What's up with the F8 Lightning?

Well, I don't think anyone's actually read the Concierge booklet, so you don't get the F8 Lightning until Squadron's out. And our actual idea is there's a few ships that we want to have you play Squadron and if you get to the point in Squadron that you get to fly them, then you get the badge to be able to get that ship in the Persistent Universe. So if you're not Concierge at a very high level, you'll still be able to get the F8C, you just will have to have played Squadron far enough along, kind of near the end, it's sort of a little bit like Wing Commander where you move up in flying different ships as you get a little further on. And if you do that, you'll earn the badge, and I think this probably relates to another question that you have down here, and it will enable you to be able to purchase that in the PU after you've completed Squadron. So the idea is, essentially, Squadron has to come out and then it will be available and then you can either earn it by playing Squadron all the way through or as a thank you to some of the people that have really helped us make this game develop at a really supportive and incredibly enthusiastic level. We wanted to do a couple of nice things to say thank you, because we wouldn't be sitting here having this discussion, we wouldn't be building the game that we're building, we wouldn't be building Squadron to the level that we're building it to without the incredibly enthusiastic support, so that's kind of the idea of the Concierge program is that the people that sort of, you know, really, I don't know whether I say all in, but are more, you know, I mean everyone should, whether it's you just getting a basic ship, or you're doing a lot more, everything's appreciated and it's enabling us to do what we're doing and no one needs to do anything more than the very basic ship, but for the people that sort of go above and beyond, we want to have like a couple of fun things for them, a couple of items that, you know, it's kind of like a bit more sort of cool and flary, not necessarily something you can only get if you're that, because like I said, you'll be able to earn the F8C by completing Squadron and getting to the point where you actually get to fly an F8A in the game.

Exactly, so that brings, that's a good follow point there. This is the F8C that we're talking about, similar to the Hornet F7C. The F8 that folks have been wondering about for the last several years is equivalent to the F7A, it's a military grade ship that's strictly for Squadron.

Yeah, so I mean it's not the A, like the new F7A, which if you play Squadron, you'll also get an opportunity to earn the badge for, and then potentially get one of those in the persistent universe, but they're all, they have military grade equipment, which is a notch above some of the civilian grade equipment, so the Cs, whether it's the Hornet C or the F8C, they're still pretty awesome ships, but they don't quite have the sort of higher grade, more durable equipment that the military A version does. That's not to say in the game that you couldn't potentially figure out a way to get one or get the equipment to upgrade your ship to get there, but they don't sell the military grade stuff on the show floor.