Star Citizen: Reverse the Verse LIVE - RSI Apollo and Medical Gameplay

20 July 201801:03:311,825 linesWatch on YouTube ↗

Transcript — every row opens the video at that moment

00:00:12
Greetings, citizens, and welcome to another edition of Ship Shape, the show where we give you the rundown on what's in the ship development pipeline, who's working on what, provide interviews with developers, and occasionally debut a brand new ship being added to Star Citizen's pantheon of spaceships. I'm your host, content manager Jared Huckaby. Now, behind me, you see the ship pipeline. That's the ever-evolving, continuously refined network of phases, milestones, and review checks necessary to ensure you the best possible spaceship for your Star Citizen experience. And it's been a while since we've given the full rundown on what's being worked on and where. So, let's get things started and jump right into things, shall we? With the recent release of Star Citizen Alpha 3.2 to our live environment, a new wave of ships have begun their journeys
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through the pipeline. It's with that news that I'm pleased to report that the Origin 300 series, stalwart of the original Kickstarter campaign, has officially begun its rework and is currently sitting in the earliest stages of white box phase, where it's not alone. Keeping it company is the Banu Defender and the luxurious 890 Jump. Now, on last week's ATV, Chris gave you a few moments sneak peek at the early white box for the 890 Jump, but I think we can do better. Here's a further look at work being done to flesh out the interior layouts for this massive luxury yacht. Now, white box phase is as crucial a phase as any in the development of a ship, as it will form the basis of everything that comes afterwards. It's our chance for designers and artists to work together to determine the foundation of a ship's interior layout, and can go through
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dozens of iterations before moving into gray box phase. What you're seeing here is just one such iteration of the 890 Jump Whitebox. And while it is yet to be determined if this layout will be the one that gets the green light, we thought it'd be fun to highlight this early, very malleable stage of a ship's overall development for you. Plus, I know how long you've been waiting for this. Now, you can expect additional updates in the months ahead as we move towards its intended release into the Star Citizen universe in the upcoming Alpha 3.5, currently scheduled for Q1 2019. Moving along to greybox phase, we have another announcement I'm very pleased to make. You think I'm going to miss this opportunity to give you the max update on another fan-favorite ship? Der. You know I wouldn't. As for the new
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ships, the ship team in the UK have begun their work on the Freelancer variants, which because of the head start the already flyable Freelancer base model gives them, are beginning their journey ahead of whitebox and already well into the greybox modeling phase. Yes, it's an exciting time to be a Freelancer owner, and we'll be following the development of these ships throughout their intended journey towards release in Alpha 3.4 towards the end of this year. Now, following ahead to the final art phase, we got a couple ships like the F8 Lightning, which is currently holding as it waits for resources in other disciplines to continue its journey. The Mustang variants, which have moved back from the technical disciplines to the final modeling and surface tweak stage as the team in our Los Angeles studio addresses recent feedback from Chris. The Hammerhead, which takes its place moving ahead into the technical disciplines,
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where it will reside for quite some time as teams work to bring functionality to all their fantastic art. And then the 600i Touring variant, which is waiting for tech setup resources to become available. It's a busy time for our ship pipeline as 3.3, 3.4, and even 3.5 ships continue their journeys towards a full and complete realization into the Star Citizen universe. But what's next? Even a game of Star Citizen's breadth and scope still needs additional ships to flush out its various game play systems and professions. And one of those that's captured the imagination of backers since the introductions of the Cutlass Red and Endeavor Hope is that of assisting your fellow player when personal injury strikes your character. Yes, medical game play and its design is ready to step back into the spotlight this month with the addition of our next
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concept ship to Star Citizen. Let's go to the ship teams at our Foundry 42 UK studio and let them introduce us to the brand new Apollo medical ship from Roberts Space Industries. The RSI Apollo is a new medical ship. It's from RSI which didn't get a new ship in a long while. We have two medical ships at the moment announced in the game which is a Cutlass Red which is basically the ambulance in our game and the Endeavor with its hospital module which is really massive and really end game. So, we needed something in between. We had quite a short timeline on this one for a medium ship. So, really early on I did a quick sketch of the interior, passed it to um concept artist and was like something like this and it kind of
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stuck basically. Um and it works well with RSI styling. The ship still has its flow, you know, it's still quite sleek and sexy but you know, it's it's got all that it's got that all that angularness to it. It's like a Lamborghini turned it into a spaceship. The RSI Apollo is basically like a small clinic that you can go to the edge of space. This has a capacity of six patients with six beds, uh a crew of two at the front with two ejection beds. And it has a size two turret on the top of the ship at the rear which is more a point defense turret rather than something made for dog fights or anything. And this is a remote turret. It has also 28 SCU of cargo at the back. And then you've got medical bay space.
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It's always that sort of fine line between sort of reality sci-fi and gameplay. So, it's okay, we need to basically spawn a player here, but we don't want him popping in. So, the player will be delivered. There's a glass cover on top sort of protecting the player. The thought process is that we'll have essentially like an an opaque glass when there's nobody in it. And then you'll hear you'll hear noises and probably lights will come on and the thing the bed will activate and then the person will arrive. The glass turns transparent. You're like, "Okay, that you know, the bed's occupied." At least that's how we've developed at the moment. It's kind of like a self-healing unit. So, you'll have a a disc that that scans scans the person, finds out what's wrong with them, heals them, and then then it opens up
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and off they go. And so, with this ship you'll be able to pick up people, fix people up, ship them back out the door, you know, so it can be you know, obviously there'll be medical gameplay. What we plan is even if regular ships can do something with medical gameplay, uh like a player could help other people in the future, you will need medical ships if you want really to pursue the medical career in the game. Um the final result really happy with. And it's just sort of going through it basically. And so, that's just been a process of refinement, just pushing and pushing and okay, let's add this, tweak this, you know, all lines generally, you know, you generally try and avoid parallel lines. We worked hard to do a good layout that
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will please every player and that is really aesthetically pleasing as well. So, I think this is a really good ship and this is bringing new kind of gameplay. So, it looks good. Do you know what? I kind of like playing the medic often. So, you know, who I'm not quite sure how this will turn out in our game, you know, but I just want to see it. Just want to see it in game and just, you know, I just want to see what players do with it, but I think um I, you know, I can't wait to see, you know, you know, it's not going to be like the Red Arrows, but you can just imagine, you know, just a whole fleet of these guys just taking off and just uh going off um just rescuing people or, you know, you can imagine just um jumping in massive space battle, debris everywhere,
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bodies just sort of floating about, you know, and them just in, you know, all the drones just popping out scooping up the people and popping them into the base of the ship. Okay. Could make for a very nice visual as well. Now, that's a good-looking spaceship. The RSI Apollo concept promotion begins today for all backers, and I encourage everyone, not just to check the ship out, but the additional medical gameplay post going up on the robertsspaceindustries.com website as well. And then, stay tuned to Reverse the 'Verse for a live Q&A immediately following this broadcast, where we'll be talking to the designers and artists who worked to bring this ship and medical gameplay to life. For Ship Shape, I'm content manager for global video production Jared Huckaby. Thanks for watching.
