“…I have a back order of Heralds…”

This is Acheron coming in on the transmission, this is Acheron.

I am a Herald owner. A proud, loud, semi-patient Herald owner. You’ll see me bumping around the Drake forums commenting on The Herald threads. The over-riding feeling among a lot of Herald owners at the moment is “When and where is my ship?” and “Why haven’t we heard anything more?”

The Herald was once the darling of the CIG ship pipeline, with talk of being right around the corner; that it would be in-hangar, and it would be in-flight before two shakes of a rabbits tail (some weird space rabbit) – but as of yet it hasn’t cropped up. More than that we’ve heard nothing of where it is and what it’s doing. But, to be frank, despite my impatience, I’m not concerned. The answer to these questions is clear; the route to completing The Herald became harder, less clear, and it has been delayed as either more aspects of Drake ships are fleshed out, a new design is passed through, or higher priorities get knocked down. It is all part of the rumble and tumble of the game development so far, and such things are best not rushed; although you could have kept it asymmetric…just saying.

That being said, I do ever so want to see The Herald in my hangar. For me it has always been this special ship, so far apart from what we have been seeing developed in full from manufactures like Aegis (more Aegis ships anyone?) with the scope for use that really delves into what Star Citizen is about, for me at least: more than just a space dog-fighting simulator; instead a place for you to discover what you really want to do. The Ugly Duckling symbolises this for me- I read an interesting post here about the possible future uses for the ship, what modules? How many variants? Is it just a comms ship?! In my opinion it could be a versatile scout and an intriguing explorer. What ship would be better? A large array of comms to intercept communications or investigate planets, and the speed to nip in and out of dangerous situations. It deserves to have the full array, nudge nudge, or possibilities. Come on CIG, if you didn’t give it beauty, at least promise to give it wide ranging uses! 😉

All speculation and Herald love aside, there is an irony that all the images used in this blog post are a little different. When searching for Herald pictures we get such a variety of designs, all from past iterations. I suppose what would be really nice is an album of shots from the confirmed design, the one we know is as close as we’ll get to the final product (as much as that can be done in our lovely little Community)

This has been Acheron’s Transmission…

“…the four arms folded out, the dark panels absorbing a galaxy of cosmic noise. We sat, waiting in that silence…”