$60k Stretch Goal: Rocharus Mount

We’re happy to announce that our Kickstarter campaign has reached it’s initial goal with 21 days remaining on the campaign. We’d like to thank everyone who has backed or supported the title over past couple of years. You guys have been amazing, and we look forward to getting many more of you into the game over the next few months.

With the initial goal behind us, we turn our sights on the stretch goals. They are the primary purpose of this campaign after all. We hope to cover each stretch goal as it gets on deck.

The first stretch goal, at $60k is the addition of tameable Rocharus mounts. These will be the first mounts in The Repopulation. We had originally planned to only support vehicles, and then possibly explore tameable mounts post-launch. But this feature was requested so many times over the years that we had hoped to be able to squeeze it into launch. We designed the vehicle code to be able to support these in the future, and after we hit the $60K stretch goal these mounts will become a reality.

We’ve attached a screenshot of what the Rocharus species looks like in-game to give you an idea of what you’ll be riding. Make sure not to jump on it from the front.

Letter from the Chairman: $36 Million!

We just hit $36 million in crowd funding! What’s even more impressive is that we reached this goal while Cloud Imperium was closed for the holidays, without any kind of special “holiday” promotion – pretty staggering and it’s entirely down to the word of mouth and enthusiasm from all of you!

I’m happy to report that the Star Citizen Development team will be back on the job as of Monday, revitalized and with an ever-greater determination to do everything to make this the Best Damn Space Sim Ever. Your continued financial support allows us to chase this goal with confidence.

Starting on Monday, I’ll be sitting down with the Dogfighting Module team to go over all your feedback from our live demo at the end of the year and schedule the remaining functionality, content and polish we want to achieve before we push it out to all of your hard drives!

After this I’ll be making my first visits to our new offices in Manchester and then Austin, where we are holding a summit with all the teams from around the world working on Star Citizen to schedule and coordinate this year’s work in detail.

Last but not least, launching The Next Great Starship, exposing some great talent to the community and allowing you to see the process of building ships up close for Star Citizen!

I can’t wait to get back to work!

At $36 million, you’ve unlocked the first of the backer-voted systems, Tamsa:

• Tamsa System – Located near the fringe of Banu space, Tamsa System features a massive central star that has collapsed into a black hole. Only two planets remain in the system, a chthonian world and a gas giant located far from the black hole’s event horizon.

For the $38 million goal, your votes have selected the “fully aquatic planet” option. Here’s the description of the system we’re creating based on your input:

• Cano System is home to a G-Type Main Sequence Star that’s almost identical to Earth’s. Of the four planets in the system, only one is inhabited: Carteyna. Located on the edge of habitable zone, Carteyna is a classic waterworld. Fortunately, its planetary axis constantly keeps the northern hemisphere away from the sun, which allowed for the water to freeze into the landmasses used as the initial landing zones in 2587. Multiple attempts have been made to try to convert the thick atmosphere into something breathable, but the process never seemed to stick. In fact, over the years, every time there’s a new technological development in geo-engineering, they test it out here on Carteyna only to yield the same result. Almost fifty years ago, scientists discovered microscopic organisms in the very early phases of life in the depths of the oceans. This caused a massive uproar throughout the UEE at the prospect that they had been attempting to terraform a developing world. Carteyna was immediately placed under the Fair Chance Act. Unfortunately, Humans had been living here for almost over three hundred years and the families that had been here for generations felt that they had earned rights as residents. After years of debate in the political and scientific community, the population was allowed to stay, but only under certain conditions: future terraforming attempts have been outlawed and the Human population has been consolidated to a single arcology to minimize their impact on their environment and the development of whatever species is growing in the deep.

Be sure and vote for the penultimate backer-decided system in the poll located below. Remember, these options just represent a small portion of what the additional budget allows us to do with Star Citizen!

Thank you for your continued support.

