Star Citizen: The Ships of 2.6

Transcript — every row opens the video at that moment

1. 00:00:03

   The Caterpillar was one of the very earliest pledge ships we did in 2012 during the initial Kickstarter campaign. We started off with the kind of the base five ships that were how we imagine playing the game. We based them largely on wing commander and privateeer kind of the different ship types. There was, you know, a multi- crew ship, a fighter, a transport explorer, that sort of thing. Um, midway through the campaign, we, you know, we were, we were hitting our goals and we knew we were going to do other ships, you know, more than just these base 5. Uh, so it's one of the Kickstarter goals in the original Kickstarter. There were these sub goals that would unlock different ship classes. One of them was the M50 Racer, one of them was the Javelin Destroyer, and one of them was the Caterpillar. Uh, I think we called it a fighting transport or a pirate transport at the

2. 00:00:50

   time. the Caterpillar. Uh it is an interesting ship because it's one of the first ships designed around pure uh modularity. So the whole front of the ship has four modules that in time we'll be able to replace with you know from what we have now which is cargo modules to maybe an additional habitation module for more crew or um weapon modules that carry missiles. So, we have the opportunity to really customize this ship from a player standpoint. Um, the interior spaces as a whole. So, this is the first ship where you can really do that. The Retaliator, you can do it with two spaces. Caterpillar, four spaces. So, it's a lot more to players uh for players to play with. It's also a pretty humongous ship. Uh, when it was first pitched, I believe it was pitched as

3. 00:01:39

   sort of the evil twin brother of the Freelancer, but players will know that the Freelancer is a lot smaller than the Caterpillar when they see it. Actually, because of the gameplay necessities for this ship specifically, it ended up growing in size tremendously. At this point, it's longer than a Starfare. Surface area wise, it's not as big as a Starfare cuz a Starfare is a lot taller and a lot fatter, but it's actually longer than a Starfare. So, it's 50% longer than a retaliator or a constellation. It's got two floors. It's got two observation decks, two habitations, uh, one in the command module, one in the main body. It's a big ship. It's a really big ship. It's one actually, it's the biggest ship we've done in LA. So, I inherited the Caterpillar after it already gone through all of its early concept uh, stages where it was uh, pretty set in on

4. 00:02:30

   what it looked like, uh, what it was for. Um, and so my task was more about getting the interior laid out, uh, getting the, uh, thruster placements figured out and and, uh, driving the implementation of it. I mean, the Caterpillar went through many, many iterations of determining what the inside would look like, how we would balance all of its uh, mass, how we're going to balance its thrust replacement. We also part of the problem with the Caterpillar is that because its focus is versatility. Uh it's its design page was just just kept going. Uh so we had to to really pair down what features it was going to actually uh contain. That was

5. 00:03:18

   part of my job was to pick and choose, try to pick the the really good juicy bits uh to to focus in on for the caterpillar. The Caterpillar can carry smaller ships. Uh it is intended for it to be able to carry dragonflies. We have the the cargo system has elements in it that allows us to tune how well a ship can carry other ships. So as far as turning this into a carrier, there's there are more ships than just the Dragonfly that fit into it, but there's there's a lot of consequences to just letting you fill it up with hundreds of those things. It's meant to operate realistically with fewer than that. [Music] Heat. Heat.

6. 00:05:21

   I'm working on the uh the 85X. It's a uh a snap ship that you get when you buy the uh 890 jump. Uh comes for free. It was given to me as uh a 3D blockout model, concept model. I've been working on it to getting it to like a game ready state. This is currently the first origin ship that we are um doing in the in the rebuild of older ships, for example. So that involves laying down the guidelines for what kind of servicing materials. It's supposed to be like space BMW. So in that sense, we're going for like high glossy materials, very neat, very clean, long, smooth sweeping curves. And because we're essentially redefining what the origin ship line is with this ship, we're essentially making everything from scratch. New materials. We're not reusing any materials, new detail

7. 00:06:09

   sheets, all those kinds of things. Um different style for lights. All those things are involved in just making making what makes origin origin. So that when you look at an origin ship, you can see that's an origin ship. So I've been working with uh Paul Delesi on the ship and I've been in charge of the the cockpit and the interior. So when we're looking at the ship, we were looking towards uh you know, futuristic cars um you know, sports car interiors, trying to make it look as sleek as possible. Um yes, some of our ships are more kind of uh kind of battle ready. This thing here is supposed to be as sleek as possible. Um, kind of getting away with metal surfaces, getting that kind of nice, you know, carbon fibers and plastics and high-tech materials in there and making it as shiny as possible. The Herald is a data running ship. It uh

8. 00:06:59

   transports data through the cosmos, whether illicit data or legitimate data. Uh it's also a science exploration vehicle. Um uh to prepare for this ship, we did a company profile for all the Drake line. So it's base profile on materials that are used for the ships, what their, you know, methodology is, who their target audiences, how much they're supposed to cost, stuff like that. And those all influence what, how, and how the ship's supposed to feel look, it's put together, manufacturer type, stuff like that. all the all the good nerdy little bits that make it believable is where we start and that's the it's like the company profile style guide that we use uh for the ship. So, uh in tandem with uh another set of

9. 00:07:50

   artists that we're working on another Drake ship, uh we both shared assets back and forth together to make sure that the ships look like come from the same factory. Keeps the ships looking consistent. If if Owen's stealing from me and I'm stealing from Ellwin, then the ships look like they're coming from same factory and you won't have any weird glaring uh differences in the ships. So, out of all the ships that we've done so far using the Drake profile would be the Herald uh and also the Caterpillar and uh the up and coming. Uh the players that are going to tend to gravitate towards this ship are people who want to explore, be the first one out. Uh people who like to make maps in those areas. Uh the unexplored

10. 00:08:38

    territories, there's some financial incentive there. Science runners, they're going to be able to make money running data for people, companies, groups, their own data that they found. It's not a ship you're going to just go murder people with. So, it's equipped with things to get away from being murdered. So, uh, people like, you know, the sly, roguish type that are, uh, science and clay, I'd say would gravitate towards the ship.