Greetings Citizens,

We are very pleased to announce that Arena Commander’s multiplayer is now available for all of Star Citizen’s backers! We have been reviewing the user experience data from Patch 12.5 and have decided it’s time to open the floodgates! Everyone with Alpha Access or an Arena Commander Pass can now play the current multiplayer modes (with more to be added soon!) Multiplayer will also be available to anyone who picks up an Arena Commander pass going forward.

Thank you to every backer who has helped get us to this point. Your feedback has been absolutely essential in improving Arena Commander and the multiplayer experience. Thank you for your forum posts, your Twitch streams, your bug reports and your patience with the process. The knowledge we’ve gained from this tiered rollout goes well beyond just this release: it’s going to benefit how we launch every single future module and ultimately the Star Citizen Persistent Universe.

Remember: this is still a pre-alpha module! That means we still have plenty of work to do. The team is now working hard to add many planned features (like keybindings, scoreboards and additional ships) and also to improve what we’ve already created. In the coming weeks, expect to see a lot of work on game balance and Arena Commander’s game rules (where players spawn, how a kill is calculated, how the matchmaking server decides to connect users and the like.) Your continued thoughts on how the game plays will be invaluable in this process!

For those of you new to the Arena Commander multiplayer experience, the QA team has generated a quick list of beginner tips. We’ve noticed that some players are frustrated by their first matches, going up against pilots with different ships and more experience. We’re working on game rules changes that will alter this, but can also say that with a little patience you’ll be dogfighting with the best of them in no time! Winning at Arena Commander requires some skill… but these tips should help get you started right:

• Avoid flying slowly or sitting still. Especially after spawning into the middle of a chaotic fire fight.
• Use boost as much as possible (left shift). The higher speed makes you a more difficult target to follow and fire on effectively.
• Incorporate barrel rolls into your evasive maneuvers. Rolling and boosting can be very effective in helping to avoid enemy fire.
• Avoid fixating on a single target. Continue changing targets and flying evasively to maintain situational awareness and find the more vulnerable enemies.
• Avoid engaging another player head on. This is a sure way to get killed.
• If you must engage a target head on, switching to decoupled mode (capslock) and strafing can help to avoid a last second collision.
• Experiment with Comstab mode on and off (ctrl + capslock twice). Having it on will help minimize sliding while turning but having it off can help you become a harder target to hit.
• With g-force safety toggled off (ctr+capslock) you can perform more aggressive maneuvers but be careful because the additional g-forces can cause you to black out.
• If you have additional weapons at your disposal, experiment with alternate loadouts via the holo-table.
• Missile damage is absorbed by shields. For maximum damage, weaken your enemies’ shields by using standard weapons before firing missiles.
• Try getting almost on top of your target before releasing a missile, in order to reduce the amount of time that your opponent has to react.

UPDATE 8/06/2014: We are currently seeing server load issues associated with the multiplayer rollout. Our engineers are investigating the problem. Discovering issues like this is the benefit of making such an early build available to the public! We thank you for your patience and support.