In honor of this accomplishment, I’d like to share the result of an aspect of Star Citizen that I think makes us special compared to the normal game development process – involving the community during development to get user feedback early to shape a better game. Here’s the result of a lot Freelancer pilot’s requests now they’ve had some time to get a feel for their ship in the Hangar: a revised design for an updated Freelancer cockpit featuring the greater visibility! And get ready: you’ll be seeing more of the Freelancer in the New Year.

— Chris Roberts

Letter from the Chairman: $35 Million!

Wow! When I started this journey I would have never guessed that we would have come so far in such a short time. $35M in funds raised to build Star Citizen before the end 2013 it truly a monumental achievement! You’re not just re-writing the rules of how games are made and funded but you’re showing the power that a committed community has to achieve a vision that so many people said was no longer relevant. You’ve broken every record there is in crowd funding – and not just for games – for any type of project!

What is also a great sign for the long term longevity of Star Citizen and its community is that a large amount of this last stretch goal, like the previous ones has come from new Citizens – 6,617 to be precise! A continually growing community is a testimony to the enthusiasm of the existing community in sharing their excitement and also a resounding indictment of the people that still say space sims are a fringe genre.

With your enthusiasm and generosity you’re allowing the team and I to go beyond the bare minimum we knew we needed to deliver to make Star Citizen an engrossing experience. As Star Citizen is an open universe and there are so many possibilities the additional funds allow us to increase the amount of content available at the start, have more talented developers working on the various facets in parallel, which will allow us to have a richer gameplay experience from the beginning and allow us to invest in some research and development projects to keep Star Citizen ahead of the curve. Unlike a typical publisher we don’t look at this initial funding as bigger profits – we look at as allowing us to deliver more of the dream sooner and ensure the online infrastructure and support is as full featured as possible, even during the pre-release period.

I would also like to thank each and every one for your support in my decision to delay the Dogfighting Module. I know it was disappointing for many people, and it wasn’t a decision that I took lightly but after much deliberation I decided it was best for the long term health of the project. The various modules are a great way of engaging all of you and providing useful feedback to the team. But for me their strongest benefit is providing smaller, shorter terms goals for the team to achieve, while working towards is a pretty daunting feature set for the full game. It forces us to finish a feature with enough polish that hundreds of thousands of people can experience it. The Hangar module, while fairly limited is an example of this – despite still missing many features that will be present in the final game it is far more polished than anything would normally be at this stage of the development if it was just an internal or publisher milestone. Even our commercials are constructed this way. They are goals that force us to get the ship and animations finished and polished for the commercial and usable in the hangar. We chose situations and assets for the commercials that match up to what we know we need for the game, in the same way we are using the modules as a way of making incremental progress to delivering a game of the scope of Star Citizen. This is why I’m against polishing something that won’t contribute to the final game. We could have shared a simple single player dogfight module with some scripted missions – and had something much more polished than we showed on Friday (at a cost of all the multi-player progress we’ve made) but that’s not something that would be anything other than one off work to keep everyone amused while we work on getting the actual functionality that we need.

In my heart I didn’t want to rush out something that would be a stop gap. Testing the head to head aspect is the one I’m most focused on. I’ve made a lot of single player games – I know that we can knock that out of the park but I really want to make sure that the multiplayer combat is fun, compelling and that we solve the various challenges in having the controls and flight model work smoothly online. That was what the Dogfight Module was always intended to be at its core and so at the end of the day I felt I would be letting myself down, as well as everyone in the community if I didn’t deliver a module that lived up to the goals I wanted to achieve. Even though I want the community’s feedback that’s only useful when I’m mostly happy with how something plays and looks and I’m not there yet on the multiplayer dogfighting.

So from the bottom of my heart thank you for your support. I’m pretty sure that when you get your hands on the dogfighting module you’ll be happy and glad we made this decision.
At $35 million, you unlock the final fan-voted ship design. The Drake Herald was one of my favorite potential choices, as it represents the diversity in possible professions that will make Star Citizen such a compelling universe for players of all stripes. I’m glad the design (and the ‘information runner’ role it represents) has made it onto our schedule due to your support! Here are the specifics:

• Drake Herald – Knowledge is power, and one of the most valuable commodities is pure information: the 1s and 0s behind everything from UEC ledgers to Citizenship ratings. Whether it’s colonists struggling to stay in contact with the UEE’s central worlds or criminals trading in illicit data, there will always be a need to securely move data. The Drake Herald, small, armored ship, is designed to fit that need and safely get that 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, the Herald is unique among personal spacecraft in that it is designed to be easily ‘cleaned’ when in danger of capture. The Herald includes an array of heavy duty internal options for data protection, including redundant power subsystems and EMP shielding, and a high-powered broadcast array for data transmission.

