The devs preview CitizenCon with new Squadron 42 merchandise and an unrevealed ship, and say the CCU system is due just before it. They give status on the Constellation, Endeavor pods, Starfarer, Archimedes, Herald and Cutlass, plus 1.3 and insurance.
I believe in the new year we're going to have some Squadron 42 caps available. So in the next few months we should have something.
We got a lot of requests for FlexFit last time, so we're looking into some other options.
TL;DRSquadron 42 merchandise is coming alongside CitizenCon, including an updated t-shirt with a different back and fixed neckline, a travel mug, and a patch set with a special subscriber patch.
Why yes, actually. So we're going to be selling a bunch of Squadron 42 merchandise to go along with CitizenCon. So on the 10th, we'll be launching an updated Squadron 42 t-shirt. We're also going to have a Squadron 42 travel mug available. It'll be like the Star Citizen one, but Squadron 42. And we're also going to be doing the patch set, and we'll have a special version for subscribers with a subscriber patch.
And what does the patch set include besides the subscriber patch?
So it's the RSI logo, Star Citizen, and Squadron 42. And then subscribers get a special fourth subscriber patch.
And the new Squadron 42 shirt has a different back.
It does. And a fixed neck. We changed the neckline because we were not happy with the last one. So it should be a better, improved neckline for you guys.
We should also mention that the track jackets are currently on discount, but we were doing that for pre-orders. So if you want to get them at the discounted price, you've got another week to do so.
Well, that's a surprise. I'm going to say wait and see. One especially cool ship will be sold at CitizenCon. A ship you haven't seen before. Unless you're one of the folks upstairs, in which case you probably have seen it. In which case, why are you watching? Get back to work!
I've got some emails out to Nick Elms and some folks in Foundry 42. No information on the Cutlass yet, guys. We're still chasing it down. You know, the last time we said that, we got all these responses like, you're just throwing the UK under the bus. No, they're the people who are building the Cutlass. We want them to answer the Cutlass questions.
TL;DRYes, two Herald interior shots appeared in the previous Ship Shape while discussing component placement; they were white box layouts, not final looks, so the interior can still improve.
You guys have the link. You can look at the images we're dropping.
If you only read a transcript, you may have missed that we had two interior shots of the Herald in yesterday's Ship Shape. So if you haven't seen them, check that out.
Yeah, Matt Sherman joined me. We were talking about placing components on our ships and where they're going to be and how that works design-wise. And we showed some of the layouts with where those spots are going to be on certain ships. And the Herald was one of them. I just told him, go find the coolest, most interesting ships.
And it should be noted that those were images of white boxing for the interior.
Yeah, those images were white box. It's not exactly what it's going to look like in your hangar, obviously.
So it still has room to get even cooler once it gets built out.
Yeah, once we have them all finalized and we're working off of them, I don't see any problem with that.
I don't think so, but I'd have to check with the UK.
No current plans to sell the F8 Lightning, guys. And that includes what we were talking about for CitizenCon. No plans for the F8.
We can't answer those questions, guys. We're on the super, super final stretch where we pretty much have the look that we want and we're working on some concept art that highlights some of the cool functionality. So on the production side, on the development side, we're wrapping up, but I can't speak for these guys and their plans.
Any question that involves the word when, guys, we're probably not going to be able to answer. Of course, after I say that, the CCU system is coming along, and we are hopeful for next week. We're launching just before CitizenCon.
The Constellation is actually going really well. Almost all of the artists, honestly, in the LA office have banded together for the final push to get it as good as we can. And we just had a review on it the other day. We're having daily check-ins, just 'this is what I'm working on', to make sure that everyone's handing everything off pretty quickly as we're finishing up all the peripheral parts. So it's going really, really well and really fast since we have everyone on it.
TL;DRThere will be no feedback thread for Around the Verse, since feedback already arrives through YouTube, comm-link and Reddit comments, and they'll take feedback organically.
No feedback thread for ATV anymore, guys. We already get feedback on the YouTube comments. We get feedback on the comm-link comments. We get feedback on Reddit. We've got plenty of areas for feedback, so we didn't feel like we needed to add a fourth one every single week.
