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We’re celebrating Star Citizen’s birthday with a huge ship sale! For the past week, we’ve brought back a selection of fan favorite limited edition ships to the pledge store so that anyone interested can pick up what they might have missed. Today, we’re kicking off the final three days of the sale by unlocking the entire fleet! Everything available the past week is now ready for purchase or CCU upgrade, so you can start your adventure with the ship of your dreams. For anyone who wants it all, a variety of master packs are also available!
A variety of new ships will be available all week; they are listed below.
Remember: we are offering these pledge ships to help fund Star Citizen’s development. The funding generated by sales such as this go directly to the game’s ongoing production. Concept ships will be available for in-game credits in the final universe, and they are not required to start the game.
Explorers
Endeavor
Musashi Industrial & Starflight Concern is proud to present the Endeavor-class research vessel, a fully modular space platform designed to be adapted for a variety of scientific and medical tasks. Initially developed as a floating laboratory, the MISC Endeavor can be outfitted for everything from spatial telescopy to use as mobile hospital.
Carrack
The Anvil Carrack features reinforced fuel tanks for long-duration flight, an advanced jump drive, and a dedicated computer core for jump charting operations. Originally a military exclusive, the Carrack is now available for civilian use. On-board accommodations include crew medical and repair facilities, and a mapping-oriented sensor suite.
315p
Exploration is man’s highest calling. Prepare to chart distant horizons with man’s most sophisticated piece of technology, the ORIGIN 315p. Featuring a more robust power plant and a custom scanning package, exclusively designed by Chimera Communications.
Pirates
Cutlass Black
Drake Interplanetary claims that the Cutlass Black is a low-cost, easy-to-maintain solution for local in-system militia units. The larger-than-average cargo hold, RIO seat and dedicated tractor mount are, the company literature insists, for facilitating search and rescue operations.
Cutlass Red
The Cutlass Red converts the standard cargo hold to a well-equiped medical facility including an Autodoc. This starbound ambulance features the Nav-E7 Echo Transponder, a long range scanner, and a Secure Plus Docking Collar, making it ideal for search and rescue. This model also features a unique Red Crossbones skin.
Cutlass Blue
Sleek, mean, and royal. The Cutlass Blue adds missiles, a more aggressive engine, and Durasteel holding cells in the cargo bay to the standard model. The Cutlass Blue is the outworld militia standard ship of choice for patrols.
Caterpillar
Drake maintains that the Caterpillar, a sprawling, modular spacecraft which appears at least somewhat like its namesake, is for legitimate commerce and extended search and rescue missions… but at the end of the day, the Caterpillar is truly the evil twin of the Freelancer.
Herald
The Drake Herald is a small, armored ship designed to safely get information from Point A to Point B. Featuring a powerful central engine (for high speed transit and generating the power needed for effective data encryption/containment), advanced encryption software and an armored computer core, theHerald is unique among personal spacecraft in that it is designed to be easily ‘cleaned’ when in danger of capture.
Military
Gladiator
The civilian model of the Gladiator appeals to those that want explore the ‘Verse with a bit of added security. Supporting a maximum of two the Gladiator is perfectly equipped to explore and fight with or without a wingman. The Civilian model allows pilots to choose between an extra cargo hold or a bomb bay.
Gladius
The Gladius is an older design which has been updated over the years to keep up with modern technology. In military circles, the Gladius is beloved for its performance and its simplicity. A fast, light fighter with a laser-focus on dogfighting, the Gladius is an ideal interceptor or escort ship.
Sabre
Part of Aegis Dynamics’ Phase Two of new ship models, the Sabre was designed as a space superiority fighter for those situations where you need to leave a lighter footprint. Designed to be a rapid responder, the Sabre is more than capable of establishing battlefield dominance for any number of combat scenarios.
Hornet
To the enemy, it is a weapon never to be underestimated. To allies, it’s a savior. The F7C Hornet is the same dependable and resilient multi-purpose fighter that has become the face of the UEE Navy. The F7C is the foundation to build on and meet whatever requirements you have in mind.
Hornet Ghost
Through a combination of low-emission drives, low-draw weapons, and Void Armor technology capable of diffusing scans, the F7C-S Ghost is built for the pilot who wants to keep a low profile. The Ghost is capable of slipping past the most ardent of observers to accomplish whatever goal you need to accomplish. Don’t worry, we won’t ask.
Hornet Tracker
If the Ghost is made to hide, the Tracker is made to seek. The F7C-R Tracker boasts an advanced radar suite making it ideal for deep-space explorers who require depth and accuracy in their scan packages. Local militia and larger merc units will also repurpose Trackers to act as mobile C&C ships for their squadrons.
Super Hornet
The closest to the Military load-out as is legally possible for a Civilian model, the F7C-M Super Hornet reattaches the ball turret and offers near milspec parts under the hood. Proving that two heads are better than one, a second seat has been added to split the logistic and combat duty, making the Super Hornet a truly terrifying mark to engage.
Retaliator and Modules
The Retaliator is the United Earth Empire’s premiere, if aging, jump-capable heavy bomber. Massive formations of these spacecraft running long-range strike missions is not an uncommon site around the fringes of the empire. With a distinctive elongated silhouette that is dotted with turrets and carrying a massive bomb load, the Retaliator is an effective symbol of Imperial might. As such, they are the frequent centerpiece of Space Force recruiting posters. Retaliators are ground-based, with all but the largest carriers unable to operate them effectively. Heavily modified Retaliators are becoming commonplace on the civilian market as the design ages and earlier production runs are sold off en-mass. Outfitted to carry cargo instead of antimatter bombs and with the waste turret positions typically swapped for makeshift living quarters, they make a good medium freighter or a basic explorer. Some have even been converted into long-hop passenger spacecraft!
Starfarer Gemini
The United Empire of Earth military uses an adapted ‘rough and tumble’ variant of the Starfarer for their front line operations. The G2M Gemini, more commonly the Starfarer Gemini or ‘Star G,’ trades some cargo capacity and maneuverability in exchange for reinforced armor, increased shielding, more powerful engines and stronger versions of the three manned turrets. The Gemini also includes an optional missile pod, which can be swapped for the fuel intake unit on the ship’s nose (see below for details.) Missile pods can be mounted to either Starfarer variant.
Racers
M50
If you want to get from point A to point B as quickly as possible and with as much style as possible then ORIGIN’s M50 is for you. Featuring supercharged engines that counter a tiny weapons loadout, the M50 is a ship for going FAST.
350R
The combination of a Gangleri BP 707 Standard powerplant with a 300i fuselage re-engineered to accommodate twin Hammer Propulsion HM 4.3 thrusters makes the 350r the fastest personal craft you’ll ever call your own.
Mustang Alpha
Inspired by Consolidated Outland CEO Silas Koerner’s cutting edge vision, the Mustang Alpha is a sleek, stylish spacecraft that uses ultralight alloys to push power ratios to the limits, albeit sometimes unsafely. And now, with the optional Cargo Carrier, you can have the Alpha’s advantages without sacrificing carrying capacity.
Mustang Beta
The Mustang Beta, with its unprecedented range, is made for long duration flights. The factory standard Tarsus Leaper Jump Engine enables the Beta to travel to the galaxy’s farthest systems with ease, while the ship’s unique Com4T living quarters will make the journey feel like you never left home.
Mustang Gamma
Consolidated Outland’s design and engineering teams have managed to tweak and refine the Mustang into an admirable racer. The end result, the Mustang Gamma, has smooth acceleration, and power on demand thanks to an innovative package featuring three powerful Magma Jet engines for maximum thrust.
Mustang Delta
While it may not be able to go toe to toe with some of the military specific ships, by reinforcing the Mustang’s already strong hull construction with Consolidated Outland’s own line of Cavalry Class Mass Reduction Armor, the Delta has a reduced cross-sectional signature that evens the playing field.
Alien ships
Khartu-al
The Xi’An Aopoa corporation manufactures an export model of the Qhire Khartu, the Khartu-al, for sale to human civilians as a dedicated scout/explorer. The export model features the same Xi’an maneuvering rig, but control surfaces modified for human use and a more limited armament.
Merchantman
Banu traders are renowned for their merchant prowess, traveling the spacelanes and trading with everyone from humans to the Vanduul! Their sturdy, dedicated trading ships are prized beyond all other transports, sometimes passing from generation to generation of Banu.
Reliant
Following on the success of the Freelancer “Built for Life” campaign, MISC has begun development of a smaller, introductory-class spacecraft that can be operated by a single pilot. Although roughly designed to compete with the RSI Aurora and the Consolidated Outlands Mustang, the Reliant is a very different animal. From the broad, sleek wings to the multiple flight modes and the second, fully-articulated crew seat, the Reliant is a small ship with a great deal of potential!
Worker Ships
Reclaimer
The Aegis Reclaimer is an industrial salvage ship. Equipped with a reinforced cargo bay, a long-range jump drive and launch pods for unmanned drones, the Reclaimer is an ideal ship for taking advantage of deep space wrecks. Tractor beams, floodlights, scanner options and docking ports round out the tools on this capable, utilitarian spacecraft.
Starliner
The Genesis is yet another landmark in Crusader Industries’ proud history of transport designs. This ship utilizes award-winning manufacturing techniques and the highest quality parts to create one thing; a next-generation passenger ship at a price that won’t break your budget. Crusader Industries’ proprietary NeoG engine technology offers some of the most efficient flight for a ship of its size.
Orion
Roberts Space Industries’ goal has always been to make the stars available to individual Citizens. Now, with the RSI Orion mining platform, RSI is letting individuals take over a process formerly controlled by mega-corporations. The Orion’s features include high-grade turret-mounted tractor beam arrays, plenty of mineral storage and a cabin designed by the team that brought you the Aurora and Constellation!
Aurora LX
Be proud of your roots with the brand-new Aurora Deluxe, built for the discerning pilot who never forgets where he or she came from. The LX features patent leather interior to guarantee comfort for those long stretches in the deep black.
Starfarer
The Starfarer differs from traditional bulk freighters in one key way: it is a dedicated fuel platform. The Starfarer is designed not only to load, store and protect fuel stasis units, it is designed to take in spaceborne hydrogen and then refine it for use without landing. The Starfarer can be used to ferry traditional bulk cargo pods (see diagram) but in such cases the fuel refining equipment would be useless. This equipment is modular and can be swapped out for another mission package for dry operations!
Cargo ships
Freelancer MIS
The Freelancer MIS is a limited edition militarized variant of the classic mercantile ship developed by the UEE. These were produced in very small quantity due to some early payload incidents. This version sacrifices the majority of the cargo capacity to make way for missiles.
Constellation Phoenix
A dedicated luxury spacecraft for the discerning star captain. The Constellation Phoenix can be operated as an organization command ship and features a luxurious redesigned interior. Standard amenities include a hidden sensor-dampened area to secure your most precious cargo, the renowned Lynx rover for landing zone exploration, and an elite Kruger P-72 Archimedes Fighter, making this ship one of the most desired in all of UEE space.
To that point, the Constellation Phoenix has proven so popular that RSI produces only a select number every sales season, a tactic that has done well to preserve it’s high demand and resale value year after year. For 2945, Roberts Space Industries is proud to release another 5000 hulls, matching it’s generous rollout from the year before. This year however, in order to maintain a finite and limited stock, Cross-Chassis Upgrade to the Phoenix will not be enabled. This ship will remain on sale throughout the weekend, ending either when time runs out, or the limited stock is exhausted.
Hull A
The smallest, most affordable Hull. The Hull A is great for those just striking out in the galaxy on their own. The Hull A is most similar to the Aurora and Mustang, but lacks the ‘jack of all trades’ nature. Where the others trade cargo capacity for firepower or speed, the Hull A is 100% on-mission transport! Additionally, Hull A (and B) are often used as station-to-orbit ferries.
Hull B
The Hull B is a more rugged option most often compared to MISC’s own Freelancer. But where the Freelancer is equipped for long range exploration and other roles, the Hull B is a pure cargo transport. Hull B are often used as corporate support ships, and it is not uncommon to spot several in different liveries during a single flight.
Hull C
Often called the most common ship in the galaxy, the Hull C is the most-produced of the range and is considered by many to be the most versatile. Intended to hit the ‘sweet spot’ between the smaller single-person transports and the massive superfreighters that make up the rest of the range, the Hull C offers the expansive modularity of the larger ships while still retaining a modicum of the maneuverability allowed the low end of the range.
Hull D
The Hull D kicks off the larger end of the spectrum with a massive ship build around a rugged frame. The Hull D is affordable enough to be operated by mid-sized organizations and companies. Hull D are often used as flagships for mercantile operations, but their bulk means that they should be operated with escort fighters while not in safe space. The UEE military uses modified Hull D as part of their supply chain, arming and refueling the soldiers on the front line.
Hull E
The largest specialized freighter available on the market today, the Hull E is generally owned by major corporations and operated with a high degree of planning. The lack of maneuverability inherent in such a large ship means that anyone planning to operate them should be careful about equipping turrets and providing escort. Their potential load (and modularity) is unparalleled, however: no other ship allows as much room to store goods or to modify towards another role!
Master Packs
New Ships
Crucible
A so-called “flying toolbox,” the Crucible is Anvil Aerospace’s first dedicated repair ship. Featuring a rotating control bridge and a detachable pressurized workspace, the Crucible is a versatile mobile garage equipped with repair arms, a drone operation center and all the equipment needed to overhaul a damaged craft back into fighting shape.
The Crucible, our penultimate Wave Four concept ship, is now available! Designed by the legendary Ryan Church, this repair ship is just the thing for keeping your fleet up and running. When closed, the detachable workshop allows crews to repair single seat fighters internally. When open, the Crucible can use its remote arms to attach and repair larger craft! You can learn more about the Crucible here, and Star Citizen’s overall repair mechanic here.
Avenger Variants
Star Citizen Alpha 2.0 will see the addition of flyable variants for the Aegis Dynamics Avenger! The base Avenger available today is now the Stalker, designed with the needs of bounty hunters in mind. A basic Titan cargo ship and an advanced e-warfare Warlock are also available… and all three will be available for combat in Star Citizen’s next patch!
The Titan and Stalker are permanent additions to the pledge store, the Warlock will be on sale through the end of the anniversary sale (Sunday, November 29th.) Please note that these variants will be available as separate modules in the future. The initial release of Star Citizen Alpha 2.0 does not allow changing modules, so we are offering them as distinct, playable ships first. We would encourage you to CCU to the Avenger you’re most interested in trying rather than picking up all three!
Avenger Titan
Lacking the Prisoner Cells of the Stalker or the EMP Generator of the Warlock, the Titan’s hold is free to carry cargo. Couple that available space with the Avenger’s tried and true combat abilities and you’ve got a light cargo hauler that’s more than capable of handling itself in a fight.
Avenger Stalker
Initially designed as Aegis’ frontline carrier ship for the military, the Avenger Stalker took a different path, ultimately having a long and storied career as the standard patrol craft of the UEE Advocacy. Utilizing its cargo hold for prisoner transport, the Avenger features a sturdy, reliable hull and the capacity for larger-than-expected engine mounts.
Avenger Warlock
The Avenger Warlock was built towards a single design philosophy: stop ships, don’t destroy them. Probably the closest to a non-lethal fighter, the Warlock is outfitted with a Behring REP-8 EMP Generator, capable of emitting a powerful electromagnetic wave to disable any electronics unfortunate enough to be within the blast radius.
P-72 Archimedes
If you’re looking for something a little more agile, blaze among the stars with Kruger Intergalactic’s P-72 Archimedes. Whether for added security, exploring a system or simply the joy of flying, the Archimedes is the perfect companion snub craft. Featuring an extra intake and a lighter hull than its sister ship, the Archimedes delivers exceptional handling and boost capabilities in a sleek package you’ll want along for the ride.
The Archimedes is here! Concepted by Gurmukh Bhasin, the Archimedes is the speedy, luxury alternative to the P-52 Merlin. Initially included with the Constellation Phoenix, the P-72 is interchangeable with Kruger’s other snub fighter and can be attached to any snub-capable Constellation. The Archimedes is available this week as a concept sale.
Vanguard
The A3G Vanguard is the United Empire of Earth’s dedicated deep space fighter. Initially developed as a bomber-destroyer, the Vanguard is a hard-charging bulldog of a ship which features extensive forward-mounted weaponry designed to tear through the shields and armor of other spacecraft. Four high-caliber forward laser cannons and a massive central Gatling gun give the Vanguard an unprecedented amount of sheer striking power. So-named because their multiple-jump range allows them to form the forefront of any military expedition, Vanguard have seen extensive service against the Vanduul.
We’re proud to announce that the Aegis Vanguard will be available as hangar-ready in Star Citizen Alpha 2.0! Going forward, we intend to make ships hangar ready earlier in the process than previously allowed, starting during their advanced greybox phase. The Vanguard will be the first of these ships! In its honor, we’re making all three variants and their BUK options available again this week.
Bring a Friend!
We don’t just want existing players to enjoy the anniversary, we want to introduce Star Citizen to new players! As a result, we’re offering a limited number of discounted $30 packages each day, first come first serve (1,000 per day.) These packages offer the full Star Citizen experience, including an Aurora starter ship and a copy of the Squadron 42 single player adventure. You won’t find a better deal anywhere in the ‘Verse, so pick up a copy for a friend today!
Physical Merchandise
Star Citizen physical merchandise is also on sale! For the next week, Constellation models are now $80, Arena Commander t-shirts are on deep discount and all other in-stock merchandise is 20% off.
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“I for sure thought she was going to yell at me when I told her, but she just gave me a hug and said that we’d find a way to make it work. I had been a hauler going on 17 years by that point. Worked ten of them making runs for Covalex and the last seven flying perishables in an ‘icelancer’ for Kel-To. Then, a few weeks ago, I was in the middle of the last leg of a 4 by 3 half-listening to Cleanshot when they started talking about how we could be helping those poor folk in Vega. By the time the commercial break hit I was bawling. See, when I was kid, my town got hit hard by a quake and I can still remember how it felt when the first relief ships touched down. I knew I wanted to be a part of that. To be honest, that was probably the reason I became a hauler in the first place, but I just hadn’t realized it till that moment. I finished that delivery and flew straight to my wife to tell her that I had quit my job to work for Operation Solace doing charity drops.”
Inhalte von externen Seiten werden ohne Ihre Zustimmung nicht automatisch geladen und angezeigt.
We’re celebrating Star Citizen’s birthday with a huge ship sale! Each day for the next week, we’re bringing back a selection of fan favorite limited edition ships to the pledge store, so anyone interested can pick up what they might have missed. Today, the focus is on our merchant ships, from the armored Freelancer to the massive Hull E! For anyone who wants it all, a merchant master pack is also available!
A variety of new ships will be available all week; they are listed below.
Remember: we are offering these pledge ships to help fund Star Citizen’s development. The funding generated by sales such as this go directly to the game’s ongoing production. Concept ships will be available for in-game credits in the final universe, and they are not required to start the game.
Cargo ships
Freelancer MIS
The Freelancer MIS is a limited edition militarized variant of the classic mercantile ship developed by the UEE. These were produced in very small quantity due to some early payload incidents. This version sacrifices the majority of the cargo capacity to make way for missiles.
Constellation Phoenix
A dedicated luxury spacecraft for the discerning star captain. The Constellation Phoenix can be operated as an organization command ship and features a luxurious redesigned interior. Standard amenities include a hidden sensor-dampened area to secure your most precious cargo, the renowned Lynx rover for landing zone exploration, and an elite Kruger P-72 Archimedes Fighter, making this ship one of the most desired in all of UEE space.
To that point, the Constellation Phoenix has proven so popular that RSI produces only a select number every sales season, a tactic that has done well to preserve it’s high demand and resale value year after year. For 2945, Roberts Space Industries is proud to release another 5000 hulls, matching it’s generous rollout from the year before. This year however, in order to maintain a finite and limited stock, Cross-Chassis Upgrade to the Phoenix will not be enabled. This ship will remain on sale throughout the weekend, ending either when time runs out, or the limited stock is exhausted.
Hull A
The smallest, most affordable Hull. The Hull A is great for those just striking out in the galaxy on their own. The Hull A is most similar to the Aurora and Mustang, but lacks the ‘jack of all trades’ nature. Where the others trade cargo capacity for firepower or speed, the Hull A is 100% on-mission transport! Additionally, Hull A (and B) are often used as station-to-orbit ferries.
Hull B
The Hull B is a more rugged option most often compared to MISC’s own Freelancer. But where the Freelancer is equipped for long range exploration and other roles, the Hull B is a pure cargo transport. Hull B are often used as corporate support ships, and it is not uncommon to spot several in different liveries during a single flight.
Hull C
Often called the most common ship in the galaxy, the Hull C is the most-produced of the range and is considered by many to be the most versatile. Intended to hit the ‘sweet spot’ between the smaller single-person transports and the massive superfreighters that make up the rest of the range, the Hull C offers the expansive modularity of the larger ships while still retaining a modicum of the maneuverability allowed the low end of the range.
Hull D
The Hull D kicks off the larger end of the spectrum with a massive ship build around a rugged frame. The Hull D is affordable enough to be operated by mid-sized organizations and companies. Hull D are often used as flagships for mercantile operations, but their bulk means that they should be operated with escort fighters while not in safe space. The UEE military uses modified Hull D as part of their supply chain, arming and refueling the soldiers on the front line.
Hull E
The largest specialized freighter available on the market today, the Hull E is generally owned by major corporations and operated with a high degree of planning. The lack of maneuverability inherent in such a large ship means that anyone planning to operate them should be careful about equipping turrets and providing escort. Their potential load (and modularity) is unparalleled, however: no other ship allows as much room to store goods or to modify towards another role!
Transport Ships Pack
SPECIAL NOTE: Constellation Phoenix hulls included in this promotional package do not count towards the 5000 unit production run.
New Ships
Crucible
A so-called “flying toolbox,” the Crucible is Anvil Aerospace’s first dedicated repair ship. Featuring a rotating control bridge and a detachable pressurized workspace, the Crucible is a versatile mobile garage equipped with repair arms, a drone operation center and all the equipment needed to overhaul a damaged craft back into fighting shape.
The Crucible, our penultimate Wave Four concept ship, is now available! Designed by the legendary Ryan Church, this repair ship is just the thing for keeping your fleet up and running. When closed, the detachable workshop allows crews to repair single seat fighters internally. When open, the Crucible can use its remote arms to attach and repair larger craft! You can learn more about the Crucible here, and Star Citizen’s overall repair mechanic here.
Avenger Variants
Star Citizen Alpha 2.0 will see the addition of flyable variants for the Aegis Dynamics Avenger! The base Avenger available today is now the Stalker, designed with the needs of bounty hunters in mind. A basic Titan cargo ship and an advanced e-warfare Warlock are also available… and all three will be available for combat in Star Citizen’s next patch!
The Titan and Stalker are permanent additions to the pledge store, the Warlock will be on sale through the end of the anniversary sale (Sunday, November 29th.) Please note that these variants will be available as separate modules in the future. The initial release of Star Citizen Alpha 2.0 does not allow changing modules, so we are offering them as distinct, playable ships first. We would encourage you to CCU to the Avenger you’re most interested in trying rather than picking up all three!
