To be honest - the openness of RSI with regards to Star Citizen and Squadron 42 development are both amazing and a curse. I think it is amazing to see what they are doing, choices they are making, development as it goes. However most gamer's are NOT used to seeing that amount of transparency, sometimes not even hearing/seeing anything until just before a Fall/Christmas release of a product (even if they have been working on it for 8 years prior).

I suspect that we will see Squadron 42 (ep1) release next year.. with more coming on after that. The Mini-PU that we are getting with Alpha 3.0 will just be extended and expanded until release. Certainly there will be some progress wipes/etc which happen in all MMO Alpha/Beta's but that is to be expected. When more folks that are currently working on Squadron 42 models/etc are freed up - there will be more development to bear on Star Citizen specific assets, so things should move more quickly. SQ42 and SC both are the same engine, so everything that applies to one also applies to the other (with the exception of net-code on the SQ42).

If things go well; I think we may see Star Citizen looking very "solid" and moving out of Alpha/Beta in 2019. But I am not going to wait that long to fly around in-game and have fun with what is available in the meantime!

Taxman

"Any group is weaker than a man alone unless they are perfectly trained to work together."
- Robert A. Heinlein, Starship Troopers