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"...With the access code below, you’ll be able to explore the Star Citizen Universe in a number of ships and vehicles: Get into the fight with the Mustang, enjoy the versatility of the trusty Aurora MR, haul freight like a pro (or steal it like a pirate) with the Cutlass Black, and tear it up planetside in the newly released Cyclone.
The code will also grant you access to Arena Commander, where you can hone your dogfighting skills, and Star Marine, where you can engage in intense FPS action. Simply follow the steps outlined below, and we’ll see you in the ‘verse."
Comments
https://robertsspaceindustries.com/star-citizen/howto/1
More info taken from Reddit:
Current Gameplay in Star Citizen 3.1.1
Info text for players that have not bought the game yet, so they know what they are buying into
Important
If you do not like to experience early development, bug-hunting and are not crash resistant, the current game is not for you, wait until it is finished
The whole game is in an early alpha development state, everything is work in progress. Ships, weapons, flight-mechanics and everything else is subject to change
Price
(Prices are different in each country)
48,73 EUR (45 $ w/o VAT in US) / for Star Citizen (The multiplayer part of the game)
48,73 EUR (45 $ w/o VAT in US) / for Squadron 42 (The singleplayer part of the game) in production, not playable
Combo-pack for both games is 70,39 EUR (65 $ w/o VAT in US)
Price model is that you only pay once and can play as long as you want
System Requirements
Windows 7 (64bit) with Service Pack 1, Windows 8 (64bit), Windows 10 - Anniversary Update (64bit)
DirectX 11 Graphics Card with 4GB RAM
Quad Core CPU
16GB+ RAM
SSD strongly recommended
Arena Commander (belongs to the multiplayer part of the game)
(not totally balanced, some minor bugs - but runs smoothly)
(approx. 3h playtime to learn the basics, a lot more if you want to master your ship)
Dogfight multiplayer
Free-flight alone or with friends in 2 dogfight-maps
Racing multiplayer or alone on three racetracks
Horde-mode against 18 waves of enemy NPC ships, Vanduul or Pirate swarm, alone with NPCs or coop with up to 3 friends/random players
Private matches are possible
Earn REC-credits by playing multiplayer games, to rent ships and equipment for Arena Commander
Flight mechanics and ship handling are more on the simulation side, learning to fly your ship takes some hours of practise
Star Marine (belongs to the multiplayer part of the game)
(buggy and not balanced, low FPS and FPS drops)
(approx. 1h playtime, very standard shooter at the moment)
First-person multiplayer shooter
capture the objective mode
Team-Deathmatch mode
EVA parts on maps
Hangar
(some minor bugs and glitches but runs smoothly)
(approx. 10min - 1h playtime to see everything, depends on how many ships you have)
Walk around your hangar
Look at and access your ship
Decorate your hangar with flair items
Only singleplayer
It is currently not possible to start your ship from the hangar
Crusader (Persistent Universe) (belongs to the multiplayer part of the game)
(very buggy and glitchy, crashes often, low FPS and FPS drops due to netcode and server restrictions is normal)
(approx. 3h playtime for just the missions, additional a lot more if you like to explore everything)
quest progress won't be saved between sessions
simple trading from A to B
2 space stations with weapon-/, cloth-/, trader-/ and equipment shops
1 big landing zone with big station on a moon
1 space station to explore and do a simple story driven quest
Space station Kareah for FPS and getting rid of your bounty
Interaction with other players, 50 players per server
3 moons, you can land and walk around on
Outposts on all moons to explore and trade with
Asteroid field around moon Yela
Repair and refill your ship at cry-astro space stations
Fly together in multicrew ships, walk around inside the ship, man a turret,
Steal other player's ships, or ask them if they lend it to you
Automatically generated missions: Repair com-beacons, hunt down aggressive players, gain control of Kareah station, simple cargo missions, find and retrieve black-boxes or intel
Menu
(works well)
Equip and change loadouts of your ships
change mapping of your external devices like keyboard, mouse, HOTAS, gamepad, etc.