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Hi. Welcome. Welcome to Reverse the 'Verse playing doctor, the RSI Apollo and medical gameplay. Uh it's me. I was just in a video, and now I'm back here. We're trying something different. We're playing. We said we'd play with our video stuff. We're playing with our video stuff. Joining us on the show this week, two of the folks you just saw in that video, uh Paul Jones and Quentin Billmont, joined by John Crew, no stranger to the RTV uh uh uh guest panel. How you guys doing? Good. Thanks. Yeah, good. Good. Just to be clear, we're not playing doctor with each other's No, there's no doctors and nurses going on. No, we're playing doctor with doctor with our backers. It's one of those things. All right, so because every RTV is somebody's first,
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let's take a few moments and introduce who you are to the backers and what you do for Star Citizen and we'll we'll just go down the line. We'll start with Paul. I am I'm Paul Jones, if you don't already know. I'm one of the art directors here at Foundry 42, part of Cloud Imperium Games. And I spend a large amount of time working on ship concepts, but also ship weapons and FPS weapons. And how about you, John? I'm good. I'm John Crew, I'm the vehicle pipeline director. Which is basically just the designer looking after all the ships from the very first ideas in people's heads to all the way out the door and post release support and all the game play associated with them. Make sure they're all all good and all the
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same. All right. And last but certainly not least, Quentin. Hey, I'm Quentin Meur I'm assistant designer working for John basically sitting up ships on working on other stuff to make the game better. And you're the designer of note for the RSI Apollo. Yeah. I know. I worked on other ships. I'm sorry? Worked for other ships that we've seen this year with Paul like 100, Hercules and ships like this, so. That's right. All right, so It's It's If you haven't figured it out yet for any reason, we are launching a brand new concept ship promotion today. The RSI Apollo. It's It's a new medium-size medical ship. We've got a lot of questions, I'm
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certain. You guys can submit your questions live in one of two places, either in the Twitch chat by prefacing your question with the word question in capital letters surrounded by brackets. Uh you can also do the same in Spectrum, which is our bespoke communication platform on robertsspaceindustries.com website. Same process. Question in capital letters by brackets. Uh that'll help our community management team uh pull the questions out from the chat. Uh right off the bat, uh I've got a couple questions for you uh for you guys just to get us started. Uh my first question right up uh just the first thing that that I thought of, why RSI? We haven't had a new RSI ship, if I if I remember correctly, since October of 2016. I mean, it's been a while. Why not just another Aegis ship? Why why an RSI ship?
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Uh well, if you're going to answer that, that's not me. Uh so, it's we were looking at the Obviously, we know uh the breakdown of ships per manufacturer. We know uh what's out there, what we plan for, be it uh ones that we haven't concepted yet, but uh things like uh Kickstarter rewards, and ones that we've got in development. And it Yeah, RSI had not had one for a long time. Um and it sort of fitted the the styling of it, really, where we in our heads where we were thinking to go with this ship, and it sort of just sat there. It It didn't quite fit in with done a lot of Aegis ships. Um they're more military stuff. You
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There can always be more, uh but at this time, uh not really. Uh Anvil again, very military. Drake has the Cutlass Red, which I'm sure we'll talk about Mhm. Uh during this. Um MISC's got the Endeavor again. Sort of medical gameplay. RSI starts being that that big manufacturer that doesn't have something like this. Yeah, there been a there's been a a concerted effort at least from my vantage points, you know, standing outside but adjacent to the vehicle pipeline here. Uh there's been a an effort I've seen this year to broaden the horizons quite a bit. You know, we we we we we brought it consolidated Outlands Outland rather back to the forefront. No, I'm sorry, Crusader C words. We brought Crusader back to the to the
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forefront. We're bringing RSI. It's just really nice to see. So, I I I think if I'm allowed to speak for the community in that regard, I I I I think I think it's a good thing and I appreciate it. Now, Paul, since we don't have that many RSI ships, we've got the the the Constellation line, the Aurora line, the Orion, and the Polaris. where did you where did how did you start when they when they gave you the brief and said this is RSI? Because it's not as developed as other manufacturers, where do you start on this? Mhm. Um that's a good question. I mean, for me it was the Connie was the the launching point really. I think for me the sort of the Connie is the uh one that's sort of most accessible in
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terms of relative size or you know, sort of size bracket. Um it for me it was sort of the signature ship. Um and it was just really um uh really sort of obviously we'd worked on the Polaris previously, but Polaris is quite a bit bigger. Um and kind of just really wanted to sort of um drive, you know, drive this back back to the sort of basics of sort of those Connie shapes. Um and you know, really want your function in the you know, the the functionality of the ship. How you want to get in and out easily, the things you want it to do. Um Yeah, sometimes these things just they start to shape themselves. Um so yeah, it's been fun. It's been you know, it I sort of really got to
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understand sort of you know, sort of the the workings of Ryan Church's mind, I would say, cuz he was obviously the original concept artist. Um and you know, having conversation with him, you know, you you really sort of had to figure out what's going on. Uh and then you take that take key components and transpose it onto the new ship. It's all right, you know, it's a little bit like cooking, isn't it? You know, you've got your you've got your sort of base recipe and then you sort of add in your chef's flare and uh and then hope everybody likes it at the end. All right, so well, we we referred to this as a medium-size uh medical ship. Uh for for anybody that maybe hasn't read our shipyard series of articles from last year, uh either John or Corazon, walk us through uh what it what constitutes a medium-size ship and
