The developers cover the upcoming Argo, a snub ship with three pod options, two ready for 2.5, and give status updates on the Caterpillar, Carrack, Reclaimer and Constellation Phoenix. They also touch on starter ships, the in-game starmap, network improvements, merchandise and show format changes.
TL;DRThe next sale is the Argo, which they say isn't really a concept sale since it will be ready with the next release and two of its three variants will be offered.
Ben LesnickDirector of Community Engagement, Online Strategy, and Spaceships
Not necessarily a concept sale, but since this is the first time we've sold it, it's all the sales at once, because it's going to be ready to go with 2.5. We're not seeing this as a big ship rollout, it's more of like, hey, here's something you guys might like to play around with. Certainly there will be roles for the Argo, we'll talk a whole lot about them in the coming weeks. We've asked in the past, and we get these petitions, and it's like, sell the Argo, sell the Argo. So the Argo is coming. I believe there are three different variants of the Argo. Two of them are going to be ready, and we will be offering those two.
And folks have seen the Argo in the Morrow Tour. So if you haven't seen the Morrow Tour from CitizenCon 2015, you can check that out on our YouTube page.
Ben LesnickDirector of Community Engagement, Online Strategy, and Spaceships
Somebody asks about the Carrack every single week. No change on the Carrack, I'm sorry. It's the next one they're going to be looking at after the Cat gets put to bed.
It's looking very, very, very cool. Tour of the UK office yesterday, you saw Nathan Dearsley talk about the giant ship team they have over there right now. 21 artists, I think he said, working on ships.
BL
Ben LesnickDirector of Community Engagement, Online Strategy, and Spaceships
And a lot of those artists are working on Squadron 42 specific ships, the Vanduul fleet, the Bengals you saw, the other capital ships, the military ships and so on. And the good news is that there will be a point when they are done with those and then we get them for Star Citizen.
Ben LesnickDirector of Community Engagement, Online Strategy, and Spaceships
None that I'm aware of. I don't think we have a baseball cap for this summer. We have a couple shirts. Big Benny's shirt sample just came in for that. But no, unfortunately, Ally is not on the show today. We would ask her. But I don't think a baseball cap immediately. But we do have these cool lanyards. These lanyard samples just came for everybody. These are not a thing we're selling, but they're there for conventions. We're giving them away at CitizenCon, I believe, and Gamescom.
Ben LesnickDirector of Community Engagement, Online Strategy, and Spaceships
Not yet. Once we have the updates to the base ships done, we've got a couple. We have the Aurora, 300 and Cutlass. Once we have those done, then we're going to move on to the variants. When Chris Smith rebuilt the Constellation, one of the reasons it took such a long time and there's so much detail is that we built it around the idea of easily switching to variants. So it's not another eight months for the Phoenix once we get there. It's a bigger job.
Ben LesnickDirector of Community Engagement, Online Strategy, and Spaceships
I do not have a price yet, but we will have that for you shortly. We try to do it exactly one week out. With it being attached to 2.5, one of the good things about our regular concepts that we do with our brochure and everything is we can pick an exact date when we know what's going to be out. With something that's going to be with 2.5, it's a little floaty.
Fit questions are hard until both ships are built. I don't know the answer to that question. When we size these things out in concept, it's the most educated guess you can make and whatnot, but until you're building it and you have to put people in it and walk around, you have to see how everything feels, things get bigger, like the Idris and the Starfarer. So hard to say until we build both of them.
BL
Ben LesnickDirector of Community Engagement, Online Strategy, and Spaceships
Although I will say we get a lot better about it. You look at the early ships, and it's 50 concept passes to get it right, and now it's like three or four. We've learned a lot, but there's always unknowns.
The Grabby Hands was a concept. It was a concept that Calix Reneau put together to deal with cargo stuff, but it wasn't the only concept. It just was the concept that we showed.
BL
Ben LesnickDirector of Community Engagement, Online Strategy, and Spaceships
They've got some exciting stuff they're working on in that ballpark, but I can't give it away, I'm sorry.
The station that we're on is what we use for Loremaker's Guide to the Galaxy, and it's a replica of the station that we're using for our Gamescom show floor booth live streaming.
