What actually separates a military vehicle from a civilian vehicle? Is this only a lore thing or does it actually have some role in design and even art?

It's no one thing. There isn't a single defining feature that goes, this makes this thing a military ship. It's a combination. So let's talk about the gameplay side first. Traditionally, they are obviously more military-minded, clue's in the name, so they tend to be more focused on offensive firepower than the equivalent civilian ships, so they might have more guns, they might have a larger size of guns. The good example we have is the F7A Mark II Hornet, which is in Squadron. That is, on the face of it, a snazzier, sharper looking Hornet. But actually, all of its weapon mounts are plus one size. So it absolutely rinses through targets. And then you also have the defensive side. So they might be more armored. They might have more countermeasures. Again, they're designed to be used in military operations where you are expected to be both attacking and being attacked. So they're geared for that. On the lore side, and maybe a little on the actual art side, military ships in the real world now have very different things to... we'll use ships as the analogy. On a military ship, you would have the captain's quarters and the XO's quarters and a brig. You're probably not going to have a brig on a civilian cargo hauler because that's not what civilians do. So the facilities on board are different. They will bring gameplay in the future. But it's that combination of stats, role, their usage, and what is inside them, essentially.

I think from a visual point of view, John's already touched on it, but with the military stuff, a lot of the functionality is what drives the visuals a little bit more than with civilian stuff, where we can take a few more freedoms in terms of the stylings. And obviously, each manufacturer still has their particular stylings, but we have manufacturers that make all sorts of ships. But I think the thing for it is that we always try and put the functionality as a higher priority, for things like, okay, it'd be great if we could move this room here because it feels a bit nicer to walk around, but you've got to think, well, actually, what does that mean if you've got people that are in crew quarters and they need to get to their positions quickly and that sort of stuff. So I guess a little bit more thought goes into that side of things.

A good example of where some of the lines can get a bit blurred as well is the Carrack. In lore, that was originally the military, I don't know if it was the Explorer, it was the advanced scout forward base thing, but the one you have is the ex-military stock, so it still has those military features on board but it's used for civilian purposes. So it does have that dedicated captain's quarters, but the crew are all in a big bunk room with shared facilities, whereas if you look at some of the more civilian ships, everyone has individual quarters, because you're not in the military, you're not conditioned to bunking with your entire crew. You want your own little bit of space, your own facilities on board that you can just tuck away in yourself.