Super Hornet Super Sale - plus for subscribers: discounted Starfarer!

AstroSam

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Greetings Citizen!
The Fall 2016 Free Fly has come to a close and we’d like to thank everyone who tried out Star Citizen or helped spread the word about the game! Since the test, we’ve had a lot of interest in the fast and powerful F7C-M Super Hornet fighter. In response to your requests, we are adding this amazing ship to the store for a limited time, and with discount upgrade options to boot! If you fell in love with the Super Hornet during the Free Fly, now’s your chance to add it to your fleet!
https://robertsspaceindustries.com/comm-link/transmission/15588-Super-Hornet-Super-Sale






What is this new strategy? Are they in badly need of "fresh" money...? And somehow it seems to me that the discounted price corresponds to the regular before, doesn't it?

Well, however: nice try by CIG, but whoever wants a LTI-based ship can't CCU to a SH by this sale.
For those of you who think that LTI doesn't matter: grab one ;)
 

DrunkenTeddy

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Well, however: nice try by CIG, but whoever wants a LTI-based ship can't CCU to a SH by this sale.
Actually you can, use any LTI ship that's a lower price than the Hornet Tracker, upgrade to Hornet Tracker, buy $15 upgrade to the SH. You get a SH at $10 off. Not a bad deal if someone wants to add a SH to their fleet. I assume at some point the Sabre is going to get it's shields nerfed and the SH will become a better option than it is now. (not that it's a bad ship, but for a similar price the broken sabre beats it)
 

BUTUZ

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Judging by the amount there spending kitting up their studios with star trek air doors and etched glass eveywhere - they probably do need more money! :D
 

Bruttle

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Okay, I understood it like the Polaris Pre-Sale, where you had to pay 100% cash.
But then this whole discount here at the Super Hornet Super Sale (what a name...) seems to me like...inconsequential. Half-hearted?
Funding has slowed down to a "crawl" since the polaris sale. This is probably just a minimal boost to the daily income to get them by until the anniversary sale. With over 360 employees and several locations including a motion capture studio, I can only imagine how large their overhead has grown. They need a certain amount of income to keep from bleeding out.

Just off the top of my head, I would guess their overhead is well over $100,000 per day. So their recent income of $30-50,000 per day is likely chewing into their capital in a serious way.


They dont need fresh money.
That's the thing though, they will ALWAYS need fresh money. Both the company and the game have grown far too large in scale to allow the stream of funds to slow down. There still is a long way to go before they can start cutting back. Plus, they are planning for this game to be around for a very long time. That means they also need to retain as much of their capital as possible to offer long term company stability.

Ultimately, it's a business. There are only two ways to run a business, smart and stupid. I can only hope they are doing it smart. Because if they're not, this game won't stand a chance of being completed, let alone lasting for a decade.
 

MikeNificent

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I guess they will have to focus on delivering more updates and working on the game more in order to keep the hype level / income stream up... (read: if you want more money, do more work). Speaking of which, I want more money to piss away on ships during the anniversary sale, so I guess I better go to work :)
 

Bruttle

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Hm, just noticed, they are also offering the Starfarer for Subscribers.
Well look at that... They sure are. The Gemini too. Both of them for 10% off. I'm trying not to get irritated about the pricing. It's not so much that it is on sale, but rather that they said the ships weren't going to be any cheaper than the original price. Yet, here they are. There is no special occasion, no event. Yet still, 3 ships are on sale. I suppose the hornet could be considered an event with the free fly, but the Farer and the StarG?

I don't know at this point if I should be concerned. Here they are, a very long distance from release, and they are already putting ships on discount for no reason other than to do it. I can understand putting them up for sale, but a discount? This isn't walmart. They don't need to clear stock to make room for more. It's essentially a small thing, and I don't really care about paying a little extra. However, it is the reasoning behind it that makes me a little worried.
 

Bruttle

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Holy crap! The RSI forums are on fire over this. People are fking pissed. I can't really blame them though. CIG has stated many times that the concept sales will be the cheapest way to obtain these ships. They stepped in it big time when they offered the hornet for it's lowest price ever. It has got me thinking though. We funded CIG so they wouldn't have to do things like this. I would hate to think that we gave them $130,000,000 to free them from needing to employ these tactics, only to see them turn and head in this direction years before the game is even done...

As one of the posters on the RSI forums stated,
Is it greed, or have they squandered $120 something million and are hurting for cash? Because it IS one or the other. We certainly don't have anywhere near $130 million worth of game yet.
 

NaffNaffBobFace

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The best strategy now would be for them to be transparent and admit it one way or the other. This crowd funder has always been about getting rid of publisher limitations and publishers pressures and publisher smoke-screens...

...in doing so they have fragmented the funding base to lots of individual funders rather than two or three big ones. Their issue now is not singular publisher pressures but mass crowd pleasing, the overall impression of progress from people waiting for something they want and know they want verses demand for return on investment from a publisher who needs to make more money to make more projects...

