Yeah, so we have an Idris and a Javelin with pieces already that fit into the Aegis brand. So we borrowed a lot from there, from things like corridors. A lot of the corridor pieces are the same pieces, and we've just tinted them to match the colour that we wanted them to be. Things like doors, that's all part of it, bunk beds, captain's quarters. We try and fit in as much as we can to help it get through and fit in the brand. But bespoke areas, we've got the engineering room, the engineering slash cargo room, and that's all bespoke to this ship, and you'll see that around the verse. You can see the big glowing lights at the side in the engines.
TL;DRThe Hammerhead's dimensions haven't changed much and the website's landed size is about right, though turrets make the measurement ambiguous, and it hasn't grown anywhere near 50%.
JC
John CreweVehicle Pipeline Director / Lead Systems Designer
Not really. We were looking at it earlier before this, and on the website, I think it's 115 by 75 by 16, and that's pretty much where it comes in at. It's a little tricky because of the turrets, so you can argue about where you measure the ship from. Because if you just measure it from where the turrets mount, the doorways, it's 55 meters. But by the time you put the turrets on, it gets bigger. And so do you count to the edge of the turret, or do you count to the edge of the barrels on the turret, which is where 75 comes from? But that's with the turrets tucked in. So when they're sort of landed and inactive, they retract back into the ship.
John CreweVehicle Pipeline Director / Lead Systems Designer
Yeah, so when it's out and all the turrets are out, it gets even bigger. But landed size, the size people generally care about for fitting on landing pads, fitting in other ships, is the size that is on the website. And if it changes, we'll update it, but it's not got 50% bigger or anything like that.
Yeah, there was space inside already for that, so we just had to work it in with a lift system to get through to it. So it wasn't a case of having to ramp the ship size up just to squeeze it in.
TL;DRSharing targets between gunners is a general game system, not coming with the Hammerhead in 3.3, though it will be very useful for it later, and turret rotation is now visible on the HUD.
JC
John CreweVehicle Pipeline Director / Lead Systems Designer
So that's not really Hammerhead-specific. It's a game system that will be applicable to any ship that has multiple turrets and seats. It's not something that's coming with the Hammerhead in 3.3, but it will be something that, when it does come, will be incredibly useful for the Hammerhead, for people to target targets and share them between, for the pilot or captain to nominate things. I was actually looking at a video just before we came in here that Kirk had sent over on some turret stuff, and for the first time ever I actually noticed, and it's slightly related to the question, but only slightly, that on the self status on the HUD you can actually see the turrets rotating around. So that's something I hadn't noticed. I know it's been wanted for a long time. That helps a lot, especially for the pilot, to see where all these turrets are pointing. It's not where we want to leave it at. That's just a happy coincidence that's happened. We want to have proper feedback for those stations.
TL;DRThey fit recycled Idris pieces against set corridor-length metrics, build bespoke pieces to fill gaps, and rely on some trial and error, with the second deck bringing unexpected fitting problems.
It's all a matter of actually just getting it in and seeing if it fits. We have metrics that we work to, and that carries through to each ship. So we know how long the corridor can be with the pieces that we've got, and we just fit it in and then build bespoke pieces around that if we need to plug up any gaps. So it can be trial and error sometimes. You can plan it though, it's not too bad.
JC
John CreweVehicle Pipeline Director / Lead Systems Designer
The concept for this was quite handy, because the concept artist who made it was given those pieces from those ships, so we had a fairly good idea what was going to work. But as I say, adding that second deck, we went through some curveballs to how stuff fits together that simply wasn't there in the concepts.
TL;DRThey won't give exact numbers because balancing is ongoing, but the Hammerhead is around Starfarer speed and maneuverability, slightly more agile and faster, and its six turrets mean it needn't be fast.
JC
John CreweVehicle Pipeline Director / Lead Systems Designer
I'm not going to give any exact numbers, because I know we're balancing it literally at the moment.
I imagine a ship like that, game-balance-wise, is allowed to have a speed in that range not only because of its armor, but because with six turrets around the entire thing, you don't have to maneuver particularly fast. You can cover pretty much wherever you're trying to hit.
Yeah, so initially it was me doing the exterior, and then we had two guys doing the interior. And then I think it ended up being, yeah, three carrying on working on it. So there were three people at any one time working on it.
