An Architect Reviews the Corsair - Star Citizen

foreign this is the Drake Corsair star Citizen's latest big ship to debut complete with enough Firepower to make even a UE gunship blush With Envy making it undoubtedly the new favorite of those looking to do some pirate I mean make unsolicited cargo inspections of their fellow citizens Drake doesn't officially like being associated with the Grim hex crowd if you know what I mean so shortly in this latest installment of An Architect reviews I'll take you through why I think it's asymmetrical silhouette is one of the most successful and iconic designs to date from cig's design

house and then we'll take a step on deck and see what accommodations Drake has made for its lucky crew of four oh and if you stay tuned until a little bit later in the video you can also find out how you'll have a chance to win a custom nameable Corsair star system game package with Lifetime Insurance so make sure you look out for that but just in case you want to prevent any unsolicited personal info inspections you might want to check out the spa answer of today's video nordvpn they now not only help to hide

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its landed form is easily one of the most interesting and iconic looking ships in Star Citizen it actually reminds me of the Mantis from Jedi Fallen order that game is awesome by the way and if you don't know I've got a video on my channel that kind of talks about its architecture so check it out it's gigantic Wings in their folded position feel suggestive of something like old sailing ships which feels appropriate for the name Corsair even the rear of the ship with the way it tapers upward reminds me of a sailing ship Stern I

wonder if this was intentional if so Bravo by the designer that's a really cool suggestion but the real special look comes from when the Corsair deploys its massive Wings especially when you examine it from an angle where you can see it's asymmetry rather I should say appreciate it's asymmetry asymmetry in design if you guys don't know is like sliding difficulty slider all the way up to Max it's really really hard to pull off successfully and that's why I think I'm Blown Away by just how well cig's ship team has pulled off the Corsair here it

feels like the hero ship in a movie I really want to see the folding animation is also impressive as someone who's studied mechanical engineering before switching to architecture and University I absolutely love the way the hinge slides along the big Wing to tuck it a bit closer to the engine array and that someone actually spent time trying to make this look believable how cool is that I mean I can't help but geek out about these things and ships that Star Citizen does the engine array is also really impressively detailed with a signature orange red Thruster

glow and articulated nozzles that actually move when you hit the afterburner it gives the impression of power interesting fact by the way pointed out by Mike phillibin on Twitter is that they actually have to produce over 1 000 metric tons of thrust just to overcome the mass inertia of the Corsair to lift off that's surely enough to flatten anyone standing under the ship so just be careful of that if you're watching this thing take off on closer inspection at the exterior the ship is also chocked full of awesome details that shouldn't be overlooked like I

really particularly love these Banning details along the hall it gives the sense that there's an underlying structure which visually is supported by these rivets and panels that make it feel like this was put together that you know there's some story behind its manufacturer it makes it feel tangible makes it feel like it could be made in the real world and I think these smaller details as well as the wider ships form really start to bring to mind a powerful design tool that I suspect cig's artists have employed with the Corsair and even other ships academically

it's referred to as narrative design Theory and that's a little bit dry so I think I want to explain it a little bit more simply as just using narrative or a story to inform a design so let me explain in the context of Star Citizen by imagining a story behind the design such as say cultural origins of the ship's manufacturer what designers want to suggest with how the ship could be used and the economics of How It's manufactured can all play a role in informing how cigs designers assemble the design in whatever programs that they

use to make it feel right in the lower and fictional Universe of Star Citizen it's important to note here though that this kind of idea is applicable to pretty much anything in design so if you're looking to do architecture or Furniture it's absolutely useful in instances where it's utilized correctly it can make for a really compelling result that really connects with users evoking memories and connections that the person who's looking at it might be familiar with so then going back to what I said earlier in the video about how the wings look like sales when

the ships landed you can see how they're trying to give this idea that it's an old sailing ship or at least suggest it subconsciously they're using this narrative here to evoke these connections so that you associate it with fast light but well-armed sailing ships of the old sailing ship days that pirates might have used I mean it couldn't be more obvious right with name Corsair that's exactly what a Corsair is or was rather they don't exist anymore but now you can probably see how powerful design can be to inform you of its purpose without just

telling you outright yeah the name is Corsair but looking at the ship I think you could probably say you get the sense of what they're trying to communicate I look on this then as a super successful design it's not just good it's great all right right class dismissed I digress let's get back to maybe some more pragmatic things like the features of the ship's exterior as a pilot you'll have control of four size four gimbal laser cannons mounted on size 5 hardpoints with an additional two outboard Wing mounted size 3 Cannons all on size 4

hardpoints together they're capable in this gimbal stock form of delivering 2 559 DPS downrange and as you guessed it quite a bit more if you swap them all out for size fives and fours but be warned swapping guns out on the Corsair for fixed guns really makes it hard to aim as the turn rate on the Corsair makes it hard to hit anything smaller than akani so it's not recommended moving one seat back the co-pilot has access to a remote turret in the rear section of the ship equipped with two size two repeaters that can

