Star Citizen: Reverse the Verse LIVE - Refueling, Repairing & Rearming

Will Maiden · Designer

Yeah, absolutely. I think one of the great things about the Vulcan is it can repair a whole bunch of stuff, including itself. The repair system, using the drones, the drones repair. So if you've got a broken drone or a broken ship or a broken vehicle, you're up to it. We've got a repair attachment to them and then you can surface repair. Obviously, it depends on the extent of the damage.

John Crewe · Designer

There's not going to be some random line of code in there saying, don't allow healing your own ship. That's not what it's about. It can do anything within its capabilities.

Will Maiden · Designer

There's a few different ways you can repair a ship. Obviously, if it's got a broken engine or something like that, you can go up to that engine and actually either replace it out or repair that particular piece of the ship, but also there's this hull repair, and one of the systems we've got in place or that's coming is this kind of synthesis of metals and materials to create these kind of compounds that hulls will be structured out of. So through mining or through other forms of collection or purchasing from stores, you can collect these metals, and then when you send a drone over, you can apply that as a mixture, essentially spot fixing, essentially spraying on this kind of fixer liquid metal that will seal up the hull and make it safe again to fly.

Will Maiden · Designer

Right. But if you were a repair crew, it's kind of what's the damage? What can I fix? The same way that if you've got a broken wheel or something on the side of the motorway or the highway or whatever, you pull over, I need to get this repaired. And some things you can repair on site, and sometimes someone will come up and say, oh, I got a spare tire, I got a new battery, and they can bring replacement parts, or, oh yeah, that'll just need a dinging out. Sometimes you can fix a broken part there on the side of the road, or sometimes you just need patching up a tire. Whatever the severity of the problem will dictate whether or not.

Jared Huckaby · Host, Community

So if you're the pilot of a Vulcan, you use the drones to repair the hull, and then you might need a supply of replacement components, the spare tires.

Will Maiden · Designer

And that's the kind of thing, like if you get a service beacon of, hey, I'm in trouble here, I need replacement parts. Then that's something that's kind of, oh, I've got one of those with me, I can come straight out, or, okay, give me 20 minutes, I'll go pick up some replacement parts and I'll put that on your bill kind of thing. So it's that kind of go fetch if you've not got it. As long as the ship can carry it, it's the right size to carry it, then they can come and bring that out to you and it's all part of the service.

John Crewe · Designer

Yeah, that's sort of why that cargo bay is there in the back. It's for storing cargo, but it can also be there for storing all the spare parts that you might decide to... They specialize in coolers and just fill it full of coolers. If you're in a particularly hot environment and people's coolers are getting worn out because it's hot and they're constantly hitting their overheat threshold and degrading quicker than expected, then you're there giving these coolers, well, not giving them away, it's not good business, but you're there on site knowing that this trend in behavior is going to repeat itself so you can maximize that.

John Crewe · Designer

So at the moment, the ballistic weapons use bespoke ammo. There's nothing stopping multiple weapons currently using the same ammo type. I think there are a few that do it already. But the ammo boxes on those weapons are very, very small and there's not actually a huge amount of variation in the ammo there at the moment. So currently, yeah, you probably would need to buy a small pool of it. It's not something we've really talked about, 3D printing ammo. Certainly not on site, but it's something that could happen in the future. Specifically, I think we've talked about in the past smart ammo for weapons. So for ballistic weapons, the ammunition is smart. By default, it's dumb. It's not programmed to do anything, but the weapons themselves can preset their behavior to perhaps make it more incendiary, make it more armor piercing. So you might be able to in the future preload that. So rather than the weapon doing that itself, it can be the Vulcan comes along with, I've got 20,000 rounds worth of armor piercing ammo, or do you want 20,000 rounds of incendiary? I can do it.

Will Maiden · Designer

Yeah. It's not a flying factory. It's a support ship that will come out and it'll bring with it the fuel and the parts and the replacement hull compounds that you're going to need. Obviously, if you're smart about it and you know what's in demand, what kind of things are big right now, you might think, oh, the common weapons, let's have a couple of those on site at all times, because someone's always going to want some extra missiles or something and these are the common missiles, the sizes that we'll want. Anything that's kind of specialist parts, then you may, okay, give me a minute, I'll have to go and pick that up from a... I know a guy that can acquire these kind of things. Knowing where you can pick up certain bits and where you're going to get a discount and things like that is probably going to be this kind of unspoken second side of the career, of where are the good hardware stores around here? Where can I get engine parts for cheap kind of thing?

