[If you want to watch the whole three hour presentation, you can find it on YouTube.]

This year, CIG opted to hold a digital CitizenCon, CitizenCon Direct, rather than stage their usual in-person blow-out. I assume that this is due, in part, to their heads-down approach to both Squadron 42 and Star Citizen’s “year of aggressive patching”. The almost three-hour televised (on Twitch and YouTube) event was mainly focused on the updates for the rest of the year, as well as a look ahead for what they plan to tackle in 2026. There was no talk of Squadron 42.

On to the recap!

Foreword by Chris Roberts

Roberts of course get’s to bookend the event; he started by proclaiming that 2025 “marked a turning point in Star Citizen’s history”, saying that they have confidently answered the question of whether or not they could pull off a seamless, server-meshed universe with incredible detail, delivered at scale. With this last “technical hurdle”, CIG is now free to work on content and quality of life improvements, both which are “long overdue”. Daily player counts are up 45% over this time last year, and per-session playtime is up 15%.

He continued by quickly recapping the narrative events that happened in 2025, including the Freedom Fighters saga that launched with the release of the Pyro system, and the Regen Crisis storyline that is currently in the process of wrapping up.

Roberts finished strong by announcing the release of the third system, Nyx, with the upcoming 4.4 patch scheduled to release in November. That marks the release of two new systems in a single year.

Welcome to Nyx

We knew that Nyx was going to be the next system released, but considering that Pyro was only released in January of 2025, having Nyx released in November of 2025 is kind of mind-blowing. The caveat is that when released, the system will be pretty bare-bones. It will have a few imperative features that make the system both useable and desirable to visit, but a lot of content and features will come throughout 2026.

About Nyx

When the system was discovered, it was quickly dismissed as being a lost-cause for colonization. It was sold off to a mining concern who worked it as hard as they could but in the end, the system was abandoned. This made it a prime location for the People’s Alliance, a group dedicated to resisting the then-controlling Messer Regime, to set up shop. Despite their best intentions, the People’s Alliance found that setting up their own government was more difficult than just taking over some spare real-estate. Thinly stretched resources meant an inability to to police the entire system, resulting in an increased criminal presence, but it also meant that the PA were unprepared for raiding parties from the abutting Vanduul-controlled system.

Now that the Messer Era has ended, the People’s Alliance is at a crossroads. Although they are engaged in a cold war with the UEE, the increase in Vanduul activity means that they may have to turn to the Empire for assistance. At the very least, the arrival of independent Citizens — the players — offers them a stop-gap solution to their manpower issues.

The Nyx system is comprised of three planets and one outpost, several jump points, and a thick asteroid belt. To start, there will only be two jump points: one between Nyx and Pyro, and the Nyx-Castra jump point will be temporarily taken over by a Nyx-Stanton jump point. This will allow players to reach the new system without having to pass through Pyro.

The Return of Levski

Several patches ago, the landing zone of Levski occupied a planet/moon of Delamar in the Stanton system. This was never intended to be permanent (not even sure why it was there except maybe because they had it and needed content at the time) and Delamar/Levski was removed in 2018. It’s back now, but in a different form: Levski is a mining outpost attached to a massive asteroid, the HQ of the People’s Alliance, and the central player hub of the Nyx system. It will feature everything we expect from LZs like medical facilities, HABs, ship and equipment shops, and, because of Nyx’s focus on mining, a refinery. Also due to the system’s cargo focus, there will be plenty of docking berths for ships that cannot land, such as the larger Hull series.

Originally I (and possibly others) thought that Nyx was going to be Pyro 2.0, as it’s lore indicated that it was a “lawless system”. In truth, Nyx isn’t lawless, just under-staffed. We shouldn’t expect rapid response police forces to arrive, or even the ability to report a crime against us, but Levski and other People’s Alliance outposts elsewhere in the system should be under armistice, allowing for players to move freely between those locations.

The system has two claims to fame, with the first being the Glaciem Belt. This is a thick ring of rocks encircling the star, and will provide a wealth of resources for mining crews. Ideally, this ring will be large enough to offer “security through obscurity” so that miners can use the dense population to hide, although such tactics shouldn’t ever be relied upon. The second is the proximity to Vanduul space.

The Vanduul controlled system is one jump away, and can be seen as a red splash in an otherwise dust-obscured starfield. It was mentioned that designers are using this as a marker; the closer a player gets to that other system, the more dangerous things become.

