What's the status on this game? I guess there are 'modules' that you can do?
Yes. The game is currently releasing alpha modules that depict certain final gameplay for bug testing, balancing, rule creation.
Nothing that will carry over into the release I'm guessing?....
Quite the opposite actually. The current hanger module will be used in the game as the player's hanger instances. The current dogfighting module will be in the end game as a space combat simulator as well as a ranked game in the game (think of it like a professional game league like we have today with other sports/e-sports). The racing module will also be a part of the final game as a racing league. The FPS module is planned to be the same as the dogfighting module, in that it will be both a combat sim for training, as well as a game league with leaderboards, ranking, and even possibly betting (just like the others as well).
What's the best way to get your foot in the door for this game? Buy a ship I guess gets you the game at release? Is there a good general ship?
Got a 4 day weekend with the wife and kids out of town so plan to game it up, I re-installed Elite Dangerous but I might give this one a shot since I hooked up the HOTAS and what not.
Well to get into the alpha, you need to support the game at a level that gives you alpha level access. Something like the "Aurora ES" package includes Squadron 42, and Star Citizen digital downloads, as well as beta level access for $35 (as well as an Aurora ES ship). You would then need to add alpha access add-on which I think is something like $5 for each module (i.e. I believe it would cost $5 to add alpha access to dogfighting module, and another $5 to add access to FPS module, etc... I don't know for sure as I had a package which had alpha access included).
There are other packages out there that still include alpha access as a part of it, but most of them will cost you quite a bit more money (I believe the cheapest package that includes alpha access is $1100). Basically you missed the boat for alpha access by about 2 years as all packages back then included it. Now because so many people want in, they are charging for the alpha slots to fund the additional costs incurred for requiring more game server instances to handle the additional people. Still, $40-50 (depending on how many modules you purchase alpha access on) isn't bad considering it includes the game which is expected to retail at $50-60 just like all other AAA games do once it releases.