John Crewe · Designer

Yeah, there's sort of multiple ways you can play. You can be the guy that's got a bit of everything, can react to any situation, you're out in space waiting for the call. Or you could be the guy that keeps my cargo bay empty of everything until I get a call, and I'm lurking near a truck stop or a station and I can get exactly what they want. It might take me a bit longer to get there, but they get exactly what they want, versus quick response and, well, this is the only power plant I've got. So do you want power or do you not want power?

Will Maiden · Designer

I think it's cool that as we're talking about the repair and the rearming for ships, we're also looking at the salvage side of things, and not to divert the conversation, but when we get to a point where you'll find a derelict and you're stripping it for parts, like, oh, this is good. And all of a sudden other players become secondhand dealers and, you know, one careful owner had this shield generator, but they crashed into a rock, so this is still good. And you can sell between the players, picking up things at a discount from local merchants rather than going to stores. The player-driven economy from that side is something that could become huge then, where it's like, oh, I know a guy that can get me some extra ammo, I've got these extra parts, or I've stripped the hull of another ship, so I've got all those extra metals that I can use. We just apply it to a new ship.

John Crewe · Designer

Yes, but there's obviously a limitation on the size. It's got to fit in there for you to carry it. You're not going to be strapping a Javelin torpedo half in the back of it with the back ramp open and 10 meters of torpedo sticking out the back. Not very safe. But yeah, stuff that will fit in there can be put in there.

John Crewe · Designer

Certainly in the initial design for it, that's not a thing. It has the big external tank underneath that's sort of segregated into two tanks. So it has an external quantum fuel tank and an external hydrogen fuel tank. So you fill up from a provider of fuel rather than collecting it yourself, and then it's up to you to give that to players. Like the Starfarer, you can set your prices for it. If you want to sell at a discount to incentivize business, up to you. But chances are the reason someone will come to you is someone's in need of something desperately. So you've sort of got the advantage there.

Will Maiden · Designer

Sorry, it's not a factory to produce this stuff. It's kind of a go-between of, I can get you that stuff. I will help you out and I will get you on the move again, rather than I can create infinite fuel or whatever.

Jared Huckaby · Host, Community

Which is why I know some folks were concerned that we rendered their Starfarers obsolete. Obviously not. There's a reason we refer to this as the profession starter ship. This is for your first forays into refueling. And then you're supposed to work your way up to a Starfarer, because a Starfarer is a much bigger, broader, and probably more expensive to maintain and operate ship, I would imagine.

John Crewe · Designer

If you look at the size of the drone compared to just one of the fuel pods on the back of the Starfarer, it's a huge difference in volume. And then the Starfarer has six of those. So it's like turning up with a little jerry can of fuel to get you going versus turning up with a fuel truck.

John Crewe · Designer

Flexibility, really, and variety. If you're a Starfarer owner, someone who's interested in running it, you clearly have a heavy passion for refueling and helping that out. But if you get a mission for something else and it's not really involving fueling, then, well, no.

Will Maiden · Designer

That's the other thing as well, you've got to hedge your bets then that there's going to be a lot of people that need to refuel. Whereas rearming is very common and someone's going to take damage. I've played the game for more than two minutes. People shoot each other a lot. So they're going to need new ammo and they're going to need a patch job. So that kind of thing of, I can top you up on fuel, I can top you up on ammo, I can patch that hole in the hull. People aren't necessarily going to just want that one thing, the specialization that the Starfarer provides. The Vulcan has got everything covered.

John Crewe · Designer

Every time you play, you could be doing a different ratio of these three things. You can always ignore all those if you want and just use it as a 12-SCU cargo ship, which is not the best in the world, but it allows you to do that. So you've got, I don't want to say free rein, you've got the flexibility to...

Will Maiden · Designer

Totally. Four drones as well. You can get a lot done.

John Crewe · Designer

You can do four separate ships at the same time, or you could do one ship four times in a go. Rather than just being that little top up, it could be four sequential refuels. You've got enough to get out of atmosphere again for all those people that have gone down to a planet hogging afterburner and now could not get back up again. Here's enough to get you out to a fuel station and maybe a bit more back home as well.

Will Maiden · Designer

And a lot of times as well, you call out a Starfarer, and the cost of that, of a big ship making all that leap to come to you, and it's like, I just needed enough to get home. I just needed enough to get to a station and I'll sort myself out from there. They don't necessarily want the works. They just want enough to get me out of this pickle.

