Star citizen will either be massive hit or massive failure, their will be no middle ground with this.

I don't believe that is true.

The middle ground is very easy to achieve for this game.  All it needs to do is be 'good' and basically do what it says, but then people realize that it still isn't worth the $10k they spent on it.

Time will tell.

2 new trailers:

New version of area commander out. https://robertsspaceindustries.com/comm-link/transmission/14390-Arena-Commander-10-Released

 

Arena Commander 1.0 is here! Today’s release marks the most significant update to Arena Commander yet, adding both the long-awaited lobby system and more than tripling the number of flyable ships. Every variant of the Aurora, Mustang, 300 and Hornet are now flyable, as are the base models of the Cutlass and the Avenger. If you’ve been waiting to fly one of Star Citizen’s single-seaters, there’s a good chance your ship has come in today!

Arena Commander 1.0 adds a host of new ship upgrades as well as significant enhancements to many of the game’s systems. Included for the first time are a ship signature system, a thruster power system, and a lateral g-force system. It contains the first iteration of the game’s lobby and we have launched a friends system in the game and on the RSI site to help you connect. Audio and visual effects have been updated throughout the game, with new animations, new textures, new cameras and more. You can find the complete list of changes, which range from the major updates below to dozens of game balancing changes and technical fixes, in the patch notes.

As you know, the team has been working very hard to release Arena Commander today and we’re especially excited to publish this patch before our Holiday break. We would have ideally liked another 4-5 days of internal stress testing and polish but with everyone looking forward to some well-earned time off I didn’t want to eat into people’s break. That said, being cognizant of the fact that the upcoming holidays are a time when everyone (myself included) looks forward to playing their favorite games we wanted to make sure that we released Arena Commander 1.0 for all our backers to enjoy over the holidays. With that in mind, I’ve opted to push today’s build of Arena Commander 1.0 to all of our backers today. So please, enjoy this significant update, give us your feedback, and we’ll come back in the New Year ready to continue polishing Arena Commander and developing the BDSSE!

I would like to stress that today’s release of Arena Commander 1.0 is a beginning, not an ending. This milestone does not denote the completion of Arena Commander, it kicks off an even more significant phase of its development. With this update, we’ve added a significant number of ships, items, missiles, and systems which means more interconnected systems, more servers to stress and more bugs to squash. These future changes won’t be limited to fixing technical glitches and balance issues.

Some elements, like the initial Avenger and Cutlass, will be converted to the new modular ship component system, but we wanted long-waiting owners to get an early look at their ships. So I encourage you to experience everything we’ve added to Arena Commander 1.0, but also to know that much, much more is in the works!

And that is where you come in! With this update, there’s a lot more for the community to help us test. So get on the forums and share your feedback and let us know your thoughts, criticisms, and ideas on everything that we’ve added. Every experience you report today, positive or negative, will help us make a better game tomorrow and come January 2nd, we will go back to work making Arena Commander even better.

Thank you for your continued support, and I sincerely hope you enjoy Arena Commander 1.0. I think that it’s a great indication of where we’re going with the Star Citizen experience. I’d like to close by saying Happy Holidays to backers everywhere. I wish you all the joy in the world and look forward to continuing our journey in the coming year.

— Chris Roberts

I am downloading this,....its 20 GIGs in size! :girlwacko: At present its reporting that it will take 12 and half hours to download it. Ahhh takes me back to the Amiga days and the old modems. I suppose I don't have have to put up with the modem screeching for all that time in protest. Mind you, I don't know if that's a good thing or a bad thing :girlcrazy:

If anyone is having connection issues, this might help:

https://forums.robertsspaceindustries.com/discussion/comment/4125828/#Comment_4125828

Thanks for that vamperium. :queen:  When I do finally get it all downloaded I will certainly give those tips a try if I hit any snags. Really want to try out my Hornet Ghost! :triniti:

I got to fly briefly in my Avenger last night before I got disconnected, and it was pretty damn awesome. 