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why did we decide that this ship was going to be medium instead of small or large or or whatever? So, yeah, medium is basically once we it's a medium-large basically once we start looking at what we wanted with the Apollo, which is having several patients on doing this kind of stuff over a large distance, this kind of stuff, we thought, well, it's too big to be a small ship. And the issue is that even if the endeavor is massive, like bigger than large, large was too big for what we wanted to do. So, medium was basically the sweet spot, even if it's close to some ships that you can think a bit too small and some ships that are a bit too close to large, so it's it's a
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bit tight, but it's the sweet spot basically to do what we wanted to do, which is well, we will talk about it on we've seen that in ship shape on those stuff, but it yeah, it's it was a sweet spot on a medium ship is going around, but without needing a lot of people with you to do this kind of stuff. Yeah, the larger you get, the larger extra stuff you have to factor in. Um they they start becoming big targets. So, you either need to start throwing turrets all over the place on them, which then uh if they're manned turrets, you need spaces for people to be in those manned turrets, you need spaces to get to them, or you start sort of almost needing uh larger components to provide that defense, which then just makes it a
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bigger ship, at which point you're back to being a large one, so medium just fits that goal nicely. And if you compare it to the the Cutlass, like they they're the same sort of width if you factor in like the Cutlass's engines, which sort of artificially bloat it, but it is a fair length longer, and because of the shape of it, um whilst on paper it doesn't seem that much bigger than a Cutlass, there is a lot more usable space in it. All right. So, uh obviously the Apollo promotion will start in earnest uh later on today. Uh the uh the uh preview for concierge members started last night, and it's got a fun it's got a fun game, by the way. If you haven't played the game uh by some of our uh developers in the UK studio, I'd highly recommend checking that out. Um what can you tell us about the stats
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now? And obviously again, the promotion page will come out later today. We're hoping right around the time that this show ends, so you hopefully less than an hour from now. But, uh what can you tell us about the stats now? Cargo, armament, armor, that kind of stuff. So, in terms of stats, uh like John said, it's basically a bit longer than a Cutlass, but about the same width. So, it's uh 43 m long, 30 m wide, and 10 m high. Um it has 28 SCU. So, the thing is that it's separated into two rooms at the back. It's not a big room that you got. Um, you got two entrances, basically. You got a small lift uh like at the front of the constellation, which is basically for the crew. On the other area, you got
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a big hump uh with a which also allows you to work as a being big looking cutter if if you want. outside of that in terms of speed, it's relatively a bit like the Freelancer, if I remember well, which is 205 m/s for the Freelancer uh for the base variant on 195 m/s for the uh Medivac variant. Um, the thing that is different between the speed is that as people might see later on or I've already seen is that the Medivac variant is better armored, but it's basically it's a bit slower and not as maneuverable. So, it's it's trading that. Do you want the the faster, more nimble version um
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or do you want the bit extra safety and armor? Yeah, on in terms of weapon, it's relatively simple. It's one remote turret on the top with two size two cannons. Uh well, it's two size two laser cannons for the regular variant on two size two miniguns ballistic miniguns for the Gatlings for the Medivac variant. Um, yeah, outside of that in terms of thruster placement, it's relatively the usual uh the magic flight variant got a heavier armor, so regular got medium armor, two shield generators. Um, it got the large radar, which is different from the usual uh because obviously well, you will need to to scan space to to find bodies on other injured people. I've seen that some people might might
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be interested into the number of toilets. So, there's two toilets in the ship. You've done this show before, Corinthian. On There's um two ejection beds as well. It's like on the constellation. It's ejection pods that also acts like like beds. So, it's pretty good. Yeah, I think I think the the really interesting thing about this is the two rooms where the the medical beds are. They they're going to be modular. Um So, you can swap them out depending on what level of medical gameplay you want to do. And uh alongside the the the pages later today, there is actually going to be an updated design post that talks about uh medical gameplay. Um
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And sort of cuz we haven't really talked about it since the Death of a Spaceman post. So, it's sort of like a a short update post to that. You're getting ahead of me. Ah, sorry. I'll stop talking. Well, we're we're The next question is going to is going to be about those medical rooms and everything. But before we get to that, I want to I want to ask Paul a question. Uh Paul, we've talked on this show several times about the process of birthing these concepts and how some are easier than others. Uh what was what was this particular delivery like? So, you know, some ships are like um you know, in the past we've had like emergency C-sections. This one I'd say was a good natural birth. You know, this was this was uh you know, we had the birthing pool. You
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know, it was everything went naturally. It all flowed. Um and yeah, it's been it's it's been enjoyable actually this one. It it's it's actually gone well. Uh even though, you know, there's always a couple of surprises that are thrown in there. Um but it's been heavily on top of this one, so um, you know, we've wasted no time and pretty early on hit hit the style in hit the shape and the sort of silhouette. Chris was like, "Well, that's not it's not RSI enough." So, um, I just dived back in and just it's you know, we just started messing with more of the shapes and just getting more of that core architecture in there. Um, and so yeah, so um, pretty good process. And how has people just come out with a name? But I like the names for it. That was actually it.
