John Crewe

I've got a cheat sheet, because I think the only person who would be able to memorize it off the top of their heads is Lee, and Lee's currently not in the country. Otherwise he would be here and doing this. So, starting from the top, we have two size 12 triple ballistic cannons that are manned turrets.

And for reference, what's the biggest gun on the Javelin?

It is 9s on the big remote turrets at the back.

And the railgun on the Idris is a 10. So these are triple size 12s here. Is there two of these? One on the top and one on the bottom?

Well, there's two triples. So the Bengal, the large lower turret on the Bengal that people would have seen in the Squadron videos, that's size 12. So that's got four.

We have three single size 10 manned turrets. So that is, instead of having dual mounts, it's a single mount. We have eight, once again, size 10 single ballistic cannon remote turrets. We then have... I know, it's still a lot to get through. We have eight size 8 double cannons that are manned, and then there is two quadruple laser cannons that are also piloted. And those are size 8.

Essentially it's a size 32?

No. Think of it more like the one on the bottom of the Bengal, where it's multiple barrels. It's worth noting that the weapons for this ship, just because of the sheer size and scale and complexity of everything to do with it, are all specific. They're not just using our generic PU weapons. All of them are built in and designed to specifically work with each of the turrets. Because you can't just go down to your local shop and pick up a size 12.

Oh, yeah. Well, I mean, we did see it had some pilot weapons. It has a beam weapon of, yes, size... It is the entire front of the ship.

Indeterminable size.

It's a beam weapon with 12 barrels. It's six on each side.

Yeah, but it does combine to one giant beam. It's a beam on a capital ship of a scale... well, the size of the ship, as a random data point, is over 750 meters, and then we just have a giant beam that is the front of the ship. So... yes. I mean, we can give it a size, but fine. I'll also cover: it has a significant suite of PDTs, flak, and other automated defense systems. There is still hot debate about the specific number of this. It's either going to be 42 plus 1 or 43. We had an interesting problem when we were actually doing the PDT and flak distribution across the ship. Because they were so small, you couldn't actually see them. So what we ended up having to do was make clustered banks of them, just so that they were actually readable on the exterior. And there's just so many, it meant that we had nice little defensive clusters so they could cover each other as well quite nicely.

Yeah, I guess a few of the more recent combat ships have had that sort of visual cue in them. I don't think it's something we're going to do for all ships. It's not like a shift in mentality or anything. It's just a couple of the new ships all felt like it was the right decision to make. I think with the Odin particularly, there was a lot of different references of different contemporary ships that people are familiar with. And one of the things we wanted to do early on was just have things retracted and tucked away.

It's a pretty bold move, because it's a lot more work to make all these retractable.

It's just such a cool moment. It is a moment in itself when they actually deploy and show the fangs, or teeth, as it were.

We don't have an Anvil ship anywhere near this size as the kicking-off point, so it's an opportunity for: what is Big Anvil? What is Anvil today?

I think as well, there's two very clear different visual states: when it's retracted and then when it means business. And obviously when it's retracted, you are limiting your defense capabilities, but that's where things like the automatic turrets come in. And then when it's time to party, that's when everything comes out. And with a ship of this size, we could wave it away with lots of 'it makes it more efficient, everything's tucked away, it makes it a little bit more efficient to fly,' but really it was a visual decision that we made early on with the vehicle, when we started having those very early conversations as to what we wanted the core visuals to be. That was one of them.

Bay-wise, it is six small... metric small, and one medium hangar. And that's to the actual metrics as well. So it's not like the pads are designed for specific vehicles. Anything that's designated for that metric can fit on them.

Because people had seen the three side doors, so they were like, oh, that's going to have some hangars. But what they won't have seen is the larger hangar.

We'll get to the larger hangar inside, but yes. Six side hangars, three on each side. Big enough for Hornets and stuff, obviously.

Oh, easily.

Cutlasses?

I think the Cutlass is small.

You'll be able to fit Cutlasses in.

It has been quite interesting to see, because from that early image and the hologram that's been above Area 18, people have been able to make assumptions, but I've seen so many questions about how the hangars work, what they're going to do, and someone's like, has it got fly-through hangars? And I'm sat there like... can't say anything, but this is getting me hyped.

Although it looks like it's an entire room, what you're actually seeing there is the walkway that you saw at the top of the hangar. That's the sort of scale we're talking. Like I mentioned, at the bottom of the hangar, there's basically a conveyor belt that connects to the torpedo control at the top. So behind what you're seeing in that image there is the cargo grid, and what you're seeing to the left there, closest to us, is an actual constantly rotating conveyor belt. So if you want to load torpedoes, you take them from the cargo grid and put them on there, and they'll then make their way to the actual torpedo control room where the tube bays actually are, to be taken off and then loaded into the tubes to be fired. So on either side there's a constant rotating thing, so if you need more torpedoes you can just take them straight off the grid, straight onto there, and it goes up to then be manually loaded.

