Yesterday, Star Citizen developer Cloud Imperium Games suddenly dropped a new build in the testing servers of its growing space simulator, including an unexpected vehicle.
The build included the Argo ATLS, which is the first mech suit to ever appear in Star Citizen. It’s a little bigger than a human character and can be boarded from the front, leaving the body semi-exposed.
If you know the manufacturer Argo, you have probably already guessed that this is not a Gundam you’ll use to drop into battle guns blazing. As a matter of fact, it does not have any guns.
Its main feature is loading and unloading ships and handling cargo with its powerful tractor beam, in line with the recent update Alpha 3.24 that revolutionized the cargo gameplay of Star Citizen.
While the Argo ATLS is already playable on the PTU servers, we don’t precisely know when it’ll be implemented on the live servers.
Incidentally, its tractor beam works differently from those already included in Star Citizen, as it lets players basically tractor in cargo boxes with one click, and place it anywhere they need with a second click. It can also throw the boxes if needed.
On top of that, the tractor beam can also handle small vehicles and even another ATLS, as you can see in the video below, recorded by YouTube users Citizen Kate (and Will).
If you’re unfamiliar with Star Citizen, it’s a crowdfunded multiplayer open-universe sandbox space simulator that has been in development for several years. It’s directed by Chris Roberts of Wing Commander fame.
The game has recently passed $720 million in crowdfunding ($720,600,959 at the moment of this writing) and counts 5,337,297 registered users. Of course, many of them aren’t paying customers, as they register accounts to enjoy Free Fly Events.
A a massive update numbered 4.0 is coming at some point this year introducing a whole new star system and many more features.
while a single-player campaign named Squadron 42 is also deep in development (and we learned last year that it was feature-complete), It starts an exceptional cast of famous actors including Mark Hamill, Henry Cavill, Gary Oldman, Liam Cunningham, Gillian Anderson, and more.
If you’re interested in Star Citizen, learning how to fly certainly won’t hurt. To that end, you can enjoy our helpful guide on how to get started with flight simulators.
Full disclosure: the author of this article has backed Star Citizen’s crowdfunding campaign.