A Continuing Mission

The recently concluded Regen Crisis mission will serve as a jumping off point for a new mission arc that takes place within the Nyx system. As we discovered that ASD was using black-market tech in their research, our job is now to investigate where ASD was getting that technology from. We are contracted by employment faction InterSec to track down any leads we can find as to the source of ASD’s technology and in doing so, are introduced to new/continuing story arc set in Nyx that features a new epic location to explore, a new faction to fight against, and the first ever Persistent Universe appearance of the Vanduul.

Genesis

“Genesis” is CIG’s latest planetary tech tool, and it’s being used to create the planets of Nyx. Later, it will be used to update planets and moons in Pyro and Stanton.

This segment was heavily technical so I won’t cover it in depth, but here’s an overview:

The current planetary design process relied on distinct biomes that were placed by hand, with an algorithmic meshing of two or more biomes wherever they might meet or overlap. This worked well to get the project this far, but it’s not been how the game was supposed to work, and was cumbersome and arbitrary.

With Genesis, planets can be designed in more natural ways by defining the composition of the worlds, and then allowing the system to generate biomes based on physical datasets.

This means that when we see a forest or a meadow, it’s because those are the biomes that are made possibly by the planetary conditions in that area. Deserts happen in arid areas, and swamps happen…wherever swamps happen. In addition, this means that mineral placement for mining will occur where we expect it to, and with the types of minerals we expect to be there. The best news is that this system will remove the unhinged rocky surface of every landmass in the game; rocks will be present, mainly at the foot of mountains or rocky hills, but not everywhere on the landscapes. We will finally be able to drive our ground vehicles without bouncing all over the terrain.

Looking ahead, this will also provide a better planetary layout which will become more important when homesteads make it into the game, as desirable land is going to be a concern on many planets and moons.

There are three planets in Nyx. Nyx III is a gas giant and as such won’t really have a biome that players can colonize, unless CIG introduces the kinds of floating platforms we see on the surface of Orison in Stanton. Nyx II sports a toxic atmosphere and is a very volatile environment, so it isn’t going to be a prime real estate location except for psychopaths and people wanting to get away from it all (literally). I would expect Nyx II to host many valuable minerals, though, so outposts and structured mining operations are probably in the cards once player housing comes on-line.

Nyx I is the “hero planet” and has a diverse set of biomes ranging from mountainous areas to grasslands to wetlands and swamps. This planet is allowing CIG to hone the Genesis toolset to allow for things like planetary approach appearances being driven by the biomes of the planet, something which is currently handled by two different datasets.

These new technologies allow for the inclusion of cliffs, which the game could never do it well if at all (woo hoo?). It also puts rocks where we can expect rocks. These rocks will look like the larger rock formations they detached and fell from, and this will provide players with a means by which to identify the presence of minable minerals, as well as the types of minerals that we might find there.

Another update applies to grass. Yes, grass. These updates fix a whole bunch of previous issues, such as how grass responds to gravity, but also changes how grass appears and is represented. Believe me, the video showcases this much better than I am/care to.

Despite the high level overview of the technology and only a broad promise that Nyx I will be built using it, I think this segment was the second best discussions of the stream for me. I’ve played Starfield, Elite Dangerous, and No Man’s Sky and have considered their planets to be relevant for their setting but ultimately lifeless and unimaginative. It seems that CIG is trying to provide a multitude of experiences within a single planetary body, and players won’t even have to break atmosphere to experience several different detailed and varied biomes.

Inter-System Cargo Missions

As CIG works to shore up the mission system under the hood, the inclusion of a third star system provides the impetus to add in the ability for a mission to span more than one star system. Currently, a mission offered in Stanton will be completed within Stanton, but in 4.4, cargo missions can be granted in one system and completed in another.

There was no mention of the scale of these, although it was alluded to that there will be all kinds of capacities being offered so that no matter what ship a player has, missions will be available. At this time, though, no word was given as to the value of such missions, so I hope that a long-haul from Stanton to Nyx will pay appropriately.

