A couple weeks ago, there was a news post about the new capital ship stations. The last thing the playerbase saw of those was concept art nearly a year ago. Got any in-game or mockup renders to show off?

We've been through like 4 different versions in the last couple of weeks, which were quite.. significantly different. Showing off pre-production stuff that's spiffy is one thing, showing it off when it's kind of ugly or has the wrong textures or whatever is not so positive.

If we don't ship it by Friday, I'll post some sort of teaser.

That's the most Serco thing I've ever seen.

Hah, that's awesome.

Also, just to mitigate expectations.. these new stations are not based on the concept art we showed before.

Those new "uber-stations" (for lack of a better term), from the concept art, are also in development, but they require a lot of new stuff. They are so massive, so different from what we have now, and built with much higher expectations of devices and hardware.. that they've required us to build new rendering technology, new asset-construction techniques, testing and evaluation of both.. things that are moving along, but dragging on longer than I like, and I want to get some kind of capship-usable stations into production more quickly.

So basically, as an alternative, this near-term update will include new components built to look similar to the "existing" stations. A "fast-path" that uses existing textures and could be put together in a few weeks. We'll eventually end up with two different asset groups, one from the original content (current stations, and these upcoming capship-hangar assets), and one from the "totally-new" content (from the concept art).

Long-term, I think they're both of value. A lot of the UIT, for instance, is supposed to be kind of a jumbled haphazard mix of adapted materials and designs, stuck together, that result in a usable station. The current stations are basically the "UIT station" design, because back in the day we ended up not having any funding, and being unable to add the other intended "nation-driven station architecture" (Serco and Itani would have had more unique-looking stations as well).

These capship-hangar components will expand on that concept, and allow us to continue using these assets for some time to come. Also, before long (and unrelated to this capship-station thing) you may see the existing assets used in pretty cool new ways, that are more aligned with my original visual goals for stations, but computers were too slow back then.

At the same time, when the modern "uber-stations" arrive, they will look very different, as indicated by the concept art. They may entirely replace some stations.. but not others, depending on the intended "character" of the region, faction, history, etc.

Personally I couldn't care less what the station additions look like -- more important is how they change the gameplay. m2c

That's awesome. :D
Just plop one of those down in Sol II and we're golden.

Just plop one of those in... Sounds just as retarded as asking for a turret plopped on a ship that has 0 flat surfaces...