Developers answer ship questions: gold-standard updates for the Aurora, the Apollo's release next month with medical beacons, and Retaliator modules. They also cover the command module, shield and PDC changes, backlog ships (BMM, G12, 600i, PTV), paints and the lack of concept ships in 2025.
TL;DRNo production work is happening on the 600i rework and it isn't on the 12-to-18-month schedule, though concepts are still valid and they hope an Origin ship makes next year's schedule.
So, we've done the concepts. We've already shown some of that, I believe, last year. Sorry, it kind of blurs a little bit. No production work is currently happening on it. And it's not on our sort of rolling 12 to 18 month schedule at the moment. I think everything we showed in the concept is still valid. I think exterior-wise, pretty happy with where the ship is. It's mainly down to interior layout changes and making a better use of the space that it's got. It's got quite a lot of space, and it's got a fair amount of wasted space. And then also the changes we want to do to make sure it works much better with the different modules and the different layouts that we need.
He covered most of it. I think the only real things to add there is everything we showed with those concept images is pretty much accurate still, big highlights being the Explorer gets a medical bed and the cargo bay of it gets large enough to hold a Nova tank. And why it never seems to happen is that really 600i owners have a functional ship. So when it comes to prioritizing what do we want to work on next, redoing the 600i takes the place of something else that doesn't exist yet. So still super excited to do it. I think it's going to be a big update when it happens, but it's just finding the right time to do it.
I think it will be nice to put a little bit of polish on some of the Origin ships. We've not done an Origin ship for a while as well. It would be nice to give it a little bit of love.
TL;DRVehicle content isn't holding back engineering: all ships support it with fallbacks, well over half are fully physicalized, and the feature itself is still in development with no date, going to tech preview when ready.
Obviously vehicle content has a big part to play in this. So this sort of two-part answer here is what's needed from the vehicle side to release the feature and what's needed to have the feature fully functional, bells and whistles and everything. So what's needed to release the feature from a vehicle content side is all the ships support it right now. We have fallback methods for those ships that don't have physicalized components, say like all the single-seaters. You'll be able to access the gameplay in a way through your existing MFDs to repair and manage components that are damaged. So it's not as unfair to those ships that don't have that level of physical components as those that do. And that will come with some downsides. But again, it's not a vehicle content feature, so I don't want to go all the way into specifics. But in terms of the full-featured running around your ship, changing fuses, messing with relays, engineering screens, completely accessible components, we are pretty well through the list. I had a big chart that I was looking at the other day of where we are with it, and it's well over half the ships have that level of everything being physicalized. And the majority of the ones that don't so far are those single-seater ships where that gameplay is of a lesser importance. So every patch, people have noticed ships getting little updates here and there, or have not noticed. So we're chipping away at that list whilst working on all the other things.
Fortunately, the engineering gameplay mode is the biggest difference to the bigger ships. The smaller ships are the ones that give us more of the headaches. Not the single-seaters, but the ones with the really small interiors, they're the ones that give a few more headaches, because we're limited by the exterior of the ship and trying to cram so much into the interiors. But luckily the mediums and the larges are a little bit easier to update and support for that.
And the big headline here is that it's not a feature that's being held back by the work on the vehicle content team. It's the folks who are developing the feature and the gameplay systems design team. They're still working on it. I saw Torsten was over here. He was visiting from the Frankfurt office earlier this week, and he was in there with a big review with JJ and Rick and Rich on this earlier this week. So it's still underway. It's still in development. No comments on when. Because between Digital CitizenCon, actual CitizenCon, a couple ISCs, we've done like five videos on engineering at this point. So it'll go into tech preview testing when it's ready. That's the answer we're going to give there as far as when.
TL;DRShowdown paint colors aren't one person's decision; they try to tie them to the event's branding, will decide at a meeting next week, and hope to improve on past choices that worked less well.
Well, we've got a meeting next week to make some decisions on this. It's not necessarily a me or John decision. In more recent years, what we've been trying to do is wrap the whole event into its sort of quite cohesive brand and tie it all together. So you'll notice the colors that the halls were and all the branding in the halls was reflected by the ships. It works great on some. It doesn't necessarily work as well on others. This year, like I say, we've got to meet and discuss next week what we're going to choose. I think we will hopefully have learned a bit from some of the ones that maybe didn't work quite so well, and hopefully make something that everyone, well, it's really subjective, isn't it? Some people are going to love it. Some people are going to hate it no matter what we do. But hopefully it will be more successful as we move forward.
TL;DRYes, work to bring the Aurora series up to current standard has just kicked off, and legacy ships are generally prioritized by popularity, gameplay needs and schedule rather than all starters first.
Short answer, yes. In fact, this week we actually did the kickoff for gold-standarding the Aurora series. What do we mean by that? That means giving it all its physical components, updating the dashboard to current MFD standards, fire extinguishers, weapons locker, just fixing all the stuff that's wrong with it that doesn't suit the game today versus when it was made. And it's going to be, I think, quite a nice update for those owners, of which there are many millions.
I have a little bit of an issue with the term gold standard, because gold standard is an ever-moving line. So it's more about bringing the ships up to current standard, or 1.0 standard, or however you want to stage it. It's bringing the ships up to the standard where they support all the current gameplay and features that we know about now. Who knows what's going to happen in the future and where we'll take things. This is about making them the best that we can make them today, effectively. And I think in terms of starter ships, I don't think we can say that we're doing all starter ships first, and then we're doing this, and then we're doing that. It's generally prioritized by ship popularity in some sense. So the most popular ships with the worst issues are the ones we want to try and fix up sooner. But then also what makes sense from a gameplay and a business sense. So if we've got a feature coming out that we know is going to use a certain class of ships, and we've got some of those ships that are maybe lacking, then if we've got time in the schedule and everything aligns nicely, then hopefully we can try and bring those up to standard as well where we can. But it's quite a lot of juggling of different things to do the picking of exactly which ships are getting their pass when.
