ATV Ship Shape: Drake Caterpillar
Transcript — every row opens the video at that moment
- 00:00:14
thanks guys on this week's ATV behind the scenes I'm sitting down with designer Randy Vasquez and he's going to take us on an in-depth look through the what what what what do we call it well we're calling it The Caterpillar for right now what are we looking at on what what's this what we're taking a look at the initial design and layout of the Drake caterpillar Randy how you doing doing good yourself good you ready to show us all yeah let's do this all right we're looking at the initial layouts and design of the caterpillar the caterpillar is an interesting ship just because it's asymmetrical it has multiple purposes multiple uses and just the modularity alone has been kind of kind of crazy so it's one of the few asymmetrical ships we have yeah we don't have many just because they're kind of difficult to actually build and create
- 00:01:03
and make sure that they run and look good so I don't know I kind of like it has its own charm you know rogish charm I might add so first thing we kind of started doing was we looked at the overall ship and then we started looking at okay what is the scaling what are the purpose of everything we've kind of made the ship a little bit bigger than what it was initially said not too much bigger and then you guys once we finish everything then we'll give all of the new updated stats and like that we've added to the ship we have not taken anything away really okay so um what we're looking at right now is kind of VAR ins like At first we were like all right well so this is kind of the smaller one we're like all right this is way too small we're not going to fit enough Cargo in there we told the we told the community that the cargo was going to be over 500 so we're trying to make sure this right here initially
- 00:01:51
would not work and then also balance wise and ballast and everything that we're going to start putting into every s ship kind of this one wouldn't work being over to side so then we kind of switched over to a more Central and this Central kind of opened up some space so that way the center people can always walk through now granted people can always fill up a cargo unit so like this is kind of the new improved one it's a little bit wider a little bit taller has space for the components it has space for the hard points it's going to be on it you have many many modules sir yeah we've done a lot of playing around kind of like where we did with the star liner right where we had tons of variations we like all right how's this look how's this and kind of just us running around inside of it we did a lot of the same thing so basically right here you're seeing if a person was to fill up the cargo bay completely you know we're
- 00:02:41
looking at 90 SCU right here 20 seu right here and 20 seu right here so people can do the math every single module cargo module will be able to hold that much cargo so it's been on the Forefront of what we wanted to do so I'm actually going to take you guys on a journey through the different pieces of this ship so right here we actually have kind of the the foyer area where people are going to be going to the airlocks and this is kind of the middle to the back of the ship we wanted to make sure that the Command Module that does detach actually kind of interfaces and links up with it so as you can see right here I have everything kind of just in blocked out form just to check before artists actually start going in and building up this ship all the way we wanted to make sure we had design set and kind of more
- 00:03:30
solid gotta so that's the rear of the main hole before you start attaching modules yes so every caterpillar will have this every caterpillar will have this part um and then they'll have engineering and then they'll have space for the rear turret we've kind of moved the rear turret back a little bit as well so that way it wasn't like in the center it was more to the rear so it had kind of a more view of you know their way to shoot behind them just because this being a cargo hauler or intended as a cargo hauler and a search from Rescue it's not going to be that fast so let's start looking at some of the modules we showed you the cargo module um kind of made like a Personnel module where the crew is going to be living inside this thing now if you want more crew you can add more modules but again if you add more Personnel modules then you're
- 00:04:19
sacrificing cargo modules or any other modules you want so it's kind of a give or take what functionality you want what are you going to sacrifice for that how many to total modules can you connect so the front module is going to be its own thing and then you can swap those out and then you're going to have a few modules behind that so actually let me show you real quick if we look here each one of these is a module so I'm seeing one which is the front module right here okay then one two three four and five wow so we're looking at five modules the player can swap in and out so five body modules and then one front module mhm so for a total of six modules yes wow okay so start going through like um some of
- 00:05:09
the concepts that we've been working with was kind of an Armory so if you were going to be setting up for troops then you want to have like you know a Barrack Personnel thing so you can fit more people in um it's not as comfortable but you have more people and basically the Armory will have host all the weapons you'll have like a workbench you'll have like a hollow table so you can kind of preview all of your um all of your changes for your loadouts then we have a workshop that's um basically a shop so you can have a store on this we think about like I guess if you want to think about like illegal activities you can have a kind of a mobile shop where you're selling Contraband or buying stuff making business meetings on the run and we don't have any citizens that are interested in elicit activities no so strictly above the board operations okay so I I'll stop talking about