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But I feel sorry for the people doing the brochures cuz they must have had to change it like multiple times a day. Yes, we uh, when we filmed your ship shape segments, we actually didn't have the names for the variants yet. So, it it it was it was the the very the names for the variants were very contentious back and forth for a while between our writers and and designers and Chris and and and and we started we opened it up to a bunch of people then then other people were were throwing things in. It's like that our events manager is our wrath on you know, everyone was like like trying to find stuff like this. It's it's it's neat when you can see it be a collaborative process like that, but uh, And then there there's a there's a debate on Spectrum right now about whether it's Medivac with an I or whether it's Medevac with an E. And we had that same thing. Medevac We had the same debate, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Medical evacuation.
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At least we were consistent at least. No, it it's just really funny cuz we had that debate internally for days and then we make the decision go out and then we see the same debate show up on the community. It's like It's how it works. All right. So, uh, now I want to talk about the interior for a bit. We actually have an image. You guys won't be able to see it, but I'm certain that you've seen it before. We've got an image of the layout of the interior here. let's let's talk a bit about the the layout here. Uh, at the front obviously like most of our ships we have the the crew in the bridge like every RSI ship at the very least. We've got the the the crew in the bridge and I see a crew lift very reminiscent of the uh the Constellation series. Uh talk to us about the bridge. Um I think uh I'm going to say I can see I can see an image in the of the reflection of your TV. So, it looks like
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it's the layout that I provided right at the start of the process. So, it has So, it has changed a little bit since then cuz we had to extend the ship um just to factor in all the components. So, but yeah, in terms of the bridge um it's fairly straightforward. You know, we we we sort of went backwards and forwards uh on things like visibility cuz we all know you know, you know, cuz you know, we tried just to I tried to get some extra struts in Corazon was like, "No, get them out." Um and then, you know, we sort of worked on adding you know, once we once we fixed that up, then just adding some additional visibility sort of um to the left and right of the sort of the corners of the ship. Um and then, again, it was just a matter of taking some of the taking some of the
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styling from uh the Polaris interior and and factoring that in. Um obviously, you can't see that from the layout, but and then, we've got the beds. Uh and then, we're I mean, to be honest, we're we're just doing a little bit of a refactor now just this week just to tie up some loose ends uh on some of the interior space just so that when it gets to the artists, it's super clear on what they need to achieve. So, what the the big stand-out feature in this is the med bays. So, John, you began to touch on it uh just a few moments ago. Uh talk to us about the med bays and uh you and Corazon for that matter. And Paul, all three, jump in about the med bays and their modularity. Yeah, so you can see that they're essentially mirror images of each other. Um so, when I say med bays, I talk about them both at the same time.
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Uh they part of the medical gameplay post talks about um different levels of injury and healing and different equipment can do different levels of things. So, on a abandoned moon that might have this old ancient medical facility that might only be able to do certain levels of healing like it might be able to stop some bleeding, patch you up enough to get you somewhere properly. It's not going to be able to replace a ruined limb or multiple injuries. And that's something that we want to do with the Apollo and so in I think that shot there's three beds on every side. So, these are three of the sort of I can't remember which way the numbering we went in the design post. I think three tier three beds.
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it's one. Well, it's It's It's one or three. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, tier three is the recovering from minor injuries like limbs being damaged. Tier one is the recovering from near-death experiences and fatal injuries. So, tier one is the more severe. Yeah, so these are essentially tier three medical beds. So, you've got six medical beds that you can heal a a variety of just general injuries that you'd expect people to find. Um if you want to be a bit more serious, you can swap those rooms out for some tier two rooms which only have two beds in each side, but they're they're bigger beds, they can do more. And then if you really want to be full doctor, full surgeon, uh you swap them out for tier one rooms and those are your sort of your big isolation rooms, big surgery rooms that
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can do the whole thing that you'd find on like in Hurston's big planets um medical facilities, but in a small ship, but you can only do one at a time in those beds. You can mix and match, so you could have one tier one on one side and the tier three on the other, so you can provide some flexibility and that sort of allows you to to tailor how you want to want to play that, but it's it's all about uh just letting you sort of decide the level of response you want to give. Yeah, that would be interesting to see what the player cycling with in terms of configuration like if players really want to be basic three on three uh, two on one uh, this kind of stuff. Now, now in the past uh, when we've done ships that have a modular nature like the like the Endeavor and had the the landing bay and the medical bay and
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everything. Uh, those modules were uh, those modules were provided separately. Uh, switching these beds out is that standard with the with with with any Apollo? it's just the the tier three ones at the moment. Um, I don't know how we're going to going to plan on that. That's that's one for the marketing department to decide on. Um, once we've sort of nailed that down a bit more, we can decide how much of sort of extra gameplay they give and whether you get a a set with that base purchase or they're additional. Yeah, so so so right now and Jared you want to come back to me real quick. Uh, right now I do want to confirm that when the RSI promotion starts in earnest uh, towards the end of this broadcast, uh, it'll just it there are no modules that are being that are being provided for
00:29:58
the promotion uh, at this time. Uh, the ship that you get will have the tier three beds and uh, how we choose to roll out the tier one and two we will decide once the tech for that comes online and we know more. It's one of those things we wanted to preserve until that tech comes online and it's developed further before we tried to ascribe value to them and stuff like that. So, so for right now it's just the ship ships in the tier three beds. Now, uh, you did mention you you mentioned the tier one, the tier three, and stuff like that. Uh, that's related to the medical gameplay uh, shipyard post that's going to go up later today. Um, obviously we wrote a whole post that we didn't have to sit here and talk about it, but it it isn't up now. So, give us the cliff notes version or how how does how does medical gameplay work today in 3.2 and and how how are we