One thing that was mentioned was that these missions may incorporate NPC combat events as non-player pirates attempt to seize your cargo, and the addition of “express runs” which put the player on a tightly timed schedule. I do hope that this is not a guarantee, that taking an inter-system mission means you will be attacked, but rather that the chance of being attacked increases. I’m not above partying up with friends to provide an escort, but I’m also OK playing the odds that my shipment might not get attacked when I’m only able to play solo. Right now it’s just rep, easy insurance, and a loss of time, all of which I assume will be reset prior to 1.0. Except the loss of time. I wouldn’t trust CIG to mess around with time if they had the ability to do it.

Rockcracker

Continuing in the vein of “maybe too much information”, CIG announced a new mission code-named “Rockcracker”. This is reminiscent of the “align and mine” mission back in Stanton which saw players needing to acquire several pass keys in order to activate a mining laser in order to acquire the minerals needed to fulfil the mission requirement.

The gist of this mission is that there are several of these large-rock dissection stations that have been abandoned. Players must infiltrate the facility, fight off the squatters who inhabit the station (of course) and reactivate the laser. Once this is done, the rock is revealed to be hollow, and the insides mineable and filled with (assumedly) rare minerals. Of course, restarting the station will draw the attention of Vanduul raiders, continuing the overarching narrative surrounding why the Vanduul are suddenly so aggressive in this area.

As cool as this sounds, I cannot imagine that this won’t be a contested area locked down by large orgs. Technically this makes sense as the amount of minerals being offered would be best suited for groups who need a large amount, but if these are the kinds of locations and events that provide the best, most lucrative materials that can only be controlled and harvested by organizations, then smaller group or solo industrial players will be locked out of this first-string source.

New Ships and Weapons

It wouldn’t be Star Citizen if we didn’t talk about new ships. Vehicle Director John Crewe mentioned that 2025 saw the most ship releases in any 12 month period in the game’s history, and while we still don’t have the BMM, other ships are still being designed, built, and released.

These three ships will be available in 4.4, and are currently available on the PTU as of the writing of this post.

Anvil Paladin

The Anvil Paladin is a gunship designed to support ground operations. I fully expect to see a shit-ton of these in the game, and just as many single player owners asking for crew members.

Esperia Vanduul Stinger

This ship showed up in the reveal of the initial missions we’ll have available in Nyx. This is a heavy fighter, reimagined for human use by Esperia. The good news is that unlike the other Vanduul-variants made by Esperia, the Stinger will feature generic weapon mounts allowing for players to mount whatever weapons they want; the bad news is that it doesn’t sound like CIG is going to make this change to the other Esperia ships like the Glaive or the Blade. As this ship is designed to be tanky and sports a non-removeable size 5 cannon, I wouldn’t be surprised to see more than a few of these harassing other players in the game.

Grey’s Market Shiv

Not only does this include a new ship, but a new pseudo-faction called “Grey’s Market”. This is headed by enigmatic Grey Chowdry, some kind of engineer who takes whatever junk he can find and mashes it into a working — but not entirely aesthetically pleasing — weapon. I didn’t have “out Drake-ing Drake” on the bingo card, yet here we are.

In the image above, the body is obviously from a Cutlass Black, but with some parts removed and other parts added. In all honesty, I like this silhouette better than the Black, but if CIG is bringing in derivative junk-ships based on existing ships into the game, I have to wonder what the hell is going on with other, older, promised ships we still don’t have.

These are three very combat-oriented ships, and we’ll find out why in a little bit.

In addition, we have some new FPS weapons, also created by Grey’s which, based on what we saw with the Shiv, should hopefully prepare you.

Rocket Launcher

LMG

“Space AK”

The rocket launcher actually fires three grenades duct-taped to a rocket. This is silly, and also means that there’s a delay between the arming and detonation, but because of the range, figuring out the sweet spot between blowing up a target and not blowing up yourself is going to be tricky. The LMG is a heavy-hitting .50 caliber slow firing weapon that can one-shot heavily armored targets, so I expect to see this making frequent appearances in the game as well. The AK is another weird one, as it fires both energy and ballistic rounds in an alternating pattern. Why? I am still asking myself this question.

Binoculars

I really appreciate this one in part because it’s not a weapon, isn’t cheesy, and has a viable use. I always try to get a 4x scope to my P4-AR to add some distance viewing when I need it, but in close quarters that can be problematic. Instead, I can now carry these binoculars when I need to scout ahead.

