Star Citizen: Reverse the Verse LIVE - Starting with Origin
Developers discuss the Origin 100 series starter ship (size one guns, handling between Aurora and Mustang, AIR hydrogen fuel system, side-door entry) and the 600i (exploration module, rover bay, cargo, windows and lighting, captain's quarters). They also cover the Avenger rework and 135c variant.
Yes, it will. So like the Gladius that got a standardized one in 3.0 or 3.1, the Avenger rework has the same. So I'm not sure it will have the TigerStrike by default on it, because that was bespoke to that ship at the time. So it would definitely have an equivalent Gatling gun on it. And I would expect that gun, if it's not that one, to be the TigerStrike back again in the future when it goes back through the whole art pass of it. You'll be able to swap it out for whatever you want.
TL;DRThe Origin 125 is a starter ship meant to be small and nimble and to work as part of a team, and the developers acknowledge size one gun concerns and say they have unspecified plans for future patches.
So, well, first, obviously, it's a starter ship, so it shouldn't be compared to a Navy fighter. But the point of light fighters is they are designed to be small and nimble, so they should be able to harass some other ships and work as a team. If you're obviously just a single ship, you won't destroy a Starfarer all alone, for example. But if you work with some other people with different roles on different ships, it should work fine. And it's pretty useful to have a small ship that big guns can't really follow.
Yeah, and against ships of the same size, so against other starter ships, small fry, it's going to be fine. I know there's a lot of concern from people about size one, that's 'concern' in brackets. Size one guns being not very useful, and that's something that we're aware of and have plans for in the future that isn't just, let's just bump everything up in DPS. We've got some things in mind for future patches.
So, well, obviously, we have talked about the new fuel system where other ships... just not as good at this. Obviously, Origin looks better, slicker than other ships as well, in some ways. Obviously some people might prefer the other ships. I like my cockpit struts. And the thing is that the Aurora is more durable, we can say it like that, and the Mustang is just faster.
It's more nimble. You've got those three points of... nimbility, that's not even a word, maneuverability, agility, speed, and tankiness, and each of those three starter ships, if you exclude the Reliant from this for the sake of simplicity, they bias towards one of those at the expense of others.
TL;DRJohn Crewe says fuel will change significantly when refueling arrives, becoming a more precious resource since not all ships can regenerate it in space, with a design post to detail how recovery and regeneration work.
Yeah, so I'll try and give the super quick version of the abbreviated design post that's going up later. How fuel works today in terms of regenerating it, storing it, using it, it's going to be quite different to how it works in future patches. So when refueling comes online as a gameplay loop, so the Starfarer being able to refuel people, how fuel works is going to be changed significantly for some ships, not significantly for others. But essentially, fuel becomes more of a precious commodity that you have to manage. Not all ships will be able to regenerate their fuel constantly in space. So for those ships, you're going to have to start making choices about range and mission types and factor in fuel stops or calling for fuel. And the AIR system with the 100 series is sort of an introduction to sort of counter gameplay to that. It's not exclusive. The AIR system is exclusive to the 100 series. Other Origin ships may have that system in a different form, and other manufacturers will have their own equivalent of it. But the post will talk about how you will be able to recover and regenerate fuel and how that system plays into it.
TL;DRMichael Sillitoe says the 600i serves as a style guide, and having lines flow and tuck away rather than terminate abruptly or look bolted on keeps the elegant Origin style from looking clunky.
So we're currently basically using the 600i as a style guide for the future ships. We're just trying to sort of figure out what works, what doesn't. And we had a brief when we started of what we wanted to try and achieve. When you have bylines, it's just sort of key lines that run through the environment. It's not always just panel lines, but sort of shapes. For example, there's a glass shield in the exploration module that separates the scanning area from the rest of it. Instead of just flowing into the wall and then just being bolted to the wall, they need to kind of flow, then sort of wrap around the wall and flow downwards and then tuck away. So basically having these big bolts and just having things stuck on, it can look quite clunky and it can ruin this kind of elegant style that we're trying to do. So having them kind of just flow away rather than just terminating helps us achieve that.
TL;DRIt's a bit of both: the vehicle team has ideas like tinting the windows or raising interior brightness, and works with the graphics team to find a balance between what each can do.