00:30:48
thinking it's going to work going forward? Yes, what we're going to write now is very easy. Obviously, it evolved a bit over time like it's not what what we got a long time ago, but right now it's you get injuries you get bleeding or whatever and you use your medi-pen or you die basically. So, that's it. We we got some some stuff that is already in the code like planned for it like for injuring limbs and stuff like this like but it's not where we want to go yet. Basically, we we got this plan but obviously it's not there yet. On the thing is that what we want to do is doing some kind of
00:31:35
permanent injuries where it's it's like this this of a space man that Chris wrote a long time ago. were reading through that doing this post there was quite a lot of it that is still like completely accurate today even though it was written four years ago five years ago. It's it's still exactly what we plan to do. So, in our heads we had oh we need to do this huge design post about how much has changed and actually there there isn't a huge amount that's changed. Um we sort of in the design design post talks about what currently is and how it is now, how we want to go in the future. So, this more persistent uh damage um how people are going to be dealing with respawning from death and other sort of injuries
00:32:22
what what side effects that has um uh why why you'd choose to respawn as a medical ship versus going somewhere else just things like that. Stuff that wasn't in the game when that was written that is now that you you When that was written, there wasn't a huge amount of game to sort of get your mind wrapped around. Whereas now there is there is significantly more. Uh, so there's a lot more questions that have come up since then and we sort of cover all that. It's not a it's not a huge full in-depth article like Death of a Spaceman. It's not Death of a Spaceman 2.0. It's more like a little uh It clarifies a lot of things. appendix. Yeah. Um, now one of the things that we're introducing in in that in that post is
00:33:10
the concept of the tier one, the tier two, and the tier three uh injury states to the to to to the to the player. Uh, tier three sounds uh much like what we have uh in 3.2 now with with limb damage where it goes it goes from uh it goes from like normal to hurt to damaged to your your crap's just ruined. Yeah. And and right now your player dies, but in the future your player won't die. They'll become they'll they'll enter some non-death state, right? Okay. Uh, tier two from that is a more serious injury. What can you tell us about tier two? Uh, tier two is sort of at the moment when you get to that final state in our limbs, the the ruined state, you you sort of lose functionality, but
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you can heal with your medi-pen and that goes away. Tier two is uh that won't go away just from injecting yourself with a pen. You're going to have to start getting some serious medical support, otherwise uh you're losing massive functionality like being able to hold stuff or being able to uh jump, sprint. Um, so that's your sort of if you don't get healed quickly enough, there's going to be long-term effects for that. And then uh tier one uh being the the the near-death experiences. Yeah, tier one is you something has gone badly wrong and you need to get help stat otherwise you're going to die and then you're going to have even more problems when you come back beyond having uh presumably lost your ship that was
00:34:46
that you were in or you were just on a planet somewhere and got taken out um that thing Death of a Spaceman talked about a lot of persistent like if you repeatedly kill yourself or get killed that this sort of starts uh accumulating persistent effects and that's very much the case so tier one medical equipment is the like you see like traditional big sci-fi healing machines like in uh Elysium and things like that that sort of tier of that uh Don't talk to me about Elysium. Have you got nightmares about that scene? I hated that movie. Apparently that sales apparently that like nobody who ever wrote that who wrote that movie knows that you can't just turn a computer off and it loses
00:35:34
everything in its memory. Anyway, anyway. Paul. Hello. This ship is red. We don't have a lot We don't have a lot of uh We don't have a lot of color. We don't have a lot of real striking visages uh in our ships. There's uh it's it's it's a it's commentary that's been made for for some time on our ships. We This is a very striking profile. I want to talk to you about the library. How we how we got there uh and and and why. We have an image actually JJ if you can put if you can put that up. We have an image of of several of the versions. Looks like 13 different versions before we ended up with with the with the one that we did. Won't you walk us through this? Um yeah, this is I mean you know, we've spoke about this before. I think this year probably has been our most
00:36:22
colorful year. I think the and I don't think it's been a um I think it was a natural a natural event really. Like I I just, you know, I started looking at our ships and just, you know, there are easy wins we can do to to add more personality to our ships rather than being the traditional whites or the silver or the black. I mean, they're all cool, but um you know, why not? Let's get some color in. But um you know, those 13, they sort of fall into different groups. So, you've you know, if essentially if my memory serves me right, uh there were sort of the whites, then there was the uh then there was the blacks, and then there was the reds. Um and it's you know, it's it's kind of the process I really enjoy actually because um you know, the concept artists have blasted and they will have done all
00:37:09
the hard work and come up with the you know, the great geometry and stuff. And then I render out about 20 different finishes and then just overlay them in Photoshop and and just start getting creative and you know, obviously there are many influences you can pull from, you know, typical sort of um EMS, you know, ambulances, you know, depending on which country you're in as well, they have different colors. So, um for me, I think by the time I got to red one, that was probably that was one of the later ones. Um and I I don't know, I just really liked it and uh uh it was really the sort of devil was in the detail. It was sort of really it was like a you know, it was essentially having a two-tone red. There
00:37:56
was a satin, there was a gloss. Then you had your sort of polished metal frame of the the canopy. We've got some probably like about 5% gold accents on the ship. Um and just really sort of went for that sort of quality RSI feel basically. Um and you know, I did my pitch to Chris. Um I basically sent them all you know, I sent them all to Chris. Um but sort of said which were my favorites and um um and the red one won out. So, yeah, I was very happy cuz it kind of, you know, kind of really sort of heavily pulls on, you know, sort of recovery, sort of like um you know, when you see the sort of those uh vehicles in the snow, sort of like, you know, avalanche kind of rescue vehicles, that sort of stuff.
