I don't understand how they want to sell this game.
You have to buy the game, then the ship with real money? Is there monthly fee? What if my ship us destroy? Need to pay for another one again?

Cara Hoshji is a smart person. She scored so well on her Equivalency that she received a hefty scholarship from Terra University. Graduating with a degree in AstroEngineering, Cara transformed a summer apprenticeship with the Support & Supply Agency, a lesser-known department of the UEE responsible for procuring and transporting resources and supplies to sate the Empire?s massive infrastructure needs, into a full-time position shortly after graduation.

?You?ve probably seen those long snake-like hauling ships pulling trails of massive cargo containers. Those were my life,? Cara said, sitting in her small apartment in Odyssa. From the stacks of packing crates, it would seem that she just moved in, but she?s already been here for three months.

Cara looks over the cramped space wearily. She claims she keeps planning to finally unpack, but she?s either working or too exhausted to try and tackle it.

Her first full-time job with the SSA was in their maintenance department, working with the pit crews to keep the ships flying. Cara had other aspirations though.

I would advise you to hold back your purchase at the moment as Star Citizen is giving me absolutely zero confidence on the project progress due to lack of transparency or just have not progressed much since the main crowd funding has ended. The Hanger Module does not put much confidence in the game while I have no idea when will the playable dog fighting module will be out as it just keep getting pushed back. At this point, it feels like Star Citizen has bloated to the point that it just have way too many features that is difficult to implement them all. At the same time, having overly pricey so-called "pledge" ships just feel like a money grab as people are paying $40 to thousands of dollars for some ships in a video game without any tangible or practical benefits. Games should not be this expensive, despite these pledge ships are "optional" to have, according to some people. If not, it just the developers are terrible in updating the backers who does not check the forums religiously.

It is difficult to see whether a game that is in development will succeed or fail after release, as game development is changing rapidly literally daily but at the moment, I do not have much confidence in Star Citizen due to lack of progress in gameplay elements.

At the same time, I had backed plenty of other projects, where most of my KS projects have either have in game footage to actually playable builds with part or almost completed content. Star Citizen is the only one so far that has absolutely nothing other than the Hanger Module.

Exclusive for our subscribers, get this set of 5 fabric patches of the first ships to have made it into the Star Citizen universe. Wear them with pride and support the cause!

Patches will be ready to ship by mid-April 2014.

Get this set of 3 fabric patches displaying the Star Citizen, RSI and Squadron 42 official logos. Wear them with pride and support the cause!

Patches will be ready to ship by mid-April 2014.

Yup, seems to good to be true. Accessible ship compartment, functional devices like shower, additional vehicle, and on top of that, the most demanding game engine... Even if they pull through, might not be playable on my old 680 by the time it launch.
High hope, but will take advise to hold.

Eric "Wingman" Peterson trollops through another Hangar.

o inside the Asteroid Hangar and Room System
o Mark "Goldshirt" Skelton in the jumpseat

how is this game progressing along? It seems they keep on adding stretch goals and loading their plate with even more stuff than they can handle.

Can they meet their target release date?

no, i havent pledged, i'm waiting for final game before i purchase.

Last year, we promised that every Citizen who backed Richard Garriott’s Shroud of the Avatar crowd funded project would receive a SotA-inspired crossbow weapon for use in Star Citizen’s FPS mode. The Shroud of the Avatar team similarly promised a unique Star Citizen artifact would appear for early backers in their game. The SotA team recently revealed their Vanduul Polearm, based on our Vanduul warrior concept art.

That’s not all: we would like to confirm that the Star Citizen Crossbow is still in the works, and it will make its appearance when an appropriate Star Citizen module launches. For now, you can enjoy your very first look at our current WIP model of the weapon, plus the bolt and ammo box!

Anyone interested in getting a crossbow in Star Citizen can still do so, as long as they back both Star Citizen and Shroud of the Avatar (at the ‘Immortal Adventurer’ pledge level or above.) Be sure to hurry if you would like the Vanduul Polearm in SotA; new backers only have until April 7th to get their late backer status (Benefactor) upgraded to early backer status (Founder), giving them access to all the early backer rewards.

Note that your crossbow will not appear on your account at this time. We will link up with the SotA team before it’s time to launch the weapon.

The Idris corvette is dead; long live the Idris frigate!

