Star Citizen: Subscriber's Town Hall feat. Banu & Alien Cultures
Developers discuss the Banu Defender: its shields, power plants, four size-2 tachyon cannons, missile racks, hit-and-run role and possible EMP missiles. They also cover the Merchantman growing larger, Banu culture (Souli guilds, the Gathering, child-rearing) and Banu-Vanduul trade.
TL;DRThe concept conveys the Banu Defender's look and feel rather than an exact replica, minor changes happen during building, and they have solutions ready for the visibility concern once vehicle artists begin work.
So it's important to get across that concept is exactly that. It's more there to get across the look and feel of the ship rather than make an exact replica of the ship that we're going to put in-game. And obviously it's going to be very similar and we try and get measurements and placement exact, but minor changes get made as ships get built for in-game use. So we've already got a solution ready to go. And that'll start to get put in place when our vehicle artists start working on it.
For the subscribers who have the monthly Jump Point magazine, you may have noticed this month's Jump Point had a behind-the-scenes feature on the Banu Defender during all the banking, all the different concepts. And one of the comments in there is from Chris Roberts himself about the visibility of the Defender. So it's been something that we're aware of. It's something that we have a couple solutions that we're looking at. And by the time it comes time to build it, I think you'll enjoy your Banu Defender.
Maybe. I mean, they trade with the Banu, they don't necessarily trade with us, so it might be one of those things where they might be cool with them, but we kind of pop in and say hello, and just, all right.
Yeah, because it's going to be interesting to see what you find with the Vanduul when you're exploring in space. Because most of the Vanduul that you run into in human space are specifically coming there on scavenging runs, basically. They're there to take our stuff. So they come with their teeth bared. But how they're going to behave in a trading area, or maybe the Banu might have to go out to them, make house deliveries since the Vanduul don't play well in well-populated cities and stuff like that.
We're not saying too much about it. Hopefully this will be one of the things that we'll save for players to experience for themselves when they get out [to] this big mystery of...
Probably. I would expect so. I mean, we've talked about the possibility of the Banu flotillas and trade centers being kind of bustling hubs of all the species. You can find all their goods there, to kind of sell the idea that Banu are hopping around from all the systems.
I mean, it certainly tracks with their character and personality that they would obtain some stuff from Vanduul and then come and try and sell it off to whoever would be willing to buy it.
Because if they're trading with the Vanduul, then they're getting something from the Vanduul. And the question is, what do they do with that stuff that they're getting? Do they sell it back to us? Do they use it for their own ships or devices or weapons?
TL;DRThe Banu Defender clarifies its stats: a size two shield, two power plants, and four size two weapons on size three gimbals, swappable for size three fixed weapons, with a weak hull offset by strong shields.
Yeah, so there seemed to be some confusion with the shield generators, power plants, and the weapons. The ship doesn't come with one size one shield, it comes with one size two shield, so it's got that bigger, beefier shield there. As mentioned in the description, it's this big selling point. It's got a weak hull and it's got stronger shields to make up for it. So we weren't going to put it out with one size one shield, even if it is of Tevarin origin. And it was also listed as having one size one power plant in some places as well, but it actually does have two. Otherwise, it might struggle with powering that bigger shield. And finally, there was a lot of confusion around the weapon mounts and the gimbals. So it comes equipped with four size two weapons on size three gimbals. So you'll be able to swap those out for size three fixed weapons if you want to.
TL;DRThe mixed Xi'an engines, Tevarin shields and Banu hull show the Banu adopting whatever tech works best, an alien blend not done with other ships, which illustrates their personality.
Well, I mean, part of it was illustrating this idea that the Banu, they like stuff that works best for whatever they're trying to build. So for whatever reason, the Xi'an thrusters were better than the previous thrusters that they had on there, so they were like, oh, that's great. Thank you. And took it and absorbed it into their tech. And the same with the Tevarin. I mean, we've always hinted at the fact that part of the Tevarin arsenal was their impressive defensive capabilities. So they saw that, they were like, ah, perfect. Thank you. And took that and absorbed it into their thing. So a lot of it was just, we hadn't really done that with a lot of other ships, this sort of amorphous blend of alien technology, and so it just seemed like a cool thing that illustrated an aspect of their personality in their technology.
So yeah, if you go aboard an all-Banu ship, maybe you'll see that they're still running a human cooler or something, because that's a really good product and they're happy to use it. They don't need to stick to Banu tech just because they're Banu.
There are definitely Banu who probably have issues with humans, who have had a deal gone wrong with a human faction and they held it against a larger thing of 'learn not to trade with them' or something like that.
