no more passes.
if you guys have logged into the CIG site lately, you may have noticed that you now have some extra UEC. thats because alpha passes are no longer a thing. CIG decided rather then spending an extra $5 for a AC pass if your package didnt contain one, to now allowing ALL packages to to have alpha access. so for those people who either bought a alpha pass or for those who had AC passes in their pledge packages will now gain extra UEC to either use now, or you can save it for future use when the game is released.
anniversary sales. right now until this Tuesday all limited ships are on sale again. about the only thing you cant get in this sale is the scythe and the glaive ships. they also fixed how they do ship upgrades and cross chassis upgrades. check that out here. https://robertsspaceindustries.com/pledge/ship-upgrades
how to Get LTI on non LTI ships. ( this only works on stand alone ships NOT game packages and dosnt work on the Omega. this process works only on ships you can melt and get full credit for.)
the new P-72 Archimedes has just been released for concept sale, since most concept sales are LTI this has LTI as well. i purchased mine, by melting a Merlin and some hanger flair i won. then, i melted my stand alone ship, used the ship upgrade process to CCU the P-72 to the ship i just melted and then re-puchased the P-72. so i lost nothing, but gained LTI on ship i already had and it didnt cost me anything.
![Smile :)](./images/smilies/icon_smile.gif)
2.0 trials and tribulations.
we are hammering a way on the bugs in 2.0 in the test server... CIG fixes stuff, sends out another patch and we go break it again lol.
the map.
Crusader is a very large map compared to the general arena commander maps. in arena commander currently if you fly from one side to the other it would take a few minutes before you ran into the border. in the crusader map, it would take you several hours to fly from one side to the other in standard space combat mode.
flight mechanics.
they have really changed around the flight dynamics of ships now. part of it is just simply fundamental changes, but, a lot of it has to do with the fact that mass now effects your flight characteristics. for example. if you are racing, and you hit something and knock you wing off, you ship will now actually be faster then it was because of reduced mass. there are also 4 separate flight modes in 2.0 now. precision mode, that allows you more refined motion for strafing and flight in general. this is mainly used in take off and landings or close maneuvers around space stations. space combat mode, this is the regular function speed. if you tried to play SC before in arena commander, that is the speed that you played that. you have cruise mode. your ships top speed is greatly increased at the cost of maneuvering. and then quantum, this is a strait line flight. once you enter quantum you can not maneuver your ship but this mode allows you to get across the system fairly quickly.
multi crew ships have been introduced. both the Constellation and the Retaliator are now flyable in 2.0 as well as the cutlass and the super hornet. the really cool part about this is, you can now EVA outside your ship. when you do this your person becomes part of the universal grid system. but when you enter a ship your person becomes part of the ship grid system. meaning, that they can do things like artificial gravity and motion without breaking things.
mini mission system.
there are small missions embedded in 2.0 things like fighting pirates, turning com relay stations back on and searching for ships in distress. i expect more missions as they get this to the live servers and more updates are implemented. there is one abandoned base to explore if you wish to do so. there is also a first person shooter base. in this base you will find weapons and ammo, and health packs. if while doing the missions you run out of ammo and/or get damaged, you can fly to the repair and refueling station and fix your ship up.
why is 2.0 so important?
2.0 is a huge step in development for star citizen. even though a lot of the systems in place are place holders and will change in time. this is the test bed for how things will work in the persistent universe. this is also the place where CIG gets to watch how people interact with each other and how to balance things as time goes on. many things will be added into this as time goes on. new ships, new missions, even new dynamics to the game. things like mining, worm hole travel, planetary landings and all sorts of stuff will be introduced here first from this point on. this is also where we get to learn how all the multi crew systems will work, such things like manned turrets and engineering stations. ships that really havnt played a role in the current arena commander will start coming into their own in the 2.0 crusader map. ships like the hornet Ghost and Tracker will start seeing their functionality upgraded and tweaked to finally fit into their roles. when commerce type missions come to 2.0 ships that can haul cargo will start seeing their functionality being used as well. once we get the bugs tested and worked out, i expect to see some fun times in the mini PU called 2.0
![Cheers :cheers:](./images/smilies/smilie_prost.gif)