John Crewe · Vehicle Director

This is another thing to write a book on. There is no one answer that applies to every ship. It is a combination of the resources we have at the time. If I could click my fingers now and put the Polaris into production, that would take out a big chunk of the UK team for maybe 12 to 18 months, which means we can't deliver a constant flow of other vehicles in patches. So you could go multiple patches without any vehicle release or any support for other features coming out. So we have to balance that across not just delivering vehicles, but supporting the other teams. For the last few years, we've been trying to not push vehicles out without their gameplay. So things like the Crucible: we could make the Crucible now, but we don't really want it floating around without the repair gameplay to go alongside. So whilst I can control the production of the vehicle, I have to rely on and work with other directors to get their side delivered alongside it. And the problems that affect me, of 'hey, we've changed our minds for IAE, we want to do this instead', also affect them for other things. The feature they're working on now might be delayed for another team, which delays the feature I need for this vehicle. So we chop and change a lot. And then also, if you have artists working on this big ship for 18 months, you don't want to put them on another big ship for 18 months afterwards. You want to break that and give them, hey, here's a nice little snub ship to do. So that's why you might see a random ground vehicle come out from nowhere, because they are relatively much quicker to do, and it gives those people a nice palate refresh. So yeah, we're not actively ignoring the older ships. A lot of them have gameplay consequences and gameplay requirements that I don't have an answer for of when they will come online. So I can't plan developing those ships at that point.

Jared Huckaby · Host, Community

And not for nothing, the larger ships: I mentioned the Banu Merchantman in 2013, but there's also the Idris from 2012. It's like this multi-crew gameplay and resource management. Even if we could make an Idris right now, because most of it's part of Squadron 42, and put it out there, it'd just be like driving around in a giant canoe. You need the multi-crew gameplay. You need the resource management in order to have a capital ship experience. To put it out right now would be disappointing. I know people want to have it. They want to walk around and take all the pictures, and then after you're done with that for the first eight hours, you go, well, now I want to do something with it.

John Crewe · Vehicle Director

It's a very big Gladius.

Jared Huckaby · Host, Community

Yeah, it's a very big Gladius, and that's not what we want that experience to be.