Developers answer fan questions ahead of Alpha 2.0: launch ships (Constellation Andromeda, Retaliator, loaners), the female model, player counts and instances, and the component-system retrofits of existing ships. They also cover the Archimedes, Vanguard, Crucible, snub capabilities and the automated unmelt.
The 20% off will be all physical merchandise with the exception of the Constellation model. Those are going to be $80 across the board. So they will also be discounted, but at a straight $80 price.
They are normally $100. So they are 20% off. Wait, they're normally $100 for subscribers and concierge. They're $125 for everybody else. So it's an even bigger discount.
TL;DRCalling the Archimedes a racer doesn't mean it can't fight; its centerline gun is being replaced with a boost-recharging device and its wing guns are going from two to four, with art and a store offering coming.
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Ben LesnickDirector of Community Engagement, Online Strategy, and Spaceships
So to recap this story, two of our producers on ATV this week referred to the Archimedes as a racer. I would stress that just because we call a ship something in casual conversation does not mean that that's the only thing it does. They called the Archimedes a racer because, as it has been described ever since the start, it's the faster snub fighter. Actually, I'm sure they called it the racer because they were just coming off of Gurmukh working on a beautiful mood piece of racing. That does not mean it's not an interceptor. That doesn't mean it doesn't have guns. That doesn't mean it can't mix it up with other ships. So that clarification out of the way, there is a little bit more information on the Archimedes on the forums from Matt Sherman, who was kind enough to stop in to talk about the current armament and what some of the cool features are. It is true we are removing the centerline gun, the big center Gatling cannon is being taken off, and that's being replaced with a new device that is like a fuel supercharger. It allows you to recharge your boost, which the normal Merlin cannot do. And the two size one wing mount guns are being replaced with four size one wing mount guns. It's going to be a neat little ship. As I mentioned, Gurmukh is working on the art for it right now. He's doing two pieces that we're going to show off in action. One is indeed a racing picture and the other is a luxury picture. And once we have all our ducks in a row, we will offer that in the store. We'll have a post, sort of a Q&A, all that cool stuff. It's important to remember that the modular system, the component system, allows you to configure these ships in ways well beyond what they're initially spec'd out for. We're giving you one configuration when we sell you this ship, but you're going to have options to make it... And I would say just in the lore of the Star Citizen universe, no one is building a ship specifically for racing right now. The M50 was designed as a bomber interceptor, the Mustang variant that races, the Omega, and the other one. They are variants of an existing ship that have been souped up to race. It's much like after World War II, you would have people who would buy P-51s and modify them as racing aircraft. That does not mean the P-51 is not a fighter. It's a pretty good fighter. And I say that as a Thunderbolt fan.
Ben LesnickDirector of Community Engagement, Online Strategy, and Spaceships
I am unsure what the status of that is. The last I heard, and this was just the intention, I don't know if it's in there, is you will be able to see the specific instances, and if your friends are in an instance, those will be highlighted, and you'll be able to choose instances. So you'll be able to coordinate with your friends to join the same instance. That was the intention. I don't know if that's the reality yet.
So sometimes stuff like that can be a couple patches in.
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Ben LesnickDirector of Community Engagement, Online Strategy, and Spaceships
Exactly. Different teams, I mean, imagine it, ten different teams building ten different things, and the seven of them that all actually work when it's time to come out, those can be in the first release, and you'll see the others come online as long as they don't break the game.
If you watched yesterday's Around the Verse, there was a segment from Jason Hutchins in Texas talking about progress on the female model upcoming. It won't be in the first drop of Alpha 2.0, but it is on the horizon. We're closer now than we were before. Every moment we're closer to a female model.
Still in the works. When we can, it'll be done. We had a meeting about it on Tuesday. We've got a plan in place. It's just a matter of making it a reality. It's Turbulent time. And again, there's a lot of considerations. It's a very complex system we have with a lot of packages, a lot of ships, game packages, add-ons. It's difficult work making sure that an automated system doesn't eat things that it's not supposed to eat. So it takes a lot of work. But there's a plan in place. Can't give you an ETA yet, though.