TL;DRThey say future format is still up in the air, but they like the rotating studio focus because it gives teams more time to prepare footage, and they'll probably keep it.
Things are still up in the air. We're trying a lot of new things. Right now, I think we're really happy with the rotating kind of thing.
BL
Ben LesnickDirector of Community Engagement, Online Strategy, and Spaceships
I like it a lot. I think that's a good way to do it because then each studio has some pride in it. They're going to show the coolest stuff. I think it helps everybody.
It's ultimately the same amount. Actually, it's still more. Instead of getting four weeks of two minutes of talking about some random stuff, now you're getting like a full eight minutes dedicated. So it's still the same amount of stuff, but now with a rotating thing, they have weeks to pull together footage and stuff and make it look cooler. So we really like everything that that's doing for us. It gives everybody more time to add visuals to what they're talking about so they're not under that weekly crunch. And I think it's just an overall better presentation. So I think we'll probably keep that. But everything's on the table right now.
Part of what they're working on is a new in-game interface and stuff. So yes, what you see in Crusader right now is temporary. It was a necessary thing to do to begin building Crusader and to begin getting it in your hands and to begin testing everything. But like many of the UIs, it is not the final.
BL
Ben LesnickDirector of Community Engagement, Online Strategy, and Spaceships
We like to call that initial implementation. In your head, you imagine computer science to be like a factory. You know what the final thing is. You put it piece, piece, piece together, and then it's done. The reality is it's much more experimental. So we do an initial implementation that's minimum requirements. It's starting to connect systems together, and you build on top of that. So it's an essential part of the process to have that early version, but it's not what will be in the final product.
I actually asked that question yesterday. I haven't gotten an answer yet. So I'll post somewhere once I get the answer because I was curious about that too.
TL;DRThe speakers joke about the cause, then admit they don't know why the decorations are there and think they are probably leftovers from before the studio expanded into the floor.
I like that you can't be 100% sure. If you've interacted with Ray Ruecroft, you go, well, that might be... No, I actually don't know why those are there. I think they are left over.
BL
Ben LesnickDirector of Community Engagement, Online Strategy, and Spaceships
We have Skype calls with Ray from time to time, and we see behind him, and I've always kind of wondered, was this just here or is this the current British decorating taste? Either one is possible, but the former is much more likely. Foundry 42 has been expanding leaps and bounds over the past two years, and they bought the floor under them and the floor above them. Like filling something with foam and it just edges out and you have to have more foam holding area.
Next week. Actually, if you remember, going back to our April Fool's Day prank or whatever you want to call it, we revealed 20 seconds of the Ballad of Big Benny's, which was a full-length music video for Big Benny's that we've been working on for the last three months, and it's done and we're finally ready to share it with the community. So tune in next week for ATV 100 Part 3 and you'll see and hear a full-length Ballad of Big Benny's, our first Star Citizen music video.
Ben LesnickDirector of Community Engagement, Online Strategy, and Spaceships
I think you will be seeing that in the not too distant future, but probably not in ATV. In fact, I remember last month in the report, they were like, no, we don't want to talk too much about it because we want to wait. They're working on something cool.
Ben LesnickDirector of Community Engagement, Online Strategy, and Spaceships
Sub flair is next week. I guess, technically it would be today because the first was... I guess this is technically the second, right? But no, it will be next week. It's also in 2.5 rather than 2.4, so it's going to be one of those ones that does not appear until 2.5 hits. But we'll do the post and all that next week, and attributes and so on.
Ben LesnickDirector of Community Engagement, Online Strategy, and Spaceships
We absolutely should do that. I mean, not as a mean thing, but yes, and I pointed this out on Batgirl's show yesterday, if you were an Idris owner or a Javelin owner or one of those big ships, you do not need to buy an extra Argo. You've got one in your ship already.
It's a snub. Again, check out the Morrow Tour from last year's CitizenCon. You'll see it's very small.
BL
Ben LesnickDirector of Community Engagement, Online Strategy, and Spaceships
It's sort of cool though. I remember watching the intro they added to Super Wing Commander where they took the 3D model of the shuttlecraft from BioForge and had you arriving on the carrier. And I was like, I wish you could see that more. I wish you could fly that. I know that's a very specific-to-Ben desire.