TL;DRThe Aurora was removed from starter packages because it still needs a gold-standard pass and other starters are a better start; it remains buyable and may return once brought up to standard.
Simply put, it's a two-factor thing. I can't remember when we did it. We did it a little while back. One, I think the Aurora MR alone, there's like 490,000 of them across accounts in the PU. When you factor in all the Auroras, it's definitely our most populous ship, and it was still needing a gold standard pass. It needs all that work. The dashboard they mentioned, the damage mesh, the ground fuel ports, the radar, it needed work. We felt that there were other starters that were a better start for people, just like the question originally said. So we removed it from the starter packages. You can still buy it individually if you want it. But we felt it was more customer-facing to push ships that were closer to the current standard, as Ben said. And when the Aurora is back and up to the current standard, we'll look at bringing it back into the starter package.
TL;DRA fourth Zeus variant, the ST, exists but was held back because its game loop isn't fleshed out; they'll discuss it once it is, and try not to push ships lacking gameplay.
I do, because a fun story here is I put the wrong image in the PowerPoint slide for the presentation, and I noticed that on stage when I turned around and looked at the screen. And it had all four there. So yes, there is a fourth variant called the ST. And the reason it isn't really known about beyond there is it has a game loop that isn't really fully fleshed out. So we decided not to launch it with the other three. And when that game loop is more fleshed out, we'll talk more about it.
It's one of those things we try. We don't always succeed. Let's just be real honest here. But we try not to push ships that don't have the relevant requisite gameplay at the same time. And when people see a new ship that's added every month, they say, why are they doing another fighter? Why are they doing that? There's a lot of factors that go into that, not the least of which is that fighters sell, let's just be real. But most of the time, when people are like, why aren't you doing this ship or why aren't you putting another ship with us, it's because we're waiting for the gameplay systems to mature before we put more ships out in that loop. Again, it doesn't always work out that way. Sometimes the schedule is the schedule. But wherever we can, we do try to not push ships that don't have the requisite gameplay. Again, there will always be exceptions.
TL;DRThe modularity feature works and is live on the Retaliator, with the Apollo's six modules due next month; spreading it to other promised ships is mainly a matter of time and resources.
I mean, it's out there now with the Retaliator, which is another one of those things, along with the Hull C, that took a long time. And we talked about it for a long time in SCLs and ISCs. It's out there with the Retaliator now. So really the only thing that stops it spreading further onto other ships that we promised it with is just simply time and resources to go through those other ships and do it. Same reason we haven't done the last one or two modules for the Retaliator. Feature-wise, it's there, it's working as much as we need it to work for ships such as the Apollo, which I'll say now is coming out next month with all of its modules, so all six modules. So it has the left and right tier one, two, three modules, so you can mix and match between them all. There might be some ships that I can't think of in the back of my mind that have a feature inside their modules that doesn't work yet. But if that's the case, we're probably not working on those ships anyway. But modularity, the feature works.
It's technically six modules, but it's two. It's the left and right with a tier one bed, a left and right with two tier two beds, and a left and right with three tier three beds.
It is. Everything in Star Citizen is generally, tier one is your starting and then you go up, and tier two is more than tier one and tier three is more than tier one. With the Apollo, because of whatever decision we made back in 2018, I think it matches actual first responder injury steps. I'm not sure. I don't remember. But it's inverse. So the Apollo is the only one that's inverse, where tier one med beds are the best of the med beds, and then tier two are the medium, and then tier three are the lesser ones. That is confusing a lot of people. Like John said, the September promotional ships, flight-ready ships, are the Apollo Triage and the Medivac.
TL;DRThe command module is a technical feature, scheduled to finish internally in December, that enables detach/dock with control transfer; that isn't a release date for the Caterpillar, and the Ironclad module is hoped for.
So, command module on the roadmap: that's the technical feature done by not the content team to allow us to set up the command module, which you've seen on the side of the Caterpillar. And it's also on the Ironclad. That allows it to be a fully independent ship that can dock, detach, dock. The complexity here that requires the feature development is it's not the same docking system as you see like Starfarer refueling or Merlin and Constellation series, because those are simply just two ships attaching to each other. The command module is that plus the transfer of control authority from one ship to the other. So when you're in the command module, it needs to have its own set of IFCS parameters and more, but we'll just talk IFCS, so it can fly off and do the same thing. And then when it's attached to the base portion of the ship, it then needs to essentially absorb all the control links of all the items that are in that other section, take over control of them, take over flight of the whole thing. So we are getting that feature-wise in a position where we can update the content to support it.
And I think I said it was recently added to the public roadmap, not in the release view, but in the technical development view; the technical feature team is doing it. And then when they're done, then it can be applied to ships like the Caterpillar. I want to be real clear: I think it was scheduled to end in December. That's not when the Caterpillar is getting it in December. That's when the work internally is scheduled to be done. And then the vehicle content team can grab that work and say, thanks, and then start applying it.
And it's not a hard requirement for some of our upcoming ships, but I think everyone would be pretty disappointed if we're not able to ship the Ironclad with its module. And obviously, like I say, it unlocks us to then be able to work on the Caterpillar and everything else. From our side, we're not in control of it, but we are pushing to try and get as much support as we can for it.
