Squadron 42/Star Citizen (New Space Shooter from Chris "Wing Commander" Roberts)

[MechDeus]

http://www.wcnews.com/news/update/6885

With an estimated budget of $12 million, Wing Commander IV was at the time the most expensive video game ever made.

http://www.thecomputershow.com/compu...commander4.htm

Budget for the game was $12 million - three times more than that for Wing Commander III.

I don't know if any of those come from official sources, but it seems to be the popular number.

[epmode]

Roberts gave the WC3 and 4 figures in the live chat thing last night so it's as official as we'll ever get.

[epmode]

I must have missed this one:



http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature...v=uyyxCi7RiU0#!

I don't think I can wait two years.

[sedition]

yeah two years for final release is a long time. At least I'll be in early for alpha and beta.

Meet me at Harry's!

Final Amount Raised: $6,238,563 Million

[Frogacuda]

Roberts has always been a dreamer. It's good when you're playing with EA or Ultima money, but when you're taking money directly from fans...

He has been known to overpromise a bit, but I can't recall any of his projects not being good games despite what might have been cut.

[sedition]

They are over $7.5 million.

Death of a Spaceman details the permanent death of your character in Star Citizen.

Sounds awesome to me.

[epmode]

I have to stop reading about this game.

I'm really interested in the crazy real-world stuff they're going to try with respect to the in-game economy. From the insurance FAQ:

What will you do to combat insurance fraud?

A ship cannot be sold without a legitimate hull id code. Claiming on the insurance policy invalidates the hull code on your previous ship, so if it was captured or stolen the new owner will be unable to sell the ship at a regular ship dealer. Additionally if you have claimed on a policy and someone is flying the stolen ship in a well policed system, the hull id will mark it as a stolen ship, the law will be after you and landing privileges will be denied on any lawful planet. You will be able to fly a “hot” ship to the less savory parts of the Star Citizen universe, where you will probably be able to land and may be able to purchase a fake hull id code, but it will take effort and not necessarily be cheap.

Finally the Advocacy takes insurance fraud very seriously. If it can be proven that a player has colluded with another player to defraud the insurance company, that hull’s lifetime insurance will be invalidated and the player may have to pay a large amount of credits to keep their record clean and not be marked as a wanted criminal.

[kedawa]

I like that in-game crime gets in-game punishment, rather than having the player get their account banned/suspended for exploiting gameplay mechanics.

[epmode]

I forgot to mention this forever ago:

If you're interested in this game but didn't buy in during the initial drive, you can still get a ship with lifetime insurance* if it's gifted by one of the early backers. The ships are detailed here (the first five ships starting with the Aurora). The ships start at $25 and a full copy of the game is included. Just let me know if you want one.

*a nice perk but by no means necessary

edit: I MADE A MISTAKE. You can only get a copy of the finished game (single player and multi) if you pay at least $35

[epmode]

Article on ship customization: http://www.robertsspaceindustries.co...nents-systems/

I thought this part was interesting:

Tinkering with your ship is of huge interest to many people. We see this in the real world: there are huge communities around PC overclocking and in hobbyist automotive tuning on the weekends. People just like knowing that they’ve squeezed every last drop of performance out of their gear. We know you’ll want to push your ship to the limit (or maybe just baaaarely past it) so we are including systems to let you try. Parts are manufactured within tolerances, and while every part that rolls off the line will function precisely to its rated value, its true capability can be discovered by players willing to risk the consequences of failure. Pushing hardware past its rated specifications can have disastrous results though, and even successfully tuned parts will likely be more power hungry and generate a larger signature!

What you’re doing is “overclocking” your weapons and modules, just like dedicated PC enthusiasts do to their CPUs! When Intel builds a chip it often (but not always!) has the capacity for a higher clock speed… and people who want to push their rigs to the limit will manually tweak their CPUs higher and higher. Those tolerances aren’t known, though: sometimes a laser might get a 10% boost… rarer a 20% boost… and other times you might cause your overclocked gun to just generate excessive heat… or even damage itself! We anticipate some players will make a living overclocking upgrades and selling them to others at a premium… it’s our equivalent of an MMO crafting system without the artificial “leveling” mechanic taking you out of the game.