CitizenCon 2952: Talking Ship

Transcript — every row opens the video at that moment

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   foreign my name is John crew I'm the vehicle director here at Cloud Imperium games uh this year I'm once again joined by Ben Curtis vehicle art director and Paul Jones concept art director and this is our yearly ship talk panel like previous years we'll be talking about something coming soon something being announced today something coming a bit later and then the fan favorite the Pekka ship or vehicle concept series [Music] to kick things off this year we're going to be talking about our New Concept chip

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   which is the Crusader spirit this is a series of ships from Crusader industries that is designed to take on a variety of other manufacturers ships at the two-person crew level and does a wide variety of tasks depending on which variant you pick the two stand-up competitors to this ship are naturally the Cutlass and the obviously the Cutlass blue red steel and the freelancer series um those are all similar sized ships to this and they also cover similar sort of roles compared to the Cutlass and freelancer series The the spirit benefits from not only Crusade Industries sort of stylish physical appearance but also their renowned Speed and Agility over those other variants we

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   have three variants of the Crusader Spirits we have the C1 which is the cargo hauler version we have the A1 which is the light to sort of medium bomber version and then we have the E1 which is the executive VIP transport version one of the really nice features of this the spirit series as a whole is the front half of the ship is kind of like the shared area and it's the rear section that swaps out so the C1 is the cargo hauler version this comes with 48 SU of cargo capacity in the Central Area accessible like the other versions via the rear ramp it's wide enough to allow a variety of ground-based vehicles on board such as the Cyclone you won't be fitting larger things in it like the tank however with the size of the cargo bay

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   on the C1 you can put a vehicle and still have some character capacity left over the A1 is the bomber version of the spirits which sort of splits the difference between the Hercules a2s bomb bomber version which has both size 10 and size 3 bomb options this comes with size 5 bombs and they are ranged in two vertical gravity drops formations down each side of the central area so you have a nice little walkway down the middle and then you have the two sort of lines of bombs each side of you and you'll be able to see them drop out of the the bottom of the ship it delivers a different role to what the starlifter does in terms of the bomber I think it's a much kind of smaller faster ship so it's much more agile you're

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   going to be kind of getting in and out um and and you know doing your bombing run and then getting back out of the danger zone quite quickly so it'll feel quite familiar in that sense but it does deliver a unique kind of play style um compared to the starlifter so you might be asking yourself which one's better and it really depends on what you want to wipe off the face of the planet that you're bobbing obviously the A2 has both Heavy Hitters and what could be described as carpet bombing whereas this is sort of for when you don't want to completely annihilate everything on the ground and lastly we have the E1 variant which solely exists to give Jared heartburn over his Starliner so this is the sort of taste of what the Starliner will will get in the future but on a much smaller scale vip1 is a really interesting module it's basically split

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   into two two levels and so you know we really wanted to sort of have that that VIP experience obviously you're you're coming into a sort of multi-role ship but when you get into the module you've got lockers space you know space to put any sort of personal belongings if essentially you're going to two elevators left or right and take you up to the top deck um so it has that sort of first class feeling I think what really makes the E1 Stand Out compared to some of our other ships is the kind of the large panoramic glass roof so when you're in this kind of shared VIP area you're gonna have great views and be able to kind of like explore the verse um in in something that I think is going

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   to be quite unique and we also have uh the mix master which is at the front of the front of the module which is basically where players can go and and choose whatever the drink it is so it's you know cocktails or coffee then players will also have super comfy seats they'll have the widescreen TV in the in their module I'm really excited to see when we start getting our players and our AIS into these ships and being able to kind of explore the verse and um yeah experience that kind of luxury living that um well I've not yet to experience so between the three variants there are a number of shared areas the the sort of core of the ship changes with each variant but there are some aspects which don't need to change and starting from the front of the ship you can actually have the the cockpit or the bridge so

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   like other Crusader ships you have the side by side pilot to co-pilot Arrangement then you have behind them they're living quarters bunk area and component access and then you have the variant section which does change the sort of internal floor plan of the ships between them then at the rear of the ship you can actually have the ramp access area so that's the Crusader Spirit we hope you look forward to seeing this and seeing what it can do in the game in the future from something at the very start of our vehicle production pipeline to something nearing the end of the pipeline let's talk about the Drake Corsair next the Drake Corsair is a important ship in their lineup because it fills that multi-crew exploration Gap in their

