meshing's first real LIVE testing environment extended soak test. The purpose of a soak test is to monitor server stability, performance, and reveal all of the bugs and issues related to the current SM config in the live environment.

4.0 Preview Status Update
https://robertsspaceindustries.com/spectrum/community/SC/forum/1/thread/4-0-preview-status-update
4.0 Preview - Shard Locked Accounts Update (Error 60030)
https://robertsspaceindustries.com/spectrum/community/SC/forum/1/thread/4-0-preview-update-shard-locked-accounts/468403
4.0 Preview Major Known Issues
https://robertsspaceindustries.com/spectrum/community/SC/forum/3/thread/psa-4-0-major-known-issues