[Megathread] Star Citizen

[Libram]

Really excited about the game, been hoping the secret space project Bioware has been working on was something like this, but now to be honest I don't really care about that anymore.
This looks so much more interesting than whatever BioWare was coming up with in my wildest dreams. Waiting for payday to pledge though, think I might go for the 250 dollar pledge, supposedly is a small freighter with turrets and even a small hangar deck from which you can launch your fighter.......

My ultimate desire would be that they could implement something like this:

Edit: Go to 5:36!

Only have that with undiscovered/uninhabited planets, I could deal with loading screens on habited planets. Still I guess it's really hard to create.

And yay, only 12k more to 1 mil. I expect them to start with Kickstarter as well soon, the community seems to want it.
If they could reach the 5 mil mark...

A space sim with hundreds of planets like this.. I'm afraid I'll loose my real life to it all. =[

[SirRobin]

I remember drooling over that demo. I would love something like the old Elite game but with all the latest eye candy. We'll just have to wait and see.

---------- Post added 2012-10-18 at 11:33 AM ----------

Just passed one million.

$1,001,070

22 days to go

[Deleted]

This looks pretty good. The trailer is impressive.


I think I can approve the art direction, for starters, too.

[RoninaThorstone]

.
I think I can approve the art direction, for starters, too.

When I watched it I was like...

DREYDES CONTACT!
2 cylon raiders incoming. Scramble the alert fighters.

[cywang86]

A week in, and 1 mil. 3 more weeks to go.....This should be interesting.

A few people already bought the 1k package too

[llDemonll]

Kickstarter is up!

I think they will draw in a lot more donations that way. People trust Kickstarter (compared to a stand-alone website) and it will get more coverage / exposure being there

[SirRobin]

Kickstarter is up!

I think they will draw in a lot more donations that way. People trust Kickstarter (compared to a stand-alone website) and it will get more coverage / exposure being there

Yeah, it still strikes me as odd that they didn't go with kickstarter to begin with. I mean, I read their answer, but it didn't make sense to me.

[llDemonll]

Me neither; had they gone with it from the beginning they wouldn't have "turned away" people who wanted to donate but either weren't comfortable donating to a "private" site or couldn't donate due to the site being down. They missed a lot of the "initial surge impulse donations" that people tend to make. At least they put it up now. I don't think they'll have much trouble finding the $2 million they need/want

[Deleted]

I was wondering why they didn't have a kickstarter, too.

It's nice to know that it's up now.

[Elite Peon]

So after looking at the site what does this game bring to the table that someone cannot already find in eve online ? Oh and if you did not want a MMO there is also x3 terrain conflict . Sorry I just did not see anything new that has not been done before . I wish them luck though .

[SirRobin]

So after looking at the site what does this game bring to the table that someone cannot already find in eve online ? Oh and if you did not want a MMO there is also x3 terrain conflict . Sorry I just did not see anything new that has not been done before . I wish them luck though .

I don't think it brings anything "new," per se. What it does do is bring back Chris's spin on it. If you played Wing Commander, Privateer, Freelancer, and EVE... Well, while they might basically have the same things, the "feel" of the first three is very different to the last one. Personally I loved the first three but EVE could never get its hooks into me. Despite me still trying to let it do just that every year or two.

If Chris can resurrect the feeling I got from Wing Commander and Privateer, in Star Citizen. I'll be one seriously happy camper.

[RoninaThorstone]

I don't think it brings anything "new," per se. What it does do is bring back Chris's spin on it. If you played Wing Commander, Privateer, Freelancer, and EVE... Well, while they might basically have the same things, the "feel" of the first three is very different to the last one. Personally I loved the first three but EVE could never get its hooks into me. Despite me still trying to let it do just that every year or two.

If Chris can resurrect the feeling I got from Wing Commander and Privateer, in Star Citizen. I'll be one seriously happy camper.

I feel like this will be a whole package rather then playing a few different games.

[llDemonll]

So after looking at the site what does this game bring to the table that someone cannot already find in eve online ? Oh and if you did not want a MMO there is also x3 terrain conflict . Sorry I just did not see anything new that has not been done before . I wish them luck though .

To me it seems like this will be Freelancer in MMO form. It's Eve without the time investment that Eve requires; the "casual Eve" if you will.

[Finangus]

So after looking at the site what does this game bring to the table that someone cannot already find in eve online ? Oh and if you did not want a MMO there is also x3 terrain conflict . Sorry I just did not see anything new that has not been done before . I wish them luck though .

I'm sorry, but this is just idiotic. The same could be said for every FPS/TPS/RTS/RPG that is released, except those genres are flooded with a dozen or so releases per year.

EVE? The only thing EVE has in common with space combat sims is space. EVE is very slow paced and downright boring at times. Combat in EVE consists of ordering your ship to orbit a target at a certain distance, and turning on and off weapons/systems as needed. I'd much rather engage in a dogfight with my enemy, and have victory depend on my skill rather than a dice roll that determines how much damage my shots do or if they hit at all.

