Yep. expect a 10% increase on all ship purchases by next month.

https://robertsspaceindustries.com/spectrum/community/SC/forum/1/thread/australian-gst-update

They're reasoning is due to a new law applying GST to online purchases outside of Australia... Even though I believe that law has been pushed back till next year.... So, this sucks.

Hey all. With Patch 2.6.1 there are now Australian servers for Star Marine, Arena Commander and Universe!

Read more about it here: https://robertsspaceindustries.com/comm-link/15743-Star-Citizen-Alpha-261

I would like to organise a play through together Sunday 5:00pm 10+ UTC (Brisbane) or 6pm for the rest of you. I have a few ideas to make things interesting, all depends how many come along.

Look forward to playing with some fellow aussies.... on Aussie servers!

Directly copypasta'd from the email

Star Citizen Newsletter - Regional Servers Inbound February 3rd, 2017

Greetings Citizen.

Across all our studios, work on the upcoming Alpha 2.6.1 patch is progressing nicely. There’s still some UI work to complete and stability issues to iron out, but, as you can see in our updated production schedule report, we’re almost ready to get this latest patch into the players’ hands. In fact, we're happy to announce an addition to this patch. Thanks to the great work by the Live Ops, Backend and UI teams, we're moving up the release of the Regional Servers to 2.6.1, so players will be able to choose which server (North America, Europe, or Australia) they join to ensure the best connection possible. Once these are running, we’ll be able to run more tests to assess whether more locations will be needed.

This week I split my time between Foundry 42 offices in the UK and Germany. I’ll be spending another week in the trenches with the devs at Foundry 42 to oversee our advancement on a number of fronts.

Thanks to everyone who showed their support for Star Citizen last weekend at both PAX South and the community-organized Bar Citizen event in San Antonio, TX. It’s just another example of how dedicated and inspiring our fanbase can be. In fact, we’ve been looking for more ways to to bring the community front and center. That’s why this week we premiered a new show called Citizens of the Stars that focuses on the important part you play in Star Citizen. Give it a watch to see some of the incredible things the community is doing.

TLDR: Australian, European servers are coming in update 2.6.1

The once a year ship sale event is coming to a close. With every announced ship being on sale for the last day. Go get em

https://robertsspaceindustries.com/comm-link/transmission/15617-Intergalactic-Aerospace-Expo-Grand-Finale

Hey there, fellow aussie citizens. I've been given admin on this group recently and I intend to do occasional annoucements of CIG's progress.

Hell maybe even try and round up some gameplay sessions for 2.6?



Although CIG told us there would be a focus on ships, they didn't tell us they'd also show a lot more. Including one thing I'll save for last that could potentially make looking forward to updates that bit less tense...

So let's kick this off with a link of the preshow lan party (which shows off new variants of the original dogfighters), and the actual livestream itself.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kWAWGDv7JAk

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6-MF7xYMB0A

And yes, the audio is poppy and crackly for everyone else too. It isn't just you. And yes, they show Star Marine, which starts at 1:31:17 in the main livestream vid. (NOT the preshow) Or you can skip to it with this!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QW-f4ourFEc

I'll have the TLDR up asap if INN is still making them.

Then we have 'The Big Guns Of The UEE', a beautiful video of the Idris class-frigate, and the Javelin-class destroyer all perfectly matched to a tear-queezing orchestral rendition by Pedro Camacho.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iGWggc7KjJE

Here is the version shown in the livestream, with comments and VO on the two megaships.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rp43tiIpi4Y

The real meat and potatoes of the stream are of course the ships. We have the Caterpillar, the EEVVVIILL twin of the freelancer. The Herald, a supercharged V8 powered drag racer turned inforunner, and the space smartcar the 85X, more luxurious than the Archimedes ever was.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yi7OMugknAw

And of course not forgetting the biggest ship announcement in the stream, the reveal of the Teravin style with the very Deux Ex Malik's Dropshop-esqe Teravin Prowler Boarding Craft, which has a shield system to allow safety of passengers while the doors are up.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5gurYlfsB-M

And the Teravin, who are very Turian looking. We may get an unarmoured picture soon, if we do I'll post it.

https://twitter.com/RobertsSpaceInd/status/799761261416173568?lang=en

Penultimately we have some filler pics I stole off of reddit, such as the cutlass greybox, choice detail caps, concept art and more.

Prowler:
http://i.imgur.com/SJLqaQj.png
Paints:
https://gfycat.com/LameParallelIguana
IDRIS:
https://gfycat.com/WelldocumentedInsidiousLadybird
85X:
https://gfycat.com/OblongForkedAllensbigearedbat
Slowmo Sabre flying through Idris:
https://gfycat.com/SphericalDeterminedCavy
New Cutlass Whitebox:
http://imgur.com/gallery/0J5tM

Last but not least, the absolute best thing to come out of this stream. CIG has announced they are doing detailed WEEKLY reports on what is done and what isn't in regards to updates. As proof they've even done a detailed picture of estimations for 2.6

https://robertsspaceindustries.com/media/rd4hotqrut25or/source/Image004.png

And yes, they dropped the dreaded RD word. Release Date. 8-Dec-2016 for 2.6 drop. Now I just want to step out of line here and tell you all personally from me, to not take this as gospel. This does not mean it's coming out in December, it means they're AIMING for this date. The can and will miss dates often, so please don't get too mad if and when they do.

However, along with this they've released something that can ease a lot of tension in the community. CIG will now be doing detailed weekly reports, as I've said, on milestones to release as well, which can be checked out in this new part of the site here:

https://robertsspaceindustries.com/schedule-report

God willing, time permitting, and knock on wood this will be kept up to date and can be used to judge how close we are to the next batch, and we can see the game taking shape to the smallest detail week by week.


Have a good weekend Citizens!