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Welcome to the Imperium Newsletter for June! Let's start off with some updates to our Discord. We have added a new bot that handles temporary voice channels. To use this bot, simply find the “Other Voice” section in Discord, then join the “Create Voice Channel” and a new voice channel will be created for you! Second, Discord has added a new feature, Text chats in every voice channel. To find this, hover over the voice channel you would like to type in, you will see a chat bubble appear to the right of the name, click on it and you will see the text chat. Please get used to this feature as we have removed our Voice-text channel. Another topic related to Discord is, start thinking of some emotes you would like added to the server! We’re getting around to some Discord updates and one will be getting suggestions from you the community on Emotes you would like to see! We will create a way to track the nominations so hold onto them for now but look for it in the near future! We’ve had a great turn out for our events this month. They’ve been great fun and we appreciate all that create, help and attend. If you would like to create, host or help an event, please contact @REIGN-11-87 or @GRIZZ our event coordinators and they will help you! Lastly, welcome to all our new & returning members! If you have any feedback in regards to anything Imperium, especially things you’d like to see in the Newsletter, please contact @Switch on Discord and let's have a chat! We are always looking to improve and provide better content for our community, help us by providing input! Dimossa TheExchange Fireball08 Sicarius_Cato Ironcladpharoah zYomi VIPERCHIEFTAIN Seadoubleyoujay NightHawk555 Lock01 PurpleLilek GraySel None HR Human Resources has promoted a new officer: @Switch Divisions Recruiting All divisions except Military are recruiting! Please see this page for further information. Imperium Mining Op - June 11 Organized & Hosted by: @REIGN-11-87 Hammerhead Duels - June 17 Organized & Hosted by: @Morse & @macgivre Imperium Naked Bunker Runs - June 25 Organized & Hosted by: @J. Coren & @Sir_Belial Operation Revolving Door - June 25 Organized & Hosted by: @REIGN-11-87 & @Psychopath Monday Meeting - Every Monday Organized & Hosted by: @GRIZZ A note from our Event Coordinators: “If you would like your event posted to #Event-announcements channel in Discord, or the Imperium Facebook page, or the Imperium Twitter account please PM someone with the @Event Coordinator tag and we will be happy to assist you in making your event a success. Don't forget to add your event to the Imperium Calendar as it automatically converts start times for members around the globe." -Grizz https://forums.starcitizenbase.com/calendar/
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Monthly Newsletters are here! Look forward to the first of the month to get an update on what Imperium has been up to! Also, don't forget to check out the Year In Review for 2021! To start the year off, Imperium has pushed many updates recently, including to our structure; not only does that mean adding/removing staff to our roster, but actual structure changes! As of 1/29/21, after an extensive officer meeting and many meetings prior, the Exploration Division has changed to the Science Division, and its color is going from green to blue. Military will be changing from blue to green as Military being green just makes sense, and Science being blue, well… we have a few Star Trek fans. This change was a proposal from one of Imperium's members, @KKillroyV2, from a casual conversation on what he’d like to see changed, which was turned into a presentable document and sent up the chain of command, which then approved the idea! Why change from Exploration to Science, you may ask? Exploration doesn't allow much room for growth under it. The name defines what the Division covers, and though Exploration is a vast topic, it's limiting. Changing to Science, we can now expand the division's reach to many more avenues, including medical gameplay! After many discussions on the topic, Imperium leaders decided it was the perfect opportunity to take this time and review their divisions for any other significant updates. This leads us to Division sections! Simply put, sections of a division allow for more focus in one area and help allocate responsibility and expertise. We hope adding these sections will allow a greater range of specialists to join the ranks. Maybe you’d like to help by being a recruiter but not moderate, well now you can! ~After the update is implemented. In other news, you may have noticed a cat on our discord staring at you ominously. We have our bot up and working through a lot of hard work from @Trophias, @Kraan Rastaban, and Vladdy! They plan to expand the bot in the future with some neat features, but currently it is handling all of our permissions which frees up another task from HR which is very appreciative! Have a special