Sean Tracy · Technical Director of Content

Yeah, and I think I mentioned this in the presentation, we tried a lot of different ones, so we'll continue to do that. As different loadouts for different ships make sense, as different balance has been done with certain ships, they might make more sense. As the scenario changes. So for example, I spoke about it, I believe, during the presentation as well, but we had to remove the Valkyrie. The Valkyrie is like purpose-built for this mode. It's just real unfortunate that, in terms of performance of an asset, it is astronomically heavy. In terms of the art, the draw calls on it, the poly count on it, and we really didn't have time to fix that up. So we're like, okay, we can remove that, but what do we replace it with? And we said, okay, well, we still need a dropship, so let's get the Hoplite in there. So we put the Hoplite in instead, which was a little bit better performance. And I think at this point, we've gotten some of that Valkyrie work done, which is good. But I'd love to bring that back. So again, this is the kind of stuff that we're doing with the vehicles. And the eventuality is I'd love to get class-based spawns and things like this, which would be really nice.

Jared Huckaby · Host, Community

You just brought something up that I didn't quite realize. Another benefit of Theaters of War is that we were able to recognize the performance hit in the Valkyrie. And you said that's being worked on right now, so it's being optimized. So again, the ship and its performance in the PU will benefit.

Sean Tracy · Technical Director of Content

Because it was so obvious, right? And again, one Valkyrie in the PU, not a big deal. It won't hit any alarm bells by any stretch. But as soon as you put, again, 40 people in, a whole bunch of ground vehicles, a whole bunch of other things, you can see the outliers. I mean, we have telemetry analytics coming out of our eyeballs. And it stands out. And you know, okay, we've got to do something about that right away. And people will ask the obvious question, why don't you just drop a whole bunch of ships in the PU and then compare them? Well, we do. But again, we've got to put our priority, we've got to put our focus on the ones that are being used, on the scenarios that are actually happening, and not just theoretically changing a thing for the sake of performance.

Jared Huckaby · Host, Community

So while the Valkyrie may not be in the first iteration, it's still something we want?

Sean Tracy · Technical Director of Content

Specifically the Valkyrie? Yeah, oh man. When we came up with the mode in the first place, that was pretty much the first ship I said I wanted. Because again, what's the whole purpose of it? It's a dropship. You've got a bunch of infantry, you've got a bunch of turrets on the side. I wanted the infantry being able to fire railguns out the side of it. I want those turrets to be able to zoom. Again, it's the Black Hawk of Star Citizen, if you want to allude to something from present day. It's got two turrets out to the side, got a bunch of turrets on it.