That's a bit of both, really. So we have an idea of what we want to do, and then it's a case of asking other departments if we can do it sometimes. In the case of the windows, we basically just need to figure out how we can tint the windows to kind of prevent more light coming in. But there's things we can do as well. So I mentioned in the episode, I believe, that we can actually increase the brightness in the ship in those areas so that when the sun does come in, it's not as glaring. It's not as overexposed when the natural light hits. So it's just a case of figuring out what we can do. I mean, the graphics team here is very good. They tend to be able to do a lot of magic. But that said, we try and meet halfway most of the time. We don't just expect them to do everything. We have to come with intelligent solutions that work. So yeah, it's just about finding a balance. The stuff we can do, the stuff they might be able to do, we just got to ask, basically.
So we've tried to push as much as possible to have some space for the pilot, especially to adjust if needed later on, like we've noticed some feedback about the Razor, for example, where I guess this question is about this as well. So, well, there is no strut from what we can see. The dashboard might be a bit visible because we need to see the MFDs and stuff like this, but we are trying to give as much visibility as possible for Origin ships especially, and for all ships in general. But yeah, we don't want to make something that will make people unhappy about it.
Yeah. So basically, they all have similarities, but the difference is at the back, where the 135c has an external cargo pod at the rear. It's not longer or bigger than the other ships, but if you are at the rear and the ship is landed, you can see, obviously, a difference at the back on the bottom because, well, there's cargo there.
Yeah, they are true variants in that they have geometry and hardpoint changes versus modular bits that swap out. You can't take a 135 and take that external cargo out and put a blanking plate in, and now I've got a whatever color scheme it is, blue and orange, I want to say. Blue and chrome.
TL;DRAs the ship range grew, the 300 series' coming rework changed its role and loadout, leaving a gap beneath it, since the 85X lacks cargo and a bed, which the 100 series was created to fill.
Yeah, well, back then, whenever it came out right at the start, it essentially was that, but as the project's grown over the years, I think we've talked about this on previous ones, the ship range has expanded. As things have expanded, things have moved around in those ranges. The 300 series is due for its rework that is coming out this year. When we were doing that, there's a lot of issues with the ship as it is. [You can't] hold cargo and walk into the ship. I've seen people landing upside down just to throw cargo crates through the door just to do stuff. So as we were looking at things that we wanted to fix on it, we started going, well, we could do this, we could put this in it and change this. It sort of became apparent that it was going to have some fairly significant changes to its loadout and equipment. And we sort of did a soft upgrade of it with 3.1 and the weapon hardpoints changed, which sort of is going towards where it's going to sit when that rework happens. And when we were doing that, we sort of, well, now that's moved. The next ship beneath it is the 85X. But that's sort of this weird snub-like fighter. It's got two seats, but it's got no cargo space. It's not got a bed. You can't do long-term travel in it. So by fixing the issues with this ship, we've created a gap for a new ship, and that's where the 100 series came from.
It's still a bit up in the air at the moment. As it stands, they still function as modules, but they're set up as variants. The whole mechanics of swapping them in and out is a bit, we're not quite sure where we want to go on them. There's no hard answer either way at the moment for them, I'm afraid.
It won't come with the Origin Rover in 3.2. The Origin Rover design brief is done, pending sign-off and a concept artist being assigned to it. So given the timeline, that's simply not going to get done between now and 3.2.
Yeah, so I don't have the exact stats, but it's about three meters wider, three meters longer and a meter higher than the current in-game Avenger. Literally the first thing, as the exploration for how big do we need to make it, was to scale it up, and then it was clear that that wasn't going to cut the mustard. It sort of had to be more tactfully done because the canopy looked ridiculous. So that was this tiny little pea-sized human head in this huge bubble canopy. So a lot of it looks the same, and a lot of the geometry was completely reworked to keep the scale in proportion to the old one.
Right. So the rover sits on the cargo space for it. And there is also an additional separate area for cargo. So if you have the rover, you can still have cargo. If you don't have the rover, you can have more cargo.
We looked a lot at car manufacturers, like the concept cars that they came up with. If you actually go on Pinterest and type in, for example, BMW concept art, you get a lot of really nice sketches, that sort of stuff. And yeah, it was basically just collaborating with the concept artist who came up with the 600i. We shared our resources, basically, and just went from there. And then, of course, we looked at luxury yachts. That's going to probably come more into play with the 890 Jump. And yeah, we just sort of looked at the shape language rather than specifics. Because if you look at specifics, then you try and shoehorn things that don't quite fit into places that don't quite fit anyway. So yeah, just creating a broad style based on those ideas, they really helped quite a lot.