skill, good idea or want to brainstorm some things for Imperium? Post it in the Suggestion Sub forum and lets talk it out! You could make the next big change for Imperium! https://forums.starcitizenbase.com/forum/181-suggestion-subforum/ Star_Runner_Orion Tha1en IronEntropy Morgen-Black Dracanan St-Nevsky (See Year In Review for details) Exemplary Member Award - @Federal - @Grigg Member of the Year - @macgivre Officer of the Year - @Trophias - @REIGN-11-87 Military Military has had the addition of 2 specialists recently! @Space-Moose and @macgivre Academy @PowerWagon is now a specialist for Academy! He is still a member of HR but plans to help get Academy off the ground! Human Resources @Federal has joined the team as a recruiter, helping new players to StarCitizen get settled in! Divisions Recruiting All divisions are currently recruiting! Please see the application page located on Portal. A note from our Event Coordinators: “If you would like your event posted to #Event-announcements channel in Discord, or the Imperium Facebook page, or the Imperium Twitter account please PM someone with the @Event Coordinator tag and we will be happy to assist you in making your event a success. Don't forget to add your event to the Imperium Calendar as it automatically converts start times for members around the globe." -Grizz https://forums.starcitizenbase.com/calendar/” This Months Events: 1/07 & 1/08/2022 IMPERIUM MINING OP - WEEKEND Organized by Reign 1/15/22 IMPERIUM COMBINED OP Organized by Macgivre and Morse 1/22/2022 IMPERIUM MILITARY OP Organized by Macgivre and Morse Upcoming Events: Xeno Threat!
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End of 2015 Letter from the Chairman has finally been released, with the goal of $102 Million reached! Without spoiling everything, the letter from Chris goes on to say, "What's coming next" with 2.1 coming live, new ships, the re-modeled Freelancer being flyable with the Sabre hangar ready. He talks of the patch goal being less "feature driven" and more "date drive" with the goal being to release a new update every month, so Jan. would be SC alpha 2.2!!! Chris supplied End of the year numbers for us, which I will find useful when converting friends and family. The Roberts Space Industries website served 178 Million page views, with over 9.5 million visitors in 2015 Citizens have downloaded more than 30 PETAbytes of content this year. 80,000 backers have explored Crusader in 2.0 in the week since its launch. The development team created 16,503 tasks in 2015 and resolved over 15,000 of them. Developers made 204,716 Perforce check-ins/change-lists. The team generated an average of 6 game builds per day. QA has generated over 17,000 bug tickets this year, and the bug smashers have since resolved almost 12,000 of those. In honor of the $100 Million milestone they're attributing a UEE War Bond to each of our Hangars!
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Chris has posted up a letter from the chairman, and it includes a nice video from a special person! Read Letter Here
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Letter from the Chairman: Happy New Year THEN: the Hangar Module in 2013 NOW: Arena Commander in action NEXT: The FPS Mode's Battle Arena Greetings Citizens, 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 //End Transmission
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Erin, Sandi and I having fun with the CitizenCon photobooth. Greetings Citizens, THANK YOU. Over the weekend, we hit both the $57 and the $58 million crowd funding marks, an incredible achievement in itself and one that means we can continue to support and expand Star Citizen. I’m grateful for a lot more than just your backing Star Citizen. Getting to spend Friday at CitizenCon with backers was an amazing experience, and one that confirms that what we are doing here is special in more way than one. It’s hard work to set up these events… but more than worth it for the chance to talk face to face with people that are just as excited about the game and universe as we are on the Star Citizen team. I hope you enjoyed hearing from the various studios and getting your first look at the detail we intend to infuse the persistent universe with. As I said in the presentation: we’re just getting started! Eagle-eyed backers have noticed a shot of the Gladius in the Hangar during our presentation on Friday. That shot is actually part of a short video put together by Foundry 42 to keep the rest of the team updated on the status of their ships, which include the Avenger, Gladius, Gladiator and Retaliator. In honor of hitting two stretch goals in one weekends, I’d like to share that video with the world. The military ships aren’t quite done yet (there’s still animations, damage stats, sound effects, internal details and the like) but I think they’re looking great. See what you think! We’ve also just put online a stereoscopic 3D version of the Cutlass commercial. It’s our first 3D commercial, and I think it’s pretty cool. You can check it out for yourself here. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hmnh_EafsRE At $57 we hit the first of the Wave Four ship unlocks, the recently-elected Endeavor-class Research Platform! Here’s the initial design description: MISC Endeavor-class Research Platform – The MISC Endeavor is the company’s most prestigious ship: a dedicated research platform capable of carrying a dozen different space science packages, running the gamut from advanced long-range scanners for jump point identification to additional shielding for near-stellar corona research. Externally, the Endeavor is dotted with sensor hardpoints; internally, the main compartment is centered on a large research laboratory which can be configured for use by a wide range of scientific disciplines. The Endeavor’s main compartment is modular, allowing an alternate configuration as a Hope-class floating hospital. This variant is employed by the UEE and other organizations as battlefield support, capable of getting Marines and pilots back to the battle as quickly as possible! When outfitted as a hospital, the Endeavor’s docking bay is capable of maintaining a single Cutlass Red ambulance. The Endeavor has also found its way into the service of less reputable organizations, where it can has been modified for everything from narcotics production to black market surgery. Since we reached two stretch goals so quickly, we did not have time for an additional ship poll. Instead of picking the two highest from the previous poll, I’m going to go ahead and announce the last winner as the $59 million stretch goal ship and start the poll for $60 million with the remaining options. I’m a fan of seeing the community debate these things, and as the pool of options decreases it’s great to see backers “campaigning” for their favorite option. Have at it! We aren’t forgetting $58 million, though. In honor of the goal, we’re giving 10,000 UEC to every backer that you can use for upgrades and flair in the Voyager Direct Store. I’d advise you hold on to the creds: we’re going to have some cool configurable weapons and other upgrades for Arena Commander in the near future! 10,000 UEC may not seem like a lot, but at this stage in the game it actually means we’re giving our backers several million dollars to outfit their ships! Here’s the next ship winner, which you decided would be the repair platform: Anvil Aerospace Crucible – A so-called “flying toolbox,” the Crucible is the ship you want on your side when you suffer an asteroid collision or survive a pirate attack! Structurally, the Crucible consists of a cockpit, drive unit and workshop. The Crucible’s workshop is versatile: it can be used as a base for conducting EVA repairs (complete with requisite tool storage) or it can use magnetic grapplers to attach directly to a ship hull. In this situation, the workshop actually opens to space and allows a repair crew direct access to a damaged ship. The workshop can either maintain artificial gravity or allow for zero-g repair operations, depending on the needs of the mission. The Crucible’s cockpit is also outfitted with an array of repair tools, including dual purpose mounts that can exchange weapons for tractor beams and remote manipulator arms. The Crucible is also part of a larger planned repair system. For larger project, independent sections of support struts and drive units, called the Miller ERS (External Repair Structure), can be locked together to form a sort of scaffolding around a damaged starship, the next best thing to an orbital drydock. A standard ERS unit includes a small drive, thrusters, magnetic attach points and modular hardpoints for mounting tractor beams, repair tools or weapons. ERS segments each have a code defining their shape (P1 = Straight section, P2= Left turn, P3 = Right turn, etc.) with the multiple layouts allowing extensive zero-gravity construction as necessary. In the case of damaged capital ships, like the Navy’s Bengal carriers, hundreds of ERS units might be formed into a latticework serviced by a dozen or more Crucibles. The Crucible should be another great beyond-combat ship that will help expand the roles available in Star Citizen’s persistent universe. Now, go vote for the next one… and convince everyone else on the forums that they should, too! Again, thank you for the support. Thanks to the incredible response you gave us at CitizenCon, the entire team is charged up and ready to show you what else we can do. It’s going to be good! — Chris Roberts WHAT ROLE WOULD YOU LIKE TO SEE FOR OUR FOURTH WAVE OF SHIPS? What role would you like to see for our fourth wave of ships? A Search and Rescue Ship B Passenger Liner / Transport C Boarding / Assault Ship D Minelayer / Minesweeper E Recon Craft F Deep Space Fighter (Twin Engine) Don't Forget to sign in onto RSI, scroll down and cast your vote for the Fourth wave of ships now! Cast your vote at the "Letter From the Chairman" on RSI now.