The team at Foundry 42 is currently building the first missions for Squadron 42, the single player game that will launch you into the Star Citizen universe. The game’s story calls for the player to start the game aboard a smaller UEE capital ship. We assigned them the Idris, the scrappy little corvette with a fierce bite already designed by Ryan Church.

Concept - Idris Briefing Room
Concept - Idris Briefing Room
Working from the Idris for this piece seemed like a natural fit… until the team whiteboxing the interior found that the original concept was not sized to fit with the Hornet model. Since the Idris would need to carry multiple Hornets (in both Squadron 42 and the persistent universe) they needed to expand the flight deck. Other additions, necessary as we learned exactly how a capital ship would function, necessitated more inside: a tender to support repair operations, medical facilities for the FPS segment and so on. The Idris needed to get bigger and better!

In the end, the ship was a full hundred meters longer and a much more imposing threat than the patrol corvette we originally imagined. As such, we have made the decision to reclassify the ship. The Idris is now a frigate, and existing fiction will be updated to reflect this change wherever possible. We are not removing Idrises from anyone’s inventories; everyone who owned an Idris corvette yesterday owns an Idris frigate today. I’m hoping existing backers will be happy: you’re ending up with twice the ship you pledged for!

While there's not much tangible products to present, I believe you may alter your opinions a bit if you'd at least watch some of their dev videos on their Youtube channel. Most of them actually dictate the developmental work placed into the game.

The only playable component that is out now is the hangar; which does feature accessible ship compartments, a shower, a few vehicles and even a target range to test your weapons. This in fact may also seem not as much, but I believe this may slowly change over the course of the next few months. The citizens of the game are now looking forward to the first iteration of the Dogfighting Module (a simulation of space combat in-game), so you don't have to worry about getting your ships destroyed etc.

What happens to that  40 mil + if this game flops? I do want this game to succeed, not much space sim being produced as it is, but regardless of that shit do happen, so what will happen to that money if this fails?

In the aftermath of Facebook's surprise acquisition of Oculus Rift, Electronic Arts announced last night that it had purchased Cloud Imperium Games, the Chris Roberts-led company currently producing Star Citizen. At present, the final figures behind the purchase are not concrete, but rumors state the price was in the neighborhood of $250 million.

EA are betting on Star Citizen being the critical success Chris Roberts claims it is. The purchase grants EA ownership of the Star Citizen intellectual property that Chris Roberts and the rest of CIG created based on his previous Wing Commander brand.

In the press release detailing the acquisition EA CEO Andrew Wilson stated:

CIG's proven track record and original IP add to EA’s momentum and accelerate our drive towards a multi-billion dollar digital business. With EA’s global reach and publishing network through Origin, Star Citizen is getting the bump it needs to compete with other FPS Space Sim Semi-Sandbox Role Playing Action Games out there in the market.

The announcement also included these words from CIG founder and Star Citizen creator Chris Roberts:

The Star Citizen community has made a big impact on gaming. We're the #1 Kickstarter project, the #1 PayPal channel and the only game daring to support Bitcoin transactions. We've achieved an impossible goal that no other studio could do but us, all thanks to our fans. I’m constantly amazed by the continued support we receive and how this community manages to grow every day. With EA now as a partner, we can finally realize our ambitious goals for Star Citizen.

Per tradition, we are also announcing our next stretch goal today. With the amount of focus and spotlight Star Citizen is getting, we're going to be introducing sunglasses for the characters in-game. The new Origin Delta 453's will help block out all the haters and naysayers that said this game would never be real. We're proving them wrong here today! At the next milestone marker the Origin Delta 453's will be purchasable through the Voyager Direct Store. Unfortunately, due to the recent acquisition by EA we need to delay the Dogfighting Module further to integrate the game into EA's powerful, scalable server architecture. We hope to have this done some time around E3, and can't wait to show you the new improvements!

See you in the verse!

This is the first major purchase by EA since it bought out PopCap games, maker of Plants vs Zombies, in 2011. Nestled firmly under the EA umbrella, it's a clear sign that Star Citizen will have the support and infrastructure to truly break records and match the years of anticipation built up by Roberts and CIG.

We?ve hit another record-setting crowd funding level: $41 million!

