star citizens Alpha 3.21 has officially gone live and with it comes Ci's best looking ship to date no I'm not talking about the beautiful Drake cutter but rather the Crusader industri Spirit A1 being the little brother to the Monstrous Hercules A2 can the A1 prove that it's worth it in the verse and will it strike fear Into the Heart of those who see the words in chat friendly A1 incoming to jump toown perhaps it'll even usurp the A2 as the best value bomber at a third of the price hello folks space Tech here and welcome to a shrip review and buyer guide for the spirit A1 as a bomber in a game primarily played in Space the A1 is already fighting an uphill battle to justify its use in game today that being said events like jumptown as well as missions like the one at ghost Hollow have demonstrated Cid's commitment to giving us more groundbased combat the question is does the A1 do enough to justify its use over the A2 if you've been to my channel before you know I'm all about the details so feel free to jump around to sections that interest you the most starting off with the tour the sides of this ship come with all the sleekness and sweeping curves of Crusader ships with a silhouette extremely reminiscent of the Hercules starlifter you get a hint towards its awesome atmospheric flight performance unfortunately while all of these scoops on the wings of the A1 look reminiscent to the wings of the origin ships you get extremely standard fuel Scoops no different than a cutless black so a far cry from something like the 300i coming to to the front you see the wonderfully designed nose of the ship with a light bar that reminds me of the current trends in electric vehicles of today easy to miss under the cockpit is a port for refueling the A1 from the ground while the A1 will likely refuel from a starf far on another part of the ship this ground Port will serve as the access point for ground crew aboard any station or Carrier carrying the A1 who knows we may even see it implemented as a part of the larger hanger changes coming to Star Citizen in the near future this brings us to the back here we have eight massive thrusters framing the rear of the ship and some awesome spokes off the back as well just like the larger Hercules and finally we have the access to the ramp through a pad on the left side of the ramp hitting this reveals one of C's newest polish touches added to Star Citizen a flashing red rectangle appears projected on the floor around the ramp followed by Steady red lights after the ramp is fully deployed up the ramp we have our first set of components the right side has our batteries as well as a size 2 Quantum Drive the space of above the drive also indicates that this ship will be retrofitted with a jump drive once the jump point to pyro comes online that is on the left side we have a size 2 power plant size two cooler and one size two Shield we then come to the massive set of blast doors which when opened revealed a money maker of this ship the bomb bay obviously the first thing that strikes you here are the 10 size 5 storm burst bombs similar to the A2 we also have an interface right beside the bombs for now this screen can't be interacted with with but will definitely be usable in the future the question is will this screen be usable to actually Target and drop the bombs or will it be restricted for maintenance of the bombs and managing power I will say once you see the targeting UI of this ship you're going to hope it's the former for now though you're able to control the lighting of the Bombay setting it to Red Alert while not obviously useful today I just love the atmosphere that it creates and you best believe I'll be turning on the red lights as soon as we go for our bombing run whenever I'm running crew on the A1 going through another set of doors takes us into another component room the left side gives us access to our life support and gravity generator two systems that aren't online yet but have been shown to be coming to the game with engineering and ship systems while there aren't any components here today I always see it as a good sign whenever cig leaves room for these systems and ships all it means is that once those systems are ready to go cig does not have to go back and make room for those components in the A1 the same way they will have to for older ships like the cutless black or the freelancer across from this we have access to our avionics as well as two size two Radars more placeholders for gameplay down the line going through one final door brings us to the cockpit of the A1 starting on the right side door leads us to Star Citizen signature shower toilet combination unfortunately we're briefly transported to a drake ship as we pull out the toilet it seems as though there's been no desire to include toilet paper here as part of this setup amazingly if you do find yourself needing to get yourself on high alert to do your business you're able to set the lighting inside of the toilet alone to Red Alert if this is what the toilet paper was sacrificed for I'm all for it across from our party bathroom we have access to a gun rack much cleaner looking than the ones in the Hercules Series this rack sits pretty behind glass and has enough carrying capacity to hold two long rifles three small weapons or tools and finally some room at the bottom for some grenades or other knickknacks this rack is also flanked by two Escape pods you know in case the red Alert in the bathroom gets too serious this brings us to the habitation section here we have a tiny kitchenet with two small storages we also have two beds Each of which comes with access to an external storage above it that can hold up to 200,000 micu this is useful to store some personal effects in armor finally the pilot seat for now this is where the magic happens you fly the ship manage power shoot the main guns and oh yeah drop those bombs for some reason it does only have two mfds though so let's talk about bombing to drop bombs with the A1 you first put it in missile mode with the middle Mouse button you then ensure that you have selected the bombs using right click and ensure that you see the storm burst is selected now fly over your Target and you should see a blue targeting circle on the ground to lock in your target press and hold T this should give you a green circle locked on the floor the red circle marks where your bomb is currently going to land if you launcher right now simply make a pass over your Target and you'll notice the UI in the center of your screen lining up once you see the center targeting circle light up green simply launch the bomb and you will hit your target something super unique about this ship versus the A2 is that you can schedule up to five bombs to be launched during one run of course there is quite a long timer between each launch so if you're not traveling extremely slowly the