Star Citizen’s latest DLC pack costs £46,000! Here are five cars you could buy instead

Almost 10 years ago now, Star Citizen launched on Kickstarter asking backers to crowdfund a hugely ambitious space sim that would feature single-player and multiplayer action, trading, dogfighting and much more in a persistent universe. 

To put it charitably, things didn’t go exactly as planned over the subsequent decade. Developer Cloud Imperium raised $644 million to fund the game, but at present there’s still no full release. What there is, however, is a DLC pack for that unfinished game which costs £46,000. 

When you buy the latest Legatus DLC pack, you get a huge collection of space ships, cosmetics, paints and inventory items, totalling 175 ships. It’s the complete collection, and each ship has an impressive interior with plenty of detail that you can walk around and admire. 

However - and we’re not sure if we already mentioned this - the game’s not finished yet. 

“Squadron 42 is currently under development,” states the store page where you can find and purchase the Legatus pack, referencing the game’s single-player component. “Star Citizen Alpha 3.21 is currently available to download and play. Additional features and updates will be released as they are developed.”

There’s no official final release date. Here are five cars you can buy brand new for the same outlay.

Land Rover shook up the old Discovery platform to make room for plug-in hybrid engines and accompanying battery packs, and the result of its efforts is a 4x4 that’s “right at the top of the class if it’s comfort and relaxation you’re after", according to... us.

It’s high-tech, too. The ground view camera lets you see the terrain under your bonnet in real-time so you can assess exactly how much trouble you’re getting into off-road, and features both Android Auto and Apple CarPlay support. You can build a new one for a few thousand less than the Legatus Pack. Up to you.

While its German contemporaries have a way of slapping fins and vents liberally over the bodies of their M Sport and Black Edition variants, Mercedes is rather more restrained about its AMG Line C-Class. The result is a summation of flowing lines that conveys elegance, rather than the ability to hoon it across deep space at faster-than-light speeds, and that may be off-putting to the discerning Star Citizen player. 

They’ll at least be reassured by the C200 AMG Line’s interior though, which is every bit as detailed as Roberts Space Industries’ stock, and borrows a lot from the current S line for extra pampering. You can spec a new one with the sportier AMG package and still come in south of £50,000.

Also known as ‘not a 911’, the Cayman nonetheless has the capacity to deliver mid-engine thrills. And it does so without carelessly jettisoning all its practical features out of the windows - usable rear seats, air con and a comprehensive set of driver controls. The hierarchy gets confusing when you dig into all the 718 options in production - but not as confusing as choosing from nearly 200 space vessels in an alpha version of a game you’ve been waiting 10 years for. So points to Porsche for that.

Buying a Tesla is like starting cars again from scratch. How do you adjust the seat position? By navigating myriad touchscreen menus, obviously. But the rewards are there - incredible acceleration, very useable range (assuming you shell out the extra cash for the long-range package) and undeniable looks.

It’s probably the closest thing to operating a videogame space ship that modern motoring has, certainly at this budget where Rimacs and Lucid Airs are distant specs, miles out of reach. Whether it’s preferable to own one, or everything ever released in Star Citizen, is for you to answer. It’s the Tesla, though.

A spacious and typically luxurious Audi, who’s been juicing up the concept of estates by calling them ‘Avants’ for so many years now we don’t even question it. The more muscular 339bhp S6 model will tip you over past the £50,000 mark, but you can be on the road in one of the 2.0-litre four-cylinder models for less than the price of 175 space ships.