An Architect Reviews the Aegis Hammerhead - Star Citizen 

Correction, he said "nuc-ular", the good old George W Bush school of english at work again ;P

Made me laugh

Baleur Norman Schwartzkopf of Desert Storm would pronounce it just as wrongly. horrible

There should be a mechanical interlock that prevents both doors from being open at the same time. I guess HAL is being naughty again :-/

@Preston Henry So happy for you guys!

@Preston Henry Ignore both these comments, they are spam.

Airopen

Just be to be sure, have you seen Gaming With Jim? It's totally diferrent review format, so they're not competitors but it's good fun. I usually watch both

I second this.

I would say the crew compliment is to small, no armory is dumb as is the lack of airlocks and blast doors. The interior is to dark and brooding, reminds me of Alien. Overall it's not a ship I would ever buy or serve on willingly.

100%

One of the best*

Actually I would argue both ways are true. Carbon nano-structures are going to be way more expensive than steel. I love the lack of windows personally, gives it that "below deck" or "submarine" naval feeling. Also, helps crew stay focused when going from place to place, you don't want your minions blinded by explosions while en route to battle stations do you?

I don't think that matters much, considering it is effectively just a filter over a hole in the hull; your rig is still rendering everything 'on the other side' of the hull, you just can't see it without a window in the intervening space. Otherwise, that would require the program to intelligently determine how much you can see, in real time, from your position relative to the window and load and unload as you moved, again in real time, and do all of this at high speed to preserve the same effect you get if you just kept it all loaded and simply had a hole to see only a portion of that loaded world at a time. Sitting in the shower doesn't de-render the entire game world simply because you can't see out of it. Your GPU has long ago already loaded what's exterior to the ship- once again, you just can't see it.

I would have to point out, as someone who has written game engines (not good ones, but it's more than most), and has some experience with 3d engine design.... Hidden surface removal is not a trivial matter. It's different on modern hardware than on really old stuff (if you were using a late 90's/early 2000's GPU, or worse, a software renderer, overdraw will eat you alive. Nowadays it's less critical) To give an example of what has changed over time, one of the optimisation techniques for 3d spaces developed in the early 90's is the portal rendering engine (yes, Portal DOES technically use that concept, if you were wondering, to do actual portals). The first example I know of is the Descent series of games, which were managing full 3d graphics on a 386 while Doom was still faking it even on 486 systems. The tradeoff? Portal rendering is only an effective optimisation when dealing with small enclosed spaces. (Duke Nukem 3d is also using portal rendering, but it's not a full 3d engine so it has other limitations as well) So, what is the point of portals as an optimisation? They prevent overdraw. In a portal based engine you divide your world into small rooms, then define certain parts of those spaces as being 'portals' - regions that link to something else in the world. Usually simple rectangles for simplicity's sake. The portal defines a link to another portal somewhere else in the world. (one of the side effects of a portal renderer is you can dynamically alter which portals connect, thus creating stargate like things and geometry that can't physically exist in a 3d space by itself) The game engine would build the world by determining where the camera is, and rendering whatever room is visible in the camera, making note of any portals in the field of view. Every time you encounter a portal, you then treat the portal bounds as a new camera and render into that area whatever is visible from the portal, and so on. With some fairly complex code you can ensure that this process draws only the visible rooms and has NO overdraw whatsoever. A big deal when drawing a pixel is an expensive process. However, at some point the ability to draw pixels quickly outpaced the ability to do the portal culling efficiently. In this context it turned out that it was actually faster to just take the visible portals and traverse the list of all the visible rooms that these connected portals show, then render them back to front. This creates a ton of overdraw, but is still faster than the algorithms needed to prevent said overdraw. Meanwhile, this still massively increases performance, because you are still culling huge amounts of the world. Remember here that there's multiple stages all of which can be optimised; Just because textures and geometry is loaded onto the GPU for stuff happening outside the ship, doesn't mean that actually taking that loaded geometry and rendering it is free. There are still performance costs associated with the actual rendering process. and having a window means you have to do the DRAWING process for what's visible outside the window (whether the models for it are loaded is a seperate issue that has more to do with Video memory limits than rendering performance) If there's no window, there's no reason for the client to be drawing anything going on outside the ship. It doesn't have to perform the geometry transformations for individual vertices and polygons for these objects. Doesn't have to do texturing for them. Doesn't have to render these polygons. The only criteria for being able to quickly show the exterior of the ship is that this exterior stuff has to be easily loaded into memory or already be in memory. But memory is a distinct resource from the actual rendering performance required... Having said that, plenty of ships show up the fact that this likely isn't done for technical reasons. After all, if performance was that much of a problem, why would you have these massive panoramic windows like in Origin ships? If it's a technical problem for one ship, it should be a problem for all of them.

