[0:00]So the RSI Aurora is the quintessential starter Star Citizen ship. For people that have been with the project a long time, it was one of the first ships that they saw. So it gave you that first experience of boarding your own ship, exploring the interior, although limited, and then finally climbing into the pilot seat and then taking off for your first mission or exploration. Whilst the game has evolved over the last decade and we have learnt a lot more about building spaceships in that time, we felt that now was the right time to go revisit the Aurora series. Doing a follow-up of the original Aurora is actually quite the task because you have to make sure that it's as beloved as the original.
[0:54]The Mark II combines the classic DNA of the original Mark 1 Aurora, and then brings it up to modern day standards in both in terms of visuals and gameplay loop. RSI tend to want to kind of push the boundaries a little bit. You want to look back and see what they've done in the past and what was successful. But they're not scared to really embrace new ideas. We've tried to keep the overall proportions and styling of the base Aurora with the Mark II, but we just tried to sharpen it up. It has a really angular style. It looks really sleek. Everything flows, and it has a sort of layered armored look. The secondary door is still there to enter the ship, but it's hidden by the newer layered RSI door designs. We still got those really iconic four wings down the sides that give the ship its length. There's also some doors that open up and show the VTOLs underneath, which are these fans that help support the ship while it's changing trajectories. There's even a cool new feature where you can vault onto the top of the ship over the front canopy. My favorite part of that entire ship is actually the back section. It has tons of detail that all lines up towards the center of the ship.
[2:23]Something we were keen to follow up with is some of the RSI ships have transforming states, such as the Scorpius. We were playing with the idea of like, do we open the wings? Do we not open the wings? And as soon as we kind of started playing with the idea and seeing how it looked, it just felt natural. The base Aurora Mark II comes with four size 2 weapon hard points, as well as four size 2 missile hard points, each defaulted into two size 1 missiles. The guns are actually attached to what the wings are attached to. So when the wings pop off, the guns are still attached to the ship. So if you lose your wings, you're not totally out of the fight? No, so if you lose your wings, you'll lose your missiles and you'll lose the VTOL if you lose the bottom wings.
[3:18]When we were doing the original design for the Mark II Aurora, one thing that came up was do we want to do variants or do modules? In terms of production, a variant of a ship is actually a lot of work on our part. You have to redo modeling, you have to almost rethink the whole entire ship.
[3:37]The ship now, instead of being a variant, comes with two different modules. And the advantage of modules is you buy one Aurora Mark II and forever in the future, when upgrades happen to the ship, you can grab that module and then add it to your own ship. The TS module or what we internally refer to as the cargo module provides an additional six SCU cargo on a drop lift, which takes the whole cargo capacity of the Aurora Mark II with it equipped to eight SCU, which is a pretty competitive in a starter ship. And then one of the big changes with the TS cargo module and the base Aurora is the cargo is held internally rather than underslung underneath, so it's more protected. So it's great for somebody who's just getting started, who wants to do hauling missions before upgrading to something bigger, like a Zeus. Or you can either go with a defense module which adds eight S2 missiles and also one S1 shield generator in the back of it. So if you add 8 S2 missiles, you're much more lethal, and if you add another S1 shield, you're adding 50% more shield to your ship.
[4:46]So the player can decide whichever one suits their play style the most. In the future we can definitely foresee other modules coming along and anybody who has the Aurora Mark II now will be able to use those modules later on. One of the kind of limiting factors of the Mark I was its overall size.
[5:10]With the Mark II, we built it more from the inside out, so we knew all the features that we wanted to deliver. You're getting from the elevator door, on your left, you have the nice pilot sit.
[5:25]We have a nice view from there. We have a lot of glass so we can really see space from pretty much everywhere when you turn around. You have two chefs for mission boxes, so you can take this ship to do missions. You have engineering screen with components below that. If you continue on the right, you have a suit locker and a weapon rack. And at the end of the ship, you have the bed with a lot of space compared to the first Aurora. When you lie down, you have a big screen on top of your head. It's very enclosed, but it all has a very functional style to it. Everything like sort of feels like it should be where it is.
[6:11]The paints are awesome. We have a lot of cool options. We have a solid black one, we have a bronze and green one. There's one tint that's iridescent that's inspired by Aurora Borealis. I think that one came out really well. One of my favorite tints was inspired by an old video game that I grew up with that I loved and I think when the players find it, they'll be doing some barrel rolls. Alongside the Mark II Aurora, we also wanted to celebrate the Mark I Aurora. And for that reason, we decided to introduce a sixth special edition variant called the Aurora Mark I SE. So the Mark I special edition is really our sending off of the Mark I. It's taking all of the the best elements from the different Mark I models that we do and combine them into one. So it takes the improved cargo of the CL, the base level of the MR, the weapon loadout and the intakes of the LN and then the luxurious take of the LX seat. We also wanted to give it a really nice unique paint. And we want to give it a nice update to the interior in terms of its materials and its colors. So it kind of feels like a high-end sports model of some of the cars you see out now. Is the Mark II replacing the Mark I? No, it's not replacing it. So you still get to keep all your Mark I Aurora's, RSI just aren't manufacturing anymore. Just like the Mark I Hornets, they're here to stay in game. They're still going to be supported, they're still going to have bug fixes, they're going to have any features that they don't support yet updated in time to support that. They're here to stay, but we hope they will turn into a classic car status within the universe. I'm very happy with the ship. The team did a great job. It is clearly an Aurora, but brought up to just kind of modern RSI visuals. I have a big background in creating the first levels of games. For me, as a designer, I thought a lot about the new player coming on and having the ship be as welcoming as possible. It's a great starter package. It's everything you could want to start the game with. But even if you have other ships, it's there as a sort of useful modular utility ship that you can just have as your second ship, perhaps when your main ship is perhaps being claimed or damaged and you just want to get back out there.
