Greetings Citizens! These are the highlights of our liveblog. You can find the full notes here.

They’re talking about the Starfarer now. Starfarer will be their first big non combat ship available in the game. It allows you to mine, refuel, repair, etc. It is the flagship for the MISC fleet.

We can see escape pods up to the bridge to escape. Beautiful exterior shots.

Now we can see the engine room. There’s another room designed for “Catwalk” where you put on a suit and go into a bay to fill up ships who need refuel. They also showed the gravity generator room. We can now see the cockpit. It’s very sleek, symmetrical and well laid out.

The Starfarer looks beautiful. It’s massive as well. Concept’s don’t give it good sense of scale but this dwarfs a Constellation.

They’re now moving to the Freelancer. Beginning to show off some screenshots.

They designed the MISC cockpits to look a-like so you know when you’re in a MISC ship or other types of ships.Now they’re going to do a fly through of the freelancer.

They’ve added a bulkhead so the crew quarters are separate from the cargo bay and cockpit. This is something they’re doing on a lot of ships going forward.

They’re now showing the reliant in greybox stage! It’s almost finished greybox stage which means the details and geometry.

It looks fantastic. They’re looking at the cargo version of the Reliant. It can hold two large cargo containers which is double that of an Aurora.

Reliant has progressed fairly quickly because of the style guide for Misc is complete and can apply many of the things from other MISC ships to it.

They’re now showing the upcoming hangar ready version of the Reliant, It’s not done yet and they don’t know when it will be ready, but they’re currently hooking up animations and textures.

For 2.1 the Sabre will be hangar ready and the Freelancer will be flight ready, yes folks, Freelancer will fly soon. Reliant variants will be going on sale soon, 20 minutes after this post.

Research variant is currently being premiered. Has better scanners, research equipment

“Skirmisher” Variant is heavier armed and will contain weapon lockers inside if you to want land or board.

Reliant variants, MISC, and Sabre will be on sale now, Soon starting at 12pm PST, every 6 hours there will be allotments of Javelins available for purchase.

Chris talks about how all the elements of the game are coming together and even though it’s in rough shape still with some bugs and missing content, it’s exciting to see it come together and people’s reactions are fantastic. The foundation for 2.0 will set up the project for adding on more and more things over time without much of a hassle which means faster development further down the line.

What 2.0 is now, only scratches the surface of what the grand scheme of Star Citizen will be, but right now it feels awesome and they’ll continue to add more players and other elements. Chris mentions the stories he’s read and the experiences they’ve already had and it reminds him of Wing Commander and how people talked about the different wingman and how they felt personally, not by their capabilities. Like hating such and such or liking this one.

[Will there be birds in Star Citizen?] Quite likely. They do plan on having wildlife down on planets

[Is the industrial hangar still considered in space?] The idea would be the asteroid/pirate hangar would be in a place like the Nyx system as an example of where it would be.

[Has Chis done any Mo-Cap personally?] Not yet but his head has been scanned and he will appear in SQ42

[What is the status of VR integration?] For VR integration, They are pretty busy with 2.0 and getting out 2.1. They still have some stuff to integrate from newer drops of the Cryengine as they’ve been updating a lot of VR stuff with it. They’ve revamped some aspects of the ship pipeline to take VR into account. It’s a matter of time and cherry picking what elements of the VR they want and having frankfurt code it in. Early next year they will see about adding it in, but performance is important right for players overall.

TrackIR is along the same path as VR, they want to add them in, but some other aspects of the project come first.

[Will we be seeing personal EVA gear like jetpacks?] Absolutely. One of the things that they’re in the process of building is you’ll be able to dress up and personalise your character just like you can with ships. The plan for the coming year is to add more components for ships, but the same for characters and what you can wear, suits, hats, jetpacks. The items are all connected so if your life support is on your suit and you take off your helmet in space, it will be bad news. The same item system will be rolled out for players as it is on ships. The USE prompt will be gone and a newer UI will be intuitive to give a better degree of control on what you want to interact with. It will have prompts that appear based off your character state and other variables and will allow you to do multiple interactions with an option like picking up a cup or drinking it instead.

[How is the Starfarer going to fit in the hangar?] The Revel and York hangar has been enlarged to accommodate the Starfarer. At first they didn’t think the Starfarer would be this big, but as time went on it grew into what it is today.

[2.1, What are we looking at for the next iteration?] With 2.0 they thought it would come out a little sooner so they’re working very hard. Freelancer will be flyable, Sabre will be hangar ready thanks to “Aegis Man” He worked on the Avenger and Retaliator. A couple other things are physicalized EVA. It’s risky because it has different behavior where it’s animation and ragdoll at the same time to simulate realistic interaction with the environment and more fluid movement such as inertia while flying around. They want to get 2.1 out by the end of this week, but “Knocks on wood”. The other thing is Million Mile High Club, but they’re working out the kinks with GIM and are trying hard to get it out for end of this week

[Questions on turrets in general] Turrets should have a stabilization mode where it keeps your turret relative to your target. Turrets are something that will get more focus on soon because they have something tangible and can get real feedback and make changes to them. It’s a long process, but having the PTU and Alpha it allows them to make those changes much quicker than if they use their own 25 man QA team.​

[Theoretical Corvette?] They definitely want to, but they have to assign a concept artist to work on it. The current team is tasked up, but once they’re off the Prowler they’ll start the design on the corvette.