I?m incredibly happy to hit this goal as it green-lights a very important research project aimed at improving Star Citizen?s long term future. With this funding, we?ll be looking into procedural generation to help build the universe out in a greater detail and scope in ways we didn?t think possible when we started developing the game! We will have some exciting announcements to make down the line involving some of the talent we?ve been talking to about helping us with procedural system and planet building.

Procedural Generation R&D Team ? This stretch goal will allocate funding for Cloud Imperium to develop procedural generation technology for future iterations of Star Citizen. Advanced procedural generation will be necessary for creating entire planets worth of exploration and development content. A special strike team of procedural generation-oriented developers will be assembled to make this technology a reality.

Last time, we asked you to vote for the next stretch goal?s player reward? and the resounding winner was UEE Marine combat armor! You can read more about the armor, which will be unlocked at $43 million, now:

Omni Role Combat Armor (ORC) mk9
Manufacturer: CDS (Clark Defense Systems)
The ?standard? Marine armor for almost twenty years, ORC armor is prohibitively more expensive than standard-issue infantry body armor used by Army Ground Forces, but the Marines boast far fewer numbers and tend to make compelling arguments to get what they ask for. Clark Defense Systems? ORC armor is created of composite mesh of fibers reinforced with ablative plates, offering a modest protection against both energy and kinetic weapons. While it doesn?t offer the same protection of the Marines? proprietary Nail-armor or their SpecOps variants, ORCmk9 armor is a baseline solution for any number of situations the average Marine will encounter on any given day. Besides, in the words of Lt. Col Armin Trask, ?you wanna know the best armor? Not getting shot.?
We?ve eliminated the least popular reward (bonus UEC) and started a second poll; be sure to vote for what you?d like as the $44 million goal below!

CLOUD IMPERIUM SANTA MONICA
The HUD has moved forward by leaps and bounds. This has been one of our most collaborative pieces of work with other studios and it is really shaping up! Over the course of the past couple of months, we have been working hard to conceptualize and define the base functionality that will drive the HUD and peripheral user interfaces in many of the ships that you will be piloting in the Star Citizen universe.

In any ship, you will be able to manage and interact with many different systems, such as weapons configuration management, power and energy management, shields management, radar configuration, navigation, comms, target tracking, preset configuration, and much more. All of these components need to be quickly accessible to you at any given point in time, especially during heated situations such as combat.

Our goal in designing the cockpit UI was to present such complex components in a manner that is functionally intuitive, yet aesthetically consistent with the fiction in that you?re piloting a ship from the future. One of the biggest challenges in designing any sci-fi interface is striking the right balance between what looks / feels visually interesting and what is functionally efficient, both of which are equally important in driving the immersion as you?re piloting ships in Star Citizen.

CLOUD IMPERIUM AUSTIN
Our Engineers got the full universe cluster configured and deployed to our cloud servers autonomously through our build system, and while our initial tests would only allow 2 or 3 players to connect, we are now up to dozens of us battling every single day. Also, we have many new improvements and enhancements for the Oculus Rift coming in the next Hangar Patch, such as FOV fixes, and dual-screen rendering, which will greatly enhance the VR experience.

In addition, we?ve been working to support artists for enhancing visuals such as making PBR (or PBS) look as fantastic as possible and also greatly improved the shield effects, making them more configurable and now have a ?from cockpit? view of the shields.
We are also very busy integrating systems for the DFM, such as matchmaking, and leaderboards, which will be needed for our upcomming release.

Animation has been very busy cleaning up the data from our first full performance capture session. Now, we are busy integrating the animation curves generated into our in game body and faces. And of course, making sure that all the animations work for the ships coming up in the dogfighting module.

Audio has been busy getting the interactive music working correctly, as well as adding new sound effects for lasers, thrusters, cockpits, breakups and hits ? in addition, recording all the dialogue for the ?b****ing betty? or warning system for the space ships we will be flying soon.

Design has managed to fill 5 of the its open positions ? it was a great month for finding some talented & dedicated designers that will go that extra mile to make Star Citizen the best experience possible. We are moving full steam ahead with BHVR on the economy simulation which will be responsible for generating many of the player missions in the game. It goes without saying that we are knee deep in dogfighting testing, and we are busy assisting with PBR implementation in the hangars, as well as making the tools that will allow us to populate the systems that all of us are looking forward to visiting.