Mark Gibson · Lead Vehicle Content Designer

[On the 'Nursa' nickname] Only heard about that recently. I wish we'd figured it out during the actual development, because we always nickname ships when they're going through development, just because it happens organically with the team. We never came up with Nursa, and I love it.

Ben Curtis · Vehicle and Weapons Art Director

I think it's mixed, really, because as we've already spoken quite a lot about, it's about that schedule Jenga, or Tetris, that you've got to try and play to get things to work together. It does tie into also bringing ships up to our current standard as well, because a lot of the time, going back and revisiting other ships to bring them up to the current standard, it's not a short amount of time, it's not a short amount of investment that goes into it. The Retaliator is an example. A lot of things have changed since that ship was made, and internally we're like, oh, it's like an onion: you take one layer off, you're like, oh, we need to do... okay, that layer comes off, you're like, oh no, that means we need to do that. And before you know it, you're almost back to square one.

John Crewe · Vehicle Director

It's the same with the Hull C, where we had to limit what we did, because then you started noticing more. Restoring an old car.

Ben Curtis · Vehicle and Weapons Art Director

Yeah, but you want to retain some of its original character as well. You don't want to go in there and make a Mark II. You want to build on it. But sorry, with the variants: if we're bringing stuff up to current standards and we're making a variant at the same time, it becomes a little bit easier, because you get more from the same one. Like I think you were saying earlier, when people have got into that particular zone for that particular vehicle or art style, whatever it is, it's quicker.

Cory Bamford · Senior Lead Vehicle Artist

You're already there in the files, in the guts of it. It's not too much extra work to sprinkle some extra time on it.

Ben Curtis · Vehicle and Weapons Art Director

So I think we are getting a little bit more for our money by doing it that way. We'll often see a post or we'll be chatting and we'll be like, oh, it'd be great if we did... a Crusader jalopy, or a Cutter bounty hunting ship or whatever it is. There's lots of things that we talk around between ourselves because we're like, oh, that'd be super cool. And sometimes those things are, oh, actually, that'd be super cool and it fits. And sometimes it's, oh, that'd be super cool, we'll put it in the bank of ideas that we could do when we get time, when we get to it. But it's a big balancing act between what the game needs, what we want to do as a team, and what we're asked to do from other departments.

John Crewe · Vehicle Director

Variants are a great sort of new starter task as well, as their first real meaty project. We talked about this briefly at CitizenCon, that we had lost a lot of people from the team over the last year and we've been rebuilding. So Montreal, their first task was the two Cutter variants. The Nursa was someone's first project. Same for the Firebird, and then there will be more. And again, they're great things to... Here's an existing ship. You can see how it all works. We want you to change X, Y, Z. You get to see the whole process, get something out the door, and then you're ready for the next big thing start to finish. So Montreal did the Cutters and then went on to the Zeuses. So the Zeuses will be their first full start to finish, but they ramped up with the Cutters.

Cory Bamford · Senior Lead Vehicle Artist

I would just add to that that it's great when the ship's fairly up to date. The gold standard passes tend to require a significant amount of weird CIG knowledge, I guess I would call it. You need a lot of understanding of how our systems work, just understanding really the in-depth stuff of the ship and how to take it apart and put it back together, right? Newer stuff, you've got a fresh start, I guess, or at least something more tidy to work with, more up to date with our current standards. So you're building upon something that's already quite polished. Whereas if you're taking something that's quite old, the standards have changed, the way we do things has changed, and you have to know the good practices to recognize the bad practice.

Ben Curtis · Vehicle and Weapons Art Director

You don't want people to learn the bad way of doing things. You want people to learn the right way of doing things.

Ben Curtis · Vehicle and Weapons Art Director

To be honest, even AAA games now take years and years. So it's not even like our life cycle is particularly long compared to a lot of other games that are a third or quarter of the scale of what we do. But a lot of the time you develop pipelines and processes and you lock that in. You get to a certain point in that game development and you lock it in and go, right, this is it, we're finishing it. Whereas obviously with our game, we have the luxury of constantly evolving our tech and our pipeline processes, and you can hopefully see the improvements with the latest patch as some of that stuff's come online. It really makes a massive difference to our player base. So we absolutely want to be at that cutting edge of making the best we can. So our processes do change, our quality standards change, our visual detail levels change. And yeah, we're always trying to push that stuff forward.