00:38:44
And so, it's really sort of um hinting at that side of things. At And I think just the shape, like just because with the complexity of the shapes that are in RSI, you can get away with it with just having that one block of color because all the shapes are doing the breakup. Yeah. Well, there's a battle royal going on in Twitch chat right now. Well, well, well, folks are pulling are calling out their favorites and I mean, there's a lot of good ones there, you know, there's there's there's some that I like and you never know. I mean, there's one for everyone, isn't there in the in there? Oh, yeah. So, as we go along, we're sort of trying to do more of that, basically, is to look at more options. I like it when the when the artist is like, "Yeah, yeah, there's a lot of good ones there." I did a lot of good ones. Those were the ones Those ones that got
00:39:33
released, you see? So, those are the ones I was happy with. There was a whole bunch that I hated and they just got left. All right. So, let's let's let's talk a little bit about some of the some of the features for the ship. Uh this ship uses a drone. This ship utilizes drones and these medical stretchers. Talk to us about the drones. How are they different from the drones that we've talked about before, like the mining drones or or or whatnot? What What do these drones do and how and how do they play into the the Apollo experience? Uh I I can talk about that. Uh at a functional level, the drones are drones are drones. They They can be controlled uh remotely or they can do be uh sort of be semi-autonomous. Uh but these ones are specifically designed for uh uh I was going to say capturing, but that's
00:40:21
probably a aggressive tone for uh rescuing uh injured people in particularly in space where they're they're just floating around, so they can be sent out. They come out the bottom of the Uh come encase the person in this sort of protective field um cuz obviously in your space uh you might be with a cracked suit. You probably don't want to just be left in a in the void until get back in the ship, so it's encases them uh goes back in the ship, and it's sort of quite a neat system. We don't think we really showed it in any detail, but they go in the bottom of the ship, and they sort of get filtered to the underside of the beds, and the sort of the drone attaches onto the underside of the beds, and they come up through the beds, and the beds all sort of
00:41:08
open up to take them um then the drone goes back down, leaves them on the bed. So, it sort of makes a nice seal to put them in this sort of healing healing bed, uh and then they can go off and do do it again. Uh obviously, if you've got six beds, you can uh fill up with six people. You've You only get two drones with it. Um and they are just for that. It's not like the uh Vulcan's drones that you can repurpose into doing other things. Uh they are purely for for capturing and rescuing uh bodies. So, can I You're not going to go You can't use them to go up to another ship and rescue the missiles off them and put them back into your ship. doing, mister? um So, you So, you Oh, god. And they are sort of the stretcher in the same way. Um
00:41:55
so, if they're not being semi-autonomous, unless I'm just speaking nonsense now, they are they are one in the same. This is whatever you guys want it to be. Like in terms of the art style and the art and the design, it's fairly flexible. Yeah, they if stop it being a remote control drone, it's essentially it's a hovering platform that you can maneuver Is that what one of the reasons that we put a big hump at the back with a big air lock is? If needed. Uh, like the drone can be used properly. You just push it. Um. Going. Yeah, blows the line between a drone and a stretcher. Is it Is it a drone or is it a stretcher if it's being pushed by someone? Now, uh, so the drones are how you bring people on. How do you bring people off? If that's If that's a necessity. Well, hopefully if you've done a good enough job, they they can get off by
00:42:43
themselves. Uh, but you could use the the space in there for those drone stretchers to go into the room and get people back into them and take them. Say you've only got tier three beds and someone just keeps bleeding out. Uh, you've transported them from where you found them across to a big medical facility for more like they've got a tier one injury that they need healing. There's only so much time you can keep them alive in your ship with tier three equipment. Uh, you put them back on the drone stretcher and you take them like you see with the air ambulance that lands at a hospital. They land, they come out, you take them take them in to get healed for good. Um, it's that time. It's that time in every one of these shows. Uh, will it fit?
00:43:31
What What What What Which Which ships What ships can house Do Do we anticipate? Now, obviously until the question is always will the ship fit in that ship? And the answer is always until both ships are completely built, we never going to We're not going to be able to say 100%. But as well as we can anticipate, what ships do we think the Apollo will be able to uh, nestle securely inside? Uh, definitely not the Polaris. Uh, that's just um, I We were looking uh, whether what we'd said on record about the Polaris all those years ago about it and found this really nice fan created image where they'd extrapolated the landing pad size out of the whole of your model and then taken all our ships in game
00:44:19
and the old Cutlass couldn't fit on there. So the new Cutlass definitely won't fit on there which means the Apollo won't fit on there. We were talking about the Endeavor obviously the Endeavor is not being built at the moment so we're sort of quite flexible in what we can do with that. So we fully intend for it to fit in the the module that the hangar module there. I way back in the day when we talked about it it's it was said to hold two Cutlasses I believe. Uh don't know whether it will still take two Cutlasses now the Cutlass has got bigger since then but it if it holds one Cutlass it will definitely hold one Apollo maybe not two cuz it's going to get start getting very long might look a bit odd. Um Some things that yeah we will look at
00:45:07
when it comes to the Endeavor but outside of that it's basically Yeah we were we were about to check the address before we came on here cuz Yeah the thing is that it's supposed to have a docking collar anyway so it it will be able to to get close to some other big ships that won't be able to to have it inside anyway but yeah it's it's not it's not a small ship that you try the usual connect fit. Yeah because it's it's it's a big ship yeah it's 40 m long and 10 m tall. It's basically so biggest issues are it's really long and it's pretty tall as well so They will always play will it fit quarantine have you not seen the images of the of the Argo MPV inside the 600i right now? Anything fits with enough force. Uh okay
00:45:57
we talked we've talked about the Cutlass Red a number of times. The Cutlass Red is has been the only uh medical ship search and rescue ship in this kind of size bracket for a while. Uh let's compare the Apollo to the Cutlass Red. What what Why would somebody want an Apollo instead of a Cutlass Red? And let's let's go the other way. Why would somebody want a Cutlass Red instead of an Apollo? So, basically there's two things about that is that obviously the Cutlass Red the last time we've talked about it is when it was way smaller. Now it's way bigger. But the intention stays the same is that it only has one bed inside. Um so, it's not something like you can take a
00:46:44