Yeah, we started really rough. We wanted to know what direction you wanted us to take. I feel like we've kind of, I wouldn't say perfected by any means, but we know what we are now. We know where we want to go. We'll take our feedback organically at this point. And one thing we want to get across is it's not all about ATV. In the past, I think there's been some sort of focus on, oh, there's just been another video. It's a means to an end. This is how we get information to you. We don't want it to seem like we're trying to be TV stars or YouTube celebrities or anything like that.
I'll let Ben decide how much he wants to tell you, but he actually gave us this huge write-up maybe a month ago that was awesome. It got me excited looking through it: five different categories and different specialty pods and 20 or 30 different ideas in there. So there's a lot of them, but I think we just kind of prioritized the ones that came out for the sale. We want to get ships out to you first before more Endeavor pods.
Yeah, I think it'll be a while before we see additional pods. I mean, we have plenty of ideas. It's just a matter of having the time to connect them with design and actually build them out. You guys have a lot of pods already.
No, we do not monetize our YouTube page, because that would add ads. That's annoying.
No news on the Drake Dragonfly. Nothing's moved on that one yet.
Yes, it can land is the short answer. What we're thinking of for the hangar is that just the Explorer module would be the part that lands and you fly up to your science complex in orbit.
That's actually a really good question because we had discussions about that in some of our meetings.
So initially CIG was the entire company and RSI was the fictional organization. Now we use RSI as the name of one of our subgroups, but I am honestly not sure which one, because we have different business entities. There's Foundry 42 UK, Foundry 42, all those, and RSI is one of those now.
That's actually a really good question too. So right now, all the guys that we have working upstairs are just working on the base, the Andromeda. I've actually been busy this week putting together some schedule projections for what those guys are going to do afterwards and how many people we might want to move on to variants and modules versus how many people we might want to move on to other ships. So I'm putting together a bunch of options and getting all that info for that decision to be made hopefully early next week.
I can't answer that question right now. We have a lot of ships where you'll leave most of it in orbit and it won't be easily stolen.
I imagine if you park them above Terra, you're probably safe. You park them above Sol, you're probably safe. You park them above Nyx, you know.
Yeah, and in fact, one thing we've looked at for larger ships is having sort of an orbital dockyard that the bulk of your ship remains on and you go down in a shuttle. But none of that is absolute yet.
We have Gurmukh working on that right now, and it's going pretty well. I haven't seen it too recently, but it's going good. He most recently did the Vanguard.
No. These are different ships.
I think in the new CCU system, if and only if the Idris is available. Makes a lot more sense.
Yes. The CCU system will cover ships that are currently on sale. So if you can't go in and buy the ship now, you won't be able to CCU to it. So it doesn't grant you special privileges. It just makes existing functionality easier.
Probably not. The most is we might have an idea of when it's going to start getting worked on next year. I know it's on our first-tier ships, so we want to make sure it's tackled, but ships take a long time, so it probably won't get started before the end of this year. Sorry.
The Freelancer's in the UK, I have to follow up with them and find out where it's at. I think they have some people working on it, but I don't know for sure.
Yes. Yes, it will.
I'll be honest, I don't know what's planned for the base of that ship, but it's a pretty big ship with a lot of room for modularity, so I would be surprised if there weren't some sort of variant with some sort of medical abilities, but I'm not 100% sure.
The UK is currently working on that. I don't know how many people they have on it, I think two or three, which is a good amount. So I know that they are making progress, but I haven't seen it particularly recently. We're trying to split it up a little bit more by manufacturer, and that's one of the first ships of that type that they're doing to this level, so they're hoping to take a lot of that stuff and bring it to some other ships afterwards.
Including the Endeavor, because that's a MISC design.
Lots of questions about the FPS playtest. I would wait for tonight's FPS post to find out. We're all waiting for that. We've been so busy here this week that if they were going on, we weren't part of it. I believe they had wanted to do one today, but they weren't able to. It was some entirely uninteresting blocker that they fixed quickly, but you guys know how that is. But we'll find out more in tonight's FPS post, hopefully. Oh, we should also talk about the PTU. We're not going to the PTU today, but very, very soon we are. But we've ruled out the PTU for today.