X3? X3 isn't a bad game, but it has a number of issues, the biggest being that it is buggy and unpolished as hell. Also, it's entirely single player, which severely limits longevity and replayability.

Finally, remember that this game is pre-alpha. All we have to judge the game on is a couple trailers, which are nothing more than tech demos. Try to wait until we have some actual gameplay footage and information on game mechanics before you pass judgement.

[SirRobin]

Updates:

A Letter from Chris Roberts

Hi everyone!

Chris Roberts here. We have some pretty big news today.

First we hit $1M this morning! Congratulations and thanks to everyone for achieving this goal. Its amazing what we accomplished in just over seven days.

But that’s not all!

I am serious about listening to the opinion of this community, so when we asked whether you wanted a Kickstarter option on Facebook and had over 1000 affirmative responses we realized that we needed to provide that choice.

I’m a big fan of Kickstarter and have backed quite a few projects on it – including the Oculus Rift – and I think the core gaming community owes them a huge debt of gratitude for providing a mechanism to get games funded in genres that the modern day publishers aren’t interested in anymore.

Not using Kickstarter was never about saving 5%, as in the greater scheme that is a very reasonable fee for the service they provide. It was about making the experience frictionless for the existing 30,000 RSI members at the time of launch. I wanted a seamless experience in the fiction of the Star Citizen world where you could interact on the forums, check out development posts and back the project all from the same site and with the same login details.

But that’s only good if the RSI site can handle both the community features and the strain of thousands of people wanting to pledge. As you already know, we famously failed in that task upon launch. As of today we have got things mostly under control. We are working 24/7 in order to get all the intended functionality up, link back up orders to RSI memberships, provide an upgrade option, improve the community experience by moving to a more full featured forum system and speeding up the performance of the site. But doing all this always creates a risk that the site may go down briefly if one of our upgrades breaks the complicated beast that is a community site intertwined with a crowd funding platform.

The kind folks at Kickstarter have generously offered to help out. Not only are they happy for us to have a Star Citizen campaign but they are fine running in parallel with the crowd funding platform on this site. This is great news, as it allows us to provide all the Space Sim fans out there multiple options to back Star Citizen. Nervous about pledging in a custom solution on a site that has had some hick-ups? Use Kickstarter! If you can’t as you don’t have an Amazon account and don’t want to open one, use the RSI site, where we take Paypal and credit cards. It’s all about user choice and in this adding Kickstarter is a very good thing.

For fun, we’ve created a small Kickstarter pledge for existing backers. It’s called the “Kickstarter” and it’s an Electro Skin Hull Enhancement module. This is an upgrade package that players will be able to buy in game that allows ship owners to switch their hull appearance at a flick of a switch. The idea is that we will make skins available and allow players to make their own (within rules) once the game fully goes live. So for the $5 “Kickstarter” pledge we will add it to your current ship package, along with a custom skin that will tell the world that you backed twice! We added it to Kickstarter to allow fans to show their support in both places without breaking the bank.

Of course if you’ve already backed there is no obligation to do this. We are already eternally grateful to the existing backers for believing in the vision and helping us get half way to our goal after only 7 days!

The Kickstarter number will be combined with the RSI counter when we hit our minimum and stretch goals, so a pledge in either place counts towards our goal of reaching $2mill or more. We will link all Kickstarter pledges to their RSI account in the same way we intend to do with all the members that used the backed up site when our main one was down. We will have to get the data from Kickstarter so be patient as it won’t be instant, but we promise we will link everything up and nothing will get lost!

So if you’ve been holding back because you prefer Kickstarter or if you just want to show your support again please go to http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/cig/star-citizen

In addition to offering you more choices, we’re focused on getting back to the business of immersing you in this universe, so we’ve started a new section up called “Spectrum Dispatches” that will be in game fiction – news from what’s happening in the Star Citizen universe along with a couple of serialized story threads. We want to involve you in this universe from day one and not just wait until we release the multiplayer alpha!

Finally we have you heard you loud and clear about the ships. We will be releasing details on the various ships on over the coming days, and you should know that Conceptual Artist superstars Ryan Church and Jim Martin are hard at work visualizing them, which we will share when ready (this won’t be in the next few days though – it takes time to do things right!)

I hope you liked my mega update!

Let’s show the world that Space Sims are back!

Chris Roberts

An Update from Chris Roberts

WOW!

Thanks to everyone backed us over these past 24 hours. We had our biggest day outside of the announcement day. Kickstarter alone brought in $155,270, hitting 30% of its goal in just 24 hours from when we launched and the RSI site brought in another $79,000.

Between the two totals we are at over 60% of our initial target after 9 days, which means that this project is going to happen and it will be about how much beyond this we can go. Remember that the more we raise the more content I can pack in from the outset and louder message we send to the world that Space Sims are very much alive.

