Hi all, Another SCLive Summary for you all, this time on ships. Hopefully, I got everything, as always this is a summary, so exact information is available from the video itself. Is the Nomad and MSRs fuel intended? That is not intended, that was harsher on the fuel than we had thought, so that is being fixed for 3.12, to what should’ve been the norm. All the fuel is balanced around systems, so it brings up the question of other systems, and how the fuel mechanics will work there. So questions like what is the range time we want, and then balance the ships around that. We want to move to a system where you don't have 40mins of fuel, and the default range is instead 1-2 hours. The starfarer currently has no component housing and has long been looked at as a ship that needs an overhaul? It does have some in there, it may not be like the more modern ships, but there is space in there. As new features come online, we are going to need to retro-fit all that stuff to existing ships, and component space is always something that is considered during concept. There is a significant amount of wasted space on the MSR, why? There is always a balance between aesthetics and function, I think there’s a bit of a balance between the player's space with the functionality, and then the suggested functionality the exterior shows. On the MSR itself, although it looks like there's a lot of dead space, it does get a little tight when trying to add more rooms, especially when considering all the things that need to be added between the interior and exterior (damage mesh etc..). Is it possible the MSR will get a second exit? I think it's something that was an oversight on our part, yeh, maybe that is a use case for that dead space. The 600i was mentioned to be having a rework, anything on this? Nothing right now, we have had a designer go through it and come up with some concepts for what a reworked interior may be like, and then adding some functionality to it like a docking collar, however, the exterior should be staying the same. Any update to the Carracks armoured cockpit? Still planned. Not cut. It's tied into the other function that the carrack doesn't have yet until they have a need, we’re not going to spend the time putting them in. The retractable antenna? To be used with Jump Points. We don't want to spend time adding them in when the function isn’t 100% locked down. These blockers are shared with other ships, like the Retaliator, which will be getting the first version of modularity. Also, talk about a possible medical module. The Banu Defender weapons? The hit-scan weapons probably won't be coming back for the defender, as they are causing a lot more problems than what we wanted due to them being attached to a manoeuvrable ship. The Constellations have been in a rough spot, anything for them? Its handling has been reworked in 3.12, it's also got some shield holes that will be fixed with SDF shields. When the Taurus comes out, we want to have a look at it as it's a bit “strutty”. It's a very tough point, and the answer applies to a lot of ships. The Sabre Raven, will it be fixed? I’m not aware of it having any major issues, there are some fixes done to the Sabre, but the Raven is in a different file. So we’ve now transferred those changes to the Raven in 3.12, but if there are more bugs, let us know. Why does one of the Razor variants have better shields than a Hornet? The Super Hornet is not where it should be when we changed the shields, we changed how the sizings are categorised. There were some ships that didn't take the changes well, and the Hornet was one of those ships, however, the razor also doesn't have a lot of things the hornet has, so it's something you have to look at as a whole package. Today's ships are made far better than the ones a few years ago, what incentive do players have to buy and operate these older ships? We are going to make sure they all have equality with gameplay function, those ships are definitely not underplayed, looking at stats. For their issues, they certainly aren't being ignored. Visually, we’ve got quite a diverse range of manufacturers, so that can mean that not every manufacturer has to have the same aesthetics but they should all have the same visual quality. Every new ship we make we get better at making them, so some of these older ships do lack the knowledge we’ve gained, which we’ve obviously applied to the newer ships, so we do want to bring everything up to that quality. . What is the status of ship armor? It's still, as of 3.12, a damage modifier, that will all go away with physical-based damage which is being worked on right now. It will take everything into the calculation. A while back CIG stated that ships will be limited to not just component size but type, is this still intended? This is something we are talking about in the ship experience team, that idea was an old one, and with the current conversation in the team, it doesn't seem like something that will stay. It was an artificial limiter that didn't really make sense and does not allow for customization and upgrading. The categories will be staying, and each one will have pros and cons. The carrack is the only non-cap ship with a medbay, whereas the Kraken does not, will we see other multi-role ships with medbays? The Kraken will probably get a medical bay, it was an oversight from us. It's certainly not intended for us to only have those 3 ships with medbays / med beds, it is however, an extremely powerful feature for a ship to have, and so it should make sense for a ship to have them. Any updates on player-facing ship modularity? The tech for doing swappable rooms is on the schedule for early next year. It was blocked by moving data from loose xml to dataforge so it could work with other systems, and some rooms have items that have functions tied to them. That work is now scheduled, when it's online, the Retaliators will be the first ones (we want) to have it as we already have all the assets there ready. What tech is blocking the ability to save the current ship settings? That's not particularly for the ship team to answer, from the vehicle facing side, we want to redo the MFDs to building blocks. And a part of that there will be a “ship settings” tab that can be sent to the servers so that all that information is saved. For the past year, ground vehicles cannot be used by lifts, is there any progress on this? From my understanding of this, the vehicle is being teleported each time the lift goes up. If there's any desync for 1-2 frames, the wheels are through the lift, then it has to decide which direction it needs to go to escape the collision. It then becomes random to if it works. New fixes are added each patch, but there are still some bugs. The Corsair did have side ramps as a part of its old concept, and so we do have the metrics for side ramps. Is there an update to customization like the 300i had? Definitely plan to do more of them, it's just a time thing, it's really just about finding a ship to do it on, and obviously, there are things like cockpit decorations. We want players to go out and find these really unique items to decorate their ships with. Will there be a fix for shield holes? Yes. SDF shields will ultimately fix this completely, for now, we are just patching them up the best we can. What are some of the technical hurdles of spawning vehicles in ships? Tech-wise, we’re having to solve a lot of these now with the constellation/merlin docking. One of these examples was when you spawned in a Connie in AC, it would put you in the merlin but flying the Connie. The constellation had access to all the merlin items, so it would try and fire its weapons. Then you go into the weird things where the terminal will show you have a Connie and merlin, but the merlin is a part of the Connie, so it shouldn’t be showing, and lots of other edge cases. How come the canopy bug has infected all single-seater ships? It's weird that it only affected a few ships previously, it should’ve been all the ships. The 3.12 Evo patch did have a fix, but we had to roll that back due to some other issues, but we are looking at fixing it. How are ships prioritized? There is no single criteria for organizing it, it's a combination of what staff we have free to work on it. About 2 months ago, every Q3 each year, I (John) sit down with the vehicle people and upper directors and we see what ships we want to add to the game, then we decide with the team what ships we can do, and then there's some back and forth with things like upcoming tech. Then if there's any leftover time, we see if we can squeeze in another ship, improvements, or rework. . Redeemer status updates? White box. It may or may not be a 5 man crew and is looking good. Taurus? It's a ship thats development is easy to pause, so we can leave it to fix other things, like if a patch is on fire Polaris? It had a reconcept pass, it's fractionally larger, still in the 100m range. Its interior has had a full pass, and it now has a docking collar and the hangar is to metric. Javelin? It's big. People saw it at fleet week with some changes. Hull C? No active production on the content side, some concept work on the Hull A has been done which may roll over onto the Hull C. It still has its blockers like docking but animating vis areas work, animating physics grids works. So it's just docking and (larger) cargo. BMM? It's in concept again, anyone who's a BMM fan knows the concepts were all over the place, it has gotten bigger, but hasn't gone to the upper landing pad size. It has kept its cargo, and its interior is currently being concepted. Starliner? It needs a concept pass on it, just because it's one of those older ships without the modern metrics.