Out of Pod Experience

Well, the original funding was 20 million USD, updated to 23 to account for kickstarting & other costs. At one point, there was a fear of an obvious risk of "feature creeping" as the game approached the boundaries of the original development plan. Actually, many of the latest fancies will not be available upon release (that already was stated by the 26th million, IIRC).

As I said at the time, CR must stop promising stuff in exchange for money, and this new diea of letting peeps choose ships is just working fine. it keeps building community, he's not forced to make those ships available upon launch (nothing beyond 26th million is, except the Suadron 42 improved content) and certainly doesn't means a feature creep, minus for the part in which so far the ships are being conceptualized by a single guy and his to-do list is growing quickly.

Anyway, the bombers sale has downed the 30th million and so another ship has joiend the ranks, the Origin 890 JUMP, a luxuy yacht with multiple decks, ample windows and a bay for small craft.

Goal for 32 million has been set as the Aegis Surveyor, a dedicated salvage ship. Voting is open for the next stretch goal ship; if they keep going this way, probably additional ships will be the stretch goals up to the 35th million.

This voting is very tight, as there are three optiosn packed on a dime:

Smuggling ship 21%
Exploration ship 20%
Information Runner 20%

That, with 10,169 votes already cast... there's some passionate community there.

Well, SC has hit 3 stretch goals over a weekend -29, 30, and now 31 million.

The 31 million stretch goal is the RSI Orion, a dedicated miner ship:



The voting for the 32 million goal has picked a exploration ship, namely the Anvil Carrack:



So far the voting for the 33 million goal haves a tie up betwween Smuggling ship and Informaton Runner ship, both with 27% of 8,574 votes gathered in a bit over an hour.

Today is the "last"* day of LTI ships for veterans. Grey market is going to explode tomorrow.

* Somehow I'm sure there will be more LTI ships sales.

I expect grey market will explode in few hours with 2-3x prices on LTI ships. If I had veteran account I'd purchase a hundred of LTI freelancers-cutlasses-hornets right now.

edit: video of shooting range within hangar in SC. This content is "costly" according to CCP who spent $16 millions on R&D last year with ~0 new content in the end (except for handful of ships with design from mid-00 and few modules).

Butchered out of SC site

"Intakes

Intakes are the hydrogen ram scoops on the front of the spacecraft which fuel it by gathering spaceborne hydrogen.. Upgrades alter the effectiveness and the profile of the vehicle; the more effectively a ship takes in fuel the more efficient its engines. The tradeoff is that, unless countermeasures are installed, this also increases the radar signature. The appearance of the ship is altered as well: more primitive intakes look like physical fan blades, others glow different colors as heat capacity increases."

Considering the ships are mostly ships you get within 2-3 weeks of playing, and most only have 1 or 2 of those (and the vast majority have what's equal to a T1 frigate) I don't see it as p2w.

It's actually pretty interesting, to defend awesomeness of a game that doesn't really exist yet. People have to put an immense trust to SC devs. It's a leap of faith, I hope that SC believers won't be disappointed.

wow look at all these nerds buying fake spaceships for a fake game that doesn't even exist and probably never will

Technically the spaceships you buy in EVE aren't real either.

Elite: Dangerous looks like a proper space sim compared to a Pay2Win arcade space shooter like Star Citizen.

I like the ship design a lot more in Elite than in Star Citizen, at least.