Stephen Hosmer

So that is a setup item, so you can either have the conference table or your piano, depending on, I guess, your preference. If you want to have more meetings, you can have that, and if you want to have more parties, you can have the piano.

So if you're in-game, what you have to do to get to the piano is you're basically going to bring up your mobiGlas, and you can change your loadout through the VMA, and you'll be able to switch out the conference table and the piano just like you would a weapon on the ship.

And this is a good time to remind folks that not everybody who owns a Phoenix owns the piano. The piano was an early pledge item when the Phoenix was first introduced in 2014. So folks who bought it in the original concept promotion, it came with it automatically. It was also sold individually. So there are actually people in the game who own the piano and don't own the Phoenix, at which point I believe our intention is to allow you to use that in hangars and stuff like that when that comes in. As for whether we will bring the piano back as its own item to buy or to pledge for in the future, that is still TBA. Let us know what you think on Spectrum. But no decision has been made in that regard yet.

It's not that much bigger. I think Josh might have the exact measurements, but it's not significantly larger.

I wrote the math down exactly, it's on my notepad here somewhere, but I think it was around 7% in width overall, so multiply by 2, so that's 14% a little bit wider, and then the length, I think, was around 10%. So just those small numbers gave us enough space to do what we were wanting to do, because the other one was just small and it was symmetrical. When we went asymmetrical, we needed a lot more room, and we wanted to make it AI friendly. So the AI pathing had to have its space and the metrics had to be proper.

Of course, you'll get the actual measurements when they get measured out, when the pledge page gets updated and these ships enter the game in the upcoming Alpha 3.3, currently scheduled for October 10th at CitizenCon.

We can't reasonably size up a power plant anymore, because the sizes have changed since we first initially...

The entire system has changed since 2014.

The entire system has changed. So if we wanted to put a larger power plant in here, there just wouldn't be any room. So what we've done instead is we've put in upgraded competition-class power plants. And what that basically means is, what you usually think of a competition, it would be like a racing, finely tuned, high performance, but the tradeoff for the high performance that you're getting is going to be its durability. So you're going to get more power out of the power plant, but you're going to have to replace it more often, basically.

We've talked about this quite a bit, and if you want the documentation on this, I'm going to recommend going to the Shipyard series of articles available on robertspaceindustries.com. Components have three basic descriptors. There's the size, there's the grade, and there's the type. It's size one through 10, if I remember correctly. I think there are up to 10, but I don't think we've actually used any of them. We've built a scale that allows us to expand in the future. You'll see the details there. But then the grade is grades A through E, as far as the quality, with A being the highest grade component and E being the 'well, I've got to get from point A to B, whatever I got.' And then the type being the tuning: there's your civilian type, then there's your military type, and then there's your stealth.

Competition and industrial.

So since the size system changed and we can no longer effectively do a one-larger power plant, what you're saying is that we've improved it from a civilian type of power plant to the competition type.

Exactly.

So you'll get more bang for your buck out of that. As IFCS 2.0 comes online and Item 2.0 continues to come out, our backers will get more and more information about this system. But we detailed it all almost exactly a year ago in the Shipyard, so you can check that out.

There is a whole bunch of documentation. We've figured out all of the different sizes, everything, and they all have names and descriptions. And we just don't have them all made yet.

So originally, when we started building the Phoenix, we scheduled everything out. Josh had to build all this stuff, and we did not actually have the remote turret system in the game when we started building the Phoenix. So when we planned it out, we didn't plan to build it yet, because we didn't have the system. Now that we actually have the system, we have to go back and schedule some time to actually get that made. So when it releases initially, we won't have the remote turret in there. But we're going to go back and make that at a later release.

I can verify what he said, because I was part of many conversations about that. What you see when you get in 3.3 will be missing what you're expecting in the remote turret, but we still have every intention to add it to the ship. It will be added when that remote turret system really comes online, because until that point, it's just geometry that's sitting there doing nothing anyway.

I think there was some confusion with this, because I had to really go back and look through a lot of old documentation to figure out what happened here, why was this missing, and where did it need to be. And what I found was that the Taurus is the ship that actually has the smuggler's cargo hold.

Because the Taurus is missing the bottom turret. So the bottom turret space was converted into the shielded smuggler's cargo hold.

Exactly. So the Taurus has only the top turret, and then the bottom turret is replaced with a cargo hold. And then the Phoenix actually has both of the turrets, similar to the Andromeda.

Yes. This got confused in a couple follow-up posts. It actually started here on RTV back in 2014 when our very own Ben Lesnick was on the show. It's one of those things where we're talking about four different Constellations all at the same time, and some of our verbiage got confused. And Ben stated on RTV, as well as in a post on the old forums predating Spectrum, that the Phoenix had this shielded double-blind cargo bay, except that there's no physical space for it, because that goes on the Taurus, and it goes where the turret was missing. If you look through the original documentation that's on the original pledge page, the original brochures, you'll find no mention of the shielded cargo bay on the Phoenix. That was a feature of the Taurus. So this has been a common misconception over the last couple of years. We actually started clearing it up on a Calling All Devs a couple months ago, but we want to come back and do it again here. There is no special shielded cargo hold on the Phoenix. That is a feature of the Taurus. And we apologize for confusing the issue back in 2014 by mixing up our terminologies and stuff like that. But no, the Phoenix has the top and bottom turrets, which you can see there in the neck. And because it has the top and bottom turrets, there is no space for a special shielded cargo hold.