If anyone is having connection issues, this might help:

 

https://forums.robertsspaceindustries.com/discussion/comment/4125828/#Comment_4125828

I was having the connection issue, and this worked like a charm - thanks for re-posting it here, I was having a nightmare trying to search the RSI forums.

Also, for people experiencing the menu buttons issues (where it shows place holders like @pause_ForeGroundMainMenuButtonOptions) you need to specifically select English (or French as the case may be) in the launcher settings.

HTH

Big long letter from the chairman https://robertsspaceindustries.com/comm-link/transmission/14414-Letter-From-The-Chairman-Happy-New-Year

 

2014 has been a huge year for Star Citizen.

We launched Arena Commander v0.8 in June and since then we’ve shown the ambition of the First Person Universe we are building with a prototype of multi crew ship combat, the scale and detail of the planet side environments and demonstrated the visceral action of the First Person Combat that players will experience in Star Citizen.

We’ve delivered 23 updates to Star Citizen / Arena Commander, four of them being major feature updates (v0.8. v0.9, v0.9.2) with the last one being the largest, Arena Commander v1.0, with fifteen new ships for backers to fly (all the Aurora and Hornet variants, Mustang family, Base Avenger and Cutlass Black) as well as significant gameplay additions like the signature system and social features like the first version of the lobby system allowing you to join up with your friends.

 

Star Citizen’s backers downloaded 13.7 PETABYTES of data from Star Citizen’s CDN during 2014 up from just ONE Petabyte in 2013. The community logged over two million sessions and one million hours playing Arena Commander which has been split approximately 80% single player and 20% multiplayer

Cloud Imperium’s staff – which is solely dedicated to making Star Citizen – has grown from 70 employees last Christmas to 180 today, spread around four internal locations; Santa Monica, Austin, Manchester, UK and a nascent office in Germany that we will be sharing details about in the coming year.

We have an additional 120 developers working on the game spread between our partners at Behaviour, Illfonic, Turbulent, outsource companies and individual contractors.

The number of Star Citizens doubled in 2014, which helped the project to raise $33M in additional funding, bringing the total raised since October 10th 2012 to just over $68.5M.

All of this allows us to build Star Citizen to a level of ambition that no publisher would dare to reach for on a PC… let alone a Space Sim!

When looking back at how far Star Citizen and its community has come in just two short years I am always amazed. What is the secret of the project’s support?

People that just read headlines wonder why; why have we raised so much money, why do people still contribute money to Star Citizen, why are people so excited?

Like many things Star Citizen isn’t easy to understand with a cursory glance. Star Citizen doesn’t easily fit in a familiar box like most games you’ll buy from a major publisher.

It’s something I’ve been reflecting on, especially as I have a couple of talks coming up with BAFTA in Los Angeles and at DICE in Las Vegas. What makes Star Citizen defy so many conventions? What continues to propel Star Citizen every month despite the game still being in development?

Numbers are always easy to focus and make nice headlines but they don’t tell the real story of why Star Citizen has gotten to where it is.

Star Citizen would be nothing without its real trump card –

The most engaged community in gaming!

It’s easy to say Star Citizen is a community focused game but it’s so much more than that. Very early in the project I made a decision to go beyond the traditional alpha model and share functionality of the game as we built it, updating and involving the community every step of the way. It is one thing to share updates but it’s a whole other level of engagement to share incremental builds with subsets of functionality of the final game to get hands on feedback.

We actively solicit and listen to feedback on the numerous patches (which we deliver on average twice a month). We have multiple video shows each week discussing the game, giving behind the scenes glimpses and highlighting community contributions. We give more detailed monthly updates to our backers on the game’s progress than I ever gave any publisher I was making a game for!

Anyone that first installed the Hangar module back in August 2013, then played Arena Commander v0.8 in June and has now has Arena Commander v1.0 on their drive can attest to the progress that has been made, how feedback from the community affects the updates and how things slowly but steadily get better and more polished.