TL;DRBespoke weapons aren't a planned trend; they were used to control damage output and achieve visuals on the latest ships, with only two more bespoke-weapon cases this year and generic weapons otherwise.
I don't know if a trend is two in a row, but it's an unfortunate trend based on just the last two ships. It's not a plan to just do bespoke weapons going forward. If I think about everything that's coming for the rest of the year, the only other bespoke weapon that is on any ship for the rest of the year is the Perseus turret guns. Everything else uses generic ones.
Oh, yeah. So two more for the rest of the year. And those ships also have generic weapons. And it's a two-part answer. Ben can probably talk about the visual side. But from the design side, it allows us to have essentially some level of control over the actual raw damage output of a ship. Because as players know, everyone min-maxes, if you have generic swappable weapons, you have to account for a full size range. So if we take the Meteor, for example, and we let those be generic size fives, I think that would be a well and truly overpowered ship, but their bespoke ones allowed us to have size five weapons that were very constrained and had downsides to keep it in check. And the same with the Wolf: the generic size fours would have made it just a Talon, but smaller.
It's a compromise. It's a compromise between design requirements and balancing and everything, and also the visuals that we're trying to... I think trying to fit generic size 4s on the Wolf would have limited what we could do with its visuals. And I know that's not important to everyone, but it does make up a large part of what we try and do with the game. But like I say, it's a compromise. With the Wolf, we were really keen to be able to have those weapons fold away and compress into the body and give those really clean lines. I think it was quite an important thing for Kruger. And with the Meteor, we wanted to really tie those weapons into the ship itself and make it feel really powerful and really unique, so we can integrate them into it, much like what we did with the Ares ships. Just because they're not generic size 4s, size 5s or whatever, that doesn't necessarily mean that there's never going to be options for other weapons for those ships. It just means that they won't necessarily use all of the weapons that are generic in that size class, but it doesn't mean that you're only going to ever have one weapon for a particular ship.
TL;DRAgreed that multiple small shields currently underperform; the engineering update will change shields substantially, with only two active at once and everything rebalanced, so current comparisons won't hold and the gap should shrink.
That is very true. So we are in this in-between stage of the current system and engineering. And I talked with Torsten yesterday to make sure I say the right thing here, so hopefully I don't misconstrue it. But with the engineering update, there's going to be quite a large change in how shields and other components function. And essentially, if you have a ship that has more than two shields, you will only ever have two available at a time active. So that means that if one of them goes down, your third one will come online to take its place. If that one goes down, the fourth one comes online, fifth, sixth, whatever. So in terms of power consumption, obviously that changes things drastically, because you're only having to power two, but you have this larger backup pool of shield generators. So in terms of size 2 versus size 3, all the sizes will have changes done. Every single item is rebalanced with engineering. All the values you see now are not going to be the same as they are when engineering drops. So you can't really accurately compare six S2s now to, say, one size 3 coming in the future. But that difference will be a lot less with the engineering update.
So we want there to be a full range of ships in a gameplay loop: true dedicated starters, like professional starters, small, medium, large, capital, whatever. And we saw this earlier in the year with the introduction of the Golem for the mining loop. So you've got that teeny tiny proper starter ship. And for salvage, we want to have that as well as this medium-large ship in the future, to fill out the range. Need an orange salvage ship.
TL;DRBacklog ships are a constant balancing act against new ships; after roughly the next 18 months a couple per year may remain, and many are held up by missing gameplay features rather than ship work.
Obviously a very popular topic, rightly so. Like we've talked about this over the years lots, it's always a balancing act. At the end of the day, the company and the project is funded in a particular manner. And traditionally, new ships sell well. But that doesn't mean we can not do the old ones. We have to do that. But it's always a balancing act between fresh new content and updating the existing content so it suits the game as it is today. Like we talked about with the Aurora, that isn't really suitable for the game today. So we need to fix things like that. And then we also need to finish and deliver on the backlog ships. And that changes year to year, quarter to quarter, that ratio.
It's something we put a lot of discussion and thought into as we're planning out the years and what we're planning on doing. And I think we generally look at what we're working on in the 12, 18, 24 month... I'll just echo what John said. We put a lot of thought into it. We're generally planning 12, 18 months ahead and having a bit of a look at where the backlog is, which, like I say, is something we do every time we're talking about what ships next. If you take into account the next 18 months or so, after that we'll be left with maybe two-ish a year that we haven't delivered, maybe some years three, maybe some years one. But I think we're definitely trending on the right trend. There's a few manufacturers that have got one or two vehicles left, and it'd be great to get them done off the backlog, and then we can really focus on new and exciting stuff. But I feel like we've made a decent effort and we are getting towards the end of the list.
If you look at the existing backlog ships, and we said this before, that we don't want to release ships without their gameplay, whether that's feature-wise or game loop-wise. As of today, if we could click our fingers and instantly magic ships into existence, if we remove all the ones that don't have features in the game today or fully functioning game loops, that backlog list is quite small. I think you've got the G12s, which I know there's a question about coming, the Liberator, the Hull series, Odyssey, and then the rest of them are ones that really do need a game loop to make their use be good in the game.
