January 2016 Updates!

Star Citizen Update: Star Marine Not Cancelled

Welcome, space fans. We are starting a new monthly series of articles on all things Star Citizen! Yes, Cloud Imperium Games is ramping up development and as a huge fan and (full disclosure!) backer of the game, I want to bring you all the latest news and juicy gossip about it. So whether it's latest patch releases to the PU/PTU, significant new plans or artwork, new gameplay mechanics or ships and major new functionality announcements you’re looking for, our monthly roundup will cover all the hottest news.

Each month, I'll be writing a roundup of all the major talking points and news on Star Citizen. What is Star Citizen, anyway? I’ll give you a brief intro in this article, but this trailer explains it better than I ever could.

BREAKING NEWS - FREE FLY WEEK

Cloud Imperium Games (the makers of Star Citizen) have announced another free fly week. This started yesterday and for an entire week, anyone who creates an account can try out Star Citizen for free.

If you don’t have an account yet, you can register for one here and get immediate access to Star Citizen Alpha 2.1.2 with the Crusader system, numerous missions and FPS landing zones/gameplay, as well as the Arena Commander combat mode and Social Modules. You’ll be able to use three ships, the Aurora LN and Mustang Delta starter ships, as well as a premium F7C Hornet fighter.

If you’re a new player and sign up, feel free to use my referral code which gives you an extra 5,000 credits to spend on in game items if you choose to pledge: STAR-9R2G-BTQP

Another very important thing to keep in mind is that from the 14th of February, Star Citizen and Squadron 42 will be split to be sold as two separate games. The price for each has not been announced yet, but it is known that the price will increase if you want both after the split happens from the current packages which include both.

Star Citizen 101

Now for the aforementioned introduction. What is Star Citizen? To anyone new to the game, it can be somewhat bewildering at first as there are several different aspects to the game and in many ways, it attempts to be all things to all gamers. Please keep in mind that the game is still in Alpha and quite rough around the edges.

1. Squadron 42, aka Wing Commander updated for the modern age. A single player military space combat game with an in depth storyline comprising both flight and FPS modes and with a cast of Hollywood AAA actors, including Gary Oldman, Gillian Anderson, Andy Serkis, John Rhys Davies, Mark Strong and of course the one and only Mark Hamill!
2. Star Citizen. The persistent online universe which you’ll be able to continue your adventures in as a trader, mercenary, pirate, good girl/guy, bad guy/girl, explorer, scientist, miner. You name it. Star Citizen will likely offer a career for it.

The tagline that gets thrown around is that it’s a First Person UNIVERSE that allows you to do anything, be anyone and experience the game however you wish.

Star Citizen is a properly physically modelled space game; that includes Newtonian flight mode.

Many people are bewildered by the number of options there are for getting involved in the game, but the fundamental point is that all you NEED to do to get the game is to buy a basic pledge starter pack. This is currently $45, €40.95 or £29.25 plus tax depending on your location. For this, you CURRENTLY get both the single player campaign of Squadron 42 AND a starter ship package for use in the persistent online universe when it launches. Star Citizen is a pay once, play forever (well, as long as the online game lasts) model. Although there are numerous other ways you can put more money into the game, this is the only requirement to play, so you can safely ignore anyone who says you have to spend a fortune in money on spaceships to play the game. Everything which is sold for real money will be obtainable in game upon the full release.

As previously noted, in two weeks Squadron 42 will be separated out from Star Citizen and in all likelihood the price will increase if you want both the single player game and also the Persistent Universe (PU). 

Currently available in Star Citizen are the following:

1. The Hangar Module. Walk around your hangar in first person and third person modes and look at your ships, get into/out of them and use the holo-table to reconfigure their loadouts and swap parts. Look at various hangar decorations you can buy with in game credits, you can even buy a buggy to drive around your hangar in!
2. From your hangar, you can take the “magic elevator” to The Social Module. Here you can walk around ArcCorp, a landing zone on a planet with other players in. Your standard actions are all available here, dance, salute, text chat etc. You can also look around a shop or bar and use your Augmented Reality tool to examine stuff you can buy in the shop (actually purchasing it with in game credits is not implemented yet, coming in a future update).
3. Also from your hangar, you can get into your simpod to access The Arena Commander Module. Arena Commander is a game within the game, if you will. An arena battle game with lots of different modes playable both with/against AI as well as with/against other players in coop or PvP modes. The main game modes available in it are:
   1. A guided tour of how to fly and basic combat maneuvers with an instructor.
   2. Free Flight. Explore two beautiful maps in space without the need to fight.
   3. Vanduul Swarm. Take on the evil alien Vanduul horde. 18 waves of progressively harder AI enemies.
   4. Capture the Core. Capture the flag with spaceships!
   5. Murray Cup Racing. Spaceship racing, no weapons, this is all about handling and manoeuvring.
   6. Battle Royale. Multiplayer deathmatch!
   7. Squadron Battle. Multiplayer team deathmatch!
4. Finally, also from the “magic elevator” in your hangar, you can access Port Olisar which is the starting point for the “Baby PU”. This is the currently tiny version of the expected final game with missions you can fly, exploring you can do, FPS, EVA (Extra Vehicular Activity, also known as flying around in space in FPS mode), social actions etc. At this stage the game has no persistence.

