Superfreighters

Shadowed

Shadowed
I've been thinking about how advantageous a trade/cargo-outfitted capital ship could be in the political scenarios unfolding in Elite: Dangerous. If your system is suddenly under an embargo, this capital ship of sorts could feed/fuel/rearm a lot of CMDRs for a long time; lengthening the resistance. This 'superfreighter' is poorly equipped for combat (compared to a capital ship), but is left to the resistance to keep their massive cargo ship from jumping away; similar to how a Capital Ship will leave a Conflict Zone when damaged.

Having a massive trade ship near a station could even provide a small discount, while adding massive inventory to certain bulk commodities, increasing trade activity in hot systems. I really like the idea of escorting a capital ship sized cargo ship and the possible political and economical advantages that a vessel this large could bring.

I guess I want to see more Capital Ships having more roles to play and being more active. Go outside Capital Ship.
 

veryinky

V
tasev1 said:
Interesting idea, but very BAD for game mechanics. Just think what this will do to the profits players make (excessive) and the effect on markets! For a supertanker this size, you would also need either special docks, or transfer ships to move the material.
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In Elite:Frontier they did use transfer ships to move the material. Yee-old Lifter which transfered standardized shipping containers from the Lynx Bulk Carrier and Long Range Cruiser to and from the stations.

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Not really for players, more of a background NPC vehicle.

Shadowed said:
Having a massive trade ship near a station could even provide a small discount, while adding massive inventory to certain bulk commodities, increasing trade activity in hot systems. I really like the idea of escorting a capital ship sized cargo ship and the possible political and economical advantages that a vessel this large could bring.
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That's the role I'd see performing, whenever one of these bulk carriers would be next to a station, the station would be offering a temporary 10% discount on trade goods. That and adding scenery and variation to stations.

Could even treat them like small Jaques' Stations, Jaques' Outposts, that go follow a sort of trade route between stations, with a couple small and one medium docking ports. Selling whatever they load up on their trade routes.

That's the main thing I'd see these ships adding, more variety when visiting space stations.
 

Deleted member 38366

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Stkx

S
This isn't a bad idea! But just to make things clear, these things aren't for players to control and are strictly NPC. Think of some content they could create. It may involve missions or personal gain to attack a Superfreighters/Capital ships+escorts with wings (or solo if you're insane).

Works very well with piracy in mind looking to fill you're hold in one skirmish Just hope you have taken out every escort and weapon hardpoints on the ship. (there might be a lot of things I'm missing here)

Would work well for military goals or PP (THINK OF THE MERITS). Taking out major supply lines of the factions you hate for the factions you love. Hell the Battleships may have more use now :D. I really wanna see the Interdictor and Farragut more involved in ED :mad: (was really hoping PP would at least do this).

Of course attacking freighters randomly may never do you any good. So they must be categorized to know what you're getting.
Military convoys would carry Hi-tech equipment and weapons. Agricultural freighters would carry food. You get the rest.

Station interaction I believe should be strictly player only (I'm stumped here). If the freighters would have purpose in ED it would probably involve supplying Planets IDK.
 

nexxo

N
veryinky said:
http://i.imgur.com/PeZpih2.gif
Elite 2: Frontier had "Long Range Cruisers" which were massive transports which hung around large space stations supposedly transporting large quantities of bulk goods between planets. Then there's the Lynx Class Bulk carrier. Also much, much too big to fit in a docking bay of a space station though not on the scale of the Long Range Cruiser.
http://i.imgur.com/Dxf0lmV.gif
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Want. Such NPC additions would make the universe look a bit more lively. I also want shuttles between station and planet (first seen in ELITE).
 

Shanaeri

Shanaeri
The way I've always seen it is that in the ED universe ships above a certain mass need a specialised and different way of jumping into hyperspace. That's why the capital ships appear in the black cloud of doom rather than the flash of light ours do.

It then also follows that these, let's call them military drives are very expensive, contain lots of tech the major powers don't want sold and are otherwise reserved for capital ships.

That would be why we don't see any around in private hands.

There's also the strong probability that the planets produce much of the stuff they need themselves and rely on traders to fill in the peaks of demand. After all, with a population in the billions it'd make no sense to have all the food they ever would need come into one place before being sent out planet wide. Perhaps the totals we see in station are only for that station, and not just for the planet as a whole?
 
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tiger61378

tiger61378
Here's a unique CG opportunity as well. Get a message that there's a superfreighter parked at a station, and needs cargo haulers to transfer cargo to and from the station. When you show up and accept the goal, you have to collect materials from the freighter (docking would be like at an outpost with external docking pads), bring them into the station, then pick up supplies going back out to the freighter on a round trip. This would also give a great opportunity for pirate minded players, since they could attack the superfreighter and the in-system transports for cargo, and would give combat minded/bounty hunter players a chance to defend it from the pirate raids. Just imagine the chaos...you head out with your Type 6 to pick up supplies from the supership, and as you're coming in to dock there's a massive battle going on all around with pirates and bounty hunters/system security duking it out, transports dumping stuff to try and get away, the supership opening up (and the station, depending on the distance)...it would be epic.
 