Still working on a lot of retrofitting, so working towards the big component system update, getting all our current flight-ready ships all hooked up, hoping to get some Hornets and Mustangs wrapped up this week, but we'll see how it goes.
It can be a long road from concept to complete just because these ships are really, really complex. I'm sure some of the people who like digging for XMLs have seen just how weird some of our part lists and just how things get hooked up can be.
Ben LesnickDirector of Community Engagement, Online Strategy, and Spaceships
Not at launch. At launch will just be the base Connie, which is the one we've been remastering. And then we're going to use the work we did on that to turn out the variants.
If you watched CitizenCon, you saw the new Connie in the live demo. And you can see more shots of it in the press version of the demo. It's also up on our YouTube, if you haven't seen that.
In theory, a Sentinel would probably be the best of the Vanguards just because it'll have the biggest electronics kit with its giant avionics racks inside.
It is a long-range fighter, so it should be able to go out and come back. Maybe not as great as a dedicated explorer, but having enough options in your ship is a huge thing.
Ben LesnickDirector of Community Engagement, Online Strategy, and Spaceships
They're hoping to increase that. That's one of the things that we're working on. I know that we're pushing for 40, but I don't know what they're actually at right now. We're pushing for 40. Basically, it's one of those things we'll know when we're ready to launch. In fact, it's one of the things you guys are going to help us determine. And when you all jump in and smash it, that's when we'll learn.
Got a lot of bugs fixed. Put out PTU four times this week. That was exciting. Getting a lot of good feedback. And then just a lot of planning for future stuff. Stuff, I think, that we're talking about later. That's what I've been working on.
Long-term, it'll more than likely be getting some visual updates just for the new component system when that all is built out. Probably a couple of versions after the base setup, the components go live. Some of that cleanup, just so all these parts have a place on every ship, even the Aurora, is definitely a big goal.
It would really apply to all of our current flight-ready ships. But this is also long-term stuff. We've got a ton of ships that we really need to get into the game. And a lot of the stuff that these retrofits would be doing would be more just taking invisible components and giving them a proper home on the ship, but it's not something that would stop us from putting these components in your hands and letting you guys fly with them before we hit that point.
That would be part of this, but also in sort of the long run, where let's get some of these other baseline ships in, get them playable, and then catch back up on these other things that we need. Because we have stopgaps effectively for it right now, but it's still absolutely on the list of, hey, we should clean this up for sure. And do you mean just like a revamp?
It's funny, we just talked about that on the 10 for the Chairman last week, and that's exactly the point. We've got a lot of ships we want to finish the flyable first, but we definitely have a plan for those as well.
I want to say Kirk's been doing a lot more hands-on with the Constellation. So I know it's something that's been explored, but I don't know if it's something that's still going to be... I don't remember where we landed about that.
I won't even speculate until the baseline, Andromeda and all the variants are flyable, guys. We've got to get that stuff, what we've already sold and promised effectively, in. Then we can start considering some of those other modules or options.
Ben LesnickDirector of Community Engagement, Online Strategy, and Spaceships
Avenger variants are still coming. They're in the plan. You'll be hearing more. We're really close to wrapping up the new ship pipeline. We'll be able to get some more information to you, I assume. I was just bugging Elwyn and... Oma? Adrian Branaga and Luke Davis and all kinds of folks about the pipeline.
Ben LesnickDirector of Community Engagement, Online Strategy, and Spaceships
This is an oldie. Not at launch. It's something we'll consider post-launch, but no promises. But obviously it would make sense someday, some distant someday, to let you be a Xi'an or a Tevarin or a Vanduul or something. But not soon.
Ben LesnickDirector of Community Engagement, Online Strategy, and Spaceships
Yes. So if you have any of the larger ships, we're going to give you a loaner Constellation. It'll either be a Constellation or a Retaliator. It's all going to depend on the value. Same system as all the other releases.