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enlisted activities because that they're just not interested in that anyways so let's go to one of the more nicer ones medical Bay you know um so don't don't mind these red dots they're kind of assets that there're going to be screens on the walls kind of like diagn Diagnostics and everything so then up top we have where the doctors would be kind of making sure checking up on everybody and then they have like a little elevator here so that way they can kind of go in and out from up top so all of the modules are going to be multi multi- level mhm right and we won't talk about this one for right now so this module right here is going to be the Chop Shop well sorry mobile salvage mobile salvage all right completely above board legal activities only please yes yes none of that we don't we don't
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want riff rafts here so we have like you know claws kind of to hold things and St we have um tools and equipment All Around The Bay these Bays will kind of open up into space so that way stuff can come from outside now all the all of the modules right here also will have things that slide open so all the doors can be actually widened out okay so that way basically you can put stuff from module to module so we want to make sure that this ship is kind of a playground so that way you can move cargo you can move Salvage from one to another and you can stay all within the ship and move things around as well as if you wanted to you can kind of open the ship up and then move things around in space wow okay yeah I didn't realize the sides opened up y yep I'll show you something on the sides a little bit M um right here we
- 00:07:34
have actually one of the the barracks module so that way it has just rows of bunks and then some personal storage top with little lounge and stuff for eating so this one's pretty basic we have everything set up so people can you know take care of their needs and this one is a Docking Bay or a docking collar sorry and this is kind of if the caterpillar becomes like a meeting point mhm so an go ahead I was say an example of it is if you look up I have a few ships up here kind of using the docking collar just to make sure it works so ideally what would happen is these um these docking things kind of just come out and they're going to be like on like Cs and stuff like that and then people can just dock with other ships and then
- 00:08:21
everything kind of just goes from there people had been wondering we we had seen a little bit of this ship mass in a a video before and that like we ship shaped did a a segment on the caterpillar a couple weeks ago and I refrained from telling folks what the uh what what the constellation Mass was but now they know yeah so as you see here um the doors will be opening up into a ramp so when this lands when the caterpillar lands actually this door will be like okay J it's going to be like a clam shell so the top part opens up and then the bottom part kind of goes down and then that is the ramp that people be using to get in and out if they're actually parked this is obviously a front module no this is not the front module this is still one of the side modules oh okay but yeah this is something that I'm just playing with
- 00:09:08
right now just some other variations and you see here I have a couple of the ones that I can mess with and based on feedback that I'm getting kind of just go from there so um let's see important to remember every for everyone to remember that none of this is final this is all exploration of ideas we're trying to basically figure out how everything fits together what works all this is done with metrics so that way um light medium and heavy armored people can actually move around within the ship and not have an issue so we have the Command Module right here we're still playing around with the Command Module so right now this is what the Command Module looks like when it's detached by itself as you can see this is kind of asymmetrical again along with the other ship so it's kind of hard to balance
- 00:09:55
just weight Mass size and everything like that so we're around the Command Module make sure that it fits the rest of the ship right and as I said people will be living inside the ship so one of the things that we're playing with right now is just the thought of removing the living space from The Command Module and giving it more purpose and functionality cuz right now a lot of space is just lost due to living this but we already have the living space within the modules exactly so we don't really need to duplicate that now the one thing we do need to have is we need to make sure that the pilot the co-pilot and and any other operator within the Command Module has space that they can do their job so we've been playing around with some things keeping it asymmetrical but making it only one layer now the reason why the one layer works out really well
- 00:10:43