No, Star Marine is NOT cancelled

Chris Roberts announced in his first 10 For The Chairman weekly webcast for 2016 that Star Marine (the first person shooter version of Arena Commander) is most definitely NOT cancelled! Star Marine was originally intended to launch last year, but as CIG took over development of the FPS module from Illfonic (the studio contracted to create the base of the FPS aspect of the game), it became evident that more work was needed and that they were closer to launching the baby PU so decided to dedicate their resources to this. Some basic elements of FPS gameplay are now available to everyone in the baby PU and further updates are planned with 2.2, 2.3 etc. Once the base features are all there (including things like the cover system, gadget usage, etc.) the Star Marine FPS version of Arena Commander will be turned on.

Personally, I’m pleased with the approach they took. I know a lot of people are looking forward to FPS in a controlled map environment with scoring, leaderboards and the likes, but for me the persistent universe where I can fly ships around, quantum drive between space stations and wreckage, fight other ships, get my ship repaired/refuelled/reloaded, dive into FPS mode with other players takes priority. This is what Star Citizen is all about, after all. That much said, I'm sure you'll agree, the artwork below shows they're still working on FPS heavily!

New Versions

This month had a lot of new releases! As you can tell, the team at CIG are busily working away on stabilizing the first iteration of the baby PU which launched with 2.0 at the end of last year. This was a great experience, but pretty unstable. Since then, the updates have churned out and stability has improved significantly:

2.1 was released on the 15^th of January. Much of the work in 2.1 was about stability and bug fixes, but they still found time to put a couple of new flyable ships into the game with the Aegis Vanguard Warden and MISC Freelancer being flyable for those that have them and the Aegis Sabre being hangar ready to explore in your hangar. Additionally, the Apocalypse Arms Revenant ballistic gatling gun is also now available. This monster of a size 4 weapon can be loaded onto the Vanguard.

Barely a week later, 2.1.1 was released. This build was primarily bug fixes and some ship balancing tweaks.

Another week passes and on the 29^th of January CIG released 2.1.2. Again, this build was primarily about game stability and bug fixes.

Since then, it has been (unofficially) mentioned that the next major build (2.2) is likely to still be a few weeks away so we can possibly look forward to this being released to the PTU sometime in February with new functionality likely on the way!

New Videos

Aside from the usual fare of video updates CIG put out (Around the ‘Verse, 10 for the …, Reverse the ‘Verse, Bugsmashers etc), CIG also released a new behind the scenes video from the filming of Squadron 42! This video focussed on the actress Gillian Anderson and her role in the upcoming game. It’s a great peek into some of the filming which took place last year at Andy Serkis’ Imaginarium at Ealing Studios and there are a couple of very minor hints about some of what will occur in Squadron 42. You can find the video here:

New Out of Game Features

The buy back of previously “melted” pledges is now available. If you had a ship ages ago and decided you didn’t want it and melted it for store credit, you can now “unmelt” that ship and bring it back into your account. You obviously have to use either store credits or cash to pledge for it again.

New Unconfirmed Details

Each week, CIG host a live stream on their Twitch channel where they take questions from the community. This month, the key things I caught are:

1. The first batch of pre-orders for the Star Citizen Saitek HOTAS (Hands On Throttle And Stick, the ONLY way to fly!) may be signed by Chris Roberts, the founder of CIG and maker of Wing Commander, Freelancer games as well as Hollywood movies.
2. Ship insurance in game is likely to run on actual flight time for the ship rather than real world time.
3. Store credit unmelting of ships is to be done on a token basis, you get 1 token per quarter to buy back a pledge using store credit. These tokens don’t stack so use it or lose it.
4. The Starfarer (refuelling ship) is currently being worked on in the greybox phase.
5. The BBC were in the UK offices of CIG (Foundry 42) in Manchester filming. We don’t know what for yet or when it will be aired. Speculation is that it may be for a BBC news or Click (the technology news show) piece.
6. Pre-orders for the Saitek Star Citizen HOTAS will likely go live closer to the time they will ship (rumored to be March/April/May time).
7. There is likely to be a new community art Webcast talent show. The last time they did this it was called “The Next Great Starship”. The winning team got a big check, their ship put into the game and if memory serves, at least one of the team is now working for CIG since winning the competition. The name for the next one is likely to be “The Next Great Star Marine” and it is expected to launch sometime around March.

Random Other Things

Chris Roberts and Sandi Gardiner have been spending a fair bit of time in the UK. They happened to be in London the weekend of the Star Citizen UK Facebook group meetup so I managed to arrange for them to drop by! A great time was had by all and we spent an afternoon at the bar talking Star Citizen with Chris and Sandi.

Of course, no Star Citizen update would be complete without an update on funding. The juggernaut that is Star Citizen, already the largest ever crowdfunded project of all time continue to roll on and funding now stands at a staggering $107 million dollars from almost 1.2 million backers!

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