Not a ship design thing so much as a style thing, but the Corsair having private crew rooms always strikes me as unfitting for a Drake ship. At the very least, those three crew rooms should be double bunks, like on the Cutlass, with MAYBE one of them being single occupancy for the captain. MAYBE. Use the space in the cockpit currently occupied by the captain for something else, maybe a dedicated scanner control seat (its meant to be an explorer yeh?). Or keep it as captains quarters (crampt and awful captains quarters) and use that frontmost crew room for a t1 medbed, so you can treat minor injuries during your LONG RANGE EXPLORATION. Also it would be nice if you could retract the picnic table into the floor when you're not using it, could potentially let you use that space for extra storage or something.
The Co-pilot seat would be a great candidate for fuller scan controls as I mentioned. You're right about the medbed - if it is an exploration ship you ought to have some medical function.
The way I see it, Drake Interplanetary is a civilian manufacturer. In the military, people get used to sharing spaces, particularly on ships and aircraft. But Drake doesn't build military ships, they build civilian ships for the civilian market, and therefore they understand that their clients have a high value on personal space. My question isn't why the Corsair has individual crew rooms. My question is why other civilian manufacturer ships like the Constellation, 600i, etc. don't have individual crew rooms.
I mean, RL experts seem strangely absent from most designs in games. I have no idea why, but it perfectly fits into the reputation of IT people being out of touch with reality.
@@j.d.4697 I would assume because most games don't aim for realism and as such, don't need experts. Especially in Sci-Fi, where the sky is the limit when it comes to technology and how it works.
to be honest .. the problem looks like who ever designs them doesn't even try to take into account what they design .. this is like designing a couch with spikes instead of cushions .. maybe some fakir might like that but regular people who don't have that fetish will never comfortably sit on it.
I melted my corsair because of the landing gear. All the concepts show it having clearings as high as the top of an ursa and it comes out and its a squatter.
Good critique! I haven't played that long, or flown that many ships, but every ship I fly always seems to have some infuriating oversight in their design. Most recently I tried gunning in the hammerhead in arena commander, and broadside turrets are so awful I can't even understand how it got this far.
Tried that as well, the controls for it also felt...off, but I personally ignored that part, it just seemed like I needed some good angles from the pilot in order to get any shots
The problem of raising the landing gear is not because of the cargo ramp, but because of how the folding wings don't have enough coverage to enter certain hangars. Hence why the wings are both mid-mounted, and why the landing gear is so short. The solution I'd propose would be having the taller wing have a 2nd fold on itself to cut the wing length in half.
You, unlike others who pointed out this flaw, proposed a rational solution other than "let's gimp the ship because hangars are too short". The hangars are all being re-scaled for instancing, now. Give us back the taller landing gears.
Another potential fix to the cargo ramp angle would be adjustable landing gear height. Have the default height as it is now, then add an extended height that would enable easier landing on rough terrain, lastly have an specialized rough terrain cargo loading setting where the ship leans backwards. Or just have all the landing gear heights be independently variable and controlled by the players with a couple of useful default settings.
Tbf, it's a space explorer not a ground vehicle. Explorers have radars and scanners for a reason, 900 years in the future we won't be explorering on foot with a magnifying glass. We point our instruments at things from a distance and collect the data.
And then what do we do when we find something of interest? In the Carrack - shuttle down. In the Corsair, you land down and explore on foot or via vehicle.
You find a suitable spot and drive your vehicle, from the cargo bay, to the location. They do this in just about every instance in real life. You are not taking your 400ft exploration ship up the Nile River. You park in the bay and send out the smaller skiff to head upriver while analyzing the data being sent from the skiff inside the big ship science room.
Good stuff, any plans to look at the dlc of MechWarrior 5, I know it's not your favorite thing, but I'm curious about your opinion on it. I'm looking at doing mw5 look myself. Keep it up, boss.
Not to mention how EVERY big ship is very convieniently a few inches away from being able to store small vehicles/snubs. It's incredibly easy for them to pull away one or two door cavities to make space (and then reduce them, later, when finalising ship balance, at "launch"). Meanwhile, let us have some bloody fun in this bloody beta! Moreover, let us mod the game, ourselves! Like Starfield's unarguable best feature - ship building x. x
You know, you didn't even touch on the biggest issue with the Freelancer's turret: It's only able to aim up by 25 degrees. It's missing 65 degrees of vertical aim for absolutely no reason!
I don't understand why game developers refuse to look at the real world when designing their games. They seem adamant on coming up with new 'balanced' game mechanics, when the answers to all the questions are right there in front of them in the real world. You don't see governments making up regulations on what firearms should do what. There are no 'OP' guns in the real world. Each have their time and place. If game studios modeled their guns on how real firearms work, their strengths and weaknesses, there would never be a need to balance. This approach works for basically everything. Don't want players to abuse the insurance system? Look at how real world insurance companies avoid it. Feel like there's too much incentive to be a pirate? Look at how the real world authorities manage it. Don't know how to make ground vehicles viable? Study why they are still being used so much today, even though we've had airplanes for over a century. The answers are literally all there.
microphone quality in this one is pretty poor, a lot of static and a much deeper sound than the previous video. still love the critique though, hope its fixed for the next video
My current microphone - a secondhand Blue Yeti - is beginning to fail. The static, bass, and volume were all items I noticed while editing. I'll have a new mic for the next one.
That's not a probleme exclusive to the Corsair's design. One giant problem with SC designs is how they are not made with the purpose in mind. To me it's the most obvious with ground vehicle design. It's not just unfun because ground vehicle physics are at an early stage of development, but because they clearly weren't designed for the types of terrain the planet designers keep pumping out. These vehicles were designed with either roads or relatively flat off-road surfaces in mind, and if your response is "they are going to add roads" then I have to ask "where are all the ground vehicles made for off-road exploration on alien planets?" How did humanity make all these places accessible without a single ground vehicle that could reliably drive on them?
i have to agree .. at this point i can only guess that these are _not_ terrible design blunders .. but actually the result of _crippling stuff on purpose_ .. Similar to the terrible internal design of the Starfarer .. there is so much work put into these ships .. but simple basics are ignored or made worse on purpose.. stuff like the ability to move components around should be a basic thing .. ships with a cargo room where 20 boxes would fit but you can only attach 10 because "reasons" and the fact that there is more than enough room ... you end up stacking items in an "unsupported" way .. and why ? because someone "decided" that there is room for 10 boxes in the 20 box cargo room ... it is terrible. The worst offender of turrets is the one on the freelancer - the fact that CiG still tries to force people into a manned turret even if that creates a ton of extra problems and doesn't make any sense to do so .. i just dont understand it at all -.-
To echo to your Retaliator issues... The A2 bombs should be controlled by the copilot. At the very least that would mean to be a griefing a-hole you at least need two people! 😆
Some of their ship designs make me wonder if they even bother to consult an expert. Hell all they would have to do is post a design on spectrum and players would be happy to point out the issues for free. It may not catch all the issues but it would catch the major ones.
The list of ships that should have their primary weapons chin turret mounted is longer than the list of those that should not. e.g. Connies, Vanguards, Cutties, Freelancers, C2, C1, etc. And the turret should either be accessible by a weapons officer/copilot or head/eye tracking by the pilot - just like on a modern attack helo.
Great job! I tried to love this ship, but it let me down in so many ways. This is a great analysis of what went wrong, especially with firing solutions, landing gear etc. I hope CIG see this as this could definitely result in better ship design in the future. I think CIG have now learned from the lack of front entrance in the MSR, and I believe the Zeus is going to have a front entrance, I sincerely hope that all medium+ ships end up with a front entrance from now on. Hoping the Zeus will finally be the daily driver I've been waiting for.
It's an issue I've always had. Directly Mounted turrets in 2954 (WTF), turret placement, illogical design choices. You can make ships look good AND functional.
