Star Citizen has had an interesting year. Like many developers, the circumstances of 2020 left development hampered with most working remotely. However, Cloud Imperium Games had the advantage of having much of the infrastructure in place for this – given their setup with multiple developers at locations around the world. Early in the year, the updates did show some features being pushed back or removed, but things have started to come together for the latter half.

The last six months of Star Citizen have introduced several new ships into the game, improvements to HUD for both mining and combat, new dedicated areas for cargo management and mining, massive volumetric gas clouds, a revamp of physics on players and NPCs, and the inclusion of tractor beams among many other smaller changes. For a game that has been many years in development, this year thankfully wasn’t as much of a loss as it was for other developers.

Today, CIG released a new roadmap. This long-in-the-making view of the future of the game gives us two perspectives for the upcoming development of Star Citizen and Squadron 42. The “Release View” is much the same as the previous version of the roadmap and includes only what is most likely to be in the next update. However, the “Progress Tracker” provides a highly detailed perspective on each aspect of both games. You can drill down to see tabs on designs for each piece in development, where the focus of work is, and the projection for when it might be completed.

While this doesn’t give any definitive information, it does give us an idea of the many separate and intertwined elements within the development of these games. Across the 20 sections of “deliverables,” there are dozens of individual portions of the game being worked on by different teams. Some of these are listed only as “unannounced,” probably to maintain the surprise that Chris Roberts seems to love creating. Yet, even with those, there’s so much information here it’s hard to sum it up. The only thing I can say without a doubt is that there’s a lot of work still to be done.

One thing I can surmise from this is probably one of the most disappointing aspects. It appears that Squadron 42 most likely isn’t going to be released in 2021. The cornerstone of what has been under development these past eight years is likely, at the very least, heading into 2022. Several of the design elements for the 28 chapters run to the end of December. That doesn’t mean the game won’t enter its beta testing by that period, but it certainly indicates the full release won’t be in that window unless something changes significantly.

It seems that the originally outlandish goals of Chris Roberts have slowly been caught up in the games industry. The extreme detail of locations within Star Citizen has started to become more common in recent releases. While the visuals are always improving in this SC, this next generation of games is set to push similar boundaries. I doubt any game will bother stretching resources to accommodate the extreme scale of planets, moons, and the rest of the universe in such detail though.

Whatever the future brings, I’ll continue seeking out the quarterly patches for content that I enjoy. I’ve committed myself to play only limited amounts of time for each patch as to not get burnt out before the game has the majority of its content. However, every update brings with it something I’d like to explore further. Perhaps as bounty hunting gameplay expands and things become more stable, I’ll put more effort into honing my dogfighting skills. Until then, Star Citizen will continue to be the “wait and see” game of a new decade.

Cloud Imperium Games has recently come under fire due to a lack of communication on the status and progress of Squadron 42. Squadron 42, for the uninitiated, is the single-player game being crafted alongside Star Citizen going back to 2012. While the Star Citizen side continues to receive regular quarterly updates, progress on the single-player portion is mostly relegated to monthly e-mails with several paragraphs loosely describing what each part of the team has been working on. These sometimes include a screenshot or two, but do little compared to the weekly development videos and live streams on the rest of Star Citizen.

Now I’m sure plenty of people will continue to repeatedly shout into the void how Star Citizen is a scam and the game doesn’t exist, so this article will have no value to you. Star Citizen’s progress is slow and frustrating at times, but the game is out there and accessible. Squadron 42, on the other hand, has had little in terms of discussion about its progress or eventual completion for more than a year now. Let’s look at some ways CIG can improve upon this.

Forget About Spoilers

Star Citizen is a player base primarily of adults. Adults that can make their own decisions about what they want spoiled or not. It was reasonable years ago when the game seemed just beyond the horizon to tread lightly. Now, eight years in and yet another potential release date come and gone, it just seems patronizing. The community should be able to decide if it is willing to accept spoilers if it means knowing more about what to expect.

Production Transparency

There’s no shortage of transparency in the development process. The weekly videos and live streams cover all sorts of interesting progress on individual elements of the game. Knowing how all of these things come together is informative and entertaining.

However, the production process is still very muddy to most. The original introduction of the roadmap was a start, but it still feels like things come and go in the production without much explanation. If the community had a better idea of why the development was getting delayed and reformatted, they would be more understanding when it was.