There's no need for big windows. Instead a very thin line of glass would do the trick, to give situational awareness from the outside to the crew, so they know what is happening around them. So yes, that would also help with performance as you said

@@SnprMk7 That's not necessarily true. Often game engines will optimize rendering by not rendering elements you can't see. So when you're sitting in the shower in your ship, it's unlikely your GPU is loading the planet you're flying next to. But you put a one way portal in that shower for your viewing pleasure and it's now rendering the LoD of that planet.

No, I can confirm that when you open the bay doors, the others don't close. Good point on the mess hall by the way, you have a unique first hand experience with this, I think then I should amend my position on it's size if there are indeed marines on board. Still though, there should be an armory somewhere on board.

since this is a military/utilitarian ship, i think having a small armory, or at least weapon wall in the crew quarters would be appropriate.

YES! i own this ship and have followed it since we 1st heard of it there will b blast doors ANYWHERE there is a non rounded section of the ship they just dont work yet also the airlock in the front is for docking with stations as mentionded in a ATV episode BUT i feel it does need a gun rack or two say 1 in crew quarters and 1 in mess?

@@Morphologis no of course I agree an armory is needed, which is why I didnt disagree on that point, on my ships they were in the berthing, and with the space there, I think they could add a small one in the one on this ship.

A weapon wall would be great in the front near the air lock. I'd also like to see an extendable ladder added to the front airlock, so it could be used on the ground when the ship is powered down. Overall, I love the ship... probably my favorite so far.

I noted his voice was very on point as well.

I also like the underslung bridge because of its' role as a flak ship for bigger capital ships. The placement of the bridge allows the Hammerhead to cover an area on a larger ship that has taken damage or lost defensive turrets by flying close enough to the bigger ship that hitting the damaged spot is nearly impossible.

Carde, your comment is golden. i have more of an issue with the placement of some of the turrets rather than the turrets them selves, the turrets on the wings can be blocked by those on the nose, and should be staggered vertically. and then the nose hatch, which doesn't seem to have a purpose.

Next video: an architect reviews Brazilian fire ant nest.

And now I can’t unhear it. Damn you.

I NEVER HEARD IT UNTIL I SAW THIS COMMENT, DAMN YOU.

actually he is settled

@@june_005 You're welcome. lol

That is a "nonsensical" design choice. Why is the bridge at the front of the ship if the ship is built to potentially ram enemies. The whole ship would lose the bridge and any flight control as soon as it rammed another ship.

Or...its for the landing gear @ 17:46

@@CelticAngloPress2nd in that case might be so even if not intended it sure helps bad drivers

Harlock RAMMING SPEED!!

@@nasme100 at 17:46 you can see that the bridge is really not at the front but a few meters behinde the front and with the front being as broad as it is it probs wont penetrate far enough for the bridge to actually hit the target

I've explored the ship in our an noticed that there's an empty space between the cargo lift and the hatch that opens up on the hull below it, that could be a space to have a air shield.

They have mentioned that these will be in the game on one of the Banu drop ships, however if what Nox says is true then it'll likely be the same as on the constellation.

Tevarin Prowler, yes that ship should come with it. Next patch :)

I will. Actually, as a cruiser, it would fit right in my line of combat vessels after my reefshark corvette, even from a stylistic point of view.

Hmm good idea! I used to do that a lot. I built an 890, freelancer, 300 series, cutlass, merlin, caterpillar, and even a functioning Revel and York Hangar. But I haven't played SE in so long. I bet its a totally different game now.

Maybe also fix those very stupid design mistakes in Space Engineers while your at it... I don't want to be ripped from my toilet and sucked out into space because a bonehead decided it would be a good idea to open the rear cargo bay while on the moon... Also, there are space pirates here but we don't have any way to stock any guns and ammo on board. Now we're dead. Woooooooooooooooo...

Also for the exposed glowing engine in the cargo bay, I would avoid and paranoid if emits loud noise and glowing particle and it may even damage the cargo too, if emits heat too~ but the bridge is nice.

"regardless what it is made of they will be weaker" lore says they aren't, so they aren't weaker in a world where you can have inter-planetary travel in 15 minutes

@@laplongejunior Even if the material is as strong as steel you still have to mount it in a way that would create a structural weakness.

You should engineer some punctuation.

@@R.JoshField Sure, i was writing a thesis so i had to be very careful about punctuation, right??? You are just wasting time very poorly..

@@laplongejunior Lets say glass armour is somehow stronger than other materials in this universe but then care to explain why vast majority of the ship isn't made of glass armour which is stronger??

Sounds like a good way to cause people to go insane or at least end up with unnecessary medical problems. But I guess that's a tradeoff that militaries seem willing to make.

@@KuraIthys they get trained and tolerance filtered for a reason you know. It may be uncomfotable but they are literally trained to work through the pain.