We've actually had remote control turrets in the B-29's. It was with periscopes and mechanical controls. Manned turrets I think could be justified and incentivized, but MANNED TURRETS CANNOT BE IN THE WAY OF CARGO HOLDS OR OTHERWISE THE ONLY THING TO OFFER TO OTHERS.
I'm not too interested in Star Citizen in general, but the video was good as always. Most of it was about ship design anyway, and looking at ship design is always fun.
Most of their non-fighter designs are only designed for a look, not for actual function. If their universe was real many of their ships would never be bought by anyone. There is so much dead space in some of their designs that it boggles the mind. What good do huge wings do on a lot of their stuff when there are not a large number of weapons mounts on them? The C-1 line is a perfect example, the Corsair another. An intelligent and functional design would try to lose as much mass as possible, and not weigh down the ship with useless frivolities.
On the other hand all ship ramps need to be revisited, the angles of the ramps are insane. Very emerson breaking. Real world ramps are about 20 degrees max. In CS we see most ramps at about 50 degrees.
I'm reminded of making a few ships of my own in Barotrauma- coverage is something that I as a player notice very easily, especially since staring at an enemy you can't shoot is always infuriating. Blind spots can make for interesting results, like having to have your pilot shift their position to allow for better gunning- but it definitely ought to be weighed carefully. Having a balance of lighter/heavier weaponry is a good way to balance things out- you get coverage for players so they can keep doing damage, but they understand they want to shift to a heavier gun, encouraging such behaviour instead of forcing it. Criminally underrated channel, by the way. Should have 100x the subscribers.
Overall, really good. I would like to point out that the Mercury Star Runner is supposed to get a secondary entrance near the cockpit, as stated by John Crewe a few years ago.
The reason for the short gear is to reduce the total height of the landed ship. Due to the very tall folded wings, it wouldn't fit inside hangars if the gear were taller. The fix *should* ha e been to shorten the wings, or add another hinge for a folding wongtip. But if one does not notice the problem until late in the design, then shorter gear is the cheapest fix.
The landing gear is so laughably short because the folded wings had to fit in the pre-existing hangers. I guess someone didn't want to make the wings shorter. 😆
I served in the navy, specialized in structures, hudraulics, composites, and non destructive inspection. I worked as a surveyor after and then got into trucking. I have an eye for things to say the least. I've been an atrist the whole time, its my passion outlet. Unfortunately I see no path with which to work with them. OFC it would be a dream job, but I'd be competing with the very folks that spent that whole time competing in their field. Its sadly, a little demoralizing, but what can ya do? I'll have to settle for doing my own thing. Heres hoping in the next year or two I'll be ablento put my software and printer to good use and sell collectables, and who knows, that could lead to some visibility amd the ability to contribute if not to SC, then at least something in creative design and concept work on similar projects. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
I like the co-pilot room, but it would be nice to have a swivel seat to access "stuff" behind that seat. Such a large wasted area. Though not like it matters either way, there are no components back there to access. Would be nice to hide a 1 SCU personal storage box back there though. I have no problem with the low height of the Corsair when landed. It is "marketed" in-game as an exploration ship, but everyone knows why DRAKE put 12 guns on it, and it was not to improve exploration. I do wish we could have a "load" setting on ships with rear ramps. Squat in the back to make the ramp angle less. So many ships have terrible ramp angles and the breakover into the bay is ridiculous. They have these hover pallet jacks they want to put into the game to move cargo boxes, those will not fit through the openings without removing the top layer of boxes. That is just not how trucks are loaded. There is a reason you drive straight into the back of a semi-truck from a loading dock. You have your pallets stacked on your fork and with only a few inches of height clearance, you cannot be going upwards through the opening. The turrets should extend out a slight bit more (~1M) so that they can have more coverage and converge with the pilot's aim. Would have been cool to change the position of the guns on the turrets putting 1 on top and 1 on bottom. Something no other ship has and would fit the Corsair's quirky design language. Also, it would allow the turrets to be tucked closer to the body like they currently are. The top turret can be raised slightly by just making the hump, that it sits on, a little bigger and moving the turret to the back of that hump. It seems CIG does not want any ship to have perfect turret placements in a game that they continue to push as multiplayer co-op preferred. The only ship with good turrets is the HH. Every other ship has turrets in poor positions that leave them blocked by something stupid, ESPECIALLY the damn carry handle on the freelancer. They redesigned the Cutlass and made the back hump upwards blocking more of the reward view of the turret. I am always confused by how CIG places turrets since they do love to say how co-op multiplayer they want their game to be. If that is your goal, make them enjoyable to use.
"Why can't we just have a jump seat?" Amen! Honestly more small ships need more passenger seating. Sportscars in the real world have passenger seats even though they don't "need" them. Why? Because bringing friends along is important!
Yep, 100% agree here. I know there's some excuse in that the corsair is a "totally not a purpose-built piracy ship" or a deep space explorer only, but even if you consider that, there are a couple pretty fixable (but glaring) issues that make no sense either way (If you're a pirate, you're gonna want to land in rough terrain). Of course, CIG are a limited number of people, and the corsair functions good enough. let's hope they don't leave this on the back burner for too long.
Designed by talented artists and rendererers rather than having an engineer involved. Space use is very inefficient and sometimes designed without consideration as to use. Cargo bays that can swallow the 32SCU boxes, but not snap them to grid is a case in point.. The MSR...the MSR should be brilliant, buit its a hot mess of inefficient design, just to tyr and sell a "smiggler" feel. The Herald is better designed than the MSR, and it doesnt have a game loop!
I have no problem recommending SC to friends but I always include a couple of caveats. Firstly, they're not paying to be a player in a game. They are in fact paying to be a play tester of a game in development. Second, they don't have to buy anything other than a $45 starter pack as 90% of the ships they see are available with aUEC but they need to cool with the fact that anything they buy in-game can be wiped if the devs decide a dbase reset is needed. .. I agree with most of what was said about the ship design though. They've made some strange choices but it is what it is I guess. Maybe some of these things will get fixed before full release but somehow I'm not too confident about that.
Nice to see people talking about this. For the time I spent moving cargo in a variety of ships I quickly learned how ineffecient the current cargo grids are. Some compartments arent squared shaped or atleast accomodating for a particular standard cargo unit size and have diagonal or odd shaped hull design around the cargo. There is also a ton of wasted space in walkways, every square inch should have a purpose and having a pretty path shouldnt be the first consideration. As for specifically the corsair, the cargo section connected to engineering has a very wide stair case leading up to it. Which cuts off important space that could be used for cargo. Secondly, the aegis reclaimer's grids have to be an extended april fools joke 12 years ago that someone forgot about. You should be able to stack 16scu 6 high in the middle, but you cannot officially on a grid (have fun stacking unstable boxes). The catwalk is so wide you can fit 16scu crates up there, which is more wasted space. What would be nice to see is some level of control given to the player as to how they choose to change the layout of the ship, get rid of beds and place more cargo space or something.
Excellent criticism... I wish MSR would have a side entrance and the rear turret in freelancer would not obstruct so much... I would add the terrible state of flight physics to it, flying ships is the primary function since the very beginning, but it seems every indie game does the flight better than SC
I remember a few years ago when I was only following SW that one ytber, can't remember if it was Bored or Noobifier, mentioned that Roberts wanted the ships to have blindspots, deadzones and be overall suboptimal in someways to avoid making the overpowered or unbeatable, don't quote me on it though. I can't say whether this sound logic but it is an explanation of some of the choices. Like how most turrets are manned, that's intentional aswell so players CAN be killed when the turret is shot at. The funny thing about the corsair is that it's most likely based of the BT 7 thunderclap from star wars the old Republic, same ship designer I believe. And some of the elements in that are actually done better than the corsair. The way to the cockpit is actually pretty quick. It has bigger guns that sit at the wing tips. There's a vehicle rack that likely has its own elevator like the constellation. The landing gear also makes it sit a little higher. And some of game shots have it with a pair of laser canons right below the cockpit protecting the main ramp which could easily be gimballed in Star citizen. I love the core shape of both ship but yeah the way the corsairs is actually arranged is pretty bad and arguably ruins the flow of the ship with the side turrets. Also yeah the mustang should have the space behind the cockpit usable, it's funny how if you really wanted to make it a compact single seater it could be half the size.
