Why, aside from ships being prioritized for Squadron 42, do new ships such as the Vulcan get prioritized over ships that are in some cases five to six years old with no release so far?
TL;DRThe Vulcan isn't prioritized over other ships; ship order follows Squadron 42 needs, which Persistent Universe gameplay systems exist, and team scheduling gaps, so ships like the Carrack wait for supporting gameplay.
The Vulcan specifically is not getting prioritized over anything else at this time. But this question goes more to why do we do some ships before others? And that comes to what's available in the Persistent Universe, in the gameplay systems. There are two driving forces behind how we prioritize our ships. One is, of course, the needs for Squadron 42. The second one is gameplay systems in the Persistent Universe that come online. I know a lot of this goes to, for instance, the Carrack. A lot of people, where's the Carrack? And the Carrack is a giant exploration ship designed for multi-system travel and exploration. And those gameplay elements don't exist in the Persistent Universe right now. So it would be pretty silly to prioritize the Carrack at this moment, given what's available in the Persistent Universe. But of course, we try to keep those things in parity whenever we can.
We're looking at salvage and repair kind of hand in hand right now. We've got some salvage ships coming through. We need the systems to support that. And, well, we need the flip side of that. More and more now that the requirements for refueling and repairing and rearming ships are in the field, the need has become, well, we need a ship for this, but not the huge thing. We need to get this gameplay in and then we can balance it and make it work.
There's also the human resource aspect of it as well. Everyone on the ship art side and the whole ship team has time allocated for each ship in the schedule. If something happens that throws one of those departments out, either everyone just stops and waits for that department to catch up for it to be finished, or they move on to something that can fit in that gap. Say a two-month period opens up for one of the vehicle art teams because something's happened on another feature that has required another team to go on that. You've now got that little two-month gap, and a small newer ship that's been concepted recently could just nicely fit in there to keep everyone continuously working.