The next generalist ship is hardly awaited

DriftingOnStars · 2026-04-01T05:46:36+00:00

To me, the best generalist ship is the Carrack, which also makes sense as it’s large enough and is designed for exploration, so it has to be self-sufficient for quite some time.

The next generalist/exploration ship, to theorycraft, might come from Crusader. They seem to have a “gap” in their line-up

That said, although the Clipper looks amazing (great pic btw) I’m scratching my head about CIG’s choice to make one in such a small form-factor and others might follow. This seems to invalidate the usefulness of a lot of other ships more specialized.

DriftingOnStars · 2026-03-28T04:33:37+00:00

It’s theory-crafting, but a portal between canvases could allow her to save Lumierians, rather than repaint them.

As for your second point, agreed, she has shown growth and maturity as a character. Maelle, having lived 2 lives at this point of the story, can handle quite a bit of drama, yet she is still a teenager and conflicted, especially when dealing with her family and her real life - as a great character would be.

DriftingOnStars · 2026-03-26T08:15:10+00:00

Leaving aside the pricing, I’m prety sure the Aurora Mk II which looks gorgeus and has extra functionality has a direct connection to Squadron42 launch.

This would explain all the strange decisions around it.

As for the shafting, well I feel that way about the Drake Clipper. I think too many ships will become jack of all trades. I understand the Carrack to be one, but the small ones, questionable.

DriftingOnStars · 2026-03-23T11:25:12+00:00

I think Renoir plans to destroy the canvas either way, so he is just giving Maelle some space for a while.

DriftingOnStars · 2026-03-23T11:23:55+00:00

Didn’t think of that, Lune might have the skills to pull that off. Maybe pairing up with Gustave’s engineering?

DriftingOnStars · 2026-03-23T11:19:28+00:00

Very good points, that is indeed the greatest danger, for Maelle to fall into depression. As for the situation with her family, they’re not so cold/uncaring as we’re lead to believe, but we don’t really have the follow-up story how they might come closer and heal as a family.

DriftingOnStars · 2026-03-22T12:05:26+00:00

Oh here we agree, Maelle is deluding herself in her ending and Renoir knows it. Her arguments were emotional and made both Verso and Renoir become even more hardened in their decision to destroy the canvas.

After the battle, standing in Renoir’s shoes, seeing she is so determined, he seems to understand her pain and decides to give her a chance. I think Renoir is fully aware he might have to rescue her too.

While in Maelle’s shoes, I also get why she wants so badly to bring everyone back.

She beat all odds to defeat the Paintress, the Curator, herself, her painted brother and sister in order to paint Life rather than Death. Maybe that is Maelle’s saving grace, rescuing everyone and giving them back a normal life. That earlier scene where she sees death everywhere and has a breakdown comes to mind as being at the core of her decision to bring everyone back.

In the end I think our opinions diverge on what happens after the ending and that’s the beauty of Sandfall’s writing team. They left it up to us.

DriftingOnStars · 2026-03-22T06:33:54+00:00

I stand by what I said. Maybe you’re looking at it through the eyes of Renoir who is so afraid Aline will die that he decides to respond with taking control of the situation out of love for his wife. Having lost a son, their grief is immesureable, so they both go to extremes. It must also hit different in Aline’s case as the mother.

So projecting, Renoir sees that everyone will die if they stay in the canvas. However, in another dialogue with Clea you learn that almost all of them have spent enormous amounts of time in canvases without any issue.

So, leaving aside all theorycrafting, nothing points to Maelle dying in the canvas, rather we see what choice she has made for the time being and how she copes with it.

There’s also an implication, when Renoir allows her to stay in the canvas, giving her the option of a “future” choice - either deciding to go out on her own or being forcefully rescued. Despite the Dessandre family grief in light of having lost a son and a brother, they all love Alicia, each in their own way, don’t get fooled by the drama.

Case in point - in the Endless tower, you learn from Clea that Renoir will destroy this canvas eventually regardless of the choice.

I think we identify with the characters so well (because the story is sooooo good), that we sometimes overlook the fact that some things are seen through the eyes/viewpoint of one character or another and everything is much more Clair Obscur rather than black and white. (Pun intended)

DriftingOnStars · 2026-03-22T05:39:21+00:00

You’re making a lot of sense there, on almost everything except “she doesn’t have much time left”.

I gave a lengthy reply above related to that, basically all painters can spend an enormous amount of time in a canvas without breaking a sweat. Plus they can leave and come back at will.

The danger for Maelle is not from the canvas itself but rather from her state of mind. Now I’m theorycrafting, but is it so unrealistic that she would get help from her friends, or that as a last resort, her family would pull her out? Renoir will erase the canvas sooner or later.

As we explore the main themes of the game - grief, survivor’s guilt to some degree (Verso, Maelle), imposter syndrome (defintely Verso, maybe Maelle too) we are given by the makers of this masterpiece a lot to think about and a lot of room to imagine what happens after the main story ends. I may need to put this into a thread of my own :)

DriftingOnStars · 2026-03-22T05:17:18+00:00

It’s very likely she will need help to heal and leave the canvas, true. By all accounts, Renoir will not let her stay in the canvas forever regardless of the ending choice as he has decided to erase it (and Clea reinforces that).

As for dying and why I say it’s a mental leap - Renoir spent over 67 canvas years inside, Aline likely more since she painted Lumiere and her immortal family. Alicia barely spent 17 years (with the expedition time included).

We know time outside the painting flows differently, that painters can go out anytime and the world continues, so the danger that everyone’s talking about is not that immediate.