Avenger Titan
Lacking the Prisoner Cells of the Stalker or the EMP Generator of the Warlock, the Titan’s hold is free to carry cargo. Couple that available space with the Avenger’s tried and true combat abilities and you’ve got a light cargo hauler that’s more than capable of handling itself in a fight.
Avenger Stalker
Initially designed as Aegis’ frontline carrier ship for the military, the Avenger Stalker took a different path, ultimately having a long and storied career as the standard patrol craft of the UEE Advocacy. Utilizing its cargo hold for prisoner transport, the Avenger features a sturdy, reliable hull and the capacity for larger-than-expected engine mounts.
Avenger Warlock
The Avenger Warlock was built towards a single design philosophy: stop ships, don’t destroy them. Probably the closest to a non-lethal fighter, the Warlock is outfitted with a Behring REP-8 EMP Generator, capable of emitting a powerful electromagnetic wave to disable any electronics unfortunate enough to be within the blast radius.
P-72 Archimedes
If you’re looking for something a little more agile, blaze among the stars with Kruger Intergalactic’s P-72 Archimedes. Whether for added security, exploring a system or simply the joy of flying, the Archimedes is the perfect companion snub craft. Featuring an extra intake and a lighter hull than its sister ship, the Archimedes delivers exceptional handling and boost capabilities in a sleek package you’ll want along for the ride.
The Archimedes is here! Concepted by Gurmukh Bhasin, the Archimedes is the speedy, luxury alternative to the P-52 Merlin. Initially included with the Constellation Phoenix, the P-72 is interchangeable with Kruger’s other snub fighter and can be attached to any snub-capable Constellation. The Archimedes is available this week as a concept sale.
Vanguard
The A3G Vanguard is the United Empire of Earth’s dedicated deep space fighter. Initially developed as a bomber-destroyer, the Vanguard is a hard-charging bulldog of a ship which features extensive forward-mounted weaponry designed to tear through the shields and armor of other spacecraft. Four high-caliber forward laser cannons and a massive central Gatling gun give the Vanguard an unprecedented amount of sheer striking power. So-named because their multiple-jump range allows them to form the forefront of any military expedition, Vanguard have seen extensive service against the Vanduul.
We’re proud to announce that the Aegis Vanguard will be available as hangar-ready in Star Citizen Alpha 2.0! Going forward, we intend to make ships hangar ready earlier in the process than previously allowed, starting during their advanced greybox phase. The Vanguard will be the first of these ships! In its honor, we’re making all three variants and their BUK options available again this week.
Bring a Friend!
We don’t just want existing players to enjoy the anniversary, we want to introduce Star Citizen to new players! As a result, we’re offering a limited number of discounted $30 packages each day, first come first serve (1,000 per day.) These packages offer the full Star Citizen experience, including an Aurora starter ship and a copy of the Squadron 42 single player adventure. You won’t find a better deal anywhere in the ‘Verse, so pick up a copy for a friend today!
Physical Merchandise
Star Citizen physical merchandise is also on sale! For the next week, Constellation models are now $80, Arena Commander t-shirts are on deep discount and all other in-stock merchandise is 20% off.
Anniversary Sale Schedule
We’re making a large number of our older ships available for those who missed out, want to upgrade an existing package or simply want to expand their fleets. We will be presenting these ships over the course of the next week in a series of role-based theme days, listed below. From armored explorers to lumbering transports to alien traders, there’s something for everyone! All existing ships will be offered with three year insurance in honor of our third birthday. Each day will also include a discounted ‘fleet pack’ in the style of the Armada Pack available during CitizenCon. Don’t want to wait around to switch to your favorite ship? All ships will be available at once during the end of the sale, from Friday, November 27th to Sunday, November 29th.
Friday, November 27th – Sunday, November 29th: All Previously Offered Ships!
From Friday through Sunday, all ships previously available during this sale will return. Pick up your favorite as soon as it appears, or wait until the finale to make your choice!
Three days of questions, three days of answers! On Thursday, we kicked off the concept sale for the new Kruger P-72 snub fighter. Today, we’ll be answering questions collected on the forums, and coming back Thursday for the Avenger variants, and finally Friday for the Anvil Crucible Q&A. For this, special thanks to Matthew Sherman for answering your questions. Enjoy!
Why would I want a Merlin over an Archimedes, and vice versa?
If you want to leverage the size/speed of the snub craft, an Archimedes will be ideal, allowing for recharging boost and more overall sustained fire from the energy weapons. If you need to make some decisive hits supporting your parent-craft and providing more short-term combat support, a Merlin and its centerline gun will be a strong choice. In the end, it will all come down to the pilot and the situations you find yourself in.
How does the P72 compare against the M50, 350R and Mustang Omega in Racing?
We’re targeting it to fit somewhere between the M50 and Mustang Omega in terms of overall performance, but we’re still getting things fully setup for this ship before deploying it.
Since the Archimedes is a variant to the Merlin can we dock one with any version of the Constellation?
Yes, any Constellation with the rear snub-dock can accept any ship based on the Merlin/Archimedes design.
Can the P-72 be operated off a 890 Jump or any other landing bay that it can fit in?
Yes, while the Constellation requires a specific mount for docking and launching a snub craft, any ship with suitable landing space can absolutely stage and launch an Archimedes.
Are there plans for a transport module of some kind to allow long distance transport of these snub ships by the large ships in the game?
Absolutely. While we’re still working things out in terms of ship-transit, we definitely want snub craft to have meaningful presence throughout the universe. From carried on a ship like a Constellation, or setting up a ship like a Crucible, Starliner or an 890 Jump to serve as a Race-team transport, we want to make sure you can bring your ships to the activities you find the most compelling.
I understand speeds are being tweaked at the moment, but as the Archimedes is tuned towards a higher-end specification, will there be engine upgrades beyond what it is fitted, or will the engines/thrusters fitted be the best for that sizing?
There’s definitely going to be room to grow, not only with the Archimedes, but with all of our ships. While the included equipment will put the Archimedes ahead of a Merlin in terms of its speed and performance, we absolutely want to provide enough tools and choices for players to experiment on their ships with.
What does having the air intake do? Allow it to refuel slowly as its flying?
The Fuel Intake for the Archimedes will allow the ship to naturally recharge its boost fuel while flying.
From the description: “Whether for added security, exploring a system or simply the joy of flying, the Archimedes is the perfect companion snub craft.” Does this mean the P-72 has a quantum drive, even though it’s been said that snub fighters are not able to fit one?
No, Snub craft still will be without Quantum or Jump drives, but the ability to recharge it’s boost fuel will definitely help the Archimedes maneuver around a system with more flexibility than a Merlin would. Additionally, the ability for all snub craft to land will give the Archimedes flexibility to explore and land to any available landing site on a planet or station.
Is this still intended to have four S1 fixed guns? The specs page currently shows the same two S1 and one S2 that the Merlin has. Where are the weapons located on the ship? The description says this is lighter than the Merlin – what is it losing? Less armor? Or are the materials just higher-end / lighter composites for the same level of protection?
We’ve made updates to the stats page to properly reflect the Archimedes hardpoints. It’s lighter-weight comes from replacing the heavier centerline gun found on the Merlin with the Fuel Intake system, as both the weapon and it’s ammo would be heavier than the 2 additional Size 1 weapons mounted to the Archimedes wing tips.
Why is the Archimedes being sold with LTI, while the Merlin wasn’t?
The Merlin was released already flyable, and had been previously available with LTI as part of the initial set of Constellation packages.
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“New day. New site. Long range scans had picked up a couple possible M-Type candidates in the cluster. We arrived afternoon SET, so that night I made sure everybody got a nice drink on before we settle in for days (hopefully weeks?) of double-shifts and intensive drilling. If Reddick could see me now. That son of a bitch would lose his mind. But it’s a good crew. They deserve some fun. That’s one thing Reddick never got: you show you appreciate their downtime and they’ll give you that much more when they are on the clock. Gonna get some shuteye. Tomorrow, we get cracking.”
- Personal Log
Grant Tunashi
Captain/Operator, Aviana
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We’re celebrating Star Citizen’s birthday with a huge ship sale! Each day for the next week, we’re bringing back a selection of fan favorite limited edition ships to the pledge store, so anyone interested can pick up what they might have missed. You want to buy an Orion? I’m telling you, you do! Today, the focus is on our working starships. These may not be the hottest dogfighters, but they’re what keeps the UEE running. Included today are the massive Orion miner, the Reclaimer salvage ship and more! For anyone who wants it all, a working ships master pack is also available!
A variety of new ships will be available all week; they are listed below.
Remember: we are offering these pledge ships to help fund Star Citizen’s development. The funding generated by sales such as this go directly to the game’s ongoing production. Concept ships will be available for in-game credits in the final universe, and they are not required to start the game.
Worker Ships
Reclaimer
The Aegis Reclaimer is an industrial salvage ship. Equipped with a reinforced cargo bay, a long-range jump drive and launch pods for unmanned drones, the Reclaimer is an ideal ship for taking advantage of deep space wrecks. Tractor beams, floodlights, scanner options and docking ports round out the tools on this capable, utilitarian spacecraft.
Starliner
The Genesis is yet another landmark in Crusader Industries’ proud history of transport designs. This ship utilizes award-winning manufacturing techniques and the highest quality parts to create one thing; a next-generation passenger ship at a price that won’t break your budget. Crusader Industries’ proprietary NeoG engine technology offers some of the most efficient flight for a ship of its size.
Orion
Roberts Space Industries’ goal has always been to make the stars available to individual Citizens. Now, with the RSI Orion mining platform, RSI is letting individuals take over a process formerly controlled by mega-corporations. The Orion’s features include high-grade turret-mounted tractor beam arrays, plenty of mineral storage and a cabin designed by the team that brought you the Aurora and Constellation!
Aurora LX
Be proud of your roots with the brand-new Aurora Deluxe, built for the discerning pilot who never forgets where he or she came from. The LX features patent leather interior to guarantee comfort for those long stretches in the deep black.
Starfarer
The Starfarer differs from traditional bulk freighters in one key way: it is a dedicated fuel platform. The Starfarer is designed not only to load, store and protect fuel stasis units, it is designed to take in spaceborne hydrogen and then refine it for use without landing. The Starfarer can be used to ferry traditional bulk cargo pods (see diagram) but in such cases the fuel refining equipment would be useless. This equipment is modular and can be swapped out for another mission package for dry operations!
Blue Collar Ships Pack
New Ships
Crucible
A so-called “flying toolbox,” the Crucible is Anvil Aerospace’s first dedicated repair ship. Featuring a rotating control bridge and a detachable pressurized workspace, the Crucible is a versatile mobile garage equipped with repair arms, a drone operation center and all the equipment needed to overhaul a damaged craft back into fighting shape.
The Crucible, our penultimate Wave Four concept ship, is now available! Designed by the legendary Ryan Church, this repair ship is just the thing for keeping your fleet up and running. When closed, the detachable workshop allows crews to repair single seat fighters internally. When open, the Crucible can use its remote arms to attach and repair larger craft! You can learn more about the Crucible here, and Star Citizen’s overall repair mechanic here.
Avenger Variants
Star Citizen Alpha 2.0 will see the addition of flyable variants for the Aegis Dynamics Avenger! The base Avenger available today is now the Stalker, designed with the needs of bounty hunters in mind. A basic Titan cargo ship and an advanced e-warfare Warlock are also available… and all three will be available for combat in Star Citizen’s next patch!
The Titan and Stalker are permanent additions to the pledge store, the Warlock will be on sale through the end of the anniversary sale (Sunday, November 29th.) Please note that these variants will be available as separate modules in the future. The initial release of Star Citizen Alpha 2.0 does not allow changing modules, so we are offering them as distinct, playable ships first. We would encourage you to CCU to the Avenger you’re most interested in trying rather than picking up all three!
Avenger Titan
Lacking the Prisoner Cells of the Stalker or the EMP Generator of the Warlock, the Titan’s hold is free to carry cargo. Couple that available space with the Avenger’s tried and true combat abilities and you’ve got a light cargo hauler that’s more than capable of handling itself in a fight.
Avenger Stalker
Initially designed as Aegis’ frontline carrier ship for the military, the Avenger Stalker took a different path, ultimately having a long and storied career as the standard patrol craft of the UEE Advocacy. Utilizing its cargo hold for prisoner transport, the Avenger features a sturdy, reliable hull and the capacity for larger-than-expected engine mounts.
Avenger Warlock
The Avenger Warlock was built towards a single design philosophy: stop ships, don’t destroy them. Probably the closest to a non-lethal fighter, the Warlock is outfitted with a Behring REP-8 EMP Generator, capable of emitting a powerful electromagnetic wave to disable any electronics unfortunate enough to be within the blast radius.
P-72 Archimedes
If you’re looking for something a little more agile, blaze among the stars with Kruger Intergalactic’s P-72 Archimedes. Whether for added security, exploring a system or simply the joy of flying, the Archimedes is the perfect companion snub craft. Featuring an extra intake and a lighter hull than its sister ship, the Archimedes delivers exceptional handling and boost capabilities in a sleek package you’ll want along for the ride.
The Archimedes is here! Concepted by Gurmukh Bhasin, the Archimedes is the speedy, luxury alternative to the P-52 Merlin. Initially included with the Constellation Phoenix, the P-72 is interchangeable with Kruger’s other snub fighter and can be attached to any snub-capable Constellation. The Archimedes is available this week as a concept sale.
Vanguard
The A3G Vanguard is the United Empire of Earth’s dedicated deep space fighter. Initially developed as a bomber-destroyer, the Vanguard is a hard-charging bulldog of a ship which features extensive forward-mounted weaponry designed to tear through the shields and armor of other spacecraft. Four high-caliber forward laser cannons and a massive central Gatling gun give the Vanguard an unprecedented amount of sheer striking power. So-named because their multiple-jump range allows them to form the forefront of any military expedition, Vanguard have seen extensive service against the Vanduul.
We’re proud to announce that the Aegis Vanguard will be available as hangar-ready in Star Citizen Alpha 2.0! Going forward, we intend to make ships hangar ready earlier in the process than previously allowed, starting during their advanced greybox phase. The Vanguard will be the first of these ships! In its honor, we’re making all three variants and their BUK options available again this week.
Bring a Friend!
We don’t just want existing players to enjoy the anniversary, we want to introduce Star Citizen to new players! As a result, we’re offering a limited number of discounted $30 packages each day, first come first serve (1,000 per day.) These packages offer the full Star Citizen experience, including an Aurora starter ship and a copy of the Squadron 42 single player adventure. You won’t find a better deal anywhere in the ‘Verse, so pick up a copy for a friend today!
Physical Merchandise
Star Citizen physical merchandise is also on sale! For the next week, Constellation models are now $80, Arena Commander t-shirts are on deep discount and all other in-stock merchandise is 20% off.
Anniversary Sale Schedule
We’re making a large number of our older ships available for those who missed out, want to upgrade an existing package or simply want to expand their fleets. We will be presenting these ships over the course of the next week in a series of role-based theme days, listed below. From armored explorers to lumbering transports to alien traders, there’s something for everyone! All existing ships will be offered with three year insurance in honor of our third birthday. Each day will also include a discounted ‘fleet pack’ in the style of the Armada Pack available during CitizenCon. Don’t want to wait around to switch to your favorite ship? All ships will be available at once during the end of the sale, from Friday, November 27th to Sunday, November 29th.
Thursday, November 26th: Mercantile
Freelancer MIS
Hull Series
Constellation Phoenix
Friday, November 27th – Sunday, November 29th: All Previously Offered Ships!
From Friday through Sunday, all ships previously available during this sale will return. Pick up your favorite as soon as it appears, or wait until the finale to make your choice!
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“Yes. Very exciting. Yes. First time in Human Empire. Yes. Very pretty. So much open space. Was told about that. Told that how warm it was too. Do you know where SataBall are? Told there was a match today. I have pass to see. Did I miss it? Okay. I have pass. Don’t want to miss. Here is registry info. Apologize. First time in Human Empire. So much open space.”
- Ket-el Bin No
Banu Traveler
Corel Customs Entrance Interview
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We’re celebrating Star Citizen’s birthday with a huge ship sale! Each day for the next week, we’re bringing back a selection of fan favorite limited edition ships to the pledge store, so anyone interested can pick up what they might have missed. Today, the focus is on ships from or based on the technology of our alien races, including the maneuverable Khartu-al and the celebrated Banu merchantman. For anyone who wants it all, an alien master pack is also available!
A variety of new ships will be available all week; they are listed below.
Remember: we are offering these pledge ships to help fund Star Citizen’s development. The funding generated by sales such as this go directly to the game’s ongoing production. Concept ships will be available for in-game credits in the final universe, and they are not required to start the game.
Alien ships
Khartu-al
The Xi’An Aopoa corporation manufactures an export model of the Qhire Khartu, the Khartu-al, for sale to human civilians as a dedicated scout/explorer. The export model features the same Xi’an maneuvering rig, but control surfaces modified for human use and a more limited armament.
Merchantman
Banu traders are renowned for their merchant prowess, traveling the spacelanes and trading with everyone from humans to the Vanduul! Their sturdy, dedicated trading ships are prized beyond all other transports, sometimes passing from generation to generation of Banu.
Reliant
Following on the success of the Freelancer “Built for Life” campaign, MISC has begun development of a smaller, introductory-class spacecraft that can be operated by a single pilot. Although roughly designed to compete with the RSI Aurora and the Consolidated Outlands Mustang, the Reliant is a very different animal. From the broad, sleek wings to the multiple flight modes and the second, fully-articulated crew seat, the Reliant is a small ship with a great deal of potential!
Alien Ships Pack
New Ships
Crucible
A so-called “flying toolbox,” the Crucible is Anvil Aerospace’s first dedicated repair ship. Featuring a rotating control bridge and a detachable pressurized workspace, the Crucible is a versatile mobile garage equipped with repair arms, a drone operation center and all the equipment needed to overhaul a damaged craft back into fighting shape.
The Crucible, our penultimate Wave Four concept ship, is now available! Designed by the legendary Ryan Church, this repair ship is just the thing for keeping your fleet up and running. When closed, the detachable workshop allows crews to repair single seat fighters internally. When open, the Crucible can use its remote arms to attach and repair larger craft! You can learn more about the Crucible here, and Star Citizen’s overall repair mechanic here.
Avenger Variants
Star Citizen Alpha 2.0 will see the addition of flyable variants for the Aegis Dynamics Avenger! The base Avenger available today is now the Stalker, designed with the needs of bounty hunters in mind. A basic Titan cargo ship and an advanced e-warfare Warlock are also available… and all three will be available for combat in Star Citizen’s next patch!
The Titan and Stalker are permanent additions to the pledge store, the Warlock will be on sale through the end of the anniversary sale (Sunday, November 29th.) Please note that these variants will be available as separate modules in the future. The initial release of Star Citizen Alpha 2.0 does not allow changing modules, so we are offering them as distinct, playable ships first. We would encourage you to CCU to the Avenger you’re most interested in trying rather than picking up all three!
Avenger Titan
Lacking the Prisoner Cells of the Stalker or the EMP Generator of the Warlock, the Titan’s hold is free to carry cargo. Couple that available space with the Avenger’s tried and true combat abilities and you’ve got a light cargo hauler that’s more than capable of handling itself in a fight.
Avenger Stalker
Initially designed as Aegis’ frontline carrier ship for the military, the Avenger Stalker took a different path, ultimately having a long and storied career as the standard patrol craft of the UEE Advocacy. Utilizing its cargo hold for prisoner transport, the Avenger features a sturdy, reliable hull and the capacity for larger-than-expected engine mounts.
Avenger Warlock
The Avenger Warlock was built towards a single design philosophy: stop ships, don’t destroy them. Probably the closest to a non-lethal fighter, the Warlock is outfitted with a Behring REP-8 EMP Generator, capable of emitting a powerful electromagnetic wave to disable any electronics unfortunate enough to be within the blast radius.
P-72 Archimedes
If you’re looking for something a little more agile, blaze among the stars with Kruger Intergalactic’s P-72 Archimedes. Whether for added security, exploring a system or simply the joy of flying, the Archimedes is the perfect companion snub craft. Featuring an extra intake and a lighter hull than its sister ship, the Archimedes delivers exceptional handling and boost capabilities in a sleek package you’ll want along for the ride.
The Archimedes is here! Concepted by Gurmukh Bhasin, the Archimedes is the speedy, luxury alternative to the P-52 Merlin. Initially included with the Constellation Phoenix, the P-72 is interchangeable with Kruger’s other snub fighter and can be attached to any snub-capable Constellation. The Archimedes is available this week as a concept sale.
Vanguard
The A3G Vanguard is the United Empire of Earth’s dedicated deep space fighter. Initially developed as a bomber-destroyer, the Vanguard is a hard-charging bulldog of a ship which features extensive forward-mounted weaponry designed to tear through the shields and armor of other spacecraft. Four high-caliber forward laser cannons and a massive central Gatling gun give the Vanguard an unprecedented amount of sheer striking power. So-named because their multiple-jump range allows them to form the forefront of any military expedition, Vanguard have seen extensive service against the Vanduul.
We’re proud to announce that the Aegis Vanguard will be available as hangar-ready in Star Citizen Alpha 2.0! Going forward, we intend to make ships hangar ready earlier in the process than previously allowed, starting during their advanced greybox phase. The Vanguard will be the first of these ships! In its honor, we’re making all three variants and their BUK options available again this week.
Bring a Friend!
We don’t just want existing players to enjoy the anniversary, we want to introduce Star Citizen to new players! As a result, we’re offering a limited number of discounted $30 packages each day, first come first serve (1,000 per day.) These packages offer the full Star Citizen experience, including an Aurora starter ship and a copy of the Squadron 42 single player adventure. You won’t find a better deal anywhere in the ‘Verse, so pick up a copy for a friend today!
Physical Merchandise
Star Citizen physical merchandise is also on sale! For the next week, Constellation models are now $80, Arena Commander t-shirts are on deep discount and all other in-stock merchandise is 20% off.
Anniversary Sale Schedule
We’re making a large number of our older ships available for those who missed out, want to upgrade an existing package or simply want to expand their fleets. We will be presenting these ships over the course of the next week in a series of role-based theme days, listed below. From armored explorers to lumbering transports to alien traders, there’s something for everyone! All existing ships will be offered with three year insurance in honor of our third birthday. Each day will also include a discounted ‘fleet pack’ in the style of the Armada Pack available during CitizenCon. Don’t want to wait around to switch to your favorite ship? All ships will be available at once during the end of the sale, from Friday, November 27th to Sunday, November 29th.
Wednesday, November 25th: Working Starships
Reclaimer
Genesis Starliner
Orion
Aurora LX
Starfarer
Thursday, November 26th: Mercantile
Freelancer MIS
Hull Series
Constellation Phoenix
Friday, November 27th – Sunday, November 29th: All Previously Offered Ships!
From Friday through Sunday, all ships previously available during this sale will return. Pick up your favorite as soon as it appears, or wait until the finale to make your choice!