Often what happens is we have to interpret what the request actually is. People want the ships; what they're really saying is they want the gameplay. They want the gameplay that is associated with that ship. And we, the people in this call, are not entirely in control of that destiny. As everybody knows from our statement at the beginning of this year, much, certainly not all, it's been kind of exaggerated, but a bunch of our engineers and programmers are on Squadron, closing that out. There are still many gameplay programmers and engineers on Star Citizen working on crafting and base building and engineering and the new inventory system we showed on SCL a while ago. But there's never enough people to work on everything all at one time. There just isn't. So you guys can make those ships when the gameplay team gets around to making that gameplay. Somebody in the chat mentioned the Endeavor. Let's just be real, we're going to be waiting a while for the Endeavor. When you take those ships out that don't have the gameplay, the backlog is actually pretty reasonable. Even the Merchantman requires NPCs and you being able to set up your own shops with NPCs, and that's feature work. So it's always a balancing act. We answer some version of this question twice a year, every single year, for at least the last half decade. The answer never really changes, but there's always new people, so we'll keep answering it, because people want their ships and people deserve to have their ships in as timely a manner as possible. But we have to balance that between gameplay services being available and, quite frankly, the need to continue pushing the project into new directions at the same time. So it's not easy.
TL;DRThe Railen pods are valid visually but need tweaking: they'll use standard SCU containers with capacity going up, a number to be given later, and some concept work to keep them practical.
I think it's, can I say both? I think visually it's valid. We really like where it is visually, and we have been doing a little bit of investigation on this fairly recently, trying to work out what we want to do with it. I think what that has led to is the cargo value is probably going to change a little bit. And I think we need to do a little bit of concept work to get the visuals to a point where it still looks cool, but it's practical and it makes the ship good to use, because the last thing I really want to do is push us too far down a particular route with the visuals that just means that it's an absolute pain to play with. So I think we need to find that compromise, like we keep mentioning, but they are valid because I like what they look like, but they need a little bit of tweaking to make work.
They are going to use the existing SCU cargo system that we have in the game, so they're not going to have some giant cargo-shaped cargo. It's going to use the same SCU ones. It's going to take 32 SCU containers, but we have some ideas on how we're going to wrap that up in the Gatac style language, and then the cargo capacity is going to go way up. I'm not going to give a number here. We'll give a number later on.
This is going to sound weird after what has clearly been a year of RSI-heavy ships, but we don't really pick a manufacturer theme for the year. We talked on stage two years ago and last year about RSI being the theme for the capital ships and going through that lineup. And a certain set of scenarios happened where we ended up doing some additional RSI ships. And that's been pretty useful in terms of building out kits and allowing them to benefit from each other. But there isn't really a 'next year is going to be X manufacturer and we're going to do 10 ships with that manufacturer' plan. We try and do a spread.
I hope so. I definitely want to see more Kruger ships. More fins. Maybe more fins. I think things like the Kruger ships, the Syulen and stuff like that, stuff that is a little bit more blank canvassy when you get to start with it, it is a very exciting challenge. I think if you take some of our existing manufacturers, you know what you're getting; you know what you're getting with a Drake ship. It doesn't mean they're not fun, because it's great to explore their processes further, their manufacturing further. But I was super happy with the Kruger and where we got to with it. And I will definitely be pushing to get more Kruger ships. Not that it's my decision, but I'll do what I can.
TL;DRThe Carrack pods were designed to be dropped out before opening, fixing that needs extensive belly rework, and it's being saved for when there's time to spend more on the ship.
Yes. So there's a lot of talk about the Carrack ones. They were never designed to be fully openable whilst they're within the ship. If you look at the ship, the belly of the ship comes down halfway down the pods. We did some work last year, early this year, to improve the opening, but they're never supposed to fully open whilst in the ship. You're supposed to drop the whole pods out, and then they open. If you look at the very original concept art, you'll see them dropped on the planet side. That's where that ship's modularity comes from. And to do that requires quite an extensive rework of that belly area. So we're going to save that for when we have time to spend more on the Carrack, because, again, it can take cargo. I'm fully aware of how annoying it can be. It's not supposed to be your mainline cargo ship. It's an explorer ship or expedition ship that can take cargo. Aware of the problem. The solution is slightly more work than I think people tend to think.
One of those great game dev quirks: technically melee is doing physical damage. So over time, it will do enough to open doors. Short, midterm, we're going to be bringing in, hopefully alongside engineering, the concept of armor having minimum thresholds of damage, like damage numbers. So punching would just never exceed that threshold to allow you to open doors. Longer term, Maelstrom does this. Out of the box, it's functional now in Squadron. Your punch doesn't do enough kinetic energy for the system to even care about, so you'll never be able to break it like that. And as the interim, until that comes into the PU, engineering will hopefully bring the lightweight version of that that approximates the same outcome.
TL;DRThey hope and are making every attempt to restore medical beacons with the Apollo next month but won't promise it; other medical frustrations won't be fixed by their return.
Boy howdy, I sure hope so. I'm not going to sit here and say it absolutely will, because that's still roughly a month away. But we are making every single attempt to get those things back online. They were causing some really weird issues. Most people, you don't need me to explain to you what the issues were. It was just filling up the mission logs and making them unusable, because of other changes that we made to Onyx facilities and stuff like that. So they were pulled down this month so that they could make some fixes. The things that have tormented medical players unfortunately won't be addressed when they come back. This is just about restoring the functionality that they had a month ago. But we will have more information about medical gameplay and the future of medical gameplay to go along with the Apollo when that launches, as John said, next month. Second to that, every single opportunity is being made to get medical beacons back for next month, because I'm just going to say it, it's really silly not to have them in the month you're trying to launch the Apollo. And I'd really rather not have an unforced error like that. But we don't always get to control our destiny that way. So people are trying. I'll say that much.
