Star Citizen, the most notorious crowdfunding project in the game industry, has recently made some big moves. Developer Cloud Imperium Games has been hard at work trying to actually make the game that it has been promising for the past 10+ years and last year’s CitizenCon showed off a huge chunk of that work finally coming to fruition. The future looks bright for Star Citizen fans, from the newly demonstrated Star Engine to the demos of the developer’s replication layer and server meshing technology, it all looks terrific. However, the game is still far from being complete, and many systems need to be created or refined before they are even close to being ready for a commercial release. One of these systems being worked on is the Master Modes, the new flight model and ship combat model being worked on for Star Citizen.
First implemented as a separate game mode in the game’s more arcade-style activity, Arena Commander, Master Modes is the studio taking another pass at each ship to ensure that the experience of flying and fighting with these ships is as satisfying as possible. Master Modes include better designing/balancing ships into their associated archetypes (snub fighters, heavy fighters, interdiction, corvette etc), and more defined roles for each archetype. These are aimed to make the experience as a whole better; people who like dogfights will have a better time and people who like racing will enjoy the difference in ship handling.
Master Modes is still in its experimental phase, and is slowly being implemented to more and more ships through the previously mentioned Arena Commander. However, there will be an expansion of the ships available for Master Modes in the upcoming Alpha 3.23 update, the list of available ships will be as follows:
- P-52 – Snub Fighter
- Gladius – Light Fighter
- Buccaneer – Light Fighter
- Super Hornet F7C-M – Medium Fighter
- Vanguard Warden – Heavy Fighter
- Constellation Andromeda – Medium Gunship
- Hammerhead – Anti-Fighter Corvette*
- *excluded from Master Modes: Classic Races
Star Citizen is one part of the two projects that were a part of Cloud Imperium Games’ crowdfunding campaign, with the other part being Squadron 42, a singleplayer story experience that is, as of October 23, 2023, “feature complete” and in its “polish phase”. There is still no release date, or even release window for either project, but there is speculation among the Star Citizen community that Squadron 42 will see a release this year either during or around this year’s CitizenCon.
