By Ian Dransfield
The slow march towards Star Citizen becoming a full game continues, with one of its six modules - Arena Commander - hitting version 1.0 over the weekend.
In a post by Star Citizen's Grandmaster of Everything (I may have made that title up), Chris Roberts pointed out the whys and hows of the release. In short, Arena Commander 1.0 brings more ships and upgrades, a lobby system and enhancements to ship systems, like a thruster power system. Which is nice.
You can see everything in more detail - and buy some brand new ships, of course - through the above link.
Arena Commander is Star Citizen's test track (in space), allowing those who've backed the game to have a few fights, races or just float aimlessly in one of their pricey space-boats.
While it's now at version 1.0, this isn't the final version - nor is it the 'proper' one - of Arena Commander, as Roberts stated in the post:
"I would like to stress that today’s release of Arena Commander 1.0 is a beginning, not an ending," he said, "This milestone does not denote the completion of Arena Commander, it kicks off an even more significant phase of its development.
"With this update, we’ve added a significant number of ships, items, missiles, and systems which means more interconnected systems, more servers to stress and more bugs to squash. These future changes won’t be limited to fixing technical glitches and balance issues."
We shouldn't expect to see Star Citizen in anything resembling a 'full' state until around 2016 though, according to Roberts. But it's alright, we've got his blessing to enjoy Elite: Dangerous in the meantime.
Though the wait for $64 million pets is going to be a tough one...
