And how do you approach designing these ships? Especially since you are going with a Newtonian physics model in the game. So especially with the really big ones, and having all these smaller ships in the vicinity, and I'm assuming you'll often have planets or moons or stars in the backdrop… how do you, sort of, design these ships, and balance gameplay around them?asked by Pramath
TL;DRShips are designed through a shared pipeline of art, tech design, engineering and gameplay, with each manufacturer given its own character and the flight control system tuned to feel like a realistic yet fun simulation.
Sure, yeah. That- the ships are a very exciting pipeline for Star Citizen. It was one of the earliest- we knew we were making spaceships, obviously (laughs). So that was one of the first things we developed and focused a lot of time on. And as time has gone on, we've grown a lot better at making them. We've gotten the right amount of staff and talent, which is an incredible talent here at Cloud Imperium, that is all focused on making ships not just match the design of that ship and how it fits into our universe, but also we some very invested, very smart, and very talented engineers on our staff, and Chris himself, all of whom understand what it takes to make you feel like you're flying an actual spaceship. There are very few people in our world who actually know what it feels like to fly a spaceship-
– yeah, maybe a couple hundred!
– Yeah! So we're working within the boundary of physics. Space physics tend to be easier than atmospheric physics. But we have a couple, we have several developers and engineers that are focusing on how to make this feel like a simulation- how would it feel if I got into my cockpit and flew off this planet, any planet, and enjoyed a space flight? So in the designing aspect, everyone's involved from start to finish. We've figured out what ship and manufacturer makes the most sense, and what kind of ship should go with what manufacturer. You know, like you buy a Mercedes-Benz when you are looking for something, but not a Chevy, they'll all have different aspects to what they are. We want to do the same with our manufacturers of the future. So we start with the designing idea of that ship, and we have our pipeline set up and established, it's a very clean pipeline that we are all very proud of. And so it goes to the pipeline- art, tech design, engineering, gameplay implications, the features, systems, how they all interact. And we've got IFCS, which is our intelligent flight control system. That is essentially driving- you know, you tell your ship to do something, and then IFCS reacts, as it should in a simulation. We're always working to refine it, tweak it, make it more realistic but also more fun. So we're always working on balancing those things to make it feel like what we'd like it to feel like.