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“Coming from a four generations of Navy, it was never a choice for me. If I could’ve gone from crawling to flying, I would have. I knew it was what I wanted when I signed those enlistment papers. I knew it was what I wanted when I showed up to basic. I knew it was what I wanted when I graduated the academy. But I’ll be damned, as soon as I stepped up to the flight deck for my first mission, I was scared to all hell. I couldn’t admit back then, but I’ll say it now. Yeah, I was scared. It took everything to put one foot in front of the other. With each step as the ship loomed closer, I realized that the fear was really a sign. A sign that I was about to do something that mattered. That I was going to make a difference.”
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We’re celebrating Star Citizen’s birthday with a huge ship sale! Each day for the next week, we’re bringing back a selection of fan favorite limited edition ships to the pledge store, so anyone interested can pick up what they might have missed. Today, the focus is on our heavily armed military ships, including the agile Gladius and the fearsome Super Hornet. For anyone who wants it all, an armada master pack is also available!
A variety of new ships will be available all week; they are listed below.
Remember: we are offering these pledge ships to help fund Star Citizen’s development. The funding generated by sales such as this go directly to the game’s ongoing production. Concept ships will be available for in-game credits in the final universe, and they are not required to start the game.
Military
Gladiator
The civilian model of the Gladiator appeals to those that want explore the ‘Verse with a bit of added security. Supporting a maximum of two the Gladiator is perfectly equipped to explore and fight with or without a wingman. The Civilian model allows pilots to choose between an extra cargo hold or a bomb bay.
Gladius
The Gladius is an older design which has been updated over the years to keep up with modern technology. In military circles, the Gladius is beloved for its performance and its simplicity. A fast, light fighter with a laser-focus on dogfighting, the Gladius is an ideal interceptor or escort ship.
Sabre
Part of Aegis Dynamics’ Phase Two of new ship models, the Sabre was designed as a space superiority fighter for those situations where you need to leave a lighter footprint. Designed to be a rapid responder, the Sabre is more than capable of establishing battlefield dominance for any number of combat scenarios.
Hornet
To the enemy, it is a weapon never to be underestimated. To allies, it’s a savior. The F7C Hornet is the same dependable and resilient multi-purpose fighter that has become the face of the UEE Navy. The F7C is the foundation to build on and meet whatever requirements you have in mind.
Hornet Ghost
Through a combination of low-emission drives, low-draw weapons, and Void Armor technology capable of diffusing scans, the F7C-S Ghost is built for the pilot who wants to keep a low profile. The Ghost is capable of slipping past the most ardent of observers to accomplish whatever goal you need to accomplish. Don’t worry, we won’t ask.
Hornet Tracker
If the Ghost is made to hide, the Tracker is made to seek. The F7C-R Tracker boasts an advanced radar suite making it ideal for deep-space explorers who require depth and accuracy in their scan packages. Local militia and larger merc units will also repurpose Trackers to act as mobile C&C ships for their squadrons.
Super Hornet
The closest to the Military load-out as is legally possible for a Civilian model, the F7C-M Super Hornet reattaches the ball turret and offers near milspec parts under the hood. Proving that two heads are better than one, a second seat has been added to split the logistic and combat duty, making the Super Hornet a truly terrifying mark to engage.
Retaliator and Modules
The Retaliator is the United Earth Empire’s premiere, if aging, jump-capable heavy bomber. Massive formations of these spacecraft running long-range strike missions is not an uncommon site around the fringes of the empire. With a distinctive elongated silhouette that is dotted with turrets and carrying a massive bomb load, the Retaliator is an effective symbol of Imperial might. As such, they are the frequent centerpiece of Space Force recruiting posters. Retaliators are ground-based, with all but the largest carriers unable to operate them effectively. Heavily modified Retaliators are becoming commonplace on the civilian market as the design ages and earlier production runs are sold off en-mass. Outfitted to carry cargo instead of antimatter bombs and with the waste turret positions typically swapped for makeshift living quarters, they make a good medium freighter or a basic explorer. Some have even been converted into long-hop passenger spacecraft!
Starfarer Gemini
The United Empire of Earth military uses an adapted ‘rough and tumble’ variant of the Starfarer for their front line operations. The G2M Gemini, more commonly the Starfarer Gemini or ‘Star G,’ trades some cargo capacity and maneuverability in exchange for reinforced armor, increased shielding, more powerful engines and stronger versions of the three manned turrets. The Gemini also includes an optional missile pod, which can be swapped for the fuel intake unit on the ship’s nose (see below for details.) Missile pods can be mounted to either Starfarer variant.
Armada Pack
New Ships
Crucible
A so-called “flying toolbox,” the Crucible is Anvil Aerospace’s first dedicated repair ship. Featuring a rotating control bridge and a detachable pressurized workspace, the Crucible is a versatile mobile garage equipped with repair arms, a drone operation center and all the equipment needed to overhaul a damaged craft back into fighting shape.
The Crucible, our penultimate Wave Four concept ship, is now available! Designed by the legendary Ryan Church, this repair ship is just the thing for keeping your fleet up and running. When closed, the detachable workshop allows crews to repair single seat fighters internally. When open, the Crucible can use its remote arms to attach and repair larger craft! You can learn more about the Crucible here, and Star Citizen’s overall repair mechanic here.
Avenger Variants
Star Citizen Alpha 2.0 will see the addition of flyable variants for the Aegis Dynamics Avenger! The base Avenger available today is now the Stalker, designed with the needs of bounty hunters in mind. A basic Titan cargo ship and an advanced e-warfare Warlock are also available… and all three will be available for combat in Star Citizen’s next patch!
The Titan and Stalker are permanent additions to the pledge store, the Warlock will be on sale through the end of the anniversary sale (Sunday, November 29th.) Please note that these variants will be available as separate modules in the future. The initial release of Star Citizen Alpha 2.0 does not allow changing modules, so we are offering them as distinct, playable ships first. We would encourage you to CCU to the Avenger you’re most interested in trying rather than picking up all three!
Avenger Titan
Lacking the Prisoner Cells of the Stalker or the EMP Generator of the Warlock, the Titan’s hold is free to carry cargo. Couple that available space with the Avenger’s tried and true combat abilities and you’ve got a light cargo hauler that’s more than capable of handling itself in a fight.
Avenger Stalker
Initially designed as Aegis’ frontline carrier ship for the military, the Avenger Stalker took a different path, ultimately having a long and storied career as the standard patrol craft of the UEE Advocacy. Utilizing its cargo hold for prisoner transport, the Avenger features a sturdy, reliable hull and the capacity for larger-than-expected engine mounts.
Avenger Warlock
The Avenger Warlock was built towards a single design philosophy: stop ships, don’t destroy them. Probably the closest to a non-lethal fighter, the Warlock is outfitted with a Behring REP-8 EMP Generator, capable of emitting a powerful electromagnetic wave to disable any electronics unfortunate enough to be within the blast radius.
P-72 Archimedes
If you’re looking for something a little more agile, blaze among the stars with Kruger Intergalactic’s P-72 Archimedes. Whether for added security, exploring a system or simply the joy of flying, the Archimedes is the perfect companion snub craft. Featuring an extra intake and a lighter hull than its sister ship, the Archimedes delivers exceptional handling and boost capabilities in a sleek package you’ll want along for the ride.
The Archimedes is here! Concepted by Gurmukh Bhasin, the Archimedes is the speedy, luxury alternative to the P-52 Merlin. Initially included with the Constellation Phoenix, the P-72 is interchangeable with Kruger’s other snub fighter and can be attached to any snub-capable Constellation. The Archimedes is available this week as a concept sale.
Vanguard
The A3G Vanguard is the United Empire of Earth’s dedicated deep space fighter. Initially developed as a bomber-destroyer, the Vanguard is a hard-charging bulldog of a ship which features extensive forward-mounted weaponry designed to tear through the shields and armor of other spacecraft. Four high-caliber forward laser cannons and a massive central Gatling gun give the Vanguard an unprecedented amount of sheer striking power. So-named because their multiple-jump range allows them to form the forefront of any military expedition, Vanguard have seen extensive service against the Vanduul.
We’re proud to announce that the Aegis Vanguard will be available as hangar-ready in Star Citizen Alpha 2.0! Going forward, we intend to make ships hangar ready earlier in the process than previously allowed, starting during their advanced greybox phase. The Vanguard will be the first of these ships! In its honor, we’re making all three variants and their BUK options available again this week.
Bring a Friend!
We don’t just want existing players to enjoy the anniversary, we want to introduce Star Citizen to new players! As a result, we’re offering a limited number of discounted $30 packages each day, first come first serve (1,000 per day.) These packages offer the full Star Citizen experience, including an Aurora starter ship and a copy of the Squadron 42 single player adventure. You won’t find a better deal anywhere in the ‘Verse, so pick up a copy for a friend today!
Physical Merchandise
Star Citizen physical merchandise is also on sale! For the next week, Constellation models are now $80, Arena Commander t-shirts are on deep discount and all other in-stock merchandise is 20% off.
Anniversary Sale Schedule
We’re making a large number of our older ships available for those who missed out, want to upgrade an existing package or simply want to expand their fleets. We will be presenting these ships over the course of the next week in a series of role-based theme days, listed below. From armored explorers to lumbering transports to alien traders, there’s something for everyone! All existing ships will be offered with three year insurance in honor of our third birthday. Each day will also include a discounted ‘fleet pack’ in the style of the Armada Pack available during CitizenCon. Don’t want to wait around to switch to your favorite ship? All ships will be available at once during the end of the sale, from Friday, November 27th to Sunday, November 29th.
Monday, November 23rd: Racing
M50
Mustang Delta
350R
Tuesday, November 24th: Aliens
Khartu-al
Banu Merchantman
Reliant
Wednesday, November 25th: Working Starships
Reclaimer
Genesis Starliner
Orion
Aurora LX
Starfarer
Thursday, November 26th: Mercantile
Freelancer MIS
Hull Series
Constellation Phoenix
Friday, November 27th – Sunday, November 29th: All Previously Offered Ships!
From Friday through Sunday, all ships previously available during this sale will return. Pick up your favorite as soon as it appears, or wait until the finale to make your choice!
Inhalte von externen Seiten werden ohne Ihre Zustimmung nicht automatisch geladen und angezeigt.
“My cousin was the one who brought me in on the job, and, even with her vouching for me, none of the Nine Tails would say more than two words to me. If that cold reception wasn’t enough to make me nervous, I hadn’t even been that sure about the whole thing in the first place. My life was plenty crap without needing to spend the next few years in QuarterDeck, but, at the end of the day, creds are creds, right? The way my cousin explained it, those security fods only had a job because of people trying to steal stuff, so we were helping them and their families as much as ourselves. I’m not sure I believed it, but it did help me climb into that turret. She flew, and I fired. Together we took out three ships. Even got a bonus share for it and a nickname too. That was three years ago and I’m still flying with the Nines. They can be pretty fun once you get to know them. So yeah, I guess I’m an outlaw now, but if anyone asks, I tell them I work in security recruitment.”
- Tan “Jitters” Lowen
Nine Tails Gunner, Falling Leaf
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We’re celebrating Star Citizen’s birthday with a huge ship sale! Each day for the next week, we’re bringing back a selection of fan favorite limited edition ships to the pledge store, so anyone interested can pick up what they might have missed. Today, the focus is on those dastardly pirates, including the ever-present Cutlass and the Caterpillar armored transpored. For anyone who wants it all, a piracy master pack is also available!
A variety of new ships will be available all week; they are listed below.
Remember: we are offering these pledge ships to help fund Star Citizen’s development. The funding generated by sales such as this go directly to the game’s ongoing production. Concept ships will be available for in-game credits in the final universe, and they are not required to start the game.
Pirates
Cutlass Black
Drake Interplanetary claims that the Cutlass Black is a low-cost, easy-to-maintain solution for local in-system militia units. The larger-than-average cargo hold, RIO seat and dedicated tractor mount are, the company literature insists, for facilitating search and rescue operations.
Cutlass Red
The Cutlass Red converts the standard cargo hold to a well-equiped medical facility including an Autodoc. This starbound ambulance features the Nav-E7 Echo Transponder, a long range scanner, and a Secure Plus Docking Collar, making it ideal for search and rescue. This model also features a unique Red Crossbones skin.
Cutlass Blue
Sleek, mean, and royal. The Cutlass Blue adds missiles, a more aggressive engine, and Durasteel holding cells in the cargo bay to the standard model. The Cutlass Blue is the outworld militia standard ship of choice for patrols.
Caterpillar
Drake maintains that the Caterpillar, a sprawling, modular spacecraft which appears at least somewhat like its namesake, is for legitimate commerce and extended search and rescue missions… but at the end of the day, the Caterpillar is truly the evil twin of the Freelancer.
Herald
The Drake Herald is a small, armored ship designed to safely get information from Point A to Point B. Featuring a powerful central engine (for high speed transit and generating the power needed for effective data encryption/containment), advanced encryption software and an armored computer core, theHerald is unique among personal spacecraft in that it is designed to be easily ‘cleaned’ when in danger of capture.
Piracy Master Pack
New Ships
Crucible
A so-called “flying toolbox,” the Crucible is Anvil Aerospace’s first dedicated repair ship. Featuring a rotating control bridge and a detachable pressurized workspace, the Crucible is a versatile mobile garage equipped with repair arms, a drone operation center and all the equipment needed to overhaul a damaged craft back into fighting shape.
The Crucible, our penultimate Wave Four concept ship, is now available! Designed by the legendary Ryan Church, this repair ship is just the thing for keeping your fleet up and running. When closed, the detachable workshop allows crews to repair single seat fighters internally. When open, the Crucible can use its remote arms to attach and repair larger craft! You can learn more about the Crucible here, and Star Citizen’s overall repair mechanic here.
Avenger Variants
Star Citizen Alpha 2.0 will see the addition of flyable variants for the Aegis Dynamics Avenger! The base Avenger available today is now the Stalker, designed with the needs of bounty hunters in mind. A basic Titan cargo ship and an advanced e-warfare Warlock are also available… and all three will be available for combat in Star Citizen’s next patch!
The Titan and Stalker are permanent additions to the pledge store, the Warlock will be on sale through the end of the anniversary sale (Sunday, November 29th.) Please note that these variants will be available as separate modules in the future. The initial release of Star Citizen Alpha 2.0 does not allow changing modules, so we are offering them as distinct, playable ships first. We would encourage you to CCU to the Avenger you’re most interested in trying rather than picking up all three!
Avenger Titan
Lacking the Prisoner Cells of the Stalker or the EMP Generator of the Warlock, the Titan’s hold is free to carry cargo. Couple that available space with the Avenger’s tried and true combat abilities and you’ve got a light cargo hauler that’s more than capable of handling itself in a fight.
Avenger Stalker
Initially designed as Aegis’ frontline carrier ship for the military, the Avenger Stalker took a different path, ultimately having a long and storied career as the standard patrol craft of the UEE Advocacy. Utilizing its cargo hold for prisoner transport, the Avenger features a sturdy, reliable hull and the capacity for larger-than-expected engine mounts.
Avenger Warlock
The Avenger Warlock was built towards a single design philosophy: stop ships, don’t destroy them. Probably the closest to a non-lethal fighter, the Warlock is outfitted with a Behring REP-8 EMP Generator, capable of emitting a powerful electromagnetic wave to disable any electronics unfortunate enough to be within the blast radius.
P-72 Archimedes
If you’re looking for something a little more agile, blaze among the stars with Kruger Intergalactic’s P-72 Archimedes. Whether for added security, exploring a system or simply the joy of flying, the Archimedes is the perfect companion snub craft. Featuring an extra intake and a lighter hull than its sister ship, the Archimedes delivers exceptional handling and boost capabilities in a sleek package you’ll want along for the ride.
The Archimedes is here! Concepted by Gurmukh Bhasin, the Archimedes is the speedy, luxury alternative to the P-52 Merlin. Initially included with the Constellation Phoenix, the P-72 is interchangeable with Kruger’s other snub fighter and can be attached to any snub-capable Constellation. The Archimedes is available this week as a concept sale.
Vanguard
The A3G Vanguard is the United Empire of Earth’s dedicated deep space fighter. Initially developed as a bomber-destroyer, the Vanguard is a hard-charging bulldog of a ship which features extensive forward-mounted weaponry designed to tear through the shields and armor of other spacecraft. Four high-caliber forward laser cannons and a massive central Gatling gun give the Vanguard an unprecedented amount of sheer striking power. So-named because their multiple-jump range allows them to form the forefront of any military expedition, Vanguard have seen extensive service against the Vanduul.
We’re proud to announce that the Aegis Vanguard will be available as hangar-ready in Star Citizen Alpha 2.0! Going forward, we intend to make ships hangar ready earlier in the process than previously allowed, starting during their advanced greybox phase. The Vanguard will be the first of these ships! In its honor, we’re making all three variants and their BUK options available again this week.
Bring a Friend!
We don’t just want existing players to enjoy the anniversary, we want to introduce Star Citizen to new players! As a result, we’re offering a limited number of discounted $30 packages each day, first come first serve (1,000 per day.) These packages offer the full Star Citizen experience, including an Aurora starter ship and a copy of the Squadron 42 single player adventure. You won’t find a better deal anywhere in the ‘Verse, so pick up a copy for a friend today!
Physical Merchandise
Star Citizen physical merchandise is also on sale! For the next week, Constellation models are now $80, Arena Commander t-shirts are on deep discount and all other in-stock merchandise is 20% off.
Anniversary Sale Schedule
We’re making a large number of our older ships available for those who missed out, want to upgrade an existing package or simply want to expand their fleets. We will be presenting these ships over the course of the next week in a series of role-based theme days, listed below. From armored explorers to lumbering transports to alien traders, there’s something for everyone! All existing ships will be offered with three year insurance in honor of our third birthday. Each day will also include a discounted ‘fleet pack’ in the style of the Armada Pack available during CitizenCon. Don’t want to wait around to switch to your favorite ship? All ships will be available at once during the end of the sale, from Friday, November 27th to Sunday, November 29th.
Sunday, November 22nd: Military
Retaliator and Modules
Starfarer Gemini
Sabre
Super Hornet
Monday, November 23rd: Racing
M50
Mustang Delta
350R
Tuesday, November 24th: Aliens
Khartu-al
Banu Merchantman
Reliant
Wednesday, November 25th: Working Starships
Reclaimer
Genesis Starliner
Orion
Aurora LX
Starfarer
Thursday, November 26th: Mercantile
Freelancer MIS
Hull Series
Constellation Phoenix
Friday, November 27th – Sunday, November 29th: All Previously Offered Ships!
From Friday through Sunday, all ships previously available during this sale will return. Pick up your favorite as soon as it appears, or wait until the finale to make your choice!
Following the departure of , with and on leave for now, the Dev Team members in the past few days have discussed and voted on who will be the next lead developer. I
regret
am posting this to inform you all that they voted for me. This may not be the easiest of transitions, especially given the forum downtime that recently took place. However, we're aiming to be much more organized and responsive as a whole. You can view the
About the update progress ... before the forum downtime, we had a system developer working on an update for Kusari, another for Rheinland, and a third working with the Nomicron stuff. Progression since then has been slower. We ask that you have patience, perhaps offer your support, and at least bear with us as they work. Complaining that they're slow will only dissuade them, and devs are people too. We are also discussing other matters such as PvP balance, new models needed, jumpdrive disruptors, and more. We appreciate the community awareness of these, and the team will be working together to get stuff done.
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Welcome to week five of the Star Citizen Alpha 2.0. Development updates and yes we’ve finally made it to PTU!
Yesterday, right in the nick of time for the Star Citizen Anniversary Livestream, we released 2.0 to PTU to our first group of intrepid testers who have been rewarded with a “sneak peek” for being so helpful with our Issue Council. The fan feedback over the coming days will be gold to the CIG team and will really help us take the stress testing up a notch so that we can safely release 2.0 to the rest of the community in an incremental fashion.
In fact, that feedback is already paying dividends! This afternoon, we patched the PTU to address some crash bugs and issues with the flyable Avengers. Thanks to the feedback from our vanguard test group, we’re pleased to announce that we are upping the test group significantly in time for the weekend. 15,000 backers, selected based on their activity level in Arena Commander, will be receiving wave two invites shortly! Remember, this is still early testing: expect lots of issues… but all those crashes and disconnects will help make for a better game for everyone.
The team have been working around the clock and over the weekend to get you this build but we won’t let up the pace until 2.0 is available to everyone and want to thank you all for your patience and understanding in what it’s taken to get here. This release really is a landmark in Star Citizen and video games history as we’re now pioneering technology that’s never been undertaken to this scale before and it’s all thanks to the belief in the backers who helped fund the team to make the dream a reality.
We hope you’ve enjoyed reading these reports with all of the gory details thus far, and depending on how things go with PTU, we will keep you updated on progress for increased backer numbers and when we are going fully Live.
The bullet points below really say it all this week…
Gameplay and Engineering
Bug fixing and polish
UI
Bug fixing and polish
Art
Bug fixing and polish
Animation
Bug fixing and polish
Audio
Bug fixing and polish
Blocking Issues
None for “baby” PTU!
Working on any issues needed to increase backer numbers and eventually go Live.
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“The Tompkins Amatuer Series, the Empire Raceway Invitational, the Long Under Flyby – I had competed in about every amateur race I could, and, the most surprising part, I had somehow managed to place in nearly all of them. What started off as a hobby after an impulse buy of an engine upgrade, had quickly taken over most of my life. It seemed like if I was awake, then I was either working or racing, and if I was at work, I was still probably thinking about racing. Going over turns in my head. Planning tweaks that I was going to do later that night. I’m pretty sure I was about a week away from getting fired when I got that comm from Team Travers. You cannot even imagine my surprise. Heck, I’m not sure I can either, since I nearly blacked out when I saw the comm ID. No way would I have guessed in million years that a winning org like Travers would ask me to fly for them, but I guess they know better than I do since I wound up winning New Horizon for them.”
We’re celebrating Star Citizen’s birthday with a huge ship sale! Each day for the next week, we’re bringing back a selection of fan favorite limited edition ships to the pledge store, so anyone interested can pick up what they might have missed. Today, the focus is on our racers, including the speedy M50 and the top-of-the-line Mustang. For anyone who wants it all, an racing master pack is also available!
A variety of new ships will be available all week; they are listed below.
Remember: we are offering these pledge ships to help fund Star Citizen’s development. The funding generated by sales such as this go directly to the game’s ongoing production. Concept ships will be available for in-game credits in the final universe, and they are not required to start the game.
Racers
M50
If you want to get from point A to point B as quickly as possible and with as much style as possible then ORIGIN’s M50 is for you. Featuring supercharged engines that counter a tiny weapons loadout, the M50 is a ship for going FAST.
350R
The combination of a Gangleri BP 707 Standard powerplant with a 300i fuselage re-engineered to accommodate twin Hammer Propulsion HM 4.3 thrusters makes the 350r the fastest personal craft you’ll ever call your own.
