star citizen.letters from the chairman.2014.work in progress

2 JANUARY 5TH 2014

WIP

LETTERS FROM THE CHAIRMANThe history of STAR CITIZEN

LETTERS FROM THE CHAIRMANThe history of STAR CITIZEN

22JANUARY 5TH 2014JANUARY 5TH 2014

WIPWIP

LETTERS FROM THE CHAIRMANCHAIRMANThe history of STAR CITIZENThe history of STAR CITIZEN

LETTERS FROM THE LETTERS FROM THE LETTERS FROM THE LETTERS FROM THE CHAIRMANCHAIRMANCHAIRMANCHAIRMANCHAIRMANCHAIRMANCHAIRMANThe history of STAR CITIZENThe history of STAR CITIZENCHAIRMANThe history of STAR CITIZENCHAIRMANCHAIRMANThe history of STAR CITIZENCHAIRMANThe history of STAR CITIZENThe history of STAR CITIZENThe history of STAR CITIZENThe history of STAR CITIZENThe history of STAR CITIZENThe history of STAR CITIZEN

2 JANUARY 5TH 2014 WIP 3

Cloud Imperium Games Corporation & Roberts Space Industries Corp., all images, artwork and textStar Citizen is a trademark of Cloud Imperium Games Corporation

kornelius, design and layout contact: [email protected], more eBooks, 2014

ContentSPrevious issueSEPTEMBER 9TH 2012 DECEMBER 22ND 2013...............................436 MillionJANUARY 5TH 2014 ..........................................................................................................537 MillionJANUARY 22ND 2014 ......................................................................................................738 MillionFEBRUARY 4TH 2014 ......................................................................................................839 MillionFEBRUARY 21ST 2014...............................................................................................1040 MillionMARCH 10TH 2014 ......................................................................................................1241 MillionMARCH 31ST 2014........................................................................................................1542 MillionAPRIL 14TH 2014 ...........................................................................................................1743 MillionAPRIL 28TH 2014 ..........................................................................................................1944 MillionMAY 23RD 2014 ..............................................................................................................2145 MillionJUNE 6TH 2014 ...............................................................................................................2346 MillionJUNE 12TH 2014 .............................................................................................................24Flight Model and Input ControlsJUNE 16TH 2014 .............................................................................................................26Intelligent Flight Control System JUNE 16TH 2014 .............................................................................................................32

SouRCeShttps://robertsspaceindustries.com/

http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/11wivt/i_am_chris_roberts_creator_of_wing_commander/

4 JANUARY 5TH 2014 WIP 52 SEPTEMBER 9TH 2012 DECEMBER 22ND 2013 3

Cloud Imperium Games Corporation & Roberts Space Industries Corp., all images, artwork and textStar Citizen is a trademark of Cloud Imperium Games Corporation

kornelius, design and layout, contact: [email protected], more ebooks, 2014

CONTENTSMeet Chris RobertsSEPTEMBER 9TH 2012 ...................................................................................................41 MillionOCTOBER 18TH 2012 ........................................................................................................6Physics Not a Dirty WordOCTOBER 20TH 2012 .......................................................................................................82 MillionOCTOBER 25TH 2012 ................................................................................................103 MillionNOVEMBER 8TH 2012 .............................................................................................12Multiplayer, Single Player and InstancingNOVEMBER 11TH 2012 ............................................................................................153.5 MillionNOVEMBER 14TH 2012 ...........................................................................................204 MillionNOVEMBER 16TH 2012 ...........................................................................................245.5 MillionNOVEMBER 19TH 2012 ...........................................................................................267 MillionNOVEMBER 27TH 2012 ...........................................................................................27Death of a SpacemanFEBRUARY 5TH 2013 ................................................................................................289 MillionAPRIL 29TH 2013 ...........................................................................................................36

Introducing Your RSI Space SuitAPRIL 30TH 2013...........................................................................................................3710 MillionMAY 6TH 2013 .................................................................................................................3912 MillionJULY 1ST 2013 ...................................................................................................................41The Star Citizen EconomyJULY 5TH 2013 .................................................................................................................4213 MillionJULY 5TH 2013 .................................................................................................................4814 MillionJULY 7TH 2013 .................................................................................................................4915 MillionAUGUST 1ST 2013 .........................................................................................................5016 MillionAUGUST 24TH 2013 ....................................................................................................5117 MillionAUGUST 31ST 2013 ......................................................................................................5218 MillionSEPTEMBER 6TH 2013 ............................................................................................5619 MillionSeptember 17TH 2013..............................................................................................5920 MillionSEPTEMBER 26TH 2013 .........................................................................................61Multiple Package ClaricationSEPTEMBER 27TH 2013..........................................................................................6421 MillionOCTOBER 8TH 2013 ...................................................................................................66

22 MillionOCTOBER 12TH 2013 .................................................................................................6823 MillionOCTOBER 17TH 2013 .................................................................................................6924 MillionOCTOBER 23RD 2013 ................................................................................................7125 MillionOCTOBER 26TH 2013 ................................................................................................7326 MillionNOVEMBER 3RD 2013 .............................................................................................7527 MillionNOVEMBER 11TH 2013 ............................................................................................7728 MillionNOVEMBER 19TH 2013 ...........................................................................................7829 Million NOVEMBER 22ND 2013 ..........................................................................................8030 MillionNOVEMBER 23RD 2013 ..........................................................................................8131 MillionNOVEMBER 25TH 2013...........................................................................................8232 MillionNOVEMBER 26TH 2013 ..........................................................................................8333 MillionNOVEMBER 26TH 2013 ..........................................................................................8434 MillionDECEMBER 7TH 2013 ...............................................................................................8535 MillionDECEMBER 22ND 2013 ...........................................................................................86

SOURCEShttps://robertsspaceindustries.com/

http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/11wivt/i_am_chris_roberts_creator_of_wing_commander/

36 MillionJAnUAry 5tH 2014

Greetings Citizens,We just hit $36 million in crowd funding! Whats even more impressive is that we reached this goal while Cloud Imperium was closed for the holidays, without any kind of special holiday promotion pretty staggering and its entirely down to the word of mouth and enthusiasm from all of you!Im happy to report that the Star Citizen Development team will be back on the job as of Monday, revitalized and with an ever-greater determination to do everything to make this the Best Damn Space Sim Ever. Your continued fi nancial support allows us to chase this goal with confi dence.

Starting on Monday, Ill be sitting down with the Dogfi ghting Module team to go over all your feedback from our live demo at the end of the year and schedule the remaining functionality, content and polish we want to achieve before we push it out to all of your hard drives!After this Ill be making my fi rst visits to our new o ces in Manchester and then Austin, where we are holding a summit with all the teams from around the world working on Star Citizen to schedule and coordinate this years work in detail.Last but not least, launching The Next Great Starship, exposing some great talent to

the community and allowing you to see the process of building ships up close for Star Citizen!I cant wait to get back to work!At $36 million, youve unlocked the fi rst of the backer-voted systems, Tamsa:Tamsa System Located near the fringe of Banu space, Tamsa System features a massive central star that has collapsed into a black hole. Only two planets remain in the system, a chthonian world and a gas giant located far from the black holes event horizon.For the $38 million goal, your votes have selected the fully aquatic planet option. Heres the description of the system were creating based on your input:Cano System is home to a G-Type Main Sequence Star thats almost identical to Earths. Of the four planets in the system, only one is inhabited: Carteyna. Located on the edge of habitable zone, Carteyna is a classic waterworld. Fortunately, its planetary axis constantly keeps the northern hemisphere away from the sun, which allowed for the water to freeze into the landmasses used as the initial landing zones in 2587. Multiple attempts have been made to try to convert the thick atmosphere into something breathable, but the process never seemed

