Developer: Cloud Imperium Games
Publisher: None, crowd funded
Website: Robert Space Industries
Live Release Target: 'Early 2015'
Platform: PC- x64 Windows Vista+
Price: $30+ (crowdfunding donations go higher)
02/26/14 - Preliminary Oculus Rift support added in patch 11.1
01/21/14 - NeoGAF Social Organization established - Feel free to join!
12/20/13 - Dogfighting update stream
12/20/13 - Cutlass and firing range added to hangar
11/26/13 - LTI purchase cutoff
10/22/13 - Hornet F7C variants added to hangar
10/12/13 - Avenger added to hangar
10/10/13 - CitizenCon event/stream
08/29/13 - Initial hangar release
08/24/13 - Gamescom hangar presentation
Star Citizen will be released in several modules that will each be continually iterated upon leading up to the full release, starting with the Hangar Module this month. Each module will be available to backers with alpha/beta access. The alpha period will be limited in slots, expanded upon when the game is in a state capable of supporting more players entering testing.
Hangar Module [August 29th] - Walk around your starting hangar and view the ships you have purchased. The initial release will only feature the original pledge ships: the Aurora, Hornet, 300i, Constellation, and Freelancer, as well as a statue of the Cutlass. There will be some limited customization options and testing of the in-game purchase system. Later builds will feature more ships and more types of hangars, as well as allow you to invite friends to enter your hangar with you and use a Rift DK. Note that you will have to wait for the dogfighting module to fly around in your ships.
Client Download: www.robertsspaceindustries.com/hangar-module
The ships currently available in the hangar are listed on this page.
Hangar FAQ
Dogfighting Module [April 2014] - Exit the hangar with your ships and engage in dogfights with other players and/or NPCs, testing for balance, functionality, performance, player count, etc. CIG's target player count per instance is >~100 players, though that may or may not be realized in this portion of the alpha.
Planetside Module - Travel to the surface of planets to socialize with other players and visit the NPCs, businesses, etc that populate the environments.
Ship Boarding Module - Board ships and engage in firefights with combatant ship crews.
Squadron 42 Module - Branching single player missions (Dark Souls-like online component), in which you enlist in the UEE military in hopes of making it into Squadron 42, a team of the most elite pilots of the UEE military. Squadron 42 will be released to backers episodically but will be one continuous story that will be finished for SC's live release. This campaign is a prequel to the time of the persistent universe.
Persistent Universe Module - The primary component of Star Citizen, the PU is the open galaxy for you to explore. You create your own gameplay. One server will host everyone playing the game.
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Live Release [2015] - Initial release version available for purchase. Continued support is planned, with updates on a two week cadence delivering new content, progressing the living story of the universe, and improving the game in addition to paid expansion packs to the single player campaign at some points.
Star Citizen, currently being produced by Cloud Imperium Games, will feature a persistent universe, where the entire population can interact together, fueled by players taking up rolls and doing whatever they want to do to create a living and compelling universe, also inhabited by millions of human and alien AI characters, a campaign featuring dark-souls-like online components (offline capable) that will receive expansions in the future, and private servers that will be able to replicate the PU server in a limited way (the full PU server would be data center level, full replication wouldn't be feasible), though they feature mod support for near infinite possibility within whatever limitations.
Star Citizen's lore will follow the arc of the fall of Rome. The United Earth Empire is extremely vast and powerful, spanning much of the galaxy and having made contact with neighboring civilizations, is destabilizing. How the story unfolds will be guided by the players, with CIG evolving the game and advancing the story as people interact with eachother, and the other elements in the universe. Squadron 42 (the campaign) ties into this as a sort of prequel to the persistent universe.
There are many types of ships to explore the galaxy with, from single person fighters and merchant vessels, to multi crew exploration ships, frigates, destroyers, and extremely large carrier and capital ships. What you do with them is up to you, a galaxy with over a hundred systems is being simulated in high fidelity with a functioning economy and democratic government supported by you, the corporations, dealers, miners, explorers, mercenaries, pirates, etc.
The game puts immersion first, being a first person game everything is finely detailed and simulated, making it an ideal supporter of the Oculus Rift, which will be useable starting at some point with the Hangar Module. While KB/M is fully supported, a HOTAS (hands on throttle and stick) system is greatly recommended, allowing you to have precise and immersive control over your ship. Most current options will work, but CIG is pursuing creating custom peripherals for SC.