I mean, again, it's like anything, we want to make sure we have that spectrum of personalities in there. So there might be Banu who dislike the UEE but like humans, and vice versa, stuff like that.
TL;DRThe Banu language isn't developed yet, but the Banu are probably fairly proficient in the common human language, perhaps with a distinct affectation, and how much of that shows with dedicated envoys is undecided.
Oh, that's a good question. I mean, as far as the language itself, we haven't gotten to that one yet. Britton is still working on the Xi'an and Vanduul at the moment. But again, I would imagine that they were probably fairly proficient in the standard, whatever you want to call that.
Yeah, because at least with the Banu characters that we've explored, a lot of them are functionally fluent in it, but they don't sound like human beings. They have a certain affectation to how they speak. But I don't know if they're necessarily reflective of a Banu diplomat or such a thing. Actually, I don't know, we've never specified that they have straight-up diplomats. But someone who's dedicated to come over and interact with humans might have less of the Banu affectations, or how much of that will bleed through, we're still figuring out.
Generally, at least the races I've touched aren't too far from human proportions. I know the design of the Vanduul ships was handled over there in LA, which is where they came up with the massage bed cockpit seats, as people like to call them. So there are some interesting challenges, but fortunately the Banu, or the Defender at least, uses controls that humans are quite familiar with, because they're reasonably human-sized. We haven't really had much of a problem with them so far.
So we've talked a little bit about how they have these Souli, these guilds, and so they have manufacturing guilds that specialize in making products. So there's a couple different guilds that specialize in making Banu Defenders for humans, and that's their whole shebang.
Yeah, so as opposed to what we describe as a human approach to corporations and stuff like that, the designs for the Defender are just available in Banu space, basically. So if there's a Souli that wants to manufacture ships, they can get a hold of the designs fairly easily, and then it just becomes that Souli's Banu Defender. With this, we're basically saying that, yeah, these Souli are making specifically human-modified Defenders for human operation.
TL;DRBanu planets are independently run, and when a joint decision is needed, the heads of planets convene in the Gathering, their Senate equivalent, with a religious collective offering insight.
The setup that we had for them was basically that all the Banu planets were independently operated, that they ran under their own steam. And then if a situation arose that required the Banu to make a decision about something, they had a couple of options. They had a thing called the Gathering, which would be basically the heads of the planets would get together to talk over the issue and figure out a solution. And then there was the ones on, is it Therese? I always get confused. The kind of religious collective that would offer insight as to how the Banu could move forward. But the idea was that the Gathering would be their equivalent of a Senate. And then if a situation arose where they're being threatened with war or something like that, this Gathering would convene to talk over what they would do and if they needed to hire basically an army to defend themselves.
TL;DRHuckaby confirms the Merchantman is getting significantly larger, roughly Polaris-sized and smaller than an Idris, though the exact size won't be known until it is built.
Well, I was prepared. I actually had a chat with John Crewe and Todd Papy before the show, just in case you didn't have the answer. So I actually do have the answer. The answer is yes. The Merchantman is getting larger. It is getting significantly larger. It is not as big as you see in those images. It's not bigger than an Idris. For instance, there was one image where somebody was doing some fantastic geometry in there and figuring out that the scale in one of the images had it as big as a Javelin. It is not that big. It is not as big or bigger than the Idris. Obviously, we won't know precisely how big it will be until we start building it, but think somewhere along the lines of the Polaris as far as size. It is a very large ship. And internally, we're beginning to think of it as a Banu-style capital ship. So yes, it is getting very large. We won't know precisely how large until it comes time to build it. And when are we going to build it? We have our production schedule up on the website now. You can see precisely where that ship is going.
Yeah, of course. Our design process has always been designing human ships. So it's quite interesting when an alien ship, or the alien spanner, gets thrown into the works. Because there's always special requirements for them. So that's when I get on the line to Will and Dave and we start to figure out what is specifically needed, how the race works and how we can fit them in on the ship and make it unique in their own way.
Aliens are definitely a lot more fun. It lets you be a bit more creative with the design and implement some differences rather than having your standard human fighters. We've obviously got this dual cockpit system going on on this. And obviously it's quite a different shape to a lot of ships we've had before. So it's definitely a nice mix-up.
TL;DRAlien ship owners shouldn't struggle with parts, since components like a Tevarin shield can be swapped for human ones or upgraded, though rarer alien parts may need hunting down.
They shouldn't do. Especially in the case of the Banu ships, you should be able to fit in things like human items, or human-produced items, in there. So if your Tevarin shield goes bust, you won't necessarily have to fit a Tevarin shield back in there, but you'll be able to slot a human one in instead.