Previous issueSePteMBer 9tH 2012 DeCeMBer 22nD 2013


to stick. In fact, over the years, every time theres a new technological development in geo-engineering, they test it out here on Carteyna only to yield the same result. Almost fi fty years ago, scientists discovered microscopic organisms in the very early phases of life in the depths of the oceans. This caused a massive uproar throughout the UEE at the prospect that they had been attempting to terraform a developing world. Carteyna was immediately placed under the Fair Chance Act. Unfortunately, Humans had been living here for almost over three hundred years and the families that had been here for generations felt that they had earned rights as residents. After years of debate in the political and scientifi c community, the population was allowed to stay, but only under certain conditions: future terraforming attempts have been outlawed and the Human population has been consolidated to a single arcology to minimize their impact on their environment and the development of whatever species is growing in the deep.Be sure and vote for the penultimate backer-decided system in the poll located below. Remember, these options just represent a small portion of what the additional budget allows us to do with Star Citizen!Thank you for your continued support.In honor of this accomplishment, Id like to share the result of an aspect of Star Citizen that I think makes us special compared to the normal game development process involving the community during development to get user feedback early to shape a better game. Heres the result of a lot Freelancer pilots requests now theyve had some time to get a feel for their ship in the Hangar: a revised design for an updated Freelancer cockpit featuring the greater visibility! And get ready: youll be seeing more of the Freelancer in the New Year.

CHRIS RoBeRtS

SHIeld ContRol: WIll tHeRe Be a PoSSIBIlIty to ContRol SHIeldS and PoWeR tHeM to tHe aRea you Want?

Yes. You will be able to increase or drop power to your shields depending on where you need to place your ships power output (i.e. in case you want to juice your ability maneuver or need to replenish our guns)

WIll StaR CItIZen FeatuRe aCtual SolaR SySteMS, WItH PlanetaRy oRBItS and SuCH?

Its not been decided whether we will actually model things like planetary orbits it may be overkill and I'm not sure people will notice it. But again it is a little like time of Day, so you never know!

today I RaGe QuIt In WInG CoMMandeR BeCauSe I JuSt FInISHed KIllInG a deStRoyeR WItH ICeMan But dIed on My Way HoMe to an aSteRoId. I HaVe Been tRyInG tHat MISSIon FoR a FeW dayS noW. Can I eXPeCt tHe SaMe dIFFICulty and SenSe oF ReWaRd FoR CoMPletInG SInGle PlayeR MISSIon? Hah!

Star Citizen is not going to be as easy as a modern game where there is no penalty for failing or being sloppy.

But I''ll try not to have something quiet as di cult as the the mission you're talking about that was the one WC mission that was maybe a little too hard (although the trick is to taunt the bombers) :-)

37 MillionJAnUAry 22nD 2014

Greetings Citizens,Youve pushed Star Citizen to $37 million in crowd funding! And that amount is only one of the numbers Im having trouble believing today. Let me share another one with you: 4,924. Thats the number of Organizations that have been created since the new system went online less than twelve hours ago. The breadth of the Star Citizen community continues to astonish: youve taken up our charge and are creating something truly unique.At $37 million, youve unlocked a new star system at the center of a nebula:tanGa SySteM At the heart of an unusual rectangular planetary nebula, lies Tanga System. The inner planets were engulfed as the star entered the red giant phase. The expanded habitable zone unfroze a small world on the former outer ring and for several hundred million years made it habitable. Life began to emerge and was just reaching a primitive state when the star collapsed into a white dwarf, throwing the planet back into a deep freeze, then blasting the atmosphere away with the resulting planetary nebula. Thats how the system was found: Only two worlds (speculation that there could have been three to four more) but both are dead planets with no atmosphere.The last poll was a hard-fought contest, but it looks like the explorers continue to have an advantage: the winning selection is an unexplored natural wonder. As a result, were adding a new system (based on a recent, real-world discovery) for

you to discover. We intend to stock it with some impressive surprises for the explorers who manage to locate it! Heres the description: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 fi rst Citizen to travel to UDS-2943-01-22 will have one hell of a view!Now its time to vote for the fi nal system stretch goal, which will be unlocked at $40 million. If past polls are an indication, it should be a close race between the three options. We have some interesting ideas for developing each one, so you can rest assured that whatever you select it will add a cool new facet to the Star Citizen world!Thank you for your continued support. Whether youre part of a thousand-person Organization or planning to explore the galaxy on your own, 2014 is going to be the biggest year yet for Star Citizen.

CHRIS RoBeRtS


38 MillionFeBrUAry 4tH 2014

Greetings Citizens,Weve hit the incredible $38 million mark in our crowd funding campaign. Its exciting seeing the Organizations feature ourish: backers are inviting more and more people into this world, and in the process theyre making even more possible for Star Citizens development. The $38 million unlock is the Cano System, home to a fully aquatic planet:Cano System is home to a G-Type Main Sequence Star thats almost identical to Earths. Of the four planets in the system, only one is inhabited: Carteyna. Located on the edge of habitable zone, Carteyna is a classic waterworld. Fortunately, its planetary axis constantly keeps the northern hemisphere away from the sun, which allowed for the water to freeze into the landmasses used as the initial landing zones in 2587. Multiple attempts have been made to try to convert the thick atmosphere into something breathable, but the process never seemed to stick. In fact, over the years, every time theres a new technological development in geo-engineering, they test it out here on Carteyna only to yield the same result. Almost fi fty years ago, scientists discovered microscopic organisms in the very early phases of life in the depths of the oceans. This caused a massive uproar throughout the UEE at the prospect that they had been attempting to terraform a developing world. Carteyna was immediately placed under the

KaBal SySteM The discovery of a new system is always an exciting time. Even the most jaded NavJumpers cant help entertaining the possibilities for scientifi c 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 fi nd 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 yearsoRetanI 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 systems 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 fi gure out a solution, but it was the fi rst 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.Thats it for the additional star system stretch goals. At $39 million, well announce a new goal that will help chart the course for the future of Star Citizen in a diff erent way and its one Im personally very excited about, so be sure to check back then and learn more!As always, thank you for your continued support of Star Citizen. Its hard to properly express how grateful we are to the community for letting us pursue this dream. I know that everyone is eager to see more of Star Citizen as quickly as possiblemore ships, more systems, more gameplayand I promise you that were just as eager to get that out there. Stay tuned: big things are happening in the verse!P.S. Everyone curious about how the Banu Merchantman will land should check out the attached concept art. Please remember that this is an early WIP and shape, form and function can change as we drill down on the inner workings of the Banu Merchantman!

CHRIS RoBeRtS

Fair Chance Act. Unfortunately, Humans had been living here for almost over three hundred years and the families that had been here for generations felt that they had earned rights as residents. After years of debate in the political and scientifi c community, the population was allowed to stay, but only under certain conditions: future terraforming attempts have been outlawed and the Human population has been consolidated to a single arcology to minimize their impact on their environment and the development of whatever species is growing in the deep. Our fi nal star system poll was the closest weve ever run, with only a few votes separating the Tevarin Ghost World and the Lost Human Colony. Since it sounds like Star Citizens backers are equally excited about both concepts, weve decided to break the rules and include both concepts!


39 MillionFeBrUAry 21St 2014

Greetings Citizens,We have reached another crowd funding record! Even though the team is heads down working to fi nish the Dogfi ghting Module, our backers are continuing to spread the word and make Star Citizen a success. To everyone who has joined recently: welcome! To everyone who has helped us reach this point: thank you!At $39 million you unlocked the penultimate user-chosen star system! Heres the description:UDS-2943-01-22 SYSTEM Breaking news: UEEastrophysicists 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 fi rst Citizen to travel to UDS-2943-01-22 will have one hell of a view!

