Greetings Citizens,

Detail: the concept stage involves planning every working part of a ship!

Late last year, we asked the community to vote on the next ‘wave’ of ships we design for Star Citizen. A new ship was selected as each stretch goal, for a total of six winners. The ships in questions ranged from a mobile salvage yard to a luxury yacht to a speedy data runner. You can find the original concept bios for all six ships below.

The great news is that these ships are getting to a stage in their development where we’re ready to share their concepts! Ship design is incredibly important in Star Citizen, and Chris Roberts does not approve ship art for release until it is up to his personal standards. So we’re getting close to the final forms of the base ships… and are ready to start offering them in concept sales!

In the past, concept sales have been short ‘blink and you miss it’ events to reveal new ships. Going forward, we’ve decided to change the process to offer some extras for backing a Star Citizen ship at this earlier stage in its development; some more exclusive rewards to make up for the fact that you can’t go right out and play with a concept ship the day it’s for sale.

When a ship’s concept gets ‘final approval’ from Chris, we plan to offer it as a one-week concept-only sale. After that week ends, the ship will not be available for sale until it is ready for use in the Hangar. In addition, we are going to offer several extras available only during the concept period:

• The Lowest Price – backing earlier helps the production process the most, so it stands to reason that early backers should get the lowest price for their ships. Future Hangar-ready and flight-ready sales will increase the cost of a ship hull slightly.

• Hangar Flare – everyone who backs a concept sale will receive two pieces of Hangar Flare. At launch, you’ll get a poster featuring the ship you’ve purchased to display in your Hangar and when the CryEngine model asset is finished you’ll get the in-game Takuetsu model to add to your collection!

• Lifetime Insurance – one of the most common demands of CS is that we offer newly announced ships with cross-chassis upgrades to preserve LTI. While we maintain that Lifetime Insurance is a slight convenience and not a game changer, we know it’s something a lot of backers want. We feel comfortable including it during concept sales of ships which have never been available before (and do not intend to make it available again for existing ships or variants.) We will however, be adding LTI retroactively to the Gladius and Xi’An Scout if they were purchased during their respective concept sales.

We’re aware that this is a change to how sales have worked in the past, so we wanted to announce the plan early to let the community know our intentions. Sales like this are what keeps Star Citizen funded; the revenue we take from selling ships at different stages in the pipeline gets turned right back into the game, expanding our scope to match Chris’ ultimate vision for the Best Damn Space Sim Ever!

The first concept sale for this wave of ships will be Friday, September 26th. We can’t reveal which ship it is yet… so sound off in the poll below and let us know which one you want to see! (The poll will not impact next week’s presentation, but it will let us know which ships you’re most eager to see!)

• RSI Orion – Roberts Space Industries’ goal has always been to make the stars available to individual Citizens. Now, with the RSI Orion mining platform, RSI is letting individuals take over a process formerly controlled by megacorporations. The Orion’s features include high-grade turret-mounted tractor beam arrays, durable exterior-accessible ‘saddlebags’ for mineral storage and a cabin designed by the team that brought you the Aurora and Constellation!

• Origin 890 JUMP – The rumors are true: Origin Jumpworks has a larger ship in the works! The Origin 890 JUMP is an interstellar super-yacht with exquisite styling and an array of high quality upgrade options. Travel the stars in style with multiple decks, high visibility windows and a small boat bay. Whether you’re outfitting it to explore new worlds or to take a pleasure cruise through Terra, the 890 JUMP is the epitome of luxury, class and refinement!

• Aegis Reclaimer – The Reclaimer (formerly Surveyor), from noted military contractor Aegis, is an industrial-quality salvage ship. Equipped with a reinforced cargo bay, a long-range jump drive and launch pods for unmanned drones, the Reclaimer is an ideal ship for taking advantage of deep space wrecks. Tractor beams, floodlights, scanner options and docking ports round out the tool chest on this capable, utilitarian spacecraft.

• Anvil Carrack – The Anvil Carrack has been the vanguard of every UEE exploration effort in recent years. Featuring reinforced fuel tanks for long-duration flight, a highly advanced jump drive array and a dedicated computer core room that allows it to put the maximum processing power into jump charting operations. Originally a military exclusive, the Carrack is now available for civilian use as a pathfinder spacecraft. Features on-board accommodations to allow for truly self-sufficient flight, including crew medical and repair facilities, and a mapping-oriented sensor suite capable of always charting a route home!

• MISC Hull C (Discreet) – Scaling from small “box trucks” to massive supertankers, the MISC range of cargo hulls (A-D) are the standard goods transporter in human space. Extremely configurable, MISC Hulls can be adapted for most any type of transport job: from standard bulk shipping on the patrolled spacelanes to armored cargo hauling on the frontier. While these pre-configured hulls are primarily used for legitimate purposes, the MISC Hull Cs have recently become the favorite for criminals who modify the ship with advanced sensor shadow technology, quick-decompress holds and a variety of hidden compartments without modifying the ship’s body so it will appear to onlookers as standard everyday transports.

• Drake Herald – Knowledge is power, and one of the most valuable commodities is pure information: the 1s and 0s behind everything from UEC ledgers to Citizenship ratings. Whether it’s colonists struggling to stay in contact with the UEE’s central worlds or criminals trading in illicit data, there will always be a need to securely move data. The Drake Herald, small, armored ship, is designed to fit that need and safely get that information from Point A to Point B. Featuring a powerful central engine (for high speed transit and generating the power needed for effective data encryption/containment), advanced encryption software and an armored computer core, the Herald is unique among personal spacecraft in that it is designed to be easily ‘cleaned’ when in danger of capture. The Herald includes an array of heavy duty internal options for data protection, including redundant power subsystems and EMP shielding, and a high-powered broadcast array for data transmission.