Mustang Alpha
Inspired by Consolidated Outland CEO Silas Koerner’s cutting edge vision, the Mustang Alpha is a sleek, stylish spacecraft that uses ultralight alloys to push power ratios to the limits, albeit sometimes unsafely. And now, with the optional Cargo Carrier, you can have the Alpha’s advantages without sacrificing carrying capacity.
Mustang Beta
The Mustang Beta, with its unprecedented range, is made for long duration flights. The factory standard Tarsus Leaper Jump Engine enables the Beta to travel to the galaxy’s farthest systems with ease, while the ship’s unique Com4T living quarters will make the journey feel like you never left home.
Mustang Gamma
Consolidated Outland’s design and engineering teams have managed to tweak and refine the Mustang into an admirable racer. The end result, the Mustang Gamma, has smooth acceleration, and power on demand thanks to an innovative package featuring three powerful Magma Jet engines for maximum thrust.
Mustang Delta
While it may not be able to go toe to toe with some of the military specific ships, by reinforcing the Mustang’s already strong hull construction with Consolidated Outland’s own line of Cavalry Class Mass Reduction Armor, the Delta has a reduced cross-sectional signature that evens the playing field.
Racing Ships Pack
New Ships
Crucible
A so-called “flying toolbox,” the Crucible is Anvil Aerospace’s first dedicated repair ship. Featuring a rotating control bridge and a detachable pressurized workspace, the Crucible is a versatile mobile garage equipped with repair arms, a drone operation center and all the equipment needed to overhaul a damaged craft back into fighting shape.
The Crucible, our penultimate Wave Four concept ship, is now available! Designed by the legendary Ryan Church, this repair ship is just the thing for keeping your fleet up and running. When closed, the detachable workshop allows crews to repair single seat fighters internally. When open, the Crucible can use its remote arms to attach and repair larger craft! You can learn more about the Crucible here, and Star Citizen’s overall repair mechanic here.
Avenger Variants
Star Citizen Alpha 2.0 will see the addition of flyable variants for the Aegis Dynamics Avenger! The base Avenger available today is now the Stalker, designed with the needs of bounty hunters in mind. A basic Titan cargo ship and an advanced e-warfare Warlock are also available… and all three will be available for combat in Star Citizen’s next patch!
The Titan and Stalker are permanent additions to the pledge store, the Warlock will be on sale through the end of the anniversary sale (Sunday, November 29th.) Please note that these variants will be available as separate modules in the future. The initial release of Star Citizen Alpha 2.0 does not allow changing modules, so we are offering them as distinct, playable ships first. We would encourage you to CCU to the Avenger you’re most interested in trying rather than picking up all three!
Avenger Titan
Lacking the Prisoner Cells of the Stalker or the EMP Generator of the Warlock, the Titan’s hold is free to carry cargo. Couple that available space with the Avenger’s tried and true combat abilities and you’ve got a light cargo hauler that’s more than capable of handling itself in a fight.
Avenger Stalker
Initially designed as Aegis’ frontline carrier ship for the military, the Avenger Stalker took a different path, ultimately having a long and storied career as the standard patrol craft of the UEE Advocacy. Utilizing its cargo hold for prisoner transport, the Avenger features a sturdy, reliable hull and the capacity for larger-than-expected engine mounts.
Avenger Warlock
The Avenger Warlock was built towards a single design philosophy: stop ships, don’t destroy them. Probably the closest to a non-lethal fighter, the Warlock is outfitted with a Behring REP-8 EMP Generator, capable of emitting a powerful electromagnetic wave to disable any electronics unfortunate enough to be within the blast radius.
P-72 Archimedes
If you’re looking for something a little more agile, blaze among the stars with Kruger Intergalactic’s P-72 Archimedes. Whether for added security, exploring a system or simply the joy of flying, the Archimedes is the perfect companion snub craft. Featuring an extra intake and a lighter hull than its sister ship, the Archimedes delivers exceptional handling and boost capabilities in a sleek package you’ll want along for the ride.
The Archimedes is here! Concepted by Gurmukh Bhasin, the Archimedes is the speedy, luxury alternative to the P-52 Merlin. Initially included with the Constellation Phoenix, the P-72 is interchangeable with Kruger’s other snub fighter and can be attached to any snub-capable Constellation. The Archimedes is available this week as a concept sale.
Vanguard
The A3G Vanguard is the United Empire of Earth’s dedicated deep space fighter. Initially developed as a bomber-destroyer, the Vanguard is a hard-charging bulldog of a ship which features extensive forward-mounted weaponry designed to tear through the shields and armor of other spacecraft. Four high-caliber forward laser cannons and a massive central Gatling gun give the Vanguard an unprecedented amount of sheer striking power. So-named because their multiple-jump range allows them to form the forefront of any military expedition, Vanguard have seen extensive service against the Vanduul.
We’re proud to announce that the Aegis Vanguard will be available as hangar-ready in Star Citizen Alpha 2.0! Going forward, we intend to make ships hangar ready earlier in the process than previously allowed, starting during their advanced greybox phase. The Vanguard will be the first of these ships! In its honor, we’re making all three variants and their BUK options available again this week.
Bring a Friend!
We don’t just want existing players to enjoy the anniversary, we want to introduce Star Citizen to new players! As a result, we’re offering a limited number of discounted $30 packages each day, first come first serve (1,000 per day.) These packages offer the full Star Citizen experience, including an Aurora starter ship and a copy of the Squadron 42 single player adventure. You won’t find a better deal anywhere in the ‘Verse, so pick up a copy for a friend today!
Physical Merchandise
Star Citizen physical merchandise is also on sale! For the next week, Constellation models are now $80, Arena Commander t-shirts are on deep discount and all other in-stock merchandise is 20% off.
Anniversary Sale Schedule
We’re making a large number of our older ships available for those who missed out, want to upgrade an existing package or simply want to expand their fleets. We will be presenting these ships over the course of the next week in a series of role-based theme days, listed below. From armored explorers to lumbering transports to alien traders, there’s something for everyone! All existing ships will be offered with three year insurance in honor of our third birthday. Each day will also include a discounted ‘fleet pack’ in the style of the Armada Pack available during CitizenCon. Don’t want to wait around to switch to your favorite ship? All ships will be available at once during the end of the sale, from Friday, November 27th to Sunday, November 29th.
Tuesday, November 24th: Aliens
Khartu-al
Banu Merchantman
Reliant
Wednesday, November 25th: Working Starships
Reclaimer
Genesis Starliner
Orion
Aurora LX
Starfarer
Thursday, November 26th: Mercantile
Freelancer MIS
Hull Series
Constellation Phoenix
Friday, November 27th – Sunday, November 29th: All Previously Offered Ships!
From Friday through Sunday, all ships previously available during this sale will return. Pick up your favorite as soon as it appears, or wait until the finale to make your choice!
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“It’s the first push that gets me every time. That moment where the landing gear breaks contact with the ground. Where the docking collar releases. It’s the moment that I know that this, whatever’s going to happen, is about to begin. Maybe this trip’ll be a bust… maybe it’ll change the course of Human history. And that… that feeling right there… it’s everything.”
We’re celebrating Star Citizen’s birthday with a huge ship sale! Each day for the next week, we’re bringing back a selection of fan favorite limited edition ships to the pledge store, so anyone interested can pick up what they might have missed. Today, the focus is on our explorers, including the mighty Carrack and the Endeavor science platform. For anyone who wants it all, an explorer master pack is also available!
A variety of new ships will be available all week; they are listed below.
Remember: we are offering these pledge ships to help fund Star Citizen’s development. The funding generated by sales such as this go directly to the game’s ongoing production. Concept ships will be available for in-game credits in the final universe, and they are not required to start the game.
Explorers
Endeavor
Musashi Industrial & Starflight Concern is proud to present the Endeavor-class research vessel, a fully modular space platform designed to be adapted for a variety of scientific and medical tasks. Initially developed as a floating laboratory, the MISC Endeavor can be outfitted for everything from spatial telescopy to use as mobile hospital.
Carrack
The Anvil Carrack features reinforced fuel tanks for long-duration flight, an advanced jump drive, and a dedicated computer core for jump charting operations. Originally a military exclusive, the Carrack is now available for civilian use. On-board accommodations include crew medical and repair facilities, and a mapping-oriented sensor suite.
315p
Exploration is man’s highest calling. Prepare to chart distant horizons with man’s most sophisticated piece of technology, the ORIGIN 315p. Featuring a more robust power plant and a custom scanning package, exclusively designed by Chimera Communications.
Exploration Master Pack
New Ships
Crucible
A so-called “flying toolbox,” the Crucible is Anvil Aerospace’s first dedicated repair ship. Featuring a rotating control bridge and a detachable pressurized workspace, the Crucible is a versatile mobile garage equipped with repair arms, a drone operation center and all the equipment needed to overhaul a damaged craft back into fighting shape.
The Crucible, our penultimate Wave Four concept ship, is now available! Designed by the legendary Ryan Church, this repair ship is just the thing for keeping your fleet up and running. When closed, the detachable workshop allows crews to repair single seat fighters internally. When open, the Crucible can use its remote arms to attach and repair larger craft! You can learn more about the Crucible here, and Star Citizen’s overall repair mechanic here.
Avenger Variants
Star Citizen Alpha 2.0 will see the addition of flyable variants for the Aegis Dynamics Avenger! The base Avenger available today is now the Stalker, designed with the needs of bounty hunters in mind. A basic Titan cargo ship and an advanced e-warfare Warlock are also available… and all three will be available for combat in Star Citizen’s next patch!
The Titan and Stalker are permanent additions to the pledge store, the Warlock will be on sale through the end of the anniversary sale (Sunday, November 29th.) Please note that these variants will be available as separate modules in the future. The initial release of Star Citizen Alpha 2.0 does not allow changing modules, so we are offering them as distinct, playable ships first. We would encourage you to CCU to the Avenger you’re most interested in trying rather than picking up all three!
Avenger Titan
Lacking the Prisoner Cells of the Stalker or the EMP Generator of the Warlock, the Titan’s hold is free to carry cargo. Couple that available space with the Avenger’s tried and true combat abilities and you’ve got a light cargo hauler that’s more than capable of handling itself in a fight.
Avenger Stalker
Initially designed as Aegis’ frontline carrier ship for the military, the Avenger Stalker took a different path, ultimately having a long and storied career as the standard patrol craft of the UEE Advocacy. Utilizing its cargo hold for prisoner transport, the Avenger features a sturdy, reliable hull and the capacity for larger-than-expected engine mounts.
Avenger Warlock
The Avenger Warlock was built towards a single design philosophy: stop ships, don’t destroy them. Probably the closest to a non-lethal fighter, the Warlock is outfitted with a Behring REP-8 EMP Generator, capable of emitting a powerful electromagnetic wave to disable any electronics unfortunate enough to be within the blast radius.
P-72 Archimedes
If you’re looking for something a little more agile, blaze among the stars with Kruger Intergalactic’s P-72 Archimedes. Whether for added security, exploring a system or simply the joy of flying, the Archimedes is the perfect companion snub craft. Featuring an extra intake and a lighter hull than its sister ship, the Archimedes delivers exceptional handling and boost capabilities in a sleek package you’ll want along for the ride.
The Archimedes is here! Concepted by Gurmukh Bhasin, the Archimedes is the speedy, luxury alternative to the P-52 Merlin. Initially included with the Constellation Phoenix, the P-72 is interchangeable with Kruger’s other snub fighter and can be attached to any snub-capable Constellation. The Archimedes is available this week as a concept sale.
Vanguard
The A3G Vanguard is the United Empire of Earth’s dedicated deep space fighter. Initially developed as a bomber-destroyer, the Vanguard is a hard-charging bulldog of a ship which features extensive forward-mounted weaponry designed to tear through the shields and armor of other spacecraft. Four high-caliber forward laser cannons and a massive central Gatling gun give the Vanguard an unprecedented amount of sheer striking power. So-named because their multiple-jump range allows them to form the forefront of any military expedition, Vanguard have seen extensive service against the Vanduul.
We’re proud to announce that the Aegis Vanguard will be available as hangar-ready in Star Citizen Alpha 2.0! Going forward, we intend to make ships hangar ready earlier in the process than previously allowed, starting during their advanced greybox phase. The Vanguard will be the first of these ships! In its honor, we’re making all three variants and their BUK options available again this week.
Bring a Friend!
We don’t just want existing players to enjoy the anniversary, we want to introduce Star Citizen to new players! As a result, we’re offering a limited number of discounted $30 packages each day, first come first serve (1,000 per day.) These packages offer the full Star Citizen experience, including an Aurora starter ship and a copy of the Squadron 42 single player adventure. You won’t find a better deal anywhere in the ‘Verse, so pick up a copy for a friend today!
Physical Merchandise
Star Citizen physical merchandise is also on sale! For the next week, Constellation models are now $80, Arena Commander t-shirts are on deep discount and all other in-stock merchandise is 20% off.
Anniversary Sale Schedule
We’re making a large number of our older ships available for those who missed out, want to upgrade an existing package or simply want to expand their fleets. We will be presenting these ships over the course of the next week in a series of role-based theme days, listed below. From armored explorers to lumbering transports to alien traders, there’s something for everyone! All existing ships will be offered with three year insurance in honor of our third birthday. Each day will also include a discounted ‘fleet pack’ in the style of the Armada Pack available during CitizenCon. Don’t want to wait around to switch to your favorite ship? All ships will be available at once during the end of the sale, from Friday, November 27th to Sunday, November 29th.
Friday, November 20th: Exploration
Endeavor and Modules
Carrack
Saturday, November 21st: Piracy
Caterpillar
Herald
Redeemer
Cutlass Blue
Sunday, November 22nd: Military
Retaliator and Modules
Starfarer Gemini
Sabre
Super Hornet
Monday, November 23rd: Racing
M50
Mustang Delta
350R
Tuesday, November 24th: Aliens
Khartu-al
Banu Merchantman
Reliant
Wednesday, November 25th: Working Starships
Reclaimer
Genesis Starliner
Orion
Aurora LX
Starfarer
Thursday, November 26th: Mercantile
Freelancer MIS
Hull Series
Constellation Phoenix
Friday, November 27th – Sunday, November 29th: All Previously Offered Ships!
From Friday through Sunday, all ships previously available during this sale will return. Pick up your favorite as soon as it appears, or wait until the finale to make your choice!
Inhalte von externen Seiten werden ohne Ihre Zustimmung nicht automatisch geladen und angezeigt.
A so-called “flying toolbox,” the Crucible is Anvil Aerospace’s first dedicated repair ship. Featuring a rotating control bridge and a detachable pressurized workspace, the Crucible is a versatile mobile garage equipped with repair arms, an operations center and all the equipment needed to overhaul a damaged craft back into fighting shape.
Whether you’re restoring a crippled derelict or quickly getting a Hornet back into fighting shape, the Crucible is your one stop repair shop! Featuring a series of remote manipulator arms for delicate repair work, clamshell doors that allow for both zero-g and pressurized repair work and all the tools and EVA equipment needed to get out there and make things go.
Are you interested in learning more about Star Citizen’s ship repair mechanics? Check out this design document developed as part of the Crucible design process to learn everything you could ever want to know!
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The Crucible features a carefully designed repair-oriented bridge with multiple operations stations. A single captain can operate both flight and repair control systems by rotating the bridge. By facing forward, the ship can operate as a normal spacecraft. In reverse, the commander can look out over the repair bay and interact with the manipulator arms and other systems. A larger crew can divide these tasks for maximum efficiency!
The Crucible’s cab section includes storage, living quarters and dedicated EVA lockers intended to allow a multi-person crew to prepare to function in zero gravity, which will be necessary for larger repair and salvage operations. Be sure to tune in to today’s livestream for a walkthrough of the planned interior from designer Randy Vasquez.
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Like the Endeavor or the Hull-series, the Crucible is designed for future expansion! Included with the standard model is what we’ve dubbed the ‘Scarab’: a dedicated dry workshop designed to support pressurized repair of single-seat fighters such as the Hornet or Gladiator (as an Anvil ship produced for the military, the Crucible is designed with these in mind.) Two internal arms allow work repair work to be conducted remotely, while direct access to the cab module (when attached) lets crews get up close and personal with their charges. External clamshell doors can be opened in depressurized mode, allowing the crew access to repair larger ships… making the Crucible capable of servicing everything from a Constellation to a Bengal! The Scarab can also be ‘dropped’ in space and can remain a fully functional temporary station while the cab performs other duties.
About the Sale
The Crucible is being offered for the first time as a limited concept sale. This means that the ship design meets our specifications, but it is not yet ready to display in your Hangar or to fight in Arena Commander. The sale includes Lifetime Insurance on the ship hull and a pair of decorative items for your Hangar. A future patch will add a Crucible poster and then once the in-game model is finished you will also be given an in-game Crucible mini ship model! In the future, the ship price will increase and the offer will not include Life Time Insurance or these extras.
If you’d like to add one to your fleet, they’re available in the pledge store until November 30th. You can also view a detail of the Crucible in the Holo Viewer in the Tech Overview of the ship page!
Disclaimer
Remember: we are offering this pledge ship to help fund Star Citizen’s development. The funding generated by sales such as this is what allows us to include deeper, non-combat oriented features in the Star Citizen world. Concept ships will be available for in-game credits in the final universe, and they are not required to start the game. Additionally, please note that the Crucible will be entering the ship pipeline now, it will ultimately be released after other concept ships have been completed. All decorative ‘flare’ items will also be available to acquire in the finished game world. The goal is to make additional ships available that give players a different experience rather than a particular advantage when the persistent universe launches.
Happy birthday, everyone! Three years ago, Star Citizen’s initial crowd funding campaign wrapped up with an epic 24-hour livestream direct from Austin, Texas. Today, Star Citizen is being developed by four dedicated studios around the world… all thanks to the support provided by our backers! In honor of that support, we’re proud to kick our anniversary sale week off with a stream updating everyone on everything from Star Citizen Alpha 2.0 to progress on Squadron 42. Tune in today (or catch the replay) to find out what’s coming up for Star Citizen straight from Chris Roberts and the team. It has been a great year for the team at Cloud Imperium. Thank you to our incredible community for the support you’ve shown us. We’re very excited about the impending launch of Star Citizen Alpha 2.0 and sincerely hope you’ll be as proud of it as we are. This new update, complete with FPS, multi-crew and large world tech, will truly show the world how cool Star Citizen is going to be!
We’re also kicking off a week-long sale that brings back popular limited edition ships and offers a few new surprises! Thanks to the new CCU system, backers can use the schedule below to upgrade to exactly the ship they’ve always wanted. Finally, we’re very pleased to announce that several new ships are now available in all possible states! Two new concept ships are on sale today and with the launch of Star Citizen Alpha 2.0 there will be three flyable Avengers and a hangar-ready Vanguard! You can see below for further details. We will be holding Q&As on the Crucible, Avenger variants and Archimedes over the course of next week. Visit the forums to have your question included!
Remember: we are offering these pledge ships to help fund Star Citizen’s development. The funding generated by sales such as this go directly to the game’s ongoing production. Concept ships will be available for in-game credits in the final universe, and they are not required to start the game.
New Ships
Crucible
A so-called “flying toolbox,” the Crucible is Anvil Aerospace’s first dedicated repair ship. Featuring a rotating control bridge and a detachable pressurized workspace, the Crucible is a versatile mobile garage equipped with repair arms, a drone operation center and all the equipment needed to overhaul a damaged craft back into fighting shape.
The Crucible, our penultimate Wave Four concept ship, is now available! Designed by the legendary Ryan Church, this repair ship is just the thing for keeping your fleet up and running. When closed, the detachable workshop allows crews to repair single seat fighters internally. When open, the Crucible can use its remote arms to attach and repair larger craft! You can learn more about the Crucible here, and Star Citizen’s overall repair mechanic here.
Avenger Variants
Star Citizen Alpha 2.0 will see the addition of flyable variants for the Aegis Dynamics Avenger! The base Avenger available today is now the Stalker, designed with the needs of bounty hunters in mind. A basic Titan cargo ship and an advanced e-warfare Warlock are also available… and all three will be available for combat in Star Citizen’s next patch!
The Titan and Stalker are permanent additions to the pledge store, the Warlock will be on sale through the end of the anniversary sale (Sunday, November 29th.) Please note that these variants will be available as separate modules in the future. The initial release of Star Citizen Alpha 2.0 does not allow changing modules, so we are offering them as distinct, playable ships first. We would encourage you to CCU to the Avenger you’re most interested in trying rather than picking up all three!
Avenger Titan
Lacking the Prisoner Cells of the Stalker or the EMP Generator of the Warlock, the Titan’s hold is free to carry cargo. Couple that available space with the Avenger’s tried and true combat abilities and you’ve got a light cargo hauler that’s more than capable of handling itself in a fight.
Avenger Stalker
Initially designed as Aegis’ frontline carrier ship for the military, the Avenger Stalker took a different path, ultimately having a long and storied career as the standard patrol craft of the UEE Advocacy. Utilizing its cargo hold for prisoner transport, the Avenger features a sturdy, reliable hull and the capacity for larger-than-expected engine mounts.
Avenger Warlock
The Avenger Warlock was built towards a single design philosophy: stop ships, don’t destroy them. Probably the closest to a non-lethal fighter, the Warlock is outfitted with a Behring REP-8 EMP Generator, capable of emitting a powerful electromagnetic wave to disable any electronics unfortunate enough to be within the blast radius.
P-72 Archimedes
If you’re looking for something a little more agile, blaze among the stars with Kruger Intergalactic’s P-72 Archimedes. Whether for added security, exploring a system or simply the joy of flying, the Archimedes is the perfect companion snub craft. Featuring an extra intake and a lighter hull than its sister ship, the Archimedes delivers exceptional handling and boost capabilities in a sleek package you’ll want along for the ride.
The Archimedes is here! Concepted by Gurmukh Bhasin, the Archimedes is the speedy, luxury alternative to the P-52 Merlin. Initially included with the Constellation Phoenix, the P-72 is interchangeable with Kruger’s other snub fighter and can be attached to any snub-capable Constellation. The Archimedes is available this week as a concept sale.
Vanguard
The A3G Vanguard is the United Empire of Earth’s dedicated deep space fighter. Initially developed as a bomber-destroyer, the Vanguard is a hard-charging bulldog of a ship which features extensive forward-mounted weaponry designed to tear through the shields and armor of other spacecraft. Four high-caliber forward laser cannons and a massive central Gatling gun give the Vanguard an unprecedented amount of sheer striking power. So-named because their multiple-jump range allows them to form the forefront of any military expedition, Vanguard have seen extensive service against the Vanduul.
We’re proud to announce that the Aegis Vanguard will be available as hangar-ready in Star Citizen Alpha 2.0! Going forward, we intend to make ships hangar ready earlier in the process than previously allowed, starting during their advanced greybox phase. The Vanguard will be the first of these ships! In its honor, we’re making all three variants and their BUK options available again this week.
Bring a Friend!