I would also like to share some artwork of the UEEs new Javelin-class destroyer. You may have caught a glimpse of the Javelin on this weeks _Wingmans Hangar and now Id like to share a closer look! The ship was designed by David Hobbins. David has been working hard to create not just a cool exterior, but also an interior that evokes the crowded corridors of a real world destroyer. The plan is for it to be modular, with parts we can swap out for diff erent roles (assault destroyer, LRR destroyer and so on!) The Javelin is still in the conceptual stages but I think its cool enough to share with the community!As I said last time, Im very excited about our next stretch goal. Our previous stretch goals have been about expanding Star Citizen immediately; adding new ships, new systems and more. Each one has added something to the game while allowing us to widen our bandwidth: hire more employees, expand our development facilities, purchase new technology and so on. Now its time to look a little further in the future!Star Citizen isnt just about the game we launch with. Were 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

I hope you will agree with me that this is an exciting goal, and that you will join me in this commitment to Star Citizens future! Thank you for continuing to make Star Citizen possible and for continuing to help it grow. Remember that next time, we will reveal the $42 million goal which should be a fi tting objective for such an auspicious number!

CHRIS RoBeRtS

technology. The game wont be a static experience: we want to build Star Citizen in a way that the experience will be fresh in fi ve 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 theyre also something we know we cant 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.Thats 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.


40 MillionMArCH 10tH 2014

Greetings Citizens,Weve done it again! The Star Citizen community has pushed us to another incredible crowd funding goal: $40 million, a number that would have been an impossible dream at the start of the games development. Im constantly amazed by the continued support we receive and how this community manages to grow every day. Since the last milestone weve added over 10,000 new citizens! Some say that space sims are niche. Im not so sure!At $40 million, you unlocked the last of the backer-voted star systems. Since the results of the last poll were so close, we decided to include both of the top two options:KaBal SySteM The discovery of a new system is always an exciting time. Even the most jaded NavJumpers cant help entertaining the possibilities for scientifi c 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 fi nd 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 yearsoRetanI 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 systems 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 fi gure out a solution, but it was the fi rst 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.

Per tradition, we are announcing the $42 million stretch goal today. 42 is a celebrated number for Star Citizen. Before the crowd funding campaign launched, I teased the game to my oldest fans with theRSI website. To enter you had to guess the password. The hint was Life, the Universe and Everything. We expected most Sci-Fans to get the reference to Douglas Adams Hitch Hikers Guide to the Galaxy. We planned to launch the teaser site 42 days out from the announcement however the realities of web development intervened but we did manage to work in a lasting reference to the projects humble beginnings by using 42 in the name of the legendary fi ghter squadron you aspire to join in the single-player adventure, Squadron 42!Its only appropriate for the $42 million stretch goal that we do something that recognizes the role that the answer to Life, The Universe and Everything has played in this amazing journey.Star Citizens equivalent of The Hitch Hikers Guide is the Observist section of Star Citizens Galactapedia.The Galactapedia isnt a simple wiki or a static how-to guide: its going to integrate directly into the game universe and respond in real time as players steer the course of Star Citizens world. We envision making the news with an impressive feat in the Galactapedia as a major goal for many players: if youre the one who fi nally defeats the Dread Pirate Roberts, charts a new Jump

Point or makes the Advocacys Most Wanted list, your actions will become memorialized for all time in the Galactapedia! Whats more, the Galactapedia will be available both inside Star Citizen and through the RSI website.With all of this in mind, we have a few additions to the game and some rewards for our loyal backers at the $42 million level! Read on:


uPdated oBSeRVISt GuIde Additional funding from the $42 million level will go to expanding the website area of the Galactapedia: expect to see holographic ships, items and navigation interface in 3D! Imagine admiring your ships or planning your loadouts right here at the RSIwebsite.

eXoGlaS ConCePt aRtEXPLORER-CLASS MOBIGLAS RIG Every player who backs before we hit $42 million will start the game with their own, visually distinctive mobiGlas ExoGlas rig which can be used to access the Observist at any time. Ive charged the mobiGlas team with a very di cult task: creating a realistic interface that will help keep your aff airs in order in an expansive galaxy that we hope players will expand in unknown directions. Its almost like building our own in fi ction operating system for an imagined future, and its very diff erent task than building spaceships. This backer-exclusive mobiGlas kit will come pre-loaded with additional galactic information that new players would ordinarily need to explore or barter to fi ll out; its our way of honoring the information youve collected about the Star Citizen universe through the RSI site and community over the past year!GladIuS The Squadron 42 team will develop an additional fi ghter for the game, the Aegis Dynamics Gladius-class light fi ghter. The Gladius will be the fi rst fi ghter

built entirely from concept to CryEngine in the UK! Heres the o cial description: The Aegis Gladius is the UEEs reigning light short-range patrol fi ghter. A single-seat ship with no room for expansion, the Gladius is fast, maneuverable and capable of punching far above its weight. The main advantage to the design is simplicity: cheap to produce, easy to repair and outfi t and quick to train new pilots on. The Gladius is an aging design nearing the end of its life-cycle, although iterative updates have kept it the most nimble fi ghter in the active eet.

toWel And of course, everyone who backs before we hit $42 million will also receive a towel for their hangar. Dont explore the galaxy without it!Remember that our stretch goals are examples, ways of showing you how we are improving the game with the additional funding and ways to thank you for your early support. The full impact of each additional dollar is actually felt across the board: the project currently employs over 200 people. As a result, every dollar allows us to support this large team and helps improve Star Citizen in both scope and scale.Thank you for your support, for making this possible. I cant wait to show you what we have in store for Star Citizen; stay tuned!

P.S., A number of Citizens have asked why we stopped giving out stretch goal rewards to backers (like the repair bot and the space suit off ered early in the campaign.) The truth is, we had so many new features we wanted to discuss that the practice slipped our mind. For the next set of stretch goals, were going to give you in-game rewards and were letting you pick what you want. Please vote in the poll below to pick the $43 million unlock reward. The winner will be described in the next Chairman post and the option with the lowest votes will be eliminated from contention!

CHRIS RoBeRtS

41 MillionMArCH 31St 2014

Greetings Citizens,Weve hit another record-setting crowd funding level: $41 million!Im incredibly happy to hit this goal as it green-lights a very important research project aimed at improving Star Citizens long term future. With this funding, well be looking into procedural generation to help build the universe out in a greater detail and scope in ways we didnt think possible when we started developing the game! We will have some exciting announcements to make down the line involving some of the talent weve been talking to about helping us with procedural system and planet building.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.

oCuluS & FaCeBooKLike many of you,Iwas genuinely surprised to hear the news that Oculus had been acquired by Facebook. There has been a lot written this past week about the acquisition and some notable people have come out for and against. I know a lot of backers and gamers feel like theyve been betrayed by Oculus selling out.Im not one of them.Why?From the moment I fi rst saw the Rift, I knew it was something special. I can tell you fi rsthand that the team behind the headset has a true passion for making VR tomorrows standard.In order for the Rift to succeed, it really needed a lot more funding than it has raised from its past two VC rounds. Hardware is expensive: its one thing to perfect the technology, but before you can sell a single Rift, you need to spend hundreds of millions on manufacturing and building a supply chain if you intend to make the Rift (and Virtual Reality) relevant for the mass market. Microsoft invested well over a billion dollars just to launch the Xbox One this fall! My hope is that Facebooks funding will let Oculus compete with much bigger companies and deliver an attractively priced consumer


headset at the scale needed for mass market adoption without the loss of the incredible passion that convinced me to back the project. I havent heard or seen anything to the contrary so until I do we are fully committed to supporting the Rift.For an interesting insiders view on the benefi ts of the acquisition, I would recommend everyone read Oculus new Chief Scientist Michael Abrashs blog post on the subject.Now to answer the myriad forum threads that popped up worrying about the possibility of Cloud Imperium being acquired by another, bigger company dont worry! We have no plans nor interest in following this path! We dont need to go to anyone with deep pockets to make OUR dream a reality. To mass-produce hardware like the Rift, you need an outlay of hundreds of millions of

dollars. Luckily our ships are digital so we have hardly any cost of goods, just the cost of developing the universe of Star Citizen and running servers that Star Citizens universe will be simulated on. Thanks to the generosity of the Star Citizen community we have these two things coveredAnd last but not least Im having way to much fun building the universe of my dreams for everyone to adventure in! Ive been down the big company acquisition route twice before and theres a reason I am making Star Citizen totally independently!

