Not a subscription but not free-to-play; rather a hybrid of these two business models. Much like ArenaNet's Guild Wars 2, you will purchase the PC game and pay no recurring subscription charges. Your purchase of the game will allow you to play in the universe for free, forever! The game will offer a variety of virtual items for purchase with in-game credits allowing you to spend money on items that offer more ways to express yourself, provide convenience, and customize your experience. But the cardinal rule regarding "in-game purchases" is: Players who spend money purchasing in-game credits will have no advantage over players who spend time!
Everything is bought with in-game credits. These purchases won't offer any advantage over someone who puts in the "game-time" to earn the same amount of credits. You might ask, why have "in-game" purchases at all? This allows us the resources to support the game on an ongoing basis as well as continually add content.

There will be public servers that we host for the main universe/game. The universe is going to be a persistent living entity, where your actions, (discovering a jump point and successfully navigating its jump for the first time, designing a ship for sale in the online shops, winning a key in-game battle etc.), will be woven into the history and lore of the game.

Even though there are other alien races, we're beginning with the human side of it. The Star Citizen universe has evolved into a futuristic version of the Roman Empire. We thought it would be very interesting to have Citizenship be something that you don't automatically receive. It's something you have to earn through civic duty or military service. It's a way to create a class system, which creates the potential for conflict among various groups and players.

1. The 2xMACO set bonus, magna rebate, seems...kind of dumb. We're talking barely more useful than a white doff.
2. 2xJem'Hadar gives you a polaron damage bonus and I use polaron everything and apparently that's working out better than I thought!
3. The MACOflector has huge perks for tanks, but I am not particularly tanky.
4. Meanwhile the Jemuflector has a 33% bigger Graviton boost, very important when passing out gravwells like cheap cigars, and an absolutely colossal bonus to siphon and system targeting, which I use all the time.