The part about turrets earned you my sub. Been saying these ever since 2013, CIG needs to get a clue once and for all or make all of those automated PDS because surely I would not waste NPCs or players in them.
It's a Drake. What do you expect? There's maybe more than one reason why they never got into the military spec circle and have their own con. The Corsair itself comes with a lot of firepower if crewed and modded then again, due to its primitive design holds certain disadvantages. And while all of this is still alpha-stage unfinished in several aspects it all in all sums up to be quite on brand I'd say.
I tend to agree with the feedback but that said, they´ll most likely not fix most of these issues in the near future. The ships all need a "gold pass" and the hope would be that they introduce some of these features and fixes to those ships then. But it´ll take ages for CIG to fix and implement all of them and they still need to drive their funding so the focus will probably still be split between adding old concepts into the game and introducing new designs that already have those features. The Zeus Mk2 as an example just completly trumps the Spirit in almost every aspect and even includes a side ladder and airlock.
Don't own this ship personally, but your review is spot on from my viewing's of it as well. Hope they take your review under consideration before a "gold pass" is made!
So I think that you had 1 point good vs the 3-4 others that are null n void as they are more or less already scheduled sometime soon ish. Corsair NEEDS bigger landing gear. Doing that would let it have the ability to have a chin TURRET (not Gimbal) like the Mustang Series. That would indeed be cool. The Co-pilot seat of the Corsair already is scheduled to be a thing, and we already have ships in-game that has functions LIKE this until the pilot seat is taken (Banu Defender, Prowler, Carrack, and at some point even the Caterpillar had it). The "Bad turret angling" issue you have current game will be fixed as turrets are getting gimbals to let the guns aim more than what the turret can Swivel and pitch. This has been a talking point in recent Inside Star Citizen videos around Master Modes. These does not need more fixing as that will fix the main issue. The Wing Guns doesnt need to be further out on the wing, as Gimbals have a set angle they can rotate and shoot. It would not give it a bigger angle, it would be the same (Tho points of Sail Up wingtip gunning tho. Love that idea!). --------------- When it comes to other ships: - Retaliator doesnt need a Co-pilot. Its a 6 manned ship, and adding more would mean another escape pod would be needed to be constructed somewhere inside of it (And Its Gold Standard is already set for 3.23 Patch Line... so Gold Standard is done). - Freelancer had its talk on a gold standard, but I 100% agree that it should have a remote turret that is placed at the end of the ship (It should also be a 2 manned ship, and have better living quarters, but thats up for CIG to fix). - Aurora can carry like 4 people inside of it as it has an interior and a bed. The Mustang CAN TOO, but its in its cargo box in the back. Mustang SHOULD have an "Enter/exit" behind the pilot seat like the V.1 had in my opinion. - The Mercury Star Runner is the biggest Miss of an executed ship that CIG has produced. Chonky, unrefined, cluttered interior, no escape pods, no eating table, Manned turrets over Remote Turrets, and all that so they could have it carry a rover and have that useless tunnel below it... That and the Huge hunch it has with empty space that takes up 40% of the ships mass or so. It CAN have all the things listed, and it has none. - Cutlass we had before was NOT the concept Cutlass, as the Cutlass we have now is the correct one. That one and the constellations, and freelancers was updated to accomandate future plans of adding stuff like components and such of the now standard size 0 - 4 (Vehicle, Small, Medium, Large, Capital) components. The Corsair already fits all of these, but MINOR changes could work, like putting the remote turret further back, extending the ramp and landing gear, and make the bottom guns into a turret (not a gimbal). Overall. I see where you are coming from, but lots of your talk wouldnt make a difference, or are already planned (without a schedule or with a shorter schedule than thought). Good video overall, tho!
The short landing gear is because the folded wings are extremely tall. These need to be short enough to allow hanger doors to close with the wings up. What the Corsair needed is to have the long wing to fold up in its current position, then rotate forward. This would keep the asymmetry of the design will allowing a more compact landing configuration for hangers. With the reduced hight then you can raise the landing gear to give better off pad lading performance. Sadly with the Corsair being one of CIG newest ships I don’t see a rework coming anytime soon. There are other ships like the Caterpillar and the Carrack that need major reworks so that they can be used for cargo gameplay, which is a vital part of their ship design.
I've bought and melted the Corsair 3 times. The idiosyncrasies are just too much. It's a shame that so many ships that feel like a home to me, most notably the RAFT and the Corsair, have these quirks that make them so frustrating to operate.
Wow yeah. You hit the nail on the head. So many weird design choices. I get they don't want to create the "perfext ship" but if they just made everything more sensibly it would make the whole experience way better.
Why would you sit in the gun? That makes no sense just use a computer while safely sitting in the hall I understand you’re trying to be World War II here but it makes no sense You’re in space if the window cracks you’re dead
It's the rule of cooool, bro. U just don't understand, bro. XD I think a systemic flaw in CIG's design process that underpins your sample complaints is that all the people involved are very invested in making each thing they work on the most awesome thing possible, gold-plating everything down to the animated but nonfunctional toilet paper dispensers. But they aren't actually incentivized to actually make something that is ruggedly crude/simple or practical. They just want it to LOOK ruggedly crude, simple, or practical. And for doing so, they are continually given ever greater orders of magnitude of funding to reinforce what they're already doing in their design process. If you want to change that process, you need to stop rewarding it. This is a result of the Chris Roberts perfectionist top-down approach to make a complete or at least very advanced development stage product before any actual end user even sniffs the upholstery off-gassing its factory-fresh VOCs. Like a lot of actual military contracts, the end users in the field aren't included in the design iteration loop until the product is already committed to production (though the US military of late has made some token gestures of trying to include the poor grunt stakeholders in the process). That's why we get Star Trek-esque interior spaces that are all walkable by 3 characters abreast, but none of the feature examples you gave. Tons of useless internal spaces, extra interactable doors, and exciting corners and contours for visually interesting design language elements. Tons of blind spots in features and firing arcs that tell you no actual player or pilot was involved in the planning stages. But hey, ship go whoosh pew pew in vacuum. Yay! I often cite Project Zomboid as an example of the opposite process -- player testing and feedback, as well as dev willingness to frequently and repeatedly scrub things back all the way to designing systems and processes from scratch. But CIG is $500M+ too deep into its own sense of self-importance at this point to do something so plebian.
They can't make the landing gear taller because then it wouldn't fit into a side feeding medium hanger. They refused to make the asymetrical starboard wing smaller.
love the video. CIG designers are seemingly basementdwellers who never touched grass and seen why their designs are bad and how this already is addressed in real life, and how this translates into hindered gameplay with their choices. i don't think there is a single vehicle in the game that doesn't put their competence into question.
Regarding the turrets: during the latest Xenothreat phase, I completed my missions and jumped into a friend's Corsair to help out. I took the side turrets, and couldn't provide any help at all, as the pilot was focusing on forward fire. I wasn't even aware of the co-pilot seat, which might have been the better choice, but since such is not common, I went straight for the turrets.
Thanks for pointing out the obvious! What we are seeing with CIG is never trust a game developer to build engineered elements without the guidance of a real world engineer!
i think they will give the landing gear more length when they improve landing gears in general, they will be able to extend feather to compensate for uneven terrain which would imply they will extend more
Love the corsaire and the problems are real. Would be cool if they switch turret location but I have to say cig did improve a lot in making them in their design
At least the Corsair has smaller landing footprint than the Spirit. The spirit has basically ground clearance and needs the area of a small city to set down.