is when it's connected to the ship if it's double layers then all the Comm the modules on the sides they can't open up gotcha so it's kind of interfering and getting in the way so if we make it a single single row then basically command the modules themselves can still open up people can operate and walk underneath the command modules no problem gotta so the the change gives us additional functionality to the rest of the ship yep makes it way more accessible so as you see here this is kind of one thing we've been playing with so that way we have sensors we have remote turrets so we're adding actually some guns to the new design they have guns on we have two hard points on front and we have one hardpoint in the back as you see engineering here we've also added a little bit more safety featur so when
- 00:11:31
the crew is escaping they can actually you know those fall down seats you see like um the jump seats right in the um in the ships so as you see here I'm like all right I went more like a tom cat a little bit more make it a little more Sleek make it a little more pretty you know and then attached I was like you know that's cool but then talking with the artists and everything they actually liked the two rows so that way the people will have space to just walk right in the center and then go with this seat go to this seat or any of these seats behind them now as you see you still have a lot of space all the engineering components engineer will be here hanging out and then you still have the turrets you still have everything so actually by doing this we've added more functionality to the ship so it's all about adding functionality making sure that this ship can get away okay it
- 00:12:20
needs to and it could also defend itself where we're like oh get away get away get away it can just go so let's talk about the front module the front module is unique and the front module only fits on the front so this one is my jack of all trades it's basically going to have all the tools of every single of the front modules we have some cargo equipment so that way people have dollies and like you know pallet like graph pallets so they can actually load things in if they need to they have um the launch Bays so launch bay we haven't talked about much at all okay now the launch bay Ser just it's just a thought it's just it's a theory right now but imagine a imagine a catapult in space and it's going to be catapulting people for you know when you are when you're rescuing a ship and you need to get over there really quickly obviously and only res just rescue only yes so this can
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catapult two people out and they're going to need to use their jump Jets and everything and their Eva equipment to basically slow down the ascent because you don't want to go Splat on the thing you're trying to rescue that's just bad form right be it would be some interesting gameplay interesting to say the least so we also have a hard point for for a tractor beam so that way it could hold on to anything and bring anything closer to the ship that you're trying to rescue and help um this is an Eva EXO and basically what it is is um if you ever seen like Subs how they have the small little submersibles and they're unmanned and they kind of detach from the ship and then they help do like on like field repairs so this is going to be something like that where they can use it for salvaging they can use it to kind of do field repairs on their own ship a person can jump inside of this and it'll be like a oneman seater and then people can
- 00:13:59
just grab onto it and it go so it's basically going to be a little like a seat with an engine and then so we have a lot of ideas for it and we're still still exploring mhm so this one is all launch base so you can launch four people at once towards your intended target so you can rescue four people yes it's like rescue divers this one's going to be more cargo so this one has all the cargo equipment where of course the mag and everything like that it has one Eva to help out with cargo and grabbing things in space and then this one is going to be mostly just Eva where you have two of the EV exos to get things and you have tools so usually this would be ideal for when you're using the Chop Shop I mean mobile salvage sorry keep slipping so we have here um just a base
- 00:14:51
front module that is going to be empty and this base module is basically going to be just whatever you want to put in it so if you want to put any equipment in there you're good to go okay so those are the modules as of right now let's go ahead and see them together okay so we talked about the different modules before and kind of functionality wise this is going to be the cargo variant so the cargo variant is going to have mostly cargo crew and that's about it it's meant to have as much cargo as possible right and then this is going to be used for either Marine can use just for cargo hauling and whatever else the player wants and then again the player no matter what variant they get they can swap out modules and everything and go from
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there so as you see I'm going to go through everything right here um the ship is actually a decent size so I'm just scrolling through right now here's the module ARR of people here's the foyer and then engineering and then here's the bottom turret so the engineering Bay is actually two stories it has space for the large fuel tanks and it also has space for two more large fuel tanks some of the alternative uses for the ship we were talking about was like a colony ship so basically people will load as much stuff on here and have a fleet of caterpillars and then be shot out into space and with these large these large fuel tanks they're able to make it even further and
