There has been a lot of discussion about the ship pipe line and how you guys are getting into a mode of pumping ships out at a regular basis. Do you expect this "pipeline" to ramp down after the game's release or do you expect the current rate of ships (or increased volume) once the PU goes live? Follow-up question: do all the alien ships follow the same pipeline or are you expecting some to be shortcut in some way (not player pilot capable)?asked by KinShadow
TL;DRThey won't make ships just to pump them out; whether the pace rises or falls depends on the game's needs, and some alien and Squadron 42 ships will be built without player-piloting capability.
Actually I do have something for that. The main-... I won't say "the main"... One of the objectives we want to keep our eye on is that we don't want to make superfluous ships that just serve no purpose. So we're not going to be popping out ships just for the sake of pumping out ships. We want to make sure that any ships we do make and design serve some kind of functionality.
Or serve a particular play-style... yeah, exactly.
Right. And that way, I wouldn't say that it's going to increase or decrease. Like I said we have a roadmap for what ships we'd like to introduce, and we're going to hopefully continue building more ships. Whether that's going to increase or decrease is going to only depend on what the needs of the game are. We may find that we may need a mid-sized ship, or some kind of corvette, or a battle cruiser, or one that's a large capital class ship that's designed specifically for exploring. We may find the need for that. And then based on what variants we can base or find off of that. So it's a question that I don't think really has a solid answer, because we have a lot ships already in being designed and having been in the hangar. I think it's gonna be based purely on what the needs of the game are.
Yeah. And to the follow-up question point-... that was well put, Darian... "Do all the alien ships follow the same pipeline or are you expecting some shortcut in some way?" Uh yeah, some of the Vanduul ships for example, and some of the ships that are planned for Squadron 42 exclusively (at least at first) are going to be designed without player-piloting capability. So they don't have to have fully fleshed out interiors, they don't have to have fully functional cockpits - 'cause for a lot of these you're only going to be seeing them as you blow them up or they blow you up, from the outside.