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Star Citizen Alpha 2.1 patch brings new ships as funding total tops $105 million

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The battlecruiser of money that is Star Citizen forges ever onward with a new patch introducing ships, weapons, balance changes and, of course, bug fixes. The headline additions for this go round are the Aegis Vanguard Warden and the MISC Freelancer vessels. The former is a heavy fighter designed to come out on top and make it home even if half of it is spinning off into space from enemy weapons fire. The latter is a long-range merchant integrated with alien tech, but can easily be turned into an exploration ship for heading out into the unknown wilds.

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As for the meat of the patch, it’s not a humongous one but does contain several important changes:

  • A new system for exploring outside ships has been disabled for the time being as they work on bug fixes.
  • That new Vanguard Warden ship is a bit OP at the moment and they’ll be continuing to work on it.
  • But it does come with a nice new gun,The Apocalypse Arms Revenant, that can be purchased for other ships if you like.
  • Another mission has been added to the persistent universe module, with multiple endings.

Meanwhile the funding total has soared past $105 million, not a huge way off the $130 million mark which will be double the last time there were any stretch goals. It’s chugging away at about $5,000 an hour at the moment, which got me curious what the average was. Turns out the game has been making just under a dollar a second, every second, since the campaign first launched in October 2012. I’d take it.

It leaves me wondering just what folks are doing with these ships once they’ve picked them up in droves. Our very own Jeremy, who spoke to many of Star Citizen’s biggest backers at CitizenCon this year, tells me some admire the artistry, others spend thousands of hours mucking about in the flight model, some just see it as an investment. Call it a tepid take, but I don’t like to drop much more than £30 on that sort of thing – though I am looking forward to whatever final product emerges. How do you spend your time in Star Citizen, if you’re a player?