It's meant to be an "everything" game.

Chris Roberts has always had the ambition for a space sim where you could truly do anything, but never had the resources to actually create it.

So what is Star Citizen supposed to be?

An open world sandbox where you, a citizen of the stars, can choose to be Whst you want. A space trucker? A pirate? A bounty hunter? A smuggler? These aren't new things in the space sim genre, but Star Citizen wants to make these aspect less like a game and more like a life sim.

So instead of clicking a few buttons to fly your spaceship, your character wakes up in bed, has to manually walk over to the ship hangar (maybe take the train there, if you're on the city planet. Yes, the train runs on a schedule), manually access the hangar via elevator, climb into the ship, activate the ship, request take-off from control, wait for the hangar doors to open, and then you fly your spaceship.

This level of granular detail is meant for every aspect of the game and is the reason why Star Citizen will never get done!