Real Release Date

This year has been one with many delays. Virtually every major game has been pushed back at least some amount of time. Fans of these games can accept this since it usually means they will get a better product in the end. I’m entirely unsure why CIG would assume one of the most committed fanbases in history wouldn’t be able to do the same.

Squadron 42 has had at least a few release dates over the years, including the one that has recently passed for alpha testing. Previously, they’ve cruised right by those dates saying little to nothing about what is happening or why. Speculation explodes and people start airing their frustrations with limited communication. What could solve this? Well, look at every other developer this year for the answer.

Before the release date, say it won’t be happening and give a new release date. Squadron 42, based entirely on assumptions, won’t be happening in any public form this year. If the community had a new release date, they might be temporarily fired up, but would at the very least have a new point to look forward to.

Having that, more than anything gives everyone a lot less to complain about. Just like the roadmap has worked well to assuage issues with how long content takes once announced. Things only start to boil over when the community is flying blind and getting no guidance.

What this all comes down to is communication. This is an issue going back many years in the development of Star Citizen. It seems like Cloud Imperium Games, or perhaps Chris Roberts himself, is firmly against making the bad news public. At least not without padding it in a huge cushion of good news.

When negative announcements finally occur, usually months after they’re relevant, it’s during a Citizencon speech or some other collection of mostly positive news. Even the announcement last week that we’re getting a “roadmap for a roadmap” was as 3.10 was lining up for release. All after months of silence and growing concerns about Squadron 42. 

It’s frustrating that the root cause of so much drama in the Star Citizen community is still present after all this time. It makes me believe that the issue is in the culture of the company rather than just a repeated mistake. It seems like a fear that somehow things will be worse if the community is informed that bad things happened in this ambitious project.

However, I contend that it’s worse for the overall image to be on the front page of gaming news with “$300 million game angers community.” Especially when it could just simply be “Squadron 42 beta delayed until Q3 2021.” An announcement that most likely would receive a resounding “ok” from the majority of backers.

If you’re interested in the Star Citizen Alpha 3.10 patch, here’s a silly video covering many of the new additions.

For the past eight years, I’ve been closely following the production of Star Citizen and its single-player addition Squadron 42. Back in 2012 at the beginning of the Kickstarter, I was fascinated by the idea of a modern version of the Wing Commander series with all of its space fighter fun. Chris Roberts easily sold me on that concept alone, but the promise was for both games all in one package. Now as we come upon the eighth anniversary of this event, the community is growing unhappy with the current state of development. Yet few outside of this community seem to know what the issue is about.

Cloud Imperium Games has, for some time, released quarterly updates including things like new planets, moons, ships, gameplay, and various refinements. Within this three month cycle, there’s always a steady ebb and flow of people praising the progress, and being frustrated there isn’t more. One part of the issue is that recent updates haven’t impressed as many players with new content. Last week the Star Citizen roadmap was updated with the next two quarters of patches and they’re even more sparse than what we’ve seen recently.

Within a similar time frame, from the end of 2019 and into this year, there was an expectation that Squadron 42 would be on the horizon. The Squadron 42-specific roadmap cited the end of Q2 as the beginning of its alpha and optimization phase with Q3 ending with its beta test. However, in March, a video discussion with Brian Chambers (Vice President of Development) described this roadmap as ineffective at showing progress. It hasn’t been updated since that point. The promise was that a new more accurate roadmap would be created to show how close it was to completion.

From that point on, very little information was released about Squadron 42. Four and a half months passed with growing frustrations about the lack of communication. The roadmap remained up in its stated inaccurate form with the quarterly dates glowing like beacons for everyone to gather around and shout. Finally, after a massive wave of dissension, CIG released a statement referencing what was going on. Yet, it wasn’t exactly what people wanted to hear.

In general, the text of the statement released on their Spectrum forum listed a flurry of excuses for how they attempted to communicate but didn’t feel it was good enough. Instead of telling everyone when this news was relevant, they sought to come up with a better solution. The statement goes on to describe a set of steps they’re going to take to create the roadmap for Squadron 42. They created a roadmap for the future roadmap.

