Let's compare the Apollo to the Cutlass Red. Why would somebody want an Apollo instead of a Cutlass Red, and why would somebody want a Cutlass Red instead of an Apollo?
TL;DRThe Cutlass Red is a smaller, faster, armed one-bed combat ambulance, the Apollo a small clinic and the Endeavor a big hospital; all three are meant to be complementary, and the Cutlass Red's production was pushed back to settle this.
So basically, there's two things about that. Obviously, the Cutlass Red, the last time we talked about it, was when it was way smaller. Now it's way bigger. But the intention stays the same, which is that it only has one bed inside. So it's not something where you can take a lot of patients. It's something where you get on the scene, you get someone. You can either go somewhere to a hospital, for example, or to an Apollo, to an Endeavor, this kind of stuff. Yeah, it's a bit complicated with that. And the other thing is that the Cutlass Red obviously is based on the Cutlass, which is a pretty big fighter now, a medium fighter. So while it won't be as powerful as the Cutlass Black, because, well, it's not a fighter...
It loses the turret, so it loses a couple of guns.
It will still be more powerful. I'd say it's a bit more like you go into a hot zone with the Cutlass rather than going there with an Apollo. Obviously, the Medivac variant of the Apollo is pretty good, but it's more: you've got an emergency, you need to go there, you need to escape quickly.
Yeah, the sort of methodology we use internally is the Cutlass Red is your ambulance, or sort of your combat ambulance. It's very small scale, but it's faster, it's got the armament. The Apollo is like a little doctor's clinic where it can treat a small amount of things, and the Endeavor is your big city hospital. And all three are completely valid. Not everyone wants to have the big hospital. Not everyone wants to have just an ambulance. Some people want all three. That's fine. They all work together in the same career, and you can go up and down the chain as you please, because if you want to just jump in and just ferry one injured person around at a time, the Apollo is sort of overkill for that, whereas you might get a medical mission where you've got 400 people to transfer within a time limit. You could probably do that in your Cutlass Red, but you're going to have to be going fast and not make a mistake or not get interdicted during that time.
Technically, the Cutlass is still the starter because it's only one bed, but it doesn't mean that you can't use it for all your medical career.
The Cutlass Red was actually due to go into production around the time we were starting this process. And we pushed it back because of this ship, because we wanted to solve a lot of the unanswered questions with medical gameplay that we just hadn't really thought about. And rather than just start the Cutlass Red and sort of put ourselves into a corner, we pushed that back. It's still some months away before we start doing it. We got our ducks in a row with this, and then we can work out where does the Cutlass Red fit against this? Where does the Apollo fit against that? And make sure that they're both complementary to each other, not that one just blasts the other one out of the water.