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Retaliator Greyboxing Report https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uw18M19BMSI LETTER FROM THE CHAIRMAN Greetings Citizens, We have passed $54 million in crowd funding, and we have two groups to thank: racers who picked up M50s and 350Rs during our sale… and new backers who are just discovering Star Citizen! I’m proud to announce that since the $53 million letter we have added almost 10,000 new Citizens to our ranks. Thank you for making this possible, and especially affirming my belief that the best way to sell the dream of Star Citizen is to let our backers spread the word. Every new backer makes the game better… so tell your friends! Before we talk about stretch goals, I’d like to share some work from Foundry 42. You may have seen a few seconds of this video on a recent Around the Verse, but here it is in its full glory: the Retaliator greyboxing status update! The Retaliator is a heavy, multi-crew bomber that’s going to play like nothing you’ve seen in a space sim before… please enjoy seeing how much detail the team in Manchester is putting into the ship. At the $54 million level, you’ve unlocked additional AI activities for the persistent world! More Detailed AI Activities – we’ll add ten distinct types of AI character roles on planetside environments! At $54 million, this includes Bartender, Doctor, Entertainer, Nurse, Sanitation Worker, Security Guard, Shopper, Tourist, Vagrant and Vandal. Future AI roles will be added with future stretch goals! Each additional ‘class’ of character will be fully expressive and have a role to play in Star Citizen’s planetside interaction AND the game’s greater economy. One of the great things Tony Zurovec has brought to the process is a desire to enhance the planetside portion of Star Citizen well beyond my original goals. He wants to see a living, breathing world on our planetside landouts, complete with AI and player roles that you don’t ordinarily associate with a space combat game. So adding things like security guards, shoppers, tourists and vagrants, each with their own form and function, to the game is another step to making it more of a real world! The winner of last week’s “ship upgrade” reward poll was… Ballistic Gatling – Preacher Armament Inquisition XXII: Preacher’s Inquisition XXII is the weapon to turn to when you want complete target saturation. Its dual-ammo feed allows you to hotswap feeds without exiting your ship, giving every owner the ultimate flexibility to pick the ammo based on the situation. Every backer who pledges before we hit $55 million will have a pair of Inquisition XXII ballistic Gatling cannons added to their accounts! Since the poll was such a success, we’re going to continue it for the next stretch goal. We’ve removed the lowest performing option… and then we’ve added three more! Each of these new upgrades corresponds to a specific Arena-ready hull type… so you can choose based on the component or the ship! Which would you like as your $56 million gift? Engine – Dragon Stellar STC Silver (300 Series): The STC Silver from Dragon Stellar Transit Company is a TR4 engine noted for its high thrust output and low EM emissions. It has been rumored that Dragon Stellar has been using inferior components, but for some pilots the decreased power and fuel efficiency is worth the extra boost, especially at this price point. Power Plant – Broad & Rabiee Quietech M120 (Hornet): The largest class in the M series, Quietech M120 from Broad & Rabiee is a dynamic Superfluid Quantum Vortex power plant system that is capable of handling all your ship’s energy needs with a minimum of emissions. Ideally constructed for anyone who’s looking not looking to make an impression while travelling through a system. Jump Drive – Tarsus Leaper Jump Engine (Aurora): The first step to the universe beyond. The Leaper Jump Engine from Tarsus connects with your onboard NavDrive to allow your ship to access jump points. The Leaper also includes an introductory scanning software package to try your hand at discovering the undiscovered. For full descriptions of all the other options, please check out my previous letter. As I have said before and I will no doubt say again, thank you all. Star Citizen has been the best experience of my career… and it’s because of the incredible community that has come together to support this game. Seeing us hit $54 million is incredible… and so is seeing you come together to support the Lego Hornet, or seeing Citizens host events and becoming friends because of this game. I am so thoroughly happy that you are coming together in so many ways to make the world I’m building your own. — Chris Roberts WHAT FREE UPGRADE WOULD YOU LIKE IN ARENA COMMANDER? What free upgrade would you like in Arena Commander? Ballistic Cannon: A&R PyroBolt C1 Laser Repeater: Verified Offworld Laser Technologies Firestorm Neutron Cannon: ProPOW Kill-O-Blast 3000 Missiles: Spearfish ASIM-09/eN7 Arrestor Power Plant: Ace Astrogation FusionPro 3H Shield Generator: RAMP Corporation ProTec Twin StandardG Cooling: J-SpanCryo-Star Engine - Dragon Stellar STC Silver (300 Series) Power Plant - Broad & Rabiee Quietech M120 (Hornet) Jump Drive - Tarsus Leaper Jump Engine (Aurora) Don't forget to login on RSI and cast your vote for this times reward poll @ https://robertsspaceindustries.com/comm-link/transmission/14172-Letter-From-The-Chairman