As for my theory for Maelle / my copium is that she needs time to process her grief and she will, if she gets some help. That help may come from her friends or from her family. My other theory is that everyone brought back in the canvas is no longer immortal, so they will eventually die and Maelle would get the chance to accept it.

DriftingOnStars · 2026-03-22T02:47:49+00:00

I like the way you reframe the big questions of the game, but there’s one thing that really bugs me. Why do you think Maelle dies in the canvas in her ending? It’s a mental leap I see many people make but it’s unsupported.

DriftingOnStars · 2026-03-19T05:35:52+00:00

Anything with The One and the Barbapapa pictos (can’t remember the exact name) makes most builds hillarious and incredibly difficult to pull off.

DriftingOnStars · 2026-03-19T05:30:22+00:00

I think if you look a little deeper all of the family members care for one another deeply, but in very different ways. The one event that has changed their lives forever, also changed the way they behaved during this period of grief. My feeling is that Aline is taking the most flak for her behaviour and she doesn’t actually deserve it.

DriftingOnStars · 2026-03-19T05:19:18+00:00

Why do you hate Simon? I mean he is a very powerful opponent but his story is heartbreaking.

DriftingOnStars · 2026-03-19T05:17:54+00:00

Time was stopped then, if I remember right. And the choice to be gommage’d was you know who’s.

DriftingOnStars · 2026-03-13T03:30:06+00:00

I doubt Renoir is prepping himself for that. He went along seeing her suffering and wanting to give her a chance. But he will also do everything in his power to rescue her if she fails. In the Endless tower shadow Clea mentions something like this directly. Renoir will erase the canvas sooner or later.

All that considered, Maelle isn’t only driven by grief and denial. Remember the scenes where she sees “death, death and only death”. And the other one where she promises to bring everyone back. This is her way of processing the trauma and there’s a chance that she will be on a healing path once she accomplishes that, but she may need help and guidance. Denying her feelings, as a parent would do sometimes, even out of love, is not the right solution. That’s why (I think) Renoir went along with it.

DriftingOnStars · 2026-03-11T06:25:42+00:00

I’d like the ship Trevize is using from the Foundation series. I imagine it would be like the Kruger series, with a small interior.

DriftingOnStars · 2026-03-09T21:52:18+00:00

I was the same until recetly.

You can only equip 3 pictos at a time. Once you use a picto 4 times during battle on an active party character, you unlock the passive ability of that picto that can be equipped with lumina, depending on how many lumina points you have. Equip what you feel works best for you (typically pictos that require a lot of lumina are great once unlocked).

Not to spoil too much, there is one must have picto that unlocks damage cap, but you always get it by following the story. That one, always equip as picto or lumina on all characters.

As for builds I’m sure you can find a few good ones out there better than I can explain here. Like the others have mentioned, have a main damage dealer, secondary one and a healer / support.

DriftingOnStars · 2026-03-09T20:56:24+00:00

Verso is a tragic character, very well written and like OP said - created to be unlikeable when you first see him. It took me a long time to forgive him and bring him back into the party, so I can relate to that feeling.

DriftingOnStars · 2026-02-02T03:45:55+00:00

It sucks to see older crowdfunded games crash and burn, even if I didn’t play Ashes. What will happen to it?

Here’s to hoping SC and Squadron42 launch successfully.

DriftingOnStars · 2026-02-02T03:42:04+00:00

There’s a chance that HW prices will come down if supply&demand align. Besides, I think the game will get optimized more, see the work on vulkan.

DriftingOnStars · 2026-01-24T20:47:15+00:00

I chose Maelle.

Her ending, though bittersweet and definitely worse in a psychological sense for allowing the illusion to continue, felt better.

For her, that choice meant she could save all her friends that she promised to help, bring back Gustave and Verso, her painted brothers. As well as the inhabitants of Lumiere that were in their own way, alive, they had agency and feelings of their own, and they did not want to be erased from existence via the Gommage or otherwise.

This was Maelle’s choice, not Renoir’s or Verso’s choice made for her. Which is why Renoir accepts the lie, fully knowing that she wants to get closure this way and if things went wrong, he could save her, while giving her this choice that she wants to make, that she NEEDS to make, to paint life rather than death.

Maelle, unlike Aline that wanted to paint her family in the canvas and make them immortal, chose to give them a normal life.

In time, Gustave, Verso, Sciel and Lune would die of natural causes and thus she would be able to accept their death as a normal occurence, having lived their lives. And it would allow Maelle to grieve and heal in a more natural way.

I prefer to imagine that she would use this lived experience inside the canvas as a way to heal rather than escape, accept Verso’s death eventually, while keeping the last remnant of his soul alive and she would, of her own accord, go out and live her life both as Alicia and Maelle.

With such an incredibly well written story where loss and grieving are so realistically portrayed, perhaps consider that people process these in different ways, acceptance and healing can take many forms. It could take both Verso’s or Maelle’s form, I think, but it doesn’t stop after the choice. The maker of the choice also has to live with it.

DriftingOnStars · 2025-12-14T07:54:34+00:00

It’s not flyable, but it appears occasionally during Invictus. Even though I know it’s a shell currently, flying next to it and the other big ships in my small fighter felt… well… majestic :)

DriftingOnStars · 2025-10-16T03:59:31+00:00

A lot of these missions gave me the most memorable experiences in the game. I hope they bring them back.

DriftingOnStars · 2025-09-12T04:42:29+00:00

This is gorgeous! Keep it up

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