We never follow it 100%, because you need to have your own creative license with it. Sometimes you come into difficulties where you need to actually fit certain rooms in, and you have to work around that. That's all a natural part of it. People did look at hammerheads for reference for it, because that is the iconic shape and the name of it. That is part of it. You look at other Aegis ships that are in the game as well, because it all shares the same design language. Yeah, with Aegis, there's a lot of the alien manufacturing type style in there. Thank you, Nate Beasley. That's definitely a Nate special.
TL;DRMaking a ship bigger is rarely a simple scale-up; it usually means fitting what must be inside and reworking the layout, with the Orion as the one example that was scaled up.
Yeah, that's all it is. It comes from what actually needs to be inside the ship, doesn't it?
JC
John CreweVehicle Pipeline Director / Lead Systems Designer
There's various levels of getting stuff bigger. Sometimes it's just filling the space more effectively. Other times it's, oh, we need to put a dog leg in this corridor, which means things need to go out. There's just a knock-on effect. There's very few times that we just simply scale up the ship. The only example I can think of is the Orion. We had the concept mesh. You look at the concept mesh and you think, well, that's fine. And when you actually went to start making it, because it didn't really detail the mechanics of the inside of it, it starts at the front where the big maw is to crunch all the rocks, and by the time they'd put the tube through the middle, there was about five meters around it to put everything else in. So we're like, oh, well, the design is fine, it's just the scale is completely off by the time you properly model the inside of it. So that one I think was literally 200%, and now everything's fine. They're not all like that.
Yeah, it is a unique problem to have it working from the inside all the way through to the outside, in multiple layers.
JC
John CreweVehicle Pipeline Director / Lead Systems Designer
Some of it is just to make it look nicer. If we follow the concepts or the interior plan 100%, it sounds weird, but it often doesn't turn out how the concept looks, given that you're following it.
Yeah, because that concept is only from one or two angles, so you've got to take into account that it's a fully explorable area, and it needs to look good from every different angle, and sometimes that just means things have to change.
The rear turrets sit a little bit wider than the front turrets, so you get a staggered, almost diagonal.
JC
John CreweVehicle Pipeline Director / Lead Systems Designer
They can shoot past the front. I think there was some confusion because one of the concept art pieces had the stubs, the nose and the wing stubs, the same length, but the back ones are actually further out. So it's thicker in the back.
Yes, we've built a mechanism inside that looks like it'll do that, and it's reinforced on the exterior. The design side is still TBD. We've done the easy part.
John CreweVehicle Pipeline Director / Lead Systems Designer
Yeah, the ramp is designed for an Ursa rover. So Ursa rover and smaller. Try it. I've seen people fit much bigger ships and much smaller ships. Creatively.
That's it, isn't it? In this studio, we're very familiar with the Aegis brand now. We don't need to have as much time experimenting to see what works and what doesn't. We kind of have a good grasp of what will work. So it was relatively straightforward art-wise for this.
TL;DRThe Hammerhead has a mess hall, bridge, engine room, corridors, crew and captain's quarters with bathrooms, component rooms, an observation area, lifts, ladders, airlocks and escape pods.
John CreweVehicle Pipeline Director / Lead Systems Designer
The cargo goes on the cargo lift. It's 40 SCU. If you put the rover on there, you lose your cargo space. So there's a trade-off to be made to be carrying one of those around. Although you could probably put the rover on and really wedge it somewhere else in that room.
I'd be careful driving the rover around in the engine room.
JC
John CreweVehicle Pipeline Director / Lead Systems Designer
Maybe a smaller vehicle. Yeah, the cargo grids are dynamic, so if you put a smaller vehicle on, it only takes away the cargo space it occupies. Maybe a Cyclone TR.
TL;DRMissiles can't be put on the Hammerhead's turrets, but they can take heavy exploding-bullet guns, and the speakers suggest mixing four weapons per turret, including distortion ones to disable ships.
Yeah, there was that question about missiles on the turrets. Can't do that. But they can fit those guns that have the huge exploding bullets. So give that a try.
JC
John CreweVehicle Pipeline Director / Lead Systems Designer
Yeah, I'm always a sucker for putting Gatlings on everything, but a Hammerhead with ballistic scatterguns on every single turret will be a sight to behold. That's scary.
Four different guns on each turret as well, if you're feeling really spicy.
JC
John CreweVehicle Pipeline Director / Lead Systems Designer
Put four different ones on a single turret, chain the fire mode so it goes distortion first and energy and then ballistics. So the first two take down the shields.
I think it would be a good idea to have the top and bottom turrets be fully distortion and then offensive weapons on all the others. So you've got two guys focused on disabling ships.