An Architect Reviews the Crusader Intrepid [Star Citizen]

This design is like the rebranding of Jaguar

Even if it's not a great starting ship, I like ships like this one that have that feeling that you could live in it and use it for day to day tasks...even if that involves running away from combat. I do agree that the big gun really makes it seem like it should be a combat ship. Kind of wished they skipped it in favor of a bit more interior space or an auto turret or something and gave us a way to use an additional shield so it can at least have higher survivability. I feel like this could be a great ship for shuttling between ground-based combat missions and light courier missions.

Question is is it better then the pisces

Looks like you welded a spirit on top of an ares

One good angle: the back default camera. Its the best camera angle from any Crusader ship.

I wish CIG would stop spamming the sad frog face engines on every Crusader ship. The Herc has round ones, the concept Mercury had one (rip, I'll never get over what they did to it), it'd be interesting to see that style get used more often, perhaps in combination with the sad face engines.

Anyway, I do like the interior a lot on this ship. The hab area could really use a window however. It was my one complain about it and I'm glad you pointed that out. How I wish CIG wasn't allergic to windows on ships...

The exterior... I kinda dig it. It's ugly af, but has a certain iconic look to it.

I've used the Intrepid yesterday at IAE Day 1 for a bit of PvE Bounty Hunting and I was actually rather surprized by its speed and manouverability. It feels quite nimble and it has a quite decent speed.
The single S4 weapon - while certainly not the most powerful armament of all starters - is still quite decent of a weapon and can easily chew through lower level enemy threats.
What I found to be the hardest limiter of combat progression with this ship is the extremely low shield power and the rather fragile hull.
This ship can't withstand any amount of fire. Most short salvos or a single hard hit will eat an entire shield facing and leave the hull completely vulnerable. Your best survival tactic is to move out of the way, which for a ship this size is not particularly easy. And with higher tier bounty missions bringing both more enemies as well as bigger guns you'll most likely not use this ship for anything beyond the lower tier ship combat missions.
Unfortunately, 8 SCU of cargo are also nothing to really write home about. It's better than what the Cutter, Mustang, or Aurora offer, but yes, the Intrepid is neither as competent a fighter as the Avenger (despite having the same amount of cargo space) nor as hardy and cargo focused as the Nomad.
It's a bit of a shame really because I think the ship looks quite cool and it feels great to fly, but the Avenger is just a few bucks more and gives you WAY more survivability.

I think the big thing is it needs 2 S1 shields.

Later down the road weapon size will matter more. So it only having 1 S4 gun isn't that big of a deal aside from the dps lacking ATM.
But the shields is. Ahuge thing. It's a fairly big profile ship. It NEEDS more shields.

ATM it is an upgrade from the Cutter.

I rented an Intrepid last night during IAE and fell in love with it. Mind you, I don’t do combat, but as a beginning space trucker, I found it quick, nimble and loved that it could cross Stanton without issues with stock components.

i Love this Ship ....for me have the best interior for a starter ship right now. i Love all the details. Different and unic.

I find it a terrible design. I struggle to understand why they decided to emphasize the gun mount like that on a ship that isn't really suitable for combat. There is a complete divorce between design and purpose on this one.

It looks great, but in terms of capabilities it’s probably the worst out there. The titan makes so much more sense for most players, or the 300i if you want some style and care less for cargo. And the nomad is the unbeatable starter for players who want to focus more on non-combat (although it actually would fare way better than the intrepid in combat as well). Even the tiny Aurora easily outclasses this ship in combat.

The least thing they can do is give it a S5, and add a couple more S1 or even a S2 shield. As it stands this thing is a pretty camper that can do a box or courier mission.

I just wish they would have went full sidewinder from ED

I've always loved an asymmetric ship design.

this is a very good looking ship, inside and out

You also get stuck if you lock yourself in the entrance gap, like the Zeus - between the hatch and outside door.

Is it me, or does it SEEM like there very well can be a window right next to the bed? Looks like a cover is put up, and the other side just has the Intrepid logo outside. A window is totally doable!!

They go any bigger on that gun and its a literal mini Ares, which it already well enough is, but far uglier lmao

*Also wait the fuck a second, it has actual SSR? Not a hard baked reflection?

I personally love its design

When you start weighing up the weapons (gun and missiles) plus the shield plus the (when it arrives in-game) armour, the best rebalancing they could give the Intrepid would be to add a PDC that pops up from between the dorsal fins (or just in front of them). A PDC would reduce some of the vulnerability due to the single size 1 shield, and add a little close-range beef to the single size 4 weapon, plus supplement the intended armour level (do we really trust CIG to get that implemented right?).

I like this. Thank you

The design language for this one is very weird... They MAKE ROOM to SHOW YOU - hey this ship has a gun - but then ... this ship is not meant for combact...

WHAT?

Ah, the guy who thinks Origin ships are beautiful doesn't like the Intrepid. Who could've seen it coming? 😂

It should be renamed the "Compensator".

love all Crusader ships

I just wish it had two little windows, one in the main corridor and one in the had, to look out the sides.

Hate that theres no windows in habitation quarters. Why do a immersive space game with amazing planets and space clouds in which you cant see all this beauty and bound to stare at the walls ?!

Nothing ugly about it, reminds me of the A10

This ship needs to be built to kill if you can fly it skillfully

Even if it had a single size 5 instead the avenger would still be better in pretty much every way, including dps, so I guess that could be a start.