@@KuraIthys so true

@@KuraIthys I've been to the military myself and I can tell you with clear certainty that they don't give a fuck about their poor soldiers. their philosophy is clear they want you to completely FORGET how it is to live in decency (or how to live in general for that matter) and they want this for 1 and only reason. To make you want to die. So that not only will you want to throw yourself in the front line but you will want to, too. Marines in the army barely sleep meaning they won't sleep more than 3 hours per day. And by sleep I mean real sleep not take a nap with a bunch of other marines next to you being loud not allowing you to relax or being forced to sleep and then being woken up to do chores in the middle of your 2 hour nap... So at some point the marine or the simple soldier will start wanting to die. I found particularly easy to understand how easy it is to make an army willing to throw itself in the front line if you feed them but not allowing them to sleep. Everyone knows that the army the only real currency that exists is free time. And you don't want to be exchanging that with anything. So deprivation of sleep is a very easy way to manipulate a large number of soldiers, make them obedient and willing to die at any point. But if you have relaxed soldiers that lack food then you are fucked! They will eventually rebel against you and the whole army camp will suffer serious issues. So the army is really that terrible. Deprivation of sleep, lack of basic hygiene, lack of normality of behaviour and speach, power roles etc, all that made so that everyone forgets how it feels to be free and make you follow orders like an obedient robot that doesn't feel think or argue :/

Only Air Force vics have working ac haha

Nathan Dearsley Vehicle Art Director in the uk is a big alien fan you can usually identify him by is Weyland-Yutani cap. he was largely responsible for the Aegis design language.

I hope they do. Dude has good insights.

Probably not. They already know that they're designing in the correct way and probably have years and years of artistic background in their team. Doesn't take a youtuber to tell them that red means bad.

the hammerhead looks like it was inspired from the Defender class light corvette from Star wars: Knights of the Old Republic and the Hammerhead cruisers

RemedyDoesGaming I think the redundancy is important in a ship like this. In future, it will be possible to have parts of the ship blown off and depressurized. Having 2 ways to get too and from the bridge gives the crew a bit of insurance to be able to keep up the fight until the engagement is over, and to be able to escape in the case of total catastrophe.

I never thought of it like that to be honest, my view was that they could of added another room or two, such as the armoury or something else. But now you've mentioned it I'm growing to like the idea of it, so thanks.

I like the double hall for redundancy, but hope some of that space can be used for retractable drop ship seats and wall mounted armory.

@@Morphologis U.S. Military loves redundancy

So, to vastly over simplify, sectionalised compartments means more chance of survival in the case of loss of portions of the ship. It'll be slightly better than being "naked" which is to say, EVAing in space, where you have about two hours of oxygen. They'd probably be able to last say maybe, 4 hours, or 6, something like that?

Generally good to draw inspiration from real world spaces as they exist for a purpose. A designer or architect needs to take in to account so much more then you need to think about in a game. I think it is a very good start which should lay the foundation to what something should look like in a game if you going for realism. There generally a bit of things you need to think about when you design a space for a game to. Generally you want to make them a bit bigger the what they may be in the real world so it easier to go around and it does not feel as cramped as it does when you watch something from a third person view. Even in a first person view spaces feel a bit more cramped when viewed from a monitor then when you actually there. And there also some gamplay considerations you need to take care off. A lot of it has to do with movement but also making the space interesting to play in. And some considerations are often given to culling, that is removing areas from view. Star Citizen is with is spaces pushing them towards more immersion over performance optimization and ease of implementation. Which I appreciate. But this is also telling why the game take as long as it does to make. I remember a Q&A session the crew of Star Trek Online had when they talked about ships. The game almost never gets new interiors and those spaces are generally quite simple. When they where ask about this the told people the truth. It takes a lot more time for them to design one interior then it takes for them to design a ships exterior. So they rather push out new ships then work on interiors (Which honestly, new ships are there cash cow and interior spaces seldom gets used). But in Star Citizen both spaces are of equal importance. This is a first person universe after all. ^_^

I do think it’s important to remember lots of vehicles in real life have minor flaws and many have major flaws in them. The depressurization flaw I actually kind of like, it’s a flaw that means you need to know the ship before using it. If someone steals the hammerhead and doesn’t know it, chances are they will kill themselves.

That is true. Though flaws if major enough will warrant recalls and patching to be fixed. Why you often see a lot of minor quirks that may only effect a small number of vehicles, but is a know issue. But generally not major flaws.

I think that's really valid, and it's something I thought about reviewing but already spent so much time on the bridge that I just forgot to put in. It's strange that there's only a pilot and copilot seat, with no additional stations for command. I think they must be crossing aircraft design with naval design with this one, as It would seem that there's a lot of inspiration from big jets and gunships like the c-130. Those typically do have a captain piloting and a copilot, but I would still prefer a command seat as you have suggested.

