New ship: Panther Clipper
- Thread starter Rubbernuke
- Start date
Looks more like a panther-lite
They hyped it up to be a "wow" amount. 50% is "okay, that's bigger." Would there have been some wanting more? Sure, but it would be a tiny number compared to what you're seeing now.
This forum loves to argue for less, for compromise, for pain, for suffering. Like it's somehow the golden path. Anything will be quoted to support an argument that a mangled wreck is better than a fit for purpose, well designed ship. That a poor handling, or poor capacity ship is balanced.
As though the collective efforts of humanity to strive, to improve capability, efficiency and effectiveness is unpossible and does not occur. Ignore it, it's been like this since the very beginning.
I am disappointed that Frontier weren't as bold as they could have been. The jump in cost from Cutter to Clipper Mk II is over 80 million, considerably more than the Cutter is to Anaconda. It's more than twice Type-9. Both the class 8 and class 7 slots could have been the special variant, it would not affect combat and would boost capacity to a more appropriate level, that would make colonisation a more sensible affair. And I think it would have been a better representation of what is possible.
And whilst sure, more is good, I genuinely believe the response would have leant more on "good enough" than anything else. The ship, aside from some minor hard point placement issues, appears to be a remarkable effort.
It's not unfair or wrong to place some degree of challenge to Frontier. To make a capable ship, that meets the brief and design.We all know the reason for the ship. The epitome of cargo crates with engines. I challenge Frontier to meet the moment.
As though the collective efforts of humanity to strive, to improve capability, efficiency and effectiveness is unpossible and does not occur. Ignore it, it's been like this since the very beginning.
I am disappointed that Frontier weren't as bold as they could have been. The jump in cost from Cutter to Clipper Mk II is over 80 million, considerably more than the Cutter is to Anaconda. It's more than twice Type-9. Both the class 8 and class 7 slots could have been the special variant, it would not affect combat and would boost capacity to a more appropriate level, that would make colonisation a more sensible affair. And I think it would have been a better representation of what is possible.
And whilst sure, more is good, I genuinely believe the response would have leant more on "good enough" than anything else. The ship, aside from some minor hard point placement issues, appears to be a remarkable effort.
It's not unfair or wrong to place some degree of challenge to Frontier. To make a capable ship, that meets the brief and design.We all know the reason for the ship. The epitome of cargo crates with engines. I challenge Frontier to meet the moment.
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This observation, from my few years spent here, is absolutely correct.
Very few see major improvements as improvement and argue vehemently against such radical change because of balance, or something equally facile.
Never mind, they will be playing and complaining against real change much longer than I, I feel.
It is a thing for most communities, but this one seems to be particularly strident.
Frontier said they would do the thing. They did the thing. Then worried. And second guessed. I wish they wouldn't. This forum is at best a microcosm and a very small part of a much larger community. One that I think, reasonably, expected the ship to do the thing it was invented to do.
It's unfortunate; both the 8 and 7 having the 50% boost would have made both the credit price and arx price (given it was also increases) seem more sensible, imo.
The descriptive hype certainly failed to represent the finished product. Not a Behomoth (not a lot bigger than the T9) and a very conservative hauling capacity.
Perhaps they should have called this one the Panther Kitten...
Perhaps FD have left the door open for the Panther XL in the future, that might even meet the description of heavy hauler Behomoth?
Oh, I think this is the XL. That would be my point.
That's a useful observation that I'll try to remember for future builds.
The PC Mk II is not the XL, because there's much unused space on the landing pad.
What has happened to Zorgon Peterson quality control, exposed wires on the bridge. Do they think they're the new Lakon Spaceways. At least we have not found any duct tape yet.
Don't forget, ZP designed the ship 11 years ago, just never got it out of the door. At that time their only other ships were the Hauler and the Adder. The FdL only entered the scene 10 years ago, the Mamba 7 years ago.
Beluga's box dwarfs Panther by far (Panther's box is 3/4 the size of Beluga's):
Panther 146.86m x 117.09m x 33.8m
Beluga_ 209.10m x 131.60m x 38.6m
This PC Mk 2 is just a Type-9 who ate too much late-night snacks.
There's plenty of room left for a true XL.
To be fair, Beluga is a narrow cilinder with huge fins at the back. Its real volume seems to be no larger than PC. Not to mention, as a pleasure cruiser it probably has cavernous interiors that are dedicated to bowling alleys and swimming pools (don't ask me how either of those would work in 0 G
) and can't be used for optional modules.More fair comparison should be Cutter. Again, a narrow cilinder with some outriggers on the back. The widest parts of the main hull is where the power plant lives. So less volume for actual cargo modules even though it's a longer ship by about 40 meters.
PC is a smaller box, but it's actually a box, which makes it far more space efficient. There's a reason why shipping containers and truck trailers are boxes instead of cilinders with tapered ends.
Of course, I wish PC was an even bigger box to live up to its legend, but it's big enough a box as it is, I guess.
To be fair, Beluga is a narrow cilinder with huge fins at the back. Its real volume seems to be no larger than PC. Not to mention, as a pleasure cruiser it probably has cavernous interiors that are dedicated to bowling alleys and swimming pools (don't ask me how either of those would work in 0 G
That's the usual mistake people make when they compare the size of the ships regarding passing through the mail slot and fitting on the landing pad.
For the calculations of the game, Beluga is a box.
Never mind if it's a narrow cylinder, what matters are the very tips of all the elegant fins and pointed noses and such. Those final pixels at the tops make the box of the ship.
So the box of the Beluga (the largest so far in the game) is 209.10m x 131.60m x 38.6m, which makes the box of the Panther merely 3/4 of that size.
But the box of the Beluga is also very irrelevant for the actual size of the ship for everything else other than if you get stuck in the mail slot or not.
Most of that bounding box is emptyness that doesn't count for collision detections. The bounding box only matters for what landing pad a ship fits on, nothing else. A big (by volume and mass) ship doesn't need to have the biggest bounding box, and a small ship can fill most of the maximum bounding box possible.
Fdev felt that 1200 tons of cargo is the right amount (whether the playerbase agrees or not) and the PC needs to be the size that it is to fit that.
what
The XL doesn’t exist? Folks getting all worked up about some mythical other Panther Clipper meanwhile the actual ship is about 200-300t short of where it should be.
It’s been 10 years since Cutter, 11 since Type-9. Some sense of reality here is recommended, because if Frontier is (clearly) borderline terrified of exceeding 1000t, why on earth expect something well bigger again, let alone any time soon. This is their big ship. It doesn’t matter how much of the pad it uses.
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It's the one you've been waiting for commanders! In this video we drop a Panther Clipper down the side of a massive crater to answer a simple question - what falls fastest? 50 tons of Biowaste or 1200 tons of Panther Clipper?
Source: https://youtu.be/1VcEffaf49Y