How Far Away Is Star Citizen 1.0?

CitizenCon has been and gone, lot's of information about all sorts of things, but when is any of it going to arrive? 1.0 is the major question, when will we get the full release of the game?

New Parts To Buy (Amazon Affiliate Links)

Become a member to support the channel:

#StarCitizen​​ #SpaceSim​​ #PCGaming​ #Squadron42​ #S42

[tenpoundfortytwo]

Now...not everyone is going to be as pessimistic as me. I'm just going with my gut on these dates and obviously I hope it all comes a lot earlier! Would love to hear your guesses!

[Chewywrinkles]

I’m just glad I started following this game as a teenager. 11 years later and I’ve been an electrician for 9 years. Really looking forward to playing star citizen when I retire.

[lhazaar-]

Based on today’s information a 2029-2030 target is a good guess. CIG can always speed up the release by moving things after 1.0. The best move for them will be to change the process sp they can have polished releases after 4.0. I don’t think the project will survive if Squadron releases and SC is not in a much much better state stability wise, and I think CIG knows this.

[MCJamZam]

Honestly, this is a refreshingly "sober" take on the timeline. As a tech enthusiast and professional 3D artist I totally agree with your take, and imo your technical knowledge shines through here. I've heard plenty other people predict a much shorter timeline, but so far not from anyone I think understands the technical aspect of this on a deeper level.

The amount of work they're planning to get through is crazy. I like it, I think it's a good plan, but it's going to be a long ride before we get to 1.0. I just hope they stick to it now.

[horsthorstensen]

Marketing wise it would make a lot of sense to get 1.0 ready by the time sq42 releases. Whenever that might be.

[theamericanaromantic]

I think 6 years is probably what we are looking at

[deansandstorm]

During the captains of industry presentation they said the pioneer is scheduled to come in the next 12 months, but also said it won’t be out in time for the first patch with base building. Meaning the base building part is at least less than 12 months from now.

[GhostOokami]

I'm thinking 3-6 years leaning toward the end of that for 1.0. Here's hoping sooner than later.

[lukasz]

We are used to it and learn that Cig has not achieved its stated time goals. However, fewer employees worked on SC in the past. There are now supposed to be 1000, so I think we will be less disappointed than in the past. The only obstacle that could come is server meshing delay. and so everything else would be delayed as well

[Nikalin]

It was good to meet you at CitCon! (I was the volunteer at the end of Day 2 looking after the line to meet Jared / Disco Lando). Looking forward to seeing everything they showed on on stage in game :)

[Spidder]

I literally have no idea when 1.0 will be released. Im just taking one step at a time and see how development goes once Pyro and server meshing is LIVE and working. I think getting dynamic server meshing working is one of its biggest and hardest hurdles.

[tree]

With Nyx and Castra, Nyx definitely seems well within reach for next year. We know what is in the Nyx system, it is not a complex system at all. They haven't show us the rest, but even with the tools they have now sans Genesis it should be relatively easy for them to make what is in Nyx. The Galactapedia entries for the Nyx system aren't dated by any means, they are updated from the original Galactic Guide, so what they talk about is what we're getting. The elephant in that particular room is the Vanduul, and we have no idea what that gameplay element will look like.

As for Castra, even though Sherman is a big new landing zone, historically it is not hard for CIG to make Landing Zones. I do think it will set sort of a new standard for LZs, but they have two different Landing Zone teams, or at least they did before the restructuring over the last year. And beyond Sherman, and CASCOM, Castra is very much a nothing system. So expecting these systems to take a long time just isn't in line with what they have the ability to produce. And with Static Server Meshing almost ready for release and Dynamic soon to follow, they really need to expand the universe to give shards a bit more breathing room for higher player counts.

[JWebmeister]

I wanted to see a realistic plan for 1.0, including scope, schedule and resources / financial plan. “Line in the sand” is grossly exaggerating what was actually communicated to backers at CitCon. Maybe the details have been worked out and it’ll be drip-fed over the next year, but I think it would be foolish to give CIG the benefit of the doubt.

I suspect they are where they need to think about the end-game feature-set and content so that the refined requirements and technical implementation of server meshing and other tech is “potentially” capable of supporting end-game content (i.e. doesn’t explicitly “exclude” the ability to support that scope).

Considering how much Tier 0 / backlog features and content there is, I think 5 years is a realistic expectation for timeframe for a MVP, and some of what was shown, such as the space stations, may not be achievable at the scale it was shown as.

[TheFireBean]

That's a fair take 10P. For me, people need to be prepared that a 1.0 release will take more time. It will be a while before it comes online, but it's also fair to say that progress is being made, and the QL improvements are there with ever patch. One major critique I have is that a patch should be playable within a week, even pre-1.0 - no question. This past week, post CON is a very bad look for CIG.