TL;DRNo plans to give the Ironclad point-defence cannons, as they're meant for military capital ships, though existing PDCs will probably be added to in-game shops around November.
Sorry, Ironclad owners, you're not going to get them. They're really designed for military capital ships. I'm aware the 890 and the Reclaimer have got them. Those do not fit that bill, and the Constellation Phoenix. But that is because they were originally promised with them as part of their original design brief. So that's why they have them. But there's no plans to give them to the Ironclad.
There is a new vehicle with a new kind of PDC coming soon. Where there's a will, there's a way. And also, I was just talking to the economy guys. We are adding the existing PDCs, the laser repeaters and the new missile ones we launched with the Idris-K kit. Those are going to get added to the in-game shops probably sometime around November, to give those of you who have ships with PDCs some more customization options. That stuff's coming.
TL;DRSome ship entry/exit animations, like the Talon's, are too long and need shortening, but speeding them up risks audio desync; being able to cancel them is wanted but is a priority issue outside his influence.
Some of them are definitely too long. Calling out the Talon, especially. That is too long. It needs shortening. We could just make the animation shorter, but then all the audio and things are out of sync, and we want to make it all feel nice. Part of the allure of Star Citizen is feeling like you're in that world. So when you start getting audio-visual disconnects, it's not great. I saw this question also hinted, why don't we just use the Ladder V2 tech for getting in and out of ships? That's never going to work. They're two very different systems. Ladder V2 is for static environment ladders, whereas ship enter/exits are very bespoke animations to the ship geometry itself, and also have a lot of events tied in, like when I start this animation, I want to start opening the canopy, deploying fins or panels or whatever. They need to be very controlled, but being able to break out of them is something I've wanted for quite a while. It's just a priority thing, and it's on a team that is not under my influence to bias, sadly.
And I think you're right, technically you could speed up the animations, but I think it's about making sure that things still feel tangible, they still feel realistic, relatable. And we did a mocap shoot, not me personally, but there was a mocap shoot done for the Wolf enter/exit, and seeing the speed at which the mocap actor, stuntman, just absolutely threw himself at the mock-up that was built out for him to use...
I'd say it was pretty quick to be realistic. Him sprinting full speed at a bunch of framework and throwing himself over it into a seat was impressive to watch. Even though I only got to see the video, so it was still good.
TL;DRThe Banu Merchantman isn't in next year's release schedule; they hope to put people back on it in the second half of next year, but chances of it moving forward are slim for now.
It's not in the 2026 schedule at the moment in terms of releasing. I do hope though, fingers crossed, everything goes to plan, that we will start putting people back on it in the back half of 2026. We got quite far into whitebox. We showed the progress at CitizenCon. It's not moved an inch from where we last showed it.
That was quite a tough thing to show, because we wanted to be honest about it and show where we're up to with it, but also appreciate if we're still on stage going, look at the BMM, everyone's going to be like, yeah, it's coming, and it's like, I'm just trying to be honest. So I think, as John says, we're hoping to get artists and designers and the content team back on it next year, but it's not currently in the schedule for next year's release. But as we keep mentioning a lot, things change, but that's a big one. It's going to take a lot to do. So the chances of it moving forward are pretty slim right now.
I don't see why not. It's a pretty valid use case. Some of the ships we have later in the year do have weapon racks near their cargo bays. I don't know off the top of my head whether the Maxlift shares... The way you decide what goes in each rack is a combination of size and tags. I don't know whether the Maxlift is classified as a weapon or a utility item.
TL;DRSimple recolors are fairly easy, but themed or unique paints are costly because breakup is baked into models and extra geometry needs rework; they are researching improvements and hope to make paints faster eventually.
How long have we got? If I start waffling too much, tell me to shut up. It's really a mixed bag. I think if you've got a black ship and you want to make it red, it's relatively straightforward for me. We have some material settings, we can change that, it's fine. Everything we do still needs to have technical entities set up, it needs to be plugged into the existing ship setup, it needs to be tested, it needs to be named, it needs to go through marketing. There's a whole host of other departments; it isn't just color swatch red, done. But making something just change colors is fairly straightforward. The difficulty comes, really, when it comes down to if you've got a ship with a particular kind of paint breakup. So if you've got a ship that, by default, is silver and it's got a little bit of blue or whatever, and it looks great, that's cool. And you can put a bunch of different combinations on there. It looks great. The problem comes, a lot of the time we're trying to theme packs around particular colors or ideas. And as soon as you start trying to get themes to work across multiple ships that have been set up in different ways, it becomes quite... You can make some really ugly ships really, really easily. So you've got to be a little bit more careful with that sort of stuff. One of the things that limits us a little bit is our breakup is baked into our ship models. So we don't have the ability to just go, OK, actually, I want to make all of these panels one kind, this panel another kind. It has to work with everything, so that can add some complications for unique paints. They're a larger investment of time. All the graffiti stuff we did early last year, this year, or end of last year, I can't quite remember, that stuff is a bigger investment of time. The issue that comes with that is there's a lot of additional geometry that we need to add onto the ships to be able to support the designs. With that additional geometry, you then have to go back in and re-set up damage, re-set up UVs, re-set up vertex colors and wear, pump it all through the LODs. It gets quite complicated quite quickly, and on top of that you then have to go through and re-update all the existing paints and tints that have already been done for those ships and anything that shares any variants. So if you take a Cutlass, for example, all of a sudden you're working across multiple different variants, all with loads. It just gets more and more of a rabbit hole you go down. So they do take a bit more investment of time, to try and not waffle for an hour on just this subject. We have recently been doing some R&D into how we improve the system and how we want to make it easier for us. There's lots of really clever ideas and things that we've talked to our graphics team about, who luckily sit next door to me, so that's quite handy. And we're getting buy-in from these other departments, and they want to see us push it as well. It now comes down to breaking down the work, getting the estimates in, getting it into a schedule, working out the priorities on it. So I do hope that we can make better paints quicker in the future. At the moment, I wish it was just the easiest color swatch, pick, go, but it's not. And I know there's a lot of games out there that do do that. There's a lot of racing games that do that, and they allow you to do full liveries across it. But the scale of our game, the texture resolution that we work to, you try putting a unique texture on a ship that's 250 meters long, you very, very quickly see the limitations of unique unwraps and unique texturing, which is something that just doesn't work for a game of our scale. And it's not a compromise that anyone's really, especially me, willing to make when it comes to putting them out. I'm not having low-res, low-quality artwork all over the side of our ships. Sorry.