Crafting

Sadly, they didn’t cover a lot of the “hows” when talking about crafting this year, although they did recognize that in a game without character levels, improving the things we own is the primary source of progression. Not only does this include what we can buy (in game, though the pledge store counts in an insidious way), but will also include what we can make, as crafted items are assumed to be better than their store-bought counterparts.

As stated last year, at some point the materials we use in crafting will gain a “quality” stat. It was stated that these qualities will be somewhat random and driven by where we find the materials, so iron found in a common and easily accessed area will have lower “quality” than iron that is harder to get to or — more likely — requires more risk for better reward. These quality attributes will affect the stats of the item we make, so one P4-AR made with higher quality items will be more effective than the same gun made with lower quality materials.

Initially, quality will be passed from source through to refined product and we’re just going to have to accept that without confirmation as it didn’t sound like we’ll be able to view or do much with or about the quality information. Once we have refined materials we want to use, we can then load our crafting machines with the materials and a blueprint in order to construct our items. We’ll be able to assign different quality of materials to different attributes so we can purposefully direct our best materials towards the stats we want to ensure have the best values possible.

Items will be built from blueprints as stated; players will be provided with a few starter blueprints in order to learn the system, but the majority of blueprints will be found through other means such as missions which is obvious but will be disappointing if that’s the only way to get them. Whether we can trade uncollected blueprints is still unanswered AFAIK. Whether this is the final decision or just for the upcoming end-of-year tech preview test is unclear. It had been mentioned or alluded to that our smaller pledge shop items would provide eternal blueprints so we could re-print personal items we might lose rather than just have them re-granted to our inventory, but this was not re-iterated this year.

Crafting machines can be purchased from NPC shops and are portable, meaning we can buy as many as we like, install them in our home hangars, or bring them along with us on our ships.

Upgrade and research mechanics will be released in later updates.

Instancing

Hallelujah! CIG is down for instancing in 2026. CIG made sure we knew that instanced content is being provided as a means for devs to create a curated experience — not to appease PvE players who moan about ganking and non-consensual PvP. Instancing will allow players to take their time to explore or listen to voice recordings or read on-screen text, taking away the stress of having players to look over their shoulders for other players who are in the same space. They also stated that this isn’t just about PvE experiences, but about curated PvP experiences. In a way, that’s a pretty good admission, meaning that if they want to, CIG can create one mission area and create both a PvP and PvE version through instancing, and players can enter based on the experience they want.

We’ve already seen instancing in our hangars (with mixed and sometimes worrying results), and area instancing will work the same, seamless way. In addition, instances will either be party-only or open with limited slots, and it sounded like CIG was going to look at/make it so the instance scales to the number of participants.

The first instanced content will be a revamped Siege of Orison. The original SoO was plagued with performance issues, and in hindsight that is somewhat forgivable since it was released before server meshing was “finalized” and other back-end improvements were made. With instancing, a group of 15-20 people can have their own event space. It sounds like this can be set to a private or public event, so I’m excited to see how this plays out when it launches.

In addition, there’s another instance mission being designed for 2026. This one takes place in the Municipal Works within Levski and was mentioned in last year’s CitizenCon. There could be many reasons for players to delve into the sewers, making the space more of a general container than a single, monolithic chain event. Gameplay-wise, this is going to be an expansive play space which spans several levels, and allows players to leave and return without having to re-start the entire progression from scratch.

Considering this is happening beneath the landing zone of Levski, I hope they eventually do something similar in other LZs. I’d especially love to see a street-level instance in A18, for example, or even a non-combat, Cyberpunk 2077-esque stealth or investigation mission centered within MicroTech.

So the plan seems to be that Star Citizen will be primarily a sandbox which allows players to do what they want, when they want to do it, be that PvP, PvE, mining, salvaging, construction, home-building, buying and selling, cargo running and other stuff. CIG also want to offer content of their own, and are using instancing as one way of doing that. Through instancing, they can control the environment and control for variables by removing the randomness that cramming people with different goals into the same space provides. Some areas can be open for sandbox play, or for small-group instances, or for individual experiences, and each can carry with it different stories or different difficulty and reward levels of the same story, and those same areas can be non-instanced as well, just being present for players to create their own stories with the community, without CIG-provided narratives.