John Crewe · Designer

Initially, it's probably not going to be very tactile, hands-on. It will go towards that as time goes on, but the initial loop will be controlling that drone. You go to the support station to control the drone. You pick what you're going to do with it, whether you will rearm or repair. The drones can only do one function at a time without re-docking. So you set it in repair mode. You manually fly it over to the thing you're going to repair. It's not a case of, oh, there's a ship next to me, drone, go repair that, and off it toddles. You've got to fly it yourself, do the repair yourself from that station. The same for refueling and rearming. Refueling, obviously, there is going to be a point on the ship that it has to lock onto to transfer, and the fuel is on the ship itself, so there's a physical connection. The rearming and the replacing components is a bit TBD at the moment. Obviously, there's physical ammo boxes and physical components. It's working out how we want to transition the stores you have to that drone to the ship.

Will Maiden · Designer

A lot of ship items that are broken potentially are inside. And so we don't necessarily want drones to then be flying through corridors kind of thing. So the logistics of how do we get it from my cargo hold over to there is still under...

John Crewe · Designer

You don't want to be walking down your Retaliator hallway and this drone just comes flying down it with a power plant in tow.

John Crewe · Designer

Again, it's the scale of it. The Vulcan's great for those little small repairs, small to medium repairs. If you've got, I don't know, a Caterpillar and half the front's missing, that's something the Vulcan's not going to be able to manufacture and replace it with. Whereas the Crucible, it's got its remote arms, it's got the onboard facilities to do that. It's sort of the economy of scale. You saw in the concept images the Vulcan's hanging around a Javelin doing small repairs, but if that Javelin's taken huge damage, that's where the Crucible comes in. And again, the same pros and cons as with the Starfarer. If you've got a Crucible, I'm doing repair. That's what I've chosen to do. It's like a flying mechanics warehouse, really. And the Crucible has actually got a little bit bigger than it was, because the Hornet's got bigger. It has that enclosed workspace where you can put an entire ship in, close the doors, repair it all, replace everything. If it's too big to go in there, then you're alongside doing the big repairs.

Jared Huckaby · Host, Community

So again, just like it is with the Starfarer, the Vulcan is meant to be your starting point for these professions. It allows you to explore multiple professions at once. It lets you operate these professions less expensively and with a lower threshold of commitment than operating a Crucible or a Starfarer would. But when you decide, hey, okay, I really do like repair, I really do like refueling and whatnot, your upgrade paths are to the Starfarer or to the Crucible.

Will Maiden · Designer

Yeah, you're going to need a big crew. You're going to need to pay them when you get the money for the job. So the costs, like you say, to operate a ship like that, where every hand is pulling together, you're expecting a big payday. So you don't get called out for the smaller jobs.

John Crewe · Designer

They're not exclusive options either. I can see an org, if there's a dedicated repair org out there, you call for help, my ship's damaged, they're probably going to send a Vulcan first because of the cost involved in getting a Crucible out there. The Vulcan will be there to do what it can, like patch up perhaps the hull breaches and holes, repair some of the basic components, but if after that everything's safe, secure, the atmosphere is refilling, but it's beyond the Vulcan's capabilities, then you've got the Crucible that can come out and finish the job.

John Crewe · Designer

Yeah, obviously it's way smaller than a Crucible or Starfarer. It's faster, more maneuverable. And for its size, it's definitely more armored than, say, a Cutlass, which is roughly in that size bracket. It's because it's going to be hanging around doing stuff. It does have the turrets on there to do defense. It needs to absorb those natural hits that are going to be in there. Whereas if you came storming in in a Crucible, as soon as you get anywhere near, there's this huge bulk of a ship. Everything's just going to be drawn to that, whereas the Vulcan sneaks...

Will Maiden · Designer

Makes itself less of a target.

John Crewe · Designer

Sneaking is not the right word. It's not a stealth ship. It's not a stealth fighter. It's not a space superhero repair ship.

Jared Huckaby · Host, Community

It's going to be able to get into and out of places far easier than the Starfarer or the Crucible.

Will Maiden · Designer

Which could be super handy when it's an asteroid field or something like that. You really don't want to be flying the Crucible through that.

