Guests:

• John Crewe, Vehicle Director
• Ben Curtis, Vehicle Art Director

TL;DW:

• No production work happening on 600i rework. It's a functional ship so they're focusing on other ones in worse/non existent state.
• Engineering status on the vehicle content side:
  • All ships support it with some ships lacking physical components using a fallback method for now.
  • Over half of all ships have physical components implemented, most that don't are single-seater ships ("it's less important").
  • Smaller ships (non single seaters ones) are the most problematic in terms of finding space for the components.
• Engineering itself is still being worked on, "will go into tech preview testing when it's ready".
• Ship showdown skin decisions are made around specific brand theme, decisions for this one will be made next week. They're aware some skins didn't really work in the past.
• They had a meeting this week to kickstart gold standard work on the Aurora series. (I'm sorry, I had to bold this one because I waited years for this.) They want to do the same for other starters in the "near future" as well.
• Gold standard priority is based on ship popularity, it's technical state and what makes sense from gameplay and business sense (new features coming online).
• Aurora starter package was removed for two reasons: there are around 490 000 of them already bought and still needs gold standard work. They "felt there were other starters that worked better for people". It might come back after gold standard update.
• Zeus Mk. II ST (shown during one of the previous Citizen Cons) is indeed planned but its gameplay loop isn't fully fleshed out yet. Its reveal was a mistake, John put a wrong image into the presentation.
• "Fighters sell".
• They don't have time to finish ship modularity at the moment, there are no other blockers at the moment.
• Apollo (both versions) coming next month. It will include all modules (for free). No working drones, they might come with base building IF there's a reasonable use case for their inclusion.
• Command module (ability to control the ship from a detachable module, see Caterpillar) will use a different docking mechanic than snubs (Merlin - Constellation) or fuelling due to transfer of control between docked ships. It's being worked on by the technical feature team, will have to be worked on by the vehicle content team after that.
• There is no plan to focus more on bespoke weapons for vehicles, all other ships released this year (except for Perseus turrets and one other ship) will be using standard weapons.
• Bespoke weapons allow for more control against min-maxing and options in terms of what can be done in terms of visuals.
• There might be more options to replace the bespoke guns in the future but no ability to use all weapons of the same size/type.
• Multi-shield vs larger size shield performance is currently stuck half-way between the old system and engineering plans. The latter will change how shields and other components function.
  • If you have a ship with more than 2 shields only 2 of them will be active at the same time. If one of them goes down the spare one will take its place.
  • All the components will be rebalanced once engineering comes online.
• They want to create a small (career starter) salvage ship in the future.
• They're trying to balance new ship and backlog releases, as well as updates to old ships. Ratio changes quarter to quarter.
• Most of the backlog ships are waiting for functional gameplay loops. They don't want to release them without that.
• They like the visuals of Railen cargo pods but require some rework to work correctly with the standard SCU system used everywhere else. SCU capacity will increase.
• They don't plan yearly focus on specific ship manufacturers, the "year of RSI" was kind of an accident (the RSI theme was only intended to work on model kits for capitals).
• There may be more Kruger ships in the future, no specific plans for now.
• The original concept for Carrack cargo pods was that they would detach from the ship and then open instead of opening as part of the ship. This will be implemented but ship requires rework they don't have time for at the moment.
• Jared showed off a Carrack plushie that never went beyond a prototype phase. It looks... not great.
• A mid term plan for external ship doors being easy to open with damage is to add "minimum damage threshold" alongside engineering to prevent opening by punching. Long term this will be covered by Maelstorm (physical damage model, coming some day).
• They're trying to bring back medical beacons with the release of the Apollo but need to finish fixing them before this can happen (they're incompatible with Onyx facilities and spam the contract list). This will not take care of issues affecting medical players (not having permission to access facilities, I assume).
• More info about the future of medical gameplay closer to Apollo release.
• Ironclad will not be getting PDCs as they're intended only for military capital ships. 890 Jump, Constellation Phoenix and Reclaimer only because they were promised to have them in the past.
• Existing PDcs should be added to in-game shops in November.
• There is a plan to allow for cancelling the ship/seat entry and exit animations. No specific plans for "when".
• Banu Merchantman not coming in 2026. They hope to start putting people on BMM tasks in the back half of that year. No progress since last showcase.
• Some future ships have weapon racks in/near cargo area (question was about MaxLift specific ones but it should be able to use those as well).
• Difficulty in creating skins for ships comes from trying to make the same theme work across multiple ships set up in different ways.
• Possible future Retaliator modules (besides already planned drop ship and personal quarters ones) include: medical and bomber.
• PTV work is low priority. Best in show skin will come one day.
• No plans for more concept ships, they want to move towards "straight to flyable" sales.
• Battlecruiser (the biggest ship in the game, promised as one of the stretch goals) will happen but is in very early stages of design work. "It's unlike any of the existing capital ships."
  • It might be the last concept sale they're going to do.
• They'd love to create internal liveries for ships. No timeline for "when", all the newer ships are set up in a way that should allow for this functionality.
• The reason for Wolf not having component access is simply that they wanted to release it in August but didn't have time to finish it on time. This will be fixed by the end of the year (alongside some other Wolf related things).
• Lots of ships coming in November. They plan to release at least one ship a month (patch).
• G12 is low priority and gets regularly delayed by other work.
• Putting bigger guns on small ships is not a problem, they want a wide variety of options to choose from. Large guns are balanced by handling and armour/HP.
• There may be more Star Kitten paints in the future, no specific ideas at the moment.
• Ship to ship docking is still planned, no more details on that.
• Rearm/refuel/repair from inside other ship is scheduled to be delivered "in the near future". This version is intended for "select hangars of existing ships" (like Idris) and will use resources stored on that ship's cargo grid. "It's necessary for some interesting content scheduled for next year."
• Work on the medical gameplay is ongoing, current plans are very different to what they were when Apollo was first designed.
• They want to add to medical gameplay in September or shortly after.
• They don't want to limit relogging purely to ship beds in the future, beds will provide bonuses but we'll be able to do that anywhere. Bed availability on ships will be more thought out in the future.
• No show next week due to work on Citizen Direct.