Carrack – What We Know
Welcome to some more Star Citizen, the Carrack is one of my favorite ships in the game and there has been a reasonable amount of info about it over the last couple of months which I wanted to talk about. Kind of an all we know on the Carrack.
What is the Carrack
Originally a stretch goal ship for when they hit $33 million in funding.
From the original blurb
“The Anvil Carrack is a multi-crew explorer that specializes in exploration and pathfinding. It is built as a single, self-sustaining ship that can make long-duration voyages through the roughest areas of space. It’s designed specifically for transiting jump points, dealing with extreme conditions in space and getting back home. Since its time in the military, it has been the vanguard of every UEE exploration effort in recent years. Combined with the high-tensile hull armor, the Carrack is one of the safest exploration ships in the galaxy. The Carrack is now declassified and it is available for civilian use.”
And on the ship page it reads
“The Anvil Carrack features reinforced fuel tanks for long-duration flight, an advanced jump drive, and a dedicated computer core for jump charting operations. Originally a military exclusive, the Carrack is now available for civilian use. On-board accommodations include crew medical and repair facilities, and a mapping-oriented sensor suite.”
Carrack Stats
The Carrack was originally 123m Long and since it’s concept they have now made it 125m, typically the older ships that were planned get much bigger (because they used to build the exterior roughly before the interior, its the other way round now), but why didn’t the Carrack get bigger?
Well during it’s whiteboxing they actually made it a lot bigger (by around 40%) BUT realised that they didn’t need too. The focus of the ship is exploration so it being as small as it can be while having everything it needs is more sensible for it’s intention.
It’s not a Carrier or a Cargo Ship that can make much better use of more space.
It’s an Explorer, smaller means, faster, more nimble, more efficient & harder to hit in combat.
This size also allows it to land on Landing Pads and in Hangars more easily, so you’d be able to land on the pads in Port Olisar (technically on the Kraken too.. maybe) BUT also this enables it to be used in atmosphere more readily too.
It’s also looks to be around 64m wide and 32m high.
It’s a 6 Person Ship
It’s components are all Large rather than Capital sized meaning it loses out on the power of Capital items BUT it’s items are easier to service, replace and switch out and assumedly repair.
It’s currently listed as having 2 Shield Generators, 2 Coolers and 2 Intakes/Tanks for Fuel as well as 3 Medium Computers (I believe M is the largest Computer Size Planned for in game atm) These computer slots can be used for a variety of yet unrevealed purposes, we do know that one is for the automation of turrets and PDS.
It’s built by Anvil and Originally for Military Purposes so expect it to be pretty tough with possible top tier military component upgrades available.
I saw 4 turrets each with 2 weapons on the Carrack from the latest videos and images I would guess they would be S4 to S5 weapons each, last info we had on them were 3 manned 1 remote.
Status
The Carrack is in Active Development, with a team of 5 working on it full time in the UK Office.
They have the interior worked out and are getting the exterior done now.
It’s likely that it will be flyable in 2019, probably Alpha 3.7 – 3.8.
The Carrack was $400 last time it went on Sale During the Anniversary Expo 2948/2018
What Does The Carrack Do?
The Carrack is the top tier exploration and expedition ship.
Although the Carracks focus is on Exploration it can do a bit of everything.
A Repair bay, Medical Bay, Living Quarters, Cargo, Engineering, a bays for Drones, Rover and a Snub. (The bay for the snub is almost big enough to take a Arrow though the arrow is a bit too tall, should fit other snubs tho)
These are separated into 2 main decks as well as an additional exploration/observation area at the top of the ship and a small lower or sub deck underneath the ship too. I suppose that is technically 4 decks then.
Links to Kettle96s Carrack old to new comparison from Reddit.
The ships bridge is supposed to incorporate various sensor, mapping and charting suites for deeper exploration gameplay.
It has the Pieces Scout Ship (which we don’t know much about other than it’s a small snub craft P52 kinda size) It has Drones & a Ground Rover.
Let’s talk about it’s potential uses for Exploration & Expedition Gameplay
Jump Point Discovery is supposed to be a thing, in fact there will be discoverable POI, Asteroid Fields, Pirate Bases, Anomalies and more in space that the Carrack is perfectly suited to find.
In fact it’s sensors are probably great for all types of detection, scanning down ships and fleets should be pretty viable.
There’s been previous talk about Mapping Jump Points, Placing Nav Beacons, Scout Drones, if there is static maps you can create in the PU by exploring an area then the Carrack will be perfect for that.
I imagine that some people will want to fly to the edge of the known universe then fly to the edges of that system and scan down interesting POI, the Carrack should be able to operate for huge periods of time or indefinitely based on it’s loadout.
Again for Surveying using the Carrack to discover asteroid fields and potential plots of land on planets makes sense too. The Carrack being able to deploy that Rover, Scout Ship and being small enough means it can get to more places and do more things.
The Carrack is also a Long Range Multi-Role Corvette, in fact I expect for a lot of players it will be a ship they will strife towards that is affordable in game (with some effort) BUT doesn’t come with the gigantic Capital Ship Price tag AND I am expecting them to be the center pieces in some smaller fleets.
I would expect it to be around twice what the Hammerhead Costs, so totally rough guess 40 million UEC.
The Carrack should have a punch with it’s weapons BUT it isn’t intended to be a straight up Combat Ship like the Polaris and Hammerhead. It does have a huge amount of utility though.
Some things we don’t know
How it’s going to be affected by the new flight model, will it get more thrusters and VTOLs?
Modularity, it’s been suggested the ship might have some modularity BUT I don’t have any info on that.
The exact layout, Amount and Placement of Elevators in the ship will be important to get around.
The extent to what exploration gameplay we will have is still unknown, we do know it’s going to cross into science and some of the other roles and gameplay loops though.
I am hoping it has some good suitability for surveying land personally and it’s probably along with the Reclaimer going to be a ship I’ll be spending most of time in.