What Is Star Citizen
And How Should I Go About Playing It
What is Star Citizen?
Travel across the vast expanse of space in a cargo hauler with a friend or two in the turrets, land on an alien landscape to pick up a bit of smuggling work only to be ambushed by unscrupulous outlaws and fight your way from the ground back into space. All in one seamless experience.
More than a space sim, more than an action shooter, more than an MMO: This is Star Citizen.
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Hundreds of systems from the dense cities to vast alien landscapes, each artistically crafted with our hybrid procedural planet tech.
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A massive variety of ships, components, weapons and equipment offering infinite customization options to tailor to your play style.
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Live how you want to live: shift from a cargo hauler to an outlaw whenever you want.
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Interact with a diverse and dynamic population. Whether they’re handing out jobs or running a store, Star Citizen’s NPC population have full day/night cycles thanks to our proprietary AI Subsumption technology.
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A dynamic community. Not only do we regularly share updates, behind the scenes videos and developer commentary, we also have made available early builds of the game, so that our backers can test and provide feedback while Star Citizen is in development.
Avenir Light is a clean and stylish font favored by designers
What Can You Experience Now?
Star Citizen is currently in Alpha which means that the technology and designs that bring the game to life are still in development. To help us refine and improve as we continue development, we have divided the game into several modes that are available now for early testing. With your Star Citizen game package, you can start playing all of these modes today and help provide us with much-needed insight and feedback.
Currently Available Modes:
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Arena Commander: An arcade-style dogfighting and racing mode that allows us to test our ships and physics-based flight model as players battle alongside and against their friends in multiple arenas and game.
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Star Marine: A fast-paced battleground where players put our unique FPS gameplay through its paces, testing the seamless third and first-person unified animations, zero-G combat, and a variety of high-tech weapons.
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Hangar: Your own personal space to look at your ships up close, edit your loadouts, and see your special reward flair and decorations.
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Persistent Universe: Commonly known as the PU, this mode combines all the other modes and allows players to explore a small section of one of our solar systems. Here you and your friends can do missions, engage in ship or FPS combat, or explore asteroid fields for long forgotten wrecks. This has all been built on our 64-bit game engine that provides seamless travel from inside a space station, to a spaceship so large that you and your friends can walk around inside while flying thousands of kilometers through space. All in real-time. All without load screens. It’s here in the PU that you begin to see the real promise of Star Citizen.
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How Do I Play?
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You can join Star Citizen by purchasing a Star Citizen ‘starter pack.’ Every starter pack includes an in-game ship ready for you to fly and access to all currently available game modes.
Pick up a starter ship pack with either a reliable Aurora or a nimble Mustang spacecraft and launch into your interstellar adventure today!
Note, additional ships and in-game items that can be purchased through the Roberts Space Industries website, but they are to allow the backers to provide extra support to the development. All of these ships will be available in the game if desired and they will never be required to play the game.
CREATING AN ACCOUNT (NO PURCHASE NECESSARY)
If you don't already have a Roberts Space Industries (RSI) account, you'll want to take advantage of the Star Citizen referral code program. Doing so benefits the code provider and grants you a bonus 5,000 United Earth Credits (UEC), the in-game currency for Star Citizen. A referral code must be applied at account creation and cannot be retroactively added to an existing account. It costs nothing to sign up, and you'll be eligible to participate in the periodic free fly events held throughout the year.
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USING REFERRAL CODE: STAR-2DB9-55JH
You'll need to complete the registration process by following the instructions in the confirmation email and sign in to your account before you can proceed.
Now that you have an account, encourage your friends to use this referral code when they create their account. Share this guide by building a custom URL that personalizes the above box with this referral code and other information.
UNDERSTANDING THE PLEDGE STORE
There are a couple of points I want to make about recognizing what comes with a package. First, game packages may include only Star Citizen, only Squadron 42, or both games. Look at the package's contents for "Star Citizen Digital Download" and/or "Squadron 42 Digital Download." I will show you an easy way to add Squadron 42 to a Star Citizen-only package during the checkout process.
The second point of interest concerns ship insurance (also found in the package's contents). Ship insurance covers the ship's hull and factory stock equipment in the event of a complete loss. As a part of promotional offers, ships are sometimes sold with lifetime insurance (commonly referred to as LTI), but there are tricks to get LTI on almost any ship and many people will advise you to take advantage of them (often at a cost of $20-$35 USD). To properly assess the "value" of lifetime insurance, you should know a few things:
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Ship insurance premiums will be, by design, an incidental cost. They are paid using the in-game currency at the beginning of each coverage period.
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Ship insurance, and therefore LTI, will not cover upgraded components you've swapped for the stock components, nor will it cover cargo. These require separate policies.
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Ships are built by in-game corporations and, like automobile manufacturers, they will come out with new models of existing vehicles. The model year 2943 Crusader Mercury StarRunner with lifetime insurance I have with my pledge package may be superseded by a 2945 model, and a 2947 model after that.
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In-game items will be subject to wear and tear. Wear and tear can be mitigated, but not eliminated, through maintenance. In the distant future, my StarRunner will have become a rust-bucket prone to breaking down. Because insurance replaces the lost ship with a ship in equivalent condition, my lifetime insurance will do nothing for me but replace one rust bucket with another.