We've mentioned this is a multi-crew ship.

It's definitely a multi-crew ship. If you want this thing to be efficient, then you will need it. Can you do this by yourself? Yes, you'll get a good workout running around the ship.

You'll get 20 shots out of the torpedo tubes, and that's it, instead of it being ready to go again as soon as it's fired. Because at the end of the day, as long as there's someone there feeding it, it can just keep going.

More multi-crew roles than just sitting in a turret, although we do have a lot of turrets.

We have a lot of people just sitting in turrets. We have 23.

Well, me and Alberto were counting them before. We had to keep recounting to make sure we had the right ones.

It turned out we're not good at math.

No, we're terrible at it. We're absolutely atrocious, and we made the damn thing. It was 15 manned and eight remote, and that's just turrets, not to mention all the other things people can do across the ship.

But those remote turrets still have to be operated.

Yeah, they are remote turrets. There's an entire room dedicated to that.

33. That's bare bones.

How many operator turrets were there? We're talking bare bones, not even working at full efficiency. That's not even saying there's anyone feeding the torpedoes. That's just to man the operator seats. That's the sort of numbers you're talking about.

I feel like when it comes time to balance a ship like this, that's probably the biggest thing. If you can coordinate 33 people together, it's like you deserve to just be, you know, the Norse god of everything.

It's like whenever you have a large group of people playing games together, there needs to be someone who is doing a little bit less of the interaction, but managing everyone and actually getting them all to coordinate. It's like anyone that's ever done raid leading in any sort of MMO. That person absolutely isn't putting out the highest DPS in the group, but they're taking a step back and watching everyone while doing it.

They've literally made the 40-man raid.

Pretty much, yeah.

Yeah, and that's exactly what I was about to reference. It's the 40-man raid experience, but it's you with your org, your friends, going out and having that gameplay for an evening.

And having your capship to run. And the best part is also, you have different specialities, right? Because you need fighter pilots, then you need turret gunners, then you need engineering, then you need the guys that actually coordinate the entire crew, and probably more than one guy at that point, because it's going to be very difficult.

Raid leading is a really unique skill. Whenever you play MMOs, there's only ever a handful of people that are even willing to do it. And they choose to do it because they enjoy doing it. But it's a very unique set of subskills. Anyone who is a raid leader or has ever been in a raid will understand just how different it is as a way to play the game.

It's like the epitome of sandbox emergent gameplay, really. It's a role that doesn't necessarily get put in by the game design teams, but it has to exist.

It's like Raid Leader is your class.

To be blunt, it's for someone who wants to do a lot of cargo. They want a ship that's relatively durable, and they like Drakes that have lots of guns. Because Drake ostensibly market this as a cargo manufacturer, but we all know what Drake tends to get up to, so sometimes the cargo's not as legit as it should be, or maybe the cargo is cargo you've got to deliver pain to other people. But yeah, it sort of caters to that. And externally, at least, I think it's pretty true to the concept. We did make some changes to it. Dan begged for an extra entrance into the top of it.

Yeah, traversal was such a massive thing for this ship versus the concept, I remember. And with the signage as well, I remember when we worked on the Polaris, one of the key pieces of feedback was that the signage wasn't as good as it could be. And obviously we went back and edited that a bit, but with this ship...

We had the stairs around the other way as well, didn't we?

Yeah, the stairs have flipped. I believe the elevator was added as well. When we actually got it in and started running around it, once we actually started putting the blockout together, we made a few changes just so it felt a bit more natural, because there was a lot of back and forth and hard 90 and hard 180 degrees that people were having to do as they were walking around. So we softened a lot of the corners, put 45s in. Like here, the wall got knocked in so this became an open area, which I think really helped differentiate the different decks, which is obviously something that we tried really hard to do. You should always know roughly where you are, and when you're in a modular kit, because this is one of the most modular ships we've ever made...

That's developer modularity. You always have to specify: there's player-facing modularity, and then there's the method in which we make our ships.

Yeah, so when we talk about developer modularity, what we mean is the asset pack that you use to author the vehicles. So let's say you have a wall that's two meters long. It doesn't make sense to model every single wall two times, in the same way that if you were to make a car, you wouldn't 3D model every single wheel again. You'd want to duplicate it. So we have this base layer of modularity of our assets underneath, and then we sit on top of that these extra assets that make each of the spaces feel different. And it was really important for us to make it so no matter where you were stood in the ship, you didn't feel lost and you were able to quickly orient yourself. I get the first time you're in it, it's a big ship, you're not going to know exactly where you're going, but it shouldn't take long to establish that.

A sense of exploration though, isn't it? The first time you enter a ship, you want to explore it. You don't necessarily just want to be like, I go in it and I know exactly what's going on. So I think that's part of the charm of these bigger ships, that you do need to explore them a little bit. Obviously, like you say, having navigation is an important user experience thing that we need to try and improve. Obviously, we've got the minimap as well, which helps a lot with that sort of stuff.

