Star Citizen #HG

Greetings Citizens,

Today’s Comm-Link comes from issue 9 of Jump Point, the subscriber-only Star Citizen magazine. Subscribers are the first to receive background articles like this as well as exclusive fiction and behind-the-scenes info! You can learn about subscribing here.

Remember to submit your Star Citizen photos! The first-ever Star Citizen photo contest ends on Friday and the winners will be announced on October 10th during CitizenCon. It’s a chance to win cool prizes and show your spirit. Information about the contest can be found here.

Hangar Manufacturers

In the generations since Roberts Space Industries institutionalized personal space travel, countless supporting industries have sprung up to improve the lives of interstellar pilots. From shield manufacturers to deep space repair services to refueling stations orbiting distant stars, the infrastructure which has grown up to support civilian space travel has become ubiquitous. This development has no better case study than the rise of modular, user-configurable ship hangars.

The system of self-maintained hangars arose out of the very simple logic that if you have a spacecraft you also need a place to put it. With the massive increase in individually owned civilian spacecraft and the resulting decline in government-regulated space travel lines, the model for ship housing quickly transitioned. Many once-thriving spaceports were parceled out for individual sale, with the hangars that once maintained thousand-person transports divided into dozens of makeshift spacecraft compartments and made available to the highest bidders.

The formalized hangar industry soon followed, with investors purchasing massive tracts of land wherever possible to erect garaging space. On some rapidly developing worlds, territory claims around landing points have become so expensive or contested that urban construction often takes place outside a hundred-kilometer ring of ‘future hangars.’ On some worlds, hangars are constructed deep into the ground or straight up in massive skyscrapers: anything to provide ship owners the piece of mind that comes with a permanent home for their craft. In recent years, three hangar designers/manufacturers have come to define the industry as a whole, with their base appearances being a familiar sight across the galaxy.

SELF-LAND

Incorporated by Peter Weathermen, a wealthy guildlicensed shipper who made his living on the active spacelanes, SELF-LAND hangars have become an ever-present reminder of just how easy it is for Humans to travel the stars. The corporation was founded on the philosophy that the temporary hangars available to transiting pilots were inaccessible, inaffordable and most importantly unsafe. (Weathermen began developing the company after he was jumped by a gang of dock-thugs who stripped his Starfarer to the hull plating.)

Starting in the mid-29th century, SELF-LAND began a franchising-based expansion across the Human-inhabited galaxy. The first SELF-LAND was established by Weathermen on Vann in the Croshaw System. Seemingly overnight, the company had expanded to a dozen worlds … and then a hundred. Today, the SELF-LAND corporation boasts that they maintain at least one facility on every world in the UEE, with some planets (Terra chief among them) having as many as sixty different complexes. SELF-LAND hangars are fully modular and environmentally controlled. Prefabricated out of the most available common metals, they aren’t necessarily attractive to look at … but they are comfortable and familiar. The SELF-LAND experience on a colony world near Vanduul space is exactly the same as that available to a pilot berthing on Earth. The SELF-LAND corporation takes care of everything, from structure design to land titles. Because of their design, the same hangar type can be used in configurations ranging from skyscraping heights, to the breadth of a plain, to stacked underground, or to honeycombed deep within asteroids.

Aeroview Hangars

Aeroview proudly claims to be the oldest established hangar manufacturer in Human space. Their design and construction of hangars goes back more than 300 years. In the 27th century, Arthur Nassir formed the company around a rigid code of business ethics focusing largely on design quality, a dedication to ergonomics, and an extreme respect for client confidentiality. Aeroview also famously reserves the right to refuse service to any non-Citizens. While hangar design and housing is tangential, at best, to piracy, Nassir’s outspoken contempt for those who fly outside the law led to the company’s code. When Aeroview was purchased by Shubin Interstellar, the conditions of the sale insisted that the code be adhered to in perpetuity.

