Star Citizen's Dogfighting Module Launching On May 29th

You might remember that Star Citizen's looooong-awaited dogfighting module was supposed to be out in April, but things happen. Things like a very, very rocky first public showcase, for instance. The slightly more deadly than usual fireworks show looked absolutely gorgeous when it worked, but a few disastrous space-outs sent ships infinitely spinning into oblivion. There were also physics errors and other various glitches. It had a long way to go, in other words. Apparently, however, it'll finally be ready at the end of May. For real this time.

Chris Roberts announced the release date in one of his Arena Commander weekly reports, explaining that it could still slip again, but it probably won't. Also, while not everyone will have access to multiplayer immediately, the hope is that everybody will be able to blow up their friends after a brief testing period.

"We intend to launch Arena Commander in two weeks, on May 29th.The goal is that every backer will have access to the single player 'Free Flight' and 'Vanduul Swarm' games modes on this day, and the very first batch of multiplayer testers will get access to the game’s multiplayer game modes. We will scale up the multiplayer as quickly as possible starting on that date, increasing the number of players as it is stable and stopping to fix bugs where needed."

"This date is based on our best possible projections using the latest information put together by Star Citizen’s production team as of this afternoon. This is a big part of what the often-unseen production side of game development does: schedule out every task they believe is required for a game to ship.  At this point, we’re close enough that we feel fairly confident in this date… but the next two weeks will be a march!"

The full post, then, includes a day-by-day breakdown of what Roberts and co will be working on for the next two weeks in order to get this thing off the launch pad. It's quite a task, but it certainly seems doable based on Roberts' timeline. I do hope they remember to shower and brush their teeth, though. Crunch time really brings out the incessant yet well-meaning mother in me.

So, who's got high hopes for Star Citizen's dogfighting? The showcase was pretty rough, but it's been a little while since then. Even assuming it hits the ground space running, though, do you think it'll stack up well to the already nicely fleshed out Elite: Dangerous? It's a war among the stars - a phrase that of course calls to mind little-known Scandinavian director Jarge Lukas' film trilogy Spacely Biffings. Who's side are you on?