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then then we haven't even talked about attachments that we want to have for outside the ship which will probably be discussed at a later time all right only give too much away so yeah there's a lot of work this is the air lock from underneath if we go up top I'm going to show run through the ship real quick these are where the controls for opening the side bays are for everything so cargo can actually come in on either side and that's all the way down so going up here we have a actual this is the seat that's going to be on top of the wing and basically this is going to be kind of like a crane operator so if anybody seen like um the crane operators on the ships on the docks and everything so every time cargo or Salvage durink like that this guy is
- 00:17:15
going to be controlling the tractor beam on the wing to grab the stuff and then bring it closer to the ship so that way the workers on the ship can get everything and kind of store everything quickly it's all about trying to be as efficient as possible when you're PIR I mean not pirating I of course not not when you're PIR salvaging who would use this ship for pirating I don't know I don't know and then this is just um way into the um Command Module so that's the cargo variant let's check out some other stuff this is going to be the search and rescue so the search and rescue which not boarding is going to be able to catapult people out really quickly to the intended target and you the ship will have to be facing it of course and then the sides would ideally be open so we have we have a couple of caros we have a medical Bay just in case you need if anybody's hurt or injured and stuff
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you you can put them in the medical Bay and I go from there we have a barracks and then we also have a Personnel this is the Personnel for the ship and then this is Barracks for having extra workers or extra Troopers or crew on board Pirates you said it not me so this one because of the multi thing we actually have two airlocks now each module is self- sustained so each module will have its own components its own power supply its own life support everything so that way if you want to open one module and have all the other ones closed all the other ones will be sealed off gotcha and you can open all the modules if you want or you can have all of them closed it's really up to you what you want to do with it we're trying to leave as much as much flexibility as possible so last but not
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least this is the mobile salvage don't don't mind that that's not a jop shop so we have tools here we already talked about this front module kind of came in we have two mobile salvages right next to each other and then as you see right here we have a Causeway so people can actually walk through and store stuff now this one has the least amount of cargo right now just because it's supposed to be going there getting the stuff salvaging and then kind of bringing back what they Salvage after they break down all the Salvage into smaller pieces then this one also has a shop so in case you're selling things then you can also sell things also while you're salvaging okay and you can also add more of the shops if you wanted to you can make a food truck cater fill food truck cater fill food truck space food truck or space
- 00:19:40
Roach Coach whatever you want to call them so yeah like it really has a lot of possibilities just to just to kind of play around with and I really hope the community likes it I I'm Blown Away there this is so much more functionality functionality than I was expecting so this is some of us stuff that we were playing around um with the Thruster placement so as you see we have thrusters up front kind of pushing in the different areas that's what each area or H arrow means and then because the ship is asymmetrical and it will be also dealing with cargo if we go if we look at it right here we need all the thrusters up front kind of just for a torque so that way it kind of turns like it's supposed to but the center of gravity is actually when it's empty center of gravity is going to be right
- 00:20:27
here but when the ship is full like a full cargo center of gravity actually changes to about right here so that's kind of a very large kind of a large range yeah SP is a good word so we had to figure out kind of how it will go how it will go through and how we'll move especially with these big thrusters here and then this one will be actually pivoting so that way it's going to be kind of like how the cutless is MHM and we're going to be using a lot of the mechanics and a lot of the looks and features of a lot of of the Drake ships so it's been a lot of fun though so far um we're still messing with the Command Module so these Thruster placements are not final and once we actually put this into the system which we do have a working version of it but it kind of wigs out a little bit so I can't really
- 00:21:15
show it right now but hopefully soon right now it kind of drives like a freight train like it's so bad I think we probably need to wrap up this is an especially long segment yes sorry so it's all right uh Randy thanks so much for taking the time to take us through the caterpillar um I know this is just design and and ear it's pre-white box but this is a lot of exciting stuff uh can we check in with you later definitely in a couple weeks maybe a couple months when this is once I get an artist and once we get everything situated and get approved then we're going to start get hitting these hard and with all the modules you can basically just Mi make modules and then have it kind of just mix and match and go from there very cool ready thanks so much man no wores thank you back to you guys
Transcript from YouTube’s automatic captions — punctuation and Star Citizen jargon are approximate. The video itself is hosted by CIG on the official channel.