This wasn’t well received. I can’t understand why after nearly five months, they weren’t able to formulate a method for communicating the production progress. The nature of the steps they laid out for us also seems to indicate they are still only roughing out the basic roadmap design. This makes it seem like they weren’t working on at all in those previous months. It also indicates that not only is Squadron 42 not going to be in “alpha” or “beta” this year, but might be even further off to given the apparent complexity of this roadmap process.

For people like me who backed the game eight years ago primarily to get into a cool new Wing Commander with Squadron 42, it’s extremely disappointing. This single-player game has been promised and delayed numerous times going back to at least 2016. Now as we forge onward into a new decade, it seems no closer than it did back then. 

Of course, I don’t plan on falling in with the strange conspiracy theorists surrounding this game. I’m well aware that a great deal of work has been done. What exists in a playable format is still incredible to behold in many areas. However, the fact is that this is one of, if not the, most well-funded game in history. The massive funding and extremely limited influence from those who funded it (the backers) have allowed mismanagement to reign. While we may eventually get a better product, I seriously doubt the quality will justify the massive delays.

If you’re a fan of Star Citizen, what’s your perspective on all of this?  Has it changed how you feel about the production and progress of the game?  Let us know in the comments!

Cloud Imperium Games has released another update in the Alpha development of Star Citizen. This patch brings with it a relatively limited amount of new content and fixes, but some that will change the way many play the game. The most notable addition is that of the Klescher Rehabilitation Facility. This is, essentially, jail for the players.

Many persistent games such as MMOs have NPC guards and basic reputation systems. Few, however, take the player out of the standard gameplay loop and have them locked up in a facility against their will. This prison system does just that, drawing a line in the sand for players seeking to brush up against the law.

Currently, the system only works by having you “wake up” in the facility after being killed by NPC authorities while having a criminal rating. The severity of the rating determines how long you’re required to stay there before it is erased. This can range from around 30 minutes to several hours from what I’ve seen. It’s time you can use to sit idly, chatting with fellow space people, or you can choose to take action.

The primary way of shortening your sentence is to head through an entrance to a cave system where you can use a mining tool to find and procure valuable minerals. When you turn these materials in, you gain merits that count toward your time. Combining this with the time it takes to actually find and mine minerals, your incarceration could fly by. However, that’s not your only option.

There is also an escape route that can be accessed via a tunnel in the prison. While it does seem that having an easily accessible escape route would make the whole experience a minor inconvenience, getting out does take an effort to accomplish. The escape route involves crouching through a twisting maze of tunnels, making perilous jumps over gaps that will kill you (adding to your sentence), and surviving long enough once making it out in the boiling atmosphere.

This means that even if you do manage to practice escaping often enough to know the path and execute it well, you still need a friend to come to pick you up so you can actually get back in business. It’s a viable option, but not one you can take on a whim.

I will be the first to admit that this process seems like it might become grating if you wish to be on the opposite side of the law in Star Citizen. It could very well be annoying, especially as time goes on in the game. Yet, I also believe it will function as a real deterrent to being a nuisance. The risk/reward tradeoff for illegal activity will have more weight than the relative slap on the wrist other persistent games currently provide. Besides, they can always tweak different aspects of this based on player feedback.

The 3.9 patch also comes with several other new additions like the interiors of the tech facility interiors of New Babbage, the main city on the latest planet, Microtech. Microtech also received its three new moons, Calliope, Clio, and Euterpe. A basic survival system has been implemented as well, the same one that lets you burn while escaping from prison, and has introduced drinking and eating to survive. Finally, only one new ship has been included in this patch, an alien design for a dropship with the Esperia Prowler.

Several other smaller changes were made along with some additional features, but in general, 3.9 wasn’t particularly impressive. It would be easy to blame the circumstances of the world right now – and they’ve certainly affected Cloud Imperium Games – but most of the limitations for this patch have been outlined for several months. Hopefully, as things return to normal, progress will pick up and Star Citizen will receive updates with more tangible content. We can always hope Squadron 42 is still in line to see a beta release this year as well.

Do you feel Star Citizen is on track with recent updates? Has anything made you consider trying it out if you haven’t?

The newest planetary addition to Star Citizen, Microtech, is a frozen world at the outer reaches of the Stanton system and is the feature location for showing off the new planet tech in the game. At first glance, it may not be obvious, but when you get in close to the surface you can see the tremendous detail added in this patch. The trees, flowers, and general terrain design seems to have universally improved on every other planet as well. While this may not be the most impressive terrain in the realm of gaming, the fact that there are thousands of square miles of it uniquely generated makes it a bit more interesting to explore.

