Elwin Bachiller Jr. · Lead Vehicle Artist

It's in the works. The Crucible is a really complicated ship.

Ben Lesnick · Director of Community Engagement and Online Strategy

Absolutely. The Crucible is the penultimate ship in our most recent wave of fan-voted designs. It is a repair ship. It's designed at its base to be able to repair military fighters in the field. So it's sized so that a Hornet or a Gladiator or anything of that size will fit in its rear bay, which is kind of inspired by the shuttle. You see the NASA orbiter, the back part, I'm sure there's a more technical term, but with the clamshell doors, and it can bring in a satellite. It has the same Canadarm-style grabbers and can bring a fighter in. For a larger ship, it kind of saddles up to it and repairs it in open space. It's a very complex ship. There's a lot of movement with it and a lot of game mechanics in it that we have to have right. Todd Papy's been in charge of the design process for repair in general. You guys probably saw some repair in the CitizenCon demo. It's not like that. That's kind of our shortcut repair for having a system in right now; the actual system's gonna be a bunch more complex and you'll learn all about it when the Crucible hits. No ETA, but it's almost certainly the next one. We're very happy with the design now. What else can I say about it? It's modular. The back bay section can be removed and replaced with something else. And it was an initial concept by Ryan Church, who was just fantastic. He's been with the project ever since the very start. He did the Constellation and many of our most favorite ships. And it's another cool ship from him.