New ship: Panther Clipper

Starshot_Jigawatts

Starshot_Jigawatts
Pville_Piper said:
Not sure how you could miss it...🤷‍♂️
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Or you can just admit "screaming constantly" was hyperbole. To make sure I'm not crazy I did a global forum search for "Panther Clipper" and "Panther". The mentions of these sharply increased only after FDEV announced Colonization and the screaming for it then was indeed constant since Trailblazers. Before that, not so much.

Now why is this even important to me? Because it's more important to us that we get ample tonnage than a ship that gives us the feels. If FDEV thinks they can milk the Panther Clipper MkII for nostalgia while whiffing on the cargo aspect, I'm voicing that would be a mistake imo.
 

The Lawful

The Lawful
Rubbernuke said:
Bigmaec is the daddy.
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There's Rubbernuke (you) forever associated with Powerplay (2.0), as BigMaec (the daddy) is with the Panther Clipper. Plus the 'Small Seismic Charges' CMDR, but forgot the name.

And there was #bazmeson who started a meme. And Harry Potter who killed Salome. We should demand on-foot VR now ;)

O7,
🙃

Found him! Kenneth McGrew it was.
1746106318388.gif
 
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Starshot_Jigawatts

Starshot_Jigawatts
Maximillian Forrest said:
Sure does, and a fully engineered one at that. Still takes a lifetime to reach orbit.
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I literally have no clue what you're talking about. Do you mean from takeoff time to being back in space? It takes literally SECONDS. I'm seriously about to log into the game and stopwatch this because either one of us is crazy, or we have radically different ideas about what a "lifetime" is.
 

Starshot_Jigawatts

Starshot_Jigawatts
Koma Pahu said:
I think they’re talking about getting off the ground and out of mass lock.
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Yeah but still. You point the nose up until you're lined up on 90 degrees. Hit boost, I think by the time the first boost is over you're out of mass lock. Then you hit the SCO boost and you're in space in seconds.

Like.....am I crazy or something????
 

Shurimal

Shurimal
Doctor Dread said:
Oh of course, but those systems - I have 3-4 of them - should be neglected.
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The problem with that is that all the real estate in the and near the edges of my powerplay area is already taken. I have no desire to move a few hundred lightyears out where it would take years to expand the power into. Even now it would take somewhere in the range of 500 man-hours to expand my power through the ~30 ly gap, plus more to create fortification redundancies.

Even when not considering Powerplay, neglecting a system with something like 17 orbital and 28 surface slots, with 7 landable planets of which 4 have 4+ surface slots is just throwing away a lot of potential.

Anyhoo, back to the Panther Clipper. I really hope it has better lateral thrust than Cutter and somewhat OK-ish speed (~350...400 m/s boost fully loaded). It's way too easy to slam the Cutter into ground even on 0.3 G planets--the vertical thrust simply seems to lose all power in hard turns, even when I keep the speed in blue and pitch slightly above 0°. 2000 tons of cargo unshielded would be ideal. It probably will have heavy enough hull to require a class 6 shield generator at minimum, more likely class 7 minimum--even then lost cargo space is proportionally small. I predict that price in credits will be north of 200 millions. Maybe 230 millions, so ~10% more expensive than Cutter. Then again, Mandalay surprised me with its 17 million price tag--I expected it to be more expensive than Phantom.
 

The Lawful

The Lawful
CMDR X said:
Panther Clipper. What to do with me Cutter?? 🤔
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Sell it for a T9 ;)

But honestly, Cutter vs. Panther will be the same choice. Compared to the T9, it will have more tons to carry, but the same flying style and limitations, if not more. Cutter, on the other hand, is a flexible multirole that excels at a lot of things, flies fast, can do AX combat (wait for it!), turns like a brick but not as bad as the other options, jumps decently and happens to be able to carry a lot of cargo if stripped down (up to 780t). T9++ style ships vs the Cutter decisions will always end the same. Two ships, different roles, for bulk cargo take the crate and not the jet.

O7,
🙃
 
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CMDR X

CMDR X
The Corsair "heat fix" is nothing to write home about either. Shock Cannons still fry it while my FGS still rock them like a champ.
 

Maximillian Forrest

Maximillian Forrest
Starshot_Jigawatts said:
I literally have no clue what you're talking about. Do you mean from takeoff time to being back in space? It takes literally SECONDS. I'm seriously about to log into the game and stopwatch this because either one of us is crazy, or we have radically different ideas about what a "lifetime" is.
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By that I mean getting from a surface installation back to my carrier which is always orbiting on the other side of the planet.
 

Jumpin' Jack Flash

Jumpin' Jack Flash
Hi :)
Rubbernuke said:
Design wise, I kind of hope that the magic marker squad made the black bits 'separate' (as in it never detaches but is a cargo container in game) so we have the white bits as the actual vehicle- a bit like the Sky Cranes
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I'm not expecting anyone to agree with me btw. but as the ship is travelling in forward motion there's a lot of dead space between the back of those thrusters and where the rear (cargo racks?) finish, I personally see it as a bit odd. If the rear fuselage extended in a thin band rearwards a bit so's the rear of the ship was more inline with those extended thrusters in forward flight there'd be enough room there to instal a few more cargo racks. It would balance up what some people have hinted as the nose of the ship projecting too far forward. At least to my way of thinking in flight at any rate with this rough description the ship would appear more balanced graphically.
When landed, if the rear fuselage wasn't originally extended too far back (just encompassing maybe a couple more cargo racks) the general graphic effect between the front and rear of the ship still wouldn't be too extreme compared with those thruster positions when landed. The only negative effect here though is when landed would the extra length of the total fuselage exceed the landing pad length. :unsure:

That was one of my initial thoughts too when looking at the new ship, (the 'detached cargo bits') because of the colour difference and graphics from the rest of the ship I also naturally assumed (I know you shouldn't especially if you've got no real info from the designer) those darker objects formed part of the cargo rack system. (y)
I'm not complaining about the design of the ship in general, it's really good, but as one or two other posters have remarked there could possibly be areas of design that might appear better. The ship might probably not be in it's 'finished' state as it's obviously not ready to be released yet, as in we haven't got an exact release date yet.?...so it might go through some more graphical (and actual final specifications) adjustments before release.

Jack :)
 

Doctor Dread

Doctor Dread
Shurimal said:
The problem with that is that all the real estate in the and near the edges of my powerplay area is already taken. I have no desire to move a few hundred lightyears out where it would take years to expand the power into. Even now it would take somewhere in the range of 500 man-hours to expand my power through the ~30 ly gap, plus more to create fortification redundancies.
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There's the difference. I don't care about Powers (maxed out LYR and forgot about all that stuff) but making nice systems for myself, for my fun with my nonaligned alt. Then the playing field is much muuuch wider and gameplay more pleasant.

Anyways, I like the new ship very much. It has to be a bit clumsy but so what? We've all learned to fly both T9 and Cutter, so we will master this one too. The only thing important is the cargo space.
 
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