Alien Week Begins & Banu Merchantman Update
Alien Week has started proper and we have a Banu Merchantman Development Update and Tour as the main part of the video BUT also there are alien ships on sale and some other things to get involved with that we will cover quick… feel free to skip straight to the merchantman update tho!
There is a drink / cocktail competition making one inspired by Star Ctizen’s Aliens.
An Alien Ship Poster Creation Contest.
There is a Alien Message to decipher… and another one coming.
I’ll link all that down below.
There are various ships on sale, the Vanduul Blade medium fighter, the Banu Defender Escort Fighter, the Khartu-Al light Xi’An Fighter, SanTokYai Medium Fighter, Nox Hover Bike, the Tevarin Prowler Dropship, Railen Cargo Hauler, the Tevarin Talon and Shrike Light Assault Fighters. There are also a range of skins/paint jobs available too with believe the Harmony Paint being a new offering for Alien Week. Blues and Reds coming together to showcase the peaceful relationships that aliens and humans can have.
The Banu Merchantman is also on sale from $600… which is super expensive for a digital ship BUT a lot of people think the MM will be around $1000 once it’s flight ready. I love the Banu Merchantman and we are going to take a look at it’s exterior and interior development.
Inside Star Citizen: Inside the Merchantman
The Banu Merchantman is a unique and landmark ship for star citizen. A large Alien floating marketplace capable of hauling large amounts of cargo, selling goods from onboard shops and areas for more freeform trade and discussions.
The Banu Merchantman’s development is currently in a mixture of white and greybox phases.
The exterior of the ship is going through it’s greybox pass with 2 artists and is more advanced than the interior… they are making sure every room and component and space between them fits appropriately in the ship.
The front of the ship has hidden or sheathed weapons.
It has dual docking collars one of each side of the ship.
They showed it’s wings, these will be able to “deploy”… expanding outwards (or contracting).
the wings are highly detailed and it’s supposed to show off the wealth of the ship.The textures and detailing on the ship are very intrinticate.
The ships internals are very much in whitebox. This is very much not final but it’s in a good enough state for them to talk around. They start at the very large bridge.
There are 4 control seats, their ships don’t have captains normally.
The Primary pilot’s seat is on the front left and it raises you up to have a great view of the stars, it also controls the “hidden” front weapons. The co-pilot is on the right. The 2 seats behind are to operate the large remote turrets.
Behind the bridge there are some suitlockers and escape pods for each of the bridge crew as well as a couple extra as it’s close to the habitation part of the ship.
There is also access to the main manned turret. It’s a large isolated room that focuses on the operator chair, this then lifts you up into the turret and then will pop out of the exterior to the ship. There is an airshield in place so that the room doesn’t depressurize while the turret is in use.
Moving down from the bridge section, they move into the sanctuary. This is an area dedicated to meditation, fortune and worship / spirituality. The ship is built with “the tree of life” as an idea for how the ship is built and this concept runs throughout. This is at the end of the tree and roots of everything.
Off to the side there is the medbay, there is a primary medical care bed but also a couple of recovery beds like the ones on the Carrack apparently. There is nop confirmation on the Teir of the medibeds but it looks to have at least a T2 for respawning.
There is a little nook where the medical officer has a room to work and store medical supplies.
Moving away from the shrine area there is the recreation & social hab area. This has areas to eat and cook but it’s also a social hub for characters to gather, sit, plan and chat.
Moving off from this area there is a secondary control for the hangar section. If you want to let someone in or dock with the ship, you can do it from here. So there is a little hangar bay on board.
Coming off the habitation area there are a couple of staff lifts… these run thru the ship to allow easier access.
At the rear is the crew lifts, this has access to all of the floors.
They took us to the passenger entrance area. This is a little foyer area for passengers.
They then showed us the conference room where you’d have trade discussions and overlooks the cargo hold. There is a large negotiation table. The amount of cargo the ship holds is ridiculous!
To the side of these are VIP suites, so important trade delegates have their own private rooms… maybe you’ll be able to use this for VIP transport missions in the future?
They are massive an spacious.
We got to see the market / mall area. This is where customers and guests are guided towards. There are a couple of floors of shops that can be setup with different stocks and NPCs running them.
There looks to be a defense turret on the ceiling. There will be a big hologram in the centre of the market area, that might be used to show off deals or larger / dangerous items that can’t fit in shops.
They showed off the communal crew sleeping area, which is a little bit further along in development. A large number of beds surround the room and then there is a social pit in the centre that the crew can sit in, relax and chat.
There are a load of rooms they haven’t shown off yet… thru a mixture of not enough time and them probably not being ready. They are working on planning out the ship and they will be expanding out the team working on it and ramping up production once they have the resources available.
Previously they had shown us the engineering areas of the ship and I had really hoped we were going to see more of that today… but it’s looking cool… I have no idea when it’s going to be in game yet tho! One day we will have these as derelicts and mission locations… AWESOME!
Boom, that’s it for your Banu Merchantman and Alien Week Updates.