lot of patients. It's something you get on the scene, you get someone you can either go somewhere to an hospital for example or to an Apollo to an Endeavor this kind of stuff. But yeah, it's it's a bit complicated with that. Um the other thing uh is that the Cutlass Red obviously is based on the Cutlass which is pretty big fighter now which is a medium fighter. Um so, why it won't be as powerful as a Cutlass Black uh because well, it's it's not a fighter. Yeah, it loses the turret so it loses couple of guns. will still be more powerful I'd say a bit more like you go on a hot zone with the Cutlass rather than going with an Apollo uh as Obviously the medevac of the Apollo is
00:47:32
pretty good, but it's it's more you got a an really emergency you need to go there and you need to escape quickly. Yeah, the the sort of the methodology we use in internally is the Cutlass Red is your ambulance or sort of like your combat ambulance. Uh it's it's very small scale, but it's it's faster. It's got the armament. The Apollo is like a little doctor's clinic where it can treat treat a small amount of things and the Endeavor is a big city hospital. And all three are completely valid. Uh not everyone wants to have the big hospital. Not everyone wants to have just an ambulance. Some people want all three. That's that's fine. They all they all work together in the same career and you can go up and down the chain as you
00:48:20
please because if you want to just jump in and just ferry one injured person around at a time, the the Apollo is sort of overkill for that. Whereas you might get a medical mission where you've got four injured people to transfer within a a time limit. You can probably do that in a Cutlass Red, but you're going to have to be going fast and not make a mistake or not get interdicted during that time. Technically technically the Cutlass is still is a starter because it's only one bed. But it doesn't mean that you can't use it for all your medical career. The the Cutlass Red was actually due to go into production sort of around the time we were starting this process. And we we pushed it back because of the ship because we wanted to solve a lot of the unanswered questions with medical gameplay that we we just
00:49:08
hadn't really thought thought about and rather than just start the Cutlass Red and sort of put ourselves into a corner, we we pushed that back. it's still some months away before we we start doing it. So we we got our ducks in a row with this and then we can work out like where does the Cutlass Red fit against this? Where does the Apollo fit against that? And make sure that they're both complementary to each other. Not that one is just blast the other one out of the water. Yeah. I can imagine that in hot zones that the Cutlass Red might be a more attractive uh uh option. If if you're if you're going into the middle of an active engagement. And then the the Apollo is you know coming around afterwards. Not that the Apollo can't be used in an active engagement if you're if you're a if you're a savvy enough uh pilot. It would I can I can see a number of situations
00:49:57
where you would prefer you might prefer the Cutlass Red over an Apollo and vice versa. All right. Um, one of the questions that's that's inundating the chat especially from the very moment we mentioned the Endeavor is the Endeavor had a respawn mechanic that that would allow players to effectively respawn inside with the Endeavor medical bay. Any talk about that functionality with regards to the Apollo? Uh, we talked about it in the design post. It's sort of something that comes with medical ships. It's sort of a feature of their game play rather than I can't remember whether the Cutlass Red came before the Endeavor or vice versa. It came before. Uh, then obviously those two ships at the time
00:50:44
were such a huge scale apart that it it made sense for the Endeavor to be that higher the higher tier. Um Yeah, it's you get it through various levels of medical game play whether it's having those tier one beds that allows you to bring people back from the dead is I think the way we'll go with it. So, the Endeavor's going to have those out the box. The Apollo you can make it be like that if you want to. Uh, the Cutlass Red probably not. Um, but we'll see. All stats subject to change. Uh, Paul let's talk a little bit more about the the Apollo interior. Um, obviously there's not a whole lot of interior with the with the Aurora. So, when when developing the style for the interior did you have to lean on the on the on the Constellation and the Polaris much
00:51:33
or did you use this as an opportunity to to expand the RSI style guide even further? Yeah, it's um obviously there's been a lot of work done on the Connie. uh, I kind of just wanted to I mean yes, we have done some stuff on the Polaris Uh and it this is a little bit of a having your cake and eating it maybe, you know, like I've taken some some elements from the Polaris um and some of the shape language that works well for this uh for the for the overall sort of like medical bays and uh central room. Um obviously it's medical so we're keeping it clean in that area but um um the cockpit and it and those sort of areas definitely will have uh you know, similar doors, you know, things that the fans are familiar with,
00:52:22
door frames, buttresses. so yeah, I think it will be an advancement of the RSI visuals but um uh everything will still tie in. It's sort of the Bengal in there as well. I guess the Bengal and the Polaris sort of they're very similar. Yeah, yeah, and it's I guess it's taking you know, sort of taking that sort of cross-sectional shape from the corridors uh and feeding that in and so there's there's lots of nods. Uh follow-up question, why you hate struts? What what what what struts, man? Why did why did you want better visibility? We did that. Yeah, it's it it has been a bit of a debate, not not a long debate
00:53:12
it just obviously when we look at the conversation there's when we look at the Apollo it's a different kind of ship on you need to to look oh, is there a body there, body there, body there. Uh on it's something that personally I wanted to push on. Paul managed as well to keep the RSI style with the struts on the side on it's a bit different but the main issue is that we've seen like for example recently with the Cutlass or with the Razor before is that obviously it's always a bit of a pain if you use your your aim in your head on you got like a big strut in front of you and you can't see on your own. Can I see on that? So yeah, that's that's something that works really well as well with the slanted glass. So it's still really RSI if you look from the side on the strut are
00:54:02
still in a way that if you turn your head yeah, there's some strut but it's not in your view. It's just works well. If you want to see the struts, just turn your head and fly. Um another RSI hallmark there have been four RSI ships before this. The the Aurora and the Constellation utilized VTOL fans and the Polaris and the Orion did not. The Apollo does not look like it has any VTOL fans. Are you Can we confirm that? You can confirm that, yes. It has VTOLs but not fans. Oh, so it's not just going to fall out of the sky the minute you you go in atmo. And like I say, it was a 50/50 so it was what works what works best visually with the ship. We actually tried to make the fans for for a while. At the at the start we tried to put fans in there but
00:54:51
