Star Citizen: Reverse the Verse LIVE - Drake Corsair
The developers describe the Drake Corsair, an asymmetrical multi-crew exploration ship positioned as Drake's Constellation. They cover its design history, 72 SCU cargo or Ursa rover bay, two side turrets, Spartan interior, fragility, AI turret blades, no variants or modularity.
Yep, absolutely. That was part of the original design brief that we had at the time, even though it was just a little one-line or maybe two-line sentence that we had for the show that we did. But that was the goal then. That is still the aim now.
Well, there's always the popular one that they just prefer the looks of one over the other. They both fulfill the same role. That is small multi-crew, small as in crew capacity, not size, multi-crew explorer, carries some cargo, carries a vehicle. Ultimately, it comes down to picking between: do I like the RSI style? Do I like the ability to have two turrets, lots of missiles? Or do I want to have less missiles, more guns, more turrets at the expense of being slightly more fragile?
I'm not 100% sure, actually. It has the capacity to take one. Like the Constellation, it takes the same space as the cargo, so it's cargo or rover. It's not like other ships where they're separate areas. Ultimately, it's not really a game design decision. It's more the marketing and platform guys that ultimately put that together in the package. For me, I suspect it probably won't come with one. That's subject to change, as you'll probably find out now based on the page that's gone up yesterday.
By the time this airs, the full promotion page will be up. If the options don't come with a rover, you'll be able to use an Ursa rover that you have on your own, or if you have a Lynx rover from the Phoenix or whatever, that can also fit in the cargo hold.
It does not have a docking port for a parasite craft like the Merlin. I'm sure enterprising people will cram one in there minus its wings or something like that. But it is designed to take an Ursa rover-sized vehicle in the back. So that's your upper size limit. It's not going to fit a tank. It's not going to fit anything that size. Grav-lev vehicles like the Nox, Dragonfly, X1, those will fit in. You could probably get some buggies, clown car it up in there. PTV will go in there, Cyclone probably, because I think it is in the same ballpark dimensions, but obviously the marketing media is all based around the Ursa. So if a ship takes an Ursa, anything else [of that size will fit].
TL;DRDrake ships are stripped back and utilitarian, at the opposite end of the sleekness scale from Origin, with exposed, bolted-on, easily serviceable military-style interiors, while RSI is a more refined civilian take.
I mean, the Drake stuff is a lot more stripped back than, say, Aegis. Or Origin, in terms of sliding scale, which way is the scale going? You've got Origin at the top end in terms of sleekness and everything is hidden away. And pretty much Drake is at the bottom of the scale. Doesn't mean it's ugly. Like John was saying, everybody has a different preference. It has got personality. And do you know what? Once we hit on this style, I really like this ship. I think we've come up with something pretty decent. The interiors, it's more akin to sort of a Russian military craft. Everything's exposed or it's bolted on. You've got your superstructure and everything's easily accessible. You can just get at it, fix it, remove it, put it back on. You don't have to worry about chipping the paint or some advanced polymer surface or any of this business. It is quite military, and what you see is what you get.
The RSI and Connie stuff is like that as well, but it's more of a refined civilian, like it's a military thing that's had its edges slightly smoothed off, whereas Origin are really, you don't want to touch that sort of stuff.
TL;DRThe Corsair began as a symmetrical big brother to the Cutlass, but Chris wanted an asymmetrical Caterpillar-style design with sailing-ship nods, which led through solar-sail experiments to the current ship.
When we first started, it was a very different vision. We always talk about these difficult births, don't we? And here we go again. Initially we were sort of pushing for, it was pitched more as a sort of big brother to the Cutlass.
Yeah. So that was the direction we were heading in, and we did a lot of designs, and poor Jim, his pencil must have been worn out by the end of it. So we were going for that sort of classic two engines. It was more symmetrical, wide body overall sort of feel. And as we progressed, it became clear that Chris didn't want to go in this direction. In the Drake universe, you kind of have two styles that you can go with. You've got the smaller, like Cutlass style, and then you've got the Caterpillar asymmetrical, and he wanted to go more in that asymmetrical style. And so we started investigating on that. And then there were a couple of additional requirements that Chris wanted to see in terms of essentially nods to a corsair sailing ship. Again, he was sort of spitballing ideas, but there was mention of sails. And so initially I was just like, what?