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Letter from the Chairman Greetings Citizens, The crowd funding tally may have moved, but we’re still celebrating our stretch goals! We reached another over the weekend with a seemingly-impossible $52 million in crowd funding. Thank you for your support in recent days; I know the Constellation sale was a big deal… but the Constellation only matters because backers understand the vision for Star Citizen! Over the weekend, executive producer Alex Mayberry announced that we’re partnering with AMD to include a starter ship with particular graphics cards. Please check out the Mustang Omega racer variant, with and “AMD” racing skin (or “Accelerated Mass Design,” to better keep the immersion.) Expect to see more on the Mustang and variants in the near future. But today, the team is hustling to finish Arena Commander v0.9 and we’re really feeding on all the energy that came out of Gamescom! This next release will include a number of new features including friend codes and the new Murray Cup racing mode (aka the New Horizons mode!) As I mentioned at Gamescom, it looks like the significant blocker will be the leaderboards (as well as several other smaller issues, such as making friend codes work correctly.) We’ll update you later in the week on the status! In the meantime, everyone who pledged before $52 million gets a jetpack! The BB-12 is a brand new Manned Maneuvering Unit from Azure Sky Aero. Whether you are engaging in precision mining operations or delicate salvage retrieval, the BB-12 is capable of EVA operation for six uninterrupted hours. This new model features twenty-four precision nozzle thrusters and two redesigned heavy-duty tanks of gaseous nitrogen propellant, capable of being hot-swapped while on the drift or refueled back on the ship. With the BB-12, Azure Sky has once again cemented their place as the premier EVA tech provider. I can’t wait for a Moonraker-style battle to reach and board a space station! Our physics engine should make it a lot of fun… but that’s further in the future. Next up is the $54 million stretch goal. For this one, I turned to our Persistent Universe Director, Tony Zurovec. I asked Tony what he’d love to see in Star Citizen that isn’t in the Game Design Documents just yet. And here’s the first of his suggestions: More Detailed AI Activities – we’ll add ten distinct types of AI character roles on planetside environments! At $53 million, this includes Bartender, Doctor, Entertainer, Nurse, Sanitation Worker, Security Guard, Shopper, Tourist, Vagrant and Vandal. Future AI roles will be added with future stretch goals! Each additional ‘class’ of character will be fully expressive and have a role to play in Star Citizen’s planetside interaction AND the game’s greater economy. Like all stretch goals, that’s just an indication of the kind of feature we can add with ongoing funding. Expect to hear more from Tony as we really kick the Persistent Universe portion of the project into high gear! As always, thank you for your support. I’m very excited about sharing Arena Commander v0.9 and beyond with the community; it truly is seeing your feedback that keeps us going. We can’t do this without you! — Chris Roberts //End Transmission
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Letter from the Chairman Greetings Citizens, It looks like the Origin M50 is rocketing off the showroom floor and we’ve reached the $49 million crowd funding level! The $49 million reward is the last of our set of user-voted ‘flair goals.’ Congrats to all current backers of Star Citizen – you have earned a Xi’An Space Plant! That’s all thanks to you, Star Citizen’s backers. We’ve had a lot of questions about why we still need to continue crowd funding. The answer is that that money is letting Star Citizen tackle longer term features and content sooner than we normally would. To sustain this level of development, we need to keep bringing in additional funds. Star Citizen is still much less than the other published backed AAA games that have similar levels of ambition (some would even say a little less :-) ) like GTA V, Watch Dogs or Destiny. We know that Star Citizen is an incredibly ambitious project, after all its basically several high fidelity AAA games all rolled into one; a MMO Space Sim, a First Person Shooter, a rich Single Player story and a fully-fledged Trading and Economy game. I’m pretty sure this level of ambition is why the majority of you backed. If I had pitched Star Citizen to a typical publisher, told them I wanted all these features and wanted to make it just for a PC I would have been laughed out of the room. (Of course, you all showed publishers that a AAA space sim for the PC is no laughing matter!) Our plan is to scale the team based on the crowd funding, with the goal to be able to double down on development wherever it’s possible to do so. If we need more artists to produce additional ships, we’d like to be able to hire them. Or if we need more engineers to get a head start on some longer term technical issue before it blocks other parts of development, we want that option! It’s the new players hearing