With regards to the increase in ship sizes, I.E Idris, are some of the smaller capital ships still going to be capable of landing planetside. If they can when will we be able to actually walk in and around them. I've been jonesing to see what the Idris has become since its transformation.asked by Ezreail

I've been waiting for this question this is a cool one.

Great question. We are discussing that now. However for the most part, the, we are deciding which ships are planetside landing capable or not when we design the ships. One interesting topic that came up was, for some of the snub nose or smaller fighters, we are deciding to either make them Quantum Travel capable or atmospheric landing capable. As a trade off between for having such a small ship you need to pick one that suits the needs that you are looking for.This is especially important when we have ships that are capable of carrying smaller ships. The Connie is an example of one, though the Merlin doesn't actually function on it yet, but when it does, you'll get the capabilities of what the Merlin is able to do when that comes online. For other ships that have snub nosed fighters for example or a carrier ship you can decide Well you know what I really wanted to park this carrier outside of a planet and then go down to the planet surface using all these smaller atmospheric landing capable ships.Or what I really want are a bunch of say like taxi style vehicles that allow you to shoot across the galaxy and then meet up with other ships very quickly. You'll need to make a decision. So as we design each ship we are deciding whether or not they are Quantum Travel capable and atmospheric landing capable. So these are things we're deciding and it's on a ship by ship basis.When will we get to see this? Well that's a great question! We're still, we're working on these we're making these ships as fast as possible however all of the ships that are medium size or larger are definitely going to have interiors that you can walk around in. I discussed earlier things like being able to access the components from the inside. That's going to be a big thing and so yes there will be interiors that you can walk around with, walk around in. And then interact with other crew members, components, systems. There will be standards things we have like beds, bathrooms, etcDV: We want to give players a reason to walk around these large ships. A reason why you want to walk down this hallway and open this door and other than just, besides having the reason of just having a large ship. We want to give you guys a reason to walk down that hall, open the door, access this panel. Apart from just being for that reasonKT: And then we'll need to make decisions such as how do we make modular components for these ships so, at least on a ship level for well when we create a ship like an Idris, it's impossible to fill every square inch of that thing with custom geos so we need to figure out what a standard hallway is, what a standard room is like, what the engineering station is going to be like, what the, if there's an engine housing room, if there's a cargo area that we can make modular and place on several parts of the ship if there are landing areas for that ship how do we figure.We make choices so that we can make a ship that's functional and is within reason schedule wise because we want to create the best as quickly as possible these are things we consider when we are designing and ultimately building the ship from nothingness to something that we can actually see in the gameDV: Let me give two examples. For those who are anime fans look at the Cowboy Bebop anime series. you've got the Bebop ship that carries: spike's, swordfish. And you've got also Faye and Jet's smaller ships. They use the Bebop through Warp Gates carrying those ships even though the Bebop can land trans-atmospherically it still has smaller ships that it can with it.But if you look at something like Battlestar Galactica where they have giant fleets of ships and some of them are orbital space stations that are jump capable but something that is shaped like a ring or like an orbital station is not going to be able to land so you want to have shuttles and lighter ships, well they're called lighters, that can go inbetween ship to ship or trans-atmospherically up and down.We'll even have orbital docking yards where you get up from there and you take a taxi or a shuttle back down to the surface. It's ultimately going to be decided by what that gameplays need is, what the ships functionality is going to be is, what the role that ship is going to fill. So ultimately there's going to be an ultimate large size of what ships can land something like...

I don't think we've made that decision yet. I think we're going to decide on those capabilities based on the role of the ships. "What is that ship made for? What is the reason to own that ship?". Then we'll make a decision about those particular characteristics at that pointDV: Right. I can figure something like a Bengal Carrier trying to make a landing would cause major atmospheric problems.