12 Days after crossing the $20 Million funded mark (and, 2 days before the 1 year anniversary of the game’s announcement) Star Citizen has crossed the $21 Million funded mark!
That’s a ton of money raised – without a publisher – in a year.  If it takes CIG another year to complete the game (and, it’s likely to take them longer then that.. 18 months is probably the minimum), and if they continue to crowdsource the entire time it’s completely possible they’ll have raised over $40 million by release.  That’s a ton of “extra” money ($23 million is fully funded + things like paypal, shipping fees, etc paid) that can be used to further develop new things for the game and/or, help defray  the costs of running the persistent servers for quite awhile.
The $21 Million goal was the salvage mechanic:
Salvage isn’t an aside: it’s a career, with its own mechanic, story tie-ins and universe-shaping endgames. Search the galaxy for a host of valuable and interesting secrets using both the flight and FPS components. Discover the secrets of the ancient Hadesians, locate valuable components and cargo… or go down in history the first to make contact an entirely new alien race.
As is standard for hitting a milestone, we get the stretch goal for the milestone that is $2 million away..and this is a good one.. it’s another alien ship flyable by humans:
Xi’an Scout Unlocked! The Khartu is the light attack craft of the Xi’An military. Contrary to Human ship design, the Khartu doesn’t have a traditional main thruster, instead featuring an array of maneuvering thrusters on articulated rigs. This design allows for incredible agility, making them the bane of UEE pilots, who bestowed the nickname ‘Quark’ because when all of the thrusters are firing, the ship looks like a spark flying through space. The Xi’an Aopoa corporation also manufactures an export model, the Khartu-al, for sale to human civilians as a dedicated scout/explorer. The export model features the same Xi’an maneuvering rig, but control surfaces modified for human use and a more limited armament. (Designer: Aopoa).
It sounds like it will be a lot trickier to fly, with the main thrust coming from pointing all the maneuvering thrusters in the same direction. Â I also like that CIG is throwing in a ‘drawback’ for all that increased maneuverability in the form of a lighter weapons load and defensive capabilities.
The non-export model will, of course, be available through “alternative” means (i.e., go defeat one in combat and don’t let it blow up).
Don’t forget to tune into the CIG live stream Thursday the 10th at 6:30 PM CDT, so you can see what everyone has been working on!