about Star Citizen and Arena Commander for the first time and jumping in as well as sales like the M50 that enable us to continue to chase our shared dream of the BDSSE to the highest fidelity. So thank you for your support. Here’s the $49 million goal: Xi’An Space Plant – Similar to a bonsai tree, the Centennial Bloom is a very famous Xi’An plant indigenous to EealusIII that blossoms for one night every one hundred years. They sell the plants in sealed terrariums to traders. Ever since their introduction to the UEE, Humanity has been fascinated by these beautiful plants and the wait for them to bloom. Please remember that the stretch goals are rewards for reaching levels and don’t indicate a specific million dollars spent. Star Citizen is a massive game, and every dollar goes to making it possible. Stretch goals are intended to reward and include the community that is making the game possible, not to indicate to the world that we are “feature creeping” too much into the game. For the $51 million stretch goal, I’d like to try something a little different in the hopes that it might be another way to involve you, our backers, in Star Citizen’s development process. For the first time, we’re going to try giving you a say in Star Citizen’s production schedule! As you may have seen, Star Citizen’s platform team launched our new online store today! We sat down to develop the new store with an eye towards making it more friendly to new backers; people who didn’t know the difference between a game package and an addon ship. In the process, we also revamped how we display ship information to everyone. That meant adding hundreds of images and other resources like the holo-viewers for existing backers! Next, we will sit down with Turbulent to decide the next big push. We have plenty of things on the to-do list, including the Galactapedia, web scoreboards for Arena Commander, the interactive galaxy map and Organizations Drop 2. These are all things that are going to happen… what we’re going to ask you to do is to determine the priority. Which of these major projects should our web designers and artists focus their resources on next? Orgs Drop 2 – Divisions, jobs and the 3D Organizations browser. Orgs Drop 3 – Private forums for each Star Citizen Organization. Galactapedia – Your guide to the Star Citizen universe which ties directly into Star Citizen’s persistent universe. Web Scoreboards – Want to see your Arena Commander history on the website, or find out how you stack up against other Citizens? Known Universe Map – An interactive map of Star Citizen’s known universe which will expand along with the game. The work the platform team does is the most community-facing; from rebuilding the pledge store to creating the XMPP chat, their work impacts you before anything else! That’s why this is the first time Star Citizen’s backers will get to directly influence our production schedule and resource allocation. We’d also like to hear your thoughts below: what do you think would improve the web side of the game? You never know: you may just have an idea worth including the next time around! — Chris Roberts //End Transmission
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Greetings Citizens, It looks like the recent Gladius and dogtags sales have pushed us over $48 million in crowd funding! The Gladius is going to be a great addition to Arena Commander; if you picked one up and helped push us to hit this goal, you won’t be disappointed! The Gladius isn’t as heavily armed as the Hornet and it can’t carry cargo like the Aurora… but it’s fast and light and should be a new way to take on Arena Commander’s head-to-head mechanic. The $48 million stretch goal was the user-voted Retaliator commercial! I’m pleased to announce that David Haddock has started scripting the Retaliator commercial. I don’t want to spoil the surprise, but we’re going in a different direction with this one! Retaliator Commercial – It was a close race but The Retaliator pulled ahead. The Avenger was a close second. The symbol of the United Empire of Earth’s power is the next ship to receive a slick commercial. Aegis Dynamics is in dire need of good publicity since the end of the of the Messer era. We currently have the Cutlass and the Constellation commercials in production and now the Retaliator will be added to that list. Today, much of the team is hard at work on patch 12.5, hunting down the bugs responsible for the latency and rubber-banding currently affecting Arena Commander. The Engineering team has eliminated server CPU and network traffic as likely causes of the jumping and poor network gameplay. They have narrowed the issue’s introduction down to one of eleven possible change lists… it can’t hide from us much longer! We are adding additional debugging tools and metrics while homing in on the problem, and we’re currently digging into possible differences between remote and local simulation of ship movement which could lead to the jumping. But Arena Commander is just the first step on the journey to Star Citizen, and we’re also continuing to look ahead and expand on the inner working of our universe. In today’s post, you can see some of the work we’ve been doing on locations. All of these stores are located on Stanton III, which the team at BHVR is