I'm going to assume the side turrets not pointing forward was a choice to not make the ship even more OP than it is. A game decision not a reality decision.
generally it seems CIG has done a very good job more recently with ships and their design, but many older concepts like the corsair are suffering from issues present since concept.
About the first half of the video: I could agree if we were talking about the Cutlass Black, but I never saw the Corsair as a ship meant to operate in atmosphere, just one to land and grab the loot after his smaller brothers do the dirty work. The corsair is a blunt object designed to surprise attack slow and large targets with overwhelming firepower in space and high atmosphere. If we are comparing to historical real planes, I'd say a P-61 black widow or ME-410, just with some cargo and crew space. The very fact that it assymetrical and flies like a brick should make this point pretty clear. IMHO the ability to hover should be WILDLY nerfed in all but the very clearly vtol oriented assault craft (again, like the cutlass) so large ships or fighters had to STRAFE, not float like gravity didn't exist, that causes real immersion break to me every time I see it. Oh, I completely agree about the landing gear, I was mostly talking about the CAS capabilities while hovering and the nose gun (or lack thereof). About the later half (about turrets and wing loadout placement): 100% agreeed. SC turrets as a whole are just awful design meant to divide the frontal arc firepower so people are FORCED to multicrew and it's really boring, just let turrets be turrets.
If the Corsair had a dedicated space for a shuttle, I would agree. The concept art, however, clearly depicts an atmospheric planetary explorer ship. It does not fit the design ethos of a "heavy fighter" like those P-61 or ME-410 units: this one has a picnic table and Drakes are supposedly low-armored. If it's turret design mimicked the P-61 or ME-410, I'd be more inclined to agree.
They have talkeda bout this since the days of the ship competition... turret placement is yet another way of leveling out the ships. Not every ship can cover ALL the areas with gunners.. that's intentional THats the point of creating strong and weak points to every ship. It's not "poor" design when the design aspect is intentional, and intentional for a specific GAMING reason. Its like those that complain as to "why aren't all the ships completely clear, so that we just fly through space with nothing in front of us. WHy? because in a gaming world that would be horrible.
That is poor design, though. The USAF didn't put out "leave in deadspots for our very expensive bombers so the axis has a chance". More importantly, it's not fun. This is not a competitive PVP shooter, this is a space adventure game with friends. Bad turret placement is not functional and, thus, it's not fun.
If you create an extending cargo ramp you have to program a system that takes the changing collision into account. It's one of those things that sound simple but take years to develop just to break immediately after release. Designing a spaceship in game follows it's own rules. It's not always intuitive and doesn't abide to real world logic. For example turrets in game should NOT cover everything, because deadspots allow for higher dps without killing balance. You could give the corsair overlapping turret fields, but then you would have to limit each turret to 2x s2 or cancel the pilot armaments.
PVP Turret balance should not dictate the ship design. The bigger point I'm trying to make is that the Corsair, a multi-crew ship, provides poor functionality for those who are crewing your ship. Poor functionality is not fun.
They also intentionally choose to have Gunners in the Gunner seats for many reasons. Several being, that the MANNED turrets cant' be replaced by the "blades" that everyone hopes comes into the games, as where electronically controlled turrets are supposed to be able to have that feature. Also, it gives the GAME portion a better feel to put a friend in a turret (while sitting at a computer screen) rather than having a computer player sitting at their gaming desk then have their computer AV sit at another computer ( inside a game) at another computer screen,.. shooting a turret gun. That's NOT more fun for friends. It doesn't give the "game feel".. it doesnt' give the feel of the WWII fighting that they wish to have, and it doesn't offer that "star wars" feel we saw in the original.
I actually support the idea of manned turrets that offer more than remote or automated turrets. They need to be well positioned in order to offer more, though, and the Corsair's turrets are not well positioned. However, the thing is - WWII fighting had remote controlled turrets. The B-29, the P-61, the A-26, there were remote controlled turret designs in WWII fighting. WWII Fighting in space is a really difficult idea to perpetuate.
This is the outcome of video game designers who have zero engineering experience, coming up with ship designs that only cover the existing state of the game without any requirements for future proofing. They obviously did not consider the ships as anything more than quick placeholders to make sales. Newer ship designs are leagues better. Take the cutlass for example. Its supposed to be all about rugged reliability with a focus in combat, but it even lacks a shoilet and a table, forcing you to place all items on the floor. That thing doesn't even have light controls, even tho the buttons for it exist. Then we move up to the corsair that offers that bit of extra, but lacks the ability to land on rougher terrain as you mentioned, while also featuring way too many doors in between with no real reason. Just wasted space. But if we move down the price range... the cutter is well polished. Cramped, it includes a toilet an a bed, a small kitchen area and secondary surfaces while still being able to carry some cargo with it. My biggest concern is engineering, how are they going to implement engineering when half of those things don't have the dedicated space for those components? Let alone relays and the rest of wiring. And then they want to add physicalized damage? So the design and placement of components will become central to our gameplay experience, yet the ships are simply not designed for it. CIG wants to deliver a shitload of new ships, but maybe they should redesign everything first.
That's some great points. I have some hope that this game will eventually come out, but the content creep of ever new ships, each of them "punching above its weight" so that none of them truly do, does mean that older models simply fall behind in quality. And until all mechanics are implemented, they will also not be complete models, as you point out with engineering sections. The ships seem unfinished, or rather, finished to a game that could be 8 years out of date with current requirements.
Not a ship design thing so much as a style thing, but the Corsair having private crew rooms always strikes me as unfitting for a Drake ship. At the very least, those three crew rooms should be double bunks, like on the Cutlass, with MAYBE one of them being single occupancy for the captain. MAYBE. Use the space in the cockpit currently occupied by the captain for something else, maybe a dedicated scanner control seat (its meant to be an explorer yeh?). Or keep it as captains quarters (crampt and awful captains quarters) and use that frontmost crew room for a t1 medbed, so you can treat minor injuries during your LONG RANGE EXPLORATION.
Also it would be nice if you could retract the picnic table into the floor when you're not using it, could potentially let you use that space for extra storage or something.
The Co-pilot seat would be a great candidate for fuller scan controls as I mentioned.
You're right about the medbed - if it is an exploration ship you ought to have some medical function.
You mean t3 not t1
The way I see it, Drake Interplanetary is a civilian manufacturer. In the military, people get used to sharing spaces, particularly on ships and aircraft. But Drake doesn't build military ships, they build civilian ships for the civilian market, and therefore they understand that their clients have a high value on personal space.
My question isn't why the Corsair has individual crew rooms. My question is why other civilian manufacturer ships like the Constellation, 600i, etc. don't have individual crew rooms.
@@BigSneed404 Totally overlooks the Caterpillar with it's beds literally in the gally and zero privacy. 🤣
@@lunasakara7306 ya, you're right. It should have private cabins too.
This whole game is what you get when you let artists design ships. They really need some naval architects to have the final say on ship parameters.
Or bomber engineers. Birthday Truck himself referenced bomber aircraft repeatedly.
I mean, RL experts seem strangely absent from most designs in games.
I have no idea why, but it perfectly fits into the reputation of IT people being out of touch with reality.
@@j.d.4697
I would assume because most games don't aim for realism and as such, don't need experts. Especially in Sci-Fi, where the sky is the limit when it comes to technology and how it works.
to be honest .. the problem looks like who ever designs them doesn't even try to take into account what they design ..
this is like designing a couch with spikes instead of cushions .. maybe some fakir might like that but regular people who don't have that fetish will never comfortably sit on it.
Artists have designed 90% of the entire game lol because that's very close to the profession ratio in the entire dev team > .>
All hail to retururn of our glorious King
I melted my corsair because of the landing gear. All the concepts show it having clearings as high as the top of an ursa and it comes out and its a squatter.
