Star Citizen IAE 2951 Finale
Welcome it is the Finale of the IAE 2951 and I wanted to talk about what’s available ot do and Highlights from the Expo this year.
Until the 1st of December you can still purchase any of the previous days ships from the RSI Website. You can also rent any of the current flyable ships from the Rental Terminals that are now at the Expo Hall and the game is also free to play until then too.
During that expo we had the Redeemer added to the game. It is a mighty gunship that a small crew can run together to bring overwhelming firepower in a small package. It’s not the most maneuverable ship HOWEVER it does have a lot of pew pew and if you are running combat missions constantly with a group then it might be the ship for you.
I am looking forward to NPCs using this as it should be a real threat!
The Ares Starfighter Inferno & Ion we also released. These are giant S7 guns with wings.
The Inferno has a rapid fire ballistic weapon with huge DPS and enough ammo for you not to worry about a few fights… which was a genuine worry with the ballistics overhaul a while back.
The Ion instead has a slow firing laser cannon that has massive alpha damage. You don’t want to get hit by this thing.
Although these are single seater heavy fighters they don’t want to brawl, they either want to take out threats before they reach them or target larger ships… if they are operating with other ships they can support them in a fight with heavy targeted fire. But if they get caught in a dogfight with light or medium fighters they aren’t going to do well.
There were also a few more new things that appeared at the IAE we had the Spartan. An Armored APC based on the Ballista Chassis with room for 8 marines and their loadouts in the back. Ground vehicles don’t have a whole lot of use in game YET but CI have actively been building up ground based FPS gameplay for a while and when there are more active ground defenses, bases, environmental hazards and reasons that you can’t bring ships in then vehicles like these will be massively important. Also both me and zin have wanted a combat APC for a while now!
The Argo RAFT had been rumored for ages… and was also straight to fylable at the IAE. It is a small dedicated cargo hauler specializing in picking up upto 3 32SCU cargo shipping containers. This is important as Cargo is going to start to have loading and unloading times associated with it as well as costs. Having a ship that can easily drop off and pickup cargo and effectively sort and move cargo easily is going to be very useful. The ship can be operated effectively with 1 – 2 crew.
The only new concept ship at the IAE was the Odyssey Explorer AND wow… it was a little bit of a surprise. It’s a Capital Class Expedition Ship… that is to say it’s bigger than the Carrack and has some Capital Sized Components. It has a lot of multi-role potential having a hangar for at least a medium fighter sized ship (like the sabre) or a prospector. A T2 medical bay (so it can be a respawn point), has room for a vehicle, a good amount of cargo space, some large turreted weapons and suits a crew of 4-6… probably the higher end of that being a more sensible idea if you want to have damage control/engineering.
One of the more interesting aspects of this ship is that it has a mining laser and onboard refinery. This is to facilitate the production of quantum fuel on the go… with the Odyssey then being able to go out into the Verse and stay there without returning to port if you don’t want to.
Lots of people were concerned that Odyssey is ship power creep and makes the Carrack redundant BUT that won’t be the case… tho it does depend on what you want your explorer for… bigger does not always mean better… But the Odyssey will have different focuses within the exploration sphere than the Carrack.
For example the Carrack has Exploration Drones & potentially different or better scanners for scanning certain POI down.
The Odyssey may be larger and have a bit of mining/refining action going on BUT that does not mean better in all aspects… we are awaiting a Q&A on the ship and then we will compare it and the Carrack in detail.
Sales on the 27th (when that ship was released) hit around $3m, suggesting that the Odyssey was EXTREMELY popular.
The IAE also had Limited Hulls on sale like Idris, Javelins, Krakens and all that jazz they sold out within seconds or minutes every time they were up on sale but they only sold a few 100 – 1000 each wave. It’s always my recommendation to get these things in game when they are finally available or join an org that is looking for crew for theirs!
I do get asked what ships do I think are a bargain OR at least are going to be going up in price… so there are a few… maybe not bargains but ships that are undervalued currently:
The Banu Merchantman is I think $550 but I’d expect that to be $750 next year and potentially close to $950 for it’s release.
The Orion is a ship that I think is for a SC ship undervalued at the moment. We know it’s massively grown in size and it’s currently $575… again I think it will be at least $750 for release potentially more.
The Endeavor is probably the other ship I think will go up in value a lot ONE day… Science is a focus for the ship and I think the complex nature of it’s modularity will mean the Endeavor will not be prioritized for a while.
Something I really recommend you do is watch all of the Jax McCleary IAE 2951 videos that CI made… they are fantastic in game / in engine examples of cool stuff in Star Citizen and a lovely light hearted immersion into it’s lore. I’ve watched them a couple of times now and CI are very very good at making these sorts of trailers and shorts AND I hope that translates into Squadron 42 feeling AMAZING while I am playing it!
What Else
It looks like Funding has smashed previous IAE sales… I think we are over $19m from November so far and it’s not even over yet which beats last year’s Nov total by some margin.
Star Citizen has made around $74 million this year in traditional funding and if it makes at least 5 million more by the end of the year it will of broken previous records from 2020… which it is more than on track to hit.
As we end November we look towards Alpha 3.16 which should be going into testing within the next couple of weeks. The patch is reasonably light on content currently and that might be for the best if we want something playable by the end of the year, that said I am only expecting a OPEN PTU for the end of 2021 and live later in Jan personally.
There are some things that might turn up here tho that aren’t on the roadmap:
JumpTown v2
Updated NineTails Lockdown
Dynamic Universe Sim – Fuel & Repair / Encounters / Distress Beacons
New Missions and events
We can probably expect some new vehicles too.
I am looking forward to ship to ship refueling, hopefully that will make the patch along with new POI.
If CI can get a live patch out for end of the year that’s going to be great for them… assuming that it isn’t broken. Noone want’s a largely unplayable SC due to a bug that isn’t fixed for a couple of weeks over xmas.
A couple of things before I go:
December’s RSI Sub Flair appears to be some new Roussimoff RS Heavy Armors.
I really like the Yellow one up front.
And you might of seen those new color variants of the new armors in 3.15 with the Qurinos and RRS Arden Armors for sale in game and on the RSI website.
I like them but you lose them if you are wearing them when you die… and it’s a faff to get them back.