Newbie Star Citizen Q&A?

Long story, short summary…I’m an old school gamer who has just updated my old Windows XP gaming desktop for a nice gaming notebook (Asus ROG G752VT-DH72). Don’t worry, I work in IT so I’m not facing a technology learning curve except for the gaming side.

I’m totally confused on how to obtain and play Star Citizen. It seems to be a foreign concept from my old days of buy the box, install the cd and play. I see the wiki article saying a 2016 release date and mentions of subscriptions, pledge donations, etc. But I see that people are currently playing it now. Also, I’m mostly a single player gamer and not much into the online multiplayer stuff where I get my ass handed to me by a 10-year-old in Singapore.

Can someone give me the 100 words or less cliff notes version of this game?

How to get it, or when it will be released to the general public?

I also don’t understand about the Steam versions of games vs store bought boxes but that may be for a different thread.

StarCitizen is it's own little thing and by little thing I mean confusing as ****.

Two things you have to understand with StarCitizen.

1) To play the game you need a game pacakge for the MMO and for the SP depending on which one you want to play. They are listed as "Squadron 42 Digital Download" and "Star Citizen Digital Download" where squadron 42 is the single player campaign and Star Citizen is the MMO thing.

2) You can buy ships independently to the game packages or you can buy a game package that comes with a ship.

https://robertsspaceindustries.com/pledge/game-packages

The best game package (cheapest) right now is this one.

https://robertsspaceindustries.com/pledge/Packages/Aurora-MR-Star-Citizen-Squadron-42-Combo

or

https://robertsspaceindustries.com/pledge/Packages/Mustang-Alpha-Star-Citizen-Squadron-42-Combo

You can also buy a package with just one of the games/ Sq42 or SC and then buy a 15 dollar upgrade that adds the other game to which ever one you have. To play the game currently (the alpha) you have to have the "Star Citizen Digital Download". They expect the Sq42 game to be released at the end of this year or beginning of next year. But that may change. They really dont have any date locked in. It is more a "it will release when it releases."

Also when you go to register your account you can input a referral code. You can input one from here at simhq or you can easily find one around the net.

http://simhq.com/forum/ubbthreads.php/topics/4180049/Referal_Codes#Post4180049

Star Citizen is in Alpha 2.3.1 right now and is available product. As the guy said as above there are deals and ships you can buy from the RSI store, or if you have REC you can rent ships to test them out and see if you like them. Personally I put it off until I saw the Sabre, and I finally bought it. The game is not of course without its faults (Still Alpha), so its still buggy but otherwise honestly very playable, just has a lot of things to work out. Personally I view it as Arma 3 in space (and that is one reason I enjoy it, don't always have to fly ships. Again things may change for the Official release, but the game is going to be moddable (I'm actually working on something here and there) but its fun to fly (in space only so far).

You have my sympathies in trying to understand it. I have followed it from the start and it still confuses me!

Just to add from what the others have already said, as you say your more into single player than MMO. If you want to get into the game right now rather than wait for Sq 42 to release ( the Single player story driven cmapaign ) you can still play the arena commander part of the game, which pits you against AI or of course you can have a look around the mini PU which is multi player but you can do missions on your own ( you just have to take a chance that someone wont try and ruin your day. )

**Edit**
Nearly forgot, keep an eye out for when they do sales, they usually do a limited number of discounted ship packages for about $22.

Theres also a free fly promotion on at the moment ( until 25th April ), which lets you donwload the game and try it out, I believe all you need is to register on the RSI web site.

hey man if you have any questions about SC still today, feel free to shout

SC fan right here.