Star Citizen | Behind the Ships: Drake Clipper

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   There's a lot of gameplay loops in Star Citizen. There's mining, salvage, [music] cargo, piracy, and a whole host of combat roles ranging from large capital ships, which require a huge crew, down to the single player fighters with more coming online over the next year. There's a lot of players that specialize in each of those roles, and there's ships that are dedicated to those roles. But there's also a lot of players that sort of don't want to be put in a box. and they just want to leave themselves open to whatever happens in the verse. We refer to this as the generalist play style. We have a few ships that sort of fit into that role such as the cutter and the Corsair. We felt there was a ideal space in the middle to introduce a new ship and that's the Drake Clipper. The Drake Clipper is the jack of all

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   trades and master of none really. So, it's the Jared of Spaceships >> is Drake's answer to the ship that does a little bit of everything. And it's really there for the person that wants to go out, explore, but without needing to bring along friends. It is Drake's solo ship for the person that just wants to go and see what the universe has to offer. >> The Clipper is that silhouette that everyone has been hankering for from Citizen Con 2024. the large vertical multi-positioned wing drake ship. >> We had a few different ideas that we tried and we ended up with one that was very thin and narrow the CR quite liked and we saw it as like a stepping point between the cutter and the Corsair as like the middle ground between those. It just looks straight. You look at it and

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   you know >> very little has changed from the concept to the to the final ship. I think some parts of it we had to like stretch and make smaller or make bigger, but it was very easy to work from. >> So really you just copied Le's work. >> Oh, 100%. Yeah. >> From the outside, I think the first thing you kind of notice when you walk up to it is just how tall it is. The role we wanted it to have, we wanted it to be able to do loads of different stuff, but we wanted to keep it within a really small solo footprint. And so what we decided to do was build on its height. >> I love it like top profile it has where you can properly see the difference in shape of the wings. I think it looks cool. >> The shapes like there's a lot of angular shape in the design. In the side we have

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   three thruster and big twin engines in the rear. >> It makes it seem so brutish because it's so simple. It's just massive engines shoved on wherever they could find them and doesn't matter what it looks like. It's just big and it goes. There's a bit of weirdness to it. It's got that Drake thing where it's not symmetrical. It looks a bit ungainainely and weird, but I really like how it's all come together. The Caesar mechanism of [music] the lift features a pure industrial functional approach. It's very cool to see it in a ship. >> And despite its utility, it's no slouch

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   in the offensive department either. Typical to Drake, it comes with four size threes for its actual weapons as well as a number of missiles to fire at your opponents. >> So going up the ramp, you enter into the cargo bay and that is literally the bottom floor of the ship. The ramp is go down in the front side [music] and you can see in the side where rampid joints a really nice details fans and some very big hydraulics and in the cargo in the ceiling nice detail there really nice pipes and a lot of gribbles there. It can hold 10 to 12 SCU. The biggest box you can get in here is realistically a 2SU box but is really ideal for single 1 SU [music] boxes.

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   Then at the rear of the cargo room is the ladder up to the mid deck. At the top of that ladder, you enter into the lower sort of engineering component room area. >> I think engineering for me, it makes it [music] feel hot. It makes it feel sweaty. It makes it feel like there's a lot of stuff going on to make it [music] function. And I think we've kind of captured that quite well in engineering. I think there's a lot of subtle movement going on. We've tried to make it kind of as immersive as we can so that when you're in there, I think the lighting complements [music] it, the movement complements it, you know, the audio complements it. It it feels like you're in the heart of a machine. >> The engineering deck is split between two floors because of the narrow shape of the ship. The only way to the top deck is a ladder. We couldn't get the components down the ladder. So, we've implemented a basically a fun little

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   trap door in the engineering room that you move the components through with a like a tractor beam. There's a big clunky lever that you pull and the trap door just swings open. So don't stand on it when you pull the lever and then going forwards from that you enter into the medical bay. >> It's Drake's take on what a medical bay should be. If I'm honest, the inspiration from it for me was more of a sort of like a butcher's room. >> It has [music] got red wine colored floor. It looks very heavy duty and like industrial. >> And a lot of people were a [music] little bit like, do we want a med bay to have a red floor? Cuz normally, you know, medical bays are they're clean. They're clinical. [music] But for me, you know, Drake's take on a medical bay

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   is there's a bit of blood on the floor. Well, I wanted it to feel a little bit like it was somewhere [music] you'd use as a last resort rather than somewhere that you'd be happy waking up. >> The Clipper has a tier three medical bed in the medb. This is great for healing minor injuries as well as short distance regeneration. >> It gives you that little bit of a safety net truly making it one of the best ships for someone to fly on the roll. >> You then have a room that is dedicated to the crafting machine. Although the feature isn't online yet, you'll be able to make stuff on the fly while actually inside the vessel. And obviously with the fabricator integrated into the actual ship itself, it isn't a case of choosing whether you want more cargo storage or the fabricator, you get best of both worlds.

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   The habitation room in the Creeper does not care about luxury or comfort. You'll see too much exposed mechanical components, [music] pipes, wires, and no frrills in general. And then at the very top front you have the traditional Drake cockpit featuring very angular designed cockpit glass and a sort of seating and dashboard setup you'll be familiar with. >> It feels quite contemporary. [music] There's a lot of push buttons. There's a lot of glowing lights. The screens are kind of slightly curved. So it's got like that kind of nod back to old CRT screens. And we just wanted it to feel quite analog or as much as [music] we could in a you know in a in a modern spaceship. The cockpit in the Creeper is quite spacious and it gives [music] the pilot a wonderful panoramic view thanks to its

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    large glass cage. >> I remember when we were doing the concept, [music] it was kind of like an early idea and we were and about to like where we want the cockpit to be and then as soon as we saw [music] it up at the front, it just kind of worked. >> It's Drake ship. It's always a fan favorite. The detail and the interest [music] that we get to do with Drake means that it's always great fun to actually work on. >> Very happy with it. It's another great Drake ship that just sort of adds to their lineup. [music] And when you look at it, you can tell it's a Drake ship. >> Is that a good thing or a bad thing? >> I'll leave that up to you to decide whether that's a good thing or a bad thing. >> Yeah. You know, I'm going to say it and I think it's [music] my favorite ship this year for no offense to any of the other ships that we're doing.