Anyone missing the Moray Starboat ?

[Bogen]

That little ship... was actually my favorite "gamestart" in Frontier: Elite II.
There was something special about it: the feeling being inside it was a mix between the Firefly and the Millennium Falcon, and i always imagined it as a spaceship for "independents" (aka smugglers, pirates, traffickers and shady people alike...) .

Now, maybe i liked it also due to the fact that it was an "easy" gamestart: it just needed a couple of passenger cabins and you were set for a good steady income... but that awkward shape, totally not aerodynamic ( well, somewhere i read it was, in fact, a boat adapted to space flight! ), duct-taped spaceship will be always in my heart.

Who also would like to see the "mighty" return of the Moray in ED ??

 

[Canasta]

+1 for that, it always looked like it was flying in reverse, what would its role be?

 

[Bogen]

I think it could be a good start to implement some "specialized" ships: like it could be fitted with special "vents" for low base signature (smuggling) or some equipment for jamming scanners . Anyway, the original role, iirc, was as a passenger boat, later also used as a pirate ship in "disguise" due to its laughable shape!

 

[mandellorian]

I`d be extremely happy to have some of the old birds brought back,even if they just did some rough and ready NPC versions to vary the traffic a bit..oh look a viper..and another viper..oh wait is it..oh yeah another freaking viper ^_^..at least the Moray had character.

 

[Bogen]

Good idea, maybe we also could see the old airfighters (hawk, osprey, kestrel...) used as npc-only ships supporting and escorting standard class ships... i also liked the idea behind those pure fighters but as player ships they were a little too limited.

 

[Captain Moray Starboat]

That little ship... was actually my favorite "gamestart" in Frontier: Elite II.
There was something special about it: the feeling being inside it was a mix between the Firefly and the Millennium Falcon, and i always imagined it as a spaceship for "independents" (aka smugglers, pirates, traffickers and shady people alike...) .

Now, maybe i liked it also due to the fact that it was an "easy" gamestart: it just needed a couple of passenger cabins and you were set for a good steady income... but that awkward shape, totally not aerodynamic ( well, somewhere i read it was, in fact, a boat adapted to space flight! ), duct-taped spaceship will be always in my heart.

Who also would like to see the "mighty" return of the Moray in ED ??

By far my number one favourite Frontier ship of all time, and the one I want to see the most.
All the other ships are "okay", but simply pale compared to the amazing Moray (with it's interesting design, and background story)

You deserve a ton of rep simply for mentioning it. Again one of the coolest starcraft in Frontier

 

[Iridium Nova]

I flew around in a repurposed Moray hospital ship for a good while. It surprised me how verstaile it was. I remember the painjob of the one I was in was pretty neat - it had a big red cross on it. I can't remember if that was vanilla or some mod that added it, I did play around with mods for a while. There's nothing quite like bounty hunting in an ambulance. Maybe they'll bring it back when they allow us to land on oceanic planets. It could have some unique properties to allow it to really shine underwater, compared to other ships. Of course, any ship that can fly in space should also be seaworthy, but the Moray would stand out above the others, perhaps as the consummate all-environment ship.

 

[Galafrey]

Love to see the classics back, I don't feel that some of the new ships have much character. Krait, Moray and Wolf Mk2 would be fab.

 

[Navigare Necesse Est]

Wasn't it quite crappy? That's what I remember.

Of course, any ship that can fly in space should also be seaworthy...

The engines might quite disagree.

 

[the100thmonkey]

Wasn't it quite crappy? That's what I remember.


The engines might quite disagree.

That and spacecraft are about keeping stuff in while subs are about keeping stuff out.

 

[Legacy_LuckyLuke]

It would be nice to see a few of the old 'vintage' ships flying around sometimes, even if they were only NPC ships.

By the same token they should be rare spots.

 

[shadragon]

Don't tell anyone, but these ships:

- Moray Starboat
- Mamba
- Krait
- The Hunter

Are soon coming out as Alliance ships. There's also rumours of a new Alliance capital ship. Tell no one, it's just between us girls. (wink)

 

[Iridium Nova]

Wasn't it quite crappy? That's what I remember.



The engines might quite disagree.

