Meet the Yor, though the sociopathic murderbots don’t much care to meet with meat.
Our sentient race of homicidal machines are sitting pretty in the Galactic Civilizations III timeframe. The clever Drengin plot to hold back during the Dread Lord war and crush their enemies’ exhausted militaries afterward appealed to the Yor’s calculated self-interest. The robotic Yor fleets joined the Drengin in smashing the Terran and Arcean empires and their allies, and now hold joint military supremacy over the galaxy.
As lead designer Paul Boyer describes the Yor:
The Yor don’t get enough credit for their menace. They are perhaps the greatest known threat to the galaxy. Other races tend to think of the Drengin when they think of evil, but the Yor can make them look like look downright friendly. The Yor are often mischaracterized as reasonable because they have such a long-term outlook. They will work with other races, and almost seem like friends, because the Yor know they will simply outlast them. And when their “friends” are no longer useful, they have no qualms with wiping them out utterly.
Their aggressive, psychopathic nature is reflected in their starships. The triangular theme denotes the sheer menace of the builders, leaving one with the feeling that just bumping into a Yor ship could easily leave one with no skin. As a race that is constantly upgrading and refining not only their ships but themselves, the Yor design in a very modular fashion. This lets them quickly upgrade them if needed, or scrap them and use the separate components elsewhere.
Yor ships are also somewhat unique in the galaxy as they have very few crew. Often, a lone pilot is the only Yor aboard and serves as a brain for the huge and deadly vessel.
(click the image for a high-res downloadable version)
Yor ships, as you can see, reflect their primary motivation: the cleansing of unclean meatsacks. The Yor hold organic life in the greatest contempt, and the efficient removal of it from the galaxy is their highest calling. As one of our talented artists, Akil Dawkins, puts it:
The Yor are a race of aggressive sociopathic machines. So we went with a triangular theme for these ships as opposed to the square or circular theme, because triangular shapes connote aggression. Because the Yor are constantly upgrading themselves, we wanted to show some of their tech in between the large triangular shapes.
The circular lights at the front of the ships are reminiscent of the three-eye design of their leaders and drones. The centered eye was inspired by HAL from 2001: A Space Odyssey, which was also an unfeeling sentient machine. The violet color scheme is similar to the Yor color scheme from Galactic Civilizations II, but de-saturated to reflect their cold and calculating nature.
The completed ships you see blocked out in this image are just two of the limitless possibilities our ship designer enables. The candy-colored images on the bottom let you see all the individual parts that make up that sleek battlecruiser. Players have full control over their ship designs in Galactic Civilizations III, so you can snap these pieces together however you like – but the designer helps you out with easy tools to do things like automate symmetry.
Our goal is to keep a unified design aesthetic for each race so that Yor ships still look like Yor ships even after players get a hold of the ship designer. We’re pretty happy with how the Yor fleet is turning out – but as always, please tell us what you think in the comments.
There were a few things that bothered me back in GalCiv 2 ship designer. This isn't all of them, just many of the annoying ones.-You couldn't specify desired miniaturization. On occasion, I felt the need to specify a level of miniaturization higher or lower than what I had at the moment. For instance, if I had an idea for a ship design to be used early in the game, I could not easily figure out how much space to leave open so the ship could be available for when I was designing it for. Likewise, some random events would give random numbers for increases to miniaturization (like +7), which meant that the designs you make now would likely be not using the maximum amount of room available when it is unlocked.-More ship management tools. A bunch of odds and ends that have caused me a bit of trouble. For instance, I often fear obsoleting ship designs because I don't have a (easy) way to get them back once if I change my mind about their usefulness. I could try to recreate the design, but then I either end up with a redundant design or I risk overwriting an existing design. Likewise, I might come up with an interesting design, but then decide it would look better as a different hull size. Occasionally, I come up with a design that would look better for a different civ all together, but I can't import or export designs. Likewise, I would like to be able to say that ship design I made would only last the map (I might for instance be using alternate weapon technologies I got from another civilization), and would not be around the next game I start.-Ability to pre-define module placement locations/not having to place the modules anywhere. It is something that has bothered me when designing ships and upgrading them. Any ship module I want my ship to have has to be placed somewhere. In many cases, I have to find places to go put the ship modules. When I upgrade, I have to remove weapons and defenses so I could go through the hassle of replacing them with better weapons and defenses. Consequentially, I often make compromises with my ship designs so I can set aside locations where it is easy to place modules without worrying (or worry less) about symmetry and appearances. I would very much like it if I could go about telling the game how to place ship modules when building and upgrading ships so I don't have to go through hassle of doing work to design and upgrade ships when it could be made simpler.
In my case, whenever I thought any of the modules interfered with the design I would just make them as small as possible and hide them somewhere they could not be seen.
e.g. I made a design where a hull module looked like an engine and didn't want the actual engine module to stick out, so make it small and hide it under the ship
All I can say...is GOD I AM EXCITED!
Same thing I did.
Yes! The ship editor will be better! Nice work on the Yor designs, definitely feels more synthetic/robotic. The ship design for the Yor in GCII felt a little more... organic, which didn't work for them, so this is a good step up.