So the components that a ship comes with when we sell it in its concept are not necessarily the only components that you can equip in a ship. These are the items that the ship comes with initially, but you'll be able to swap out coolers, swap out power plants, swap out shields, and maybe even upgrade them. So while the cool Tevarin shield comes with it, and maybe the cool Xi'an engines come with it, you could possibly upgrade them to even better components, maybe even from different races or sources.
Yeah, you can upgrade, downgrade, sidegrade. The choice is yours, really. But I wouldn't recommend getting rid of the Tevarin shield. It'll be too good.
But yeah, it might also be where you're acquiring the alien ship. There's potential there for some parts to be... Like Jonny said, you could do a human equivalent, but maybe if you want to maintain that specific, harder-to-find part, you might have to venture out into the far reaches of the universe and hunt it down.
TL;DRThe writers draw on many sources, including the Ferengi as a trading-race comparison they deliberately set aside, plus history and real societies, aiming for the Banu to feel unique rather than a collection of references.
I mean, we definitely looked at some of the more common trading races that have been in sci-fi culture, the Ferengi were one of them, and then we tried to put that aside because we knew that was the main comparison people would be drawing, and tried to [find] what was a tone that would make sense for them, and what could make them not only unique inside Star Citizen, but unique in science fiction, but also feel true and not just weird for the sake of being weird.
Yeah. Because there's that certain element where, again, you'll reach into other pop culture things as a starting point. Just to go, it's sort of like this, but sort of like this. But then, yeah, you obviously want to focus on making them feel like they're their own thing and not just a collection of references and stuff like that.
We definitely look a lot to history a lot of times for actual working societies, and being like, this element here for their political or social setup is very cool, of this small group of people, and then can we incorporate that, or what if that became the dominant aspect of a society, and how would that look?
TL;DRBanu have no families; children are sold to an evaluation guild that raises and tests them, then sold to a career guild where they work off the cost, though procreation itself isn't worked out.
We haven't worked out the procreation thing, but they don't actually have families. When they have a child, they basically sell it into what they call evaluation Souli. It was sort of weirdly referenced to Plato's Republic and this idea that, I mean, in that book you take away the kids to have the state basically raise them, in the sense that it creates brotherhood, because anyone can be your kid because you don't know who your kid is. So it's supposed to create camaraderie or whatever. But for our purposes, it was more of, they put the kid in an evaluation Souli who raises them, educates them, trains them, while also testing them to figure out what their strengths and weaknesses are and their mental aptitude and spatial abilities and stuff like that. And then basically once they reach an age, they are sold off to a guild, a Souli, that basically will be their career.
Yeah, like this kid had really fast hand-eye coordination and tested well in math, so maybe a piloting Souli who trains the best fighter pilots would be eager to snatch that kid up and train him up. Because Banu, when they transition from the evaluation guilds, they've been purchased basically, so they have an apprenticeship where they have to work off [the cost] to obtain full membership in society as an individual. So if you're really skilled, they'll become a well-valued member of the guild pretty fast. And if not, they have a hard time. They might be working in a lower position for a long time. And at which point, once they've paid off their schooling, basically, to the original guild, they can choose to stay there or to move on. Start their own.
We're still trying to work that out, so I think it's a case that we want it to, but it's fitting it in and making sure that it fits in properly. So there's no guarantees there at all, but we're looking at it actively currently.
Yes, it does. It's one of our new weapon types that we're introducing with the Banu Defender. So it would be the first weapon of this type that we're actually introducing into the game. So you can expect it to have all kinds of new VFX, and the projectiles will behave a lot differently from the weapons we've seen currently. It's a super long range, high speed projectile, which makes the Defender ideal for engaging at longer ranges.
It's a standard energy weapon, but the particles are accelerated to faster-than-light speeds, so it'll be difficult to miss if you've got your sights over the target.
Yeah, sure. It comes with four size two tachyon cannons on the gimbal mounts, and it comes with, I'll have to just double check this, two size three missile racks with four size two missiles in total.
TL;DRThe Banu are below the military-focused Tevarin and weaker than the strategic Xi'an at large-scale war, though their defense and mercenary guilds fight well individually, and they see violence as wasteful.
Yeah, they would have no idea. I mean, militaristically, just off the top of my head, the Tevarin were a dedicated military society. So they're definitely lower than them.