You shouldn't have to rely on that.

You shouldn't have to rely on that. As you're heading towards engineering, even though you're in a corridor, you want to start seeing those engineering-y elements bleeding out into the room, so it doesn't feel too stale. And then when you get up to habitation and stuff, you want things to be a little bit more clad, a little bit more refined.

I've seen a lot of discourse about it being artificially weak, which I think is not intended. It should be passing damage through to the main ship rather than killing everything. But there is some intent design-wise. The number one question everyone always has about the Ironclad is, why can't I fly it from the main bit? And that's never been the idea with this ship. You have this main block of a ship, same with the Caterpillar, and the command module gives you that functionality to fly around. That's the sort of USP of these sort of ships.

It's not the same as every other ship. There's always this assumption that you're trying to make every single ship be the ultimate ship, and it's not. The ships are supposed to have certain trade-offs. You get this, but you lose this. If you don't like it, that's fine. There are 200-some-odd other ships out there. The command module is interesting because it is, for all intents and purposes, a standalone craft. It can do everything a standalone ship can do. It can go to quantum. There was some confusion internally earlier, people kept referring to it as a parasite ship, and I'm like, no, if anything, the main hull is the parasite, because it needs the command module to survive, not the other way around. So as far as it being a critical weak point, that's something with the damage not being passed in?

Yeah, simply, it's a bug. The intention with the feature itself is for the command module to not be a critical part, clearly for gameplay purposes, because you don't want a very big, durable ship like the Ironclad should be to get shot down by whoever with the command module being destroyed in very, very few shots, because clearly the size difference is enormous. So the damage is going to be passed onto the Ironclad specifically, or the Caterpillar, depending on which one you are attached to. And all the damage to the components themselves would be passed to the Ironclad as well. So everything inside the command module would be in a dormant state, so to say. So basically the damage is going to be passed onto the main body.

Does that allow you to, when it does detach, have a suitable...

Yeah, exactly, a suitable raft that you can immediately go away and flee from it. The cool stuff is that you can also trigger the self-destruct and then leave the ship and fly out with the command module. So have fun with that.

So the short answer is that damage is supposed to be passed on to the main hull and it's just not at the moment. So it'll be addressed.

Yeah, as soon as possible. I think we already have a fix in for the hotfix, but as always, tentative fixes.

There should be a new series of fixes going out on Tuesday of next week that address a couple other things with the item recovery stuff. So if we can, we'll loop that in there. So that should be better for people before DefenseCon [ends].

It is clearly the intended gameplay dynamic that we want to reach, because clearly we don't want you to lose the ship, especially with the item recovery patch as well.

It's got more guns. That's one of the big ones. It has a larger front door. Again, something from the concept time, there was an intentional difference that the Ironclad Assault is designed for assault. So it's got a big enough front door on it that can fit tanks and Ballistas, which the base Ironclad can't. That can only really fit rover-sized vehicles. It trades off some cargo capacity, so it's 1,500-odd, which is actually, I think, pretty much what the original Ironclad concept had. So they both had a glow-up.

I think it's technically 14-something. But its big thing is it's now got the service bay.

Yes, the services bay, which is located in the rear third, which Will is handily looking at here, denoted by the floor texture difference and the half gantries above.

And in an upgrade from the original concept, the concept was only supposed to be able to service ground vehicles.

It's just anything that can fit in the zone. If you can fit it in the volume, then it will allow you to do it. And if you obviously have the supplies on board.

Ship hangar service is probably one of my favorite features that have come online with 4.8. Because now you see all the people that do the crazy fleet operations, and now being able to actually repair, refuel and rearm on the go gives tremendous utility to things like the Idris, beyond just, hey, I'm a railgunner. And even things like the 890 Jump, the 600i stuff, and as those continue to progress, they'll get more utility. The vehicle services thing, it's repair, refuel and rearm. You need RMC to do the repairs. You need fuel and commodities and ammo and countermeasures. And the ammo stuff is new for 4.8, actually having commodities. And then it's got the additional remote turrets.

Yeah, and some of them are upgunned to quad mounts instead of dual mounts as well. It's got the jump seats at the front as well.

Pretty much, yeah. One of the very common questions I get at Bar Citizens a lot is, I love ship X, but I hate manufacturer X. And as we've talked about many times, we have our big ship matrix of sizes and roles, and we always want to fill everything, and then within that have options. And the Pitbull is just a great Fury alternative. One of the hard design requirements I set from the start for it was it must not exceed the bounds of the Fury. So that presented some challenges, because the Fury, which Dan worked on, was a challenge for fitting stuff in. Wanting more guns on it didn't make it easier.

It's got six guns. What is it, four size ones, two size twos? That's nuts. And it's got missiles. So talk to me about this decision. You're going to add six guns and missiles to this. Do any of you have any conscience whatsoever?

The only problem is we couldn't fit more. Physically, there isn't space to fit more and make it still fit inside the Fury's bounding boxes.