Are we done? No! We have a long way to go! No one at CIG is resting on their laurels but it it’s this PARTNERSHIP with all of YOU, the community that is enabling a game of this ambition to be made. You are a community that contributes something much more valuable than funding for development. You contribute your time, your feedback, your ideas and your passion.

And THIS is the secret of Star Citizen.

It’s a project that is being built not just by 300 developers, but a project that is being built by hundreds of thousands of gamers that love PC games, that love space games and want to see a game made RIGHT, one that has such depth and ambition that they can see themselves happily adventuring for years to come.

This is a model I and the rest of the team at CIG have happily embraced. I have never had so much fun building a game and if you asked any Star Citizen developer they will probably agree with me. We love the process of creating this game lock step with all of you out there. We are continually amazed by the creativity and enthusiasm of the community. How within hours of a patch going up we can watch streams of people playing. The team is constantly passing around fan videos where we see something surprising; whether it’s a bit of skill, an exploit we didn’t see or just a piece that sums up Star Citizen better than we could. The original “Imagine” trailer by Kieran (years1hundred on YouTube) was a great example, but there’s other amazing stuff out there; DeVall’s “Hype Citizen” trailer, Corporation Incorporated / Fiendish Feather’s videos of Scavenging on a wrecked Constellation, a Search and Rescue mission or just showcasing the Mustang Variants is just a small sampling of what our community is capable of.

So when I read a press article that questions whether we can deliver all the promised features to keep everyone happy, or I see someone that can’t fathom how Star Citizen can have such support and without doing any research jump to cynical conclusions I just smile.

Because with the community we have and the passionate and talented team of developers I can’t imagine us “flopping” as a few bloggers have predicted. Not because we’re better than everyone else, but because building a game this way, in total lock step with your community, means it’s pretty hard to fail in the long run. Will we build everybody’s dream game? Of course not, that would be impossible! But with this level of engagement and iteration I think we’ll build something special that people can happily lose themselves in even if it doesn’t have every feature they dreamed of.

And it won’t stop there.

The number one priority for team in building the Persistent Universe is how players themselves can affect the universe. We’re building a game that will be just as community driven once the game is “finished”. It’s why we’ve built organization support into the web site, why we’re expanding it this coming year with private forums and blogs and starting to layer in the organization support in the game itself.

Star Citizen isn’t a sprint, it isn’t even a marathon. There is no final finish line the way you would have with a traditional retail game. Star Citizen is a way of life for as long as the community is engaged by it.

My 100% focus, and the rest of the team is to make sure all of you are continually engaged. Not just by the “finished” game (if you can ever call anything in Star Citizen finished) but by the development process, the early builds of the game, by the discussion and feedback loop.

And this is what I tell my friends in the industry that have no idea how we’ve managed to do what we do. You have to throw away the old approaches to how you develop, how you share and how you engage your community.

Or in Silas Koerner’s words, “Dare to challenge the expectation of what has come before. To embrace the unique. To put everything on the line. Only when you risk everything can we discover something truly special”

EVERYONE, both the development team and all of you are dedicated to making Star Citizen something special. If we don’t get a feature perfect the first time we will continue to refine and improve.

And that is what will make Star Citizen different than most other publisher backed games. We have the willpower and patience. Our stakeholders just have one goal in mind…

Make the Best Damn Space Sim Ever!

So here’s a big THANK YOU for everyone’s support, patience and enthusiasm in 2014 and here’s to looking forward to continuing to make history together in 2015.

This coming year will be an even bigger year than 2014 – the FPS module will go live to backers, we will be giving our first drops of the Persistent universe, starting with the Planetside social module, the multi-crew Arena Commander and the first Episode of Squadron 42.

2015 is where the game will be shaped. And it will be shaped with your input. So get in the game and let us know what works and what doesn’t for you!

