Bit light on news this week but you can always add to the goal by buying a mousepad https://robertsspaceindustries.com/comm-link/transmission/13326-Mousepads-For-Sale

 or polo shirt. https://robertsspaceindustries.com/comm-link/transmission/13319-Polo-Shirts-Now-Available

And guess what yes it's 23 million https://robertsspaceindustries.com/comm-link/transmission/13324-Letter-From-The-Chairman-23-Million and onto 25.

Greetings Citizens,

Thanks to your efforts, we have reached $23 million in crowd funding! We are in uncharted waters here; the community is allowing us to do something truly new, for which you have my eternal gratitude.. Our unlock for this level is the addition of a Xi’an scout plane. The goal here isn’t simply to add an extra ship to the game, but to add a new type of ship which can be expanded upon as we go. Once we’ve put the effort into building an alien experience for the Khartu, we can apply it to other Xi’an ships moving forward. Essentially, the extra funding lets us build an even more immersive universe. Here’s the official unlock statement:

$23 million

• Xi’an Scout Unlocked! The Khartu is the light attack craft of the Xi’An military. Contrary to Human ship design, the Khartu doesn’t have a traditional main thruster, instead featuring an array of maneuvering thrusters on articulated rigs. This design allows for incredible agility, making them the bane of UEE pilots, who bestowed the nickname ‘Quark’ because when all of the thrusters are firing, the ship looks like a spark flying through space. The Xi’an Aopoa corporation also manufactures an export model, 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. (Designer: Aopoa)

As a special reward for those who have backed us to this point, you will be receiving a model of the Khartu to display in your hangar. It won’t be ready immediately, as we now have to concept the ship… but as always, we will be keeping you informed about that process!

$25 million

• Enhanced Alpha – We will use additional funding to build a wider alpha test than we had originally intended for the first phase of Star Citizen’s launch. The initial plan was to first launch servers in North America and then expand to areas such as Europe and Australia to decrease latency in these areas, perfecting the game as we improve the experience around the world. This funding will allow us to invest in a wider infrastructure for our early testing, spinning up remote servers earlier. Hitting this goal will also allow us to increase the number of remaining alpha slots. Extra alpha slots not only means more Star Citizens will travel the ‘verse at launch, but that we will receive more feedback and more stress testing. This in turn will allow us to better balance and enhance the Star Citizen experience!

Finally, I would like to share two new images that have just come in from concept artist Ryan Church. When the artwork we released last week came in, I asked Ryan to follow up with the cockpit because I wanted to see how cool it would be to get behind the ‘stick of this ship… and I was not disappointed! I hope you enjoy.

Thank you for your continued support of Star Citizen and for helping us build a bigger, better game than I had ever dreamed possible.

— Chris Roberts

 

And this new commercial.

The Hornet trailer is out, in 4k resolution no less!

Their funding has gotten a significant increase today too, no surprise there. 

Another very cinematic trailer. 😎

Yes it looks like helped the funding.

It looks like the Hornet commercial and brochure were a resounding success; the president of Anvil Aerospace should expect a bonus this quarter! In all seriousness, the community is continuing to set funding records and is allowing us to do more with Star Citizen. At $24 million, you’ve unlocked the following stretch goal:

• Public Transportation System – Need to get from one place to another but don’t have a starship? We’re building a galactic transportation system. You can travel via transport from system to system in Star Citizen and even ship items (like a ship you need moved to another hangar.) With this stretch goal, we’ll expand this system: star liners, long range transports, charter ships and flyable shuttles!

Pictured here is a monorail car, which will be used by the player to travel from place to place on Terra! A public transportation system may not seem as sexy as a new bomber or a cruiser, but it speaks directly to the goal of making Star Citizen an immersive, world-building experience. Instead of having a simple ‘fast travel’ option like an MMORPG, Star Citizen will feature a living, breathing system to support that gameplay requirement… a system that will be impacted by the economy and player actions in all sorts of exciting ways!

We’re also revealing the $26 million goal, which I think will interest a lot of players. We have become increasingly fascinating with the possibilities for larger capital ships in Star Citizen and would like to dedicate some of the additional funding to expanding their functionality:

• Enhanced Capital Ship Systems – In addition to the command and control systems we’ve already outlined, we’re going to expand capital ship functions! Lead a damage control team to fight fires and repair key systems during battle, control internal bulkheads to slow boarders and man a number of consoles, like navigation and engineering, that will make commanding a capital ship feel even more immersive.