Poll ReSultSLast time, we asked you to vote for the next stretch goals player reward and the resounding winner wasUEE Marine combat armor! You can read more about the armor, which will be unlocked at $43 million, now:

OMNI ROLE COMBAT ARMOR (ORC) MK9

Manufacturer: CDS (Clark Defense Systems)The standard Marine armor for almost twenty years, ORC armor is prohibitively more expensive than standard-issue infantry body armor used by Army Ground Forces, but the Marines boast far fewer numbers and tend to make compelling arguments to get what they ask for. Clark Defense SystemsORC armor is created of composite mesh of fi bers reinforced with ablative plates, off ering a modest protection against both energy and kinetic weapons. While it doesnt off er the same protection of the Marines proprietary Nail-armor or their SpecOps variants, ORCmk9 armor is a baseline solution for any number of situations the average Marine will encounter on any given day. Besides, in the words of Lt. Col Armin Trask, you wanna know the best armor? Not getting shot.Weve eliminated the least popular reward (bonus UEC) and started a second poll; be sure to vote for what youd like as the $44 million goal below!

IS It BeGInneR FRIendly FoR neWBIeS WHo HaVe neVeR Played a SPaCe SIM BeFoRe oR IS tHeRe SoMe KnoWledGe needed? MeanInG It IS eaSy to ContRol tHe SHIPS oR doeS It taKe a lonG leaRnInG CuRVe? alSo aRe tHe ContRolS on a KeyBoaRd not MoRe dIFFICult tHan on a GaMePad oR JoyStICK?

It will be like Wing Commander & Freelancer. It should be simple to learn the basics and you should have fun ying the early missions and it wont overwhelm you with the "sim" of it all. But once you get comfortable there will be a lot more nuance and detail you can delve into if you so wish. Keyboard is supported but personally I think that would be more di cult than a joystick or mouse (which are also supported).

42 MillionAPrIl 14tH 2014

Greetings Citizens,

$42 million in crowd funding! I cant think of a better symbolic victory than reaching that number in crowd funding. The meaning of life, the universe and everything is now the amount pledged to let us build a new universe!

Id like to thank so many of you for coming out to PAX East to see the Arena Commander reveal. Well be sharing some additional footage later in the week to let everyone see what we werent able to show at the event! Technical glitches aside, it was extremely gratifying to see everyones reactions; everyone who got their hands on the game loved it, and more importantly, they immediately understood where were going for Star Citizen. I cant wait to be able to share it with the entire community that has made the project possible.

At $42 million, you unlocked several celebratory goals:

uPdated oBSeRVISt GuIde Additional funding from the $42 million level will go to expanding the website area of the Galactapedia: expect to see holographic ships, items and navigation interface in 3D! Imagine

admiring your ships or planning your loadouts right here at the RSI website.

EXPLORER-CLASS MOBIGLAS RIG Every player who backed before we hit $42 million will start the game with their own, visually distinctive mobiGlas ExoGlas rig which can be used to access the Observist at any time. Ive charged the mobiGlas team with a very di cult task: creating a realistic interface that will help keep your aff airs in order in an expansive galaxy. Its almost like building our own in fi ction operating system for an imagined future, and its very diff erent task than building spaceships. This backer-exclusive mobiGlas kit will come pre-loaded with additional galactic information that new players would ordinarily need to explore or barter to fi ll out; its our way of honoring the information youve collected about the Star Citizen universe through the RSI site and community over the past year!

The towel features the UEE logo on one side and an Observist logo on the reverse.

GladIuS The Squadron 42 team will develop an additional fi ghter for the game, the Aegis Dynamics Gladius-class light fi ghter. The Gladius will be the fi rst fi ghter built entirely from concept to CryEngine in the


UK! Heres the o cial description: The Aegis Gladius is the UEEs reigning light short-range patrol fi ghter. A single-seat ship with no room for expansion, the Gladius is fast, maneuverable and capable of punching far above its weight. The main advantage to the design is simplicity: cheap to produce, easy to repair and outfi t and quick to train new pilots on. The Gladius is an aging design nearing the end of its life-cycle, although iterative updates have kept it the most nimble fi ghter in the active eet.

toWel And of course, everyone who backs before we hit $42 million will also receive a towel for their hangar. Dont explore the galaxy without it!

The team has put together some preliminary art for the towel, included in this post. Use your Observist towels with pride, theyre only available to backers who supported us before this level! (Just like Arena Commander itself, weve tried to come up with fi ction to go

with the towel: its the incentive reward your character got for subscribing to The Observist in the fi rst place.)

For the $44 million goal, youve voted for an additional hangar room. The Hangar room system is currently being developed at Behaviour and will premiere with the upcoming asteroid hangar. Backers who support the game before we hit $44 million will have the following added to their hangars:

StellaR CaRtoGRaPHy Walk among the distant horizons youve charted in Star Citizens 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 fi nd 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, its more than a map: its your digital diary!

$42 MIllIon toWel damage states.

The development team is back at work today getting the dogfi ghting module ready for its full release. As always, thank you: none of what you saw last week would have been possible without the support of our backers. Hitting $42 million means that even more resources are going into the verse! Finally, remember to vote in the poll below, which will select the $45 million stretch goal reward item.

43 MillionAPrIl 28tH 2014

Greetings Citizens,Another incredible accomplishment by Star Citizens backers $43 million!Id like to begin todays letter by showing you where one of our previous stretch goals is going. At $42 million, we unlocked the Gladius light fi ghter for Squadron 42. The team at Foundry 42 has been working on the ship and Im pleased to show you some of the early WIP today! The Gladius is intended to be an older fi ghter that doesnt have the arms and armor of a Hornet but that can maneuver and strike quickly.At $43 million, every backer (to this point) gets a set of marine combat armor added to their accounts! A full description is below, but youll learn a lot more about what this is good for as we lock down more information about Star Citizens FPS module.

OMNI ROLE COMBAT ARMOR (ORC) MK9

Manufacturer: CDS (Clark Defense Systems) The standard Marine armor for almost twenty years, ORC armor is prohibitively more expensive than standard-issue infantry body armor used by Army Ground Forces, but the Marines boast far fewer numbers and tend to make compelling arguments to get what they ask for. Clark Defense Systems ORC armor is created of composite mesh of fi bers reinforced with ablative plates, off ering a modest protection against both energy and

kinetic weapons. While it doesnt off er the same protection of the Marines proprietary Nail-armor or their SpecOps variants, ORCmk9 armor is a baseline solution for any number of situations the average Marine will encounter on any given day. Besides, in the words of Lt. Col Armin Trask, you wanna know the best armor? Not getting shot.The votes are in and the winner of the $45 million reward is the mystery object! Its pretty cool seeing the community take a chance on something unknown instead of going for a free weapon or other upgrade. And you wont be disappointed! The mystery object is more than just a piece of are, its a puzzle players will someday compete to solve. Where the artifact lead you? A lost Hadesian outpost, a cache of technology, a hidden jump point? Its up to you to fi nd out!