(not every external device works at the moment)
Website
(confusing at the beginning but works well)
Voyager Direct Store: Buy ships and equipment with real money
Electronic Access Store: Buy ships and equipment with REC (only for Arena Commander)
Forums and chat (now Spectrum) work very well. There are a lot of friendly and helpful guys willing to help
Go to #becoming-a-citizen or #helpdesk-volunteers and just ask your questions, there is always someone there trying to help
Ships
(all ships are work in porgress everything can and will change)
all ships (not all are currently buyable) https://robertsspaceindustries.com/ship-matrix
ship status (can I fly them already?) https://robertsspaceindustries.com/spectrum/community/SC/forum/1/thread/concept-ship-loaners
The Future
System:
Acer Predator XB272, 1920 x 1080 @ 240Hz
i7 7700K
MSI 1070
16GB Ripsjaws V, 3200
SSD with windows on
M.2 for games
So woke up in the love pod, had a run around Olisar, was averaging around 45 FPS on V-High settings, went over to the console, spawned a Mustang, navigated my way to the correct deck jumped in and flew around for a few minutes. After chekcing key binds opened up the map clicked on Delamar then flew over to it, avg 35 FPS on surface. saw blue icon for Levski so followed that finally got there FPS dropped to around 25 FPS, had a couple of ships there think possibly cutlasses, ended up waiting 10 mins for a landing pad and in the end just landed outside, logged out.
So I've always been critical of this game, I still remain so due to practices I disagree with, however, some of the stories I've heard are blown way out or proportion. I was expecting a full on nightmare being able to find a ship on the right pad.
This was not the case, it was easy, same with the flight controls, I managed after never playing the game to find the correct pad, jump into my ship, take off and the proceed to navigate to and land at Levski. It then dawned on me that I have always been of the opinion that the majority of people who play games are completely and utterly clueless, so yeah I suppose for most, somehow this would be difficult.
The good:
Flying over to the planet and landing seamlessly was nice, the graphics looked decent though had some flashing texture problems with shadows.
The bad:
Not a fan of the UI, daresay if I had my saitek hooked up would make things easier but couldn't be bothered installing the saitek software and blowing the dust off my HOTAS, would like to be able to bind an action key (is it possible?) to enable one press to open doors / enter ships. From what I saw seems Elite has a better UI layout currently.
The Ugly:
Even while averaging 30 FPS, experienced lots of micro stutters, especially in Levski some of them would turn the game into a slide show quite literally, even with my X52 hooked up would not want to try combat with that level of stuttering going on, would make it virtually impossible to land consistent hits on targets.
Conclusion:
Baring in mind only played for 30 mins, not as bad as made out by some but then equally not as good as made out by others, seemingly lots of issues that need to be addressed before I would entertain any notion of dropping cash on it.
It may be that those of us that play SC for a longer time have done a lot of tweaking to our systems and especially settings, resulting in a slightly better than average performance.
Most of the people i know prefer a programmable HOTAS joystick for flying. Of course with optimized key bindings.
But micro-stuttering and FPS drops like those observed by you are still common - i concur. One gets used to it and one learns how to land hits consistently on the chosen target. Its getting better and better from patch to patch.
There ARE still a lot of issues to be addressed, but that is what volunteer playtesters (and the CIG QA crew) are for ;-) We write reports and check the Issue Council for things that need testing.
Swatting bugs one at a time ;-)
Have fun
As to the micro stutters, I get that you can get used to it, though it's something that desperately needs to be addressed, as for me it's a big no no when it comes to games. Still skeptical of the game but was actually surprised at the same time.
After my initial testing, I decided to dig out my HOTAS and get it hooked up, first thing I noticed is that the sensitivity was through the roof, after finding a quick guide on setting up the curves it sorted it right out and was smooth. I think they really should lower the preset sense way down, as it was insane, would only have to tap the stick and the ship would go nuts. I found a guide how to sort it out but there really is a lot of people in gaming these days who wouldn't even entertain the notion of reading guides for a game.
Also had a look at messing around with some settings on my PC, ended up hitting 60 FPS, this was with people flying around near me, lowest was about 25, still had stuttering going on but as @Erillion stated, you do get used to it.
After I got everything setup, decided to fly around a few places and check out the scenery. Visited the moons first off and did a couple of missions. Favourite place by far I visited was grim hex, really did a good job with the atmosphere on this place, for me, had a proper Expanse, belter vibe to it.
The UI still feels a little cluttered, especially in the Cutlass, I suppose you can get used to it, though to me, it seems like there is too much going on considering how small the screens are. Personally would prefer fewer screens that are larger / easier to read, while keeping the system now where you can choose what is displayed, as that is a nice touch. MobiGlass has actually grown on me, at first I disliked it, however, I think this was down to the fact that I didn't have a clue what was going on.
Only suffered three crashes in the time I was playing, all at Olisar, though I did get a fair few delivery missions that just disappeared while in the middle of them. All in all it was actually a decent experience, the potential there is huge and the art team deserve massive props, if only they can get the code working it really could be a good game.