building as a baseline for our planetside content. Stanton III - Casaba Outlet Stanton III - Dumper's Depot Stanton III - Abernathy Interiors As we promised last time, we’re going to return to our tradition of stretch goals that improve the core game. The ongoing funding keeps the project running on the scale it is today… but we’re also eager to find ways to improve what we’ve already planned. We’ve come up with one for the $50 million goal that we think will truly improve the immersion, and help make Star Citizen a living, breathing world: Alien Languages – Do you speak Banu? We will work with real-world linguists to create distinctive and realistic alien languages for Star Citizen’s three biggest alien races, the Vanduul, the Xi’An and the Banu. No universal translators, no garbled animal noises: Star Citizen’s aliens will be speaking their own authentic languages! I’m excited about this one… and looking forward to meeting the first fan who learns to speak one of our languages! As always, thank you for your support. Star Citizen would not exist without our backers. Keep spreading the word! — Chris Roberts P.S. A special additional congratulations to our German backers for their team’s World Cup victory. Well played! //End Transmission
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Source: https://robertsspaceindustries.com/comm-link/transmission/13888-Letter-From-The-Chairman-44-Million and don't forget to vote for the next stretch goal my fellow citizens. The choices given: A new role-specific outfit Engine tuning kit A space plant ================ // Begin Transmission \\ ================ Greetings Citizens, $44 million! I think I can safely say that this will be the last letter I write before Arena Commander launches, and I can’t wait to share the first taste of what you’ve been helping us build. Getting to dogfight in deep space is going to make Star Citizen real for a lot of people… but I also know that everyone who has supported us to this point already understands. Thank you for getting us here! The final week push to get Arena Commander V.8 out the door has begun here, so I’ll keep this letter short… but I would like to share a piece of concept art. You’re looking at what we call the “negotiation room” in the Banu Merchantman freighter. It’s a place where traders can invite others into their ships, display their cargo (the bay is visible) and make deals! As we look to the next stages of Star Citizen beyond dogfighting, we’re putting more and more thought into how systems like cargo and trading will take shape. We’re building a system that makes sense, measuring ship interiors, building a standardized cargo container measurement system (see diagram) and determining exactly how cargo will be loaded, unloaded and interacted with in port (and during flight!) As the most recent set of changes to our preliminary ship stats reflect, transporting cargo is going to be more complex than just finding the ship with the highest storage capacity… it’s going to involve finding the right ship type for the job. Everyone who pledged for Star Citizen before this point will be getting an additional room added to their hangars, once the modular room system launches: Stellar Cartography – Walk among the distant horizons you’ve charted in Star Citizen’s dedicated “map room” featuring a 3D holographic representation of the known universe. Your map room will start with a basic guide to the United Empire of Earth, and will expand into something that is unique to you as you explore uncharted worlds and discover new secrets. Build the most in-depth universe map possible and show it off to visitors, or lock down your secret jump points and hidden trading posts so that no one else can follow. Interface directly with the Observist guide to find out everything from what ores are in demand on MacArthur to who serves the best pasta on Terra. And with the ability to leave your own notes about your encounters and travels, it’s more than a map: it’s your digital diary! And the results of the penultimate player reward stretch goal are in! Backers who pledge before $46 million will get an updated scanning software suite from Chimera Communications. Here are the details: Updated Scanning Software – Chimera Communications unveiled the latest version of their SBit scanning software, also announcing a one-time free upgrade for their current and long-standing customers. The new SBit upgrade offers advanced scanning capabilities for prospecting asteroids above and beyond their baseline systems. SBit is a FIB-based system that floods the scan-zone with energy then processes the frequency of the energy reflected back, providing the operator with a composite sketch of potential ore deposits. With the new version, Chimera included an updated library of searchable frequencies as well as variable scan sizes, allowing smaller surface, higher-resolution scans. The general public will be able to purchase the update when SBit is officially released. Again, thank you for your continued support. That support means a bigger, better game… the first part of which you’re going to play very soon. Remember to vote in the poll below, which will determine the final player reward stretch goal! — Chris Roberts ================ // End Transmission \\ ================