Yeah, we did solar sails. I put another artist onto it just to get a different vision. Sometimes if we get a bit stuck, it's nice to get some fresh brains on it. We did a little more exploration with somebody else and then we came back. So we got there in the end, and then eventually got to the point where Jim had moved into 3D and we were sort of working with the kit as well. People will recognize quite a few of the elements that are on this ship. And then it was just a matter of me and Mike really just getting into the nuts and bolts, getting our hands in, and just sort of massaging the craft basically to get it to where it is now.
TL;DRChris wanted asymmetry, which was hard to design without it looking like a box, and the team keeps key parts like thrusters symmetrical to avoid flight handling problems.
So he wanted more asymmetry. The Caterpillar is sort of asymmetrical from one axis, but when you try and factor sails or fins into the design, it suddenly gets really quite tricky. And then there's quite a bit of experimentation of just how to achieve what Chris wants with the asymmetrical feel and it not look like a box. I didn't want to achieve the award of next ugliest ship in Star Citizen that I've made. I've got the gold already. I didn't want to go for the silver again. I don't know, it's kind of one of the things that, once we dealt with the body and then the main wing, really to balance it, then we went vertical. So we've got this sort of essentially Y-wing.
It's always tricky from a design side and from the flight handling side when asymmetry comes up, because we have a lot of old ships in the game that are very asymmetrical and they cause us problems to this day. So whenever we come up with new asymmetrical ones, we try and visually make it look asymmetrical, but if you really drill down into it, a lot of the key components like the thrusters are symmetrical. We did the same with the Mercury Star Runner. That is essentially a symmetrical ship from a design setup point of view. It's just the hull that gives it that asymmetry. The thrusters are evenly matched all the way around it. And the same on this. Really, the asymmetry from a gameplay impact point of view is going to be those wings, and that's really only going to have some impact in atmospheric flight, and they're not wild enough to throw things off, because obviously you've got just one horizontal wing and then the two Y ones out the other side. The thrusters remain symmetrical, and the main engine is just going to power through any torque that's going to be trying to throw it off.
TL;DRThe ship should be able to fly in atmosphere with wings in either configuration, one being better than the other, since the wings only affect drag and carry no thrusters or landing gear.
I don't see why it wouldn't be able to. One of them will be better than the other, but it's not going to be like some ships where you are forced into having to do it one style because of other knock-ons. The landing gear isn't tied to the wing shape at all, to my knowledge. This all comes out of the body, so it doesn't matter what you do with the wings. It's purely going to be affecting the drag simulation. And as we're finding with the Reliant now, the Reliant's a different case because it has the thrusters on the movable part. So that does change from being very yaw happy to very pitch happy, depending on what flight state you're in. That's nothing to do with the orientation of the wing, and the drag from it is purely from the thrusters, which this doesn't have. So yes, it will have some impact, but no, it shouldn't be to the point where, if you look at it, you think you can only be flying around in a left or right hand circle in atmosphere.
Right, and if it can successfully maneuver enough in atmosphere to land in both wing configurations, I'm going to guess that if those wings get destroyed, you're not completely SOL either.
TL;DRThe ship has 72 SCU with a rover or cargo, medium components in ones and twos, three turrets, forward-facing fixed guns and fewer missiles than the Constellation but more customization.
SCU-wise, 72. Very similar, almost identical to the Connie. Again, it's rover or cargo. If you put a smaller vehicle in there, you get some of the cargo space back. Component-wise, it's medium items pretty much across the board. Very similar layout to our other ships, so ones and twos of everything. There's no wild card options like the Prospector with a one size bigger power plant or Sabres with three shields. It's very traditional, ones and twos. Weapon-wise, there's two manned turrets. I believe they're on the sides. So unlike the Connie, which is top and bottom and pretty much 360, these are two sideways ones that obviously cannot do 360 because there's a ship in the way.
Yeah. Again, a very sailing ship style nod. There is a remote turret on the back to cover that back. So you've got the turrets to cover the side angles, you've got the remote turret on the back, and then you've got four size four hardpoints around the cockpit, I believe, and then some on one wing.
Oh yeah, they're on the Ys, aren't they? As the pilot, you've got a lot of forward-facing firepower. But once that is out of your view cone, you have to then rely on your turrets. So you've got three turrets, one more than the Constellation. It's got less missiles than the Constellation. The Constellation's packing, I don't know how many, lots, like 50. Whereas this is much more restricted, like eight or so. Depends how you configure your missile racks, which the Constellation can't do because it's all bespoke missile racks. Whereas this, you could put one single large missile on each hardpoint, or you could get the octo-racks and have eight of the smaller size.
