Developer:	Cloud Imperium Games.
Publisher:	Cloud Imperium Games [via crowdfunding and outside investors]
Designer(s):	Chris Roberts (Lead designer) Josh Strike (HUD / Scaleform designer) Ryan Church (Conceptual artist) Jim Martin (Conceptual artist)
Release Date:	Estimated November 2014.
Genre:	Space Trading/Combat Simulator
Game modes:	Single-player, multiplayer (Private servers), massive multiplayer (Official server).
Platforms:	Windows, with plans for OSX and Linux. No plans for consoles.
Funding Goal:	$2,000,000 Donate to Official Campaign
Kickstarter:	Donate to the Kickstarter

Contents 1 Overview 2 Development 2.1 Developer comments 3 Story 4 Gameplay 4.1 Physics 4.2 Navigation 4.3 Combat 4.4 Death Penalty 5 Economy 6 Ships 7 Star Systems 8 Multiplayer 9 System Requirements 10 Subscription Model 11 Funding 11.1 Funding Sources 11.2 Pledges 11.3 Kickstarter 11.4 Stretch Goals 12 External links 13 Screenshots 14 Comments

OverviewEdit

Star Citizen is a video game by Chris Roberts and Cloud Imperium Games. Star Citizen is an upcoming space trading and combat simulator game for the PC. Star Citizen is currently being developed by Chris Roberts' Cloud Imperium Games Corporation, founded in 2011. Roberts' previous works include games such as Wing Commander, Privateer, Freelancer, and more.

This wiki is currently in heavy development. For more information about the game, please check out the official Draft FAQ here. There is also an Unofficial FAQ posted by user Lozenger and collaborated on by the Star Citizen community.

Unofficial Dev Q/A site run by BoMby can be found here UEE News Network

Please try to keep everything nice and neat! This main page is for general information. If you have a lot of detailed information to post, consider creating a link to a new page (using double brackets: [[ ]]) to store all the info.

We are in dire need of sources! Please consider helping out by locating specific developer posts that support information on this wiki and linking them as sources. There are a lot of developer posts on the forums, on the RSI facebook page, both official and unofficial FAQ, and kickstarter page. Happy editing!

DevelopmentEdit

Development started in 2011 on a modified version of CryENGINE 3, and has an expected release date of sometime between 2014 and 2015. The game will initially be localized to English, French, German and Spanish with plans to handle other languages afterwards. Chris Roberts currently plans Star Citizen to remain DRM free.

The current (known) development team for Cloud Imperium Games consists of:

• Chris Roberts (Lead designer)

• Eric "WingMan" Peterson (President of Development)
• Ben Lesnick (Community Manager)

• Martin Galway (Sound engineer)
• Josh Strike (HUD/ Scaleform designer)
• Ryan Church (Conceptual Artist)
• Jim Martin (Conceptual Artist)
• Aaron Frost (Staff Writer)
• Shawn (Front-End designer)
• Dave Haddock (Loremaster/Writer)
• George Oldziey (Music Composer)
• Wayne (Site Admin)

Developer commentsEdit

A lot of the information on this wiki comes from comments made by the developers. Sometimes the developers make great comments that contain useful information, but doesn't exactly fit into the wiki (yet). If you have a great developer comment that deserves to be read, but doesn't really fit here, please add it to the developer comments page!

StoryEdit

Need to add story elements here. Squadron 42, etc.

Story leading up to the point where game starts: Time Capsule on RSI website

GameplayEdit

Star Citizen will feature gameplay similar to the original Wing Commander and Privateer, with a more realistic physics system. This means that it is NOT a ‘click to kill’ interface like most modern MMOs; your success in combat is going to depend as much on your skill with a space fighter as it will with your ship upgrades and your pocket book.

Star Citizen will take the best of all possible worlds, ranging from a permanent, persistent world similar to those found in MMOs to an offline, single player campaign like those found in the Wing Commander series. The game will include the option for private servers, like Freelancer, and will offer plenty of opportunities for players who are interested in modding the content.

