00:00The Drake Ironclad was anticipated by many, especially its owners, and now it has been
00:05released following this year's Defense Con. Many people who bought one are unfortunately
00:10left with a sour taste in their mouths. Now, I hate to say this, and this is the kind of
00:15statement that most likely keeps me in CIG's blacklist, but to make it short, the Drake
00:20Ironclad is mostly useless as of Star Citizen Alpha 4.8, and in this video I am going to show
00:25you why.
00:30One of the biggest issues with the Drake Ironclad right now is something that becomes frustrating
00:34almost immediately once players actually start using the ship in real gameplay scenarios.
00:40Every single time the server transitions within a shard, the command module detaches itself
00:45from the main body of the ship. And while this may sound like a minor inconvenience on paper,
00:50in practice it quickly becomes an incredible, irritating issue. Instead of feeling like a
00:55reliable industrial platform, the Ironclad constantly forces its crew into repetitive
01:00reconnect procedures that completely break immersion and disrupt operations.
01:06For a ship that is supposed to represent heavy-duty logistics and long-term hauling, reliability should
01:12be one of its strongest qualities. Instead, owners are dealing with a system that literally
01:17separates the bridge section from the rest of the vessel during server transitions. It transforms
01:21what should be smooth cargo operations into an ongoing maintenance chore, and after enough jumps,
01:28the novelty of the ship starts being replaced with frustration. In the current state of Alpha 4.8,
01:34this issue alone makes the Ironclad feel unfinished and far less practical than many smaller or less
01:40ambitious cargo ships.
01:44Another major problem comes with the current cleanup system in Star Citizen of Alpha 4.8,
01:48and before that actually. Right now, some ships that land inside the Ironclad can sometimes enter into
01:57what players commonly refer as Purple U. This means that the game has flagged the ship for cleanup,
02:04essentially training it as abandoned or ready to be removed from the server. And when that happens,
02:10the ship eventually disappears entirely, as if it had been destroyed.
02:15The consequences for this are absolutely brutal for industrial gameplay.
02:19If the ship is carrying cargo, valuable loot, refined materials or mined ore, everything is simply gone.
02:28A prospector pilot can spend hours mining only to lose an entire haul because the game suddenly decides
02:34that the ship should be cleaned up. Cargo haulers face the exact same risk, except the stakes become
02:40even higher when you are transporting massive quantities of freight worth hundreds of thousands
02:45or even millions of credits. This becomes a huge issue for the Drake Ironclad because the ship is
02:51fundamentally designed around persistence, storage and logistics. The entire fantasy of operating a giant
02:57industrial cargo platform completely falls apart if the game can randomly decide to delete your ship and
03:02everything inside it after landing. Instead of feeling secure, Ironclad owners constantly have to worry
03:09about whether the server will simply erase hours of progress. And for a ship whose main purpose is
03:14carrying large amounts of valuable cargo, that is a massive problem.
03:21But what truly made me lose my mind was what happened next. My character certainly started to suffocate
03:28and died from a lack of oxygen, despite the fact that I was wearing a helmet the entire time. I
03:35had no
03:35warning, I just had a little icon on the back saying that I was not getting any oxygen in my
03:40lungs and then I
03:41died because the game somehow decided that my character could no longer breathe. Thankfully this happened
03:48while I was already at the station, meaning that the consequences were limited and frustration did not
03:54come as high as in other scenarios, but still, at the moment I thought about this happening during an
04:00actual operation out in D-space, and this is exactly when the problem hit me. Imagine spending hours
04:08organizing cargo and coordinating a crew and escorting valuable freight through dangerous space only for
04:14someone or the whole crew to randomly die because the game forgets that their helmet exists. In smaller
04:20ships, it's already infuriating when you don't have a helmet and you die like in the pirate seas,
04:25right? But on a massive industrial platform like the Ironclad, these kind of bugs become even more
04:29destructive because every operation requires far more setup and coordination and commitment.
04:35Random death can throw an entire logistic chain into chaos. And that is really the core issue with the
04:42Ironclad in 4.8. The ship demands some long term persistence, it needs stability, and it needs to be
04:49reliable in order for multi-crew gameplay to exist. But unfortunately, in its current state, right now,
04:57it simply does not support that fantasy constantly enough yet. When basic survival systems can randomly
05:03fail without warning, it becomes extremely difficult to justify using one of the largest cargo-focused
05:08ships in the game for serious operations. At the end of the day, this is what makes the Drake Ironclad
05:14so frustrating in Star Citizen of 4.8. The ship itself is not the problem. Visually, conceptually,
05:21and thematically, it is one of the coolest industrial vessels Cloud Imperium Games has ever released.
05:25The fantasy of commanding a massive armored cargo platform through dangerous space is incredibly
05:31appealing. But the current state of the game simply does not support that fantasy properly yet.
05:36Between the command module, which constantly detaches during server transitions, the ship that randomly
05:41enters clean up states and disappears with all their cargo, and game breaking bugs like characters
05:46literally suffocating to death while wearing a helmet, operating a ship like the Ironclad becomes less
05:51about having immersive gameplay and more about fighting the game itself. And the larger the ship,
05:58the worse those frustrations become because every operation involves more time, more organization,
06:03more risks, and far more to lose when something breaks.
06:06That is why many owners are disappointed right now. The Ironclad feels like a ship designed for
06:12the future vision of Star Citizen rather than the current one that we have. Maybe one day,
06:17when persistence is reliable, server meshing is stable, cargo systems are deeper, and long-range
06:22logistics finally become meaningful, this ship will truly shine. But as of Star Citizen Alpha 4.8,
06:27the Ironclad feels less like the industrial powerhouse that many players dreamed about and more like an
06:32expensive reminder of how unfinished the current gameplay experience still is.
06:39And this is all for today's video. Do you also have an Ironclad? Are you disappointed by the
06:44current state of the Ironclad? Did you encounter any other bugs with the ship? Let me know in the
06:48comment section down below. Don't forget we have a giveaway guys, so please make sure to check out the
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07:01members including Doctor Robin, Sokart Assessius, TheKeyToDocker, Shadow Horizon Zero Crusher,
07:05App in the Eradicator and I'll see you guys in the next one.
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