So much true
All of this, especially the Freelancer turret placement, has being nagging at me for ages!
Good critique! I haven't played that long, or flown that many ships, but every ship I fly always seems to have some infuriating oversight in their design. Most recently I tried gunning in the hammerhead in arena commander, and broadside turrets are so awful I can't even understand how it got this far.
Tried that as well, the controls for it also felt...off, but I personally ignored that part, it just seemed like I needed some good angles from the pilot in order to get any shots
The problem of raising the landing gear is not because of the cargo ramp, but because of how the folding wings don't have enough coverage to enter certain hangars. Hence why the wings are both mid-mounted, and why the landing gear is so short. The solution I'd propose would be having the taller wing have a 2nd fold on itself to cut the wing length in half.
or make it use larger hangars?
@@adrianbarreto4225 Bad solution, why resort to having to use larger hangars just because it's poorly designed? That's just accepting inefficiency.
they said in one of the last isc that news mediums personal hangars will be taller, so it wont be a issue anymore
You, unlike others who pointed out this flaw, proposed a rational solution other than "let's gimp the ship because hangars are too short". The hangars are all being re-scaled for instancing, now. Give us back the taller landing gears.
Another potential fix to the cargo ramp angle would be adjustable landing gear height. Have the default height as it is now, then add an extended height that would enable easier landing on rough terrain, lastly have an specialized rough terrain cargo loading setting where the ship leans backwards. Or just have all the landing gear heights be independently variable and controlled by the players with a couple of useful default settings.
An exploration ship that's got the ground clearance of a NASCAR car going over a Walmart speed bump.
Tbf, it's a space explorer not a ground vehicle. Explorers have radars and scanners for a reason, 900 years in the future we won't be explorering on foot with a magnifying glass. We point our instruments at things from a distance and collect the data.
And then what do we do when we find something of interest? In the Carrack - shuttle down. In the Corsair, you land down and explore on foot or via vehicle.
Yeah they pulled the same BS with the Carrack. I loved the original concept. What we got....not so much.
You find a suitable spot and drive your vehicle, from the cargo bay, to the location. They do this in just about every instance in real life. You are not taking your 400ft exploration ship up the Nile River. You park in the bay and send out the smaller skiff to head upriver while analyzing the data being sent from the skiff inside the big ship science room.
I would be interested in an analysis and/or critique of space combat in the original Battlefront 2.
Good stuff, any plans to look at the dlc of MechWarrior 5, I know it's not your favorite thing, but I'm curious about your opinion on it. I'm looking at doing mw5 look myself. Keep it up, boss.
preach! tear down the overall design issues with all the other ships!
Not to mention how EVERY big ship is very convieniently a few inches away from being able to store small vehicles/snubs. It's incredibly easy for them to pull away one or two door cavities to make space (and then reduce them, later, when finalising ship balance, at "launch"). Meanwhile, let us have some bloody fun in this bloody beta!
Moreover, let us mod the game, ourselves! Like Starfield's unarguable best feature - ship building x. x
You know, you didn't even touch on the biggest issue with the Freelancer's turret: It's only able to aim up by 25 degrees. It's missing 65 degrees of vertical aim for absolutely no reason!
I don't understand why game developers refuse to look at the real world when designing their games. They seem adamant on coming up with new 'balanced' game mechanics, when the answers to all the questions are right there in front of them in the real world.
You don't see governments making up regulations on what firearms should do what. There are no 'OP' guns in the real world. Each have their time and place. If game studios modeled their guns on how real firearms work, their strengths and weaknesses, there would never be a need to balance.
This approach works for basically everything. Don't want players to abuse the insurance system? Look at how real world insurance companies avoid it. Feel like there's too much incentive to be a pirate? Look at how the real world authorities manage it. Don't know how to make ground vehicles viable? Study why they are still being used so much today, even though we've had airplanes for over a century. The answers are literally all there.
I'm sure the USAF didn't ask for poor turret placements so the axis fighters could have a balanced chance.
Someone needs to send this to Star Citizen devs rn, this dude has amazing insight and should be hired by/leading the design team
Keep 'em comin'.
THE RETURN OF THE TRUCK
microphone quality in this one is pretty poor, a lot of static and a much deeper sound than the previous video. still love the critique though, hope its fixed for the next video
My current microphone - a secondhand Blue Yeti - is beginning to fail. The static, bass, and volume were all items I noticed while editing. I'll have a new mic for the next one.
That's not a probleme exclusive to the Corsair's design.
One giant problem with SC designs is how they are not made with the purpose in mind.
To me it's the most obvious with ground vehicle design. It's not just unfun because ground vehicle physics are at an early stage of development, but because they clearly weren't designed for the types of terrain the planet designers keep pumping out.
These vehicles were designed with either roads or relatively flat off-road surfaces in mind, and if your response is "they are going to add roads" then I have to ask "where are all the ground vehicles made for off-road exploration on alien planets?"
How did humanity make all these places accessible without a single ground vehicle that could reliably drive on them?
i have to agree .. at this point i can only guess that these are _not_ terrible design blunders .. but actually the result of _crippling stuff on purpose_ ..
Similar to the terrible internal design of the Starfarer .. there is so much work put into these ships .. but simple basics are ignored or made worse on purpose..
stuff like the ability to move components around should be a basic thing .. ships with a cargo room where 20 boxes would fit but you can only attach 10 because "reasons" and the fact that there is more than enough room ... you end up stacking items in an "unsupported" way .. and why ? because someone "decided" that there is room for 10 boxes in the 20 box cargo room ... it is terrible.
The worst offender of turrets is the one on the freelancer - the fact that CiG still tries to force people into a manned turret even if that creates a ton of extra problems and doesn't make any sense to do so .. i just dont understand it at all -.-
To echo to your Retaliator issues... The A2 bombs should be controlled by the copilot. At the very least that would mean to be a griefing a-hole you at least need two people! 😆
Some of their ship designs make me wonder if they even bother to consult an expert. Hell all they would have to do is post a design on spectrum and players would be happy to point out the issues for free. It may not catch all the issues but it would catch the major ones.
The list of ships that should have their primary weapons chin turret mounted is longer than the list of those that should not. e.g. Connies, Vanguards, Cutties, Freelancers, C2, C1, etc. And the turret should either be accessible by a weapons officer/copilot or head/eye tracking by the pilot - just like on a modern attack helo.
You must have seen my prior video :)
I dislike this Drake but that doesn't invalidate any of your observations. CIG take note.
i just realized that about its landing gears, its so stubby compared to the carrack...
Great job! I tried to love this ship, but it let me down in so many ways. This is a great analysis of what went wrong, especially with firing solutions, landing gear etc. I hope CIG see this as this could definitely result in better ship design in the future.
I think CIG have now learned from the lack of front entrance in the MSR, and I believe the Zeus is going to have a front entrance, I sincerely hope that all medium+ ships end up with a front entrance from now on.
Hoping the Zeus will finally be the daily driver I've been waiting for.
The Zeus looks to be a golden child of functional space ship design. Here's to hoping.
It's an issue I've always had. Directly Mounted turrets in 2954 (WTF), turret placement, illogical design choices. You can make ships look good AND functional.
We've actually had remote control turrets in the B-29's. It was with periscopes and mechanical controls. Manned turrets I think could be justified and incentivized, but MANNED TURRETS CANNOT BE IN THE WAY OF CARGO HOLDS OR OTHERWISE THE ONLY THING TO OFFER TO OTHERS.
I'm not too interested in Star Citizen in general, but the video was good as always. Most of it was about ship design anyway, and looking at ship design is always fun.
Excellent points. I agree with all of them.
Ships are cool but badly design.
Most of their non-fighter designs are only designed for a look, not for actual function. If their universe was real many of their ships would never be bought by anyone. There is so much dead space in some of their designs that it boggles the mind. What good do huge wings do on a lot of their stuff when there are not a large number of weapons mounts on them? The C-1 line is a perfect example, the Corsair another. An intelligent and functional design would try to lose as much mass as possible, and not weigh down the ship with useless frivolities.