The results of the last system poll have determined the winner of the $37 million stretch goal: the stellar graveyard.

• Tanga System – At the heart of an unusual rectangular planetary nebula (see reference), lies Tanga System. The inner planets engulfed the star entered the red giant phase. The expanded habitable zone unfroze a small world on the former outer ring and for several hundred million years made it habitable. Life began to emerge and was just reaching a primitive state when the star collapsed into a white dwarf, throwing the planet back into a deep freeze, then blasting the atmosphere away with the resulting planetary nebula. That’s how the system was found: Only two worlds (speculation that there could have been three to four more) but both are dead planets with no atmosphere.

Be sure to vote for the $38 million system unlock in the poll below. Remember that all additional funding goes directly to supporting Star Citizen’s production in dozens of ways, the additional ships and systems are just a small representation of what is being done to improve the game!

Finally, don’t forget about the Foundry 42 / Squadron 42 contest announced on Friday; There’s some really great prizes and it’s our way of giving a little back to all you for being such a great community. You can sign up here!

Thank you for your continued support. Happy holidays to all of you and I’m looking forward to showing you more of what we’re working on in the New Year!

Wingman's Hangar Episode 50

Star Citizen - December 20 2013 Livestream

Wingman's Hangar Episode 49

Letter from the Chairman: $34 Million!

We have reached $34 million in crowd funding… without any special promotion, new ship releases or even LTI! Much of this is because new users are finding Star Citizen and the community you’ve helped create every day. I know that we have loyal backers to thank for that: in addition to making the game possible with funding, you’re introducing your friends and families to Star Citizen.

At $34 million, you unlocked the penultimate fan-voted ship role, the MISC Hull C:

MISC Hull C (Discreet) – Scaling from small “box trucks” to massive supertankers, the MISC range of cargo hulls (A-D) are the standard goods transporter in human space. Extremely configurable, MISC Hulls can be adapted for most any type of transport job: from standard bulk shipping on the patrolled spacelanes to armored cargo hauling on the frontier. While these pre-configured hulls are primarily used for legitimate purposes, the MISC Hull Cs have recently become the favorite for criminals who modify the ship with advanced sensor shadow technology, quick-decompress holds and a variety of hidden compartments without modifying the ship’s body so it will appear to onlookers as standard everyday transports.

Last time, you were asked to vote on a major feature of the next Star Citizen system. The audience resoundingly chose a location on the event horizon of a black hole. As a result, the $36 million stretch goal is the Tamsa System:

Tamsa System – Located near the fringe of Banu space, Tamsa System features a massive central star that has collapsed into a black hole. Evidence suggests that there were at least two more planets in the system when the star collapsed before the ensuing black hole engulfed them. Only two planets remain in the system, a chthonian world and a gas giant located far from the black hole’s event horizon. Initial surveys indicate that the two outer planets are slowly being pulled towards the black hole, leaving the two as a risky proposition at best for any sort of colonization.

We look forward to showing you more about this system as the locations develop… and the countless others you’ll be exploring in Star Citizen. In the meantime, you can vote on the next location. As with the ship polls, we’ve removed the highest and the lowest options from the previous poll. Now tell us what kind of location you’d like to see next!

Wingman's Hangar Episode 48

Letter from the Chairman: $33 Million!