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   lineup we've seen a lot of Drake ships of various usage and roles such as the buccaneer and Cutlass in this size class you naturally have the the constellation the 600i is the competitors and what Drake brings is its usual rugged overwhelming amount of Firepower for its size sort of classification to that entry it strikes uh dedicated exploration ship um it's a kind of a medium deep space vessel effectively got crew for up to four or spacecraft four crew it's got a sizable cargo hold um and it's kind of got everything that you need to really spend a decent amount of time away from civilization away from stations and just kind of being able to

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    chart out those deep areas of space it brings that sort of No Nonsense no thrills approach to the ship and you know you know if something's going to go wrong it's going to be something that you more than likely can fix and it's not going to be something that you know you have to cut back to a main dealer to get serviced and fixed it's something that hopefully you and your crew will be able to kind of repair and get back on running or just fix with some duct tape so fans when they see um the ship will immediately see the sort of Heritage the DNA that's running through um the spirit so you can you can kind of almost imagine how the ship is built you know it's got that military easy fix kind of feel it's loaded with guns a load of the turrets um it has some really interesting mechanisms inside it so I think players

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    will really dig that I think what's quite unique to the Corsair is is Wings the way they fold up um you know this isn't done purely for style you know being Drake is more there to function it allows you to get in and out of the hangers much easier and put quite a lot of effort into keeping that really iconic uh exterior kind of silhouette and vision that we set but still making it functional and making sure it works at the moment we're just kind of finishing up on Final art and most of the exterior has had you know the majority of it it's core art time spent on it we've still got lighting to do we've still got kind of like final finishing to do tweak some of the materials till we're kind of properly happy um but it's in a good place so I'm really really excited for able to show

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    you so let's take a look inside the ship and once again we'll go front to back on the inside of the ship we start right in front on the cockpit um the the Corsa has quite a unique feel to its cockpit in the the pilot is kind of sat right up front and then kind of classic kind of Drake starlings the the co-pilot gets in the seat behind them and actually sinks down into the floor that transition from the main cockpit area into that kind of co-pilot um kind of section uh it's it's you know you move right forward and you're sat pretty much underneath where the pilot is it gives great visibility for both the pilot and the co-pilot the other nice thing about this cockpit is again you've got these massive guns that stuck out either side of you um so it should be it should be a nice place to be in in the rear of the cockpit we've got the Captain's Quarters so the Captain's Quarters is actually pretty much identical to the rest of the

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    quarters in the ship in terms of its kind of size and it's it's uh amenities As you move back through the ship there's a um I guess a small kind of Crossroads directly behind the bridge from here you can either progress backwards straight into habitation or to either side you've got the turret access so it's right really at the kind of like the neck of the ship effectively the side turrets have changed a little since the concept phase they now have a greater range of motion uh sort of the your axis we're quite Limited at concept stage to about 45 degrees each way you're now looking at 90 degrees pretty much each way so it's a lot more effective especially forward firing which again the corset has so many guns pointing forwards having extra two characters very very Drake inhabitation we've got you know you've

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    got the remaining three crew quarters that being Drake they are no thrills you've got a bed you've got somewhere to store your gear and that's pretty much it the main habitation area though is um if anything quite luxurious for a drake ship in that there's a decent sized space you've got your your bathroom which is No Frills it's got a shower it's got a toilet whatever you've got the um the kind of chow line for for all your food and everything you need to survive and then right in the heart of the the habitation area there's a large kind of sizable uh seating area and that's not just for the crew to you know have their meals for somewhere you can plan operations plan your next move and really you know decide where you're taking your your adventure as we move

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    back from habitation we start to get into like the rear half of the ship I think if the habitation areas like the the heart of the crew into in the ship then the engineering areas the real heart of the ship itself it's sort of this octagonal hexagonal space with a few little rooms coming off it to Crown components in and off one of those you have the side airlock which again has suit lockers and weapon Lockers in there for before you go into Eva or docking or coming back out of before you enter the rest of the ship and then you've also got the lift and the lift not only goes down to ground level but it also takes you up to the the roof of the ship so if you do want to go on a quick space walk or you need to go and repair something on the exterior then you've got kind of easy access straight up the lift and out you go then finally at the rear you have

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    the main cargo hold which has space for a nursery Rover or similar sized vehicles and down along with a significant cargo capacity and you know being a drag ship there's a huge ramp on the back of it all the mechanics are exposed you can really see the workings of how the ship actually operates if you're a fan of Drake it certainly ticks all those boxes so I think the Corsair is a particularly cool ship I love the styling of it love the asymmetric Wing arrangement of it I think it's just going to be a great fun addition to the game giving those sort of players who enjoy that Drake experience their slice of the pie and you'll be able to experience that yourselves at IE this year and a vehicle coming later today a vehicle that's at the end of the pipeline we have the gray cat STV racing is a cool and fun aspect of Star

