[Nehkara]

Star Citizen hits $39 million!

Letter from the Chairman

$39 Million milestone unlocks:

UDS-2943-01-22 System – Breaking news: UEE astrophysicists based at the famed Klavs observatory station have utilized advanced telescopy and other remote sensing technologies to identify a truly unusual star system on the fringes of known space. The object, once thought to be a single massive star, is actually a trinary star consisting of two white dwarfs and an active pulsar orbiting one another. Because of the complex gravitic factors at work, it is now believed that a jump point leading to the system likely exists in or near explored human space. Beyond the bizarre stellar makeup, the composition of the system is all but unknown. Could planets exist in this carefully balanced web? What else might have been drawn there? One thing is certain: the first Citizen to travel to UDS-2943-01-22 will have one hell of a view!

$40 Million will unlock:

Kabal System – The discovery of a new system is always an exciting time. Even the most jaded NavJumpers can’t help entertaining the possibilities for scientific understanding or new species or even a new home that could await them on the other side of a new jump point. The discovery of Kabal was certainly something new. By all outward appearances, the system seemed empty. It was only during when a UEE Surveying team began to assess Kabal III, did they find something disturbing; old uninhabited Tevarin cities. How could an entire Tevarin system escape detection all these years? Did the Tevarin that were assimilated into the UEE know about it? How was it kept a secret? The questions multiplied when a detachment of Marines, sent to secure the planet ended up discovering a cache of old Tevarin war machines. Among the rows and rows of weapons, they made an even more disturbing discovery; some of the technology was made in the last ten years…

AND

Oretani System – Oretani was just one of many systems that were being discovered during the rapid Expansion era of the 25th century. The surveyors noticed nothing in the system’s six worlds of immediate importance. Only one planet seemed to be a viable candidate for terraforming. The terraforming Corp that won the bid sent a mid-level team (and their families) into the system to start processing when the only jump point into the system collapsed. Scientists scrambled to figure out a solution, but it was the first time an incident like this had occurred. As years stretched into decades, people studied the area around the former jump point, hoping for a sign that it had reopened, but after time they gave up. After all this time, Oretani is only ever debated among select number of historians. Most believe that without support, the initial terraformers probably died out, but no one really knows what to expect on the other side if that jump point ever reopens.

For $41 million, CIG is looking to the future:

Star Citizen isn’t just about the game we launch with. We’re going into this building not only an immersive launch experience, but the platforms and the tools to let us keep expanding the game to meet the available technology. The game won’t be a static experience: we want to build Star Citizen in a way that the experience will be fresh in five years, ten years and into the foreseeable future.

Among the most common feature requests for Star Citizen are atmospheric combat and ground exploration. These are the single biggest things we would like to include in the game, but they’re also something we know we can’t have day one. Our universe is a big place, and creating the hundreds of existing landouts properly is enough of a challenge… building entire continents and atmospheres in the current system would take a lifetime.

That’s where procedural generation comes in. If we can develop a truly great procedural generation system, one that lets us create entire planets for you to populate, then we can expand the game to add these features (and more) in the future.

Procedural Generation R&D Team – This stretch goal will allocate funding for Cloud Imperium to develop procedural generation technology for future iterations of Star Citizen. Advanced procedural generation will be necessary for creating entire planets worth of exploration and development content. A special strike team of procedural generation-oriented developers will be assembled to make this technology a reality

Also, CIG has unveiled an early look at a new ship! This is the UEE's Javelin-class Destroyer! Click the images for larger versions.