When you started this, we had only shown two Crusader Industries ships before, the Genesis Starliner (2015) and the Hercules Starlifter (2019), with four years of game development in between. How do you reconcile those two when you start concepting a new one?
TL;DRThe team borrowed the Starliner's raised midsection and anvil-like top shape and the Hercules' air-intake inspiration, and explored asymmetry, which is why several of the designs are asymmetrical.
Well, we looked at the base shape of the Starliner, and it had almost like a hump in the middle section, and then it kind of looks like an anvil from the very top. So that's what we did with a few of these. We've had this midsection that's slightly raised in the middle and then kind of just spread out further towards the back. So it kind of gives that same appeal as the Starliner. And the Hercules had these sort of air intakes, and we got some of the inspiration from that from real life aircraft. So that's what we did for these ones. But as you can see, we did quite a lot of investigation work with these because originally it was going to go really far out, because we also had in the back of our minds asymmetry as well. So that's why there's a few of these that are asymmetrical, because it's what we wanted to go for.