Short answer, yes. I feel like there's probably a bigger discussion that needs to be had here, probably for balance reasons and other things. But yes, it has different armor than the Andromeda. It's better than the Andromeda, not by much really, but it is better. I think there should probably be changes in the future with how the armor system works, but I don't know what those will be.

I see some conversation in chat about the armor, about whether it's better than a gunship or something. He said it's better than the Andromeda. There's still a whole lot of game balance that has to go into all the ships in Star Citizen. So right now, as far as the armor for the Phoenix, we're only saying our current intention is for it to be a little better than the Andromeda. That's the only comparison we're making as far as armor goes.

There's a whole other balance team that are looking into these things, and they're thinking about these things, and they've got spreadsheets and they've got a lot of calculations, and they know a lot more about it than I do, and it's definitely something they have on their mind.

Definitely. I believe the co-pilot seats right now will have that functionality eventually. It's not in right now, and I think the original design was that you'd be able to swap out different modules, computer blades, that kind of thing. That's something we plan to do in the future.

In 2014, it was a feature unique to the Constellation line. But as the game has continued to develop and evolve over time, that is now a feature available to, well, I should not say all, to most ships in Star Citizen: the ability to swap out computer blades and customize your different stations for different needs. So the Phoenix and the Constellation line has no special advantage to that above any other ship. It is just in line with everything else. So what was a new and exciting feature that we were testing in 2014 is now, and you know this from dozens and dozens of conversations over the year, something that we planned for the entire line of ships now.

So the water physics is actually something that the engine team is working on, because they're making water for the planets. So that's not something that's going to be in 3.3 right now.

We haven't actually attempted to do it. I was asking about that before we even started. I'm like, how are we doing the water? We don't have that yet, so just wait. And then attaching it to a ship was even beyond that. So I was like, all right, well, I guess I'll just make a tub then and we'll wait, and I'll just keep maybe water volume, or however you guys want to handle it, in mind, the different ways to do water.

And just to head off any misunderstandings, Hosmer is not saying that water won't be in 3.3. He's saying that the hot tub water won't be in 3.3.

Water attached to a ship.

Water inside a ship will not be in 3.3.

Putting water inside of a ship's internal physics grid.

Oh yeah, it's going to be fun, especially in zero G. To answer that zero G portion, I want to see that. I think we all want to see that.

It'll be a question about whether we have the time and the resources to dedicate to that. I think we can safely say everybody wants to see the water rise out of that.

I want to see how many people drown in the zero G water hot tub. It's just a matter of time.

So it has similar loadouts to the Andromeda. Other than the remote turrets that will be added later, it has the exact same number of hardpoints. The stock loadout is going to have different guns. I can't remember exactly which guns are on there right now, but they are different, I think. It'll have the competition-grade power plant. So the components aren't exactly the same. The components are going to be different, but the hardpoints are the same.

So really, as far as combat capabilities, you're talking about a little more juice for the weapons and the addition of that remote turret.

Exactly.

I mean, an additional gun and more juice for the guns tells me it's more capable.

Yes, but you're going to need another person to operate all those guns.

Well, the remote turret will be automated. Eventually, it's automated. That's what the original point defense was. It's an automated weapon, so they'll have an AI blade.

Oh yeah, that's right.

Okay, so the armor right now is actually being reworked into the Item 2.0 system. So I don't have an answer for that currently. But when that gets implemented, we will...

Armor 2.0 is in the works. It will need to be completed before we know precisely how it will affect the Phoenix. But our intention is that it should have some improved armor. We just can't tell you by how much until the full Armor 2.0 system is done.

Yeah, so armor is currently in the works being converted to Item 2.0. And the system isn't completely fleshed out, or at least I don't have the information.

I think we covered the armor stuff. It's a big TBD, but our intention is still that it should have some more. Talk to us about the power plant.

So when we spec'd out the Phoenix, originally it had a size seven power plant and the other ones had a size six power plant. That size doesn't exist anymore. Currently, the Andromeda has two size two power plants, which are civilian power plants, I believe. And the Phoenix isn't going to get a size upgrade, but it's going to get a grade upgrade, and it's going to be changed to a competition class power plant.

So instead of two civilian grade C power plants like there are in the Andromeda, it's going to have one or two competition grade?

Two, yeah.

Two competition grade, and you said better, so B?

Yeah, I believe so, B, yeah.

And finally, what about the formerly known as point defense turrets, now known just as unmanned turrets?

So the point defense turrets, we don't currently have the tech for that, so when the Phoenix goes out in 3.3 we won't have those as a part of it, but when the tech gets implemented in the future we will be adding them.