TL;DRNo concrete plans for more Retaliator modules beyond finishing the previously sold living quarters and dropship ones; a medical bed module is a personal wish, and a bomb option would more likely be swappable torpedo racks.
Obviously, we need to do the ones that we sold back in the day that were not delivered, which I think are the living quarters and dropship ones, before we do any further ones. There are no concrete plans for additional ones, but if I get my way, I would do a medical bed one, just because I think that would be a pretty good utility for it. I know a lot of people have asked for an actual bomber module using bombs. I think I would personally...
In that case, no. I would probably go the route of letting the existing torpedo racks be swapped to bomb racks as an option rather than a wholly new module. But we could go either way. It makes sense to do an actual dedicated bomb one, but we've got two paths for it.
TL;DRThe PTV rework is still planned though it keeps getting bumped from the schedule; it would bring the current PTV up to modern standards with component space and weapon racks, and keep the promised paints.
This is another great little bit of a ship task that we keep putting in the schedule, and then it gets removed because something runs long or something needs to come forward. Yes, still planned. I think we did show a concept of it.
We showed the whole family so you could see the lines. That is how it will end up. So it's basically the current PTV brought up to modern grid standards, space for components, and I think a pair of weapon racks on the back of it, so you could put your personal weapons on. And it will have backwards compatibility with all the paints and the Best in Show one we promised.
TL;DRNo concept ship has been released this year and none is planned, as they want to move away from concept sales and make ships flight ready, though concept art work still continues internally.
I was going to say, if we've only got four months, we can't whip up a new concept that fast. So 2025 will end up being our first year without a single concept ship.
It's something we've talked about, I think, loosely on various shows, that we ultimately want to move away from concept ships entirely and just go straight to 'here's the thing'.
We won't be releasing them as concepts. Sorry to the concept artists watching this who are now on the floor. They're still an absolutely essential part of the process. It's just that we made this initiative last year to really try to make everything flight ready, to move to flight ready. Last year, I think we only had two concept promotions: Ironclad and, technically, the Starlancer attack variant was the concept. But we're trying really hard. And this year, we've succeeded.
TL;DRThe Battlecruiser is still planned but only in very early concept work and not coming anytime soon; a concept sale may eventually be needed for it despite the push toward flight-ready releases.
It's looking really, really cool with the progress we've made on it so far. So I think the Battlecruiser, on paper, it's a big old ship. And we are, I hope I'm allowed to say this, we're in very early stages of our concept work on the Battlecruiser at the moment. Too late, Jared. Sorry.
It's a big ship. It needs a bunch of concepts to get it right. Super happy with where it's going so far. I think it allows us to take a lot of the things that we've learned on our existing ships and our larger ships and wrap them into a big powerhouse and deliver something that we're super excited about. Not just in terms of firepower, but what we can deliver from a ship this size with everything that we know now.
Trying really hard not to do concept ships anymore. 2025 looks like it's going to be, again, it would be impossible to launch a new concept at this point, so our first year without concept sales. We don't want to do any more concept promotions ever again. We might have to do our last one for the Battlecruiser whenever that comes. Flight ready or bust. Get the old ones that we need to deliver done. Make new ones flight ready and try to avoid concept promotions whenever possible. Realistically, if a Battlecruiser is as big as you're going to say it is, we'll probably have to do that one as a concept at some point. But we'll let future us worry about that whenever that day comes down the line. Not anytime soon.
TL;DRBen Curtis would love interior liveries and says ships are already being built with tintable interior materials for it, but the player-facing feature depends on other teams and isn't confirmed.
I'd love to. Again, it's one of those things that requires teams outside of my control to be able to deliver this, and they all have big priority lists that they need to work through. My expectation is it will come, because when we're actually developing our ships, we are setting them up using the same system that we use on the exterior of our ships on the interior. It's just there's no player-facing way of being able to swap that within the client itself. As we make the work, though, we set them up in the same way, where we effectively assign different IDs to different areas of the ship, and we set those materials, they take on a tint, and then we tell it what that tint is. So it means that for the last, I want to say, 18 months or so, we've been making our ships like that, so that when that feature, if that feature, when that feature comes online, we're already trying to work a little bit smart and not accrue more tech debt and more rework that we need to do on ships. So I am all for it. I can't make it happen on my own.
TL;DRThey deny any conspiracy, saying the Wolf shipped without some component bays because of time, and those bays are in progress and expected in a patch before the end of the year.