...Saying "we are working on new real-time colour-bleeding techniques that will blow your socks off" is all well and good, but in an age where people are choosing to watch Youtube cat videos at 480p over a movie that cost a billion dollars to make on a 4k larger than life cinema screen, at some point you have to ask yourself "unless this is going to help fund the game by being able to sell licences to other game makers to use it, how does this help me get my Merchantman in the sky and overto Tyrol to sell some Rubbertree wood?" In short, it doesn't...

If they're fine, say "Hey we are fine, but are aiming to generate a steady $xxx to ensure when we finish the game we have as much funds as possible to continue to refine it and keep the servers free as originally promised."

And if they are not say "Hey, we are on course, we are on track, but getting us to this point has been a huge draw on the resources. We've not just had to make a game, we've had to make a new part of the industry from the ground up to give you this new game experience. We don't want to throw in the towel and push out whatever we are capable of right now, we want to give you what we know we are capable of giving you." at this point it will be the choice of the backers as to what happens. We will vote. We will be the publisher. How unexpected.

I want to go on record that i am not a doubter. I do not think they have issues as such...

...However I believe a rolling contingency plan has to be drawn up: Numbers off the top of my head here - CIG has to work out what % of the cash they have left and what % of it hey would need to push completion at any given moment. For instance, if they still have 75% of total pledge funds and it will take 13% of total pledge funds to push completion right now, they re okay, however if they have 75% of total Pledge and it would take 50% of total pledge to complete right now, they they seriously have to think about puling the trigger on bringing product to the table. The nearer it gets to the numbers matching each other the harder they have to think about saving some things for later when they have more than just one revenue stream and pushing the product out, because at the moment all they have is us. Once the game (a game) is out, they will have us and a game as revenue generator. And once the PU is out they will have a game, the PU and us. and maybe we will take a back-seat and become a minor revenue stream... maybe that is happening already?

Time to focus on taking all the eggs out of the basket...? Maybe...

I have asked a lot of questions and answered none of them. Just a little transparency...
 

Bruttle

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The best strategy now would be for them to be transparent and admit it one way or the other. This crowd funder has always been about getting rid of publisher limitations and publishers pressures and publisher smoke-screens...
I think the problem with that would be the truth. To quote a famous phrase "You want the truth? You can't handle the truth!". They would have to publish all the money that they wasted at the beginning of this. I have my suspicions that the first couple years of spending were wasted and ultimately thrown away. For instance, the first iteration of star marine. All that money outsourcing the original star marine was ultimately scrapped for the most part. The same applies to all the "first gen" ship versions that they are now re-working.

Don't get me wrong, I think they are on track now. I think that they finally have a clear picture of what they are trying to accomplish and have a game plan in action. They may have stumbled around for a couple years, but they are now on point and know what the game will finally look like. Which, of course, is radically different than their initial dream.

The underlying issue is that they are closer to a test lab than a traditional developer. They are plowing new ground, charting new territory, discovering new limitations (and surpassing them). We are now looking at a game that will redefine the industry in every possible way. Even as it exists now, the technology that this "alpha" employs has never been seen before.

This game is true development. That's why, if they allowed for full disclosure, we would find that CIG has very little of the 130 million left. The game is like a military contract. If you want cutting edge, you have to pay for it. Rarely does that cutting edge end up within budget and deadline estimates. That's probably why we are here, talking about the days events. CIG likely has far less assets than they should. They have probably spent far too much getting to this point.

That's why they NEED money. They now have over 360 employees and a huge amount of daily overhead. As I put in earlier, I would imagine their overhead to be over 100k per day. That would explain their desperation and the consequential abandonment of their previous promises.
 
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supitza

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I understand they need money and that's okay. I'll give them new money for new stuff.
"Hey, here's some old news. Pay me?".
No.
 

BUTUZ

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I don't see why people get aggro about cig wanting money. The whole point of this shindig is they ask for money and we give it to them. Judging by the progress that has been made in the last 6 months I am happy!
 

supitza

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I don't see why people get aggro about cig wanting money. The whole point of this shindig is they ask for money and we give it to them. Judging by the progress that has been made in the last 6 months I am happy!
I'm totally okay with them asking for money. I'm just saying that MY money (@supitza 's money) is only dropping with 2.6 / 3.0 or any major news.
 
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BUTUZ

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I've dropped my money. Doubt I'll drop any more now. Just gonna sit back, relax and enjoy all the new features of each patch, AND SHOOT MOONSHINER IN THE FRIKKIN FACE :D
 

AstroSam

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I don't know at this point if I should be concerned. Here they are, a very long distance from release, and they are already putting ships on discount for no reason other than to do it. I can understand putting them up for sale, but a discount? This isn't walmart. They don't need to clear stock to make room for more. It's essentially a small thing, and I don't really care about paying a little extra. However, it is the reasoning behind it that makes me a little worried.
I'm having the same concerns but wasn't able to put them in writings. So thanks for that, exactly what I'm thinking. And I can totally understand that the backers - and the RSI forums - are on fire.

I think that RSI has been kind of surprised by their overhead costs. Or some people were, but Chris Roberts didn't want to hear/see it. I'm curious how they will react on that shitstorm. May be that they wanted to earn fresh money - but now backers are more than ever withdrawing for wait and see what CIG will putting on the table for the 130 million bucks they were given for the development of the former idea of Star Citizen.
 
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