I think in individual small skirmishes, they can probably hold their own. I mean, they have these defense and mercenary guilds that are still highly skilled warriors, but it would come down to, once you start talking about larger scale operations, maybe they wouldn't quite match up to someone like the Xi'an, who are very good at overall strategic planning and conceiving stuff on a much grander scale. So I could see, when you have an outlaw pack going against a squad of Banu Defenders, you're in for a tough time. These are people who've been training their whole life to fly Banu Defenders. Their job is to fight off outlaws, so you'd expect them to be really good. But coordinating with five other...
Yeah, there might be a communication breakdown if you had 16 Souli, war Souli, that had gotten together to form this big army and stuff like that. And they all have different ways of doing things. So yeah, it might not be as efficient, but on an individual level, it probably would be.
We've talked about a general tone about how the Banu look towards violence overall, and how it's seen as a fairly wasteful endeavor. If you could make peace and both profit, that's a better road for everyone involved. So why wouldn't you? But they're not afraid. Sometimes violence is the only option, and then they bring the pain.
I mean, I would say a pretty good stun weapon would probably be a common part of the Banu arsenal. Let's try to keep the goods intact as much as possible.
Not specific gases yet, but overall we've talked about how their survivability is much higher than humans. They can exist in a much broader range of environments.
I can't remember the name of the specific system, but if you go on the star map, there's actually a system that has arcologies where basically the atmosphere is lethal to humans, but not to them. But they still want humans to come visit, so they've built these arcologies so you can hang out inside while they hang out outside.
I can't promise anything, but there's no hard no on it yet, to dip a tentative toe into that pool. It's something that seems like it would be fun to be able to do, but the ramifications of it still need to be investigated further.
This is a Subscriber Town Hall, so hopefully a lot of people have read Drifters and you get an idea of the fun of having a Banu on your crew. Read that story if you haven't, it's really good.
TL;DRThe Banu are good at diplomacy in a way, since they don't keep history and must renegotiate contracts whenever a guild dissolves, which can frustrate other parties.
Yes, in a weird way, because you also have to bear in mind, and again, this is the fun of coming up with these interesting, almost paradoxical personality things, they don't keep track of history. So one of the things that we realized, what started as a discussion about Souli: if a Souli were to dissolve, and I, as a human corporation, was getting my materials from the Souli, and then it dissolves and another Souli takes its place, I have to renegotiate my contract with that Souli because the previous one isn't going to honor a contract that they didn't sign. So I have to basically constantly renew a contract with them.
Contract is null and void. So you have to renegotiate. So what ended up happening in the conversation was we realized that they had signed a trade agreement with humanity when we met each other. And so did that mean that they basically had to keep renegotiating that contract every generation? And so, yeah, basically they've gotten really good at diplomacy, but it might be kind of frustrating that you would have to...
Yeah, every couple of years explaining to the Banu why they can't bring slaves into UEE space, and like, yeah, your drugs are great, but please stop trying to bring them.
TL;DRWriters and ship designers work closely from the start of a concept, giving and taking, which for the Defender led to a multi-crew design with a co-pilot who can gun and repair.
Yeah, I mean, it usually starts with somebody saying, hey, it'd be really cool if we could do this. And then it goes from there. And we've had situations where it's like, this might not actually work for the Banu, but it is great for the Xi'an, or vice versa, or stuff like that. So yeah, we try to keep in contact as much as possible and make sure that everybody's work is being reinforced by everyone else's work, and we're not going out and saying stuff that they don't want as a direction. So it's a give and take with all the departments.
Yeah. Sometimes it's easier for us to create something on paper that we can present and be like, well, this would be really awesome for the Banu to do. And then it's up to wonderful designers to come back and be like, well, this is what we actually can do. And then we'll go like, okay, that's cool, but what if we did this one small thing? I mean, having the Defender be a multi-crew ship was probably one of the biggest things to come out of those discussions about how the Banu would operate and how they would want to be able to focus on specific things while flying around. It's going to be interesting to see how that affects... have you been planning out how that's actually [going to work]? Because the Super Hornet has, it's not a manned turret, is it?
The seat's behind the pilot. So that kind of multi-crew fighter versus something like the Defender, which has, I think, more abilities, with those seats designed for sitting side by side.
Yeah, the co-pilot in the Defender is going to see a lot more action. There's going to be a lot they can do in terms of engineering, gunning, because they'll have control of the entirety of the ship's guns. So as long as you've got gimbals on there, you're going to have a very useful gunner on there with you. If you're putting fixed weapons on there, they might not have quite a good time and they'll be shouting at the pilot the entire time. But then because a lot of the ship items are housed on the interior, they can also get out of the seat and go and repair stuff if it's on fire while the pilot tries to get them out of danger. So yeah, it's super important to work with these guys dead early on, because, as an example, they might have envisioned something completely different than us. And once we get the design down, concepts already started, we might get a message from these guys saying this is completely the wrong direction that you're going with these guys and not well planned at all. So it's good to get everything knitted together early on.