Tinman

Tinman
I'm assuming we'll see them eventually. (NPC controlled that is.)

The ability to dock with bigger ships have been mentioned several times by David and the devs. The capital ships even have docking areas ready to go. When that becomes possible more types of super freighters might come around that we can dock and trade with.

The current "seeking luxuries" for example seems like rather obvious placeholder. Why are Type 9 ships hanging around in space asking for people to deliver goods to them? They can just go into the stations and buy them on their own for less cost. If however these ships where too big and couldn't go into the stations this would be another matter. Especially if you could instead dock with them and conduct your business instead of having the cargo magically removed from your ship when getting close. ;)
 
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Snarfbuckle

S
Player ships are mostly limited to "trucker" sized ships or "tanks" instead of Container ships and Battleships - if not for game balance reasons then for practicality.

Want a X8 dual cannon battleship and command it from a bridge then EVE is more a fitting game universe.
 

Krow

Krow
With Fuel scoops that inhale entire stars. :D

Definitely like to see more trade juggernauts with multiple trailers, accompanied by appropriate security.
 

sun_tzu

S
Panther Clipper
http://elite-dangerous.wikia.com/wiki/Panther_Clipper
will this be the super freighter type craft if (when) it is introduced?
Actually come to think of it didnt FD promise a free ship to backers when they had released a certain number of ships (to make up for lack of pledged ships at release)
Perhaps there will be a future update with 5 pretty awesome ships:
A big trade ship - the panther clipper
A big multi purpose ship - the federal corvette http://elite-dangerous.wikia.com/wiki/Federal_Corvette
A big passenger ship (assuming passenger ships have a specific role by then) say the beluga liner http://elite-dangerous.wikia.com/wiki/Beluga_Liner
A dedicated mining ship? - lets face it there is nothing specific for this role yet
A fantastic combat / pirate ship - the return of the Mamba?
 

wstephenson

wstephenson
Tinman said:
I'm assuming we'll see them eventually. (NPC controlled that is.)

The ability to dock with bigger ships have been mentioned several times by David and the devs. The capital ships even have docking areas ready to go. When that becomes possible more types of super freighters might come around that we can dock and trade with.

The current "seeking luxuries" for example seems like rather obvious placeholder. Why are Type 9 ships hanging around in space asking for people to deliver goods to them? They can just go into the stations and buy them on their own for less cost. If however these ships where too big and couldn't go into the stations this would be another matter. Especially if you could instead dock with them and conduct your business instead of having the cargo magically removed from your ship when getting close. ;)
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I'd expect that superfreighters in systems would be a periodic event like a caravan train. Look at the plotting of the transport of the grain harvest in the book Lave Revolution for an example of long-term trade deals that result in massive cargoes being shifted. So the arrival of a superfreighter might be preceded by a Community Goal to gather megatonnes of grain from neighbouring systems, then the freighter(s) itself would arrive, park a few Ls away from the station and be loaded by NPC Lifter traffic. I'd expect that the main business of a super would be a background affair, and its travel would be under the hood, but its presence would have a significant effect on the background sim and factions, bring atypical (illegal? there must be a lot of smuggling space on one) commodities into the local market and generate special event missions at the super's dock and the local station.

Perhaps the super would travel slowly in-system using normal-space drives and be visible from SC as a PoI for hours/days as it crawls far enough away from gravity wells to use its station-class hyperdrive?
 

Tweakz

Tweakz
SlickReed said:
Cool idea. Doesn't the Type 9 fit this description?
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Lol nope... a Anaconda or Type 9 are both medium sized at most compared to Elite 2. The real deal was the Panther Clipper which had like 2k tonnes cargo capacity in Elite 2. But it looks like that one will also be a smaller version now. So there are not really any supirior Tradeships atm in ED or even planned.
 
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Vasious

Vasious
Tweakz said:
Lol nope... a Anaconda or Type 9 are both medium sized at most compared to Elite 2. The real deal was the Panther Clipper which had like 2k tonnes cargo capacity in Elite 2. But it looks like that one will also be a smaller version now. So there are not really any supirior Tradeships atm in ED or even planned.
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Even at 2k the Panther was tiny to the Lynx at 6k and LRC 15k
They are in a different league
 

nexxo

N
I agree. I totally see a role for player controlled 2k and 6k cargo vessels (even if they can't dock inside stations --at space elevators instead perhaps?). They would be slower to manoeuvre and no good for dogfighting (perhaps have no weapons at all except automatic turrets and really phat shields and armour) and would need to wing up with other players in agile fighters to traverse the rougher parts of space. But they could be good for bulk trading runs or be the centre of a mining operation with three mining players dropping their ore in the big ship for refining and carrying back to the station.
 
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