Star Citizen is building a faction system, initial launch planned for early January

Star Citizen is getting organized. And not in the sense that it's getting really good at raising incredible amounts of game development cash. No, we knew that already. Dubbed "Organizations," the upcoming space sim has announced a new faction/clan system that's being prepped to go live sometime next month, according to an update from developer Cloud Imperium Games.

The new feature is being integrated into the Star Citizen website and will see five different faction choices when it's released: Corperatons, PMCs, Faiths, Syndicates, and unaffiliated groups simply known as Organizations. That last option is for players who want to roleplay in a slightly more open-ended association, although none of the group types will be tied down by their specific "archetype," according to the developer.

Each of the five groups will set the internal ranking system for its members and decide their specific roles. This last perk sounds promising as it should allow for custom rank titles that don't necessarily conform to traditional military nomenclature. And while each faction will have its own unique alphanumeric ID, organization names themselves can't be locked down, or as the developer puts it, "an unlimited number of players can form groups named 'Red Squadron.'"

I sense we'll see some amusingly creative groups given all this PC-centric flexibility , but there'll also be some level of moderation by Cloud Imperium of any organization's publicly available content, according to the feature description. With all this community organizing going on, it's also great to hear that the official website's chat system will see an upgrade. The new chat system, alongside the Organization features, will be transitioned into the actual game when it's released, according to Cloud Imperium.

Hearing about this in-progress space sim and its galactic ambition for the first time? Check out this interview with Wing Commander creator and Star Citizen lead Chris Roberts on some of the ideas behind the game.