TL;DRYes, more starter ships are coming, though the speakers say they're redefining what a starter ship is, with tiers and some larger ships from the starter poll, possibly changed, and probably nothing as entry-level as existing ones.
BL
Ben LesnickDirector of Community Engagement, Online Strategy, and Spaceships
Yes. I will add though that we're kind of redefining what we think of as a starter ship. We have the idea of a tier one, tier two, different levels of starter ships. I don't know if we'll have anything as entry level as the Mustang or the Aurora, other than other Mustangs and Auroras. Someone let loose that we're going to be looking at some of the other bigger starter ships from... You guys know. You know what I'm talking about.
Ben LesnickDirector of Community Engagement, Online Strategy, and Spaceships
The list of ships. There's some of the others from the starter poll. And I will also say that they're not exactly the same ships as they were when we did that poll. There have been some enhancements, changes. They've had some work done.
No hard ETA. I was talking to John Erskine about the Austin ATV next week, yesterday, and he's looking at getting some more information about that, but nothing like a date or an ETA.
BL
Ben LesnickDirector of Community Engagement, Online Strategy, and Spaceships
It's one of those things where if we were in a position to know how long it is to fix this problem, that would be great, and it probably wouldn't be a problem in the first place. It's more of an analyze, figure out, solve, so it's not construction, it's treatment.
I have no idea what they're talking about. It always makes me curious when people suggest something is more RSI than Origin or something is more Anvil than Aegis and stuff. I'm always curious.
BL
Ben LesnickDirector of Community Engagement, Online Strategy, and Spaceships
Yes. You can make whatever merch you want for yourself. We love that stuff.
BL
Ben LesnickDirector of Community Engagement, Online Strategy, and Spaceships
Make it for yourself. We also tend to give away posters at our big events. So if you went to Gamescom a couple years ago or any of the PAXs, we usually had posters to give out.
Ben LesnickDirector of Community Engagement, Online Strategy, and Spaceships
Possibly, but not a priority. Weapons is a little bit more compelling than clothing, but in general, the hope is to move everything into the game economy rather than working it like the ships do right now.
Well, the one in Ship Shape was sent to us by the artist. So they're still working on it. I know they have not finalized the look and feel of the command module yet. So chances are they're both old, or one could be what they end up going with, or not. So still up in the air.
Ben LesnickDirector of Community Engagement, Online Strategy, and Spaceships
I think we have enough volunteers for Gamescom, but reach out, absolutely. It's always good to have backups, and we'd love to hang out with anybody at Gamescom. You don't have to volunteer.
TL;DRJared says he loves the DX Racer chair and sits in it all day, though his colleague's orange one is more comfortable, and the different lines vary in firmness and padding.
I love this chair. We have two DX Racers here in the office. I have one, and Jeremiah, our character concept artist, Jeremiah Lee, has one. His is actually better. It's orange, so it's naturally better. It's more comfortable to sit in. We got ours free from DX Racer with the agreement that I would sit in it in the show. It's very comfortable. I love it tremendously, even though Jeremiah's is better. So they're all different. They have a bunch of different lines with different firmnesses and padding and stuff. I don't know which one Jeremiah has, but I like his better. But this is still a fantastic chair. I sit in this chair all day.
BL
Ben LesnickDirector of Community Engagement, Online Strategy, and Spaceships
So in answer to your question, some chairs are better than others, but these ones are pretty good.
I don't know specifically for Dragonfly owners, but I approve of a Fonzie-style jacket.
BL
Ben LesnickDirector of Community Engagement, Online Strategy, and Spaceships
Well, one of my favorite things about the original game is that you seem to be wearing a cool leather flight jacket, and yet you also eject out into space in it.
Tune in to ATV next week for the Austin edition. We were just talking about doing a quick update on the Herald for that.
BL
Ben LesnickDirector of Community Engagement, Online Strategy, and Spaceships
If you're a subscriber, I think we posted a couple Herald shots to the vault last week from the current broadcast in Austin. There's also an image or two in the monthly report coming out later today.
It's one of those things where as much as the accusation that development follows marketing gets thrown around, it's the opposite. We put that stuff up when they provide it and it's ready to show. So they're still working on that stuff.