However, this recent patch for Star Citizen has a few more interesting additions. New space stations are orbiting each planet to give the player a respawn point. This allows them to be near a planet without having to navigate through its cities to the spaceport to leave. In addition to that, these stations have been overhauled to each has a unique design and more elaborate interiors. This comes after the previous patch gave space stations unique exterior designs evocative of some familiar science fiction universes.

It also includes a new ship, the Argo Mole, a multi-crew mining vessel, as well as an implementation of SOCS. Server-side Object Container Streaming is a process that allows the game to stream out player and NPC objects that aren’t in any players’ view to cloud-based storage. This prevents the numerous objects (cargo, weapons, ships, etc) generated in the game from overwhelming the server infrastructure. It also allows objects to “persist” in the server session without needing to be destroyed to free up memory. It’s a major step in boosting performance and long term item persistence.

This patch isn’t without some controversy though. While the addition of amazing visuals within Microtech and other planets is a sight to behold, a key gameplay addition was recently removed from the roadmap. The mechanics for salvage and a salvage ship were removed to focus on the mining updates and the release of Squadron 42 (the single-player portion of the game). While many want to see Squadron 42 progress, the focus on additional mining gameplay over the first salvage implementation has some players questioning the development priority.

Still, Cloud Imperium Games forges ever onward, moving toward the next patch, 3.9, to be released at the end of the first quarter of 2020. It will feature the moons of Microtech as well as its main city’s interiors and some interesting “prison” gameplay. This patch previously had the Drake Vulture, a single-crew salvage ship, but now is only slated to have some ship updates rather than anything new. However, the long-awaited Anvil Carrack is due to release in between 3.8 and 3.9, so some players may still be happy even with the limited progress. Yet, the question remains of Squadron 42 will still be beta tested within the next year…

It’s always free click-bait to put Star Citizen’s latest million dollar mark in their crowdfunding process in an article headline. When you’re seeing hundreds of millions of dollars, it’s easy to spark interest from even the mildly curious. Of course, $250 million isn’t anything to ignore – and of course, many great games have been developed for less money. However, no game in history has approached what Cloud Imperium Gaming is doing with its funding model, so trying to compare them doesn’t make much sense.

There are far more contentious opinions about the development of Star Citizen than there are even different flyable ships in the game (over 90). People are quick to call it a “scam” and say it’s never going to be released, even as numerous Free Fly events allow anyone to download and play the game for free in its current state. Convincing people otherwise is a lost cause given the staggering amount of written and video content covering the development process. Yet, the fact that the company is crowdfunding its entire development process seems to be the most argumentative topic of all.

The issue here is that Cloud Imperium Games didn’t really exist as a developer before 2012. Even in the early bits of the Kickstarter campaign and crowdfunding, the studio was really only Chris Roberts and a handful of other people. Initial goals for the game were mild and didn’t really require much of a team while it was shopped around to publishers. However, as the money rolled in from the fervent fanbase with the crowdfunding efforts, the scale of the game grew significantly.

Since 2012, CIG has contracted other developers, built multiple studios in the US, UK, and Germany, and increased the size of the development team to around 500 people. They didn’t get all of this from day one. They didn’t even get all of this year one. Unlike most high budget published game developers, they have had money trickle in week by week, month by month, for the past seven years.

The company had to be built from the ground up – and all of that had to come from backer money. All of the comforts existing developers have like a pool of onboard talent, furnished studios, assets from previous games, server architecture and so on, weren’t available for CIG and had to be acquired over time and at cost.

It always confuses me when I see people making statements alluding to the idea that all of this money was obtained at the start of development. The Kickstarter alone was only $2 million. That’s a quarter of what the Ouya campaign raised. Even a full year after starting, the budget was less than a tenth of what it is now. While the cash flow here has been consistent, it is very different from a budget that would allow full development from the start.

Star Citizen is a game that’s going to take time. More time than the seven years that it has taken to get to this point. Even when it is officially “released,” the game will be far from complete from a development perspective. Content will grow and additional ships will be included.  Star systems, planets, and whatever else rumbles around the mind of Chris Roberts will show up in-game as well.