It’s going to be a lot of work, but also a lot of fun and I couldn’t imagine doing it with a better group of people than group of developers working on the game and the amazing Star Citizen community.

== Chris Roberts

New trailer for Area Commander and patch https://robertsspaceindustries.com/comm-link//14452-Star-Citizen-Patch-V101

And I believe they are over the $70 million mark now.

Also some footage showing the jumpgates and MobiGlas user interface.

Short interview with Roberts give a brief time line for the games FPS, Persistent universe, planetside ect modules http://www.gamersnexus.net/news/1794-star-citizen-persistent-universe-town-hall

Lot of new relating to SC this week as they were at some show some where.

And a condensed version.

Monthly wall of text. https://robertsspaceindustries.com/comm-link/transmission/14481-Monthly-Report-January for these keeping up with game.

Area Commander 1.0.2 out https://robertsspaceindustries.com/comm-link/transmission/14486-Arena-Commander-102-Released

 

Arena Commander 1.0.2 is now available via the Star Citizen launcher! This is a smaller patch which focuses on bug fixes, balance updates and smaller additions to the game. Fixes include everything from lobby kicking issues to the missing glass in the Herald space globe’s cockpit!

One of the most visible additions will be the expansion of the skin system to the Aurora line. You can now select your Aurora’s skin in the holoviewer (two alternates are available now, with more to come!)

Arena Commander 1.0.2 also sets the stage for the shield customization system. Additional shield generators will be available in the Voyager Direct store tomorrow, along with a post detailing our design plans for shields going forward.

A complete list of additions, fixes and known issues is available in the patch notes, online here.

There was quite a bit of consternation on the RSI forums with regards to the EU tax hike now being applied to new pledges from people living within the EU. For the UK that means and additional 20% put on the price of all pledges. It will be interesting to see how this will effect their income over the coming weeks.

Interesting to see if it will have any effect but I suspect that most of the games funding comes from the US.

New mining ship https://robertsspaceindustries.com/comm-link/transmission/14518-Rugged-Colossus-Orion-Mining-Platform like the look of that ship 😎

 

There’s gold in them thar hills!

The RSI Orion is mankind’s premiere spatial mining platform, featuring multiple independent mining drones, an onboard refinery and a system of saddlebag-class storage units.

For advanced mining operations, the RSI Orion is second to none. The Orion carries a crew of up to six, responsible for flight operations, engineering and manning both turrets and pre-installed drone interfaces.

Onboard accommodations, while industrial in style, support all crew for extended duration mining runs. A genuine complete mining solution, a single Orion can locate, identify and extract lucrative ores, or it can be paired with explorers and transports to form the centerpiece of a larger-scale mining operation! Get to the core of the matter with the all-new RSI Orion.

Read more about Mining in Star Citizen in an exclusive in-depth design post by Tony Zurovec!

More about how it's all going to work in the game here https://robertsspaceindustries.com/comm-link/transmission/14522-Star-Citizen-Careers-Mining

And a new patch to arena commander https://robertsspaceindustries.com/comm-link/transmission/14515-Arena-Commander-103-Released

I have to admit that ship looks simply stunning! :girlcrazy:

Certainly one the best designs they have so far come up with. 😎

Monthly wall of text about all things Star Citizen. https://robertsspaceindustries.com/comm-link/transmission/14563-Monthly-Report-February

Video of the damage model.

Montage of Star citizen bits. 😎

Ist minute mostly pre rendered stuff but it goes into the game play after.

New version was launched over the weekend https://robertsspaceindustries.com/comm-link/transmission/14572-Star-Citizen-11-Is-Live scroll down past the adds for expensive ships for the details.