even face forward to hit targets with the pilot and as you might have noticed it's also got two turrets they're both equipped with size twos and they can fire forward with the pilot combining all the Firepower of the ship up together to go over an insane 4000 DPS sustained throw some eight size three missiles in there and you've got a recipe for enough Firepower to take down a hammerhead if you get the jump on it and that's that's impressive for the internals it comes with a single size 3 Shield two size two power plants two

size two coolers and a size 2 Quantum Drive this makes the Corsair quite a bit more tanky than you might suspect but the Corsair isn't perfect while it has the potential to deal more DPS than the days until Squadron 42 is released its two side turrets have a surprisingly limited range of motion not being able to face backwards and having very limited upward and downward range that means that anybody who gets just slightly behind you is going to be out of your firing Arc and while the AFT remote turret can cover most of the rear

it has a huge blind spot just below the cargo ramp that skilled light fire Pilots can slide into which is going to mean death if it's not countered quickly by a skilled pilot so while the Corsair can be formidable in PvP situations it's not really the kind of ship you want to get in a turning battle with an experienced pilot in it's not really the meta yet and we'll just have to see how the flight model rework puts it later this year because I really hope to see it more often in actual combat now before

we move on to the interior it's time I snuck in the giveaway rules here for those of you who've actually stuck around this far because believe it or not not many do and I want to give this ship away to somebody who actually wants to watch my videos so this is kind of a thank you to you guys so if you want to be eligible to win all you have to do is make sure you're subscribed to my channel and then post in the comment section what you see yourself doing with a Corsair it would

also be really cool if you could share this video somewhere on social media but that's not really required it's not going to increase your odds I would just really appreciate it so if you've done those things I'll randomly select one of you guys from the comment section A Week within posting the video I'll reply to you if you've won directly with my official account which will have a check mark right next to my name so you'll know that it's my account not some scammer and that's really important guys you have to look for the check

mark because there are scammers out there and they've been in quite a few of my comment sections I've been making efforts to ban them but they keep making new accounts so watch out for that you have to look for the check mark but now it's time to step on deck and take a look at the corsair's interior impressively the Corsair actually has four Ingress points which is good when you know that you might be shot at when you exit which let's be honest if you're flying Corsair probably happens pretty often one of those entrances has

a pretty neat party trick too and it's the one closest to the flight deck on the corsair's Ford starboard side press a button and the lift is revealed through a Sleek folding door once on it you'll find three physical levers which are actually animated in awesome little detail by the way which I absolutely love I love the analog nature of Drake ships pulling the middle lever will bring you to the ship's interior as you probably expected but pulling the third lever on the left brings you to the roof this offers some pretty fun possibilities but

also some tactical advantages think for example if you're exiting your ship on a planet surface where you know there might be somebody waiting to Ambush you now you've got The High Ground to shoot down at them there are also two other entrance points one being being the docking ring and the other being the most obvious the cargo bay at the most rear but we'll look at that a little bit later returning to the interior from the forward lift it exits on the habitation area for the crew here crew can take meals in a generously sized

mess hall complete with a dispensary and a nicely sized table just off center in the room and out of the way of the main circulation path down the main axis of the ship and thankfully the designers over at Drake have deemed the Corsair fit to have its own head something that the Cutlass black is sorely lacking notably though it's the only one on the ship so no Captain's head sadly for those of you looking for that the interior's design no is authentically Drake a Bare Bones design language that reveals wiring bulkheads welds and rivets but

I find that this is a Charming aspect of Drake's design language it's not a place for soft-handed Microtech pencil pushers it's a place for hard folk who don't need any Thrills to get their job done at least that's the story I get the feeling that they're trying to tell one thing that misses the Mark here though is the lighting I feel like there is something incomplete with this space especially near the dispensary area where I need my flashlight to actually look at this space and in case you're wondering no there aren't any light switches to

turn on lights here there just aren't any lights definitely feels strange and sadly this lighting issue is something that you're going to see Pop Up throughout This ship's interior design moving on though just across from the communal space are well positioned main crew cabins which feel appropriate for the programmatic organization of the ship connects to a communal space where you'd want to hang out after you know taking a nap or you know changing out shifts however upon examining one of these crew cabins you might find yourself surprised to find it quite a bit more spacious

than you might have expected in comparison to other vessels like the constellation or Redeemer it feels positively luxurious of course nothing about the finish of the space is luxurious it's like sleeping in a half complete framed house but it's Drake so that's what you should expect each cabin is pretty much identical including the Captain's Quarters which is maybe just a little bit smaller and the beds rotated they come with a suit storage locker and a Foot Locker that is actually independent of the ship's standard local inventory so you've got a little bit of privacy there