We don’t just want existing players to enjoy the anniversary, we want to introduce Star Citizen to new players! As a result, we’re offering a limited number of discounted $30 packages each day, first come first serve (1,000 per day.) These packages offer the full Star Citizen experience, including an Aurora starter ship and a copy of the Squadron 42 single player adventure. You won’t find a better deal anywhere in the ‘Verse, so pick up a copy for a friend today!
Physical Merchandise
Star Citizen physical merchandise is also on sale! For the next week, Constellation models are now $80, Arena Commander t-shirts are on deep discount and all other in-stock merchandise is 20% off.
Anniversary Sale Schedule
We’re making a large number of our older ships available for those who missed out, want to upgrade an existing package or simply want to expand their fleets. We will be presenting these ships over the course of the next week in a series of role-based theme days, listed below. From armored explorers to lumbering transports to alien traders, there’s something for everyone! All existing ships will be offered with three year insurance in honor of our third birthday. Each day will also include a discounted ‘fleet pack’ in the style of the Armada Pack available during CitizenCon. Don’t want to wait around to switch to your favorite ship? All ships will be available at once during the end of the sale, from Friday, November 27th to Sunday, November 29th.
Friday, November 20th: Exploration
Endeavor and Modules
Carrack
Saturday, November 21st: Piracy
Caterpillar
Herald
Redeemer
Cutlass Blue
Sunday, November 22nd: Military
Retaliator and Modules
Starfarer Gemini
Sabre
Super Hornet
Monday, November 23rd: Racing
M50
Mustang Delta
350R
Tuesday, November 24th: Aliens
Khartu-al
Banu Merchantman
Reliant
Wednesday, November 25th: Working Starships
Reclaimer
Genesis Starliner
Orion
Aurora LX
Starfarer
Thursday, November 26th: Mercantile
Freelancer MIS
Hull Series
Constellation Phoenix
Friday, November 27th – Sunday, November 29th: All Previously Offered Ships!
From Friday through Sunday, all ships previously available during this sale will return. Pick up your favorite as soon as it appears, or wait until the finale to make your choice!
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Space is a hostile place and even the most skilled pilots will need to have their craft patched up from time to time. Fortunately, there are a number of options available to Citizens to get themselves back up and running.
Star Citizen’s repair system works in conjunction with the engine’s detailed damage model to create intuitive and engaging gameplay for players wishing to pursue a career in ship repair or for pilots to execute quick field repairs.
The basis for repair technology in Star Citizen are tools equipped with multipurpose lasers that can trim away damaged material or sinter construction material injected onto a component’s frame, rebuilding its structure
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Any ship with repair capabilities has two roles that must be filled to ensure a successful repair job: the Repair Arm Operator and the Repair Task Manager.
The Repair Arm Operator is responsible for the control of the robotic repair arm. Mounted with a multi-purpose laser and material injector system, the repair arm is capable of carrying out all manner of repair tasks. The repair arm is the only player controlled method of fully restoring a ship to 100% health but requires skill, knowledge and coordination with the Repair Task Manager to do so effectively.
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The Repair Task Manager relays detailed damage information to the Repair Arm Operator, designates repair tasks to be undertaken and is responsible for the allocation of materials to satisfy part reconstruction requirements.
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To initiate workshop repairs, the Repair Task Manager must first use their damage assessment interface to gather damage information and prepare for the repair tasks required.
Damage Assessment
Whilst using their terminal, the Repair Task Manager can access the target ship’s damage diagnostics. This displays the status of ship parts, the hull, systems, weapons and their various connections. The player can toggle and filter between various layers, isolating and displaying their respective elements.
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Damage that has been dealt to a ship’s hull is represented on an AR overlay as a heatmap: no damage displays as green, full damage and holes as red, and partial damage on a gradient in-between. The edges of hull breaches are also highlighted for clarity.
Highlighting the various parts will display its current health as well as the materials required to repair it. When ready to start a repair job, the Repair Task Manager selects the desired part, opening the Material Panel.
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Repairs taking place in a workshop require the consumption of the raw construction materials gathered through Mining, Scavenging and Trade. The Repair Task Manager can assign different materials according to the repair task at hand via their console’s Material Panel.
Depending on the repair job, certain types and quantities of material are required. When a component is selected, these requirements are displayed in the Repair Compound section of the Material Panel as slots that need to be filled from the repair ship’s Material Stock.
Each material is graded to reflect how effective it is when assigned to a slot and how it will affect the repair procedure (discussed later in the Repair Arm Operator’s section). To get optimum results the Task Manager must balance the Arm Operators requirements, versus the value of the materials used.
Once all materials have been assigned, the Repair Arm Operator can then initiate the reconstruction process.
In the event that a ship part or component has been entirely detached or destroyed, it must be reconstructed. To do this the Task Manager selects the missing part from their Damage Assessment panel and assigns the materials as normal.
Once the composition is confirmed, the missing part’s frame is automatically constructed by the Repair Arm; the process is entirely automatic, using patterns from the repair terminal’s database for reconstruction. After the framework has been constructed, the player can then use patching to build the surface up as normal.
Before a reconstruction can be started, the attachment point must be cleared of any obstructing debris by the Repair Arm Operator. Whilst an obstruction is present, the part appears as a red hologram on the damage assessment screen with the extraneous material highlighted for removal.
Once the Repair Task Manager has chosen the part and repair material composition, the Repair Arm Operator starts the reconstruction and repair process. By using their terminal, the operator controls the arm’s position and aim remotely via a mounted camera. To avoid overcomplicating controls, the head is translated and aimed directly with an IK solution orientating the rest of the arm to follow.
The Repair Arm’s laser can be switched between two modes to carry out the various necessary repair stages: Stripping and Patching.
Stripping
Hull stripping is vital for improving the integrity of a ship’s hull that has only sustained light damage, as only missing segments can be patched.
In stripping mode, the repair arm’s high powered laser is used to cleanly remove parts of a component’s surface without causing structural damage to the surrounding area. Stripped surfaces are converted and collected as a percentage of its raw materials.
Stripping is also necessary when a component or part has been completely detached. Full component reconstruction requires a clean attachment point requiring the operator to cut away any debris that compromises the area.
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Patching is the act of rebuilding a ship or component’s surface and restoring its integrity. When in patching mode, the Repair Arm’s laser is repurposed to directly ‘print’ material onto a ship or component’s frame. As the Repair Arm is aimed, a wireframe hologram is projected showing the edge of the damaged area that can be printed onto. This grid is a high resolution tractor mesh that matches the undamaged surface, supporting the material printed onto the ship.
The Repair Arm sprays a powdered compound whilst simultaneously firing a laser to heat and bind the compound, creating the new surface. As the repair surface is built up, the mesh gradually contracts to form a new working edge until the area is completely restored.
The strength of the new surface is dependent on the amount of exposure it is subjected to from the laser. As a surface is being built, it gradually increases in strength until it reaches 100%. If the laser remains focused on that area for much longer however, the integrity decreases as the surface overheats. This creates a sweet spot that the operator must reach before moving on to achieve optimum integrity.
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The player can choose to toggle the AR damage heatmap overlay on and off whilst patching to receive real time feedback as they approach this threshold: the surface turning green as it nears 100% and transitioning back into the red as the surface is overexposed. If a surface becomes overexposed, the Arm Operator will have to restrip that section of the surface before reattempting to patch it.
The composition of the repair material, as defined by the Repair Task Manager, determines the behaviour of the patch surface as it is being printed: the max integrity level, the size of the peak integrity sweet spot and the rate at which the exposure affects integrity. This presents a player-defined risk-reward loop where the use of cheap materials can achieve the same results as expensive ones, but requires far more skill to accomplish with the crew of the repair ship needing to take their operators abilities into consideration when pricing jobs and assigning materials.
The Multitool is a personal item that is equipped with the capabilities of a small-scale version of a workshop’s Repair Arm. It is capable of stripping and patching, allowing it to achieve a wide variety of ship repairs short of full part reconstruction.
Although the Multitool’s repair abilities are the same as that of the Repair Arm, the size of the laser and low quantity of repair material it can store means that it is only suitable for quick fixes and patch jobs to get a ship back to a proper repair facility.
Component Damage
When your ship takes damage, some of that damage will be transferred from the point of impact on the hull to the nearest system and weapon components. Those components then distribute that damage between itself and whatever Subcomponents are attached inside.
Subcomponents are the various consumables that are used to run or improve a component or system’s behaviour.
In general, component field repairs consist of turning off whichever component is having problems, replacing the broken subcomponents, and turning the component back on. In very large components, like those found on capital ships, there may be multiple actions involved in turning a component on or off, including rerouting power or coolant to other parts of the ship. These actions may also involve the use of on-board ship computers.
Subcomponents
Subcomponents provide additional benefits to the component they are attached to, allowing for further customization of a player’s ship. They are divided into three categories, each providing specific areas of improvement.
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Module Racks are panels that house the various components used to keep their associative subcomponents running. These can be found on the hull under maintenance hatches in closed-cockpit ships, or internally in the engineering section of larger multi-crew ships.
Depending on the component installed, different types and numbers of subcomponents are required. Each subcomponent is built for quick removal and replacement allowing for field repairs to be carried out as quickly as possible. If a player attempts to remove a subcomponent from a powered component they risk being electrocuted and receiving damage.
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Replacing a damaged subcomponent is a simple case of interacting with the item in question. The player will then remove it, freeing up the slot. If the player has a replacement in their possession, they can then interact with the empty slot to place it.
Subcomponent types are universal across ships and components of the same size class, a coolant rod from a Gladius’ laser cannon can replace a Hornet’s coolant rod housed in the shield generator. This provides a great deal of flexibility, allowing players to juggle elements between various systems as needed, as well as opening up opportunities to patch their ship using scavenged parts.
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Components on larger ships, such as the Idris or Retaliator can require a large number of subcomponents to function and/or larger sizes of subcomponents. When damaged, these more complicated systems can take significantly longer to diagnose and physically swap out any compromised subcomponents. To maintain full operation, these ships can contain alternative backup systems. In the case of an emergency, engineers can use their ship terminal to redirect power to the backup, allowing for full ship functionality whilst the engineer repairs the primary system. This can also be achieved manually, should an engineering terminal become inoperable, by physically swapping the whole module rack out, placing the backup system in the primary’s slot.
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Star Citizen Alpha 2.0. development update. Week Four… let’s go!
Well it’s been a fun week working on the game. As much as it can be stressful at times, it’s easy to forget what an amazing project we’re all working on thanks to you guys with your incredible support. Everything else aside, we are all really happy to be part of the team building the dreams in to a reality! The First-Person Universe will be something that has not been done before in the history of video games so any project this ambitious is always going to be a challenge – and who doesn’t love a challenge! Nothing worthwhile comes easy.
Star Citizen is a game we’re building to be enjoyed for many, many years to come and we’re now reaching at a turning point on a very special journey together with the 2.0 release. We hope we don’t leave you waiting much longer for this first real taste of what Star Citizen can become. It was a tough decision to make in putting our efforts behind this one huge release because it always had the potential for added risk for delays in production but we know it was the right decision to make for good of the project because it will give us the right foundations to build upon for the long term. A Publisher might not have been so brave because they don’t have the BDCE (Best Damn Community Ever!).
Get out your lucky pants and three-leaf clovers out because Murphy’s Law was in full force this week! No, it’s not a new game feature – we suffered some unfortunate news in our Lead FPS Programmer falling off his bicycle and breaking his wrist! This certainly wasn’t in the schedule so with him out of action for a few weeks we’ve had to pool some resources from other areas to help pitch in with getting 2.0 out of the door. It’s certainly not what we needed at such a critical time in the project but these things do happen.
In better news, we’re very nearly finished with our Excludibir process, with just one more QA report thus far of missing assets from the Release build with the Gladius causing a black screen hang on the Tutorial of the game. So that’s been addressed and should hopefully be the end of it for 2.0.
The new ship UI screens we posted footage were very warmly received last week which is exactly the kind of feedback that really gets a buzz around the office and makes our community such a great group of people to work for. We are never totally sure on how something will be received until it’s out there so that was certainly a good way to dip our toe in the water with this one to check the temperature with you guys. We have now finished up the last of the gameplay code hooks so that is in full test now to make sure that clicking all of those buttons will actually do something! Please note that the sections that are labelled as “System Offline” in the video will not be functional in this release but will be coming in subsequent patches as we iterate on it.
The item component for EMP is being hooked up and in put in to full test this week so we’re eagerly anticipating the results of that and Design have been busily reviewing the new IFCS Flight Modes – SCM (Space Combat Maneuvering), Precision and Cruise. These are coming all along nicely but it’s always weird to begin with when first testing out a new control system. It often takes time to get familiar with them and we want to ensure that you guys get a solid base so that we it feels comfortable and fun and can then iterate from there.
The worst bug of all bugs that’s been a thorn in our side over the past week has been server degradation. It took the whole QA two days to track this very nasty issue down but one of our programmers has just at the time of writing this report committed a fix which we hope will be verified as fixed in the next QA build. The issue was gradually preventing players getting in to a game server after an extended play period so we came to suspect a leak and had to go about back-tracking the sequence of events leading to the issue to look for what might have caused it. It was an awkward one to repro because it needed a large amount of players testing for hours on end. We eventually managed to trace it back to an issue with the ship selector and the player accounts so we really hope that this fix will alleviate a number of related issues that we were experiencing on the server-side. It’s been a perfect example of how one small discrepancy in the build can have huge knock-ons!
Speaking of knock-ons, we’ve also unearthed some new Blockers on our Release builds with the as listed below in the bullets but fortunately we have workarounds for them all in our Profile Builds so have been able to continue our work – however, this sadly means that the build is not ready for public consumption yet!
Production, QA and Dev are doing some serious triage work on the remaining unresolved issues and looking for any creative problem solving to get a solid release candidate together. We’re making some tough decisions to agree upon what is classed as a “must-fix” for Release. The triage will help us minimize the chance of any further unnecessary knock-ons and get you something to play sooner rather than later!
Below we have a list of high level items that you might like to scan over to see what the various teams have been focused on this past week…
Gameplay and Engineering
Fixed a major issue where the server performance would degrade over time
Fixing memory leaks in the new zone system when destroying vehicles
Working on fixes for Quantum Travel
Working on a fix where multiple ships going to the same destination don’t end up inside each other
Working on a fix for being teleported back to the start point when emerging from Quantum Travel
Implementation and balancing of a new fuel type – Quantum Fuel
This depletes in Quantum Travel and requires players to refuel or risk being stranded in deep space
Network optimizations
Performance optimizations
General bug fixing
UI
Bug fixing and polish
Removed the tool tip to heal other players when you are near an injured player, since we have temporarily removed the ability to do so until we fix the animation for the medpen.
Art
Bug fixing and polish
Animation
Bug fixing and polish. ADS is much improved, and I’m looking forward to doing more FPS combat playtests around the stations outside of the Armistice zone.
Audio
Mastering and implementation of recorded dialogue
Designed custom convolution reverbs, mainly for interior spaces
Polishing of audio across the whole of the crusader map
Working on improving the sound design for EVA
Continued improvements for ship fly-bys
General bug fixing
Blocking Issues
Server degradation preventing causing spawning issues (fix committed)
Quantum Travel causing a crash on Release
Player not able to pick up a weapon for FPS at Security Post Kareah on Release – BREAKING: This is fixed!
Climbing in to small and medium ships causing the player to spawn at point origin (0,0,0) on Release
Low repro cases of Quantum Travel failing to deliver the player to the intended mark on Release
“The only constant in game development is change.”
We all have ideas. Good ideas. Bad ideas. If you’re lucky, possibly even great ideas, but the best ideas rarely come without a fair share of time and effort and perhaps most importantly: trial and error. Game development is that process of not only bringing those ideas to reality, but of testing and refining those concepts in the crucible formed from combining hundreds and thousands of disparate designs into one.
It’s here in the game development phase when you discover the true virtue of those intentions, and discover what works and what does not, and what can be made to work and sometimes more importantly, what should not be made to work. It is the thing you do your best to anticipate, and the place where you either discover the elation of a theory fully realized, or the struggle to iterate that initial plan into something better than it was before.
THE SHIPYARD is a new series of articles we’ll be publishing from time to time as things come together. Created with help from the developers in the trenches creating this game, we’ll explore the history of these ships, the current realities they’re faced with, and the prospects of their continuing evolution going forward. We’ve decided to start with the Cutlass because it’s had a storied development history, and it gave us a great chance to take a candid look at the trials and tribulations it’s faced in the last three years. This isn’t the answer to all Cutlass-related questions, but we feel it’s a great effort at pulling the curtain back on game development, and documenting a little of how this process actually works.
The Drake Interplanetary Cutlass was born on October 3, 2012 at 5:44 AM Eastern, part of a designer’s guide to Star Citizen’s ship manufacturers that continues to inform many aspects of the project today. The primordial Cutlass was cited as an example of names that Drake Interplanetary, our pirate-focused company, might use.
Drake Interplanetary is ostensibly a legitimate company, but it’s an open secret that they manufacture cheap, well armed craft favored by pirates, to the point that they’re named in that vein: “Cutlass,” “Buccaneer,” “Privateer,” “Bandit,” “Marauder,” etc.
The intent here was to solve a very specific problem of immersion: while we knew that many players would want to engage in piracy, it was not believable that there would be a high-tech, public spacecraft manufacturnig company that simply produces hardware explicitly for criminals. Toyota, for instance, doesn’t manufacture a specific model of pickup truck for paramilitary terrorists… their existing trucks simply fall into the hands of such groups, which adopt them for their nefarious purposes. So, the idea of Drake Interplanetary was born: a sketchier company, for sure, but one that builds ships for a specific, legal purpose (note also that we would later build the Cutlass variants around the reference to it’s search and recsue role.)
At this point, however, the Cutlass was simply a distant concept. We opted not to include a Drake ship with the initial lineup, thinking that selling something as being (in-world) ‘cheaper’ than the others would be counter-intuitive as part of a campaign aimed at selling the thrill of owning your own spacecraft. Then… pirates happened! From day one, it became clear that a LOT of Star Citizen’s backers wanted to someday engage in a life of crime. Backers formed their own syndicates and cartels and clans, buoyed by the promise that Drake Interplanetary would someday be supplying them ships. Within a day of our initial wave of ship specifications being published, the theorycrafting as to which the best option for starter pirates began.
With the campaign in full swing and with plans being made for the end of the Kickstarter, I made the following suggestion in an e-mail to Chris Roberts:
Pirate Pack – I’ve had this in my mind a while; basically, just a copy of the game with a pirate fighter (Drake Industries Cutlass,) which will be appealing to a particular subset of our audience.
Chris immediately replied that he loved the idea and that he wanted to see a pitch for the Cutlass’ design and specifications that could be sent to concept artist Jim Martin in the hopes that we could show off a sketch during the last days of the Kickstarter.
So: how did the Cutlass concept come about? As with many of our ships, we started by looking for two types of analogues: ships (and more importantly gameplay roles) from Chris Roberts’ classic games and historical aircraft to lend verisimilitude to our growing universe.
For the first part, we naturally looked to 1993’s Privateer where piracy was a semi-viable career option, although one that made life particularly difficult in most of inhabited space (other aspects of Star Citizen’s design were planned alongside, intending to give pirates more to do overall!) For those unfamiliar, Privateer had four player ships: a starter, a gunship, a transport and an elite bounty hunter fighter. In a great example of emergent gameplay, pirates of yore tended to forgo the statistically superior Centurion fighter and instead purchase the cheaper Galaxy light transport. Why? Because the Galaxy had the largest cargo hold and a pair of turrets that meant you could attach tractor beams without using a precious forward-facing missile/torpedo slot (turrets, which had no AI, were otherwise largely unnecessary in Privateer.) While a Centurion could best take out a lumbering transport, it’s small cargo hold meant that the profit made from stolen loot was limited. For the Cutlass we decided: why not codify this mechanic and offer pirates a fighting ship that trades some dogfighting ability for the larger cargo hold they’ll want in the ‘verse?
For the historical reference, we fixated on the idea that Drake built ‘cheaper’ ships intended to be available in large numbers to a larger group of captains. While not wanting to sell the Cutlass as ‘disposable,’ we wanted to get across the idea that it was treated as something of a lower tier ship than the Freelancer, Hornet or Constellation. For that history, we looked to World War II and the Heinkel He 162 “Volksjäger.” Developed by Germany in the last days of the war, this ‘people’s fighter’ was a fascinating mix of then-high technology jet engines with cheap, wooden construction that could theoretically continue in small shops as Germany’s major aircraft factories were targeted by the Allies’ strategic bombing campaign. The Cutlass borrowed liberally from this idea, combining high tech role-specific gear (like the tractor beam and rotating engines) with a lower quality hull. To further reinforce this idea, marketing decided to price the Cutlass $15 below the Hornet or Freelancer. Later, I would get to integrate this backstory into the Drake Interplanetary profile in a Jump Point!
The result of this thinking was published in a Comm-Link update as the Cutlass and the ‘Pirate Pack’ went up for pledge. This is the same material provided to Chris and to Jim Martin upon which to base his concept artwork.
Drake Interplanetary claims that the Cutlass is a low-cost, easy-to-maintain solution for local in-system militia units. The larger-than-average cargo hold, RIO seat and dedicated tractor mount are, the company literature insists, for facilitating search and rescue operations. While it’s true that Cutlasses are used throughout known space for such missions, their prime task and immediate association is with high space piracy. Cutlasses, often operating in groups, menace distant transit lanes to prey on hapless merchants. A single Cutlass can ravage a mid-sized transport and a pack operating as a clan can easily take down larger prey. STOL adaptations allow these interceptors to operate off of modified transports or pocket destroyers; the most common warships that make up pirate caravans.
Designer note: the idea is that Drake Interplanetary builds ships which are ostensibly for legal purposes (local militias, etc.) but are ‘obviously’ for pirates: so it has the appearance of a military fighter, but mated to an awkwardly larger hull for collecting loot; it should have visible forward-facing tractor beams and a seat for a second crewman even though there’s no turret (as you’ll need a second man to board an enemy ship.) It also has a cheaper build quality: if Anvil is building Jeeps and Origin is building BMWs, this is a Honda.
To further appreciate the intent behind the Cutlass, it might be valuable to look at the original specifications compared to the other ships in the same tier, the Freelancer and the Hornet. Note that these specifications are long out-of-date… but they speak well to the intended role of each ship.
From these numbers, you can see the early attempt to balance the Cutlass as a sort of fighting transport midway between the Hornet and the Freelancer. Over twice the cargo of the former, half that of the latter… but with better weapon slots, more maneuvering thrusters and a lower mass to avoid being a lumbering transport. With regards to the oft-debated maneuverability, the biggest inspiration for this idea was the initial concept art that came back from Jim Martin, which reminded me of the Vampire from Wing Commander Prophecy. We discussed quite a bit the idea that the Cutlass might be especially maneuverable, but unreliably so: engines on an axis that would offer, for instance, exceedingly great yaw but limited pitch or roll. The sort of ship that might require an expert pilot to truly handle well.