[BigBobBlazer]

The only thing CIG has ever learned is how to manipulate it's backers in a more clever fashion. CitizenCon has only just concluded and we're already seeing it with the RSI Galaxy. They've essentially postponed the production of the RSI Galaxy to some vague, unimportant time, years in the future, as opposed to it going into production immediately after the Polaris (which is almost done). They have cleverly distracted most by making it more about the Galaxy's ability to build bases. But underneath all that, they got backers to not really notice that they're not going to make the RSI Galaxy anymore. It's release date is somewhat akin to the BMM (we're not working it, we don't plan on working on it, but it'll get done some day). Highly disappointing considering that some backers were even speculating that the RSI Galaxy might get released at IAE this year.

But, don't kid yourself. This had nothing to do with the Perseus having more in common with the Polaris than the Galaxy. This had everything to do with CIG selling another ship, the MISC Starlancer. If they kept the Galaxy as the premier base-building ship, most wouldn't buy the Starlancer BLD. Plus, the Starlancer BLD is easier to make, smaller, not modular, and CIG has already gotten the backers money for the RSI Galaxy, so there's no real need to get it made now.

And here is the lesson. Don't give CIG money for concept ships. It's a sure-fire way to get them to deprioritize the ship you want made.

[Brodoodle]

Alot of the later things on the list really are going to come down to how many people server meshing can hold/ CIG want to host cost wise.

Also considering they want monster hunting and base building (likely t0) in 12-18 months how on earth are peole expecting the 4 dozen other things to be implmented in the 6-12 month window before a SQ42 release after that 😂

We are easily not seeing everything stated and in thier words a completly polished state for 1.0 by 2029 or later, not without some seroius cutting

[nathanforrester]

Ok time is always interesting to talk about. We have lived in the working on server meshing world for what 7 years now. Groundbreaking tech that has never been done before. I do not see any of these new systems in that same category. You have a fancy version of no man sky planet building. You have a story along the lines of starfield. You have some landing zones to build. This is all standard stuff.

I really think the slow down on the new stuff is how much old stuff has to be rebuilt.
The main hold up this year had been old systems. The new stuff was fine. How much old stuff needs to be redone for us to see the new planet tech. Who knows. If nothing needs rebuilding we will start seeing this new tech by the end of next year.

Once they can create the new planets and all the little sites of interest then the new systems should follow. They have teams working on landing zones long before the other stuff is done. I would guess a team can do a landing zone in a year. That is about how long new lorvill took.

The social stuff is hardly Groundbreaking and will not effect how fast the other work can happen.

So baring a hitch in server meshing 3 to 4 years for everything but the player made space stations.

[MegaMerijn]

While it sucks we might not see a lot of these things soon, we can at least finally see what the aim for the game will be so we can be happy that they are going to work on the things we want in game.

[HappyChap]

CIG will run out of money way before 1.0 is close to release.

[Ilwrath]

Here's my prediction: Base building has been worked on actively since the beginning of 2024. They are looking to roll it out by Q2/Q3 2025 up to large buildings, which is why they are going to also roll out Starlancer BLD by then. The Galaxy was put on the backburner because finishing the Polaris delayed starting on the Galaxy and they already had the Starlancer in the pipeline so they came to the conclusion that making the BLD variant will be the only way to hit their target with base building - more than anything this is a sign of hard targets having been set. Pioneer and XL buildings will come later, earliest Q1/2026. 

Finally adding medical gameplay makes sense because with that and bases there's actually some functioning game loops (if the technical advancements are there) that will allow citizens to pass their time during 2025/2026. Ironclad also works well with base building/ground warfare.

Now If you think you're pessimistic, here's how I see it: Something happened that has made them speed up production and set hard targets. Maybe funding projections? The next two years in terms of deadlines is going to be brutal. SQ42 in 2026 is going to take much more than they are willing to admit and it will eat resources from SC, but they will publish no matter what. It might end up good, but it could end up being a buggy mess. Regardless of the outcome, 1.0 will be pushed out late 2026 or during 2027 and it will end up being a shell of what was said in this years citizen con with either features missing, not working or 1/2 done and then completely forgotten. IF SQ42 its a success they might be able to gather enough funding to continue developing 1.0 to a playable state if they don't start dreaming about a sequel to SQ42.

One of the biggest problems I see here is that despite all the talk, I don't think there's actually that much to port from SQ42 to SC. It was always mostly an excuse to funnel fund and dev time towards the vision. I definitely won't say it's all doom and gloom, but I do think there's hard times ahead.


I've pledged in trickles during the years, but the total sum is actually pretty embarrassing. I still think there's potentially a very good game to be had at the end of this wild ride, but I'm under no illusion about money being absolutely wasted during the first half or 3/4ths of development.