These looks can easily be made into function; I don’t think the corsair should hold away but for $200+ you have to sell un-gimped functions
Hey your back, welcome back. Now that all dlc is done for mechwarrior 5 do you have any more thoughts on it.
On the other hand all ship ramps need to be revisited, the angles of the ramps are insane. Very emerson breaking. Real world ramps are about 20 degrees max. In CS we see most ramps at about 50 degrees.
I don't mind a 50 degree ramp but I'd like controls to adjust the angle to what I need.
I'm reminded of making a few ships of my own in Barotrauma- coverage is something that I as a player notice very easily, especially since staring at an enemy you can't shoot is always infuriating. Blind spots can make for interesting results, like having to have your pilot shift their position to allow for better gunning- but it definitely ought to be weighed carefully. Having a balance of lighter/heavier weaponry is a good way to balance things out- you get coverage for players so they can keep doing damage, but they understand they want to shift to a heavier gun, encouraging such behaviour instead of forcing it.
Criminally underrated channel, by the way. Should have 100x the subscribers.
Thank you - give the channel a share!
Haha i have this, but on bad design, my starrunner take the cake, its nothing but bad design except for the looks.
I feel like the Star Runner has reached untouchable status; it's a funny relic that at least shows that CIG has learned something about ship design.
12:49 same thing with the prowler
good presentation dud. subbed.
Overall, really good. I would like to point out that the Mercury Star Runner is supposed to get a secondary entrance near the cockpit, as stated by John Crewe a few years ago.
GIB NOW PL0X
Yes most cig ships suck
The reason for the short gear is to reduce the total height of the landed ship. Due to the very tall folded wings, it wouldn't fit inside hangars if the gear were taller.
The fix *should* ha e been to shorten the wings, or add another hinge for a folding wongtip. But if one does not notice the problem until late in the design, then shorter gear is the cheapest fix.
The landing gear is so laughably short because the folded wings had to fit in the pre-existing hangers. I guess someone didn't want to make the wings shorter. 😆
Or make them fold at a different angle?
@@birthdaytruck yeah could have had the big wing fold in half? I guess short landing gear was easier to make!
This was surprisingly interesting and enjoyable, I would like to see an analysis on every ship.
I might do a tier list- there is some wonderful ship design that I’d like to point out so folk know why Im so critical abour the bad design.
@@birthdaytruck that would be phenomenal!
What's that song at 11:05?
I would like to know too
"Ordinary People" from SC ost
Correct!
I served in the navy, specialized in structures, hudraulics, composites, and non destructive inspection. I worked as a surveyor after and then got into trucking. I have an eye for things to say the least.
I've been an atrist the whole time, its my passion outlet.
Unfortunately I see no path with which to work with them.
OFC it would be a dream job, but I'd be competing with the very folks that spent that whole time competing in their field.
Its sadly, a little demoralizing, but what can ya do?
I'll have to settle for doing my own thing.
Heres hoping in the next year or two I'll be ablento put my software and printer to good use and sell collectables, and who knows, that could lead to some visibility amd the ability to contribute if not to SC, then at least something in creative design and concept work on similar projects.
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
I like the co-pilot room, but it would be nice to have a swivel seat to access "stuff" behind that seat. Such a large wasted area. Though not like it matters either way, there are no components back there to access. Would be nice to hide a 1 SCU personal storage box back there though.
I have no problem with the low height of the Corsair when landed. It is "marketed" in-game as an exploration ship, but everyone knows why DRAKE put 12 guns on it, and it was not to improve exploration. I do wish we could have a "load" setting on ships with rear ramps. Squat in the back to make the ramp angle less. So many ships have terrible ramp angles and the breakover into the bay is ridiculous. They have these hover pallet jacks they want to put into the game to move cargo boxes, those will not fit through the openings without removing the top layer of boxes. That is just not how trucks are loaded. There is a reason you drive straight into the back of a semi-truck from a loading dock. You have your pallets stacked on your fork and with only a few inches of height clearance, you cannot be going upwards through the opening.
The turrets should extend out a slight bit more (~1M) so that they can have more coverage and converge with the pilot's aim. Would have been cool to change the position of the guns on the turrets putting 1 on top and 1 on bottom. Something no other ship has and would fit the Corsair's quirky design language. Also, it would allow the turrets to be tucked closer to the body like they currently are. The top turret can be raised slightly by just making the hump, that it sits on, a little bigger and moving the turret to the back of that hump. It seems CIG does not want any ship to have perfect turret placements in a game that they continue to push as multiplayer co-op preferred. The only ship with good turrets is the HH. Every other ship has turrets in poor positions that leave them blocked by something stupid, ESPECIALLY the damn carry handle on the freelancer. They redesigned the Cutlass and made the back hump upwards blocking more of the reward view of the turret. I am always confused by how CIG places turrets since they do love to say how co-op multiplayer they want their game to be. If that is your goal, make them enjoyable to use.
"Why can't we just have a jump seat?" Amen!
Honestly more small ships need more passenger seating. Sportscars in the real world have passenger seats even though they don't "need" them. Why? Because bringing friends along is important!
Yep, 100% agree here. I know there's some excuse in that the corsair is a "totally not a purpose-built piracy ship" or a deep space explorer only, but even if you consider that, there are a couple pretty fixable (but glaring) issues that make no sense either way (If you're a pirate, you're gonna want to land in rough terrain). Of course, CIG are a limited number of people, and the corsair functions good enough. let's hope they don't leave this on the back burner for too long.
Designed by talented artists and rendererers rather than having an engineer involved. Space use is very inefficient and sometimes designed without consideration as to use. Cargo bays that can swallow the 32SCU boxes, but not snap them to grid is a case in point.. The MSR...the MSR should be brilliant, buit its a hot mess of inefficient design, just to tyr and sell a "smiggler" feel. The Herald is better designed than the MSR, and it doesnt have a game loop!
I have no problem recommending SC to friends but I always include a couple of caveats. Firstly, they're not paying to be a player in a game. They are in fact paying to be a play tester of a game in development. Second, they don't have to buy anything other than a $45 starter pack as 90% of the ships they see are available with aUEC but they need to cool with the fact that anything they buy in-game can be wiped if the devs decide a dbase reset is needed. .. I agree with most of what was said about the ship design though. They've made some strange choices but it is what it is I guess. Maybe some of these things will get fixed before full release but somehow I'm not too confident about that.
Nice to see people talking about this. For the time I spent moving cargo in a variety of ships I quickly learned how ineffecient the current cargo grids are. Some compartments arent squared shaped or atleast accomodating for a particular standard cargo unit size and have diagonal or odd shaped hull design around the cargo. There is also a ton of wasted space in walkways, every square inch should have a purpose and having a pretty path shouldnt be the first consideration. As for specifically the corsair, the cargo section connected to engineering has a very wide stair case leading up to it. Which cuts off important space that could be used for cargo. Secondly, the aegis reclaimer's grids have to be an extended april fools joke 12 years ago that someone forgot about. You should be able to stack 16scu 6 high in the middle, but you cannot officially on a grid (have fun stacking unstable boxes). The catwalk is so wide you can fit 16scu crates up there, which is more wasted space. What would be nice to see is some level of control given to the player as to how they choose to change the layout of the ship, get rid of beds and place more cargo space or something.
Excellent criticism... I wish MSR would have a side entrance and the rear turret in freelancer would not obstruct so much... I would add the terrible state of flight physics to it, flying ships is the primary function since the very beginning, but it seems every indie game does the flight better than SC
I remember a few years ago when I was only following SW that one ytber, can't remember if it was Bored or Noobifier, mentioned that Roberts wanted the ships to have blindspots, deadzones and be overall suboptimal in someways to avoid making the overpowered or unbeatable, don't quote me on it though. I can't say whether this sound logic but it is an explanation of some of the choices. Like how most turrets are manned, that's intentional aswell so players CAN be killed when the turret is shot at.