Robert Space Industries - Star Citizen's official site; new lore and updates are released daily and each dev at CIG has a thread on the forums for you to interact with
About the Game - An intro to Star Citizen
RSI Youtube - CIG team interviews and game content. Wingman's Hangar is a weekly series produced by CIG with news about the game, Wednesdays at 17:00 gmt
SC FAQ - Outdated but a lot of good information can be found here
What makes up a ship? - Overview all of the components of the ships in SC, how their individual components function and interact
The SC Economy - An overview of some of the in-game economic systems
SC Ship Stats - Listing of all available technical specifications for the ships in SC
Community supported links:
SC Wiki
Galaxy Map - known position and information of the systems in SC
SC Economy - Compilation of knowledge about how the economic/crafting/upgrade systems will work in SC
Pulse Magazine: a Community produced magazine
Star Citizen is currently being funded entirely via crowd funding, with more success than any other crowd funded product at over 18 million dollars. If $23m can be achieved by the SC community, SC can be released and maintained completely free of private investors/publishers affecting the game (accomplished on 10/17/13!). You can see a selection of bulletpoints of where all that money is being spent here. Note that all the money is being spent on hiring staff, operating costs, R&D, etc, each funding milestone is not all being funneled into one specific thing, and that the development goals listed here are for Star Citizen as a whole, not necessarily for when the game goes live in 2015 - it will remain in active development, providing constant (free) updates for years.
There are several packages with different ships and extra digital/physical content available for purchase, their content listed here. Digital Mercenary ($40) is the cheapest package with alpha/beta access and full access to the final game. For a starter ship I would suggest an Aurora, which will start you off to then build up your fleet/assets through in game progression according to your own interests, but the other pledge levels come with different ships if you really want to donate more to the game. Remember that these pledges are donations to fund SC, you are not directly buying ships and the cost of packages is not necessarily related to the in-game cost or value of ships, and that you are not entitled to keep ships attained this way indefinitely if you lose them while playing the game. This game will not have a cash shop and the ability to receive ships by donating will not be available later on.
Users in at least some of the Alpha tests are limited, be sure to check the front page for a count of the remaining slots.
While you may also purchase additional ships to start off with in the game, do not feel compelled to purchase a bunch of ships, no content you can buy is exclusive to this backing period or to purchases, everything may be earned ingame. If you want to contribute more to the funding of Star Citizen, you can pledge a monthly/yearly subscription. The money from subscriptions is used to fund media like Wingman's Hangar, and the subscription doesn't offer in-game perks as SC is not a subscription based game.
Ships/packages can also be reclaimed or gifted. If you own a package that you wish to exchange for something else you can reclaim it to be credited for the amount it was purchased for and you can put that credit towards anything else on the RSI store. Gifts can be sent to any e-mail address, once they claim it they own all rights to the use of everything included with it, but they will not recieve backer status if the account hasn't actually bought anything.
Regular Video Broadcast Schedule
Shows will be available at the posted times on the RSI youtube channel.
- Mondays (3 PM PST GMT-7) – 10 for the Chairman
Chris Roberts, founder of CIG and director of Star Citizen, discusses questions posed by backers. - Wednesdays (9 AM PST GMT-7) – Wingman’s Hangar
News updates about SC, studio reports (a look at things currently in development), discussions of development progress, community spotlights, and backer questions sections. - Fridays (3 PM PST GMT-7) – The Next Great Starship
Teams from around the world will compete to build Star Citizen’s new gunship.
Monthly Report: Status updates from the various studios working on star citizen, a summation of high level development progress. Posted on the first week of the following month.
Click images to see larger versions
Concept Art
Images
Trailers
Squadron 42 Trailer
Original Kickstarter Pitch
In-Fiction Ship Commercials
Origin 300i
RSI Aurora
Anvil Aerospace Hornet F7C (4k direct download)
Development
Studio Report: Shubin Mining Colony
Test Dogfighting Gameplay
Dogfighting Update 12/20/13
CitizenCon 2013
Making of the Hangar
Making of the 300i
Star Citizen Galaxy Map (WiP)
Very early AI combat tech demo
Very early gameplay tech demo