What Is The Drake Kraken?
Welcome to some more Star Citizen, today I wanted to talk about The Drake Kraken, what it is & potentially are we going to see it at CitizenCon?
CitizenCon Evidence
This years CitizenCon on the 10th of October is according to the Fluff:
“sponsored and hosted by controversial ship slingers, Drake Interplanetary. Reinventing their own image in the wake of PR turbulence and corporate restructuring, Drake has a chip on its shoulder and perhaps a game-changing ace up its sleeve. CitizenCon 2948 is not to be missed.”
Game-Changer was a term used often to hype the Pioneer, the Outpost building ship unveiled at CitizenCon 2017.
The date of CitizenCon matches perfectly with the next expected Concept Ship sale too.
So why do I think it’s the Drake Kraken & What is it?
There was a happy hour game dev RtV type livestream that CIG did on the 1st of Dec 2017 called Happy Hour Gamedev: YOU Pick the Next Drake Ship this show went through various ships that Drake might make and asked the audience to choose one to have as the next Drake ship & to go on concept sale at somepoint, eventually the Drake Vulture Small Salvage ship one this vote.
Other Ships that were mentioned:
Starlifter
Medium Storage Runner
Corsair – Constellation Competitor
And the Kraken – Scout Carrier
You’ll notice that the Starlifter and Medium Storage Runner have been Concepted but via a different manufacturer, Crusader Industries the Hercules & Mercury respectively.
It is very likely in the future that we will have another Constellation sized ship from a manufacturer too.
But the Kraken was heavily upvoted & a lot of the community seemed annoyed that it didn’t win the vote but as we have seen it’s very likely that it will be made in some form.
The reason I think this will still be a Drake ship is because the name Kraken suits the buccaneering, pirates of the Caribbean theme of Drake & they are likely to want to keep that awesome name. Drake doesn’t have a Capital Ship yet, the Drake pipeline is one of the most developed ship pipelines AND I feel that if they have a large Drake Capital ship they can make it “more affordable”
CitizenCon (arguably the Holiday Livestream) is the probably the best time for them to sell something like this that is quite expensive but will generate hype sales.
So what is the DRAKE SCOUT CARRIER (CODE NAME: KRAKEN)?
The original vote for the Drake ship page describes it as:
Drake’s capital ship entry, space to park and store a few medium ships (up to Freelancer-sized) and transport them around the verse. Serves as a mobile truck stop in function with a small hub of stores (some less than legit) to help restock.
They talk about it in the GameDev Live Stream too:
They said it may have room for some larger ships, BUT say maybe upto a Freelancer MAX.
https://youtu.be/VaN9iKEOOBA?t=3100
They said it wasn’t going to be a military class of ship.
Something of the size of an Idris or Javelin BUT with a much higher carrying count of ships.
The trade off being it has next to no weapons.
Potentially you’d be hauling 6 – 8 ships of various sizes on board. Those ships would have to be your defenses.
Like a Mobile Space Station or a utility first Capital Ship BUILT for moving and servicing vehicles and their crews.
There was a lot of talk about the ship and the various ideas and visions for it:
They talk about it potentially being a floating parking lot,
having a huge cavenous opening for larger ships, a huge hangar on the inside with landing pads on top as well, various shops, habs and recreation on board too.
They talk about it being able to repair a ship as well as rearm and refuel.
Potentially a Caterpillar might be able to land inside.
In this vision of the ship there would be an ample area to receive & storage cargo, you could literally drop it off in your ship then go and leave the Kraken’s crew to process the items.
It sounds very much like a mobile CryAstro or Small Rest Stop
They also describe it as a small city, centre of commerce, a Drake & Fleet HQ.
The Kraken actually fills a whole that Star Citizen was missing, there was a Stretch Goal for when SC hit $19 million in funding – Manage Space Stations – Players will compete to own and operate a limited number of space stations across the galaxy.
This could potentially cover that stretch goal (tho I suspect they might have some larger space stations in the future that you might be able to manage and fight over)
It is more than a Pocket Carrier, it’s an actually carrier & something that suits the game very well.
Concept Price wise, it’s going to depend on it’s size & what functions does it have, is it modular, do you purchase modules separately?
You could have the ship ranging from $600 – $2000 based on this.
The Pioneer was $850 so I would expect something similar more if it’s massive & has a load of function beyond carrying. Tho if it’s modular the base ship could be relatively cheap BUT house a load of modules.