The funny thing about the corsair is that it's most likely based of the BT 7 thunderclap from star wars the old Republic, same ship designer I believe.
And some of the elements in that are actually done better than the corsair. The way to the cockpit is actually pretty quick. It has bigger guns that sit at the wing tips. There's a vehicle rack that likely has its own elevator like the constellation. The landing gear also makes it sit a little higher. And some of game shots have it with a pair of laser canons right below the cockpit protecting the main ramp which could easily be gimballed in Star citizen.
I love the core shape of both ship but yeah the way the corsairs is actually arranged is pretty bad and arguably ruins the flow of the ship with the side turrets.
Also yeah the mustang should have the space behind the cockpit usable, it's funny how if you really wanted to make it a compact single seater it could be half the size.
The part about turrets earned you my sub. Been saying these ever since 2013, CIG needs to get a clue once and for all or make all of those automated PDS because surely I would not waste NPCs or players in them.
It's a Drake. What do you expect? There's maybe more than one reason why they never got into the military spec circle and have their own con. The Corsair itself comes with a lot of firepower if crewed and modded then again, due to its primitive design holds certain disadvantages. And while all of this is still alpha-stage unfinished in several aspects it all in all sums up to be quite on brand I'd say.
I tend to agree with the feedback but that said, they´ll most likely not fix most of these issues in the near future.
The ships all need a "gold pass" and the hope would be that they introduce some of these features and fixes to those ships then.
But it´ll take ages for CIG to fix and implement all of them and they still need to drive their funding so the focus will probably still be split between adding old concepts into the game and introducing new designs that already have those features.
The Zeus Mk2 as an example just completly trumps the Spirit in almost every aspect and even includes a side ladder and airlock.
Don't own this ship personally, but your review is spot on from my viewing's of it as well. Hope they take your review under consideration before a "gold pass" is made!
So I think that you had 1 point good vs the 3-4 others that are null n void as they are more or less already scheduled sometime soon ish.
Corsair NEEDS bigger landing gear. Doing that would let it have the ability to have a chin TURRET (not Gimbal) like the Mustang Series. That would indeed be cool.
The Co-pilot seat of the Corsair already is scheduled to be a thing, and we already have ships in-game that has functions LIKE this until the pilot seat is taken (Banu Defender, Prowler, Carrack, and at some point even the Caterpillar had it).
The "Bad turret angling" issue you have current game will be fixed as turrets are getting gimbals to let the guns aim more than what the turret can Swivel and pitch. This has been a talking point in recent Inside Star Citizen videos around Master Modes. These does not need more fixing as that will fix the main issue.
The Wing Guns doesnt need to be further out on the wing, as Gimbals have a set angle they can rotate and shoot. It would not give it a bigger angle, it would be the same (Tho points of Sail Up wingtip gunning tho. Love that idea!).
---------------
When it comes to other ships:
- Retaliator doesnt need a Co-pilot. Its a 6 manned ship, and adding more would mean another escape pod would be needed to be constructed somewhere inside of it (And Its Gold Standard is already set for 3.23 Patch Line... so Gold Standard is done).
- Freelancer had its talk on a gold standard, but I 100% agree that it should have a remote turret that is placed at the end of the ship (It should also be a 2 manned ship, and have better living quarters, but thats up for CIG to fix).
- Aurora can carry like 4 people inside of it as it has an interior and a bed. The Mustang CAN TOO, but its in its cargo box in the back. Mustang SHOULD have an "Enter/exit" behind the pilot seat like the V.1 had in my opinion.
- The Mercury Star Runner is the biggest Miss of an executed ship that CIG has produced. Chonky, unrefined, cluttered interior, no escape pods, no eating table, Manned turrets over Remote Turrets, and all that so they could have it carry a rover and have that useless tunnel below it... That and the Huge hunch it has with empty space that takes up 40% of the ships mass or so. It CAN have all the things listed, and it has none.
- Cutlass we had before was NOT the concept Cutlass, as the Cutlass we have now is the correct one. That one and the constellations, and freelancers was updated to accomandate future plans of adding stuff like components and such of the now standard size 0 - 4 (Vehicle, Small, Medium, Large, Capital) components. The Corsair already fits all of these, but MINOR changes could work, like putting the remote turret further back, extending the ramp and landing gear, and make the bottom guns into a turret (not a gimbal).
Overall.
I see where you are coming from, but lots of your talk wouldnt make a difference, or are already planned (without a schedule or with a shorter schedule than thought).
Good video overall, tho!
The short landing gear is because the folded wings are extremely tall. These need to be short enough to allow hanger doors to close with the wings up. What the Corsair needed is to have the long wing to fold up in its current position, then rotate forward. This would keep the asymmetry of the design will allowing a more compact landing configuration for hangers. With the reduced hight then you can raise the landing gear to give better off pad lading performance. Sadly with the Corsair being one of CIG newest ships I don’t see a rework coming anytime soon. There are other ships like the Caterpillar and the Carrack that need major reworks so that they can be used for cargo gameplay, which is a vital part of their ship design.
I've bought and melted the Corsair 3 times. The idiosyncrasies are just too much. It's a shame that so many ships that feel like a home to me, most notably the RAFT and the Corsair, have these quirks that make them so frustrating to operate.
Wow yeah. You hit the nail on the head. So many weird design choices. I get they don't want to create the "perfext ship" but if they just made everything more sensibly it would make the whole experience way better.
Why would you sit in the gun? That makes no sense just use a computer while safely sitting in the hall I understand you’re trying to be World War II here but it makes no sense
You’re in space if the window cracks you’re dead
It's the rule of cooool, bro. U just don't understand, bro. XD
I think a systemic flaw in CIG's design process that underpins your sample complaints is that all the people involved are very invested in making each thing they work on the most awesome thing possible, gold-plating everything down to the animated but nonfunctional toilet paper dispensers. But they aren't actually incentivized to actually make something that is ruggedly crude/simple or practical. They just want it to LOOK ruggedly crude, simple, or practical. And for doing so, they are continually given ever greater orders of magnitude of funding to reinforce what they're already doing in their design process. If you want to change that process, you need to stop rewarding it.
This is a result of the Chris Roberts perfectionist top-down approach to make a complete or at least very advanced development stage product before any actual end user even sniffs the upholstery off-gassing its factory-fresh VOCs. Like a lot of actual military contracts, the end users in the field aren't included in the design iteration loop until the product is already committed to production (though the US military of late has made some token gestures of trying to include the poor grunt stakeholders in the process).
That's why we get Star Trek-esque interior spaces that are all walkable by 3 characters abreast, but none of the feature examples you gave. Tons of useless internal spaces, extra interactable doors, and exciting corners and contours for visually interesting design language elements. Tons of blind spots in features and firing arcs that tell you no actual player or pilot was involved in the planning stages.
But hey, ship go whoosh pew pew in vacuum. Yay!
I often cite Project Zomboid as an example of the opposite process -- player testing and feedback, as well as dev willingness to frequently and repeatedly scrub things back all the way to designing systems and processes from scratch.
But CIG is $500M+ too deep into its own sense of self-importance at this point to do something so plebian.
They can't make the landing gear taller because then it wouldn't fit into a side feeding medium hanger. They refused to make the asymetrical starboard wing smaller.
love the video.
CIG designers are seemingly basementdwellers who never touched grass and seen why their designs are bad and how this already is addressed in real life, and how this translates into hindered gameplay with their choices.
i don't think there is a single vehicle in the game that doesn't put their competence into question.
Yeah not enough engineer minds at cig. Mostly it's all artist leading artist making choices over what's cool looking. It's for sure a let down.
