At some point all the throwing of money becomes a bit ridiculous though.
Practically all the ships will be available to buy in the game with ingame money. Whether their balancing and surrounding meta will live up to the backing price tag and their concept is utter speculation to the point that I'd call much of the concepts pieces of fantasy literature. We don't know if a 600$ large combat ship might not be shot to pieces within minutes by some players in bombers, who just played the game for a couple of hours. We don't know if the specialized Hornet variants will have any use in the game or will just end up being the usless brothers of the combat variant, because they didn't get a place in the meta.
Actually
all the ships are to be available in game either for purchase or capture.
In regards to a $600 ship going to pieces within minutes when faced with a coordinated fleet of bombers? Given that the lowest bomber right now is a $165 ship (not something you'll have in a couple of hours from a starter package), it's quite possible, and even probable. None of the $600 ships are capital ships, and shouldn't be expected to survive solo against a bunch of bombers for long. The only ship Roberts has said will be able to hold its own against a bunch of bombers (Retaliators) is the Idris, and that's a $1200 ship that will require a sizable human presence to properly function, and was likely taking into account the internal fighter wing.
Spending money isn't supposed to turn you into an untouchable god who can solo a bunch of other people that have the proper paper to your rock. The money should be to support the game with the ships as a bonus, and proper game balance is going to dictate that those ships can get destroyed.
As for the variants, that's just a matter of trust. It's an issue with any crowd funded game. What's to say anything a dev says will actually be what they say when the game is done? If you can't believe in something as basic as stealth and tracking in a game that already has the groundwork for ship signatures and radars set, then that's your choice.
We don't know whether more than two of the large combat ships fully manned and a handful of fighters will even be able to fit into one instanced area of the game. Chances are, they won't or whatever duct tape solution there will be for such encounters might be fairly limited and far less grand than the concept texts make them out to be. We don't know if exploration will actually give the feeling of exploring unknown space, when there are no unknown star systems around, because the whole game map is hand made with some dynamic elements (aren't tunnels supposed to change?). In the same vein, we don't know which use the rovers in the Aquilla and Carrack will even get. Will there actually be large planetary areas to explore where those have any use?
First you say we don't know and then you say essentially that they won't. You're obviously skeptical about their ability to achieve anything with the game. =P But yes, the end result will be less than the idealized concepts. This follows for just about every game out there. Aim for the stars and then scale back as practicality demands.
Exploration wise, there are unknown star systems. What is visible on the map isn't everything. If anything it's theoretically more unknown than Elite where everything is there and you pick where to go, and the primary challenge is not dying before you get back. (Be it by death by black hole or death by boredom.
) In SC you'll have to find a jump point first, and then ride that point into the unknown. It might be someplace new. It might be a new route to an existing place. It might collapse after you use it and leave you stranded. So no, you're not going to be "discovering" tons of places in SC like Elite, but on the flip side, the process should be more involved and have more importance when accomplished.
Rovers only exist on two ships and planet side exploration is hardly important in the grand scheme of things when everything else on their plate is considered. Elite is *just* getting basic planet side exploration and that game had the luxury of being totally procedural from the get go. That didn't stop people from exploring in that game despite how static the process is.
Now that they're scratching 100 Mio. $ in funding, do they really need more money to make the game? Shouldn't they be able to finish the base game and be able to sell it to the public - adding the later concept ships with seasons/addons? Will throwing more money at it actually make the game any better or get it finished any faster? Or does it just invite them to dream up concept sale after concept sale with new featues whose implementation and release is ever further down the road?
I tend to think that the latter is somewhat the case. I also have severe doubts that Star Citizen will eventually live up to all it's made out to be. If Elite has shown anything, than it's how much flaws a game with similar scope can have and I'm not fooling myself into believing that Star Citizen will - initially - overcome all those flaws and be the "BDSSE".
It wont overcome every possible flaw, but by getting an appropriate amount of funding it can hopefully avoid the Elite downfall of launching as a retail product with tons of crucial aspects not implemented. If Elite had the funding that SC has, I highly doubt they'd have chosen to launch when they did with the game in that state.
Which is why I think at least my money is better invested in some nice sim hardware that I'll be able to use in other games even if Star Citizen were to become a turd. Or in Star Citizen, if it turns out the be
the shit. It's a much safer investment than fantasy ship sales and it still allows one to throw hundreds of dollars at
something.
Sim hardware without software you want to use it on is useless. I've played Elite, and burned out on it. I'll be back eventually, but that's besides the point. Hardware will always be there. The sim community will provide it. What they don't can be made by hand. Software to use it on, on the other hand, is a time limited affair that can't be done by hobbyists. If you don't seize the opportunity when it presents itself, there's no telling how long you'll have to wait for a second chance.
For all we know, coming close to Star Citizen's vision might require them to have 300M or more in pure dev budget and 5 more years of development. And even then, due to design decisions (e.g. handcrafted world vs. generated galaxy) or due to hardware limitations (e.g. tighter than ideal player limit for peer2peer instances, maybe no dedicated multiplayer servers, player/server bandwidth) its actual vision may be wholly out of reach. All we know for certain is that they're not going to be done next month.
Which makes it a question of faith, whether you'll let them bleed you wallet with continued and partly incereasingly expensive "pledge" fantasy ship sales or wait and see what they will deliver in return (edit: and maybe play another space game that is out in the meanwhile ;-) ).
You act as if they haven't shown us anything with the "wait to see what they deliver". They've continued to make progress year after year. With this first version of the PU, we're experiencing for the first time the basis from which the game will be built. So long as they continue to iterate and make progress, all is good. And this isn't even counting Squadron 42 being developed alongside it.