I also found myself doing that, almost all the time. Hopefully this will be fixed somehow, but not entirely sure how.... I guess it will depend on how the new module system works. At the very least I am hoping that the advanced mode will have a fix for this no matter how complicated. I guess it's a bit OCD of me.
Also, now that I think of it. Will there be a way to put in a firing arc for weapons or something? It always bugged me that I would put in a forward facing laser or whatever, and it would shoot through the ship to hit something behind it in the battle viewer....
It's been a long time since I've played galciv2, so I don't remember the editor that well, but one of the things I found wanting in Kerbal Space Program's original editor was a sub-assembly function, which they recently added. You build part of a ship, save it, and can re-use it whenever you want. In KSP it's useful for designing sub-ships and universal docking configurations and the like, but it could be useful in galciv as well. It would allow you to build a distinctive setup that sets your designs apart (without all the repetition), giving players one more way of customizing their own civ.
Yes I agree; I also play KSP and think the sub assembly is one of the best things added so far!
I think in Galciv3 this would be a great thing to see. I always wanted my ship designs to look similar, by having all the same 'bridge' thing on it; didn't work out the greatest because I had difficulty making everything consistent every time.
Also, I was re-watching the trailer, and noticed that the largest ship in the human fleet has the ship name 'Crusader' on the side of it. This made me think of something, will we be able to put a decal sticker on our ships to put names on them or our flag? Because that would be awesome! I know galciv2 had a plate with the civ decal we could put on a ship, but it was bulky, would be better to have an overlayed texture/sticker that we could do that with, and possibly use a custom .jpg file or something...
This is great - I often just like to upgrade a ship functionally without worrying about design, but I know the majority (?) probably want ultra-flexible design potential. Covering both bases is the way to go.
EDIT: names on ships (previous post) - would be awesome!
I would like if every race had their own style, unlike in GC2 where certain races (Terran/Arcean, Torian/Drath, Drengin/Korath etc) shared a style. Along with unique tech trees, this would go a long way in giving each race moar character.
That would be awesome indeed.
No, in TOA all the races share a handful of design sets.
The AI makes use of different pieces, but for the Human player, the base designs were the same.
I'm referring to the base hulls and jewelry selection.
\0/
In GCII there were only 5 “styles”, that were used to build all 12 major races, pirates, minors etc. In GCIII each Major Race will have its own unique style. Which will consist of many parts, 50 or so. Depending on style. (Not including functional components, weapons, dives, and such.) These parts will be used by use to create each race's, hulls and template ships. Designers will have access to all that styles parts, plus some generic parts, by default. Players that want to use the Advanced tools in the ship designer will be able to use parts from all the styles, and even the hulls of other races. Hope this helps answer some questions. Cant wait to show you guys the Ship Designer, just want to make sure it is extra awesome before we show it off.
In GCIII each Major Race will have its own unique style. Which will consist of many parts, 50 or so. Depending on style.
I know that I cannot get an answer to this yet but here it goes anyway: how many major civilizations are we talking about? Closer to Galactic Civilizations II or to Galactic Civilizations II: Twilight of the Arnor? In any case, it's going to be lots of work to give all of them a distinct visual style. But it'll be worth it.
I apologize, English is not my first language.
I would not support such a restriction (for the player), I would only like for each race to use completely different base hulls. For instance; the Humans and Arceans both use the same base hulls:
(These were the best pictures I could find, but both hulls are shared between the Arceans and Humans.)
Can you freely combine parts from all of the Civs different styles?
That's all I wanted to know. If the Beta ship designer will be compatible with the post-launch one, there's gonna be lots of awesome ship designs already when the game goes live.
I like how the overall design aesthetic evokes a high-tech surgical/multitool appearance. It basically calls out what the Yor are on sight, the instrument of removing organic life from the universe.
I can agree with that from the perspective of making a custom race.
However, I don't see a problem with each major race having their own specific design aesthetic that makes them distinguishable from one another. If all the parts are available from all of the races for the ship design of a pre-established major race it would lend to there being no point in creating separate design aesthetics whatsoever, (unless the basic ship designs acquired through tech tree unlocks are all that are used by the player throughout the campaign).
Personally, I like the sound of where the game is going in terms of the racial ship designs. In GalCiv2 there was nothing particularly distinctive about one races ships from another in my experience. The access to all parts made me just want to create my own race instead of ever using the prefab races.
Reminds me a lot of some of the Cylon ship designs in BSG, which is a great thing!
Lots of jagged edges and ruthless mechanical-isms.
As a Yor player, I take issue with this notion of "psychotically evil." Perhaps "ruthlessly efficient" as a compromise? Liking the ships; will there be a lot of exposed metallic-looking surfaces too (obviously as a frame being a ship, but I mean as a color)? Paint is an unnecessary aesthetic material really besides perhaps a minimal level to provide visual identification and rising fear levels in irrational meatba-- err organics, much like windows pointed out by our likeable Geth counterparts of another universe.
There are many great features available to you once you register, including:
Sign in or Create Account
