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Ship Watch – Where is the Polaris?

Welcome to some more Star Citizen and Ship Watch (if you have a better name for a series looking at ship development / production schedules and progress please share), since we have had the new roadmap I wanted to talk about what ships are getting work and what we could see going to flyable and concept in 2021 as where as where certain ships are in production.

The Hercules Starlifter both C2 and M2 are pegged for release with Alpha 3.13.

We know as well that the Hercules A2 is also getting work at the same time and it’s quite possible that they will have it in the Q2 2021 3.14 release.

The Hull A & B are getting work that is currently planned to finished at the end of Q4 2021 with a large 29 week set of work and I think they might be aiming to have them in that end of year patch HOWEVER unless the stars align expect them to turn up early 2022.

Something that’s a little odd is the lack of the Hull C on the Roadmap. We know they have most of it’s tech ready to go, they just need ship to station docking, cargo updates and icache… so maybe it will turn up when the update the roadmap in Jan.

The RSI Polaris Torpedo Corvette is getting 23 weeks of work from a large amount of art and design teams. It’s listed with having it’s work completed by the end of 2021… now I would expect delays and more work required for such a large ship SO I would expect it in game mid 2022.

The Banu Merchantman is not currently on the Roadmap as it was suggested it would start work after the Polaris. I would expect the ship to go into full production in 2022.

The Ares Ion & Inferno Flying guns with ships attached… they have work that ends Q3 2021 over 26 weeks and with enough art, tech and design teams to have the ship probably completed in that quarter, in my opinion at least.

They are bringing the Vanduul Fleet upto gold standard, so I would expect to see the Scythe and Glaive updated to their new versions in 2021 by Q2 IF I have understood CI intentions. The new versions look amazing but require human cockpits as they are supposed to be converted or reproduction versions for the human market… and Vanduul are bigger… so their controls are basically different!

The Redeemer is in active production now, we have seen some of it’s whitebox…  Currently it has a planned 28 week sprint ending in Q3 2021, so it’s very possible we could have the ship flyable by Q4. This has very much become a gunship moving away from having dropship abilities.

The Constellation Taurus is on the Roadmap for having it’s current work completed by the end of Q1 2021… so I am currently expecting to see it in the Q2 3.14 patch currently.

The Taurus has a bit of an interesting development as it keeps getting paused when new priorities come along.

However the Parasite docking for the ship should be functional when it turns up in game as that’s a feature of 3.13.

Also we know that the Constellations are going to see a little update, they said they would look at the struts in the cockpit for example.

The Nova Tank or Tonk [TONK] looks like it will be turning up in 2021 potentially in Q2 2021. It’s been prioritized somewhat as they want it for ToW. However Star Citizen is trying to expand out it’s ground gameplay and reasons to be on the surface of planets.

You are going to need ships like the Hercules Starlifter to transfer these to planets… OR just spawn them at an outpost. That said Vehicle in Ship Spawning is seeing work completed on it in Q3 so expect to be transitioning to being able to do that probably Q3/Q4.

The F8 Lighting and F7A Hornet are getting work BUT are unlikely to be properly available in Star Citizen until after SQ42 launch HOWEVER NPCs and the UEE military are quite possibly going to be flying them round the Verse sooner rather than later… I mean we’ve seen them during Fleet Week May 2020 (and were able to steal them during that time too).

It’s a similar thing for the Player Flyable versions of the Idris and Javelin too… they are currently exclusive to NPC usage.

Something that I want to mention as well is the Retaliator… this is going to be the first ship with modularity actually functional and you are going to be able to swap the torpedo bays for cargo, living space or drop pod / marine area. It’s expected to have that in the first half of 2021 AND that should then start to see other ships get modularity as well obviously massively important for customization of some ships and their functions. The Caterpillar is built around that in fact!

There are at least 5 “unannounced” projects from the vehicle concept team that are ongoing currently some of which are likely to be ship/vehicle (tho they do work on other things like FPS Gear too) that I would expect to see during 2021 in some form.

They even have “various concepts for enemy ships” that they have planned… which is an odd thing to have listed, tho specifically thats a feature for Squadron 42 and probably for the ship jackers, who might have scrapper ships made up of parts of other ships… we could see them in the PU at some stage. 

I would expect that they wanted to show some new ships / concepts off at CitizenCon 2020 that was then cancelled.

We have that leaked ship that SCLeaks expected to be released as flyable with 3.12… tho that is still possible it could be in the 3.12 branch… actually if I have something that might be a spoiler then I am going to put THIS SYMBOL ON THE SCREEN… then once it’s gone you know it’s safe to listen? That seem fair? So quick spoiler… the 400i a new Origin Ship expected to be Origins Answer to the Constellation is what we were talking about.

You are good spoiler over.

So what else could we have for straight to flyable and concept ships.

The Mobile Refinery Ship is highly likely… this is what myself and a huge portion of the community thought the Nomad was going to be… but it was first mentioned at CitizenCon 2019 and was highly popular… also refining is in game now, it makes sense.

There is also a Xi’An Cargo ship that they wanted to have in game.

We know that they wanted the TitanSuits in for ToW as well… so potentially that’s on of the projects too.

So there might be other new straight to flyable ships turning up and we could see some other ships/vehicles go on the roadmap when we see more updates in Jan. 

I am expecting the G12, Ranger and the Vulture to turn up as well personally.