I saw all the Reddit inspection posts about this, like it's some secret CIG conspiracy to stealth-lower the standards of the vehicles. It's not. Ultimately, we wanted to release the Wolf in August, no matter what. And we just didn't have time to do everything we wanted to do for the Wolf to get it out the door in August. I saw plenty of comments saying, oh, it only takes 30 minutes to go model these hatches.
If there's any artists out there that can model, animate, UV, do the technical setup, LODs, get it engine-ready in 30 minutes, we have open hires. Please apply.
There's a lot of work beyond the actual physical modeling, and some of it has to be done sequentially rather than work in parallel. If we're going to do the components, we can't do the final damage mesh until it's all done. We can't do the final UVs. We can't do the final LODs. So that time we spend doing those components just delays everything later and later. So whilst it may be this amount of the whole schedule to do it, it shifts the whole date back. But they are in progress. I saw a video today of them all in engine, looking pretty cool. And they will be coming in a patch before the end of the year, along with some other Wolf-related things.
That we possibly hinted at earlier in the show. If the Wolf wasn't ready, if the Wolf wasn't flyable, if it wasn't an enjoyable experience, if it wasn't usable, if people couldn't play the gameplay with it, then no, we would not have released it. We would have held it. But a couple of component bays, knowing that we can get them into a relatively recent subsequent release, that's not a thing worth holding a release back. That's all that is.
This is another one of those vehicles that goes on the schedule. It's a nice little clean cut: here's X weeks of time. We've got a strong concept for it. And then something happens and it moves. And it's really annoying, because it would tick the box of all the Origin ships done. And I think that would be, I guess, with the exception of Kruger, the first properly complete manufacturer lineup where we've released them all.
I'm just looking at my wall trying to see if you're right. But I'd love to get it ticked off. I'd love to get them done. They're super cool. I like ground vehicles. But it's not on the current schedule just now.
TL;DRThey see no problem with small ships carrying big guns, saying each ship is balanced against its handling, armor and shields, and a varied range of ships fits the game as long as they stay balanced.
Yes, those bigger guns are designed to take on larger ships. Is putting them on smaller ships a problem? I don't think so. We have ships like the Ares that is a single-person ship with a very big gun designed to take on larger ships. We want there to be a wide range of gameplay styles, but what we don't want is, we always refer to it internally as the Jesus ship, where it's the best. Every ship owner wants their ship to be their ship. They want it to be the best handling, the most damage output, the strongest health. But whacking a pair of great big guns on a ship doesn't make it instantly better than another ship, because we balance it alongside, not mentioning any ships in particular, the handling and the armor. Brain's failing. So the Meteor, which I'm guessing is probably the source of this question.
I remember for the week before it released, everybody was on fire because it was supposed to be the most OP ship in the world and was going to destroy everything. And then people got their hands on it and they're like, oh, I guess not.
Like I said, it's balanced around what it has. It has those big guns. They're tuned in a way that makes them not particularly effective against light fighters and small fast-moving stuff, but better against larger ones. It doesn't have the shield and health to take hits. Its handling is great in a straight line, but not angular. And we have all these different options: if you want to play a certain way, there's a ship for that. But there's not like A beats B, C beats A in every single category.
And I think from my side of things, hopefully we're building a universe that has space for all sorts of different ships, be it little single-seaters with big weapons, or be it big haulers and cargo stuff with no weapons. I think we're building a pretty wide-reaching game, or at least I hope we are. And I think as long as it doesn't break player immersion, as long as it doesn't break the enjoyment, I think there's a massive amount of space for a variety of ships. And as long as they're all balanced, which, as John says, there's loads of different levers and strings that the clever people can pull to make sure that the ships work with each other and we're not making something that's really overpowered. But purely from a visual side of things, I think as long as it's believable, I think there's room for all sorts of fun stuff. At least I hope there is.
TL;DRMore Star Kitten paints will come because they're popular, but Ben Curtis won't make one just for its own sake and wants a reason such as an event or story behind it.
We will, because they're very popular. Would I like to see another Star Kitten paint, or would I like to see something that is equally as fun that is slightly different? I'd probably take something equally as fun that is slightly different, but I know there is a lot of love for the Star Kitten. I think for me, it's why. I don't want to put out a new ship that's just got a Star Kitten paint for the sake of putting out a Star Kitten paint. Now, if we have an event in game or an experience in game that is themed around that, then absolutely, we do loads of ships around it. Or if we've got some story arc or some mission where the person at the end of it is a massive Star Kitten collector and you get one as a reward. I don't know. I'm winging it on the spot here. Yes, it's just I'm not really willing to just make one for the sake of making one. I'd rather it have an idea behind it and not just be like, oh, yeah, it's going to do well, we just made one.
CIG is not a monolith. There are roughly 900 or so people here, and there are a lot of opinions, and some people love Star Kitten, and some people who won't be named, they're not in this call, but they don't like Star Kitten, and we have to come to a consensus sometimes when we do things like this. It's a forever fight. I've been trying to bring back Star Kitten for a while. Ben is the most... He goes, it should be purposeful and it should speak to the product. And that's why Ben is generally in charge of this and I'm not. I would just be putting cute kawaii shit on all kinds of random stuff, because I just think it's fun. And that's why I don't get to make decisions. But let us know. Go to Spectrum. Let us know how much you want Star Kitten. Show people who don't believe, with your voice, that you want Star Kitten stuff or kawaii stuff or whatever. Make it happen.