Thank you for your continued support. I hope you take as much pride as I do in the fact that you aren’t only bringing back PC games and taking a shot across the bow at big publishers, you’re taking Star Citizen to new frontiers. The team at Cloud Imperium can’t wait to show you what’s next!

Finally, one small change to the Hornet rollout. We’ve had a number of requests from backers eager to purchase the limited edition Super Hornet who will not be able to do so until the end of the month. Federal employees in the United States who are just getting back to work after the recent government shutdown are especially affected. We are grateful for your passion and would like to help however possible. With this in mind, we are going to keep the Super Hornet available an extra week through Monday, November 4th. We hope that helps give all of our existing backers an opportunity to upgrade to the F7C-M!

— Chris Roberts

 

crikey 25 million.

Greetings Citizens,

Last week, when we reached $24 million, I wrote that you must like Hornets. It turns out you REALLY like Hornets: Star Citizen’s backers have propelled us to $25 million in crowd funding! This milestone also means that October has been our single biggest month for crowd funding yet… that’s truly astounding.

At $25 million, you allow us to build a stronger infrastructure for the Star Citizen alpha test:

• Enhanced Alpha – We will use additional funding to build a wider alpha test than we had originally intended for the first phase of Star Citizen’s launch. The initial plan was to first launch servers in North America and then expand to areas such as Europe and Australia to decrease latency in these areas, perfecting the game as we improve the experience around the world. This funding will allow us to invest in a wider infrastructure for our early testing, spinning up remote servers earlier. Hitting this goal will also allow us to increase the number of remaining alpha slots. Extra alpha slots not only means more Star Citizens will travel the ‘verse at launch, but that we will receive more feedback and more stress testing. This in turn will allow us to better balance and enhance the Star Citizen experience!

The tech team is already looking into the best way to make this happen! One immediate impact is that we can add 50,000 alpha slots to our test plan, which will be reflected on the site shortly. As usual, we are ready to unveil the ‘next next’ stretch goal, for the $27 million level. This is another goal that should interest everyone immediately because it allows us to expand the range of experiences you’re going to find in Star Citizen.

$27 million

• Banu Merchantman Unlocked – Banu traders are renowed 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. At $23 million we dedicated additional resources to making Xi’An spacecraft a unique experience. At $27 million, we will expand that same thinking to the Banu! Starting with the merchant ship, the design team will expand Banu technology to offer players a completely different way of experiencing their universe.

Even though we’ve fully funded the base game, every extra dollar helps to make the experience better. The content we talk about in these stretch goals isn’t “feature creep”; it’s elements we’ve been building and planning that will be all that more impressive with additional resources. In essence, you’re putting things we’ve already discussed for the future into development now. The extra funding means we’re secure in assigning resources to go ahead and begin developing that richer content we had initially planned to fund through the game’s success upon release.

Thank you for your continued support of and trust in project. You have empowered the team to make Star Citizen something truly special… the Best Damn Space Sim Ever!

— Chris Roberts

 

And the money train continues https://robertsspaceindustries.com/comm-link/transmission/13358-Letter-From-The-Chairman-26-Million

It looks like the Hornet launch couldn’t end without one final stretch goal unlocked! Our backers have hit the incredible $26 million mark, which enables us to expand the capital ship mechanics in Star Citizen.

• Enhanced Capital Ship Systems – In addition to the command and control systems we’ve already outlined, we’re going to expand capital ship functions! Lead a damage control team to fight fires and repair key systems during battle, control internal bulkheads to slow boarders and man a number of consoles, like navigation and engineering, that will make commanding a capital ship feel even more immersive.

 

On a slightly different note this  http://massively.joystiq.com/2013/11/03/stick-and-rudder-what-if-star-citizen-fails/

I wonder how far will this go 🙂

I wonder how far will this go 🙂

:)))))))))))))))))))))))))

I laughed way too hard at that.

I wish I could do more than think about a cool space ship although I do hope that this contest makes a great ship for the game I have invested way to much money in. 😎

Would not be surprised if they hit 30 mil by Christmas.

I would be surprised if they wouldn't 🙂

If you have missed the "news", which have been all over the CIG forum, the 26th november will bring back a lot of the "limited" ships for sale again ...

One (of the many links about it) link is: https://forums.robertsspaceindustries.com/discussion/72650/limited-ships-going-on-sale-again-for-real-not-a-troll#latest

Not so limited then, only have the one ship myself.