bombs will be quite spread out I will say though if you were looking to cause massive ruction across a wide area this is the perfect way to do it since the range on those bombs is absolutely huge it will be interesting to see what kind of use cases the community can come up with for this kind of carpet bombing strategy I for one know that I'll be using it for the massive combined arms battles that my org has where we have to hunt ground soldiers in the forest of Microtech they aren't going to know what hit them a warning if you're watching this right after the launch of the A1 the bombing targeting seems to be broken for the A1 right after launch so keep an eye on the issue Council report Linked In the description to check the current status of this bug over the coming days I'm planning on testing how effective the bombs are specifically against landed ships so let me know in the comments if that's content you'd be interested in seeing bombs aren't the only weapons in the a1's Arsenal of course the pilot actually has access to four size three hard points that come equipped with laser cannons by default unfortunately the capacitor for the weapon seems very low at 15 shots per weapon I'd usually recommend switching these cannons for laser compers instead and I'm not usually a fan of ballistic weapons either but considering the primary purpose of this ship is to conduct its bombing run then return back for restocking you have the perfect excuse and ability to equip ballistic weapons and restock them every time you finish a bombing run speaking of restocking each bomb cost 42,000 a to restock so use them carefully to counteract that with a relatively large hydrogen and Quantum fuel tank you shouldn't find yourself needing to refuel much before you've blown up of course as the pilot you also have access to four size three missiles which are cross-section targeting by default personally I found that smaller missiles are more useful and they hit more often so I'd recommend swapping these out for 16 size one missiles Instead This brings us to the co-pilot seat here make sure to look over to the left side center console to turn on the power for your seat on the right you can then click the prompt to start using a remote turret this turret is equipped with two size two laser cannons which I'd swap for laser repeaters personally most interestingly however is the fact that Crusader straight up stole the turret designed from the RSI Scorpius and mounted their turret to be on Rails as well on top of the ship in the default position you have access to a decent firing Arc able to hit almost anything even slightly at a higher elevation than the ship in front or behind hitting the deploy button moves the turret all the way to the back and below the ship from this position you have a generous amount of flexibility to hit ground targets or anything behind the a one this would be a perfect position to use as your pilot drops a bomb at high speed and then is pulling up away from the ground as you'd be able to shoot at Targets on the ground behind you with ease personally I would have preferred if RSI had managed to keep that kind of moving turret capability as its own flavor of remote turret but I must admit that this turret does fit the role of the spirit A1 like a glove of course none of this matters if you've already been blown up before you can hit your target or if you blow yourself up for that matter so how does the de ability of the A1 hold up under Fire the A1 comes with one size 2 shield which has an HP pool of 9,000 of course I'd recommend immediately upgrading these shields to the fr76 boosting your Shield HP to 10,375 if your Shields ever do get depleted the A1 has a total of 46,000 HP but more accurately 165,000 body HP and 135,000 nose HP while this seems comparable to ships like the cutless black in terms of Shield health Health a great graphic made by user Jens sang on Reddit shows that the size of the spirit's cross-section means you're much more likely to take more damage in a spirit versus in a cutless while not Apples to Apples it's undeniable that the spirit presents a bigger Target especially from above and below a likely position for enemies of a bomber ideally you're not even getting hit this would be thanks to the mobility of the A1 Spirit In Space you have an SCM speed of 154 m/s with a top speed of 1120 with afterburners you're able to get to that speed quickly with 15 1 12 GS forward and 9.9 G's upwards thrust while on paper this isn't dissimilar to a cutless black I find that the A1 seems to fly much better in atmosphere while I don't see it breaking any speed records in time trials anytime soon I wouldn't be surprised to see some Racers take it for a spin once in a while overall I don't think that it lives up to the incredible maneuverability for the size of the Hercules series but it's nothing to scoff at either whether this is enough to make the A1 effective at bombing however is yet to be seen the A2 can rely on its enormous Shields and HP to make sure that it gets to the Target the A1 gets no such luxury speaking of racing though Fury Racers can Rejoice thanks to some awesome work by folks online on Reddit and in my org Nova it looks as though the A1 will be able to fit a fury STV PTV a cyclone and even a rock if you want to drop some bombs in between mining sessions access to these kind of ground Vehicles also means that you're not forced to bomb bunker turrets if you want to do some bunker running you can park a ways away and show up in style in your STV so should you buy the Crusader A1 spirit I think you really have to consider the kind of gameplay that you engage in if you find yourself wanting to engage in missions like ghost Hollow or events like jumptown often without dropping the dollars or a for an A2 I don't think you'll be disappointed with the performance of the A1 that being said it's also a fantastic daily Runabout ship with its ability to fit an XL1 plenty of quantum Fuel and a claim timer of only 2 minutes and 15 seconds the A1 is one of the fastest ships to claim and then jump somewhere with it can fit a variety of vehicles in the back and you can even carry your racing snubs my only hesitancy to recommend this ship then is the price the cutless black does all of this at close to half the cost if it's the level of polish that you're hunting for were're likely very close to the launch of the C1 Spirit which will be able to do all of these things cargo hauling and cost almost half the total dollar amount so yes for a specific kind of gameplay you can do no wrong with the A1 but for everyone else I'd highly recommend picking up a C1 instead what do you think will you be picking up the A1 let me know in the comments below please like and or subscribe if you enjoyed this video take care and I'll see you in the next one these bomb doors are strangely humanized
