I was hoping that a dev (or anyone with the knowledge) could help me nail down one aspect of the San’tok.yāi: its trunk. As far as I can tell most people aren’t even aware the ship has a trunk, something which makes sense when considering that: there exists only a single sentence¹ referring to said trunk, the 0 SCU capacity (caused by the compartment’s tall, thin shape) leads many to believe it simply has no storage whatsoever, and that the only direct picture of it (see image 1) can, in context, easily be mistaken for part of the Power Shuttle or landing configuration. Against all odds though, this little-known trunk may enable the STY to fulfill roles not currently on offer by Xi’an designs. While courier missions obviously come to mind, I’ve gathered some evidence² suggesting an additional possibility: taking on bounties not only for those wanted dead, but alive; while how restrained characters function mechanically may necessitate that a seat be retrofit to the trunk’s lift (possible variant?), the space is there regardless. This, combined with the confirmed weapon storage³ transforms the STY into a viable option for bounty hunting and could double (triple depending on how you feel about the Khartu-al) the number of gameplay loops Xi’an ships are able to facilitate. Essentially, the STY’s trunk may very well may be the most important part of the ship, not just for allowing me to make the title a dad joke, but for fleshing out the universe, providing gameplay diversity, and garnering more $$$ for CIG should a variant with seat pre-installed be released.
Thank you for coming to my TED Talk, and please provide more details on t r u n k .
Footnotes:
¹ “Art Director Paul Jones notes that, for a medium fighter, the San’tok.yāi is a very complex ship with many compartments to take into account, including a newly-added trunk that allows you to access to a small amount of storage.”
² I used two methods in order to first guesstimate whether the trunk’s lift could fit a human: a direct comparison of the size of the pilot seat to the lift itself and surrounding cargo (image 2) and a cross-reference, taking the person’s size relative to the trunk’s opening (image 3) and comparing that opening with the lift (image 1). With both methods indicating the lift could easily fit a human—and seat if need be—I moved on to assessing the trunk’s internal space. For this I used the STY’s Holoviewer model (thank god it includes the trunk) and compared it to the Anvil Hawk, a character model, and the ship’s own pilot seat. While I’m sure that someone with more 3D modeling know-how could easily conduct a much more accurate analysis, I found there to be more than enough space to account for some margin of error.
³ “[A]n additional exterior locker for storing FPS weapons would be added to improve the versatility of the ship.“
Sources:
Work in Progress: Aopoa San’tok.yāi from Jump Point Issue 06 11
Aopoa San’tok.yāi Brochure
starship42.com
Submitted December 09, 2019 at 10:48PM by Stormslash https://ift.tt/36bsJse
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