Even Squadron 42, the single-player campaign, is set to have multiple chapters keeping staff busy potentially for years post-launch. This $250 million is only another step in the largest crowdfunded project ever and certainly not the last one. Every time you see another article click-baiting you with a big number, remember that this development process is truly unprecedented.

No matter what progress Cloud Imperium Games makes and shows off to the world, there’s still a healthy contingent of naysayers ready to shoot it down. Most come along with half-baked perceptions on how game development works and cite things like “200 million dollars” and “release dates” that ignore readily available information. While it’s not hard to refute nearly all of these issues, it’s practically impossible to convince some of these individuals Star Citizen is a real thing. Those people probably didn’t make it past the first sentence or two, and this article isn’t really for them. What I will discuss here is where Star Citizen is right now and where it’s going to be in the foreseeable future.

The most recent update to this alpha was 3.7. With it came some new ships: two variants of an existing ship (Aegis Vanguard), the first of an alien race’s ship (Banu Defender), and a ship that will bring in an interdiction mechanic (RSI Mantis). While the variants are a nice addition and the fancy design of a new alien ship is always a pleasure to see, the star of the show is the Mantis. With it, players can now pull ships out of quantum travel and keep them out for some time. Quantum travel is the “warp” of the Star Citizen universe and a state within which you couldn’t have anyone intervene. This new ship gives players the ability to get at those quantum travelers and thus adds another layer to the gameplay.

Previously, it wasn’t too difficult for someone to avoid combat simply by charging their quantum drive and heading out. Being outmatched just meant you had to turn and run to survive. With the Mantis, you can lock down your opponents and force either a fight or surrender. However, the Mantis itself isn’t much for combat. The stock equipment onboard prevents you from doing much outside of minor damage to most ships you ensnare. This means that the player will most likely need to have allies around to enforce their ship’s ability. That creates great potential for quality team play mechanics and even hiring other players – a system already in the game.

The patch also included several other good updates and additions. These include things like an updated character creation system, improvements to the NPC ship and character combat AI, and underground caves with mining using a special utility tool. However, the most important addition for the future of the game is the addition of a rental system that allows players to use in-game currency to rent ships. The 3.6 patch introduced the purchasing of ships, but the price was significant for a game that still reset progress on the quarterly patches. Renting allows for a great deal more player flexibility.

Before 3.6, the only way to get other ships in the game was to buy them for real money (something that turned many people away) or rent the limited ships that could only be used in the Arena Commander module. This relegated you to only a selection comprised mostly of combat fighters and you could only use them in the limited multiplayer modes of Arena Commander. Now, with only a moderate amount of time invested in missions or cargo trading, you can make enough UEC to rent even the fanciest ships in-game.

This addition is another significant milestone in what it is going to take to give Star Citizen the appeal it needs to shake off the whole “buying ships” anchor that has weighed it down for so many people. There has always been the promise of “you only need to buy a starter package,” which has historically been as low as $25 (currently $45), and now that situation is truer than ever. You can start with the relatively limited ship of a starter package and accomplish tasks that will let you do a great deal more in the existing game without investing another dollar. That’s the game that people wanted from the start and what every player deserves.

The road to release is still a long one though. Star Citizen won’t see 4.0 until July of next year and even that doesn’t bring with it any promise of graduation from “alpha” status. It is well within the expectation that all of 2020 will still be fleshing out content, AI, back end functionality, and tweaking gameplay with the continued label of “alpha.” However, it is becoming clearer with every patch that more playable content and tangible improvements are making the game feel like something you want to keep playing rather than just try out.

Has anything you’ve seen about Star Citizen lately made it more appealing if you haven’t checked it out before? Are you waiting for an actual release before you give it a shot? If not, what about it turns you away? Also, here’s a silly video covering many of the new additions for 3.7.

Also if you want a more detailed look at recent progress from a third party, check out this video from Digital Foundry.

It may be because of the popularity of Elite: Dangerous and Star Citizen starting 2012 and their ever-growing high profile status going forward, but the trend of taking players into space has certainly caught on. Recently, I played Rebel Galaxy Outlaw, a prequel to a space sim that released in 2015. After a few hours in it, I could already see its homages to classics in the genre from decades ago like Wing Commander and Freelancer. This game, like so many others that have come along over the past seven years, has taken the genre to a completely new level.