John Crewe · Designer

Same for going down to planetside. The fuel cost and the degradation on your components from doing multiple re-entries in big ships is going to take its toll. And if you've called out repair for your M50 that's crashed on Daymar or something like that, you probably don't want to pay the repair bill for a Crucible to come and do that. You want something more in your price range.

Jared Huckaby · Host, Community

I don't think it is. No, there's no design or space for a spare utility mount for a tractor beam to drag anything with it. I'm sure some enterprising people will find a way to perhaps not tow but nudge things around.

John Crewe · Designer

They're specialized. They're all done by the same company, Saga Data Systems. So they do look similar, but they do perform different functions. Like the Reclaimer ones are there for salvage, cutting stuff up, which is not useful for a repair ship.

John Crewe · Designer

I would imagine you can, but the usability of them takes a severe dent. Naturally, the Vulcan has the ability to pipe fuel into it. The Reclaimer doesn't have that. So you could probably take the salvage drone out of the Reclaimer and put it in the Vulcan. It's all self-contained, so it's fine. They can carry stuff fine, but some of the more specialized functions they're going to struggle with.

Will Maiden · Designer

Yeah, because you've got a fuel line from the tank underneath to the drone, so you can fuel the drone up before sending it out. You could potentially have a salvage drone that takes fuel from wrecked ships and brings it back and then tops back up your tank. So you could potentially see a way where you would have a salvage drone useful as one of the four. If you have cargo drones on some ships or if you have other types of drones, it's like, well, I have no need of a repair drone because I can't send fuel to it and I can't put metals into it kind of thing. You're limiting yourself. But the option could still be there potentially.

John Crewe · Designer

Depends on the damage. Twice as many as half the amount.

Will Maiden · Designer

Yeah, I mean, you've got a tank with a capacity. You could be running on empty and you're like, I just need enough to get me by. So you might only need 10% of that tank to get someone out. Or they may need 50. We flew too close to the sun, quite literally. We're going to need new coolers and we're going to need fuel to get us all the way back to Port Olisar. And that might be 90% of the tank. Yeah, it's a piece of string kind of question.

John Crewe · Designer

I don't see it being a single ship, if that's the sort of loaded question, unless that ship has required absolutely everything. Like, I need all your fuel. I need complete repair as much as you can. My ammo is all out. That's probably an edge case thing.

Jared Huckaby · Host, Community

Ultimately, I think it's probably the kind of thing that gets figured out through game balance. When the day comes and the Vulcan gets introduced in the game, whatever values it has on that day will go through the same testing as everything else. So however many ships you can repair the day it gets introduced will not necessarily be the same number of ships you can repair a month later or a year after that.

Will Maiden · Designer

Yeah, absolutely. To speak to that point, we're never going to get to a situation where you empty the entire tank of fuel into a stranded ship and it's not even halfway home and then you've got to go back and get more fuel. We're going to make sure that we will be able to get you home to the nearest space base from a ship. At the bare minimum, you will be able to help someone get home.

Will Maiden · Designer

How would you cripple a ship, like actually do damage? Just take the missiles back off again. But I mean, the guy's like, well, where's my missiles? You promised me missiles. I've got 16 missiles, I need four more, and then all of a sudden I've got no missiles and this little cackling robot is flying off with them. Get back here. I wouldn't have thought we would allow them to have the ability to remove items. And I think that goes back to the logistics question of how do we take from our side and give to you, but not leave it as an open door, like, I'm going to turn my back and trust that you're going to put everything in the right place and not take anything for yourself kind of thing.

John Crewe · Designer

Yeah. If that sort of stuff happens, the whole reporting criminality system in game is there. That guy, that was a shady deal.

Jared Huckaby · Host, Community

I was thinking more of the hull repair drones that come and instead of repairing the hull, they just start stripping more hull away.

Will Maiden · Designer

Yeah, I mean, that's kind of the salvage, if you've swapped it for a salvage drone. Essentially, though, the way that salvage is, it's applying essentially damage to the hull as it scrapes the hull off. So if you're in a ship and you start taking damage, then that guy's going to get flagged as an enemy immediately. All cannons fire kind of thing.

John Crewe · Designer

It doesn't need to be actively flown. It really depends on the scenario. If you're doing it at the edge of atmosphere where gravity is taking effect, it's probably not the wisest time to leave the pilot's seat and start doing stuff. But no, you can fly it by yourself, you can park it up, turn around, jump in one of the support stations, do the drone stuff.

Will Maiden · Designer

Yeah, I hope you're not getting shot at.

