Generally, official forums for games are unhappy places in the best of times, but backers of Star Citizen are getting vocally resistant to ship nerfs that, from all accounts, appear to favor some of the new ships that were unveiled during this year’s CitizenCon.
The heart of the row appears to center on three ships in particular: the Galaxy, the Corsair, and the Redeemer. Both the Redeemer and Corsair saw their power reduced to perceptibly make way for the buyable – but currently not flyable – Starlancer TAC and Starlancer MAX respectively, while the unreleased RSI Galaxy was presumed to have lost its base-building capability in favor of the Starlancer BLD.
There hasn’t been any official word from the devs regarding the first two points, but vehicle director John Crewe ended up muddying the waters a bit in response to the Galaxy kerfuffle: When asked for clarification by CIG on the ship’s capabilities as a base builder, he replied that “[t]here are no current plans to have a base building module,” and while he did leave the door open for the module’s eventual addition, he further stated that “there is nothing concepted, planned or in the production schedule” and that unless a feature or module is specifically stated or in-game, anything else should be treated as “speculative.”
Roughly six hours later, he posted a slight redaction to that statement:
“I realize my previous comments may have given the wrong impression, and I spoke too soon on this topic. I’ve since regrouped with the larger team(s) to ensure we’re all fully aligned on the Galaxy’s future. To clarify: while there’s no base-building module currently in active development for the Galaxy, we’re fully committed to enabling a large base-building drone module for it down the line. The Galaxy won’t be the first ship for building large-scale structures when base building launches, but will come soon-after, and its potential for that role is very much intact.
“My earlier comment about when things are ‘speculative’ was incorrect. We want to make sure that when we walk on stage, during ISC, or in any presentation, you can walk away feeling confident in the information we share.”
In spite of the clarification, many replies to the post are needling Crewe over the use of “speculative” and others are stating intent to stop spending until the full release or asking CIG to better respect long-term backers, which as we’ve chronicled previously, doesn’t appear to be CIG’s MO. Perhaps the better move here would be to stop buying anything from this venture until there’s a finished product, eh?