So thank you to everyone that backed for the first time, or backed again because you’re such a big supporter!

It makes me proud, humble and determined to make the best game I possibly can as you all deserve nothing less.

As we showed yesterday by listening to feedback on providing Kickstarter as an option we hear you loudly on the ship specifications. We’ve had the general specifications worked out for a while, but I’ve been holding off on sharing as I want some early conceptual work to share along with the descriptions because I believe a picture is worth a thousand words!

But as you would like to know sooner rather than later our plan is to publish the descriptions once the upgrade feature is functional, which the web guys are aiming to have online by Monday.

In addition we plan to do a Reddit AMA on Monday. We’ll provide a link here when that is live.

Finally if you go to the Star Citizen section on the home page you will see that it now connects to our game overview and FAQ. This will be the living document that we update the game’s design and feature list as we describe them and also will be where the FAQ will live. Please check it out!

Chris Roberts

[RoninaThorstone]

Does anyone else feel that its messed up that we are getting more information and updates for a game that doesn't exist than what we got from BiowarEA about swtor in the past few months?

Not flaming. Just... Happy to see these updates.

[Drakos]

A space sim with hundreds of planets like this.. I'm afraid I'll loose my real life to it all. =[

No doubt! So many good games to support. The next couple of years could be a real revival for PC games.

[SirRobin]

Update:

A Note from Chris Roberts

Hello everyone!

Less than two weeks ago, I reached out to the gaming community to help me prove that the PC game wasn’t dead. That there was still an audience for the kind of games I created with Wing Commander and Freelancer. To prove that Space Combat wasn’t finished as a genre

I hoped that the answer would be yes, that the demand would be there and that it would come together in a way that would ultimately let me build the world I have been dreaming about for many years.

What I didn’t expect was how quickly it all happened.

Last night, just four and half days after our Kickstarter campaign launched, we passed the $500,000 mark, making it successfully funded, and another Kickstarter success story.

As I write this we are less than $50,000 from reaching the RSI goal of $2 million in overall pledges that makes Star Citizen a “go”. It’s unbelievable.

I’m proud to represent this cause and I’m tremendously humbled by the incredible community that has rallied to my side. Not just the donations–which have been astounding –but also the stories and the creativity I’ve encountered interacting with you in the comments and on the message boards and elsewhere. Like me, you have all seen Star Citizen, no matter what you may have called it, in your head for many years… and thanks to your collected efforts; I’m going to build it for you.

I have two pieces of information to share with you tonight. The first is the long-awaited design document about Star Citizens five pledge ships. Time and time again you’ve asked what an Aurora or a Hornet or a Constellation is. I’m happy now to be able to share our design concepts. These are the specifications we’re building on as we create the game world and they’re the descriptions I have sent to the artists who are putting together the ship models. Normally you wouldn’t see this kind of inside information, especially not this early, but I hope you will find it interesting and get a kick out of getting an insider’s view of how game development works.

The second piece of news is the news that you can finally upgrade your pledges at RobertsSpaceIndustries.com. If you’ve decided you would like to upgrade to a higher tier of ship or if you would like to increase your support for the project for any other reason, you now have that option. In addition we have heard you loud and clear on the Forums, on Kickstarter, Facebook and on the recent poll. You want the ability to add additional ships to your base package. So we’ve given you that option too. I hope you’ll enjoy seeing our plans for these ships and then choosing the one that best fits how you want to play the game.

Tomorrow, we’re going to be adding additional information about stretch goals… more specific levels and in-game rewards that you can achieve. In the near future we will have the upgraded forums online and we will start opening additional content at the RSI website. There’s a lot to look forward to!

So, pilots: we’ve won our first furball! But, there’s plenty more work to do. Let’s knock out the $2M in overall pledges that green lights Star Citizen, then set our sights on the stretch goals. The more of these we can hit, the richer and more varied the game I can deliver. We’re less than half way through the campaign, so I know we can go much further. If you’ve already backed, spread the word. If you’re still waiting to, then please join the cause.

Thank you, truly, for your unbelievable support. We have $45,840 to go! We can get there by MORNING!

Chris Roberts

Poll: The End

There’s great news this morning: the combined RSI and Kickstarter tally is over $2,000,000… which means we are officially funded! That’s such big news that it seems impossible at the moment. We’ll have more celebration about that in the near future, but we wanted to poll the community: would you mind if we extended the RSI campaign’s deadline by ten days? That would give us a little more time to hit the stretch goals, yes, but the main interest is in planning one big event to celebrate the end of the whole funding campaign… which would be a lot easier if both happened simultaneously. What do you think? If the people who have backed the game already do truly object, we won’t do it. So, please, let us know in the poll!

[RoninaThorstone]

Getting pay check tomorrow. I think I'm gonna spring for the wingnut.

Thank god they are keeping it open another 15 days.

I was terrified I wouldn't be able to get the chance to get my wingnut package.

[RoninaThorstone]

Just an update.

They reached 3 million.