Monthly wall of text for March https://robertsspaceindustries.com/comm-link/transmission/14640-Monthly-Report-March

New version of SC 1.1.1 https://robertsspaceindustries.com/comm-link/transmission/14652-Star-Citizen-Alpha-111-Released

 

Star Citizen Alpha 1.1.1 is now available via the launcher! Today’s update adds a variety of bug fixes, balance changes and general updates intended to improve the Arena Commander experience. Additional bomber pilots can also man their planes: the Anvil Gladiator is now flyable! 1.1.1 adds manned turrets to three of our spacecraft and introduces a new type of large missile; further information about both of these systems is included below. Please let us know about your experiences with 1.1.1 below or on the forums; your feedback, experience with game balance and bug reporting helps us improve Star Citizen as we build the final game!

And note on there version numbering for the various bit of SC. https://robertsspaceindustries.com/comm-link/transmission/14651-Note-From-The-Chairman-Version-Numbering

 

When we released our last major game update, 1.1, I posted that going forward we would refer to future public builds as ‘Star Citizen’ rather than ‘Arena Commander.’ Star Citizen 1.1 instead of Arena Commander 1.1. The reasoning behind this decision was the fact that in the near future we won’t just be releasing Arena Commander. We’ll be releasing Star Marine, the initial social module, multi-crew, Squadron 42… and more. Star Citizen is coming together, and it made sense to get that across. Since we wanted the external number to match what we use internally, calling it Star Citizen 1.1 just made sense.

The big problem was that calling the game “1.1” is that it could also imply something I didn’t intend. There’s no proper standard for build numbers, but it is a common practice to refer to your first commercial release as 1.0. Calling what we are releasing Star Citizen 1.1 might imply that Star Citizen is finished, or a game you can pick up and play in its polished form today. Many backers argued this point on the forums, and we listened carefully to the debate.

Many of you may see this as a small thing, easily dismissed or corrected. But what truly struck me about the response was the reasoning that came up time and again: of course backers know and understand where Star Citizen is in development today… but they were concerned that new players learning about the project wouldn’t. And that crystallized something for me: Star Citizen’s community doesn’t just want to play the game they’ve paid for… they care as much as the development team about making sure the game is a success. For all the debate back and forth, the thought that our community would worry quite seriously about excluding future players made me extremely happy.

So of course we resolved to make a change. As noted above, one of the requirements was that it not just be a forward facing community change: if we were going to change how we name our builds, we were going to do it internally and externally. Internally, we had much the same discussion that was going on on the forums: what do we call it? Add a leading 0? Temporarily drop ‘Star Citizen’? A new system of letters? In the process, we reviewed all of your many suggestions. In the end, the answer was that we wanted to keep it Star Citizen and we wanted to call it 1.1 in order to avoid renumbering everything and reworking our stream names (more of a challenge than you would think) and our long term plans. You’re playing the same builds we are, it only makes sense to give you the same information we have. And so with a great deal of very careful consideration I’m happy to announce that we have chosen one of the community’s suggestsions: you are downloading Star Citizen Alpha 1.1 with today’s release. Thank you to everyone out there who took part in this debate, and who helped us decide on the best change to make.

• Alpha 1.1.1 – Today’s Update (Primarily Arena Commander improvements)
• Alpha 1.1.2 – Code Stability bug fix patch for Pre-Star Marine
• Alpha 1.2.0 – Star Marine
• Alpha 1.3.0 – Social Module

Hopefully, that solves the numbering issue and helps new backers understand Star Citizen’s status and plans. I will close with a final, genuine thank you to the community for helping sort this out and for caring enough about Star Citizen in the first place that it would ever be an issue.

— Chris Roberts

Has there funding slowed down this year as they have not announced anything for a while?.

Looks like they got hacked according to this thread on Reddit https://www.reddit.com/r/Games/comments/375kvv/leakwip_after_the_recent_leak_of_40gb_worth_of/ or was it some sort of stunt.

 

The story: A community manager for CIG posted a screen shot that included a partial URL. Someone guessed the rest and was able to get on a torrent containing ~48GB of unreleased assets. By the time CIG shut it down 2 people had already hit 100% and it went from there.