the full crew compliment listed on the Corsair officially is four but I personally think it might have been a good idea to double up at least two of these cabins for an additional engineer and Marine especially considering we've just gotten soft death which enables us to board other ships and we're soon going to get multi-cure engineering gameplay which I think having another crew member do would be great instead of trying to pull somebody off a turret it feels like a missed opportunity then moving further aft just connected to the communal space is a mechanical space

that gives access to various functional components of the Corsair you might call this an engineering Bay this base is octagonal and floor plan which makes a bit unique with the Quantum Drive featured prominently in the center the various other sub-components arrayed around each wall one thing that kind of bothers me a little bit though is the cable management on the ceiling it kind of feels like a mistake I know it was done for the rule of cool but I think they went a little bit too far on that side and they should have made some

cable management you know like cracks or something to make it feel a little bit more like a manufactured ship as opposed to like a custom job but that's just me halfway then through the left side of this space you'll find yourself in a docking collar space here just like the mess hall though the light switch doesn't work near the door which is frustrating you can't activate the lights though by hitting the light switch near the airlock strangely enough so it's not super intuitive the space is decently lit once you actually get the lights on which

reveals a set of four suit lockers and a bunch of gun racks and interestingly two large gun racks capable of holding some heavier Hardware like railguns and rocket launchers which are perfect for favorable negotiations the airlock animation itself is pretty cool but cooler even still are the mechanical levers for operating the doors again the designers have done a really good job here of making the space feel believable with its Mechanicals and I want to see more stuff like this on future Drake ships moving all the way aft you'll find yourself finally in the corsair's generously

sized cargo bay without the up to two Cyclone rubbers that you can fit in here the space is capable of supporting 72 SCU of cargo technically it's less than the RSI constellation but in terms of volume provides a lot more flexibility to squeeze a little bit more in there if you want in case you're wondering though no it can't fit a tank it's just a little bit too low for it likewise the design feels consistent with past Drake designs like the Cutlass and caterpillar featuring exposed Mechanicals components structure and insulation which as I've said before

countless times I absolutely love the cargo door is also a pretty nice party trick folding out mechanically with a very satisfying wine and clunk of gears and hydraulics and has a really cool feature that I hope to see in other upcoming ships which are flood lights for the rear area of the ship outside is great for Illuminating loading cargo or identifying hostile threats that might be camped out at your most vulnerable area of the ship this is the biggest entrance and it's hardest to protect people from running on board but now let's take a peek

at where all the action happens which I'm sure many of you have been itching to see moving forward from the habitation area and the ship you'll find yourself in an area dedicated to two turrets on either left and right side these lead to seats that are appropriately Bare Bones Drake not uncomfortable looking but certainly not luxurious perfect turrets offer a decent visibility level though with a limited range that I talked about earlier in the video which leads to some pretty bad blind spots Ford once again though will finally find ourselves on the bridge for the

flight deck whichever you prefer to call it just to the left of the entrance is a slightly smaller version of the crew cabins that we saw further aft and ahead of that is a spacious Flight Deck with an interesting vertical crew seating arrangement for the pilot and co-pilot the arrangement though is only revealed by sitting at that rear co-pilot seat which brings you down through a mechanical Contraption to a lower canopy with a great view to below what the pilot can see here you now have a great view of what's below the ship and you

get access s to the rear most remote turret right now though there's not much else you can do in this position but I suspect in future this will be a secondary piloting position and maybe even capable of controlling the lower two size fours but we'll see with that position out of the way we're finally left with the most important part the captain's seat or the pilot seat in typical Drake fashion the mfds and switches are all analog and mechanical feeling they feel ancient but satisfying with toggle switches and levers that really feel like they do

something when you flip them some of them actually work too they're animated like the lever to deploy and retract the wings dang cool there's also a cool little secret MFD to the lower right on the floor if you look for it and it actually works I don't know why they did this but it's a cool little Easter egg here visibility isn't too bad with the struts being minimally obstructive views two below though aren't super great so you have to rely on your co-pilot to spot what's below you the ship flies also in a pretty predictably

heavy way responding slowly to commands to change heading which is why the Corsair isn't particularly great with dealing with small ships by itself and despite its shortcomings it's a joy to fly and awesome when you punch the accelerator to get up to its top speed which isn't great but it does accelerate pretty quickly up to it overall then I think the Corsair design especially from its exterior is fantastic it's iconic and I love it but the only thing that really comes to mind that keeps it from a perfect score is the incomplete feeling interior to

me it seems like the designers ran out of time to really flesh out some of the lighting properly and I think that they even forgot to do some of the switches there's also some inconsistency with the crew cabin sizes versus other ships in the Drake lineup but I think there was a missed opportunity here to add a few more beds and a bunk form where these issues to be addressed I think that I would easily rate this as one of the best ships I've reviewed on my channel what do you think are you eager to

get one of these yourselves now let me know down in the comment section below and as always if you like the video and you want to see more don't forget to hit that like button and subscribe and I hope to see you guys in the next one foreign