Kickstarter, from its inception, has had a knack for using nostalgia to bring back franchises and genres that faded away as millennials grew up and started having less time for games. As adults that were coming out of an economic slump and building careers, Kickstarter offered an option to fund modern versions of games we used to love. Announcements for Star Citizen and Elite: Dangerous came from the original creators of Wing Commander and Elite games triggering loads of nostalgia for fans. Fans who now had enough disposable income to make these crowdfunded projects immensely successful.

At this same time in 2012, SpaceX was becoming the first private company to send a spacecraft to the International Space Station. They followed this up by completing the technologically and visually impressive task of landing rockets for reuse, bringing an element of science fiction into reality. NASA was not slacking either with the Mars landing of the Curiosity rover and discovering exoplanets now by the hundreds. The idea of space travel and the universe outside of our little bubble hasn’t been so popular since the moon landings.

Today, games like Rebel Galaxy Outlaw, Kerbal Space Program, Stellaris, Astroneer, Surviving Mars, and even the rebounding No Man’s Sky offer a huge variety of different approaches to games set outside of our terrestrial world. Virtually every genre now has a collection of space games for anyone who wants to try their hand roaming the galaxy and being a pioneer.

Games aren’t even the only medium latching on to this growing trend. Star Wars is right in the middle of a new trilogy grossing billions of dollars. Star Trek booted up another series while The Orville, a Star Trek-inspired television series, maintains its run as well. Even more hard-science movies and shows like The Martian and The Expanse are thriving in this space-crazed world. It is truly a great time to be a fan of science fiction set in space.

With all of the games currently in development, the future of space sims is brighter than it’s ever been. While Cloud Imperium Games’ Squadron 42 is tentatively set for a release sometime in the next year or two, other games are joining in on the hype.

Both Kerbal Space Program 2 and Everspace 2 were recently announced at Gamescom and are set to release in the coming years. After 16 years, Homeworld is getting a fourth entry in its franchise off the backs of its remaster and prequel. Even Bethesda is getting in on the action with Starfield – though it’s current status and gameplay are still a mystery. The breadth of available space games is going to be as expansive as their setting.

I’m not sure where my limit is in appreciating this movement, but it’s not in sight at the moment. I still plan to make time for the dozens of games and other media that send me into the stars. The idea of heading out into the frontier of space, building a life on new worlds, and maybe even shooting a few lasers in between is one that I will always find exciting. While I may have been born too early to do it in reality, these games are doing a great job satisfying that desire. Here’s hoping they keep following the trend of getting more robust and entertaining with each iteration.

Another yearly quarter has come and gone and that means it’s time for another Star Citizen patch release. While this patch may not be as flashy as 3.5 with its introduction of the massive city-planet ArcCorp, it does deliver some foundations for building the gameplay.

The first iteration of the Law System is now in place, meaning your actions will have consequences based on the system you’re in and authorities will come for you. The new hover mode changes the way flight mechanics will work in planetary atmospheres at low speeds and will have significant effects on the way ships of every size and shape fly and land. These, along with several other great additions and improvements both on the front end and back end, make Star Citizen 3.6 and update worth checking out.

Here’s a full rundown of the patch and a silly video to go along with it.

When will Star Citizen release?

That’s the question seemingly on everyone’s mind these days, and often met with the standard responses “it’s never being released” or “when space travel is a reality.” However, the real answer is a rather boring, “we don’t know.”  That’s not to say we don’t know anything at all about the future of Star Citizen and what is going to be released within the coming months.  In fact, Cloud Imperium Games has made a very clear and concise roadmap detailing what will be in its upcoming patches and when they will be released.

The Roadmap

Star Citizen Alpha 3.5 (yes, it’s still in Alpha) was the last version to release on April 18, 2019.  It included a variety of additions like a new character creation system, a playable female character model, a variety of new ships, a reworked flight model, and the star (or planet) of the show, ArcCorp.  Adding a new planet and its moons is a daunting task on its own considering the addition of literally thousands of square kilometers of surface that can all be thoroughly explored. But this planet has some unique features.