What a day! Some of you have been with us for over a year now, some of you are just discovering Star Citizen… I am grateful to all of you for what you’re making possible. As I said in the livestream, we’re in this for the long haul: Star Citizen isn’t going to be something you play and discard… we’re building a world you’re going to want to inhabit for years to come.
At $33 million, you unlocked the Anvil Carrack:

• Anvil Carrack – The Anvil Carrack has been the vanguard of every UEE exploration effort in recent years. Featuring reinforced fuel tanks for long-duration flight, a highly advanced jump drive array and a dedicated computer core room that allows it to put the maximum processing power into jump charting operations. Originally a military exclusive, the Carrack is now available for civilian use as a pathfinder spacecraft. Features on-board accommodations to allow for truly self-sufficient flight, including crew medical and repair facilities, and a mapping-oriented sensor suite capable of always charting a route home!

Information Runner handily won the final ship role poll… so I am proud to introduce the latest in Drake Interplanetary’s lineup!

• Drake Herald – Knowledge is power, and one of the most valuable commodities is pure information: the 1s and 0s behind everything from UEC ledgers to Citizenship ratings. Whether it’s colonists struggling to stay in contact with the UEE’s central worlds or criminals trading in illicit data, there will always be a need to securely move data. The Drake Herald, small, armored ship, is designed to fit that need and safely get that 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, the Herald is unique among personal spacecraft in that it is designed to be easily ‘cleaned’ when in danger of capture. The Herald includes an array of heavy duty internal options for data protection, including redundant power subsystems and EMP shielding, and a high-powered broadcast array for data transmission.

I hope you’ve liked having this additional input into Star Citizen’s development. We’ve enjoyed following the discussions related to the ship choices so much that we’d like to keep this process going! For the next five stretch goals, we’d like to add an additional system to the game… and you’re going to pick the major feature! Remember: the system, like the new ships, is simply symbolic of what’s being added to Star Citizen with the additional money. Each stretch goal system represents additional artists, tools, programmers and new technologies that will make the finished project even better!

— Chris Roberts

Letter from the Chairman: $32 Million!

To be perfectly honest, I didn’t expect to have to write another letter so quickly. Damn you all for being the best, most supportive community in gaming! Hopefully you can forgive me for waiting until after the livestream for this post! The alien ships are a hit; we can’t wait to share more as they come together. Flying a Xi’An scout or a Banu merchantman will be a different experience than their human counterparts, and we’re dedicated to making it worthwhile. At the $32 million level, you’ve unlocked the Aegis Surveyor, a ship dedicated to salvage that also offers some emergent gameplay opportunities:

• Aegis Surveyor – The Surveyor, from noted military contractor Aegis, is an industrial-quality salvage ship. Equipped with a reinforced cargo bay, a long-range jump drive and launch pods for unmanned drones, the Surveyor is an ideal ship for taking advantage of deep space wrecks. Tractor beams, floodlights, scanner options and docking ports round out the tool chest on this capable, utilitarian spacecraft.

The winner of the $34 million ship role poll, in a photo finish, is smuggling! There are two typical paths for smuggling ships: fast, armored ships adapted to run blockades and escape the authorities when necessary and totally innocuous ships that keep their cargo hidden from prying scanners. Several of our existing ships, including the Banu Merchantman, are well-equipped for the former job and so we’ve going for the latter.

• MISC Hull C (Discreet) – Scaling from small “box trucks” to massive supertankers, the MISC range of cargo hulls (A-D) are the standard goods transporter in human space. Extremely configurable, MISC Hulls can be adapted for most any type of transport job: from standard bulk shipping on the patrolled spacelanes to armored cargo hauling on the frontier. While these pre-configured hulls are primarily used for legitimate purposes, the MISC Hull Cs have recently become the favorite for criminals who modify the ship with advanced sensor shadow technology, quick-decompress holds and a variety of hidden compartments without modifying the ship’s body so it will appear to onlookers as standard everyday transports.

Thank you for your incredible support; I hope you enjoyed the chance to interact with the team in today’s livestream. And don’t forget to vote: next up is the last phase of the fan ship role selection poll. By the process of elimination, you can expect to be choosing a new ship from Drake Interplanetary, maker of the Cutlass and Caterpillar. Choose wisely!

— Chris Roberts