Greetings Citizens,

The Idris corvette is dead; long live the Idris frigate!

The team at Foundry 42 is currently building the first missions for Squadron 42, the single player game that will launch you into the Star Citizen universe. The game’s story calls for the player to start the game aboard a smaller UEE capital ship. We assigned them the Idris, the scrappy little corvette with a fierce bite already designed by Ryan Church.

Working from the Idris for this piece seemed like a natural fit… until the team whiteboxing the interior found that the original concept was not sized to fit with the Hornet model. Since the Idris would need to carry multiple Hornets (in both Squadron 42 and the persistent universe) they needed to expand the flight deck. Other additions, necessary as we learned exactly how a capital ship would function, necessitated more inside: a tender to support repair operations, medical facilities for the FPS segment and so on. The Idris needed to get bigger and better!

In the end, the ship was a full hundred meters longer and a much more imposing threat than the patrol corvette we originally imagined. As such, we have made the decision to reclassify the ship. The Idris is now a frigate, and existing fiction will be updated to reflect this change wherever possible. We are not removing Idrises from anyone’s inventories; everyone who owned an Idris corvette yesterday owns an Idris frigate today. I’m hoping existing backers will be happy: you’re ending up with twice the ship you pledged for!

If you’re absolutely dead set on seeing a corvette in Star Citizen, have no fear: our designers and artists are going to get to work on a new, smaller corvette that will be made available in the future!

Please enjoy some of the latest Idris artwork included in this post. This is the ship as it stands today. Development subscribers will also get an extensive WIP article in today’s Jump Point magazine, launching later tonight (click here for more information on how to subscribe.) Pay special attention to the search-and-rescue ship, now included with every Idris… it’s one of the reasons we needed to reclassify!

— Chris Roberts