John Crewe · Designer

Yeah, so the two support stations control the remote turrets and the drones. Obviously, there's four drones, two turrets, only two places to control it from. You've got to make some decisions about what you're going to do at one time. If you've read the Shipyard posts, which I highly recommend, there's a whole page about remote turrets and how we plan to allow players to essentially give AI control to them. So if you're a solo player, you probably want to take your computer, take out the blades that come with it by default, stick some remote control ones in there. So then those turrets are just automated defense and you can focus on doing repair.

John Crewe · Designer

You can have all four out at the same time, but if you've got two people on the two support stations, then only two can be actively controlled at a time. When I said four on one, that's like chain them up, say four in a row. There's only one fuel port.

Will Maiden · Designer

You can have one fueling, and while it's fueling, it's like, okay, that's actively fueling, now let me repair with this one.

John Crewe · Designer

Say I'm solo piloting my Vulcan. I go to the support stations. I program two to be fueling, one hydrogen, one quantum, one repair, one rearm. I control the hydrogen one first, fly it over, dock it on. Whilst that's doing that, I switch to the repair one, fly it over, start doing the repair, swap to the rearming one, that launches out, grabs a missile, sticks it on. The fuel one's probably done by now, so I'll fly that back and then fly the quantum one back out.

Will Maiden · Designer

So it's like hot seat, you're just jumping on it as it needs attention and then setting it up and then jumping to the next one.

John Crewe · Designer

If you've got another player, then obviously you can do twice as much. If you don't have a second player, then you can always hire NPCs to do that job for you, although how good they are is up to how much you decide to pay them.

Jared Huckaby · Host, Community

That still sounds like only two drones are out and active at a time, though. Am I missing something?

Will Maiden · Designer

I think they can all be out, but only two can be under direct control. So you need to be leaving the other two doing a task. You can make changes to two at a time. That's just for this ship; other ships may vary.

John Crewe · Designer

It can only help. So the drones will be flyable things, so they will have their own speed limits. So I wouldn't expect people to be afterburning whilst trying to have this little drone catch up to fuel them. So you'll be able to do it in motion, just at a considerate speed to each other. For the other actions, there's nothing stopping you launching your drones and the Vulcan just staying where it is and the drones go off. That ship could be flying around still, but it's going to get harder the more that person starts moving around.

John Crewe · Designer

Shields don't stop physical collisions with stuff, like ramming into stuff. I believe the lore of the shields is they just reduce the velocity of objects.

Will Maiden · Designer

It's like hitting something into water, all of a sudden it slows down.

John Crewe · Designer

Yeah, so that's why energy weapons sap shields: they have no mass. So they don't go through the shield because they've got no mass to slow down. It just all gets absorbed in, which in turn draws down the shields, whereas ballistics go through shields because they've got the mass to carry on, and they go much faster. So a drone going slowly through it should be fine.

Will Maiden · Designer

So I guess a shield wouldn't stop an EVA?

John Crewe · Designer

No, you can EVA through those.

Will Maiden · Designer

That kind of goes back to what we were saying before. It depends how damaged the ship is. Just a cockpit of the Hornet... We don't really have this kind of concept of 100% health. You have parts that are broken.

John Crewe · Designer

We talked about this loosely last time when I was on Reverse the Verse, about the concept of health and how it is at the moment, just a numerical value, isn't the long-term goal. It's the collection of the item abilities, some of its parts. So going back to 100% health, how damaged is it? Is it just lightly singed from atmospheric entry? Yeah, sure. Is it just the cockpit of the Hornet and everything else is gone? Probably not. That's beyond its capabilities.

Will Maiden · Designer

Yeah, if you've lost a wing, it's not going to help. But if you've just burnt the hell out of the wing, right, I can fix that. So it's all in degrees of how severe the damage is.

John Crewe · Designer

Yeah, if I've got a small hole in the hull, fill it up with the gunge. I'm secured.

John Crewe · Designer

Again, depends on the damage. What's the definition of effective? It will be able to do stuff on capital ships.

