A new Star Citizen ship has been unveiled — on Newsweek of all places — and this one is a doozy, offering the ability to let pilots of the ship pluck other ships out of quantum travel and keep them locked down.
Meet the RSI Mantis, which sports a Quantum Enforcement Device that has a couple of functions. The first is the Quantum Dampening ability, which projects a roughly 2000 meter sphere of influence that prevents other ships from engaging their quantum drive. The second is the Quantum Snare, which charges up the device to let off a massive 10,000-20,000 meter EMP-like burst that will pull anyone caught in the blast radius out of quantum travel.
There are a couple of important balancing points to make sure the Mantis isn’t overpowered. For one, the Mantis is very light on personal armament, so it can’t exactly tangle with some of the more aggressive ships. For another, engaging the Quantum Snare will require that several other systems be turned down in order to compensate for the Snare’s immense power and heat demands, effectively making the Mantis a soft target. Basically, the ship is meant to fly with other, more heavily armed ships as part of a strike team.
This new piece of tech will be straight-to-flyable, meaning that Star Citizen isn’t offering a concept drawing for people to buy in to (for once). The RSI Mantis will start Evocati testing later this week and is due to arrive to all Star Citizen players sometime around October 10th. For those eager to learn more about the ship, there’s a Q&A being offered right now.
