Star Citizen Has Added A New Ship, And It's Awesome

Roberts Space Industries just passed a crazy milestone, managing to rack up $144 million in crowdfunding for their space sim Star Citizen. In response to racking up more money than the average AAA blockbuster title, RSI announced that a new spaceship is coming soon.

Gamespot is reporting that the new ship is called the Anvil Hurricane and it's currently in its pre-order concept phase. What this means is that you can pre-order the ship for $160 but it won't be delivered to you in-game for the alpha version of Star Citizen just yet because it's still in development.

The A4A Hurricane is a sleek little ship designed to pack a big punch during combat. The objective of the ship rests in a design made to punch through enemy shields with extremely devastating weapons. However, that firepower comes at the cost of shielding, requiring very expert skills to maneuver and fly like an ace during dogfights. The Hurricane comes with six cannons and four missile launchers.

Over on the Roberts Space Industries website they mention that the Anvil Hurricane is scheduled to arrive later in the year for backers of Star Citizen. According to the post, the Hurricane shouldn't be too difficult to implement because it's based on a core Anvil chassis and the physics are already setup within the current alpha build. It's just a matter of finishing up the design and testing it before allowing gamers to get their hands on it. They expect the Hurricane to make its appearance in Star Citizen sooner rather than later.

The Hurricane can be pre-ordered right now with an upfront payment of $160 that goes towards the game's continued development. They're advertising it as a "limited concept sale". The designers and engineers are currently working on the ship but it's not available in the hangar module, the Arena Commander mode or the PTU.

Like many other ships made available through the pre-order backer phase, there is a lifetime insurance order available for the ship, too. So if your ship gets blown up and totaled while you play in the full game, you'll be able to pull it out of the shop without worrying about exorbitant costs keeping you out of action.

Some people are still rather critical of the game due to the fact that development is still ongoing and they're five years into development. However, the team did have to undergo a lot of changes over the years in order to accommodate the scope of the title, which rapidly grew during the initial Kickstarter phase.

The game was originally going to be just another Elite: Dangerous clone, but due to the funding constantly expanding they ended up expanding Star Citizen from a typical dogfighting space sim to a full-blown galactic simulator. You can travel to various planets, take up quests from NPCs, get out of your ship and walk around, as well as partake in a working FPS competitive mode known as Star Marine.

Development is still moving along steadily due to the engine originally being based on the CryEngine, which wasn't designed at all for a game the size and scope of Star Citizen, but they seem to have managed to get on track and are regularly outputting new alpha versions. The new Anvil Hurricane could likely arrive with the next big alpha release of the game.