TL;DRThe Corsair is meant for friends going on long trips, with pilot and gunners also handling scanning, engineering and repairs, while solo players can hire an NPC crew and explore with the rover.
So the Corsair is all about going out and having fun with a group of friends, ideally. If you don't have anyone to play with, like I know you always moan about, that you're there playing by yourself, you'll always be able to hire an NPC crew. But really, you have your pilot, you've got your gunners there to defend you, and when they're not doing that, they'll be doing the whole scanning and engineering side of running the ship. It's designed to stay away from base for a fair amount of time, which obviously means you're going to have to have supplies and manage your systems in the ship. So repairing and keeping on top of wear and misfires and any items that break during your transit, you've got to deal with those as well as just going exploring. Take that rover out and go explore some unknown planets. Find some caves.
TL;DRIt's built for one to four people on a medium-length expedition, with living quarters, galley and supplies, sitting between the long-duration Carrack and the less self-sufficient Cutlass.
Yeah, like the ships in this sort of category, it's those one to four people going out for a medium-term expedition. It's got everything you need on board. You've got your own little living quarters. It's got a shared galley and relaxation area. It's got space for supplies and the cargo hold and spares. It's not going to be that long-term duration like the Carrack, where it has all the bells and whistles. But it's also not going to be as short-term as some of the smaller explorers like the Terrapin, where yes, it can go out for an extended period of time, but ultimately it's a one-person ship. There's only so much you can cover with one person, which is where these come in. The Cutlass is probably the next logical downgrade, I guess, from this. It's got space for two people. It's got two beds. Fine. But it doesn't really have the onboard living accommodation to sustain them. It's got no toilet, which everyone always complains about. There's only so long you can go without the toilet.
It's a pretty capable fighter, do you think? It's a very Drake thing. Ostensibly, they're a nice public company that's doing good things. But yeah, it's fully loaded. It can handle itself. Like the Cutlass, it was a militia patrol ship in the lore, but it gets used for more nefarious purposes. Same for the Caterpillar: it's a cargo ship, it's got a lot of guns and turrets on it, and I'm not sure the cargo it carries all the time is always what it's supposed to be carrying, but that seems to be what Drake does.
TL;DRLike other Drake ships it is less durable than competitors, trading toughness for armament, though the wings' thrusters are non-critical and crew teamwork or future automated turrets can help in a fight.
Like other Drake ships, it is not as durable as some of its competitors. That's sort of the trade-off you get with all this extra armament: you suffer in the durability stakes. Like we talked about earlier, the thrusters aren't really integral to the wings, so they can come off, and they're probably going to be the first things that come off from missiles and shots. It's not going to impact you too much. It has got those turrets, so teamwork is going to be key there to shaking off a few fighters. Or, like we've talked about for turrets in general, in the future you'll be able to equip a blade on your computer item that will allow you to turn them into an auto or AI turret. Obviously there's four crew, three turrets to operate and a pilot, so that's everyone doing that. There's no one left to run engineering or manage the shields, so you can swap out some of your computer capacity to automate one of those. That brings back that person to help move the shield power around and do the shield hardening.
No, they're about 90 degrees, aren't they? They're not like the Hammerhead, where they're on a little gimbal that pops them out and then can rotate 90 degrees forwards. They are recessed in, so they're a bit more protected than the Hammerhead ones. It also means people can't really sneak behind. On the Hammerhead, once those turrets go out, you leave the doorway to the ship open. I've seen people sneak back into ships. That's not going to be a thing on this, but you lose that forward facing. I think there's more than enough guns pointing forwards on this. So really, this covers from 20 degrees off the boresight to a hundred and something.
Yep. You may not have enough computer capacity to do them all at the same time, but there's nothing to stop the individual turrets being done like that. Obviously it's not in-game, so I don't have the exact numbers on how many slots each computer blade has or how many slots each computer has, how many blades it will take to automate each turret. But like we've said on previous ships, quite often there is not enough capacity to do everything all at once. We want to promote those choices: if you want to fill your computer bank with AI turret blades, you're losing out on some other important functionality, and you have to pick which you deem to be more important.
TL;DRThe ship borrows mostly from the Caterpillar kit, plus mess hall, monitors, bunk and seat pieces, but the Drake concept is still limited and may get another expansion pass before production.