Not so limited then, only have the one ship myself.

One man and his ship against the universe! All you need is a star to steer her by!

One man and his ship against the universe! All you need is a star to steer her by!

And LTI.

Some news about squadron 42 from RPS. http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2013/11/08/chris-roberts-details-squadron-42-takes-on-doubters/

“I’m picking the studios that I think have the personnel that can do each task, and then we’re all hooked in to the same build,” said Roberts. “We all see everything. And then I’ve gone out of my way to pick the right people. The team in England is led by my brother. It’s the team that did Privateer and Starlancer and a bunch of people that worked with me on earlier things like Wing Commander. They’re taking the lead on Squadron 42. They basically did the last good Wing-Commander-style space game.”

 

It's kinda starting to irritate me that everywhere you see Chris talking about his past games he rarely (never) mentions Freelancer, which is my favorite out of all his works so far. Even in his KS campaign messages he was rather cryptic about it and he pretty much did nothing about the 10 years anniversary.

// sad face //

IIRC Freelancer might be a bit of a sore point with Roberts as the game did not turn out as he intended it to be and he left the company before it was finished.

And it's $27 million https://robertsspaceindustries.com/comm-link/transmission/13368-Letter-From-The-Chairman-27-Million

Greetings Citizens,

First the Xi’an and now the Banu – Star Citizen’s backers are making it possible to greatly expand the user experience! Here’s the stretch goal you unlocked at $27 million:

• Banu Merchantman Unlocked – Banu traders are renowed 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. At $23 million we dedicated additional resources to making Xi’An spacecraft a unique experience. At $27 million, we will expand that same thinking to the Banu! Starting with the merchant ship, the design team will expand Banu technology to offer players a completely different way of experiencing their universe.

We’re eager to get to work building out the Banu spaceflight systems… watch this space to learn how we’re going to make it a distinct experience from flying a human-designed ship. And since we hit this goal before November 26th, the Banu merchantman will be one of the ships available during the sale (you heard it here first!)

Now that we’ve reached $27 million, the Banu merchant ship will be sent to top concept artists for further development. In the meantime, I’d like to share with you some of the art that has resulted from the previous Xi’An stretch goal: the first concept painting of a Xi’An capital ship!

We’re going to devote the $29 million stretch goal to more resources for the single player game, Squadron 42. With Erin Roberts and the other veterans at Foundry 42 hard at work on the game, you can trust that it’s going to be great. Now we’d like to give them some extra resources to work with!

• Enhanced Mission Design for Squadron 42 – The team at Foundry 42 has big plans for Squadron 42, and we’re going to provide extra funding to make it a true spiritual successor to Wing Commander! Squadron 42 can go above and beyond anything you’ve seen before. From opening with an epic battle instead of a training patrol to missions that seamlessly combine boarding and space combat, we aim to put you right into the action! Additional funding will let the team realize this, with enhanced mission design and more resources and animations to enhance fidelity.

Big publishers haven’t been willing to invest this kind of money to improve PC games in a long time… we’re going to prove it’s worth it. That wouldn’t be possible without your support; thank you to all backers for helping make this game possible.

— Chris Roberts

 

Looks like us single player are at last going to get some of the action.

Looks like us single player are at last going to get some of the action.

That's great news, I was getting nervous. Also a good thing that they have Erin Roberts onboard now.

Looks like us single player are at last going to get some of the action.

There are plenty of us out here - the old die-hards mostly. I think some game-makers underestimate just how many, at times. I'd not have backed Elite: Dangerous if they hadn't made it clear from the start that there would be a viable single-player option/experience.

Additionally, single-player games are immortal whereas the ones focusing solely on multiplayer can often disappear into thin air quicker than you can make your schedule for playing them (ImLookingAtYouBlackProphecy).

single-player games are immortal whereas the ones focusing solely on multiplayer can often disappear into thin air

Truer words have never been spoken ... 🙂

As far as this game goes, the ONLY thing I'm interested in is the singleplayer. At the moment, I have no plans or intention to play on the multiplayer side.

BIG Post from Roberts himself about this continuing argument about a console version. https://forums.robertsspaceindustries.com/discussion/76653/star-citizen-pc-ps4-and-consoles

As far as consoles go Star Citizen will never be on the PS3 or Xbox 360. As for the next gen consoles, PS4 and Xbox One, we have NO CURRENT PLANS, but my stance remains open and is consistent with the many interviews I’ve given -

 

So it's a maybe in the future.