What makes ArcCorp special is that, rather than being relatively barren like most planets and moons in the game, it’s covered entirely by a planet-sized city.  It’s very reminiscent of Coruscant from the Star Wars universe, but here you get to fly in and around every building and land at a variety of different zones.  It does have some caveats though, namely that there’s a no-fly zone closer to the surface to prevent people from smashing into buildings and maintaining a little realism.

By the end of June or early July, 3.6 should be releasing.  It will be adding a new collection of content and updates including more flyable ships, an in-game rental system, and a law system.  The Q3 and Q4 updates will bring their own new gameplay improvements and expansions moving Star Citizen ever closer to that indeterminate release date.

Squadron 42

Along with Star Citizen and its online MMO-styled design will come a single player portion named Squadron 42.  Anyone familiar with Chris Roberts’ Wing Commander series will recognize the concept in the development of this title.  Squadron 42 has its own roadmap that, as you would expect, has some overlap with Star Citizen since they’ll be using most of the same ships, assets, and gameplay throughout.  However, the single-player experience will have a variety of cutscenes and in-game character interactions featuring a surprisingly well-known cast of famous actors like Mark Hamill, Gillian Anderson, and Gary Oldman (just to name a few). You can see some of their work in this Squadron 42 trailer.

This roadmap, much like the one for Star Citizen, outlines the progress being made in the different areas of development.  Yet, one surprising difference is that its final update is the beta release of Squadron 42.  At the moment, that is set for Q2 2020.  Now, if you’re not new to following Star Citizen, you’ll know that Squadron 42 has had a couple of release dates over the years.  They’ve always been passed by with an explanation arriving months later.  Generally, the issue has been certain key components of the development hitting roadblocks or needing refactoring to achieve the standard of fidelity on which Chris Roberts won’t compromise.  While that’s frustrating for someone waiting to play, it is admirable to see quality as the deciding factor in releasing a game.

Release Dates

It seems odd to me that so many people appear to be up in arms about the release of Star Citizen.  We have all seen so many games over the years release too early with tons of bugs and missing content just to meet deadlines and ensure maximum profitability.  It’s refreshing to see that approach tossed out the window in favor of making the game right rather than right now.

With that preface, it is my opinion that 2020 is going to be a big year for both Star Citizen and Squadron 42.  If Squadron 42 is in “beta” and is tested as rigorously and by as many people as Star Citizen has been over the years, I think there is a strong chance that it will see a full release of Squadron 42 before the end of 2020.  That’s assuming that everything goes as planned up to that beta.

With the release of Squadron 42, Star Citizen may not be far behind.  At least as far as having all of the core mechanics and gameplay interactions rolled out and playable.  Even if Star Citizen reaches something that people would dare label a “release,” it’s going to have years of content that needs to be developed and added.  The end goal is to have over 100 star systems and, currently, they’re still fleshing out a single one.  However, once two or three full star systems are in the game, they’ve essentially developed all of the elements necessary to create more.

Given the nearly seven years (my god it’s nearly been seven years) that I’ve followed Cloud Imperium Games’ development, it’s hard to be even mildly certain anything is going to happen when it’s supposed to.  Along with many of the game’s backers, I take what we get when we get it and never bank on anything more.  Yet, since the roadmap went live early in 2018, the delivery of patches has been infinitely more consistent than it ever was.  They have stated and followed through on the idea of pushing out patches in a timely manner rather than holding them up for stalled development or bugs.  It has meant that some features I’ve been waiting for (like Salvage) have been pushed back multiple times, but I would always rather have consistent updates and the impression the game is making progress rather than hold things up for one or two pieces of gameplay.

Source: Cloud Imperium Games

http://robertsspaceindustries.com/star-citizen

They’re doing the crowd-funding thing that’s popular in game development now. They aren’t using Kickstarter for some reason; they say why on the site, but it’s currently down. A backup site is up, but doesn’t have that information. They’re asking for more than normal; $30/$40 gets you a copy of the game. More expensive tiers offer fancy, presumably unique, ships and physical goodies.

Their post release plan is to release content on a two week basis. It will have to be relatively small pieces of content, given how aggressively they want to push them out. A star system per update, if the video is anything to go by. On the topic of star systems, the first person to find a new jump jump point and navigate it gets it named after them. Hopefully they get to name it, otherwise we’ll end up with a bunch of jump points named things like xXx_n1Nj4a55Ass!n_xXx and bob32151.