it didn't work with the shape. There's evidence there on on the development boards. Yeah, eventually we dropped it. Right. So we are almost out of time so I'm going to do I'm going to do a couple lightning round questions here. Just let's try to hit as many of these as we can before before we go. How many crew are required to operate the Apollo? Two. Two. Okay. What's what's the max crew? Okay. How many beds? There's two beds. I can a Cutlass Red dock with an Apollo? You mentioned the docking collar. TBD. Depends what we do. Obviously the Cutlass Black lost its docking collar. We'll see on the road. Um, let's see. Um Um,
00:55:40
can you use this ship for cargo? Yes. Uh, how many drones will be available to pick up stranded citizens? I believe you said two. Uh, what are the differences between the two Apollo variants besides just the look? Armor, maneuverability, there's some missiles. Oh, yeah, the missiles. Two size two missile launchers, so obviously so it comes with uh, two size two missiles on each. But, yeah, I I've seen people wondering, but why is there a missile on the medical ship? We did all Yeah, it it ties pretty well with when we were making the variant on it. It was Oh, yeah, it works well as well with the mini game and all that stuff. But, it's not something like it's not overpowered or whatever. It's not like you won't start taking down all the ships coming
00:56:28
with your medical ship and taking down all the ships. So, it's it just works Yeah. And RSI's got a bit of a standing history with these projectile weapons between the torpedoes on the Polaris and the missile racks on the Constellation, so. Yeah, it's probably got the least missiles of any RSI ship. Uh, will the Apollo have flashing red lights like an ambulance? That's a good question. Uh, we didn't put it in the concept images. I mean, we've obviously got you know, we've got lights. Um, we've I've kind of we've well, me personally I've left that open. I mean, it's more I'd like flash lights we had them in the the Avenger trailer for 3.2 3 Yes, we've been inundated with requests to add add flashing lights to the Avenger. So, then, um, how long do do we think it'll take a
00:57:16
player to be healed in the beds? Uh, that's too early to say. It depends on It depends what's happened to you as Uh, let's see. Uh, does the Apollo have bathrooms? Yes. uh, is does anything fit Do other vehicles fit inside the Apollo? I the with a big ramp. Like can you can you park something in that reception area? Technically I I guess you could put a bike because this is a big airlock on docking collar airlock's big enough to put the the drone with a person in it. Um Bikes I think definitely fit. Yeah, you might be able to wedge one in sideways. But there's always You won't see You won't fit a Merlin or whatever. I say that but someone will will manage to. Uh we know ships have different uh uh quantum speeds. Now that we Now that
00:58:03
we have linking they they they they can they can see that. Uh how fast do we think uh this ship will be in quantum? Will it Will it be Will it be faster because it's got to rush people to hospital or It's going to be the in the same band as the other sort of ships with medium quantum drives. So sort of Freelancers and Vanguards style. So it it is quicker than the smaller ones um but it's it's not specifically tuned for faster quantum speeds. if you bring somebody aboard that's faking injury and ends up being hostile, does it have a Does it have a brig? It's got two bathrooms, right? Can we lock the bathrooms? Probably or just send them out the bottom of the bed. Uh let's see. Uh will the drones be automated or or can the drones be automated or will it be required that they be flown by a player? I think we always want to
00:58:54
make this sort of player driven rather than just click and forget. Um so uh I would expect them to be to do them well. They're player controlled and we'll probably leave some sort of level semi-autonomous. So they'll they might go out and find the things for you but to actually bring them back that will be something you want players to do. Very Chris is always very make things hands-on rather than just uh click a button. And probably the most common question we get asked and this speaks this speaks volumes about the people who who watch this show. Can the drones kidnap people unwillingly? Can we rescue people who don't want to be rescued?
00:59:41
I would I would say no at this point. The the person's got to be sort of immobile. It's it's they they're not like huge tractor beams on the things. It's just like a I'm not sure if the the question is probably can you do a scam where you get someone and tell him I'm saying now you must pay because I hit you even if if I shot your leg before. That's That sounds like a Yeah, that's that's a big sandbox, so who knows? Yeah, I would expect players uh put people in these drones. They kind of have to be um unconscious or knocked down. I'm not suggesting how you get them into that state to start with, but you know, cuz it's going to be people running around space stations with them. I look forward to seeing the emergent
01:00:30
gameplay that develops because of this. All right, guys. That's it. That does it for today's RTV playing doctor. I am pleased to announce that the promotion page for the RSI Apollo will be going live any moment. So, you can go to robertsspaceindustries.com. You can see the full stat breakdown. You can see all the the the the imagery and all the various packs and whatnot that will be available. Paul, John, Corazon, thank you so much for being here today on on the show. I almost said Paul, John Ringo. Uh It's I just That's what That's what we call him. Where's George? Am I George in this situation? I got my mind set on you. George on. That's from a solo career. All right, guys. I'll let you get back Actually, that's the end of your day. I'll let you guys go home for the week. Thank you so much.
01:01:17
For those watching at home, like I said, the promotion is about to start any minute. Check that out on Roberts Space Industries dot com. Uh there's also a design post shipyard medical gameplay that we've talked about several times. It's an addendum to the original death of a spaceman post where you can read a little bit more about tier one, tier two, and tier three injuries and how the treating of them will go forward not just with the Apollo but with the Cutlass and with the Endeavor and you know and just medical gameplay in general. Uh additionally, what else do we got going on ahead of the things here? Um we had that 600i commercial contest from the community that was amazing. The winners were announced already. You can check out the winners for that up on Spectrum. Uh some fantastic stuff and uh just always impressive to see what you guys are capable of. With that um this
01:02:06
weekend at the San Diego Comic-Con, while we don't have an official Star Citizen presence there, our own studio director Eric Kieron Davis is down there. He's appearing on two different panels over the week. Again, not Star Citizen related, but if you're already going to be down there and you want to show some solidarity and support, I'm sure he'd appreciate uh some some fans. And if you do go and you want the you get a chance to ask a question, um feel free to ask him uh if he thinks Jared deserves a raise and if so, how much. Uh and are you willing to go on the record for that? Now. That'd be cool. Anyway, that's it for this week's RTV. Uh thank you so much. We'll see you next week. Um I'm content manager for global video production, Jared Huckaby. Uh have fun with your Apollo and play that game.
01:02:54
Play the play astromedics. It's a lot of fun. Take care. Thanks for watching. For the latest and greatest in Star Citizen and Squadron 42, you can subscribe to our channel or you can check out some of the other shows, and you can also head to our website at www.robertsspaceindustries.com. Thank you very much for watching.

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