[Can the Idris land?] Yes it will be able to, but not fit in every hangar or spaceports.

[Scimitar? Is it a possibility?] There’s a lot of designs from TNGS that were very cool and CIG have hired several people from various teams. At some point they want to look into possibly getting those ships in the game, but it takes a lot of work and they need to redo a lot of them to bring them to the level that their current ships are up to.

[Server is in Europe?] Everything is on Google Compute, but they’re located in North America. They’re currently doing an assessment on what they want to do with cloud architecture and optimise it for everyone regardless of where you are in the world like Europe, Australia, but it’s not something they’re ready to do just yet, still some designs to flesh out.

[Match making for the PU currently? IE friends] It won’t be in 2.1, but it’s a top top top priority. They want to be able to have people join together with their friends and as soon as it’s possible it will go out to the backers.

[Difference between SQ42 Episode 1 and 2?] Episode one is a lot bigger than most Triple AAA games like Battlefront of instance. The story is so big that they can’t contain it within one storyline so that’s why they broke it up into a three part arc. They want to have a really cool story for the first one, maybe the second one gets darker and eventually continue the story. It’s an ongoing story and doesn’t end.

John’s character is called “Graves” serving in the 118 Squadron. His character took a job that caused him to alter his service and tries to dance on the line between redemption and failure.

Dave Haddock was responsible for writing the SQ42 script and Chris says if you don’t like it, blame him.

The script is 700 pages so far and it’s significantly higher than most films. It’s that large because of so many variables

[Will major decisions in Episode 1 come into play in episode 2] Yes. They will have things that you do in the story that will continue into 2 and 3 like relationships for example.

[How will character’s transition from characters in SQ42 into the PU] The way it’s setup is the PU is the future version of yourself and in SQ42 it’s the younger version of you. If you look at your journal you’ll see things you’ve accomplished and may have unlocked things for the PU. You will be able to go back and forth between SQ42 and PU.

[Can characters like Graves die in EP1 and not carry on into EP2?] Good question, I guess you’ll have to play it and see.

[Will our relationships from SQ42 carrying on into the PU?] Yes, certain relationships will extend into the PU. It may not be directly but if you helped someone out, their company may give you discounts or unlock other things for you as a remembrance of that act.

[How does Graves’ character compare to Mark Hamill’s “Old Man” Character] John is more joyful and less prickly as they put it. The characters have relationships with each other that may differ than what you have with them.

[Will there be other narratives projects created ala SQ42 after its success?] Yes we have plans to do that with scripted missions and other aspects of the universe. They have many different ideas that they want to bring to life and put them in the universe. They will continue to add stories to the PU.

[Without going too far into detail, will Graves come with us and fight alongside us?] At certain points you will fight along side him.

Jack Huston plays Cal Mason in SQ42!

[Will we get command over a wingman and more?] Yes you will be able to give wingmen commands, but it’s up to them if they choose to follow that order. Your relationship with them affects their loyalty just like the original Wing Commander.

[Will we get to fly Vanduul ships in SQ42?] You will get to fly Vanduul ships in later episodes, but not the first one. You will get to fight them! ​- [Will we be able to advance in rank in SQ42 to allow us to have different perspectives during the campaign?] You will get medals and other awards, but it won’t give you control over lets say which ships you want to take on the mission or other aspects. The game has a lot of freedom in how you accomplish your objectives, but some things will remain standard.

[Will the Pegasus make an appearance in SQ42?] Not in EP1, but EP2

[Will characters in SQ42 co-pilot with us?] Absolutely. You can have them gun or them fly, whatever you decide.

[Will alien languages be ready in time for SQ42? Will we be able to speak them in the game?] Yes! They’ve got the primary language down for the Vanduul and are working on the Banu and other languages with their linguistics.

[Will characters in Squadron 42 exist in the PU?] Yes they will exist in the PU as figureheads such as Bishop for example. They may not be doing the same thing, but you may meet one of them retired on an off world or in a bar, etc.

CitizenCon venue details are being locked down. The location for it next year is Los Angeles. They are looking at Frankfurt and are going to be at Gamescom as well in order to spread out the fanbase equally and give people a chance from around to world to participate.

Some more housekeeping. Unmelts will be ready later this week. Turbulent have it up and running, but are working out some kinks and it should be available by Friday. Since the VAT changes they’ve kept the euro prices artificially low, but they are changing the prices starting February 1st, and will unlock a variety of ships near the end of January for those who want to get the favourable exchange rate. They are bringing back 5000 of the $30 starter pack that has Star Citizen & Squadron 42 and an Aurora.​​

They’re currently showing us a procedurally generated rocky planet 1000km with seamless transition from space to atmosphere.

Sean Tracey is now in a Cutlass and repeating what the video did, but in real time! It’s unbelievable.