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Star Citizen Capital Ships

Welcome to some more Star Citizen talking about some Capital Ships & Gameplay associated with them. The recent Fleet Week event gave us our first real look at the Massive Idris-M and Javelin Capital Ships for a lot of players these are some of the Apex of what Star Citizen can potentially offer dozens of crew working together to operate a ship with high risk and high reward… or at least that’s the plan.

The Idris is around 250m Long Frigate with some quite big guns there and room for a few fighters.

The Javelin is half a kilometer long Destroy Class Ship and covered in an array of massive weaponry and turrets and room for a larger ship BUT not the same fighter compliment an Idris can muster. It’s also the largest ship that’s been available for players to purchase, even moving around these large ships will take some time and for $2500 it’s not something sensible to buy for a normal human… When working to get them in game when they are available it’s likely to be a significant investment for a large Org to get themselves an Idris or Javelin.

Both dwarf the largest currently flyable ship the 890 Jump which is 200m long.

The Idris & Javelin were flying around During Fleet Week. These beasts were only partially combat ready tho. We had organizations and groups of players taking down these titans too EVEN tho they were supposed to be near invulnerable… tho they patch this out half way through Fleet Week… making them even tougher and actually fight back more appropriately. 

The ships didn’t have interiors tho it was just the turrets and externals of the ship. At that stage.

So when might we be seeing them again?

Well there was supposed to be an Idris Mission in 3.9 that got pushed back as the Idris wasn’t ready. It was supposed to be part of the Arlington Gang mission set that is currently in game as the last challenge and they planned to have it that you could only uniquely accept it once… so after you have done it once you’ll have to join another party to do it again.

This is planned to be get most of the server to help take it down for a large reward kind of mission.

I am hoping that we see this Idris Mission in 3.10.0 as the Idris is at least partially functional.

Another potential for seeing the Idris is when Xeno-Threat turn up, an anti-alien outlaw group from Pyro… We saw some leaks that show them having large scale incursions with Idris & supporting fighters moving around the Planets in the Stanton system in a very similar sounding way to that of the Navy Fleet during Fleet Week.

Again at these stages it’s only planned that the externals of the Idris will be function… no boarding and flying the ship YET BUT even with just NPC combat against the Idris at this stage it will take a large force to take one out.

These are unlikely to be flyable by players UNTIL when Squadron 42 Episode 1 drops.

When in players hands These large capital ships are intended to have large crews.

CI have previously said even with 70 NPCs on ships like the Idris and Javelin have them feeling pretty spacious.

Some of these Ships have larger crew needs than the current server limit so we are waiting on some server/networking improvements or server meshing before these are in players hands too.

Capital Ships are going to require crewing to be run… even moving them from place to place might be difficult for a single player as there could be issues with a component breaking, repair work that needs doing etc…

If you can organize it a Player Crew for all the major positions on the ship would be ideal. What sort of positions on a Capital Ships will you have?

Captain

Pilot

Gunners

Engineering both for repairs BUT also to manage MFDs and various systems on the ship

Security

Command and Control

Fight Docked Ship Crew

Then there are lots of other task you could have made into any role you want.

Communications, Logistics, Organization, Admin, Cargo Management, Maintenance… there are probably quite a few more.

NPC crews will eventually be in the game to hire, they will have to be paid but to what extent they require access, food and drink remains to be seen. It’s assumed that you’ll need to have food stocked for them though. I can foresee that NPC crews on larger ships will be useful EVEN if you have players covering the main positions on the Ship.

Just because of the amount there is to do and having redundancy could mean the difference between winning and losing a battle.

Computers & AI Blades are another way of managing a ship and it’s systems. CI are currently building out core computer systems and eventually this will allow for AI modules to control turrets and potentially manage some systems on a ship.

Costs of AI Modules and their Running Costs are unknown as are the costs of NPC crews HOWEVER if there was a Teir list of how good something is performance wise Players would be on top, then NPCs then the AI Modules.

The Costs of Capital Ships are expected to be incredibly expensive for

Fuel

Maintenance

Insurance

Components

Cargo/Supplies

You are unlikely to want to deploy them constantly and when they need repairs or they are on stand by Capital Ship Docks will be somewhere they can get some rest… 

We know that Landing on Planets & Moons is NOT ADVISED with such a large ship as in some cases you might be too heavy to leave atmosphere yourself… Tho there are Argo SRVs the tractor tow ships to help you out if you do become planetbound.

We don’t know exactly what plans CI have for the safety of Capital Ships while you are offline.

We know that CI have a Permission Systems planned allowing different crew access to different areas… I don’t expect that will allow you to trap players in rooms with NO POSSIBLE WAY OUT tho.

Questions that need to be answered in the future How will crew leave a Javelin when they log back on if the main crew aren’t around?

How are Stoways Handle? CI have partly answered that saying that you can issue an order to have anyone that isn’t part of the crew to leave a ship AND if they remain then they are a criminal OR can be engaged by the crew however they want without getting a criminal rating.

I suspect there will be a Docked,Locked & protected kind of thing where you are safe while in dry dock, you’ll be encouraged to dock them with a station and lock the systems out… 

BUT we don’t know for sure if these ships will spawn and despawn or persist even when logged out. Also I would expect that players can leave the ship whenever they need to… CI don’t want to prevent players from playing the game.

So what sort of Uses will these capital ships have:

Mobile Bases for Orgs, allowing you to run missions out of them, and move between Star Systems while having somewhere to rearm and rest.

I would expect them to be very expensive to deploy BUT needed in larger scale missions or raids to fight against large fleets or other enemy capital ships.

Attacking another Org, dislodging bases… we don’t know the full extent to what the gameplay will be with Base Building on planets and unclaimed planets / systems but expect Orgs to contest these areas with Capital Ships.

When in player hands the Javelin & Idris-P will come with a base loadout… it was said originally that the Javelin would be an empty hull that you had to completely outfit BUT it seems that has now changed. 

I am looking forward to boarding actions… when we have physicalized components ships will be often disabled rather than explode AND crews may attempt to repair there crippled ships… Conversely a way to deal with a ship might be to disable it then board it to finish off the crew OR even capture the ship.

A capture the Idris/Capital Ship gamemode/level seems to be a plan for the Theatres of War Mode in Star Citizen in the future as well.

We will see the plans and gameplay evolve with these ships as Star Citizen gets more development AND it will be the backers and players that help shape that.