We seem to get some insight into the pipeline from you in this past Ten for the Developers. Could you elaborate more on the ship pipeline, and what the method behind the madness is of putting ships out like the Caterpillar when there is no cargo in the game?asked by Eth9

There's all sorts of different reasons for things we do. Caterpillar is because we have gotten to that stage of the ships. We just built the Starfarer, so that prototyped all the technology we need for ships that are that size. We just finished the Drake style guide and component kit parts for building ships. We're doing the Herald right now. We built the [unclear] and all the Drake ships at once. So you'll tend to see ships bunch up like that. Sometimes there are Squadron 42-specific needs that we can't call out directly. But usually ships happen for a reason. We're also not too far from cargo. And one of the things we're going to need for cargo is ships to fly around.

Like with most things, there's more than one reason for anything worth doing.