I’m not normally a gamer who likes to do the same thing over and over again, which seems kind of antithetical to what games bring to the table. But throw a carrot in front of me, and I am willing to consider grinding content for it.

To wit: Star Citizen’s Alliance Aid event is coming to a close with the release of 4.7 sometime this month (March 2026 for you Readers From the Future). This event has tasked players with collecting resources from the wilds, fighting off pirates and protecting those stricken with the Molina Mold sickness, and hauling as needed cargo between locations. These are the basic blocks that are available to all Star Citizen players right now — some of the only blocks, really — and we’d be doing them anyway, so it’s really just a perk that we’re getting rewarded over and above the usual financial payouts we get otherwise.

I’ve already completed the cargo hauling track and have earned the milestone rewards from that, but my ultimate goal has been to reach an overall 100% completion in the main track. At 100%, I will be rewarded with a custom branded crafting fabricator once 4.7 drops (and a few other items).

Crafting is new to the game with 4.7, and will of course be “tier 0”. This is not the only fabricator in the game, and I suspect that we’ll see one available for purchase on the pledge store as well as being made available via the in-game stores, but this is the only way to get a permanent account grant item without having to spend real world money. Considering I am very interested in Star Citizen’s crafting gameplay, this is the highest priority for me right now.

As of the writing of this post, I am a bit shy of the 90% completion award — The Apollo Alliance Aid Red Livery (paint/skin), which I can use. Pretty much all of my progress has been through the “transport” operations, which thankfully continue to contribute to the main track progress even though I’ve completed the transport track itself. I focus exclusively on “small” transport missions within Stanton; these only require the movement of six crates between two points. Each completed mission awards 255 points to the completion of the specific and general tracks, and I have found that my “sweet spot” has been to take three such missions, collecting 12 boxes (usually from three different locations, but not always) and delivering them within Stanton (usually to three different locations, but not always). If I’m lucky, I can pick up more than one mission payload and/or drop off multiple payloads at a single location. Worst case scenario: I have to consult the star map and figure out the best, most economical order in which to pick up and drop off the three sets of six boxes.

By my calculations, I have to complete 17 more missions, and if I run three missions at a time, that comes out to about six more sessions. If I do two per day, which is about as much as I can mentally stand, I’m looking at three more days of grinding. That should be doable before 4.7 releases.

The good news is that when partied up with others, sharing missions allows for the full point value on completion, regardless of whether or not all party members are working on the same mission. In fact, Alliance Aid has been a massive boon for goodwill within the game, as players have been PUG’ing in order to share as many missions as possible to complete the event as quickly as possible across as many tracks as possible. Since I’m only interested in the main track and then whatever other tracks I can progress as time allows, and because I’m generally anti-social in my multiplayer games, I’ve been mainly going it alone, although there have been several occasions where I’ve partied up with @Mindstrike and @CakedCrusader who have mainly been working the event more as a group-benefit than for the benefit of their own interests, which I appreciate. After all, once I get the fabricator, it’ll become the “community fabricator” when crafting in 4.7 becomes available.