While the code remains intact, Aeroview’s original business model does not. The Aeroview hangars of the 28th century were palatial affairs built on a case-by-case basis to the specifications of the social elite capable of owning their own spacecraft. In recent years, Aeroview has adapted their tactics to follow in SELF-LAND’s footsteps (although they would never admit it). Instead of custom-building high-class hangars on an individual basis, they now produce a line of modular “business hangars” priced to sell to successful businessmen and other executive-level clients. Unlike other modular hangar companies, Aeroview does not lease the property on which their hangars are established. This is left up to the individual consumer to determine; the Aeroview hangar can be erected at any point in the UEE given 48-hours notification (24 hours, for a steep rush construction fee).

Of special note, Aeroview has found particular success in developing hangars for larger scale craft or craft that require additional space for support equipment. Pilots of ships like Freelancers, with multiple crew housings, or Hornets, with weapons racks and a need for more intensive hull repair facilities, generally find it more cost effective to purchase a single Aeroview hangar rather than multiple SELF-LANDs.

Revel & York

When the Revel & York engineering corporation set about designing its first hangar some thirty years ago, the reaction was laughter. The company, known best for excessively expensive and visibly uncomfortable furniture, was entering a field dominated by aerospace giants. The laughter ceased quickly as the Revel & York “deluxe” line of hangars became the de-facto spacecraft garage of the rich and powerful. The company’s cavernous hangars, established on ideal landing spaces in top-dollar land agreements, earned their standing reputation for excellence and quality.

Revel & York designers work directly with pilots to develop a hangar experience like no other. R&Y is the only company currently constructing modular hangars designed to support merchantman-class spacecraft like the Constellation and Caterpillar, locking them into a valuable if small segment of the population. Their hangar designs have earned their reputation: between interlocking catwalks (with motorized lifts!) to allow pilots to supervise their spacecraft from overhead, to specially designed Greycat PV buggies for transporting ship crews from module to module, everything is designed for not just the elite pilots’ usability but also their overall enjoyment. SELFLAND and competitors make a place to put your ship; Revel & York makes a place for you to take it in.

Greetings Citizens,

Gamasutra has published a major article on Star Citizen’s crowd funding campaign! In the article, Chris Roberts talks about how backers have changed the campaign and what’s next for Star Citizen:

The next step is the Dogfighting Module, which is due at the end of the year. “You’ll be able to take your ships, you go out of your hanger and you go into space, and you fight against other players, or AI, in this sort of deathmatch setup. So it doesn’t have the story that we’re going to have, it doesn’t have a big sandbox universe. But we’re going to use it to balance the combat, we’re going to use it to do technical stress testing — like, how many people we can have in one area of space,” Roberts says.
“And then next year we’re going to have the planetside module, which is where you walk around the planet, go to the bar, get missions, talk/interact with other players, you buy equipment and stuff like that. And then we’ll have the shipboarding module, which is the first person combat when you board another ship. And then we’ll have the alpha single player story. Then we’ll have the alpha of the full game.”
In addition, GDC Next has announced that Chris Roberts will be giving a talk about Star Citizen during their conference. GDC Next takes place from November 5th through 7th at the Los Angeles Convention Center in Los Angeles, California. The event is the successor to GDC Online, where Chris first announced Star Citizen last year. You can learn more about the talk here.

Cloud Imperium Games CCO and Wing Commander creator Chris Roberts — who spoke to Gamasutra about his crowdfunding success — will present a talk called ‘Star Citizen: Going Beyond Crowdfunding’.
In this talk, Roberts will explain his approach to cultivating and continuously engaging Star Citizen’s supporter community — and how that approach enabled them to raise more money than any other crowdfunded game and build a head start on the large player base needed to support its massive virtual universe.
Dealspwn has also published an interview with Chris Roberts, focusing on how Star Citizen stretch goals have evolved.

“So we got to a point where we went ‘Okay, well it doesn’t look like we need investors now. We are fully community funded,” he continued, “and that’s the best because everyone who’s backed the game just wants a cool game, [and] I want to make a cool game – we’re not worried about ‘Okay, you’ll get your 10 X return on your investment.’ So as long as the game, even after it goes live, makes enough money to pay for the servers and add new content, then it’s great, you know, and anything over that would be gravy.” Roberts went on to explain that even a successful game can still bring a lot of pressure with investors and publishers on board. “When things go well, they’re like ‘Oh, you did really well. Well, next year we need you to do 20% more.’” But, of course, that isn’t the case with Star Citizen which is now 100% independent from these issues and restrictions.