Exactly. A very important tenet of military operations is Command and Control. There are no indications that this vessel has any of it. How does a ship like the Starfarer, a support ship, with its smaller crew require a Captains Chair while the Hammerhead, a combat ship, does not? Your concerns about decompression is also a valid design flaw. Segmented compartments connected by airtight doors not only reduce how much oxygen is vented from the ship but also prevent any fires from spreading to other parts of the ship. This could very well mean the difference between how many casualties are taken during combat and how effective the ship remains in combat when it takes damage. One small suggestion I would make to make your videos less "cringy" for those of us that are more nautically inclined is to try and use the proper nautical terminology when describing parts of the ship. Mess Halls are strictly land-based facilities. They are referred to nautically as a Galley or Mess Decks. The area where the crew sleeps is called Berthing. Their beds are called Racks. Of course, the bathrooms are called Heads. The hallways are call Passageways or P-ways. The doors, hatches. Walls, Bulkheads. Floors, Decks. This may seem trivial but for us that have spent a career on the High Seas, this is the language we speak.

@In Toxicated You're making me want to read up on naval architecture. Another thing I'm wondering about is the sheer amount of space used for corridors, or properly, passageways. It seems like a huge waste of space, and even in a ship of this size, wouldn't space be at a premium?

In the case of the Hammerhead, the passageways make sense in that they connect the forward sections of the vessel with the aft sections. They also connect those two important sections with all of the turret stations. Even if we were to fill in the middle section of the vessel with usable compartment6s, those passageways would still be needed to segregate those hypothetical compartments from any possible damage that may be spreading through the ship be it fire, toxic atmo, or decompression. On the Starfarer, an argument can be made about the inefficient use of space on that vessel.

I just assumed the captain would be the pilot. Is there a reason he would not be? This is an aircraft after all.

There is. It's called Star Citizen

@@EliPorterMahn The joke is that the game is unplayable due to the bugs. r/woosh

Actually there are a TON of things I wanted to cover, but this video got really really long already at near 19 minutes. The corridor thing thing, I did answer that in a different comment. I think it's fine because of redundancy in case of depressurization. If it wasn't a war ship, I would agree that it's excessive - but in this case it's not. :) Thanks for the like man, I appreciate it.

Adding retractable seats and weapon walls in the expansive halls would be nice, the ship should be able to double as a drop ship (especially with the front airlock). The engines should be hidden behind something. The engine room should be closed in for depressurization when opening elevator. If the ample hallways space can be used for dropship marines, I think it's OK. Also, it's nice to have a backup hallway when one side takes heavy damage.

The far sticking out turrets is literally the design. The further out they stick the better. The engines are in their visible damaged state in the video, they will not be like that in an undamaged ship, pretty much all larger ships have that.

@sanforce The part you're overlooking is balance. They didn't add functionality to make it a drop ship because they didn't WANT it being a dropship. First and foremost, this is still a game and they've been very careful to specialise roles of each ship (or made the general use ships not great at any particular thing). If it doubled as a drop ship, you'd have a heavily armed, armoured and large contingent ship that would devastate everything else in the class.

Starfarer would be sweet, it was the first of the big ships when it was released.

if I recall, (and as he says at the beginning of the video) the material used in making the bridge windows here are an alloy that is as strong as the steel the rest of the ship is made out of, so no structural weakness. (unless the ship hulls are also made out of some, even stronger, alloy)

Yeah, the bridge (or CIC) should be located in a fortified area probably near the center of the vessel. Any pertinent information can be piped in via sensors.

then EMP strike and those sensers go bonkers and suddenly no eyes

@@benlee8225 it's actually not hard to shield electronics against emp's, they aren't as powerful as pop culture makes them out to be. The reason large emp's are a problem irl is because our civilization wasn't built with emp shielding in mind, but a smartly designed starship would be properly shielded against such an attack.

Absolutely

Ok then, how about the aegis vanguard and all of her variants?

It was said that it had something to do with how the game calculates the mass of the ships.

Ideally the entire crew would suit up once combat starts.

@@andrewswitzer6334 True... but in lore, people don't run around in EVA suits at all times... so if a combat situation begins and you're in the aft part of the ship, that's what those lockers are for, presumably.

It is on hold indefinetely at the moment from what I know due to their mismatched schedules

its on hold. you know with morp being on the other side of the planet and getting an alienware laptop so running space engineers is impossible for him atm.

No he can run it he did a few streams recently enough, well participated in a few. Including the heavily modded Un-coperative survival on w4sted's channel. The problem is time zones. Plus I think he has a better computer it's just the laptop was the best he could bring to US with him.

He could have gotten a better mic

I disagree. I think his voice is natural, but also suits the decorum of the situation. He has very clear diction and enunciation and produces his ideas in a very consistent speed so that people can observe and also take in what he's saying simultaneously.