I have my concerns with the game for sure, but you have to keep in mind that it hasn't even hit Alpha yet. Everything is WIP and shouldn't be judged as final.

i5-2570k (ish)
8GB RAM
ASUS Nvidia 670 GTX

It runs pretty damm smoothly. There are some texture glitches, but I'm running it on very high 1080p without any issues. Maybe not 60fps, but definitely above

At the moment, we really don't know how "grindy" the game will be (I for one, am perfectly happy living in my Freelancer for the entirety of the game). The problem comes with the realization that if a ship costs say 50 or 60$ in the shop and it's TOO easy to get in game relatively quickly, then it won't sell and people who bought it before will feel cheated. The other side is if the ship takes too long to unlock, free players will be upset.

I'll put my faith in Chris Roberts. I've been burnt before but being an independent developer with a long history of space sims, I'll give him the benefit of the doubt.

That is always a danger with these huge projects. That being said, I'm playing with the Dogfight module (Arena Commander) right now and it alone is almost worth the entry price alone.

Realistic Physics: The game has a full fledged newtonian physics system. It is possible to flip around 180 degrees, shoot an enemy, and then flip back 180 degrees without changing your direction of movement at all.

Chris Roberts explains it:

Source:

https://robertsspaceindustries.com/comm-link/transmission/12741-Physics-Not-A-Dirty-Word

Exploration will be very deep and fleshed out thanks to the stretch goals.

You will be able to explore the following:

• About 70% of each star system will be unexplored. Source
• Alien Wrecks. Source
• Asteroid fields with resource deposits. Source
• Lots of interesting space features. Source Another
• Possibly "Treasure Island" style treasure hunts triggered by found artifacts. Source
• Derelicts
• Some derelicts can be explored on foot. Source
• Repairable Bengal Carriers
• Asteroid Bases
• Old areas will have some system for keeping them explorable. Source
• Rare, unexpected and possibly unique encounters that are not persistent, perhaps found by following faint hints and trails.

You will also be able to do this with the things you find:

• The Salvage mechanic will likely be a primary source of income for many explorers. Source

  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!

• Discovering a jump point to an unknown system will be highly valuable, as well as granting you naming rights.
• Presumably discovering unknown jump points to known systems will have monetary rewards.
• We can record resource locations and sell that information. Source
• Selling resource locations to an NPC store gives royalties on the sale of that info. Source
• Resource deposits can be over-mined and exhausted. Source
• Presumably the treasure hunts mentioned above will have some cash value.
• Identifying and following ships with bounties, and selling their locations. Source
• Scout Escorts: Rob Irving has said it may be possible to share autopilot data for formation flying. This may allow "slaving" a customer's autopilot to your nav data and guiding them through hazards. I've asked directly if that's the plan and will update if/when he answers. Source
• We will be able to take missions from the OES. As an intel office, that may mean scouting missions. Source

There's a huge huge thread here just dedicated to catlaouging all the exploration stuff:

https://forums.robertsspaceindustries.com/discussion/38624/exploring-exploration-in-star-citizen-what-we-know-so-far/p1

As for mining,

Chris Roberts had this to say:

The only thing that they will not have at launch is the ability to fly into planets and manually land on them. That will be possibly be reserved for some expansions.

It's a free to play game with microtransactions?


BOOOM! Any kind of interest just disappeared. Pity, cause it looks nice.

I've been playing the arena commander module for a few months now and although the game looks good as a whole it's not blow your socks off incredible. The game does have a lot going for it. The attention to detail in the ships is pretty impressive. I have the origin 315 and it's a beautiful ship. As for the graphic settings right now there is simply low medium and very high ( which is what I play on) and there isn't anyway to tweak individual settings outside of script changes and mods.

I'm playing on an Intel i7 3770k 4.3ghz

16 gigs of ram

Gtx 780 ti

Game runs fantastic for such an early build

Star citizen is not a free to play game. You have to purchase the game outright. Backers are getting ships now but the main game you will start out with rental ships until you can afford to buy your own. I have been following it since the beginning and have never seen the first hint of anything that would give the illusion it's free to play.

I feel as though Star Citizen is going to crumble under its own ambition. I just find it very hard for it to live up to the hype or even be released within this generation.

At least we will have the dogfighting module and Squadron 42 within the next couple years.  And they plan to keep developing the persistent universe MMO stuff as long as they are making money so that will be constantly evolving.

Too bad the game wont be coming out until 2018 (what the devs have said).

Nope

It's pay to play

Then free forever, with a cash purchase possible, though not necessary

Given that the development will have been funded by early backers. Further income will come from "real people" buying the game and then from expansion packs to Squadron 42 the story mode

There's an amazing amount of misinformation out there