Regarding the turrets: during the latest Xenothreat phase, I completed my missions and jumped into a friend's Corsair to help out. I took the side turrets, and couldn't provide any help at all, as the pilot was focusing on forward fire. I wasn't even aware of the co-pilot seat, which might have been the better choice, but since such is not common, I went straight for the turrets.
Thanks for pointing out the obvious! What we are seeing with CIG is never trust a game developer to build engineered elements without the guidance of a real world engineer!
i think they will give the landing gear more length when they improve landing gears in general, they will be able to extend feather to compensate for uneven terrain which would imply they will extend more
Aircraft turret design is nice, but the corsair can literally fly backwards and shoot at a pursuer with its main guns+both cheek turrets.
Love the corsaire and the problems are real. Would be cool if they switch turret location but I have to say cig did improve a lot in making them in their design
At least the Corsair has smaller landing footprint than the Spirit. The spirit has basically ground clearance and needs the area of a small city to set down.
The useless turrets that only fire back of some ships is the most annoying. No one would make ships with turrets that have restrictions.
I completely agree about turret placement. There are a ton of ships that have awful turret placement. The Cutlass is another one that comes to mind.
I'm going to assume the side turrets not pointing forward was a choice to not make the ship even more OP than it is. A game decision not a reality decision.
Melted my Corsair for these reasons. Would go back to it if they re-design the elements youve mentioned to make sense. Good disection!
My trouble is having Drakes ship being reliable. Cheaply made, yes but reliable?
Fascinating video
Also I agree with all of this. They make cool ships but sometimes I wonder how they overlook these things.
12:50
I made this exact comment on a forum and the entire page exploded with reasons why it's good and I'm stupid.
generally it seems CIG has done a very good job more recently with ships and their design, but many older concepts like the corsair are suffering from issues present since concept.
Cig needs a better go no/go on ship functionality. Everyone likes the corsair forbits its inside and as a solo pve boat or transport truck.
100% this is a beautiful game but the designers don't understand anything about what they are building.
you dont need to check Cutlass concept to see the tractor beam attachment, it's actually on it since it's release with a "tractor beam" sticker on it
great content and as others have stated, definately something that CIG should consider.
Haven’t watched the video yet but I hope it mentions the Eclipse having holes in it’s wings
I would love to see better landing gear on every ship, soften up those landings a little bit.
I am sure CIG will offer a mk2 version of it in the pledgestore soon 😂
To the redeemer I think they said it will be one of the next to be reworked but dont take it as save
The only purpose of the Corsair is to melt Hammerheads.
I think you nailed all the reasons I have a love hate relationship with this ship.
Cool ship vs practical ship. I prefer practical.
The redemmer needs to switch the hab and jumps seats
Man CIG should employ you to help them ;)
"The Virgin top turret vs the Chad Chin Turret"
About the first half of the video: I could agree if we were talking about the Cutlass Black, but I never saw the Corsair as a ship meant to operate in atmosphere, just one to land and grab the loot after his smaller brothers do the dirty work. The corsair is a blunt object designed to surprise attack slow and large targets with overwhelming firepower in space and high atmosphere. If we are comparing to historical real planes, I'd say a P-61 black widow or ME-410, just with some cargo and crew space.
The very fact that it assymetrical and flies like a brick should make this point pretty clear. IMHO the ability to hover should be WILDLY nerfed in all but the very clearly vtol oriented assault craft (again, like the cutlass) so large ships or fighters had to STRAFE, not float like gravity didn't exist, that causes real immersion break to me every time I see it.
Oh, I completely agree about the landing gear, I was mostly talking about the CAS capabilities while hovering and the nose gun (or lack thereof).
About the later half (about turrets and wing loadout placement): 100% agreeed. SC turrets as a whole are just awful design meant to divide the frontal arc firepower so people are FORCED to multicrew and it's really boring, just let turrets be turrets.
If the Corsair had a dedicated space for a shuttle, I would agree. The concept art, however, clearly depicts an atmospheric planetary explorer ship.
It does not fit the design ethos of a "heavy fighter" like those P-61 or ME-410 units: this one has a picnic table and Drakes are supposedly low-armored. If it's turret design mimicked the P-61 or ME-410, I'd be more inclined to agree.
They have talkeda bout this since the days of the ship competition... turret placement is yet another way of leveling out the ships. Not every ship can cover ALL the areas with gunners.. that's intentional THats the point of creating strong and weak points to every ship. It's not "poor" design when the design aspect is intentional, and intentional for a specific GAMING reason. Its like those that complain as to "why aren't all the ships completely clear, so that we just fly through space with nothing in front of us. WHy? because in a gaming world that would be horrible.
That is poor design, though. The USAF didn't put out "leave in deadspots for our very expensive bombers so the axis has a chance".
More importantly, it's not fun. This is not a competitive PVP shooter, this is a space adventure game with friends. Bad turret placement is not functional and, thus, it's not fun.
If you create an extending cargo ramp you have to program a system that takes the changing collision into account. It's one of those things that sound simple but take years to develop just to break immediately after release. Designing a spaceship in game follows it's own rules. It's not always intuitive and doesn't abide to real world logic. For example turrets in game should NOT cover everything, because deadspots allow for higher dps without killing balance. You could give the corsair overlapping turret fields, but then you would have to limit each turret to 2x s2 or cancel the pilot armaments.
PVP Turret balance should not dictate the ship design. The bigger point I'm trying to make is that the Corsair, a multi-crew ship, provides poor functionality for those who are crewing your ship.
Poor functionality is not fun.
They also intentionally choose to have Gunners in the Gunner seats for many reasons. Several being, that the MANNED turrets cant' be replaced by the "blades" that everyone hopes comes into the games, as where electronically controlled turrets are supposed to be able to have that feature. Also, it gives the GAME portion a better feel to put a friend in a turret (while sitting at a computer screen) rather than having a computer player sitting at their gaming desk then have their computer AV sit at another computer ( inside a game) at another computer screen,.. shooting a turret gun. That's NOT more fun for friends. It doesn't give the "game feel".. it doesnt' give the feel of the WWII fighting that they wish to have, and it doesn't offer that "star wars" feel we saw in the original.
I actually support the idea of manned turrets that offer more than remote or automated turrets. They need to be well positioned in order to offer more, though, and the Corsair's turrets are not well positioned.
However, the thing is - WWII fighting had remote controlled turrets. The B-29, the P-61, the A-26, there were remote controlled turret designs in WWII fighting. WWII Fighting in space is a really difficult idea to perpetuate.
This is the outcome of video game designers who have zero engineering experience, coming up with ship designs that only cover the existing state of the game without any requirements for future proofing. They obviously did not consider the ships as anything more than quick placeholders to make sales. Newer ship designs are leagues better.
Take the cutlass for example. Its supposed to be all about rugged reliability with a focus in combat, but it even lacks a shoilet and a table, forcing you to place all items on the floor. That thing doesn't even have light controls, even tho the buttons for it exist.
Then we move up to the corsair that offers that bit of extra, but lacks the ability to land on rougher terrain as you mentioned, while also featuring way too many doors in between with no real reason. Just wasted space.
But if we move down the price range... the cutter is well polished. Cramped, it includes a toilet an a bed, a small kitchen area and secondary surfaces while still being able to carry some cargo with it.
My biggest concern is engineering, how are they going to implement engineering when half of those things don't have the dedicated space for those components? Let alone relays and the rest of wiring. And then they want to add physicalized damage? So the design and placement of components will become central to our gameplay experience, yet the ships are simply not designed for it. CIG wants to deliver a shitload of new ships, but maybe they should redesign everything first.
That's some great points. I have some hope that this game will eventually come out, but the content creep of ever new ships, each of them "punching above its weight" so that none of them truly do, does mean that older models simply fall behind in quality. And until all mechanics are implemented, they will also not be complete models, as you point out with engineering sections. The ships seem unfinished, or rather, finished to a game that could be 8 years out of date with current requirements.