Congratulations everyone! We are an official “go” as of Thursday morning at 6:32 am EDT. Thanks to everyone’s enthusiasm we’ve got there in just two weeks.

I would like to say a big “thank you” to everyone. I know I have been saying thanks a lot recently, but you’ve earned them. You’re helping us put Space Sims back on the map! THANK YOU!

Now that Star Citizen has been funded, we’ve had a lot of questions about stretch goals. Many of you know the set of goals previously listed at the RSI site. They were broad design concepts that we needed additional funding to achieve. But quite frankly, they weren’t much fun for you and didn’t have enough concrete data!

So, we’ve heard you: our backers deserve a stretch goal system that isn’t just about game design but about rewarding our incredible community. To that end, we’ve developed two campaigns: one specifically for Kickstarter and one for the whole project. They still showcase our big ideas… but they also make the rest of the funding period about you.

The idea is that the money collected on Kickstarter and the money raised here on the RSI site will be pooled together and count towards the overall stretch goals which are listed here.

But, as added bonus, we’re running a Kickstarter set of stretch goals with are ADDITIVE to the overall stretch goals.

Our next goal is $750,000 on Kickstarter. That is within reach as I type this message! When we get there, every backer will start the game with a class I repair bot. Here’s the backstory:

The legend on the Saga Datasystems’ AMX-1 Repair Bot box says “a pilot’s best friend” and few experienced flyers would disagree. Thanks to a network of nine telescoping flex arms, the AMX-1 can access and repair any standard ship system with ease. Though it lacks the full speech boards and the emotional memory cores of more expensive models, the trademark whirring and beeping of an AMX is a welcome sound for anyone charting a path between the stars.

Next up is our main stretch goal: at $2.5 million we will add an additional flyable ship, the Anvil Gladiator, to the game. The Gladiator is the civilian variant of a powerful military bomber currently being used against the Vanduul on the frontiers of the galaxy. The Anvil’s pylons can support the heaviest grade antimatter torpedoes and it has up to a pair of turrets for protection during bombing runs. In short, they’re a capital ship’s worst nightmare!

Finally: we polled the community if it would be alright to extend the overall pledge campaign by ten days to match the Kickstarter and the answer was a resounding yes. So that’s what we’re going to do; it’s going to let us put together something special for when everything finishes on November 19 at 11 am PST!

So, lets get out there and earn some robots… and in the coming days, much more!

And again THANK YOU!

Chris Roberts

--- Fri Oct 26 2012 00:00:00 GMT+0200	
+++ Fri Oct 26 2012 00:00:00 GMT+0200	
@@ -25,2 +25,0 @@
-
-