HadeSIan aRtIFaCt The mystery of what happened in Hades has been one of the great archeological puzzles ever since the system was discovered in the early 26th Century. The evidence suggests that the Hadesians nearly erased their entire civilization in devastating civil war that left a planet cracked in half, but so many questions remained. Who were these Hadesians? How did the war get started? Over the centuries, even the public became enamored by the mystery of this system. This


It IS PoSSIBle to HaVe a SeaMleSS tRanSItIon BetWeen SPaCe TO A PLANET (LANDING ON IT)?

Not in the initial release if you mean actually ying down through the atmosphere and exploring it in the same level of detail the ships are built. The design is already ambitious as it is. It's something long term that I would love to be able to do, but its a matter of content We can build a whole universe as we're not having to detail each world out to the fi delity of the ships. To do this you would need a whole other level of computer and content.

curiosity was in amed when scientists recently discovered a lone Hadesian artifact on the black market of all places. Trinket manufacturers quickly tried to capitalize on the resurgence of interest by building exact copies of the artifact for sale to the public, even replicating the unidentifi ed symbols along the base

I dont want to sound repetitive after so many levels, but thank you again for your support. Every additional dollar goes to Star Citizens development and makes it a better game. Please remember to take the penultimate player reward stretch goal poll, listed below. Its hard to believe weve come this far, but the winner will be the $46 million stretch goal!

44 MillionMAy 23rD 2014

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 cant wait to share the fi rst taste of what youve been helping us build. Getting to dogfi ght 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 fi nal week push to get Arena Commander V.8 out the door has begun here, so Ill keep this letter short but I would like to share a piece of concept art. Youre looking at what we call the negotiation room in the Banu Merchantman freighter. Its 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 dogfi ghting, were putting more and more thought into how systems like cargo and trading will take shape. Were 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 ight!) As the most recent set of changes to our preliminary ship stats re ect, transporting cargo is going to be more complex than just fi nding the ship with the highest storage capacity its going to involve fi nding 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 youve charted in Star Citizens 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 fi nd 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, its more than a map: its 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 off ers advanced scanning capabilities for prospecting asteroids above and beyond their baseline systems. SBit is a FIB-based system that oods the scan-zone with energy then processes the frequency of the energy re ected 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 o cially released.

Again, thank you for your continued support. That support means a bigger, better game the fi rst part of which youre going to play very soon. Remember to vote in the poll below, which will determine the fi nal player reward stretch goal!

CHRIS RoBeRtS

45 MillionJUne 6tH 2014

Greetings Citizens,Weve hit $45 million in crowd funding, so I think its safe to say that the Freelancer is a winner! I think the Freelancer is a great microcosm of the Star Citizen experience. Backers chose the original design during the initial campaign, they petitioned us to update the cockpit and now here it is, beautifully fi nished in your Hangars with a full set of variants. This isnt just a ship you helped pay for: its a ship you helped create.At $45 million, youve unlocked one of our backer-selected rewards, the mysterious Hadesian artifact. We have some cool plans for exactly what this will kick off in the Persistent Universe but youll have to explore that aspect of the game yourself! Here are the details:

HadeSIan aRtIFaCt The mystery of what happened in Hades has been one of the great archeological puzzles ever since the system was discovered in the early 26th Century. The evidence suggests that the Hadesians nearly erased their entire civilization in devastating civil war that left a planet cracked in half, but so many questions remained. Who were these Hadesians? How did the war get started? Over the centuries, even the public became enamored by the mystery of this system. This curiosity was in amed when scientists recently discovered a lone Hadesian artifact on the black market of all places. Trinket manufacturers

quickly tried to capitalize on the resurgence of interest by building exact copies of the artifact for sale to the public, even replicating the unidentifi ed symbols along the base

For your fi nal are reward, youve voted for the Engine Tuning Kit. Heres the newly-unlocked o cial description:

enGIne tunInG KIt Wilkes & Federman MaxTune Kit has become one of the best-selling starter kits for the discerning home enthusiast. Featured in Whitleys latest Steal of the Year issue, this kit comes with everything the edgling engineer needs to take a deeper look into the mechanics of their engine. With a Tap Analyzer, you will be able to view your engines current output and energy draw numbers in an easy and comprehensible way. Use the thirty-eight piece omnitool to access your engine to start tweaking. Wilkes & Federman is not responsible for damage incurred after tuning your engine. Please consult with manufacturers warranty before performing work.I hope youre enjoying your Freelancers, and that you like todays commercial. As you know, our initial plan was to produce brochures and commercials for the fi rst set of pledge ships. Youve seen the Aurora, 300i, Hornet and Freelancer now, and the Constellation and Cutlass are in production.

CHRIS RoBeRtS


46 MillionJUne 12tH 2014

Greetings Citizens,In my last letter, just a few days ago, I wrote that the Freelancer seems to be a hit. Lets modify that: at $46 million, we have solid proof that our interstellar pickup truck is a superstar! Thank you for your support. Its especially gratifying to see that backers are interested in roles beyond traditional space combat; the success of the trading and exploration-oriented Freelancer is a good reminder that Arena Commander is just our fi rst step into building a living universe!

The $46 million stretch goal is one of the player-voted in-game rewards. 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 off ers advanced scanning capabilities

for prospecting asteroids above and beyond their baseline systems. SBit is a FIB-based system that oods the scan-zone with energy then processes the frequency of the energy re ected 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 o cially released.

The winner of the last letters commercial poll is the Retaliator! (It was neck and neck with the Avenger until pulling away at the last minute.) As a result, it will be the next commercial we put into production following the Constellation and Cutlass. Our writers are already busy imagining how to put together a cool and diff erent commercial for the bomber!

In honor of the poll, Id like to share a couple of images of the Retaliator. Youre looking at an in-engine shot of an early model and a view of the internal weapons bay. These images are actually a few weeks old; Ive asked the team in the UK to put together a small Retaliator gallery to show you the current status. That will be available tomorrow.This brings me to the topic of stretch goals. When we started the Star Citizen campaign, the purpose of the stretch goals was to make things we had imagined but didnt think we could aff ord possible: adding capital ship systems, studying procedural generation, hiring additional artists to build more ships at once and the like. The additional funding continues to expand the scope of the game and make what were doing possible but its becoming more and more di cult to quantify that with more stretch goals (and to explain that to the rest of the world, which likes to focus only on how much money weve made.)My preference would be to use these letters going forward to update you on what were already doing with the money; sharing additional parts of Star Citizens development. We would also continue to award are and other extras to our backers as we hit milestones, whether theyre funding or schedule-related. If we discover additional technologies or come up with new elements to the games design we want to incorporate, well let you know about those as they happen. But this is a decision for the community: let me know what you think in the poll below.

CHRIS RoBeRtS

aCCoRdInG to tHeSe aRtWoRKS It SeeMS We Can FReely MoVe on a oR MoRe PlanetS. IS tHat CoRReCt? do We alSo HaVe SoMetHInG to do on tHeRe, lIKe MISSIonS? oR only In SPaCe?