PhysicsEdit

Star Citizen will feature an accurate newtonian physics engine. Ships will come equipped with lateral thrusters that are required to turn the ship and reverse acceleration. Ships will come equipped with "assisted flight" computers that makes the ships easier to fly. Pilots will have the opportunity to turn off this assistance and fly manually.

NavigationEdit

Need more info here. The primary methods of propulsion are thrusters, warp drives, and jump drives. Players will use existing and known jump paths to travel between systems. Players will have a chance to discover new jump paths, and even entirely new systems. When a player discovers a new path, they will have to navigate the jump path manually before it can be saved into their navigation computer. Players can then have the new jump point named after themselves and sell its location on the galactic market.

CombatEdit

Need more info here. Ship combat will rely mainly on piloting skill and ship balance. When two ships enter combat, they are seamlessly instanced into a battleground. Other ships can dynamically join and leave this battleground, up to 100+ ships (depending on game design). The game will use this dynamic instancing to spread out ship battles and reduce server load. For example, if there are 1,000 ships fighting in orbit of a planet, the game will try to split it into 10 instanced battles of 100 players each.

Quote from Chris Roberts about ship balance in combat: “There is no undefeatable MMO RPG style build in Star Citizen as we don't have character stats that affect your damage. Instead your skill as a pilot is key. In addition the ship design / abilities is very rock, paper, shotgun so every build of ship has a weakness. And in case you're worried that we're going to make the basic missions boring to encourage you to buy credits; We're not! trading and flying missions are the core of the open world experience. They're the fun parts and there is no way I am going to deliberately nerf them to encourage people to pay Zynga style. Its a big reason I'm building this game outside the publisher system.”

Death PenaltyEdit

Need more info here. This topic is largely undecided and still being discussed by the developers. The current consensus is leaning towards ship death meaning ship loss, unless it is your pledge ship (which is always replaced for free) or you purchase some kind of ship insurance. The developers have yet to settle on anything final.

EconomyEdit

Need more info here. The in game economy will be similar to Freelancer's model and use credits as a currency. These credits can be earned in-game or possibly purchased through micro-transactions. The developers have asserted that there will be only one currency, whether earned in-game or purchased with real money.

ShipsEdit

Ships

Star SystemsEdit

Systems

MultiplayerEdit

While Star Citizen itself isn't an MMO (it will also have single player and private multiplayer modes), there will be a persistent massive multiplayer universe (MMU) offered to players. This persistent universe will be similar to Freelancer's multiplayer servers, but on a much grander scale. To reduce server costs, Star Citizen will use dynamic instancing to limit the number of players that can interact at once, while still offering a unified game world. As Chris Roberts put it, "if there were 10,000 people in orbit around Earth, that'd be 100 different instances of 100 different people." If instancing does happen, players will be able to travel between instances and join other players. Dynamic instancing has been said to apply to spaceship combat as well as planet side rooms such as bars and orbit areas of space. You can follow your friends or other 'Persons of Interest' (POI) by tagging them with a yet unknown in-game system. This will allow you to follow people for missions through multiple instances. Friends may also join you in a battle instance if they are in your system, or if you have a multi-crew ship like the Constellation (4 crew max) then your friends can drop in, run around the ship as in a FPS and man the turrets, the cockpit, or the fighter. The full implementation is still under development on how it will be applied to other aspects of the game.

Players will also have the option to host their own multiplayer universe on a private server. These private servers will support mod capability, and the developers are even interested in implementing the best private modifications into the official MMU server. It is unknown what level of functionality private servers will have compared to the MMU server.

The main story campaign will support co-op multiplayer, meaning it will be available to play at least on private servers, if not the the main MMU server. This information needs further clarification from the developers.

System RequirementsEdit

There will be a lot of optimization in the next 24-months, plus the usual fast pace of technology, so it is hard to say absolutely. As of October 15th, 2012, the current internal alpha build requirements are 4GB dual core PC with a GTX 460 or greater, with recommended i7 2500, 2600, 2700 and GTX 670 or greater. Since the game is built on CryEngine, their system requirements will stay roughly the same as ours.