With that, the Cutlass began the development process… with several stops along the way! As with any creative process, what is listed above was the starting point. Over the past two years, the team has experimented with everything from a maneuverable Cutlass that spins rapidly on the axis of the twin-boom engines to a Cutlass that’s a pure transport. Knowing that there were a significant number of Cutlass pilots, we wanted to give players access to the ship as quickly as possible despite the fact that multi-crew ships and any piracy-related mechanics were much further off. In fact, both of our first two major module releases had ‘partial Cutlasses’ released for them: the large external concept model in the Hangar to tide captains over until their ships were modeled and then the ‘dogfight oriented’ single-pilot Cutlass added to Arena Commander 1.0. Neither version expressed the true purpose of the ship as originally announced, but both were intended to tide players over until they could begin raiding shipping lanes in the finished universe. For more details on this process, we will turn this article over to our RIO, designer John Crewe, to walk you through where the flyable Cutlass has been and to talk about where it went and where it’s going!
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WHERE WE WERE: The Cutlass Takes Flight!
by John Crewe
The Cutlass Black became flight ready with the release of Arena Commander v1.0 back in December 2014, but the road to getting it flight ready was an admittedly rocky one. After the initial block out by the ship team in Austin at that time, the Cutlass was worked on by a variety of people, including internal staff and several different outsource companies. The ship pipeline at the time was both young and extremely complex, and in review the resulting work had not been completed in a way that made it easy to implement in game. The unfortunate truth was that the asset that you’d had sitting in your hangars for some time had some serious design flaws in relation to its thruster placements; chief of which being the lack of any that could believably provide lateral thrust for strafing and yaw rotation. The only thrusters that could achieve this were the gimballed central ones, and because they were only centrally located, they unfortunately just couldn’t provide sufficient rotation as needed.
In addition to this, the Cutlass also required some new thruster setups that had never been created for any of the Star Citizen ships before, and as such this new ground was being tread right up unto the release. We had for the first time in our development main thrusters that could rotate and act as the thrusters that provided retro thrust. We also had those central thrusters which could not only pitch/yaw but also roll, and at certain angles would limit rotation in other axis! The final part of the thruster issues with the Cutlass is having child thrusters, which the main thrusters are supposed to have but have been absent since the flight ready release. Long story short: the original IFCS system was never written to account for thrusters with thrusters on them and the handling behavior would degrade completely, so we’d removed them until we had a chance to look at that system; work which will be included in the forthcoming model update.
John Pritchett and myself spent many evenings in the build up to release trying to solve these issues and whilst they solved a lot, a few persist to this day, which required some non-ideal solutions at that time, like the incredibly fast rotating thrusters and the fairly slippery handling that results from non-optimal thrusters.
The final bump in the road for the v1.0 release was the delivery for the damage states and LoD’s was massively behind schedule and came in very late, barely days before the v1.0 release date leaving very little time for implementation, evaluation and optimization. This is always an unfortunate occurrence in game development, but because we knew this was the beginning of things and not the end, we implemented the best interim solutions we could at that time.
It is safe to say the Cutlass has suffered from a lot of issues, but we’re intent on making amends (read on to find out how!) It became clear after its flight ready release that a lot of work had to be done to get it to the standard required and as such Foundry 42 was tasked with investigating a review and revamp of it.
The designers at Foundry 42 took a look at it and worked up a proposal to keep the unique exterior shape but allow as much interior modularization as possible. At that point the ship was split up into four sections. Here are some bullet point features we want to implement in each section:
Contains a pair of escape pod beds on one side and a utility area on the other side.
Small additional weapons locker, shower/toilet and turret access.
Storage built into space between current interior and exterior hull, especially for smuggling.
Turret access is retained in this area although the entry hole will be made to the new standardized 2m, to match Docking Collars and as such if destroyed makes the perfect extra docking point for enemies.
Similar to the current rear of the Cutlass but have the docking collar move to the ceiling rather than being on the floor of the cargo bay.
Sealed from modular room to allow it to open during flight without depressurizing the entire cargo bay.
The docking collar is also moving to the new standardized size of 2m wide which will allow 1SCU crates plenty of space to be transferred through and the ramp is wide enough to support larger items as well as being directly loaded onto the cargo lift.
In addition to this, there was a small selection of exterior adjustments decided to aid the overall handling such as bringing the rear engines more in line with the front canard wings and adding better placed/integrated thrusters to the front of the ship as well.
Once the initial design pass had been done it was passed over to the concept team who started doing paint overs using the existing white box designer geometry. Some of these concepts were released during the Cargo Design Doc and the rest are included throughout this post.
Shortly before work was due to commence on the “Cutlass rework” the priorities on the ship schedule changed, and as such the Foundry 42 Ship Team (at the time, only a few people) were moved on to finishing other ships such as the Gladius, Gladiator, Retaliator and Idris, which you have all now seen at CitizenCon as well as a few others you are yet to see.
Because of this, the task of creating the revamped Cutlass was given to an outsource studio with guidance from the team. In an effort to avoid the same mistakes that were made with prior outsource partners, they were actually embedded within the F42 studio for a fortnight so we would have the proper oversight and be able to provide the most immediate feedback.
Unfortunately, as happens in game development, the priorities changed again, as we realized that other needs at that time trumped the rework of an existing flyable ship, and as such around June the Cutlass Black rework was put on the back burner as other ships came through the pipeline. This is an unfortunate reality of development, as there are only a finite number of resources available, and getting more ships built allows other members of the team complete their work sooner, as opposed to slowing multiple departments as they wait on one team to rework the Cutlass.
WHERE WE ARE: The Cutlass in Alpha 2.0
For Alpha 2.0 the Cutlass Black is receiving an interim update for a variety of reasons, primarily performance. It was by far the single most expensive ship in the game in terms of memory usage, as everyone will have experienced playing AC with the severe hangs whenever one spawns or dies. We managed to improve that somewhat over subsequent patches from the programming side by pre-caching it, but at the end of the day the raw assets just weren’t optimized enough to be suitable going forward.
We decided a few months ago that rather than rushing to try and get the reworked Cutlass out for 2.0 we’d spend the time “upgrading” the old version to improve the experience for everyone when one is involved in combat. Not only have we totally redone the damage setup using the new damage shader system but we’ve also added in the basics of the new Multi Crew UI screens as seen in the Constellation and Retaliator. By doing this work the actual source .max file has shrunk from just under 2GB down to 550MB, the in game .cga assets have also been reduced from two assets totaling 405MB down to a single asset under 30MB. Not only is this better for the game but also massively better for us developers as it was taking nearly 40 minutes to commit the .max file to Perforce previously on our old office connection, now it’s under a minute.
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The result for players is that it allows the Cutlass to be managed just like those larger ships and gives us valuable feedback on the usability of those screens on a much smaller scale ship, both in terms of size and crew count. The Pilot has a revised cockpit display with new multi-function displays and the co-pilot seat has an all new single 16:9 display allowing oversight to many features whilst controlling specific engineering style tasks. In addition to the UI screens we’ve also done a quick usability pass on the ship, tightening up the interaction prompts for all the buttons and adjusting the button locations to be not quite so jammed in and making the external buttons a bit more visible. There should be no more cases of trying to open the cockpit door, whilst accidentally lowering the turret or ending up in the jump seat!
On top of the multi-crew update the ship has also had a complete thruster balance pass to go with the new IFCS system which should help limit some of the more unexpected behavior you experience in AC today along with improved speeds and handling allow you to catch up with your prey easier.
Lastly and most importantly, we are bringing back the cockpit fans which have been missing in action since v1.0. We expect this was the only aspect of the rework anyone was interested in, so let’s consider the Cutlass “finished.”
Just seeing if anyone is actually reading this. We’re kidding, of course. But not about the fans. Those are really back. =)
WHERE WE’RE GOING: Plans for the Cutlass Going Forward
With the split of ship manufacturers between studios, the Cutlass (being a Drake ship) has moved over to LA for them to implement the above design rework alongside their work on the Herald and Caterpillar. The current ship schedule is very full, with all the ships required for S42 taking priority and most being done at Foundry 42, as such the interim update to the Cutlass for 2.0 fills the need we have for it in the short term.
As the concept and designs for the rework have been finished, this reduces the amount of time needed for the eventual Cutlass rework to be completed. It’s just a case of finding time in the schedule to complete that work, especially when it has to compete against other ships which are not flight ready in any form, yet.
In addition to the rework the Cutlass will benefit from all the ongoing updates to ships such as the new component system rollout which will allow players to customize their ships much more than is currently possible, and we hope to have a more thorough design post on this exciting system soon. Other updates that will be coming online will be updated turrets and mounts to allow a variety of weapons, the first recently released was the S4 fixed mount allowing Cutlass users to wield the hefty Behring cannon. The plan has always been to allow players the choice of setting their ship up how they want, but in v1.0 the turret was slaved to the pilot simulating a remote control turret. For 2.0 it is now a dedicated manned turret which in future will allow it to be slaved to either seat, manned directly or controlled by AI.
The Cutlass is designed to be operated by two people (MAX Crew is NOT the same as REQUIRED or OPTIMAL Crew,) with a pilot and another who can choose between sitting in the RIO seat and managing ship systems or taking direct control of the turret to provide offensive capabilities. That doesn’t mean you have to roll with just two people, you can always recruit a bunch of your buddies to ride in the back to take on any jobs you see fit although there are only two escape pods…
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One of the most popular questions/complaints is about the variation in stats for the components in the Red and Blue versions and as always our answer is “All stats are subject to change” and the Red & Blue are no exception.
The current stats for the variants will be reviewed when the Black revamp takes place as that will dictate the base level for the variants, expect the Blue to still have some edges as you’d imagine from a Law Enforcement variant.
The Red version will still maintain its search and rescue capabilities with an integral escape pod recovery mechanism in the central modular room along with medical pods and hospital equipment. The turret will also be swapped for the scanner array and of course its exterior paint job.
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The Blue version still retains its additional missiles and prisoner cells although their arrangement is still to be decided. They currently sit around the edge of the hull but may move onto the central cargo lift to allow all of them to be lowered out of the ship together for easier prisoner loading/unloading.
In regards to the exterior styling there will be a push towards unification of the base meshes between all three versions so that one exterior can be used across them all with only small “bolt on” pieces like you find in the Vanguard series to differentiate them, along with their recognizable paint jobs of course. This means the cockpit geometry will most likely be different than to what is currently there whilst we find the best compromise between them all, but rest assured: no more bars through the viewline!
Questions from the Community
As demonstrated with CR comments in the WIP and the ship commercial it was lead to believe the Cutlass would be a nimble ship. However the current iterations have made the ship otherwise. Has CIG taken a new direction for this ship?
As we’ve covered in the post above the Cutlass has suffered at the hands of numerous setup and design issues which we’re dealing with. The direction is still the same, it is supposed to be nimble for its size and type especially considering the other roles it can do and with the IFCS changes coming with 2.0 it certainly performs significantly better than in 1.3.
Why would a Police, Bounty hunter, CSAR, and Pirate use the slowest fighter in the game? Shouldn’t speed and combat capabilities be more important than raw cargo capacity for those roles?
See above, it no longer handles like a slippery superfreighter with the IFCS changes in 2.0 and will get better when the reworked Cutlass is released. The Cutlass can easily catch up with other ships and mix it up with them.
Currently the loading bay & Docking collar are too small for SCU to pass through it, is this intentional or will it be fixed? Will the cutlass receive a way to load cargo pods and other bulky items?
The current docking collar on the Cutlass is 1.3./2.0 is 2.2m wide, larger than a regular 1SCU crate which is 1.25m * 1.25m * 1.25m. The rear ramp is also 1.8m wide and 2.8m tall, again more than enough to receive cargo in multiple sizes. The cargo lift for the rework of the Cutlass can accommodate larger items as well, but if you’re wanting to transport large/bulky amounts of cargo then the Cutlass is not the ship for this.
Is the Cutlass still intended to be a 3 to 4 crew ship instead of the 1.5 crew ship she has been initially sold as? What sized crew is the Cutlass rework designed around?
The Cutlass in 2.0 and the reworked version, is designed around supporting two crew. One pilot and one for either providing additional multicrew support via the second seat or providing offensive power via the turret. Down the line you’ll be able to slave the turret to one of those seats or add an AI module to allow it to be independent of the seats just like any other turret in the game would be capable of. Just because we say two crew does not mean that is the absolutely minimum or maximum, one person is able to fly and fight with it at a basic level. Adding that AI module I just mentioned would allow it to be on a par weapon wise with what is currently in 1.3. You could also man all three seats or have a couple of guys on the jump seats in the rear to provide extra support during landing/boarding “operations”.
The Cutlass seems to be in the awkward position of having the speed and handling of a multi-crew ship, while retaining the armament and defenses of smaller fighters. What benefits does the Cutlass have over a smaller/faster single person ship, or a bigger/more armed and armored multi-crew ship?
As discussed the speed and maneuverability have been increased significantly in 2.0 which will not only help with offensive options but also for defensive needs and evasion of missiles. All the ships are due for updates in the future regarding their health as the new component system comes online along with piercability of the hull which will change how ships behave when being damaged. The Cutlass benefits from having a second player being able to dedicate themselves to managing the ships systems (shield/power management for example) or turret versus a lone player having to manage it all.
It is not designed to go toe to toe with the regular multicrew ships like the Connie, Tali or Freelancer who dwarf the Cutlass not only in size but also weaponry and crew size. The Cutlass sits in a role that can bridge the single seater and low end multicrew ship roles and function in either camp or somewhere in the middle.
Cutlass Resources
For more information about the Drake Cutlass, consult the books in your local library… or check out some of these previous posts concerning our plans and objectives for the little pirate ship that could.
tl;dr – the Cutlass has had a complex development history, with multiple voices wanting different end goals. The Cutlass will become more maneuverable with Star Citizen Alpha 2.0, but it will not drop the focus on being a fighter WITH a cargo hold intended for piracy (or search and rescue, as a Drake salesman would say!)
We hope that everyone has found at least some of the answers they are looking for. On a personal note, a huge thank you to Lead Technical Designer John Crewe in the UK for taking the time to indulge us in this crazy endeavor. We will consider a supplemental edition of The Shipyard in the future to clean up any issues that arise from this and the launch of Star Citizen Alpha 2.0.
No one ship can be all things to all people, and it shouldn’t be even if it could. As with all these ships, the Cutlass may not be what everyone wants it to be and as such there may be other ships that are much more suited to your playstyle. One such option is a potential ship we’re calling the Drake Buccaneer, which would be a ‘pirate interceptor’ intended more for tricky maneuvering than cargo capacity. It would likely feature light armor, a shorter range ‘sucker punch’ style weapons loadout and a significantly more limited cargo bay. Buccaneers would need to operate alongside of Cutlasses or even as parasite fighters attached to a Caterpillar for more serious raiding missions. If we go ahead with the concept, it would be intended to fit the same price range as the Cutlass, allowing owners who prefer sheer maneuverability to switch designs with impunity.
We’d like to know what you think, both about the Buccaneer and this style of post. Two polls are embedded below to help us decide what to do next! Cast your vote to let the Star Citizen team know what you’re thinking, and be sure to post your comments below.
Remember there is no such thing as a perfect ship, just the perfect ship for you.
Alley Wrote:In the next patch, the shipcompat component of the technerf system will be removed.
For those who don't know the specifics of it, the technerf system works as the following:
- 1: It will check your ship for a control item (IDs in our case)
- 2: If so, it will apply nerf multipliers depending on what is defined in the techcompat configuration (ex: Order Guns on a Blood Dragon ID, or Order Ship on a Blood Dragon ID)
- 3: It will check another configuration, the shipcompat one, that oversees what this ship itself is compatible with (ex: A Battleship Scanner on a Percheron will work at 0.75x efficiency no matter what the pilot is flying as)
- 4: Prepare the soup and stack the nerfs.
Part 3 of this system will be removed. While it does make some sense, it's awfully complicated and simply ruins the game in many ways. It also cause the admins to lose an incredible amount of time trying to get things to work properly and usually cause faction tech requests to take an awfully long time because each ship belonging to the tech mix must be changed in the shipcompat configuration to account for the change if it's something really wild.
Now, the lowest tech element of your selection in the techchart will be the nerf you will fly with. They do not stack.
Example: Freelancer ID -> BHG Manta (75% on FL ID) + Bretonia Civilian Weapons (90%) = 75%. The lowest common nerf percentage is 75%. Your ship will fly with a 75% powercore.
Again, it's expectable some people will pull odd stunts of OORP mix techcombos. These guys will be dealt with by the rules for OORP. Ensure we don't have to smack you and all will be good. (IE: FL ID, GRN Lynx, Corsair Guns without any very very solid reasons = you get obliterated).
Needless to say nobody will miss this and technology perk requests should be processed much faster.
Hidamari Wrote:Long overdue.
SummerMcLovin Wrote:Good to hear, saves me having to ask for standardisation of Gallic/Sirian Engines to match cross-divide technerf values. Saving the work of the admins and devs is also good news.
TheFreelancer Wrote:hmm, i like!
jammi Wrote:Good stuff.
All I can say is "cleanup in Isle 3" when Karst sees this.
Alley Wrote:updated first post with precisions on how the system will behave.
Adam_Spire Wrote:How does this effect Special Roleplay Requests and their power nerf/setup?
Alley Wrote:Nothing will change for SRPs
Thyrzul Wrote:I see 5th paragraph and I wonder perhaps it'd be better to include that in rules as well, under the relevant one, to make sure there's definitely an official place not hidden under random archives over time where people just can't miss it. Just a thought.
JayDe Wrote:Finally. Many weeks passes since I asked to fix Farmer Alliance ship chart. Now it will be done in one large way to kill the entire problem for everyone.
For those of you who have followed the twitter updates, you probably know already this was quite a bumpy road.
For those who didn't follow these developments, essentially the server's raid controller died out of the blue. I'm not going to go into any details, but it was a very exhausting and unpleasant experience that even got me into trouble at work. Either way, we're finally back up and that's what matters.
Unfortunately due to -reasons-, while we have daily backups of the server accounts, it turns out there were no backup system in place for the forum and wiki data. I initially thought we had no backup at all (which means we'd have to restart from zero) I discovered a backup from August 21th back when I was running local tests on my personal dedicated servers. So yup, we've lost a fair bit of forum stuff, but at least we're there.
It's a really bad event for disco, but it could have been much worse. Together, we'll have to rebuild what was lost.
October was a busy month! The worldwide Star Citizen development team is hard at work getting Alpha 2.0 out the door, and we’re very excited about getting this one into your hands. In the past, our module releases have each shown a small part of the picture: ship configuration in the Hangar, social interaction in ArcCorp, single-seat dogfighting in Arena Commander… and now we’re leaping ahead and giving everyone a very early preview of Star Citizen’s beating heart. From multicrew ships to first person combat on the ground, Alpha 2.0 is our first serious look at how the puzzle pieces fit together.
We’re eager to share it, and to collect your feedback… because this isn’t the end of the road, it’s the start of a process that will culminate in the launch of the Persistent Universe. On top of the base that is Alpha 2.0, we’ll be building everything else necessary to creating a living, breathing ‘Verse… and we’re truly looking forward to sharing that process with the community. The following monthly report will update you on exactly what each of our teams has been doing to help reach this very important milestone!
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Hey everyone!
What a month October has been. So many accomplishments leading us through another strong month has gotten us excited about what’s coming your way. The amount of work being completed and released is motivating us to push through to our next major milestone. The in-depth Santa Monica update is below so please look it over and let us know what you think!
Engineering
This month the Engineering team has been working closely with our UK office and the Santa Monica Designers to continue pushing the boundaries of what is possible.
Lead Engineer Paul Reindell has strategized how our Item System is being revamped and made excellent progress towards its completion. The “ItemSystem 2.0” is designed to be more lightweight, and therefore less resource intensive. Rather than implementing all of the common functionalities into one CItem class, the Engineers have split the functionalities into standalone GameObjectExtensions (GOE’s), allowing them to remain self-contained. By accomplishing this, those systems can and will intercommunicate with one another. As an example, if a different character model is loaded, the effects can then be re-attached to the new model at the GOE level.
AI Programmer Chad Zamzow has made improvements to how the radar works by fine tuning the system to be much more effective at how it represents (or excludes) occluded or partially hidden objects. Further tuning has also been made to the rotational limits of turret hardpoints. He has created a smarter, more realistic system by allowing the Tech Designers to specify rotational ranges of each turret hardpoint. This will prevent turrets from unsightly/immersion breaking clipping through a ship’s hull mesh and any broken gameplay effects or exploits that might accompany such behavior.
Our Flight Engineer John Pritchett nd Designer Pete Mackay have been implementing the new flight modes to our IFCS. These new flight modes not only give players greater control over their velocities, but also provide a means to accelerate to the awesome looking Quantum Travel. Furthermore, John has also been working on integrating the IFCS system into player EVA movement, giving players fine-tuned control over how characters will move around in the near-zero gravity environment of space.
From the UI/HUD team, we have been busy at work completing the 16:9 diegetic screens for the multi-crew-capable ships. This format gives multi-crew screens improved real estate over which information can be passed on to other stations as well as broader details for each respective role, such as a ship’s engineer. We’re really excited about what we accomplished and hope you will be too.
Design
With the Multi-Crew/Large-World release targeted within our sights, the Santa Monica design team has been hard at work, meeting several important milestones that will make it the most epic one yet.
For the Multi-crew release, we’ve prioritized recent design efforts around how the redesigned Constellation will handle during flight. As the Constellation is one of the most anticipated ships in the game, Lead Technical Designer Kirk Tome has been overseeing the tech setup of the Constellation, tuning the flight characteristics and center of mass. The lessons learned during this process will provide the pathfinding R&D needed to manage flight and control over ships in the Constellation’s size group generally.
Beyond the Star Citizen Alpha 2.0 release, the Design team has been making sure plenty of upcoming content will keep everyone excited and happy with their personal favorite ships. Designer Randy Vazquez has written the technical documentation on how the Salvage mechanic will work in-game hand-in-hand with designing the Crucible salvage-capable craft. Other ships that have met progress milestones this month are the Reliant and Xi’An Scout.
Investigations into new combat mechanics have been spearheaded by designers Matt Sherman and Calix Reneau, not least of which is the EMP weapon system and how ship systems can be affected by other types of attacks such as disruption to heat dispersion or disrupting the flow of energy to various ship components. This Distortion Damage is specifically designed to disrupt and drain power from nearby components. We know that the disruption cannons haven’t been very popular in Arena Commander so far because the disruption effect was still being designed – but that’s going to change for the better! As you can see, we achieve many of our larger milestones this month and are ready for another excellent month!
Art
This month has been an incredibly productive month for our art team. We’ve put the finishing touches on the baseline Constellation asset, finalized ship and character concepts, completed rigged and animated character models, and more!
We achieved some major accomplishments and even large tasks for major ships like the Constellation and the Reliant. We finished the functional animations for the maneuvering thrusters, landing gear, missile launcher, escape pods, docking collar, turret doors, to mention a few – all needed to prepare this amazing ship for its first large world release.
Delivering Admiral Bishop was a major milestone for our character pipeline. We took him through all the steps needed to populate Star Citizen full of rich and animated characters. Everything detailed in our character pipeline video revealed this month shows off just one of the several steps to bringing our characters to life.