The on planet stuff will be like Freelancer / Privateer. You will be able to visit a few locations to buy / sell / upgrade ships, buy / sell commodities, get missions, listen to rumors in the bar and so on. In space you'll be able to move around in fi rst person on spaceships, including boarding and capturing (or defending) larger spaceship s/ installations.

tHe GaMe SoundS GReat But VeRy, VeRy aMBItIouS WItHout SoMe BIG FundInG and you Won't Really CoMe CloSe to tHe ReQuIRed aMount oF Money WItH CRoWdFundInG?

We have private funding (not publisher funding). The crowd funding side helps to determine how ambitious we can be upfront. The overall game wont cost $20M upfront, but probably by the end of the fi rst year of public release we will have spent that much between the original game and the ongoing content that year.


Flight Model and Input Controls

JUne 16tH 2014

Greetings Citizens,Its really great to see so many of you taking to space to try out the fi rst taste of what space combat will be in Star Citizen. I, like the rest of the team have been avidly watching the Twitch streams of backers playing and reading the forums for your feedback. Two of the hot topics of debate have been the Flight Model and the advantage or disadvantage of various input devices. So I thought I would take a moment of your time to share some insight on the two topics.

FlIGHt ModelMost space games (including my past ones) greatly simplify the simulation, usually as an atmospheric ight model without gravity and air resistance ships have predefi ned pitch, roll and yaw rates, linear acceleration (that is applied to a simplifi ed point mass) and a capped top speed. When you want to turn, the joystick or mouse input is mapped directly

to the specifi ed turn rate irrelevant of the ships moment of inertia. Damage is usually handled as a multiplier on the turn rates and linear acceleration.Star Citizen doesnt do that. We model what would be needed on an actual spaceship, including correct application of thrust at the places where the thrusters are attached to the hull of the ship in our model moment of inertia, mass changes and counter thrust are VERYnecessary. Star Citizens physical simulation of space ight is based on what would actually happen in space.There were a couple of reasons why we went this direction 1. Because we were planning on modeling and simulating spaceships with a fi delity that hadnt been seen before I felt we needed a simulation that would let the player have diff erent ight behavior if a thruster is damaged, a wing is blown off or a pilot overloads his ship with weapons and

Chris Roberts walks you through arena Commanders physics model

ammunition? I wanted a system that could feel distinct for a huge variety of ships, with wildly diff erent sizes and roles because in Star Citizen you can go from a single seater ship 15 meters in length to a huge capital ship over 1km in size crewed by many players. I wanted these ships to come with their own identity and feel much like similar sized cars, even if equivalent in mass can feel radically diff erent. I wanted ships to have their own personality not just a slower of faster version of the base ship.2. The second is that Star Citizen will have a signifi cant amount of player vs. player combat. I dont know how many people played Wing Commander Armada (the fi rst Wing Commander game to feature multiplayer) but it wasnt that much fun in battle mode (the head to head mode). When you design a single player game you can deliberately dumb down the AI to allow the player to get on the tail and shoot down multiple enemies, which gives the player a sense of achievement. Theres nothing more fun than single handily clearing a wave of 10 enemy Kilrathi fi ghters. But lets be honest, in single player games the ability for the player to gun down waves of enemies has less to do with the skill of the player because the player is usually overpowered in respect to the base enemies he will fi ght. You cant do this in player vs player, and its likely that multiple players will have the same ship. Without a sophisticated simulation and ight model, with lots of options for a pilot to uidly try diff erent tactics to get the upper hand the battles can end up as a frustrating stalemate when both pilots have the same ship as no one can get on the others tail because you dont have the same forces that aff ect air combat (namely gravity and air resistance) to bleed energy from the maneuvers.These reasons are why we went out of our way to fully simulate the physics that would involve controlling and moving a ship in space with no short cuts.

In the very same way we also simulate the ship systems. Every function is tied to individual items that are plugged into the ship the weapons, the thrusters, power plant, heat sinks, radar, fuel tank, batteries, targeting system, CPU, HUD and even the Intelligent Flight Control System (IFCS) are all items that tie into various pipes that connect the systems theres a pipe for power, heat, fuel and CPUcycles. The targeting computer needs power from the Power Plant and CPU cycles from the Ships Computer, positional information from the Radar to resolve targets. If there arent enough CPU cycles to go around the targets will resolve slower, not enough power and the targeting computer may stop functioning all together. If you dont draw off enough heat from the weapons, they may overheat, malfunction or even become damaged. If one of your wings gets blown off with its attached heat sinks, you better scale back your heat output.By fully simulating both the systems and physics of powered space ight we allow for a huge amount of emergent behavior and variety in the fi nal game. Ship load out becomes very important not just for functionality but also for actual ight and responsiveness. Just like in real military aviation design, you could decide to have redundant systems for better battle survivability or you could maximize your hitting power at the expense of maneuverability.Sounds pretty cool right? So why all the fuss?Proper space ight simulation is inherently diff erent than an atmospheric ight model. In space there is no aerodynamic force (lift or drag) and so both angular and linear inertia becomes much more important. Unless you apply a counter force to arrest the angular or linear momentum of an object in space it will continue unaltered.


When a player pulls back on the stick the thrusters apply thrust to create rotation, which accelerates the ships angular velocity. When you let the stick return to zero or move it the other way, the IFCS now has to apply counter thrust to fi rst retrograde the current angular velocity and then move you towards the new desired angular velocity. Unless the ship has hugely overpowered thrusters, this will not happen instantly. As the IFCS isnt clairvoyant and doesnt know when you wish to change angular velocity it cant anticipate your actions, so unless the pilot himself eases into his desired orientation, its likely he will overshoot it. Think of it as stopping in a car; you normally have a good feel for your stopping distance and so when approaching a stop sign you start to slow down. You dont expect to go from 50 mph to zero instantly. This behavior is quite diff erent from an airplane which uses control surfaces that alter the air ow over the wings/tail to maneuver. In this case the angular velocity change is normally directly proportional to the rudder/ aps position.

This means that to a certain extent you need to anticipate where you want to be and ease into that position. If youre used to an atmospheric model when fi rst ying in a model where momentum is much more important it is pretty easy to overshoot your desired heading. Then as the counter thrust isnt instant you can overcorrect the other way. This is why the ship can feel twitchy when trying to line up a target.As this is diff erent than what people are used to, a portion of our community clearly feels the current ight model is wrong.

But if you think about what we are doing, we actually allow for a LOT more variation and nuance in ight and combat than a simplifi ed Wing Commander/X-Wing style ight model. Like learning to drive a car really wellit

requires some learning. You have to anticipate where you want to be and plan for it.Does this mean I think the system is perfect?No!This is one of the big reasons we wanted to get it into all of your hands. Its been great seeing people play the game and provide their feedback. Its been really great to see quite a few people who fi rst hated the ight model, come around to seeing its potential after some other members of the community have shared their insights. This doesnt mean everyone is sold but its always heartening to see people being open to new possibilities.But that doesnt mean that Im satisfi ed with where we are. My goal is to have all the nuance that I describe above for the players that want to go deep but also make it accessible in the way Wing Commander was for someone new to the game (and genre).The key thing to remember is that the Intelligent Flight Control System is just the interface between the physical simulation of the ships movement via its thrusters and the force they exert. Its not the model. I see a lot of posts talking about the desire for Newtonian mode. The physics simulation is already a full Newtonian rigid body simulation. For what we are trying to achieve there will always need to be a y by wire interface between the players input and the actual physics as no human can simultaneously direct eight thrusters simultaneously, specifying their thrust and attitude to achieve desired movement. Within the confi nes of physical reality the IFCS can do pretty much anything we want. The key is determining what we want the players input to map to.The fi rst pass of various modes basic IFCS, De-Coupled, G-Safe and Comstab are all diff erent modes that we felt would be

useful at various times. It doesnt mean it is the end of the modes, or how they are implemented is the only way they will be. A lot of people have been asking for true 6DOF available all the time basically having strafe available during normal IFCS ight mode and to make strafe additive to the ships velocity in decoupled mode. These are all things that we will experiment with, along with quite a few other options e.g., an additional G-Safe mode that is turn limited rather than speed limited and were also going to be playing with thruster power as currently the maneuvering thrusters are about a half to a third of the power of the main engines which is fairly overpowered Just be warned the weaker the maneuvering thrusters the more the ship will slide at speed before vectoring to the desired direction.To give you even more insight into how the IFCS works, John Pritchett, the engineer who wrote the current implementation of the IFCShas written an in-depth piece that goes into the detail of how the system works. I hope you will all appreciate the level of detail we are aiming for in Star Citizen. Dont forget there is so much more to the game than just Arena Commander

and even in Arena Commander there is so much that cannot be appreciated yet as we are blocked by a work in progress HUD and lack of items to equip your ship with both of which will open up new possibilities and tactics.