Will Maiden · Designer

It's a good time to clarify, to get into the mindset of, it's not just take three health packs and you're at full health again. It's localized, it's physicalized damage. Oh, I've burnt off the whole underside of my ship, so that means if I enter atmosphere or something, I'm going to have a really bad time of it. It's specific damage that's been done to a ship, is how it's the longer term plan for Star Citizen's damage model. So thinking about it in terms of, well, I've broken my engines, so I literally cannot move. And no matter how much you repair the hull, the engines are never going to get fixed. I'll still never be able to move kind of thing. So it's all the degrees of what broke on a capital ship. We've got the Crucible for, right, we need a new wing, you need a new thing, okay, we're going to need to call out the big boys. But if it's a case of we are venting oxygen, the bridge has got a big hole in it...

John Crewe · Designer

The rear ramp's ripped off.

Jared Huckaby · Host, Community

In one of the marketing images, we actually show several Vulcans assisting a Javelin.

Will Maiden · Designer

Right. I mean, if you've taken torpedoes through the sides and everything's vented and there's hull breaches everywhere, they will fix that right up and get you flying again, get you back into the fight.

John Crewe · Designer

Yeah, I don't know if you can see it in the image, but if you follow those lights all the way back into the recess of the Javelin, you've got the two huge torpedo launchers. Right at the back of there, there's this really cool slit window along the whole height of that recess with a little lift in there that goes between the decks. So you can be at the front of the ship looking out of this window whilst those two torpedo tubes are just lobbing.

John Crewe · Designer

It's sort of similar to if you as a ship came under fire. They don't have weapons, they don't have countermeasures, so their best defense is to get back within range of the Vulcan, and then you swap from controlling that drone to go dock back in there, get back in your hatch, and once you've programmed it to do that, swap over to the turret and start engaging whatever was shooting at your drone.

Will Maiden · Designer

Short answer, yeah. I think that's the one thing, anywhere that needs it.

John Crewe · Designer

Yeah. They're not particularly heavy things. So whilst they do have small thrusters on them, they can still work in atmosphere.

Jared Huckaby · Host, Community

Yeah, there's a ton of versatility for the Vulcan right there, because the Vulcan, with its greater maneuverability, flying through atmosphere, once the full atmospheric flight model is in and the VTOL engines come online and people aren't just using maneuvering thrusters to hover in atmosphere like they're doing, when all that system comes online, the Vulcan's going to be much more effective in atmosphere than I imagine the Starfarer is.

John Crewe · Designer

Vehicle items are much smaller than the rest, so you can fit a lot more in that cargo bay. And from all the stuff I've seen on the forums and Reddit of people going on little expeditions around planets in their rovers and Greycats and Cyclones at some point, they all have components in, just like the ships. So they're going to suffer from the same item degradation and wear. They're going to wear out over time if you're doing stupid things.

Will Maiden · Designer

The amount of people thrashing those vehicles around. We'll be seeing sandstorms and atmospheric effects like that. The harsh realities of frontier life are going to require some support. And I think the Vulcan getting down to the planet and lending a hand is something that a big, weighty, huge flying factory or fueling station is not going to be interested in. Especially when, oh no, I'm out of fuel, I can't get back to base camp.

Jared Huckaby · Host, Community

The Vulcan specifically is not getting prioritized over anything else at this time. But this question goes more to why do we do some ships before others? And that comes to what's available in the Persistent Universe, in the gameplay systems. There are two driving forces behind how we prioritize our ships. One is, of course, the needs for Squadron 42. The second one is gameplay systems in the Persistent Universe that come online. I know a lot of this goes to, for instance, the Carrack. A lot of people, where's the Carrack? And the Carrack is a giant exploration ship designed for multi-system travel and exploration. And those gameplay elements don't exist in the Persistent Universe right now. So it would be pretty silly to prioritize the Carrack at this moment, given what's available in the Persistent Universe. But of course, we try to keep those things in parity whenever we can.

Will Maiden · Designer

We're looking at salvage and repair kind of hand in hand right now. We've got some salvage ships coming through. We need the systems to support that. And, well, we need the flip side of that. More and more now that the requirements for refueling and repairing and rearming ships are in the field, the need has become, well, we need a ship for this, but not the huge thing. We need to get this gameplay in and then we can balance it and make it work.

John Crewe · Designer

There's also the human resource aspect of it as well. Everyone on the ship art side and the whole ship team has time allocated for each ship in the schedule. If something happens that throws one of those departments out, either everyone just stops and waits for that department to catch up for it to be finished, or they move on to something that can fit in that gap. Say a two-month period opens up for one of the vehicle art teams because something's happened on another feature that has required another team to go on that. You've now got that little two-month gap, and a small newer ship that's been concepted recently could just nicely fit in there to keep everyone continuously working.