We delivered several needed concepts that are fueling production of Squadron 42 which we’re really excited to show you as soon as possible.
That does it for our art team this month and looking forward to sharing more next month.
Writing
Well, now we can talk about what the writing team has been up to the past few months.
Starmap!
So much Starmap.
As you can now see, we had over ninety systems and over three hundred planets to work out. While Dave has been chipping away at the systems since the project began, there were still a lot to figure out. Will, Cherie, Adam and Dave would set aside time each day to discuss the unexplored systems to figure out the basic information (star type, number and type of planets, other points of interest, etc.) but more importantly try to get a sense of what the character of the system would be. They’d ask questions like, what was the system adding to the Star Citizen universe? What kind of narrative potential could exist there? They also worked closely with Benoit and Turbulent to input the systems into the map itself. As we got closer and closer to release, they shifted onto double-checking the data, doing final sweeps for any typos and basking in the Galactus-like power of manipulating a universe.
After its release, they’ve been continuing to tweak the descriptions and working with the science consultants to generate the more detailed astronomical data for the systems and planets, but mostly we’ve been working on PU needs which have been coming in hard and fast.
At the same time, Dave has been over in the UK to sit in with Chris for editing selects for Squadron 42, while the team continues the push to help provide narrative and dialogue for the Crusader map. Specifically… dammit… can’t talk about that either.
And that’s it. The end of October brings another month of immense progress from Santa Monica and ever closer to the final product of Star Citizen. Thank you for working alongside us as we bring this expansive world to life and see you in the verse!
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Greetings Citizens,
During the month of October the Austin studio has been hard at work and there have been a number of accomplishments. The team worked very hard to support many parts of the game that were demonstrated at Citizen Con, and we are very excited to be in the later stages of testing Star Citizen Alpha 2.0 and the Crusader System for upcoming release to the PTU. We’ve had a number of team members visit other studios for collaboration, and we’ve been focused on some internal reorganization to adapt to CIG’s evolving global footprint. Here are detailed reports from each team.
Persistent Universe Team
This month our PU team has been looking ahead towards upcoming releases, working on brand new features that will add to the Social Module experience. Mark Skelton and the PU Art Team have been putting the finishing touches on the Million Mile High Club. Complete with a dance floor, fish tanks, and Bartender and Doorman NPC’s, this luxury lounge will go out to a select group of backers and we expect it will be the envy of all who come to visit.
We’ve also shifted the Environment Team’s focus from Stanton to Nyx for a time, and we’ve got BHVR working to complete the Levski landing zone to get it in your hands soon. We’ve been going back and forth on the blueprint for certain areas of Levski, particularly the bazaar marketplace area, to make sure it is laid out exactly the way Tony wants. Levski is going to be completely different from Area18, and being the first Frontier world we will have released we hope it will scratch a mischievous itch amongst the community.
Additionally, we’ve been working on an additional shop in preparation for our Shopping Milestone. Casaba Outlet, once released, will introduce the first iteration of the in-game store and purchasing experiences. Tony, Zane, and Karl Jones have been working together on creating the brand new Shopping UI and it is looking really fantastic. The environment itself has had a design/layout pass by Rob Reininger and is now undergoing art polish right now by the team at BHVR. Casaba Outlet is a clothing shop so naturally it requires the creation of several new civilian clothing assets. We’ve partnered up with CGBot for this purpose to bust out some clothing assets from the Terra>Fashion Casual line.
We’re also recommencing discussion on how Character Customization will work in Star Citizen. We’ve had several ideas tossed about, and we expect to have an initial iteration ready for you guys to go along with Shopping. Sean Tracy has been working on a prototype to pass off to BHVR to take to fruition. We’ve also been generating more content to go along with this first iteration, including Billy Lord creating more hairstyles, and the clothing assets mentioned above.
We’re also in the process of adding new animations to the game for use by NPC’s in preparation for when we get Subsumption (our Peaceful NPC AI system) up and running for our NPC’s. David Peng and Vanessa Landeros have been working on Nightclub and Medical Unit animations, respectively. Bryan Brewer has also been polishing our Male Locomotion Sets and will be moving onto Female Locomotion Sets soon.
As always, it’s been a busy month for the PU Engineering team. A lot of work went into getting our recent SC Alpha 1.3.0 release out live, including a few pushes to PTU leading up to that release. With that release we introduced some new features into ArcCorp….namely the buggies and the respawn functionality needed to handle the multitude of insane deaths caused by buggies. A lot of work dealing with physics and collision issues went into this release (we knew you’d be putting those to the test!). We also increased the player count for ArcCorp up to 40 from 25, which was accompanied by some significant performance optimizations to ArcCorp. But that’s not all! We got in some new chat functionality, such as the private chat channels, so players can chat privately with their cohorts. These improvements were the result of a great cross-studio effort between our various CIG studios and friends at Behaviour and Wyrmbyte.
We’ve also maintained a heavy focus on upcoming releases that are planned for the coming months. Working closely with Behaviour, we have been putting together our party system and additional functionality for the hangar elevator interface. A ton of work has been put into optimizing performance throughout various area of the game, as well as strengthening our existing backend services and adding new services. We’ve been working hard on character networking optimizations…and all sorts of under-the-hood work that will greatly improve the player experience.
A series of networking meetings over the past several weeks have wrapped up, allowing us to begin getting together technical documentation needed for some of our longer term planning and road-mapping for essential networking systems.
Last but not least, in addition to tackling the many bugs that came with launching the recent live release, we’ve has been busy knocking out tools and editor bugs to help support a variety of developers in creating new content for Star Citizen!
Until next time, we hope you survive the post-Halloween candy comas! We can’t wait to get our next release out to you.
Live Operations
QA
QA charged into the month of October at full speed. The first part of the month was devoted to testing our live demo for CitizenCon. We were very happy to see the presentation go as smoothly as it did and are extremely excited to get Alpha 2.0 in everyone’s hands.
Immediately following CitizenCon, we shifted our testing to the live deployment of Star Citizen Alpha 1.3.0. After five deployments to the Public Test Universe, we had a potential candidate to release to the live environment. There was some discussion to potentially release an additional patch to address some remaining outstanding issues. But the decision was made to focus on Star Citizen Alpha 2.0 and roll any potential 1.3.0 fixes into that release.
The remainder of the month has primarily been focused on testing Alpha 2.0 and the Crusader system. Our counterpart QA team in Foundry 42 has been conducting in depth performance testing and providing the information to our engineers in their efforts to optimize Crusader as much as possible.
Our ship expert Andrew Hesse has been working very closely with Designer Pete Mackey and Physics programmer John Pritchett testing the newly implemented IFCS modes for each flyable ship. Additionally the team has been working with Technical Designer Calix Reneau in his efforts to balance ship flight. Each ship’s flight characteristics were tested in 1.3.0 and then again in our SC Alpha 2.0 code branches. Calix is now able to compare ship flight in both environments which will help him to more effectively tune each ships’ flight characteristics in the progressing SC Alpha 2.0 branch to his intended specifications.
This month we have a new addition to the US QA team, Vincent Sinatra! Vincent will be filling the role of QA Lead in our LA studio. Vincent has a wealth of experience as project lead on multiple titles. Some of which include Doom3, Quake4, Enemy Territory: Quake Wars, Call of Duty Black Ops and Call of Duty Elite 2.0. Vincent will be focusing on testing each ship for proper flight characteristics and system functionality as well as any special projects requested by development in the LA Studio.
This month we also had our engine and editor expert Melissa Estrada travel to our Frankfurt office. Melissa spent a week training Senior QA Christopher Speak on our various Star Citizen specific processes and procedures. They also spent time discussing our automated testing development in detail. It was a very productive trip!
Right now we are continuing to focus our testing on Star Citizen Alpha 2.0’s internal test builds and the Crusader system. We are having a lot of fun with it and very much look forward to getting it out to everyone as soon as possible.
Game Support
The Game Support team continues its work serving players, and yes, we’ve been just as excited as you about CitizenCon and everything that was shown there!
We’ve been continuing to assist players with technical support issues, and we’ve turned out attention to incoming reports of hacked accounts. A note to those reading: We’ve started to see a rise in unauthorized access to accounts, so make sure you are keeping your information secure and don’t share with anyone!
On a side note, we’re just as thrilled with the rollout and usage of the Issue Council as everyone else! While largely maintained by our QA team, we’ve been making sure the most pressing issues get attention, and with the 1.3.0 release, we saw our first bug reports entered in by players and fixed by the dev team. We’re excited to continue this process as getting player feedback is absolutely essential to building the BDSSE. Over the next few updates, we’ll start publishing those results for you so that you can see how this has affected the dev cycle.
As we have pushed out 1.3.0 to players, we’re extremely excited for what’s on the horizon for 2.0. As the needs of the game and community grow, so does the demand on the team. We’re very close to bringing on our first team members in Manchester which will expand our hours of operation and help lower the response time for when you send in a ticket to us.
Speaking of 2.0, we’ll be holding controlled PTU play sessions with players as we did for the Social Module. We’ll slowly ramp that up over time, and we will have a special place for those players to provide feedback and bugs. This will be an essential process to collecting information on the 2.0 release, and we’re very excited to help make this good as it can be before going to Live.
IT/Operations
The month of October flew by for the IT team and as usual we got a chance to roll out some new services and a number of upgrades. As the pace of builds continues to increase we still need to keep up with the data delivery between all studios. Fortunately we keep finding new ways to improve our long haul transfer times to levels we couldn’t have expected the month before.
Moritz joined the IT team as our new Systems Engineer in the Frankfurt studio. Moritz has deep roots in Germany and brings many valuable vendor and service provider connections along with him. He had to hit the ground running because we were all too busy supporting CitizenCon to show him the ropes when he arrived. After the show we worked closely with Moritz to lay in some substantial improvements to the Frankfurt studio. Paul came over from the Austin studio and with the help of other members of the IT team throughout the company we implemented a new phone system as well as a sizable storage upgrade. Most importantly, we finally got the fiber internet upgrade installed which will make a major difference for the team in Germany as well as the rest of the company.
Last month our friends from Intel brought us a prototype server for performance testing of their latest SSD drives. This server is incredibly fast in every test we’ve thrown at it so far this month. We’re super excited to have the opportunity to performance test their new drives in various RAID configurations and can’t wait to put this server to the torture test of our game build and publishing environment.
Dev Ops
For the month of October, DevOps supported the new and improved Build system, added more analytics to the Launcher and supported CitizenCon!
Since changing to the new build system, we’ve been able to push more builds out than ever before (and you can see how this has enhanced the feedback and deployment cycle for Alpha patch 1.3. We couldn’t have done that before)! We’ve also added a feature that grants QA and Production the ability to deploy game servers for specific builds. This allows any member of our team around the world to now kick and deploy builds “On demand”. They no longer have to wait on someone else to deploy a server to a build that they’re working on. We are continuing to improve the state of the new build system with “nice-to-have’s” as the core functionality of the build system has been fully implemented.
We also made improvements to our internal builds page that allows devs to check the status of all builds, monitor builds, and copy builds without the need of opening additional tools. One central location for all of your build needs! DevOps improving the way we upload our game data to Amazon for a faster and smoother distribution to all of you wonderful people. We updated our launcher with some bug fixes and added some analytics to help improve our services.
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Greetings Citizens,
It was wonderful to see so many of you at CitizenCon earlier this month, and gratifying to hear that so many people around the world tuned in for the show! We hope you had a good time seeing first-hand some of our work, and there’s plenty more to come. Here’s the breakdown of what we did in October:
Design
October is done and CitizenCon is out of the way, now all the focus here is on getting the first phase Crusader build into your hands. We are working flat out to get it in a stable enough state to give you an impression of the scope of this incredible game. There are still issues we are closing out that need to be in a better state for release, such as EVA which is going to be an integral part of Star Citizen.
Quantum Fuel is also going to be a factor for players to manage and consider, adding a layer of realism and strategy to travelling around the universe. Service stations, run by Cry-Astro have begun to pop up around the Crusader map allowing players to refuel, rearm and repair; for simplicity and convenience in testing the Alpha 2.0 build, these will initially be free, but when REC comes online in future builds it will give players more to think about.
We have implemented several starter missions for Players to tackle that are dotted around the map, and as we continue to fixup the FPS gameplay we now have a specific location that will host FPS combat for those brave enough to dive in. All in all we hope to deliver enough content to keep you busy for a while.
Another happy side effect from all the focus on the Star Citizen 2.0 build is that we have been able to move design resources back on to Squadron 42 now that a number of critical blockers have been removed. We have been making great progress on the AI system with the team looking at getting something into future Star Citizen – Live releases in the form of an asteroid base for you to tackle.
All in all, another exciting month on Star Citizen where we are really starting to feel things coming together after all the time consuming, but essential technology work that the engineers have been doing to allow us to deliver the experience that you demand. As always thank you so much for allowing us to do what we do to make this fantastic game happen.
Audio
This last month has been somewhat split into two as far as our main focuses (foci?!) of attention in audio have been concerned.
Firstly, we had CitizenCon, which was massive of course, and to varying degrees occupied the whole CIG Audio team right up until the event itself. Apart from the solid work that was done, i.e. the material that’s all going forward into the game, we put in an awful lot of work to try to make sure it was the best sounding event as far as the live streaming aspect was concerned. From our perspective, we weren’t altogether satisfied with Gamescom and there was a lot more we could do about CitizenCon’s audio quality and prep; making sure it all went smoothly was so important to us. Stefan Rutherford has to take a lot of credit for that, he was there throughout assisting the audio engineers and I feel that it really paid off.
It was awesome finally to show parts of Squadron 42 which has been something we’ve been working hard on for some time, our Dialogue Specialist Bob Rissolo put in some serious work to make sure that the Bishop’s Speech and Morrow Tour came across as well as they did on the vocal side of things. Talking of the Morrow Tour (also another facet of Squadron 42) – that featured sound design from most of the team but honourable mention to Ross Tregenza who owned that and ensured it all came together. Geoff Zanelli’s music was great to hear for all the Squadron 42 sections too. I have to mention Darren Lambourne, Luke Hatton, Jason Cobb, and our audio code team Sam Hall, Mikhail Korotyaev and Graham Phillipson who all put in so much effort to get it all across the line.
Hopefully you all saw (and heard) the StarMap which Phil Smallwood and Matteo Cerquone owned and pushed forward with on the audio side. Some great music from Pedro Macedo Camacho there for that too.
After CitizenCon, our second big focus for this last month has been SC Alpha 2.0, which features a lot of what was shown off at CitizenCon and more besides. E.g. on the dialogue front, we’ve been carrying out sessions for updated ship computer material and a whole host of requirements for various points of interest. We’ve also been continuing work on the many points of interest that you will be able to explore.
As well as the Alpha 2.0 work, we’ve been continuing on the sound for the Social Module, with audio also now being started on for the Million Mile High Club. Somehow we’ll get some ‘luxury’ sound in there! Also the FPS work has continued, esp. on the Foley side, and we’re now really looking to improve the EVA sound-scheme to contrast with the in-ship audio direction.
Of course ships are a massive aspect of our game and we’ve been both improving how we approach these, as well as creating whole sets of new pass-bys for specific ships and manufacturers. So they won’t just sound cool as they thunder past you, they’ll hopefully be more readily identifiable. This concept of ensuring consistent characters to different ship types is fuelling much of our 2.0 ship audio approach.
We’ve also been continuing to evaluate 3D Audio tech with a view to choosing an ideal solution for VR and headphones. We get a lot of posts about binaural audio and that has some bearing here, clearly.
Thanks for listening!
Animation
After a big push on getting the pcap pipeline up and running in order to support the Squadron 42 “Morrow Tour” demo that was shown at Citizen Con, the UK animation team has now joined in with supporting the SC Alpha 2.0 release by getting any of the FPS animations in order – this has involved R+D work for some of the team here to get to know the ropes, and then polishing up existing assets and supporting the Design and Code team with what they need.
We’ve also been spending time getting the new animator, Oscar, settled in to the team in Frankfurt and getting him up to speed with the tech so that he can work fulltime with the FPS team in Germany for the duration of the project.
QA
The QA team in the UK have been doing the usual of juggling the requests from Dev and supporting the live releases such as 1.3.0. Earlier in the month we even had some of the CitizenCon limelight when our team demoed Crusader, the Morrow Tour and the ARK Starmap live on stage to the sell-out capacity crowd which was quite a bit of pressure!
We’re now testing the hell out of SC Alpha 2.0 to get that ship shape for its introduction!
Also we’ve grown in size, with a new addition to the team in Ben Hickton and have another tester on the way next month so we’re looking forward to having more hands on deck. In part this is to replace the void that Assistant QA Manager, Geoff Coffin and his lovely beard have left in the team after making a switch to Tech Design.
Graphics
This month the graphics team have been putting the finishing touches to a number of features such as distant shadows, multi-crew ship damage, the improved LOD system, advanced face wrinkle shader. We’ve covered many of these in previous reports but as we get closer to releasing the next version of Arena Commander we’ve had to stress test these systems and fix all the bugs to ensure the backers get a good user experience. We’ve also been looking at lots of performance issues because as we’ve been expanding our maps we’ve been stress-testing the engine in ways it hasn’t experienced before. These have mainly been CPU optimisations rather than GPU optimisations as larger maps don’t necessarily results in more objects on screen, but do mean we need to process a lot more objects to check whether they’re visible and also to update their gameplay/AI.
One of the next features we’ll be focussing on is more improvements to the face shader. We’re getting some great results from the advanced face rigs we have, but the memory cost is currently pretty high and so we’re trialling a new technique that will vastly reduce the memory cost to just a small fraction of what it is currently, with the bonus of actually achieving more detail, so we’re excited to get this tested and hopefully in-game soon. We’re also going to start a major re-work of both the UI rendering and shield shader. Both of these were written very early in the project and as the design of the game has become more finalised it’s become clear they need an upgrade in order to do everything we’ll need in the final PU. For the UI we’ll be integrating it more closely into the rest of the rendering pipeline which will allow it to fit better into the scene and also be slightly cheaper to render. For the shield shader the technique will get a major visual and performance improvement which we’re excited to get started on!
Engineering
Just a short update from the UK this month. After a really successful CitizenCon at the beginning of the month we’re now working hard to get the large world map out and released into the wild. A lot of this is polishing up what we already have, bug fixing and performance improvements, but cumulative small polish is critical for delivering a game that plays smoothly, even on a powerful computer.
This doesn’t mean we’re not doing any new features. We’re looking at improving the Retaliator’s damage so you can get it to split in two, which is a bigger task than might be expected. When a piece breaks off a ship like the Retaliator then what the game recognises as the interior also has to be broken in two and a new instance created. Also our debris system wasn’t network synced as the pieces from a fighter were small enough not to really be concerned about. This obviously changes when you have a piece of Retaliator debris bigger than the ships you’ve flown so far, then we have to start worrying about it being in the same position on all clients. We could have just hacked a fix in for this build, but we want to do things properly which has meant making that whole system more robust and future proof going forwards. Takes more time in the short term but you benefit in the long run.
There is a lot more going in which we hope to be able to show you shortly, but we’re now at the stage where it’s just a case of working hard fixing up all the current issues.
Art
A lot of time has been focussed into hiring again this month, artists across the board, from all over the world and we are still going – if only we could add another level to this building like the environment guys do! Concept team has grown by two and given us a good boost in being able to dial in concept work Xi’an Scout, MISC Freelancer and Starlancer. We have a welcome Senior Character artist added to the team and they has been a flurry of activity on characters for SQ42 and heads for promo pieces (giving nothing away here!)
VFX
It’s been full steam (and other ambient effects!) ahead for Alpha 2.0 release. Specifically this means we have continued to polish and optimise the ship damage effects as well as ironing out some functionality concerns we had regarding how the interior effects trigger in relation to receiving exterior damage. That’s all coming together very nicely.
Also we did a fully sanity check on ship thruster effects to make sure they were still behaving as expected post-IFCS update. Fingers crossed, all good!
Aside from the ships, there have been lots of ambient environment effects polish and optimisation for the new map – leaking coolant, steam, airlock effects, holomaps and general space dust/debris to name but a few. There’s been a real focus on making sure these effects are as efficient as possible due to the sheer quantity required to populate such a massive area. We place these on a per-location basis, but as there are several locations within a single map, the overall particle entity count can get pretty huge. Thankfully we have a plethora of optimisation settings to play with, so within reason the effects shouldn’t cause too big a performance hit.
We’ve also been working with the graphics engineer to ensure our particles are being correctly lit/shadowed based on location/placement within visareas.
We also began R&D on a new type of ship weapon – can’t say too much about this but its effects requirements present us with some unique challenges. Looking forward to seeing this one take shape in the near future!
Ship Team
Ship team has been growing, we have an influx of new starters, here we always start them on props to get used to the pipeline and then add them into the production process of the ships. So, to the meat of it – Starfarer Interior, it’s ongoing, pushing to establish hero areas of the interior of the ship which then serves as the kit foundation of all other areas within the ship.
For the exterior, we continuing to establish the MISC exterior shader set / style, working up thrusters and landing gear in tandem. Additionally, the AEGIS Vanguard is marching forward to Hangar ready, using existing shaders and mesh parts established during the Retaliator production.
The Freelancer interior and exterior: still early days but the ship is really taking shape and giving off the MISC vibes, cockpit fitting, UI and cockpit fitting have worked hard to come up with something new and interesting yet functional for this ship so watch out for further updates.
The Sabre, currently being Greyboxed to establish a solid mesh foundation to build from at this stage, we’ll give this to ship tech to take through its paces and identify any snags before going into final production.
The Prop Team
Now Citizencon is out in the public I can talk a bit more freely about what the Prop team have been focused on. Citizencon was used as a test bed for how we are approaching dressing the larger multicrew ships. The hangar dressing was a main focus, we concentrated on building all the engineering and diagnostic tools that the engineers need to keep their fleet in working order. A lot of work was also put into supporting the animations and performance captures, we have a good understanding of the technical set up required for getting the props working with the animation data. There is still a lot of work to be done on the smaller scale human props that we want to deliver, to really sell that lived-in feeling when you step on board these ships and environments, but the engineers are now geared up to fix any battle scars your fleet of fighters may receive!
The prop team is now focusing on 2 major areas, the ship components and the shopping experience. The ship components are super exciting for us, it’s going to pave the way in terms of ship customisation and performance. We are supporting the design team and making sure that all the options they want to give to the players from a game play point of view are viable from an art standpoint. So far its super exciting, the concepts are fantastic and we hope to have the first couple completed soon. Once we have the foundations in place we should be delivering new component artwork on a regular basis.
The shopping experience is part of the social module, it’s all about giving the players more options. I don’t want to give away just yet what shop is our focus but nailing that immersive shopping experience is our priority, making the shop feel alive and used when you walk and purchase your wares.
Summing this month up in two words, it would be dressing and customisation!
Environment Art
Optimise, test, polish, bug, repeat. This has been the mantra for the environment team since the demo you saw of SCA2.0 at Citizencon. It’s not the most fun part of game development but is an absolutely crucial step to ensure then end experience for the user is as good as possible.