TL;DRSuch stat discrepancies are expected for a year or so because balance is iterative and needs playtesting; components and ships will be cleaned up and made consistent over the long term, but not urgently.
With weapon and balance stats right now, there's going to be a lot of stuff that's in flux, and we're not going to tune to a razor's edge balance, and there's going to be some wild discrepancies that will pop up from now through even the next year or so of development on this, because we can't get everything dead right on the first pass.
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Ben LesnickDirector of Community Engagement, Online Strategy, and Spaceships
We're going to need playtesting, we're going to need tuning. Some things will get out of date as new systems get brought online. So it's just an iterative process.
Long term, everything will get some cleanup to it, but it's not like a drop everything and try and fix this one thing to perfection right now, because we've got so many other systems that need work.
All the components are still going to be going through iterations themselves. And once those components are iterated on, then that's going to trickle down to retrofit a lot of the ships to make sure that all of them are consistent, make sure that all the sizes are consistent with each other, especially since those ships have been made. The size of this has changed at least twice.
A lot of our flight-ready ships right now, the old size system doesn't apply at all really, so it's going to be a lot of new stuff, but also a lot more range to really customize your ship when we even get the first drop of these components out to you guys.
Ben LesnickDirector of Community Engagement, Online Strategy, and Spaceships
I don't believe they've done much beyond the concept for the 890 Jump. So we can't answer whether it's going to get bigger or not yet. It's one of the things you discover when you start building it out. I would not expect it to get bigger. Another ship on the list. So many ships, so many lists.
Ben LesnickDirector of Community Engagement, Online Strategy, and Spaceships
No. It's like this big. I would say its repair bay is large enough to fit a Hornet or a Gladiator. Its internal repair bay. So it's big, but not huge, I guess you'd say. Think tugboat. This is our tugboat. It's our tugboat slash space shuttle, which are more closely related than you would expect.
Ben LesnickDirector of Community Engagement, Online Strategy, and Spaceships
It's going to be a 10 for the Producers this Monday, maybe the week after that? Chris gets back the 30th, I think. Although his schedule is always changing. He's out there in the UK working on Squadron 42, going from the footage they have recorded to the final cuts of things.
Snubs do not have quantum or jump, but they do land. So if you go to a port and your 890 Jump won't land on that planet, you can bet your 85X will get you to the surface.
Alpha 2.0 will launch with the Retaliator and the Constellation, hopefully. That's the plan. And then the single-seat ships that are already available. But the Freelancer will come at a later point. It will not be at launch.
They should have the highest cruise speed available, so they'll be able to go faster than their normal engagement speed, but that's still not going to be really that close to quantum speed, so you'd be looking at the difference between a minute or two in quantum versus this could take you a half hour, 45 minutes in super cruise.
We asked Turbulent to make it the Hornet, so that should go in at some point soon. So if you bought a Sabre and that's the only ship that you have, you should get a loaner Hornet in Arena Commander shortly. Again, it has to do with running scripts, and those scripts have to go and apply it to everybody.
Not in the first drop. But eventually it might be a place where we can test things like salvaging or mining or something like that.
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Ben LesnickDirector of Community Engagement, Online Strategy, and Spaceships
Oh, absolutely. I mean, that's why we're doing it, really. So we can plug in these systems as they become finished and see how people react to them. The first drop of 2.0 will be most of what you saw in the Gamescom demo, or the CitizenCon demo.
Ben LesnickDirector of Community Engagement, Online Strategy, and Spaceships
Because Droid is a registered trademark of Lucasfilm Incorporated, a division of Walt Disney Corporation. You're going to see some droids in 2.0 because we're using them in place of some of the places where we're going to have deeper systems later, for the repair. You just fly up and droids goop up your ship, which you saw in the demo at CitizenCon. There is some lore about why we don't have extensive AIs and so forth that we specifically put in there to avoid having Mr. Data, that sort of android. But there's also repair droids that are going to be our equivalent of, our legally distinct counterpart of R2-D2. So definitely robots, droids, robot critters.