Today Cloud Imperium Games opened the sixth day of the Intergalactic Aerospace Expo 2049 in Star Citizen, focusing on the totally-law-abiding brand Drake.
If you’re not familiar with Drake, its rugged and no-nonsense ships tend to be very popular among… problematic citizens. This has given the company a fairly bad reputation, which it’s trying to shed.
As usual we get a new trailer featuring the Top Gear parody with totally-not-Jeremy Clarkson Jax McCleary and totally-not-the Stig Jimmy.
You can watch it below.
On top of the trailer we get the reveal of the Drake Kraken Privateer, a variant of the massive Kraken attack carrier that is basically a flying mall that can hold ten shops (eight public and two private) within its large hull. Of course, it can still serve as a carrier as well.
It’s 270 m long, 64 m tall, and 104 m wide. This means that its area covers that of almost nine American football fields.
Below you can see some artwork to give an idea of what it’ll look like. The last screenshot is a bonus from a mailing list showcasing the spaceport of New Babbage on Microtech that will be implemented across Alpha 3.8 and 3.9.
Purchasing the Kraken Privateer with real money doesn’t come cheap, as it starts $1,700 and Cloud Imperium Games is selling only a limited quantity, as it doesn’t want capital-size ships to be excessively common. Apparently, the available stock for today was sold-out in seconds.
That being said, you should keep in mind that all ships will be purchasable with in-game credits, so spending real money should be seen exclusively as a way to support the game’s development. If you’d rather not pull out your wallet, you don’t need to.
As usual, the most relevant part of the expo is the Free Flight Event which will allow everyone to try the current build of Star Citizen without needing to pledge any real money to the game.
Here is the list of ships and vehicles available for trial today.
- Buccaneer: A light fighter that sacrifices durability and an ejection seat for raw fire power.
- Caterpillar: A heavy multicrew commercial freighter. Lightly armed, with superior cargo capacity.
- Caterpillar Pirate: A heavy multicrew commercial freighter. Lightly armed, with superior cargo capacity and custom pirate livery.
- Cutlass Black: Black is Back. Drakes multicrew Cutlass is highly versatile, with combat and cargo prowess.
- Dragonfly Black: A two-seater grav-lev bike. Easily traverses rough terrain, or closes the distance in space.
- Dragonfly Yellowjacket: A two-seater grav-lev bike. Easily traverses rough terrain or closes the distance in space with custom yellow livery.
- Herald: No secret is safe, Drake’s Herald captures and stores information before leaving at blistering speed.
Speaking of lots of money, the game’s crowdfunding total has literally skyrocketed past $248 million.
To be more precise, at the moment of this writing it’s at $248,777,830 and climbing fast. This means that gamers have pledged almost 1.8 million dollars in about a day most likely due to the popularity of Aegis Dynamics ships and the beginning of the Kraken sale.
The number of registered accounts is now at 2,444,076. As usual, you should keep in mind that not all of them are paying players. The number includes accounts created for Free Fly events like the one ongoing now.
If you want to see more you can check out the impressive gameplay shared at CitizenCon and the second part, showing planet Microtech, the Anvil Carrack, and the Anvil Pisces, and the first wormhole jump to a new system. You can also take a look at the brand new “Theatres of War” Battlefield-like gameplay mode, the reveal of the game’s universe simulation tech, Quantum, and more videos and screenshots showing planet tech v4, Microtech and its capital, New Babbage.
For the sake of full disclosure, you should keep in mind that the author of this article has been a Star Citizen backer since the original Kickstarter campaign several years ago.