ContRol deVICeSThere has been a lot of debate about mouse control vs. joystick control and the worry from some portion of the community that the mouse scheme makes the game too arcadey and HOTAS users feeling that their control mechanism of choice has not been supported properly.

Firstly let me state the goal for Star Citizen will be controller agnostic. No one control mechanism should have an advantage over the others. Personally I am a joystick pilot (either through HOTAS or Gamepad) as opposed to a mouse pilot. I just feel like I have more precise ight control with a joystick. In our various studios there is a huge variety of controller use some prefer mouse, some joystick, some HOTAS and some gamepad. This is the best guarantee that any one control mode will not dominate.


Having said this we recognize that the control input schemes need work in exibility/customization to achieve this goal.One of our top priorities for Arena Commander is to allow users to customize their key bindings form inside the game. We are actively working on this and hope to deliver something next month.We also will be working on the various HOTAS profi les, as well as fi ne tuning the control fi ltering for joysticks to hopefully allow for crisper maneuvering during smaller movements of the stick. There are also some additional head look modes that havent been implemented yet that will allow a joystick player to take advantage of the gimbaled weapons the way the mouse player can. And of course if you feel the mouse, with its greater precision allows for better aiming you could always y the ship with a joystick and look with a mouse!

yaW VS RollThere has also been some discussion around the fact that yawing does not impact your pilot in terms of negative G eff ects (i.e. the black and red out of the vertical G forces).

There are a few things to consider here. First, pure yawing turns, without any bank, are certainly possible in space, but that isnt the optimal way to turn. You can generate more thrust by combining your side and lower thrusters than you can with just your side thrusters. IFCS automatically banks a ship to optimize its turning thrust, and this is where vertical G forces come into play (note this is diff erent from atmospheric ight where banking is necessary for turn stability). Second, the amount of bank in any yawing turn will depend on the amount of side thrust that your ship can provide, which means the amount of vertical G forces in a yawing turn will vary based on the situation. Third, black/redout and loss of consciousness are consequences of vertical g-force exposure only, where blood is being either drained from or forced into the pilots head. Properly constrained pilots can withstand very high levels of horizontal G forces without any signifi cant loss of cognitive ability.For horizontal g-forces, the limiting factor is structural. Unfortunately, that limitation has not yet been implemented in our model. Once it is, there will be consequences orces). Once it is, there will be consequences

for extreme unbanked turns. Instead of blacking out, you might rip off a thruster or a wing from the sheer magnitude of the horizontal Gs. And if enabled, G-safe mode will guarantee the structural integrity of your ship by limiting the amount of thrust in any maneuver.

tuRRetInGA portion of the community has expressed concern about the ability for players to turret by going into decoupled mode and spin around to fi re at their target, feeling this removes the skill level of dogfi ghting. I know people think this but I can assure you that in our internal multiplayer tests pretty no one exclusively decouples and turrets as they would get destroyed very quickly. The key to surviving a dogfi ght is about being constantly on the move and not being predicable with your movements sitting still or moving in a constant vector (which is what happens when you decouple) will get you killed. Decoupled mode is best used by going into brie y for a quick orientation change then dropping back into coupled mode. As we tweak the power of the maneuvering thrusters to make the main engine more signifi cant going into decoupled mode, making a quick orientation change and going back into normal ight will be a great way to maximize your available thrust for a quick vector change. I know that some people think that being able to change your orientation much quicker than you can in an atmospheric ight sim makes the game easy but this is a space combat simulation NOT an atmospheric ight simulation and the ability to decouple your orientation from your velocity vector is absolutely something that would be used and dont forget a huge amount of the community demanded to be able to do the maneuvers you loved from Battle Star Galactica!

GIMBaled WeaPonS VS FIXedIn Arena Commander V1.0 (and Star Citizen as a whole) there will be both fi xed weapons and gimbaled/turreted weapons. The fi xed weapons will have a slow auto convergence of perhaps -/+ fi ve degrees to allow them to focus at a point that is user defi nable (defaults to half maximum range) or will adjust to the distance of the current target. We didnt have time to fi nish this feature so for v0.8 we just made all fi xed weapons gimbaled in order to not give the Hornet a huge advantage over the Aurora and 300i. This is not the long term plan.Fixed weapons will have a lead indicator (just like in a real combat aircraft). We are also considering altering how the gimbaled guns look reticle operates. Right now you just have to place it over your target and the targeting computer gimbals the guns to achieve that fi ring solution, when the dotted lines collapse inside the reticle it means that all guns have achieved the solution. We are thinking about making it so you have to place the look reticle over the lead indicator in order to achieve the fi ring solution.

This will allow a pilot who is not using the full power of his gimbaled guns (its not always easy to aim and y into two diff erent directions or if youre in a combined look and y mode like the Freelancer mouse mode) to y in a more optimal manner for leading the target (you want to heading at where the target is heading not where it is now)As for people thinking that gimbaled weapons spoil the skill in the game, gimbaled / turreted weapons are a mainstay of current military equipment and will likely be even more so in the future. That doesnt mean a hit is automatic. The weapon still has to come to bear on the target and you have to be pointing your ships nose in such a way as the fi ring solution can be met. And thats assuming the target doesnt start changing course or speed erratically!

CHRIS RoBeRtS


Intelligent Flight Control

System JUne 16tH 2014

oVeRVIeWIn Star Citizen, IFCS is a ight control system that is designed to assist the pilot in operating a spacecraft. It translates a pilots control inputs into thruster operations to accomplish a designated command, even under a sub-optimal or failing propulsion system. It is an adaptive system that uses a combination of sensors and feedback control to drive the error between the goal state and the actual spacecraft state to zero. It is fault tolerant, in that it can adaptively utilize any combination of thrusters and its backup Control Moment Gyro to compensate for the failure or loss of one or more thrusters and keep the craft stabilized and, if possible, under pilot control.

Even with a single thruster remaining, a pilot can, with some di culty, actively control his or her spacecraft.

IFCS SuBSySteMSIFCS is comprised of many subsystems that work together to provide a pilot with spacecraft stability and control. These include:PRoPulSIon and attItude ContRol (PAC) PAC includes, typically, the full set of thrusters, which provide both translational and rotational action, and a backup Control Moment Gyro (CMG) unit which provides supplemental attitude control. It also includes the circuitry and control software that drive these units.

PRIMaRy ContRol SySTEM (PCS) The PCS provides an interface between the pilot and IFCS. It translates a pilots commands into control actions that are applied to a virtual control frame which represents the ideal goal action of the pilot. The virtual control frame consists of a goal velocity along any combination of axes, goal rotation rates about any combination of axes, as well as a reference attitude. This virtual frame represents the ideal state of the craft under perfect control, and all pilot input is applied relative to this virtual frame, thereby limiting the eff ect of external error on pilot control.