That's a good question. I mean, predominantly in terms of kits, this is using the Caterpillar. There's a lot of Caterpillar in it. A lot of the superstructure, the ribbing, the vertical ribbing. I think in terms of how well this is developed as a concept, there's still a way to go. We've got the first read, what I'd call the basic Drake architecture in there, but there's still a lot of room for development. So when we're making this stuff, I'll give Jim a kit of parts, and it's fairly limited in terms of what I give him. It's just enough to get the overall vibe of the ship right. We borrowed obviously from the kit for the mess hall and the suspended monitors, and some of the bunk room stuff. So it's quite limited at the moment. We've obviously borrowed the pilot's chair, co-pilot's chair, that sort of stuff. So there's enough there to give people the feel of what will be coming. But ultimately, I think before the ship goes into production, we'll probably do an additional pass where we expand it out a little further. The thing is, it depends on who builds it. If it's going to Elwin and his team, I think they built the Caterpillar anyway, so it's a lot simpler, there's a lot more free rein. If it's going to a brand new team that's full of juniors, then we'll probably spend a bit more time working out all the exact areas.
TL;DRThe rover gap is too snug in the concept and will be widened in production, and a second crew entrance is an enclosed vertical lift between the two turrets.
Yeah, I think it's because we went with the incline and the narrowing at the top, and then with that additional geometry of the circular engine mounts, everything has crept in a bit. But we'll definitely fix that so there's enough space for people to easily get past. There's nothing more annoying than having to shimmy past your vehicle. And then the other crew entrance is essentially in between the two turrets. It's just a standard vertical lift. Jump on there, up you go. And it's fully enclosed, so you're not venting your whole ship if there's a problem. So when you come in, turn left, you go down to the crew; turn right, you go into the cockpit.
TL;DRInteriors are Spartan, with a bed per crew member, a separate captain's room, toilet, shower, food machines, a communal dining area, an open component room, storage spaces and possibly vents.
I mean, it's the basics for living. Spartan. Yeah, it's Spartan. So you've got your bed per crew member. The captain does have his own separate quarters. They are super sparse at the moment, but we'll be looking to expand or develop that area. It may not get much bigger, but you've got your dedicated area. You've got your usual combo of toilet, shower, sink.
Yeah, maybe on the suspended monitors we've got some kind of game system hooked up to that. Who knows, whatever we want to do. And then as you progress further through, you get to essentially the guts of the ship, the components. And again, that's very skeletal. Basically, you've got superstructure that's coming through the roof, going down vertically and then onto the floor. So it's essentially an open server rack almost. It was just one thing that I wanted to add as a bit of a visual hook for the ship. So when you come through from either direction, you come into this room and it's octagonal, again keeping with the basic Drake feel. They're not spending money on curved beams or anything. It's just straight I-beams, and they're just cut together. And then there's plenty of space also for little rooms off it, either for additional storage or, if you maybe want some illicit goods, in theory. When I was talking to Jim about it, we were going to put in a vent system as well, so there was additional gameplay and more interest to the ship. We didn't actually fit that in in the time that we had, but there is space for it. So expect that when it goes to the dev team, we'll put in these vents.
TL;DRThe octagonal central room should hold most components and is hoped to stay that way into production, though it isn't fully specced, and it would be warm with vents and steam.
It's the majority. We haven't fully specced out exactly what's in there. I knew that we had a lot of space in this ship anyway, so there's still some flexibility in what's going to go in there. But yeah, it's got to be a warm room when you generate heat.
That seems like a pretty good example of utilitarian design. All the components are there in a central place at the core of the ship where they're the most protected. I don't know if that's how it's going to end up, but that's one of the things I was looking forward to.
I hope so, because it was my idea. So it's going to go in, right? I'm going to force it in. No, but if it doesn't work, it doesn't work. But it's something I would like to see us have a shot at.
I don't see why it wouldn't happen in the production of it. Like you say, there is more than enough space for other components in there, but the majority of them are going to go in that space.
Yeah. And you mentioning the temperature for that room, that's going to give us an additional visual hook, so we can put big, essentially AC units or vents all above you, so we can have steam or whatever it is venting down from the ceiling. So we're going to have a really atmospheric feel.
At its most basic, it was a visual element to balance out the ship. It works well. We treated it as a sensor, and its styling is very similar to the Caterpillar. But yeah, a lot of people are thinking it's a gun. It does look like a gun, but it's not a gun. But will it, I guess, I don't know, John can speak to this, whether we can factor in some gameplay, possibly.
The majority of the scanning and radar stuff comes from the actual components themselves in the ship. It's not like the Reliant variants with their turret camera things on the end of the wings. Possibly, but it's not intended for anything actual gameplay-wise. It's a cool-looking [detail].
