Frequently Asked Questions

What is Star Citizen?
Star Citizen is an MMO space trading and combat simulator set in the mid-to-late 30th century. Star Citizen will feature both detailed space flight aspect as well as a first-person element which will allow players to explore and fight in first-person on planets as well as in space and on space stations.

Star Citizen is set to feature a wide variety of activities such as exploration, trading, mining, as well as smuggling and piracy facilitated by many different ships that can be upgraded and outfitted to suit different playstyles.


 * What is Star Citizen?: An official video by Chris Roberts detailing the current state and vision for the game.
 * About the Game: The old introduction to Star Citizen and its future
 * Guide to Star Citizen: An unofficial community-written guide to Star Citizen.

What is Squadron 42?
Squadron 42 is an offline singleplayer campaign set in the Star Citizen universe. SQ42 will feature a 70 mission campaign and will tie into Star Citizen should the player wish to do so.

Who is Cloud Imperium Games? Roberts Space Industries?
Cloud Imperium Games (CIG) is an American video game company with offices in Los Angeles California, Austin Texas, Manchester United Kingdom and Frankfurt Germany. It was founded by Chris Roberts and Ortwin Freyermuth to develop Star Citizen and Squadron 42.

Roberts Space Industries is a fictional space technology company within the Star Citizen universe, RSI manufactures several different ships, as well as a line of space suits. However RSI also exists as a real-life subsidiary of CIG created for marketing and branding purposes.

When will Star Citizen be finished?
Squadron 42, the single player campaign, is expected to be content-complete in 2017, with an unknown amount of time to follow for polish. The date of commercial launch of the MMO portion of Star Citizen is still unclear. Some of the future plans are described in the Upcoming Patches article.

What are the latest features currently in the game?
You can find the latest features in the live Alpha.

What should I play first?
Arena Commander, a game mode in the Star Citizen Alpha, offers the smoothest gameplay, with single player, co-op or player vs. player combat using a variety of ships. The Universe, located in the Crusader star system, has the most features and is closest to the "final" Star Citizen, but has the most bugs, stability issues, and frame rate problems.

Will my PC run Star Citizen? Why am I getting low frame rates?
The official requirements for running Star Citizen, at the time of writing, are given. They may change during the development. A community guide can be found Here to figure out if your PC/laptop can run the game. However currently Star Citizen's Persistent Universe is performing poorly for everyone due to networking issues, so it is not uncommon to get only 20 - 30 fps on a powerful PC.

Is Star Citizen Pay-to-Win?
Currently people can purchase ships, weapons, and equipment for real money. However the developers have stated that ships and other items will no longer be directly purchasable with real money near or at the game's launch. At this time the developers have stated that it will be possible to buy UEC, the game's primary currency used to purchase most items, with real money in a limited way. "NO Pay2Win - You should never be able to buy anything with real money that you can't buy in with in game credits."

- Chris Roberts . However, at this time, there are items that cannot be purchased without real money - mainly ships.

How does buying ships work? Do I have to spend a lot of money?
No, you do not have to spend a lot of money. You certainly can, if you want to.

Currently, the game can be purchased via. A package will contain one or more ships, as well as some in-game currency and insurance for your ships. The most important thing to note is that the cheapest packages ($45 USD) will ONLY include either the multiplayer Star Citizen or the singleplayer Squadron 42. In order to get both, you can choose a package and purchase Squadron 42 for an additional $15. You may also purchase a Star Citizen package and buy the Squadron 42 add-on at a later date. Ships can also be purchased individually and added to your account where they will be available to use in-game when they are completed and flight-ready this however does require you to have a game package attributed to your account. All funds from purchases go directly toward creating Star Citizen and paying for the development of the game with the exception of the subscriber funds.

Can I still use other ships when I have not bought them?
Yes, you can either try to steal a ship from a player or you can rent one using REC.

Rental Equipment Credits or "REC" are currently the only way to own ships without paying real money for it. This currency can be earned by playing public Arena Commander matches, which can then be spent on the to rent ships or weapons for 7 periods of 24 hours.

More information be found.

How can I help bug test the game?
If you own the game you can submit bug reports and other issues to the. The Issue Council is a community-driven tool in which players can report issues they have encountered, attempt to replicate issue reports created by other players and prioritize valid issue reports to help Cloud Imperium Games developers decide which issues to investigate.

I'm having connection issues
See our troubleshooting guide.

What is the Public Test Universe?
The Public Test Universe (PTU) is an environment which is nearly identical to the current "live" version of the game. It exists to allow public testing of new and unstable patches, bug fixes, and content additions that are not yet ready to be released.
 * More information can be found in the on the RSI website