Star Citizen is increasingly poised to become one of the greatest and most ambitious games ever made, and a large reason for that is its combination of space simulation and first person shooting.

Today Cloud Imperium’s leader Chris Roberts updated fans with new details on the first person module of the game, which has now been titled “Star Marine.”

“Since the days of Wing Commander, I’ve dreamed of integrating a first person shooter with a space sim,” Roberts wrote on the developer blog, “It’s such an exciting idea: you might land your fighter on a carrier and then race into battle to repel alien boarders… or you might put down on a seedy border world and fight off pirates eager to steal your cargo! And on a broader level, it speaks to our longtime goal of increasing immersion: you’re no longer taken out of the action with between-mission gameflow menus or worse. Instead, from the moment you start the game to the minute you exit, you’re living in and interacting with the Star Citizen world!”

He goes on the explain that Star Marine is being developed differently than Star Citizen‘s multiplayer module, Arena Commander, in that more attention is being paid to more minute details in animation and visual fidelity before it is rolled out for testing to backers.

Zero gravity gameplay is a crucial feature in Star Marine as well, and to that end Cloud Imperium have developed SATA Ball, a sort of zero-G version of basketball in which teams of two players compete against one another to score points. “Really what we are using SATA Ball for is a test bed to make the zero-g locomotion system something very robust, and ultimately a viable movement strategy when you are in that environment,” the developer says, “Typically you would expect to see thrusters for movement in zero-g, but for Star Citizen the easy way out doesn’t make sense. You should have the choice to move around without thrusters… and be successful if you are skilled, and we want players to be able to do that.”

There’s no word on when the Star Marine module will be released to backers, but Cloud Imperium have proven that they’re on top of keeping fans well informed on new updates with Star Citizen, so stay tuned.