I can't talk much about it. It's not a secret, and we're trying to hype you up for it. It's just, I think there's not that much to say. It's the first build after the Great Merge, which has been an ongoing death march, but that we have survived, and now we can release playable builds again. I think this one's a little more for us than it is for you guys. It's about getting all the builds together.
TL;DRCompany policy lets anyone play the latest build, though most staff lack time, so production playtests have recently been held on Fridays and have proven helpful.
If you haven't booted up the game and played what we have so far in a while, it takes a really, really, really long time, if it's been forever, but theoretically anyone can. You just have to make sure you're updating.
As far as company policy goes, anybody is allowed to get in there and try the game. Most of us do not have the time as much as we'd like to.
We've started having, and this has actually been really helpful, production playtests every Friday where we carve out time and actually enforce this, because everyone gets so busy and it's easy to be like, oh, I know. But we're starting to be a little more diligent about it and it's been great, because every time we're like, oh, hey, this little thing right here would be great if we addressed it. So we started those a few weeks ago and they've been really helpful.
I talked to Sandy about this. It's something that we know people want. So nothing in the near future, but certainly in the new year, we'll figure that out for you guys.
There are some weird logistical issues we've had with posters in the past. We've looked into it, and it just hasn't been viable. But we will continue to try to find a good poster distribution.
And we'd like to do a collector's art set. That's been on our radar for a while. We know you guys want art.
Getting these things made is only half the battle. Getting them fulfilled to you...
Fulfillment and shipping is usually the biggest holdup for us.
Again, right now we're working on the base. That's one of the other ships that we're trying to decide how much we're going to give resources there versus the Constellation. So hopefully more information on that soon.
Probably a question for designers. Yeah, almost certainly, but we'll see. If one shows up today, we'll ask.
We're working out the Constellation models first, and then we will move on to the possibility of other models.
I think we still have Constellation models, don't we?
We do, but we need to fulfill the smaller version of the Constellation model. We've got to get that all sorted out, and then in the future we'll definitely consider it, because I would like models of all of our ships. I want a little Endeavor with removable pods.
I don't know exactly what's coming out, but I know that there is one, because I wrote the entire LA art one.
There will be a monthly report. The internal deadline to get it to us was today. We are doing this one the same day as CitizenCon, because so many people in the company this past month have been working on very cool things for CitizenCon that we can't talk about yet. So we made the decision for the monthly report this time around to have people write it as though CitizenCon has happened and all this stuff has been revealed, and then we'll publish it the same day as CitizenCon, so you can get an actual picture of what we've been doing instead of just 'I did something secret I can't talk about.' October 10th is the monthly report.
Yes, same base ship.
It's the same hull.
Yes, that's the point of LTI. That's the point of CCUing in the first place. The entire point. Otherwise you could just melt the package and buy the other package. The whole reason CCU exists is to keep your insurance status and whatever other goodies are attached to a ship. So when you see the new CCU system, remember this was all to help you original backers. Can't stress that enough. Keep your packages.
It means it won't have your name on it. But it will be a just-for-concierge thing.
Turns out doing a metal engraving for everybody who wanted one was pretty tough. We did personalized citizen cards early on.
We still get tickets about them, quite honestly. Problems with them, I should say.
I don't know of a way to permanently lose it.
What about if it's illegal?
I don't want to speculate, honestly, because people will go crazy. I think that's something that will be explored with the PU team.
If someone's trying to run insurance scams, duplicating ships, stuff like that.
Yeah, the insurance scam stuff for sure.
A few people have told me that it is probably the Freelancer. I think that question somehow came up in my interview, actually, I remember.
I think the Carrack.
Yeah, that's what they were saying, either the Freelancer or the Carrack.
The Carrack kind of in size, but the Freelancer more in spirit, because it's supposed to be a transport. Turns out we didn't rip it off one-to-one.
No, we do not have an intern program. Not yet.
Probably not. I think it'll be the Andromeda first and then the others will follow. We're going to get the base going and then build the variants out from that.