John Crewe · Vehicle Director

Obviously a very popular topic, rightly so. Like we've talked about this over the years lots, it's always a balancing act. At the end of the day, the company and the project is funded in a particular manner. And traditionally, new ships sell well. But that doesn't mean we can not do the old ones. We have to do that. But it's always a balancing act between fresh new content and updating the existing content so it suits the game as it is today. Like we talked about with the Aurora, that isn't really suitable for the game today. So we need to fix things like that. And then we also need to finish and deliver on the backlog ships. And that changes year to year, quarter to quarter, that ratio.

Ben Curtis · Vehicle Art Director

It's something we put a lot of discussion and thought into as we're planning out the years and what we're planning on doing. And I think we generally look at what we're working on in the 12, 18, 24 month... I'll just echo what John said. We put a lot of thought into it. We're generally planning 12, 18 months ahead and having a bit of a look at where the backlog is, which, like I say, is something we do every time we're talking about what ships next. If you take into account the next 18 months or so, after that we'll be left with maybe two-ish a year that we haven't delivered, maybe some years three, maybe some years one. But I think we're definitely trending on the right trend. There's a few manufacturers that have got one or two vehicles left, and it'd be great to get them done off the backlog, and then we can really focus on new and exciting stuff. But I feel like we've made a decent effort and we are getting towards the end of the list.

John Crewe · Vehicle Director

If you look at the existing backlog ships, and we said this before, that we don't want to release ships without their gameplay, whether that's feature-wise or game loop-wise. As of today, if we could click our fingers and instantly magic ships into existence, if we remove all the ones that don't have features in the game today or fully functioning game loops, that backlog list is quite small. I think you've got the G12s, which I know there's a question about coming, the Liberator, the Hull series, Odyssey, and then the rest of them are ones that really do need a game loop to make their use be good in the game.

Jared Huckaby · Host, Community

Often what happens is we have to interpret what the request actually is. People want the ships; what they're really saying is they want the gameplay. They want the gameplay that is associated with that ship. And we, the people in this call, are not entirely in control of that destiny. As everybody knows from our statement at the beginning of this year, much, certainly not all, it's been kind of exaggerated, but a bunch of our engineers and programmers are on Squadron, closing that out. There are still many gameplay programmers and engineers on Star Citizen working on crafting and base building and engineering and the new inventory system we showed on SCL a while ago. But there's never enough people to work on everything all at one time. There just isn't. So you guys can make those ships when the gameplay team gets around to making that gameplay. Somebody in the chat mentioned the Endeavor. Let's just be real, we're going to be waiting a while for the Endeavor. When you take those ships out that don't have the gameplay, the backlog is actually pretty reasonable. Even the Merchantman requires NPCs and you being able to set up your own shops with NPCs, and that's feature work. So it's always a balancing act. We answer some version of this question twice a year, every single year, for at least the last half decade. The answer never really changes, but there's always new people, so we'll keep answering it, because people want their ships and people deserve to have their ships in as timely a manner as possible. But we have to balance that between gameplay services being available and, quite frankly, the need to continue pushing the project into new directions at the same time. So it's not easy.