REACTION CONTROL SYSTEM (RCS) The physical state of the PCS virtual frame is controlled by the predicted thruster and CMG output in response to pilot control. Under ideal conditions, the PCS frame attitude will be perfectly synchronized with the actual attitude of the spacecraft. However, factors such as sub-optimal thruster response or failure, external forces such as weapons fi re, missile explosions, etc., can cause the real attitude of the craft to deviate from the virtual attitude. When this happens, it is the job of the Reaction Control System to drive the error between the two attitudes to zero. It attempts to do so using both thrusters and the Control Moment Gyros. If it fails to synchronize the attitude of the real and virtual frames within a reasonable time, it may reset the virtual frame attitude to that of the real spacecraft in order to avoid pilot disorientation.ANTI-GRAVITY SYSTEM (AGS) The AGS detects and compensates for gravity, and, in general, any other continuous external force, allowing the spacecraft to maintain its position relative to the fi elds source.

TURN CONTROL SYSTEM (TCS) TCS assists the pilot in achieving stable turns. At high speed, a spacecrafts thrusters may not provide enough force to hold a

stable turn, causing the ship to slide, often resulting in a collision. A pilot will normally decrease his or her speed when turning, but TCS can manage the throttle for you by automatically setting the forward velocity to match the desired turn rate given the level of turning thrust currently available. The system takes into account the optimal banking thrust in calculating the sustainable turning velocity.G-FORCE CONTROL MODE (GCM) GCM is a safety mode that attempts to limit a pilots exposure to potentially dangerous levels of g-force. The primary danger for a fully constrained pilot is prolonged exposure to vertical g-forces which can cause blackout, greyout, redout, disorientation, loss of consciousness, and, if not corrected, even death. Horizontal g-forces of an extreme nature are also avoided, as they can cause both physical harm to a pilot and structural damage to the spacecraft.In addition to these standard subsystems, other functionality may be implemented for more advanced systems.

IFCS oPeRatIonIFCS takes as input a pilots commands, which may include a variety of operations, but are ultimately translated into 3 degrees of translation and 3 degrees of rotation. Additionally, other pilot inputs may be used as parameters in various phases of the IFCScontrol system.Once the input values are modifi ed by IFCS modes such as Turn Control and G-force Control, speed limits are imposed, etc., the modifi ed inputs are passed into the Primary Control System, which includes both a linear and angular velocity PID controller. These control functions calculate the optimal force and torque which, if applied at the ships center of mass, will provide the motion requested by the pilot.


Simultaneously, attitude readings are passed into the Reaction Control System where a positional PID controller is used to drive the ships real attitude toward a goal reference attitude provided by the PCS. The control function outputs a torque that will optimally decrease the attitude error over the next time step.

Finally, a reading of persistent force fields, typically gravity, is passed into the Anti-gravity System which calculates the necessary counter-force.Once the desired forces and torques have been calculated, propulsion resources are allocated to them in order from highest to lowest priority. AGS force is allocated first, as failure to generate sufficient counter-

propulsion could be catastrophic. Next, RCS torque is allocated, drawn from primary propulsion first, then falling back on CMG torque if insufficient propulsion is available. Next, PCS rotation control is allocated, again drawing upon primary propulsion first, CMG torque next. And finally, at the lowest priority, translational control is allocated.

After a short time, once the propulsion system has acted on the IFCS commands, sensors read the ships actual state, which may vary from the expected state because of propulsion malfunctions, uncompensated external forces, etc., then feeds the results back in to theIFCS control loop and the process repeats.

IFCS

VeloCIty and attItude ContRolBecause IFCS cannot rely on the propulsion system to deliver the requested control, it uses a PID feedback controller to minimize the error between the desired state and the measured state. Such controllers are used by the Primary Control System to calculate the optimal force and torque to carry out the pilots control commands, as well as the Reaction Control System to maintain attitude stability.PID controllers can be tuned to provide a range of response characteristics. Using velocity control as an example, an overdamped controller will accelerate quickly toward the reference velocity, overshoot, then oscillate as it settles into the final

velocity. An underdamped controller will accelerate more slowly, settling into the reference velocity without any overshoot. A critically damped controller will accelerate at the optimal rate to settle in minimum time without any overshoot. The Primary Control System controllers that provide linear and angular velocity control are dynamically tuned. Based on pilot input magnitude, they can range from a subtle to aggressive acceleration response. In addition, individual pilots may prefer a more or less stiff acceleration response.

The actual response time of IFCS controllers is dependent not only on the tuning parameters, but also on the response time of its propulsion system components.

PID VeloCIty Control


PRoPulSIon SySteMtHRuSteRS

The primary component of propulsion on most ships will be the thruster. The Star Citizen flight model provides a 100% accurate thruster model that takes into account the location of each thruster relative to the ships true center of mass, and the maximum thrust capacity and response time of each thruster. Under ideal conditions, the thrusters will generally be balanced about the ships intended center of mass. This allows the ship optimal thruster control. In this sample image, the top rear thrusters are balanced about the center of mass and will generate a zero sum torque about the z axis.After suff ering damage, the center of mass may shift, destabilizing the thruster system. In the following image, the thrusters are no longer balanced about the center of mass. When fi ring the thrusters, the ship is subjected to non-zero torque, resulting in an unintended yaw. IFCS will attempt to

compensate for this torque error by using other thruster pairs to generate counter torque, and if unable to do so, will attempt to limit the error by decreasing the amount of thrust generated by the thrusters.

Damage and other conditions can also change the available thrust capacity, response time and even accuracy of each thruster, or a thruster may become completely non-functional or be lost altogether. Any of these changes will have an eff ect on the thruster balance and therefore how the ship behaves under pilot control.

ContRol MoMent GyRo

Each ship has a small amount of backup torque available to it even if every thruster has been lost. This torque is provided by a set of internal Control Moment Gyros. As long as the CMGs are functional, the pilot will always have minimal torque available on each axis of rotation. This torque is sufficient to stabilize the ships attitude, and can be used to slowly spin up or down under direct pilot control.

FInal noteSThis document is not an in-fi ction description of the Star Citizen IFCS, it is an accurate description of the true ight control model implemented for the game. This level of realism was necessary in order to deliver a ight control system that could be fully integrated with and in uenced by the environment, damage states, changing mass distribution, power allocation, thruster placement, etc. IFCS is an emergent system, and therefore may be imperfect at times. But this mimics reality.And fi nally, great eff ort has been made to limit spacecraft control to only the command pathways provided by IFCS. No player, AI or evenIFCS itself will ever modify the position, velocity, rotation or rotational velocity of a ship directly, with the exception of initialization and network correction. This guarantees that all spacecraft control is consistent and the game will never have an unfair advantage over a player. I look forward to your feedback as we work to refi ne and polish this system. After all, this is only the beginning. Were just getting started!JoHn PRItCHett, Physics Programmer at CIG

HoW Many SHIPS, RouGHly, do you aIM to InClude at ReleaSe?

Around 10-12 yable, signifi cantly more in int he game (probably 40+) 7.You will be able to operate with your friends (or AI to a certain extent) bigger ships. The RSI Constellation is an example of this, but it will go up to larger ships maybe not as big as the carrier int he demo, but probably a destroyer or corvette.

WHat PRoGRaMMInG toolS / lanGuaGeS / enVIRonMentS do you uSe?

No Assembly any more!Pretty much C++ for everything. There is some LUA in CryEngine but I hate that!On the coding / debugging IDE its currently VS2010

star citizen.letters from the chairman.2014.work in progress

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