A universe as dangerous as the one imagined in Star Citizen isn’t entirely without its helpful medical spaceships, and soon players will get the opportunity to be ambulance pilots when the new RSI Apollo goes live in the upcoming (but undated) alpha 4.3.1 build of the sandbox.
This upcoming ship, which comes in the Triage and Medivac variants, can effectively work as a flying field hospital, with medical bays that can be swapped out to different arrangements depending on player needs. The default configuration comes with three tier 3 beds to handle some standard injuries, but those can be interchanged for two tier 2 beds to handle larger mission ranges and greater injuries or one tier 1 bed to handle healing and regeneration across the entire star system.
As with most ships in the game, it fields some impressive armament in the form of fore cannons, missiles, and turrets, with more missiles and armor on the Medivac, though in either configuration its primary function isn’t really as a frontline combatant.
On the subject of ship systems, that’s one of the series of topics handled in CIG’s wildly sporadic Q&A posts: Answers provided in the latest edition confirm that swapping out ship modules will be coming not just for the Apollo but for the Caterpillar and Ironclad, assures backers that ship maintenance will be carefully balanced once underlying mechanics and systems are implemented, and outlines the arrival of ship armor in stages, starting first with a temporary armor layer system once engineering gameplay is live and later with a “maelstrom” system that takes ship materials into consideration for armor.
The Q&A also discusses efforts to improve in-game chat moderation, promises that VoIP will take characters’ physical location into consideration for audio effects, plans to add more customizable rooms in player hangars, and UI improvements for character inventory and ship summoning terminals. For all of these plans, and for alpha 4.3.1’s arrival, there are no timelines for release given.
sources: YouTube, official forums Longtime MMORPG gamers will know that Star Citizen was originally Kickstarted for over $2M back in 2012 with a planned launch for 2014. As of 2025, it still lingers in an incomplete but playable alpha, having raised over $800M from gamers over years of continuing crowdfunding and sales of in-game ships and other assets. It is currently the highest-crowdfunded video game ever and has endured both indefatigable loyalty from advocates and immense skepticism from critics. A co-developed single-player title, Squadron 42, has also been repeatedly delayed.