I wouldn't say that. I think that'd be a slight overreaction. They're competitors in some ways, but they each have their own pros and cons. So, I mean, the Constellation is missiles, missiles for days coming out of that thing. It has its own snub craft. It's got different turret layouts. It can hold more cargo. But the Origin is a bigger ship and looks really nice.
It will fit inside any that it physically fits inside. We didn't design it specifically to fit in or out, or not in or out, of any specific ship. It's broadly similar to the 85X in dimensions, so you could theorize that it would complement an 890 Jump nicely if you wanted to do that. But beyond that, we haven't gone out and measured...
I've seen the videos of Starfarers laden with stuff, but compared to ships like carrier ships, where we have strict metrics for fitting in, say, an Idris or a Javelin, it wasn't as strict a priority to keep on top of that for this.
It's large enough to, well, if you want to enter it with cargo, you should be able to, because, well, there's two SCU capacity inside. It needs to enter somewhere.
I think I wrote this in a sort of, every time we do these concept sales, you guys ask us some questions that you think people are going to be asking for feeding back in the forums, and my answer to that was, imagine a ship that's in between the Aurora and the Mustang, and that's where it will feel like, handling-wise.
Technically, it's the first to have the AIR system, but it's not the concept of... again, this is sort of explained better and in more detail in the design piece that's going up later. It's exclusive to the 100 series, but it's not the only instance of that technology in the universe. Other ships have their own version of it. Starfarers, naturally, have the ability to scoop fuel and process it similar to the AIR system. It's just on two wildly different ends of the spectrum.
I think the exploration module, personally. I really like the idea that you can do quite a lot with quite a little. I think that's one of the ideas we wanted to kind of push through. So with a small crew, you can do quite a bit. And just having the drop ramp for the rover as well, I think it's really cool, to be honest. When we were building it, we wanted to make sure it could fit a multitude of different rovers. We built it around the Ursa, which was the largest we had at the time. So it also fits a Dragonfly, a Nox, everything else we've got planned so far. So yeah, that's personally what I'm quite excited about.
Oh, we have bathrooms. We have bathrooms, yeah. We didn't show it because... Actually, Colin's just working on some of the crew quarters right now, but it just didn't make it into the B-roll. And we have one for the captain's quarters, which, because we're reworking the captain's quarters, we didn't want to show anything off that wasn't sort of roughly final. There's a few things we need to work out with certain shapes, but yeah, don't worry, there's a bathroom, and it's going to be nice, like everything else we do on the 600i. So you won't be disappointed, I promise.
This has come up plenty of times when we've been designing this thing, and yeah, we would really like to have some kind of privacy option. There is actually glass right now in the real world you can get which sort of clouds up on command: you hit a button and it clouds up or tints or whatever. If we could have something like that, I think we're trying to gun for it. That'd be really nice. That's the sort of thing we want, because yeah, you don't want to be sort of waking up on a planet, if you're in Area18 or something, and you have a lot of people looking into the ship. It's not ideal, really.
So, I mean, we're currently doing the lighting for the 600i. Basically, it's a bit more technical because we've got a lot of area lights and it's a lot softer. So we're just trying to figure it out right now. But yeah, we could have a light state. The light states we tend to have on the ships are default, off and auxiliary, and I think emergency as well. So yeah, we might be able to do something like that. It's not out of the question, but we'll see.
It's fairly dead. The two-seater one, I know it was in-game for a short period, I think just whilst it was in the hangar. Because we didn't at the time have the tech to do that for its flight-ready release, and it wasn't a consideration at all for the rework. So there's no immediate plans for it.
Again, this is all going to come with the refueling post. They will have similar systems. It might not be branded as the AIR system. That is bespoke and has certain features above and beyond the others.
There's always lots of thoughts percolating. The way you guys have built it means it is truly modular. All the doors are in the same place. So in the future, there's nothing stopping us putting an extra one in, and it will just plug in, plug out, all the doors nicely align. But there's no designs approved and signed off for anything else to go in there.
Unless Colin snuck some in, not that I'm aware of. Obviously, the touring module's open to stuff, maybe. I don't know yet. We need to kind of figure out the space for that module itself and how many rooms and so on we need in there. So yeah, for us, from what I understand, it's just a pool table.
Yeah, it's sort of, it's got those weird... because it goes up and down a little in places. Technically it's two, but it can feel like more than two at times.