Still planned. All the ships we build for it follow the metric we set out for it. It's still planned. The small, round, circular docking collars will extend to the bounding box of each ship, and then the two will join together so you can transfer. Nothing's changed there, but it's not on one of my teams to deliver that, so I can't talk more.
TL;DRRearm, repair and refuel inside select existing ships' hangars using their cargo grid resources is on the feature schedule and actively worked on, with no date, and won't apply to every ship or hangar.
So this is one I can talk a bit more about. This is on the feature team schedule to be delivered in the near future. I'm not going to give a date, and it's required as part of some other planned content where we're going to allow ships to land inside select other ships and then be able to refuel, rearm, repair on board those ships, using the parent ship's resources inside their cargo grids. So if you've stocked up your ship with RMC and hydrogen fuel, the ship that's landed in will, at this moment in time, it may change when it releases, use the existing mobiGlas repair/rearm screen and go, I want to repair, rearm, and it will take it from the resources.
And I think it's not technically blocking us from releasing any ships apart from, I think, the Crucible. If there's others, I can't remember them right now. But I do think it will add a lot to the Vulcan experience. I guess it is still sort of related to combat anyway, but I think it will still add a lot of gameplay to some of our larger multi-crew ships.
Now, I do want to clear up, for Kami, and folks who are saying Ironclad and Crucible: no. This is what John said, and I want to reiterate this here: select hangars of existing ships. This isn't something for new ships, although it is something that will apply and make things like the Crucible and the Vulcan possible down the line. Let's just take a ship with a big hangar as an example, like an Idris. You have extra munitions, you have extra fuel, you have extra repair goods or whatever sitting on your cargo grid, and somebody lands a ship on the same cargo grid, you can reload, rearm, refuel from that stock. It's not going to be every ship, it's not going to be every hangar, but like I said, it's on the feature schedule right now, and it's necessary for some of the interesting content that we have scheduled for the next year. So no when, but it's on the schedule and being actively worked on. And it's needed for some of the goals that the gameplay teams have. So it'll be a really cool thing for ships when it comes.
TL;DRThe Apollo launches next month without drone gameplay, since drones are tied to base building and no longer fit medical gameplay, but all six medical bay modules will be included free on every Apollo.
So drones are being developed as part of base building. Obviously, the Apollo is coming next month. Drones will not be releasing as part of the Apollo launch. I will rip that bandaid off now. When we were developing the ship, obviously the Apollo, I want to say, was 2017 originally concepted? 17 or 18. The idea of medical gameplay then is very different to the idea of medical gameplay now. And we have people working on updates to the medical gameplay system right now, beyond what we talked about, the medical beacon. And when we were looking at the ship, the drones were this sort of gray area. They said they would do one thing in the concept that doesn't really apply in the game loop we have now for medical. They predated tractor beams and the whole respawn mechanics we have now. So we have left space for the drone bay in the ship. We've not got rid of it. The space is there if we find a valid use case for them to exist when drones as a feature exist. But the Apollo will launch next month without drone gameplay.
Now, I do want to add that because the Apollo is launching next month without the drone gameplay, we are going to do something else. We mentioned those modular bays that the Apollo has: the left and right tier one bed, the left and right double tier two beds, the left and right three tier three beds. In the past, when we've added modules to ships like the Retaliator, we have sold those modules individually. We are not going to do that with the Apollo. So I'm here to tell you now, we are going to include all six modules for free on every Apollo SKU. So if you already own the Apollo, we are going to retroactively inject those into all of your existing items in the My Hangar app on the website. So if you have the Apollo now, you're going to get all six. If you purchase the Apollo when it comes out in September, or at any point from now on, it's not a limited-time thing, it will come with all six bays. For all the reasons John said, absolutely completely valid, about not including the drones at this time, we still felt there was something more we could do to ease that switch-over. So this is what we're going to do. John, did I forget anything?
No, I don't think so. Like I said, we're aware that there are some issues with medical gameplay at the moment, beyond just the beacons not being there, and we're wanting to try and fix some of those things and improve the whole, not just fix things, add gameplay to the medical stuff. Hopefully we'll get that for September, if not soon after.
And there will be some more changes to med beds and how they work. They're getting some additional functionality, but you'll learn more about that when that promotion gets closer to the event.
TL;DRJohn Crewe isn't on the team fixing the current login bugs and gives no timing, but the plan is to let players log out anywhere, with beds giving bonuses, though details are early.
I believe there are some bugs with the current system. That is probably the root of this question, but I'm not on the team that is responsible for fixing them, so I don't have the answers to when for those. But I do want to talk about how we want to deal with logging in and out going forward in the future. We want, and I think Rich has talked about this before, we don't want to exclusively gate logging in and out of the game purely to ship beds. We want to allow you to do it anywhere, but there's consequences to that. It's just that beds will have bonuses, like if you log out in your ship bed, it's better than just logging out on the floor somewhere. And that means you will start seeing some ships where you go, hmm, that ship would have been really cool, but why does it not have a bed? Probably utility, where we're taking that design mindset going forwards. So expect to see some of these changes going forward in newer ships. Obviously, exploration ships where you're supposed to be out long duration will have beds and everything. But those smaller short-term ships may not have them anymore.
So just want to reiterate here, because again, this is an early design change. It's too early to go into a whole lot of the details. But the idea here is to eventually move to a system where you can log in and out on your ship, whether you have a bed or not, and then explore what advantages we can add to those ships that do have beds on top of that, which we can't talk about now because we're still exploring what those might be. But for people like, oh, my ship doesn't have a bed, I can't log out: we're working towards minimizing the impact of that.