They should have removed the gun entirely. Give it heavier armor, a second S1 shield and made it the entry step for data running. It already appears to have extra computers mounted in the hull in the cockpit area right hand side behind the pilot.

Looks good, flies like shit.

I think CIG is missing a major opportunity on ships this size. If they widened the cockpit for a Copilot, added a S2 turret, added a bunk, and suit locker it would be a hell of a ship. Then it would be a great smuggler and bunker runner that would hold its value and attract a lot of established and new backers.

I like the Intrepid a lot, it's fun for comfy traveling and light mission work. I do wish it was a little better in a fight, that prominent S4 is screaming that it wants to kill. Maybe some better shields or HP, or a pair of S1s to go with the S4 would go a long way towards helping in that regard. The S1 missiles also feel like a waste of time, like why even bother? But man, it's fun to fly, has excellent functionality, and the interior is awesome.

Intrepid makes no sense. It's like rolling up to a real fight and you whip out a water gun and a paper shield. This should be a passenger runner, data runner, or an explorer. Replace the gun with a specialized scanner or drone launcher. I could get this AND the free paint for $5 and didn't bother. It straight-up doesn't compete with anything in that price range. A fantastic interior that's honestly wasted.

For pe the intrepid cockpit have been modified from the crusader language because of the fact that you can eject yourself so the canopy need to detach

I love it, it's the Nissan Cube of spacecraft! I come from Space Engineers and the least interesting workshop designs to me are the ones where the builder just turned on Symmetry Building Mode to get a good overall silhouette, but when you walk inside, all the internal rooms are doubled with a mirrored counterpart with no clear kayfabe reason why. The average build lacks the presentation of utilizing all of the ship's interior so that it can fulfill all of its requirements as a living, working space as well as a fully functional interplanetary vehicle in an efficient manner, and it breaks the illusion that every single centimeter of the limited space aboard is precious.

The asymmetry of this ship and its older brother the MSR really make me think about the various offset components deliberately made that way, all coming together into a complete jigsaw puzzle of incredible engineering, and the painstaking amount of work that must have gone into mass-balancing the spaceframe so that it isn't a nightmare to fly. I find it really fun to think about.

I'm extremely disappointed that the Intrepid's identity is not a combat ship, because it comes so close to solving one my major gripes about science fiction fighting vehicle design: I hate it when weapons are such tiny guns arbitrarily slapped onto a larger machine, because you could throw your hands up and follow the logic of "if they are so tiny, barring the lazy answer of power requirements as a limiting factor, why not just put more of them everywhere? Combat and survival are this thing's purpose, why wouldn't you??" It usually gives me the impression of an average child's drawing of a spacecraft, where turrets are little afterthoughts mounted via insipid little pivots. Dedicated fighting machines should be built around their weapons and convey it well with form following function.

This design really nails that idea of a ship that looks like it has dedicated a lot of internal equipment to supporting a weapon realistically, so it's very frustrating that it's not a fighter. To dedicate an entire half of a design to some special offset equipment denotes a very specialized role, but this ship doesn't really feel like it has one. I think the disjointedness is an indication that the real-life workflow at CIG is very strange.

Wait. No one else is reacting to the Mirror? The FUNCTIONAL mirror?

did I just see the mirror in the bathroom work? since when is that a thing? and do all mirrors work, or is it a Intrepid-only-feature?

They need to get rid of the gun and make it an Explorer or data runner. Make it a high-powered antenna/AESA style array. It isn't a combat ship. The engineering console is wasted. The cargo is poorly designed, more of a parlor trick. You can't dedicate half a ship to combat, then have it be large, slow maneuvering, and fragile. The living space makes it ideal as an Explorer or data runner that's constantly on the move from remote locations. Unite the cargo bays, give it 2 chin guns, and a top remote/auto turret, and the design is fine.

Thank you so much for the solid conclusion. The fact that it is not even an option after comparing it to the titan is really a problem.

a second shield, and an additional 2 scu. But honestly I think all of these starter ships need to have their firepower nerfed, idk why a starter multi-role ship has a size 4 gun. How do they even come up with these ideas

At first I wasn't going to get one, but I ultamitely caved after checking it out. It's ugly and for some reason I just couldn't resist. That said, with the StarRunner being SC's "Millenium Falcon", I have begun to call the Intrepid "The Centurion Pidgeon".

Any plans on doing an architect reviews Starlancer MAX?

You are too excited about engineering, and I don't like it; I would appreciate it if they dedicated their efforts to solving bugs and release the game.

bigger gun would have made it perfect - an Ion with a cabin and cargo - that I would pay for

I'm sorry but I don't think it's ugly and I don't get the hate....

I didn't dig it at first but I have slowly fallen in love with this ship..... HOWEVER it's combat capability is worse than the Pisces. Give it a Size 5 slot and improve the shields and/or missiles and it would be great.

I do feel like this ship could have used a unique weapon, specifically for this ship, that makes it stand out from the crowd. Maybe some kind of Beam laser or Auto-cannon. Crusader has already commisioned weapons from Behring for the Inferno and Ion, so the idea isn't that far fetched either.

Very weird looking exterior of the ship..... Not the best asymmetric design.

I hope we can get to give out ships a name on launch, by looks alone what would u guys call YOUR intrepid???
I choose ORCA