To clarify, this is not one of these posts trying to convince you not to buy the new Ironclad concept. For one, I would be a hypocrite to say so. Secondly, you're an adult. It's your money. No one should tell you how to spend it. If buying a new concept ship makes you happy and it's within your financial means? Go for it. No one should shame you for spending your hard earned money on whatever you want. With that being said, I wanted to make and share this image, especially for new fresh players who may be unfamiliar with CIG's current backlock situation. I believe that anyone who's considering purchasing this concept ship (or any other concept ship) should do so with realistic and reasonable expectations. You deserve to know what you're getting yourself into. The short of it is: CIG has a ship backlog issue. They sold a LOT of very big concept ships over the years. A lot have been delivered already, sure. But a lot of the more ambitious, and older concepts are still stuck in limbo. Considering that the Polaris (which will release soon :clinking_glasses: ) took about a year an half to produce. And the very long list of remaining "big ships" left to do... You should not buy any new concept ship with the expectation that you'll get it within a year... two years... or even five years. Some concept ships today are more than a decade old. Please, do keep that in mind. This isn't a jab at the amazing devs that make these behemoths. I've met some of them during bar Citizens. They are lovely and passionate people who want to get these ships in your hands asap, with the level of quality you deserve. They can't possibly make them faster... is what I'm trying to say. CIG is aware of the backlog situation. And over these past two years have tried to mitigate/address it. - We are seeing a lot more new variants to existing ships proposed during sales. This is a good strategy as it minimizes the work required to get them ready, while keeping the funding going. - They seem to be adopting a new strategy for how they handle their ship pipeline. The idea is to make one large ship in a certain brand and make it with other future ships of the same brand in mind (Reusing a lot of assets, interiors) to speed up the process for these ships. The Polaris and the Perseus-Galaxy, and more are going to be the first line of ships to be produced with this new strategy. We will have to see how long it takes for the Galaxy, Perseus, Arrastra etc... to come out after the Polaris to get a clear idea of how effective this will be at cleaning the backlog. - CIG is trying to increase and train their current ship production team. With the goal to one day be able to produce two very large/capital ships per year (we are clearly not there yet). That being said, unfortunately the pledge store machine must go on it seems. And new, very large, very ambitions concepts are being added to the current backlog faster that they can produce ships of this scale. So, the backlog situation is not likely to improve in the near future. If you're a new player, you may not be aware of this "backlog" situation. And you deserve to know. It may also help older backers to remember that the backlog is still very much there. This is why I'm making this post. This is why I made this image. I'm not telling anyone to not buy a concept ship. I just want some to understand (or be reminded), that CIG has (still) a serious backlog problem. And you should make your purchase without ANY expectation that you will see these concept ships any time soon unless the status quo of the backlog situation changes. (Yes, that includes the new Ironclad) That's about it for me. I hope you will appreciate this post. Have a good weekend. Edit: Since the image preview on spectrum isn't that great for large scale images like this one, you can see the full resolution image here if you prefer. https://freeimage.host/i/JskvdKP Sorry for the inconvenience.