New ship: Panther Clipper

With size 8 thrusters I wonder how agile it will be … would be hilarious if it ends up out-Corvette’ing the Corvette …

It would be great if the agility was higher than that of the Cutter, roughly on a par with the Corvette. Then the PC2 would be ideal as a pirate-attracting cargo mission runner, a role that the Corvette currently fulfills for me because the Cutter just flies so badly.

With 5-7 boosters in the utilities, a class 7 shield and the 10 hardpoints, this should work out quite well. Given the class 7 PD, you have to be a bit more conservative with the weapons, of course.
 
I only saw the news on The Burr Pit last night, and there was no mention of how many Utility mounts there are. Does anyone know this? Or is it just something that no-one knows yet? I'm probably still going to want to utilise one of the Class 6 compartments for a Prismatic, as I don't think my class 5 Prismatic is going to work, and I wouldn't mind knowing how much power I'm going to need to get a decent enough amount of sheilds from my boosters, and whether there will be enough mounts for a couple of PDT's as well, like on my Cutter.

If the PP is as large as that then it's looking positive that there will be the full eight Utility mounts, not just four or six. That's my hope, but does anyone know for sure?
 
If a Chieftain ate all the pies.
I'm happy with it's cargo capacity...looking forward to flying it.
Yes, and no. The rear Chieftain legs yes, but the PC is more like

1750928204691.jpeg
 
D&D’s “bag of holding” has found its way into ED.
I think it can be explained in-universe:

Cargo holds are not just empty dumb boxes, like seaship shipping containers. Instead, they have to be hi-tech storage units with internal compartments and both passive and active technology to protect the cargo from sudden acceleration, which the ship can do, when accelerating, turning, or colliding with something. After all, the cargo needs to remain intact even at very high g's.

These new enhanced cargo racks use newer technology and newer materials to significantly reduce the internal space taken by these protective structures and mechanisms, thus allowing for more cargo to be fitted inside the container. However, the drawback is that the ship needs to be specifically fitted for these special cargo containers. They won't fit nor work in existing ships.
 
I only saw the news on The Burr Pit last night, and there was no mention of how many Utility mounts there are. Does anyone know this? Or is it just something that no-one knows yet? I'm probably still going to want to utilise one of the Class 6 compartments for a Prismatic, as I don't think my class 5 Prismatic is going to work, and I wouldn't mind knowing how much power I'm going to need to get a decent enough amount of sheilds from my boosters, and whether there will be enough mounts for a couple of PDT's as well, like on my Cutter.

If the PP is as large as that then it's looking positive that there will be the full eight Utility mounts, not just four or six. That's my hope, but does anyone know for sure?

Six at least:

IMG_7850.jpeg


And someone has seen 8:

I looked at the video from the stream, and what i can tell is there is four on the engine nacelles, two on the rear engine rails on the main body, and two on the bottom in the middle. So it should be a total of 8 utilities.
 
Hi :)

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imo if anyone wants to make colonisation less painful then they should champion adding extra features into colonisation via the missionboard or what not other than plain hauling.

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Yep, I agree with this. :)...Colonisation, the main mechanics of this feature start off as an interesting and fun exercise, the implementation of claiming a system (bar one obvious flaw) works pretty much as one could expect, thereafter the means of building stations then descends into questionable gameplay.
So ... the Panther Clipper isn't going to radically change this imho.

As for the Panther Clipper itself...🤔... my personal view is it's a good aesthetically pleasing design, keeps pretty much close to the original FE2's specs compared to the other ships we have from that era, the animation of the four engines is excellent, and the cargo carrying capacity, hardpoints and internal modules interesting, and is pretty much as one might expect too.

As for the ship's 'kit' we've been briefly shown...I'm not overly impressed at the moment, the 'spoiler' part of the kit seems a bit old hat now, but that's my own personal view, other players might think different. The 'Prong' at the front would be a better concept if one of the larger hardpoint weapons could be swapped (by choice) to that position, and when fired the graphical animation representation of firing also swapped to the 'prong' graphic. The graphic might also represent which type of weapon one chose too, so not every prong was the same, for example..a multi cannon would be one type of graphical animation while a beam laser another. ;)

A 'special' paint job and ship kit supplied with the stellar version?...surely, one of the paint jobs supplied should be a form of Black based colour theme, as befitting the feline name!:cool:

(Footnote...My only real gripe is the Panther doesn't seem to be supplied with a dedicated cargo bay for an MB4 mining machine or Energy Bomb bay....other than that I'm happy! 🤗 ).

Jack :)
 
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I think it's a great idea actually. It's a feature I have in my ideas doc for the game, in fact! Between that, supercruise overcharge and the Panther-Clipper being in this quarter, my predictions are on a roll.

The Saud Kruger reserved slots were a less good idea because SK ships weren't all that good in that state. Related and compounding that, passenger transport just isn't very fleshed out.

I've an idea for an Asp competitor in the Constrictor, which would have a mix of military internals and cargo only internals, making it a little OP as a pirate ship without overpowering it as a pure trader or pure combat ship. They're right that they've given themselves a new lever to help make original ships, and I'm looking forward to how they use it.

The Panther itself is slightly odd for introducing the feature though. There should be something interesting that this ship has almost 600t cargo by default, before making build choices. But I haven't thought of a build to make use of that yet – the optional internals and everything else don't suit making it a pirate ship or even really a miner.
Why not just up the cargo size rather than some hand wavium idea ? Are we going down the specialised weapons rack route if you put plasma on this ship you get another one ?
We don't get any extra for the military slots with many people wanting to get rid of them , the reserved passenger slots came and gone .
I just don't like the hand wavium spacey wacey oh if you put a 7 cargo in here we give you an extra 64 t and if you put an 8 in you get 128 ? Why not add another 6 and 7 and lock them unless the 7 and 8 are being used as cargo . Makes sense no makey up stuff or "magic" .
But these are justu thoughts . I hold Elite as quite factual in the broadest sense. And it just affects my silly sensibilities.
And I still won't pay for early access noatter whose echo chamber it is 😜
 
I think it can be explained in-universe:

Cargo holds are not just empty dumb boxes, like seaship shipping containers. Instead, they have to be hi-tech storage units with internal compartments and both passive and active technology to protect the cargo from sudden acceleration, which the ship can do, when accelerating, turning, or colliding with something. After all, the cargo needs to remain intact even at very high g's.

These new enhanced cargo racks use newer technology and newer materials to significantly reduce the internal space taken by these protective structures and mechanisms, thus allowing for more cargo to be fitted inside the container. However, the drawback is that the ship needs to be specifically fitted for these special cargo containers. They won't fit nor work in existing ships.
Nah, they are just boxes, like seaship shipping containers. We now have magic.
 
On the other hand, those specialised cargo slots & racks open up the upgrade of the other cargo ships like the T7, without giving them more slots.
Well if they did open up for all ships with double 7 or 8 spots ,cutter, type 9 and corvette as standard I could live with that . So if you used 1 of the slots as cargo you get an extra slot (. 8+128 , 7 +64) . Then it's a standard
 
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