Tactical Strike Groups

Most everything up to this point has been focused on new content, technology, and individual player activities on the ground, but at its heart Star Citizen is a game about space and space ships. For the longest time the only thing combat ships could do was fight other combat ships in small-scale one-off missions like the patrol or ambush missions, or the occasional even like Xenothreat, or through PvP. With instancing being planned for 2026, CIG is also focusing on working on an in space instance called Tactical Strike Groups that will force players to work together across all roles, using a variety of ship types, to complete a scripted mission.

This mission is going to task players with playing the roles of various ships that exist in the game. Capital ships will required to fight the heavy fight, but in order to do that, smaller ships need to take out heavy weapon emplacements that can one-shot the cap ships. Before they can do that, bombers or torpedo ships will have to take out the power generators that power the shields that protect the heavy weapon emplacements that prevent the capital ships from getting too close. There will also be a segment requiring the use of drop-ships to deliver troops to infiltrate a facility to secure and extract an objective. There was also a segment requiring smaller ships to fly inside a station and blow up a reactor as evidenced by a scene that should earn CIG a call from Disney’s lawyers. And, of course, they’ll be Vanduul raiders to make matters worse.

I really do support this kind of big thinking, but I also wonder if CIG has ever met people in a multiplayer game before. The likelihood that a group of previously unassociated players could coalesce around a shared objective and not either all do their own thing or try and browbeat everyone else into doing what they want them to do is terrifyingly low; not zero, but so close to zero it might as well be zero. More organized orgs, however, should have a great time with this event, and I’d love to see supercut recaps of player’s experiences with it.

It’s a Wrap

I think CitizenCon Direct was a success. One issue with going big on events like this so early in a project’s lifecycle is that people come to expect it. Gathering in person in a massive convention hall, with a bunch of massive screens and a light show is that people quickly consider it to be the norm and demand the same or better next year. In truth, I think CIG delivered as much good info in this three hour online montage as they did last year in person — 1.0 announcement notwithstanding. It forced them to be more concise, focusing on bullet points that would resonate the most.

Of course, I was thrilled to hear about CIG’s plans for instanced content, although I am also assuming that they will cut as close to lean as possible. Regardless of their claims otherwise, Star Citizen is primarily a PvP game, and they will go to great lengths to ensure that content either only happens under those conditions, or pushes players towards those conditions. It’s great that we’ll be getting instanced missions which allow me alone or me and friends to tackle without having to worry about other players, but CIG also stated that getting to and from those instances could be dangerous. They just can’t not give with one hand and take with another.

The planet tech is also looking to be coming along quite nicely. As someone who rarely ventured from his home base of Vesper in Ultima Online over 25 years ago, I appreciate being able to live on a single planet while still experiencing a range of sights and sounds as well as adapt to the pros and cons that each biome provides. I do hope, however, that between two planets with similar substrates that the realization of surface design isn’t just the same but in a different location, though with large planets and a willingness to park a ship and drive to different places, it might not be so noticeable in the end.

I was hoping that 2025 would live up to the promise of improvements in Star Citizen, and I have to say that they have done a lot better. Day to day, there were times I couldn’t see the forest for the trees and wasn’t happy with decisions the company was making, but weeks and months later, nearing the end of 2025, the sum total has been pretty good; much better than the workflow that CIG has employed in the past. Crashes are down to the point of being pretty much non-existent for me (I wrote this before the game froze and crashed out on me during a cargo run). Wonkiness is down, but not out. The Onyx facilities have been a whole lot of fun when we’re not running into other players and have set aside a few hours to run them. I still have some difficulty getting myself to log in unless I can devote a lot of time to tackle a singular goal, meaning that the game isn’t anywhere near the point where I feel that I have a lot of options that will satisfy me. As much as I like long-form content, I also want short-term goals that I can accomplish in an hour or less. Right now that’s short-distance cargo running, but that can get real old real quick.

My only concern is that CIG has shown a propensity for making improvements that work for a while and which have the support of the community, but then they fall back into bad habits or fall down on account of bad management decisions. Right now it seems that all of the ducks are in a row, maybe thanks to the top-level shake up at the end of last year/beginning of this which has nailed down a more concrete plan to push SQ42 out the door, but that could change at any time for any reason, derailing whatever plans the company has for Star Citizen in 2026. I really hope that doesn’t happen, and I really hope CIG has found their groove in what is probably the home stretch to this almost two-decade development cycle of the most ambitious space game ever made.