TL;DRThe Defender is designed as a nimble, offensive hit-and-run ship that guards the Merchantman by buzzing attackers, hitting hard with its cannons, and drawing pursuers away; the name is partly a branding gag.
Funnily enough, I had this discussion with someone in the office today and they said, why is it called the Defender if it's got a fragile hull? And I was like, well, it defends the Merchantman. It's not a defensive ship itself. So it is quite an offensive ship, and the way we've designed it, it's more suited to hit-and-run attacks. So it'll be able to buzz around any attackers that are coming for the Merchantman or the fleet that it's guarding, and if they ignore it, it'll be able to pack a big punch with the cannons that are outfitted on there. But if they come after it, it's going to be able to survive long enough and draw them away from the fleet, so that the Merchantman can get away quite easily. So it's very nimble. That's the thing to take away from this.
One of the things too was, in a weird way, it was about branding as well. When talking about the name, as Jonny said, it's designed to defend the ship, but also it was the idea that giving it an aggressive name would feel somewhat contrary to the Banu, to their spirit. And also the gag of, the Merchantman is a merchant ship, this is a defense ship, so they called it a Defender.
Yeah, I think Ben explained it in the Jump Point article this month, that he had thought of it. It's a natural Ben-like pun off of Merchantman to have a fighting ship Minuteman. They did pair well together, but in the end we went away from the working title to have something that captured the spirit of the ship a little bit [more].
Oh. You came from the wrong side. Yeah, probably. If they knew you were coming from there, they probably wouldn't be too thrilled about it. I don't think they would necessarily treat you as hostile. I mean, who knows? But they probably wouldn't be too thrilled about it.
Yeah, I mean, part of it's going to be how your ship appears, because again, you're going to have a reg tag or something that shows up on a HUD, so whether that shows as a human ship or a Banu ship.
Yeah, there was another question in the threads about, because the Banu are really proud of their Merchantman, whether they'd be upset seeing a human flying one. And I don't think so at all. I think it would make them happy to see Banu trade spreading. That's a big part of the culture, the sharing of... Xi'an might roll their eyes if you show up in a Scout. If you're trying really hard.
I think it would be able to put up a good fight, but it's not a true racer. And while it's quite light, it's never going to match the maneuverability and the speeds of the M50 and the 350r and even the racing-prep Mustangs. But of the non-racing ships, it'll definitely put up good times.
Yeah, those were supposed to be Banu worlds. I can't remember if we actually marked which ones. We didn't label them, no. But yeah, they were supposed to be Banu planets. But again, we have a handful of them called out. They're part of that hazy roadmap down the way. We have a lot of landing zones to build.
It'll possibly give you a bit of an advantage, but it's not going to completely tear through the shields and straight through the ship, and the Tevarin shields will help with that.
Yeah, I mean, it's not been 100% confirmed yet, but we were considering getting EMP missiles on it by default, as we're trying to get more and more weapon and damage types out there at the moment, and we've already got those EMP weapons on the Warlock. It would be quite a good idea to get all these different damage types out into weapons, out into missiles, out into rockets and all that kind of stuff. So yeah, it's something that may come as stock on the Defender.
TL;DRThe Tevarin burned their own culture and spent generations refusing to discuss it out of resentment, which makes it plausible modern Tevarin don't know it, though smaller factions are now looking back.
Well, I mean, it was several hundred years ago, so they've had multiple generations. Again, part of the thing was not that their culture was taken away from them, it was that they burned it to the ground, so there's a lot of resentment, I think.
There was a large movement within their society to distance themselves from this past that brought them to the point of near destruction. Twice. And so now there's a little bit more of a recovery going on amongst their people, of trying to reconnect with their past.
Yeah, there's smaller factions of them that are trying to, not regain, but just look back, and are finding merit in some of the stuff that they used to believe in. But I think that was the key distinction that makes it a little bit more plausible as to why there could be modern Tevarin that didn't know about Rijora and stuff like that: for generations they were very actively like, we are not going to talk about it. We are not going to acknowledge it. We are just going to be very resentful of the fact that this is what nearly wiped us out. So that was the idea behind it.
They love all sports. We never really specified the other sports, but yeah, that was the idea, which is that it was competition. It was very exciting, but they just don't care about teams. They just like the athleticism.