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    Citizen and it's something that we've seen that backers really enjoy doing and organizing amongst themselves something that we really want to help support from within cig so we wanted to bring a new vehicle to the verse which is where the STV came from so the stb is the gray cat Sports train vehicle it builds on what they learned from the PTV but it brings it um out of the hangers off of the tarmac and onto you know much more rugged terrain it's a four-wheeler two-person open tops sport styling everything you need to razz around on the planet so the STV is actually part of a wider family of vehicles you may recognize the resentments in the name to the gray cat PTV which is also part of that family and we also have a third vehicle lined

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    up that we want to do in the future called the UTV which is the utility terrain vehicle and we've actually reconcepted the PTV and we the concept for the UTV and when you see all three side by side you'll see that family resemblance the interior again is similar design language simple layout easy to clean that was a big thing for us even though we don't have like a cleaning mechanic all this sort of builds into the sort of visuals of the vehicle so you know the floors have got drill holes in them so it can easily let water through the seats are easily removable so you can actually see the bolts where you can just quickly whip them out and so all of this thinking goes into those kind of vehicles the wheels are a big feature larger rubber mud guards

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    um you know just there's lots of subtleties um in terms of the the roll cage you know the sort of cross-section of all these things maybe you know people wouldn't notice but for us you know these are all um part of making a manufacturer consistent so the stb delivers that gameplay that is you know you and a buddy out exploring over our planets we've got you know these vast ships that you can explore deep space and and you know go off with with your big multi cruise but what this really allows you to do is get down on on you know one of our many many planets and go exploring on the ground it's not just a vehicle for you and a friend it's also got kind of some cargo space in the back so if you are out there doing missions and rather than having to fly your ships directly to where the mission is it allows you to land you know slightly out

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    there slightly in a safer area you still got space to load up with weapons load up with your um whatever Mission items you need and get in and out nice and quick compared to the Cyclone RC which is a sort of racing variant of a non-racing vehicle the STV was built from the ground up to be a good uh racing vehicle it has a good chassis it has better handling it has better top speed and that was made makes it a compelling racing Choice the best things about Star Citizen as a whole is it kind of brings uh a lot of gameplay and it's you know it's not all about combat it's not all about um you know flying these massive ships and I think one of the things that a lot of us are excited internally about is racing within our game a lot of us come from a racing background in terms of the games we've developed before

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    um a lot of us are you know petrol heads at heart so I think being able to build on that kind of gameplay um in Star Citizen is super exciting for us and if you stick around to the end of the broadcast you'll get your first chance at seeing the STV in action in a race organized by atmo Esports creators of the Daymar rally where you'll see it taking on the terrain for the first time you'll be able to pick one of these vehicles up today at the end of the broadcast and finally the most important aspect of these inaugural shows the pick a ship concept challenge thing for those of you that have seen previous years you will see that we've thrown up some silhouettes of potential ship on vehicle options and asked for your feedback on which one we should actually make and

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    the wise among you have probably realized that we end up making pretty much all of them anyway so instead of just doing that again and pretending that we're not going to do that and we thought we'd do something slightly different this year and just have a single ship option and the choice is actually the manufacturer and the styling of that ship so you want to do a nice large civilian mining ship that Bridges the gap between the Argo mall and the RSI Orion because if you know those two ships there is quite a gulf of space in between them we wanted to fill that Gap with a an intermediary stepping stone before you jump into the big RSI Orion which the scale of its mining is nothing like any other mining ship in the game the mole is the current mining system just lots of it so with this larger ship we want to increase that and also provide

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    onboard space for our ground mining Vehicles such as The Rock and The Rock DS which allows you the flexibility of taking on any mining situation that you can come across so with that we have three choices which are basically the manufacturers we have rsi's the first choice so obviously our side Duty Orion so this would be a smaller vehicle in that family we have Argo again we have them all so naturally it could be a larger step up from that and then we have misk the third option obviously Miss do the prospector so again keeping it all within the same family as you can see from these images they each have their sort of own unique styling take on that pitch that I've just given you at the end of this ship talk panel Jared to come on and explain how you get to vote on these three options and that's the

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    end of talking so over to you Jared