On reddit in the "Ask Chris Anything!" session on February 22nd, 2012 Chris wrote the following information:

It's a major focus for me (to optimize SC for multicore and SLI) as I develop on Intel 3960x hexacore OC with GTX680SLI. This is not the requirement for the final game, but shows the kind of machine you want to have for the game

Subscription ModelEdit

Star Citizen uses a similar model to ArenaNet's Guild Wars 2. You only need to buy the base game, which will be released at $60, and you never have to buy any add-ons or pay subscription fees after that. The game will be supported afterwards by mictrotransactions to purchase in-game currency. It will not be possible to purchase anything that cannot be obtained through playing the game, and there will be a monthly limit on purchasing. They will be avoiding a "Pay-to-win" enviroment.

During the fundraising stage, any person who pledges $30 or more will receive the full game on release, including alpha and beta access during development.

FundingEdit

Cloud Imperium Games is looking to raise $2 million dollars through the use of crowd funding. The time period for this fundraiser was 30 days, starting on October 10th, 2012. When asked why they didn't go through a publisher, Chris Roberts stated: "We want to build a PC game and publishers increase costs because of their need to recoup their sizable overhead. We want to make sure all the money raised goes directly to the development of the game. The game will cost less, be more creatively pure, and, most importantly, be built for the real “core” audience."

The Official crowdfunding phase has now ended with a total of $6,238,563 as per the RSI Facebook page.

Funding SourcesEdit

Chris Roberts estimates Star Citizen will require $12-14 million in funding to fully develop. His studio has already spent $1-2 million developing what is currently being shown in demos. Chris has also stated that outside investors are interested in funding the remaining development costs if he can prove there is sufficient interest in the game. These investors have agreed to provide additional funding if Roberts can reach his fundraising goal. *These facts need to be verified and linked to sources.*

PledgesEdit

In order to achieve the $2 million funding goal, CIG has put together donation packages, called pledges, that are filled with in-game and out-of-game rewards. The rewards range from starting credits, citizen cards, pledge ships, custom skins and more. For a full list of donation packages and their rewards, please visit the official website .

KickstarterEdit

From 18. Oct. 2012 funding has become available on Kickstarter. On Kickstarter the goal is less than on the official RSI site ($500.000 to $2.000.000) and the smallest amount on Kickstarter is $1 opposed to $10 on the official RSI site. There is also added the option for backers, who have already pledged on the official site, to pledge for $5 in exchange for a small addition to their already owned ship. The Star Citizen Kickstarter can be found here.

“	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.	”
–Chris Roberts

Stretch GoalsEdit

To encourage funding, CIG has also tied some of their game features to stretch goals. The purpose of these stretch goals is to promise the features (and game-as-described) is finished within a two year time period. While stretch goals usually don't guarantee any features that haven't met their goal, CIG plans to implement all stretch goals regardless if they are met.

According to the dev team: "We intend to build the game that Chris Roberts described at GDC Online regardless, but without additional funding we are going to have to do it one piece at a time, starting with Squadron 42, rather than as a single larger production. With more funding we can include more ships, systems, unique locations, animations and cinematic sequences.” The current and known stretch goals are outlined as follows, as of the November 19th, 2012 final hour push update:

External linksEdit

• Official site
• Un-official subreddit
• Official RSI Facebook group
• Official RSI Youtube channel
• Official RSI Twitter account
• Official Star Citizen Kickstarter Campaign
• Drake Interplanetary Community Site
• Star Citizen Base Community site, home of the Imperium Fleet.
• Piracy Clan: The Grinning Skulls
• Star Citizen FR: The largest french community
• Star Citizen RU: Russian-speaking community
• Alliance Interstellaire Francophone - A Francophone Community Site
• SC-Com German Squad/Communtiy

ScreenshotsEdit