The final level of dressing has been added to the scenes, everything from personal belongings left behind to half eaten boxes of Big Benny’s noodles – this process lets us tell small stories within the environment and hopefully adds the human element to the scene.
SCA2.0 has been the perfect proof of concept for large world environments and space stations for both the PU and SQ42, its shown how modular building sets can work and how amazing it can be to create space stations real time in the editor – simply amazing tech!
The environment team can’t wait to see you guys play 2.0, we want to see lots of videos of you guys exploring, and having fun within the sandbox
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Greetings Citizens,
Frankfurt is getting a bit colder this month, and the leaves are starting to fall off the trees. The team here is 30 strong now and we have numerous candidates across multiple disciplines that we’re in discussion with. We appreciate all the support we’ve been getting from the community. Here’s a breakdown of some of the stuff we’ve been up to this month.
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Weapons
The Weapon Art team has been working on a prototype for new scope attachments and experimenting with lens shaders.
The picture is the current result of this, showing the prototype geometry (not featured in the game, purely made for testing) from a couple of different angles as well as in ADS view.
We’ve also continued to develop the manufacturer style guides and the high level production pipeline for ship and personal weapons.
Design
On the level design side, Andreas and Clement have been looking into best practices of creating modular elements that can be used to build space-station-like-structures and experimenting with various ways of combining those into environments that, while allowing us to quickly build new areas, are still meeting our high standards of artistic & gameplay quality. This system also gives us the flexibility to quickly alter the flavour and content of an environment, changing it from something like a UEE to a pirate/smuggler space station.
On the system design side we have been focused on multiple things. Chris has been busy working with the Character Art, Tech Art & Animation departments ensuring our new character setup fits the new modular suit design. This needs to be done as soon as possible, as it affects all future FPS characters we will have from now on and doing it correctly now instead of waiting until later will pay off. He also worked closely with Francesco (AI) on finalizing the systems we need for our AI to function properly.
Another big task that is taking a lot of our time right now is re-visiting our Careers (both old and new ones), fleshing them out and trying to reorganize them each into component Player Activities and then split each Activity into its base Systems/Mechanics. There’s a lot of documentation work here but once done we will be able to have a clear picture of all the things the player can do in the Star Citizen Universe and what are the required systems are for it. This will also help production as we will be able to see what systems are needed for which career, allowing us to prioritise them.
Todd has been working with everyone involved in the FPS part of the 2.0 Baby Persistent Universe release, ensuring the quality of the FPS stays on par with what the backers are accustomed to seeing from Star Citizen.
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FX
This past month, VFX has been working hard towards adding and polishing effects for the persistent universe and arena commander module updates that will be released soon. Some of the effects included are improvements to the quantum drive spool up and effects for the new repair drone. We have also been making libraries of various types of space dust to place around asteroid fields. Everything from thick fog, to various densities of dust and even some hot plasma gasses.
On the tech side we have recently had some improvements to the particle refraction. This removes the ghosting artifacts that were possible with the old technique. It also adds a new feature, the ability to blur the refraction. This is important to pull off certain effects such as heat haze.
The gif is a close up of the repair drones welding torch effect that was shown in the CitizenCon demo.
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Cinematics
Cinematics did some clean-up to the UEE senate scene so we can revisit it once Admiral Bishop’s dress uniform costume and other character details are finalized. (What you saw at CitizenCon was not fully final of course! We enjoyed sharing it but there’s more we want to do.) We also did some work on finishing the senate hall environment, including texture work and modelling the senate hall pieces with tables and so on.
We also reported and addressed issues like the lacking bone link dialogue in Sandbox and other cinematic related issues. Doing these highly polished bits once in a while is good for setting ourselves into “final” mindset and finding bugs or issues and address them early on.
After this we switched gears to another part of the SQ42 intro cinematics: A giant outdoor set involving an even bigger capital ship and our beloved Bishop. The scale of this set is seriously enormous.
We also started working on the first scene with Mark Hamill’s character and to say it is like a dream come true would be an understatement. We have a first version of the UEE pilot helmet on him that he & other pilots including the player will use and it just looks so cool!
We continued working on the McArthur Skydock, focusing on getting the textures where we’d like them, making normal maps and finishing up the diffuse and gloss textures, and built some new parts such as the huge columns and claws that hold the ship.
AI
During the first part of the month we have been focusing a lot on the Morrow Tour experience, improving and polishing the AISequences and how those are connected with the AI behaviors.
We introduced the possibility for level designers to requests activities in parallel like walking and talking, and we also made a pass on the Usables to properly utilize them as navigation links and started our iterations on Subsumption to create basic routines for AI NPCs.
After CitizenCon we moved our focus on mainly two areas: FPS AI and multicrew ships controlled by AI.
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FPS AI – First of all we have extended the zone system to be able to register general AIZoneObject so that we can have multiple AI objects connected with the zone system without really polluting the zone system API.
We started with the cover information so that behaviors can query correctly cover spots in the ‘Verse.
At the moment are currently working on the first version of our systemic combat behavior creating basic tactics the AI can select during the combat behaviors.
Spoiler alert!! I can share with you guys a little snippet of the behavior tree where the AI selects a cover spot that has a shooting posture and it then sprints towards the cover location.
Audio
Focused mainly on bugfixes and small features for me this month. One thing the players might notice is the improved pass-by sound effect logic for the space flight. With the new and improved mathematical basis for the game logic, we were able to tighten the ship flyby sound effect timing, which in turn allowed us to make the sound much more detailed and focussed, especially for the really close ones.
Build
DevOps kept refining the build system, making it more stable and bullet proof. In particular a lot of effort has been put in the buildmonkey front end page. Instead of having someone from DevOps deploy servers, QA can now do that on their own just by clicking a button. We’re heading towards the point where there is less involvement from a DevOps Engineer to handle simple everyday tasks.
We’ve been experimenting a lot with docker and how that can help improve our tools’ stability. Our build system (which is on github now) is going to have its own continuous integration system. Even though it’s far from being done, right now whenever there’s a new pull request or commit on the master branch, we get that change and spin up a new build server within a docker container on a completely automated fashion.
We also got visited by Alex P from the ATX studio. Within CIG he’s one of the most knowledgeable individuals for server automation, chef and general live service management. That week’s been very productive in terms of getting deeper knowledge into certain systems.
Engineering – Chris Bolte
Hi Everyone, during the past month my main focus was on upping the quality of our two October releases: CitizenCon and SC 1.3.
During this time I worked on several optimizations, mostly around the ZoneSystem and CPU side object culling. Besides those, my second focus was on improving our thread backend to be more optimal for a PC only game.
CPU Performance has changed a lot over the recent years. In the old times, optimization was straight forward, there was only a single execution unit inside the CPU which did all the computations. In addition, there was an active GHz race, causing your code to automatically run faster by each new released CPU. Nowadays, the GHz of CPUs don’t change much anymore (single core performance still increases, but not on the level as it did before) and CPUs have gone “wide”, by providing more execution units.
This puts more burden on the programmer, as concurrent programming can be very complex. Since games have (by their nature) are very sequential execution; each frame first must update the state of the world, and then send this state to the GPU for rendering, It is hard to parallelize those in a way that actually gets you any performance gain. To do this, one of the most prominent models used for Games is a so called Main Thread. This Main Thread can be assumed to be like a regular game loop from the single core CPU times. The other cores are then used during a frame to help the Main Thread. If for example, we must update the state of 100 particle systems, we can distribute those over all CPU cores, to reduce the latency between beginning to update the state and being done with it. See the attached picture for a simplified example how this distribution helps.
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To make all of this even more complex, the PC platform has to be more general than consoles. On consoles, the game normally has all the resources exclusively and on a known hardware set. On a PC, the game has to share the resources dynamically with an unknown number of processes running at the same time on an unknown hardware platform.
So to better utilize the PC platform, we switch the thread backend to batch oriented work stealing approach. By using this new model, we can massively reduce the cost to communicate with different threads as we only need to send a signal once per batch, and not once per entry. We also reduced the contention between the worker threads (important to scale to a higher number of CPUs), by utilizing work stealing so that threads communicate with each other instead of over a central queue.
This whole threading change was one of the major improvements for performance for 1.3, which also causes a higher CPU usage (which is good, as we now actually make use of the cores inside your CPU). Currently, nearly all legacy jobs are already ported over to this system, as well as all CPU side culling of the ZoneSystem. In the future this system will be used to parallelize parts of the game code, as well as a few additional things.
Engineering – Physics
On the physics side we encapsulated the physical parameters from the animation hierarchy and moved the entire code and all data structures into the physical hierarchy. We also invested some time into a radical cleanup of the synchronization-code between the animation- and the physics-module and added new debugging features to display the physical state of articulated entities.
On the animation side we helped the fps-team to build a new animation rig which makes full use of existing engine features like animation driven IK, which in turn makes it possible to have “runtime retargeting” and “procedural motion warping” on animated characters. In parallel we added several new debug features to visualize the primarily joints of the rig and to display the inner workings of animation driven IK. There’s a future design gain from getting this to work – more ship cockpits and crew stations could be able to have more of an individual feel and not seem artificially or excessively ‘templated’ on each other.
Engineering – Everyone Else
The rest of the core engine team have been busy on numerous fronts. It’s a bit premature to go into all the details, but rest assured you’ll hear more moving forward both in our monthly updates as well as our weekly ATV segment.
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To all the reckless drivers on ArcCorp,
We were all quite impress with your driving skills and your unstoppable determination to drive a buggy inside G-Loc Bar. You created enough scrap metal from those damaged buggies to build an Idris. While you were driving around, here’s what the team in Montreal has been working on.
Design
The design team is hard at work with Austin to take the next step for the shopping experience. A new shop is coming up for ArcCorp, while we are working on the stores for upcoming new locations. We are also working on giving you more feature for the character customisation system.
Art
Digging into a massive asteroid, the art team is setting up amazing vistas for the next location you will be able to explore soon. We’ve also finished the final art pass on a very special club. Be kind with every citizen. You don’t know who might be owning one and you want to make sure you are on that VIP guest list. We are only waiting for the engineers to hook it up to an elevator so you can access it … No buggy allowed this time.
Code
This month we completed a lot of the development that was started last month. Most of these features were delivered to the user via the recent Alpha-1.3.0 Release.
We polished and completed our first iteration of the Loadout Selector Usable Item, please try it and give us your feedback! You’ll also see a lot of new features added to the Chat, most notably the possibility to create private conversations as well as filtered conversations. The Transport Elevator Console modifications have also been completed. The list of destinations is now populated directly by the Location Service (Backend). It’s now possible for players to have access to different instances of Area18 and player will be able to choose which one they want to go to based on how many of their contacts are in a specific instance. This information is now displayed in the console.
We’ve also put in a lot of work on features for future Releases. We’ve worked on the Ship Selector Usable Item that will enable players to spawn a selected vehicle on a landing pad. The list of ships available to a player will reflect the list of ships he currently has. We are also working on adding a Party-forming functionality through the Contact List as well as fixing various Scoreboard Issues for Star Marine. We’re also in the process of working on a framework that allows for some UI Elements (i.e. Chat, Contact List) to adapt when a player passes from First Person View to Third Person View.
We’ve also provided some support for the production of Flair Items that will be awarded to certain Backers as part of the Referral program that was launched at CitizenCon 2015.
Last but not least, we’ve continued working on a UI Development Toolset and are currently in the process of having it tested by different team members to catch any Issues before we roll it out to other studios.
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Greetings Citizens,
This was a super busy month for all teams, as we work towards the 2.0 release. On the Moon Collider side, we were mainly providing support and doing some bugfixes for a few interesting issues that cropped up with ships, such as some scripting issues in the tutorial, and some behavior tweaks for encounters on the Crusader map. However, for the most part, ship AI has been quite solid, so we were able to do a lot of cool feature work that won’t be in 2.0, but will appear in the following release.
So, what have we been working on?
We’ve made a couple of nice improvements to spline flying for ships. As you may know, ships mostly fly freely in combat, but we do sometimes have them use splines to achieve results that we can’t otherwise get easily. For example, if we want a ship to fly close to other objects or through small gaps, their obstacle avoidance usually won’t allow it, and so we can markup maps with splines to guide ships through these kinds of areas.
The benefits of splines here can also create a problem though: if we’re not using avoidance on splines, then what happens if an object ends up floating into the path of a spline? Up to now, the AI would just collide with the object. This is great if you’re thinking of playing a game of chicken with an AI on a spline, but it would be nice if the AI could be a bit smarter. Now, AIs have the ability to avoid obstacles on their splines, while still allowing for them to ignore the obstacles that the splines bring them close to (such as the big space station they are flying through). There is also an ability to provide extra markup in places where veering off the spline to avoid an obstacle will make the ship crash, so that it can be smart about when to avoid, and when to just plow through. Now you really might end up in a game of chicken and not know if the AI is going to blink first. Are you feeling lucky?
The other thing we’ve improved with splines is to make them work better when they’re attached to moving objects. Up to now, if you had a spline attached to a moving object, like a rotating space station, it would rotate with the object, but when an AI went to fly that spline, it would actually fly a stationary copy of the spline, fixed at the moment the ship started down it. This has been limiting some of the scenarios in which we can make use of splines. Now, we’ve made it so that if a spline is moving, its position will continue to be updated even as a ship is flying along it, and the ship will do its best to stay on it. If a spline is aggressive enough to be just within the capabilities of the ship flying it, then this might not work and the ship will struggle with the additional movement of the spline, but under most normal usage it works fine, so you should be seeing AI ships maneuvering expertly around large moving structures in the future.
Death spirals are a feature that we mentioned starting on last month and that we continued working on a lot this month. This has turned out to be quite an involved task, and we’ve expanded it to the more general concept of “death flourishes”. The idea is to have a generalized framework to sometimes delay the destruction of an AI ship when it has become fatally damaged, so that we can have it do something interesting, such as perform a death spiral, before it is destroyed. But it also needs to be smart, and not make the ship invulnerable to further damage while doing its death flourish. You don’t want it to fly a death spiral into an asteroid and NOT explode!
As part of this feature, we looked at three different ways of doing death spirals. The first one was to allow designers to place special splines in maps to help make ships fly into structures and explode on death. While we may look into this one further in the future, we realized that in practice, for it to look reasonable, the spline needs to be near enough to the ship that it can start flying on it within a couple of seconds, and that’s going to end up happening very rarely in games. So we might end up using it as a rare option when the situation is just right, but it’s never going to be a common case.
The second option we tried was using maneuver splines to fly death spirals. These are special splines that can be placed in front of a ship at any time and it can then follow. Originally created to prototype allowing AI to fly fancy combat maneuvers, they are an obvious candidate for death spirals. So far they are working fairly well, but we found an interesting problem with them that will require further work to resolve. AI controls ships via simulating the same control inputs as human players, so it can’t cheat by doing things that human players can’t do. But we’ve found that when trying to make a ship fly a really aggressive spiral spline to make it look like it has gone out of control, IFCS will kick in and limit how extreme the control inputs can be. This means that we can make the ships fly moderate spirals, but so far they have been unable to keep up with really cool looking ones. We will need to do more work looking into how we can get better results for this.
Finally, we tried a very simple but surprisingly effective option of just jamming one of the ship’s thrusters on! If you pick the right one, a ship will quickly go into an uncontrollable spin. It works well, though it’s a bit limited in variety, so we will use this along with the spline flying option, and have tunable probabilities for seeing these things happen before a ship is destroyed. Over time, we hope to expand the list of possible death flourishes with other ideas, which could even allow for unique deaths for certain types of enemies. There’s a lot of fun to be had here, and the end result should mean more satisfying kills during dogfights.
The last thing to mention this month is a refactoring we’ve been doing on the ship takeoff and landing system. We’ve been reworking several aspects of it to use Kythera behaviors for control during all but the final vertical descent/ascent to the landing pad. This has allowed us to integrate takeoff and landing splines into landing pads, and ships will automatically choose the best spline for their approach direction. Up to now designers have been needing to manually script a lot of this, which is time consuming. With these changes, landing areas will now be a lot easier to setup and will be more robust. This means designers can build maps faster, which means more content, and that makes us all happy!
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Greetings from Montreal!
Here’s what we’ve been up to in the last month:
October was a very exciting month, with CitizenCon taking place in Manchester this year. To coincide with this event, Turbulent delivered many new updates to the website.
The Referral Program was unveiled at CitizenCon. It allows Citizens to invite their friends to play Star Citizen. The new system not only gives rewards to the new recruits, but also implements unique rewards to be given to backers every time that someone used their referral code to create an account and purchase a game package. The more recruits that you invite, the more rewards that you can access. In the future, we will reveal higher-level rewards.
We were also thrilled to be part of the unveiling of Squadron 42. We added a new landing page on the website to introduce this exciting new single player module to Star Citizen. An amazing cast was announced, but we will have to wait and see where they fit in the Squadron 42 storyline. Stay tuned for future updates on the cast and the game.
CitizenCon also saw the introduction of a new ship, the Aegis Sabre: a lightweight fighter to be used as a “rapid responder”. With its sleek, performance-oriented design, the Sabre was a hot item, rivaling the sales and community excitement of much larger ships.
Finally, Turbulent was proud to unveil the long-anticipated Starmap and we were thrilled about how you the community have embraced it. We are continually collecting your feedback to help us plan future versions of the Starmap, as we work to make it as polished, realistic and comprehensive as possible. Not only did the Starmap catch the imagination of our community, as to what their game universe would look like, but it also caught the eye of the web design industry. The Starmap already has been the nominee and recipient of many awards for web design/development excellence, including being featured on Google’s Chrome Experiments, as well as winning the FWA (Favorite Website Awards) Site of the Day (October 30) and AWWWards Site of the Day (October 30), CSSDA (CSS Design Awards) Website of the Day (October 20).
With CitizenCon done and 2016 on the way, there is no rest for the wicked here at Turbulent as we are currently planning our next projects for Star Citizen and cannot wait to present to you what we will do next!
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What has happened this past week in Star Citizen Alpha 2.0. development I hear you cry?
Well we’ve still been tweaking, polishing, and refining any remaining pieces of content whilst the rest of team go to battle with the list of Blocker and Critical bugs so this week’s report will read a little more like a QA report! We are battening down the hatches and getting on with some good old fashioned bug smashing!
The 2.0 release stream is in lockdown now and the Star Citizen Team are doing everything in their power to get this build ship-shape for you guys. Each developer has to be extra careful in testing their work and getting it peer reviewed with risk assessment for approval by Production before it’s allowed in to our precious stream. This is welcome news to Production because we’ve encountered some really frustrating bugs recently, that on top of our more persistent issues we could really have done without. Huge new technological systems like Large World, EVA and Multicrew Ships taking a little longer than expected is no big surprise, in fact it’s more or less expected! But what you don’t want (or at least do your best to reduce) is delays on the logistical side of managing the build process.
One issue we had recently was with our exclusion system – Exludibur! – a system that we use to configure what is and is not in any given build (without an exclusion system, we’d be releasing hundreds of gigabytes of un-optimized, partially-completed game elements with each release!) So when some of the environmental geometry had not been listed for inclusion in the QA build from the 2.0 release stream, it was no surprise that when it got tested that it simply wasn’t there in the game! And what makes it worse is that when that happens, the code still tries to call the geometry that isn’t there, gets very upset, and crashes! We still managed to test our main Game Dev stream to progress with our work but it’s things like this that still take time in our Production and we need to focus to get it right.
Another issue we might have been able to avoid was to do with a new Main Menu that we’re making for you. As you may or may not know, we have internal versions of the build called “Profile” that can sometimes produce slightly different test results when compared to a “Release” version of the game. Release is the best for the most authentic testing conditions but we sometimes need the Profile build for some debug options or to get around issues such as a black screen hang that was happing in one of our Release builds earlier in the week. The black screen was due to the introduction of a new main menu screen that wasn’t hooked up in that mode and therefore unable to test. The Profile build however was able to bypass the issue, so we could continue our work and test the rest of the content in the game. Again, it’s just another consideration in the Production that we have to make sure is checked off to get it ready for release.
I’m sure you’re all wanting to hear a little more about the Main Menu now – right? So the call for the Main Menu was a decision made to improve your user experience by helping players get in to the game more quickly with the initial boot up and also when coming back out of any standalone gameplay such as a gamemode in the Arena Commander simulation. We are now allowing the player choose whatever they want to load with this new menu, and avoid having to wait for content that they’re not looking to access. You guys have been speaking up about this on the forums, so we’ve listened and are doing something about it! We hope you approve of it once it’s all implemented in 2.0 and I’m sure you’ll let us know if you don’t! Just please note that it’s a first iteration.
In other UI related news, we have been putting the finishing touches on the ship screens which you will see in one of this week’s update videos which shows you the all new and improved Avenger, Cutlass, and Constellation. These are again a first iteration with lots more work left to do (ie. Adding the wireframe ship to the Avenger) and the “System Unavailable” messages should give you an indication of cool things still to come with this multi-layered system for managing your beloved spaceships.
So that’s just about it for this week’s report. We really hope that we won’t need to write another, or many, of these reports because we are certainly “close” to the 2.0 release, it’s just really, really hard to predict just how close we are. It’s a tough fight in the 2.0 trenches but we have an incredibly talented and dedicated team that no amount of bugs can keep down for too long! So thank you for your patience, we will keep you posted but please know that it IS coming!
Now here are the high level items broken down for you by the team…
Gameplay and Engineering
Looking at a Quantum Travel bug where two ships can come out of travel inside each other
Improved engineering screen FoV for multicrew ships
Continued work to improve the EVA experience
Improving weapon movement for FPS combat
Fixed up an issue where dying in FPS combat left the weapon floating in the air
Performance optimisation
General bug fixing
UI
Added support for notification of REC awards
Lots of bug fixing & polish:
Multicrew ship screens
mobiGlas Mission Manager
mobiGlas Journal
Added respawn countdown
Quantum Travel HUD
Visual skinning of transport elevator console panel
Mission Manager live updating, when you have it open
•* More polish and bug fixing
Art
Final environmental polish and LODs
Final lighting changes to Crusader map
Final VFX polish on Ship damage, Crusader map and EMP
Finalizing LODs for Avenger
Optimisation for Retaliator
Animation
Further refining base character locomotion
Additional work on finalising stocked and pistol locomotion
Audio
Dialogue session has been completed so the mastering of these assets is now progressing
Working on improving the sound design for EVA
Continued improvements for ship fly-bys (see video update for more details)
General bug fixing
Blocking Issues
Probe for Quantum Travel marker isn’t working properly so the player can’t travel to a mission location
Missing space station geometry due to Excludibur (now resolved and verified fixed)
Missing geometry for Arc Corp elevator due to Excludibur
Server crash when spawning Multicrew ships
General server stability issues with 17+ players in-game; but vastly improved from just 2 players when playing two weeks ago!
Black screen hang on boot in Release (now resolved and verified fixed)
I can share with you guys a little snippet of the behavior tree where the AI selects a cover spot that has a shooting posture and it then sprints towards the cover location.