Functionality-wise, it's like any other ship. It's got a scanner. It can scan with it. The component that comes with the ship is just better than what you'd get on run-of-the-mill ships, which for Drake is probably state-of-the-art. It's something fractionally better than average. Going to upset a lot of Drake fans now.
Yeah, there's one on top, but it's not lined up with anything important. It's just a detail. You can get into it multiple ways in EVA, and it's not of a size in our lineup of ships where it becomes problematic to spawn at locations. It's relatively compact. And the wings fold up to bring it into metrics for landing zones and hangars. So there's more than enough places where it can be naturally spawned without the need for being attached to docking collars. It's an exploration ship. You probably shouldn't be docking to other ships, because that's generally not good behavior. If you're docking to another ship, it's probably because you're exploring it in a hostile way.
TL;DRNo variants have been discussed beyond paint schemes, and the interior is so integrated around the cargo and component bays that swapping parts would leave little of the ship.
There was one particular color that I was under the impression we were delivering it in, and I must have done like 12, 14 different variations just to try and get this color scheme to work. But then it was nixed at the end: let's just go back to what we had to start with. But it looks cool. There's a lot of good stuff we can do with this ship, so it looks pretty sweet.
Yeah, there isn't a huge amount of variation you could do internally and gameplay-wise with the ship. The Constellation variants, the Aquila has some bolt-on pieces to make it better, which aren't particularly translatable to this. The Phoenix is almost a new ship for the majority of the interior, and the Taurus has significant geometry changes to have the extra cargo. Whereas with this ship, if you take anything out of it to replace it with anything else, you lose a huge amount of the functionality of the ship. The back cargo bay and the component bay are almost one integral part of the ship, and all that leaves is where the crew is. And if you get rid of that to change it to something else, there's nothing left of the ship.
Nothing planned. A lot of people think we're on some secret mission to try and remove modularity from the game. That's not the case. It's just that some ships we build it in from the ground up, others we don't. If every ship was modular, then it sort of ruins a lot of the fun of the ships. They all become very samey. So we have some ships that are modular, we'll have some ships in the future that are modular, but we also have a lot that have a dedicated role or focus, because it just makes them more interesting.
There's nothing. It's not designed for it. It's too big to naturally land on the Kraken. Like people have theorized with the Caterpillar, you can slam it down on the two top pads, but it's not a natural storing or spawning location. It's simply too big. Yes, you could land it there and use it, but it's not designed to go on there.
TL;DRPaul Jones is most pleased with delivering a shape and silhouette he likes on an asymmetrical ship, working with new concept artists, and capturing the romance of Drake adventure with a recognizable Drake look.
I don't know. It's really personal for me. I'm really happy about how the ship turned out, because I find the asymmetrical stuff the hardest to tackle. These ships are not easy anyway, but then you throw in asymmetry and it's a whole different ball of wax. Also working with new concept artists. So for me, it's a bigger thing in terms of, we've delivered something that I'm really happy with in terms of shape and silhouette. We've obviously done the promo images and I'm falling for my own promo. I'm just like, oh yeah, I'm doing this. I'm going to be in the stars. I'm just going to be sailing away with my crew. So yeah, I guess I've fallen for the romance of the Drake adventure.
I've known Jim Martin for a while now. He makes ships that don't necessarily look like anything else. When people see a Drake ship, you know it's a Drake ship right off the bat. And when they see a Corsair, they're going to know they're looking at a Corsair immediately.
Yeah. And so then we're job done. We want people to be able to look at these ships and go, right, that's a Drake, and even better than that, go, that's a Drake Corsair.
TL;DRIt adds variety to the overlooked mid-range of solid do-a-bit-of-everything ships, where John Crewe expects average players to spend most of their hours, even if it brings nothing brand new.
I think it adds a really nice bit of variety to an often overlooked segment of our ships. A lot of people always get super excited for very niche gameplay ships, something that does a specific career, or it's a starter in that career, or it's the end game in that career. But in reality, everyone's going to start with their starter ships, and then these ships are where I see the average player spending the majority of their time in game. Things like the Cutlass, the Connie, the Freelancer, the Corsair, that's where, in my mind, people are going to be putting the hundreds of hours in on those ships. Those are your traditional solid ships to do a little bit of everything in. And then you can go off to the more exotic, fancy ships. And just having more variety in that area is exciting for me, because it gives everyone a chance to express what they want their little ship to be. They've got all the choice in there. So it might not be the most amazing ship in terms of one gameplay aspect. It might not bring anything brand new to the table, but those are sort of the core of the game.