It’s been quite a journey for a highly anticipated space MMO game Star Citizen. After its successful Kickstarter campaign, the game received numerous updates, features, models and more, inching ever closer to the inevitable release of a full game. Last weekend the developers from Cloud Imperium Games revealed one of the biggest additions to Star Citizen yet – a new 40-player mode called Theaters of War.

The new Star Citizen mode was announced during the annual CitizenCon, a gathering of Star Citizen players and fans. Cloud Imperium Games told that the new Theaters of War game mode is a multi-phase, multiplayer co-op mode that combines first-person shooter, vehicle and space combat and will be released in early 2020.

According to the announcement, Theaters of War will work in a few separate phases. The first one will allow players to fight in a traditional FPS capture point match where attackers will try to take the defender’s base. If they succeed, the second phase will kick off and will feature a grander scale battle featuring vehicles in a slightly bigger version of the map. The third and the final phase of Theaters of War will take players in space and will involve spaceship combat – attackers will try to take over the defenders’ space station.

We know it sounds a bit complicated but the live demonstration should clear some things up for you. Here’s a video:

According to the developers, this new 20vs20 game mode should serve as a reenactment of key lore moments in Star Citizen without breaking the original flow of the game. Cloud Imperium Games stated that Theaters of War will give players an option to experience Star Citizen’s space war glory without a necessity to play long hours and without breaking the persistent universe of Star Citizen. Imagine an instance where you can relive a part of space history – that’s Theaters of War.

Of course, there’s still a lot to do in order to polish Theaters of War – weapon balancing, animations and so on. Cloud Imperium Games said that the team spent 8 months developing this mode which will be one of the key parts of gameplay trying to deliver the game’s story. However, the developers are positive about adding this mode to the game for testing very soon. It’s expected to land in early 2020 alongside some new space vehicles including the long-awaited Anvil Carrack – a spiritual successor of Serenity (a spaceship from Firefly TV show).

The new spaceship is set to debut in February, so that might mean that Theaters of War will also make its debut around the same time.  As always, no final release date for Star Citizen has been given.