Starship engines have to be able to function in a vacuum - it's not that different from being underwater. We're not working with internal combustion here. The thrusters on our ships are essentially large hydrogen engines. There happens to be alot of hydrogen in water. Roughly about 66%. The engines themselves shouldn't be a problem. The problem with taking a starship underwater comes from friction, ambient mass, and pressure. This could be comparable to flying in a thick atmosphere. I figure we'll have upgrades to the planetary approach suite enabling the ship to enter atmospheres. This would include systems to deal with re-entry as well as a means to make heat dissipation more effective in these environments. The ship would be more sluggish due to the fact that it's moving through a more massive medium than space, but otherwise I don't see a problem. It probably wouldn't be too different from trying to fly around under 1km altitude on a 2+g planet, though aerodynamics/hydrodynamics would probably play a part of their own. Just another environment to get used to flying in, a challenge I am looking forward to.

 

[Sapyx]

In the original Elite lore, Morays were built to allow aquatic alien races access to space. With the redaction of all alien races except the ammonia-breathing Thargoids, that particular function has been negated. We no longer "need" a sub-to-space ship.

I don't know what FD plan to do, with regards to "landing" on water, whether ships will simply take damage/explode, sink, "fly" underwater, or float. The usefulness or otherwise of Morays will depend on whichever one of these models they implement.

 

[Iridium Nova]

In the original Elite lore, Morays were built to allow aquatic alien races access to space. With the redaction of all alien races except the ammonia-breathing Thargoids, that particular function has been negated. We no longer "need" a sub-to-space ship.

I don't know what FD plan to do, with regards to "landing" on water, whether ships will simply take damage/explode, sink, "fly" underwater, or float. The usefulness or otherwise of Morays will depend on whichever one of these models they implement.

This is true, but Morays were brought back in Frontier and FFE, games which existed after the alien redaction. If I recall, in those games, the ship was somewhere between an Asp and a Cobra and had about the same multi-role versatility though couldn't match the Cobra's flight profile. Also, the Thargoids aren't the only known sapient alien race. There were a few others, notably the aliens wiped out by the Empire during the founding of Capitol. I seem to recall mentions of at least one other sapient race also wiped out by humans somewhere else. There are no known living aliens in the ED universe, unless you count the Unknown Artifacts, but nobody is sure yet what exactly those are.

 

[Lobstris]

I'd love to see more of the originals come back - even if the designs are criticised by others as 'simplistic cheese wedges'. E: D won't truly feel like Elite till there are Morays, Kraits, Mambas, Boas, Cobra MK Is, Constrictors, Worms and Landers flitting around.

 

[Navigare Necesse Est]

Starship engines have to be able to function in a vacuum - it's not that different from being underwater...

Actually it is. But it's a video game - we can have all the space magic. Just don't sell this stuff as real facts.

 

[DrakeAurum]

+1 for that, it always looked like it was flying in reverse, what would its role be?

I may be misremembering, but wasn't one of the Moray's 'features' the fact that its reverse thrusters were more powerful than its main engine?

It might work nicely as a dedicated trader in the Cobra/Diamondback price bracket.

 

[Marasmusine]

I may be misremembering, but wasn't one of the Moray's 'features' the fact that its reverse thrusters were more powerful than its main engine?

That was the Gecko, which really did look like a cheese wedge.

 

[the100thmonkey]

Starship engines have to be able to function in a vacuum - it's not that different from being underwater. We're not working with internal combustion here. The thrusters on our ships are essentially large hydrogen engines. There happens to be alot of hydrogen in water. Roughly about 66%. The engines themselves shouldn't be a problem.

Except the specific impulse from the engines would seem to indicate that they are fusion drives, albeit small ones. The heat from the exhaust would instantly vaporise all the water it came into contact with. At the very least, this would create a bubble of water vapour around the ship causing a... spectacular loss of buoyancy. You'd basically boil your way down to the bottom of whichever ocean you happened to be in.

The problem with taking a starship underwater comes from friction, ambient mass, and pressure. This could be comparable to flying in a thick atmosphere. I figure we'll have upgrades to the planetary approach suite enabling the ship to enter atmospheres. This would include systems to deal with re-entry as well as a means to make heat dissipation more effective in these environments. The ship would be more sluggish due to the fact that it's moving through a more massive medium than space, but otherwise I don't see a problem. It probably wouldn't be too different from trying to fly around under 1km altitude on a 2+g planet, though aerodynamics/hydrodynamics would probably play a part of their own. Just another environment to get used to flying in, a challenge I am looking forward to.

Many of the ships have airfoils already - the Dropship, for example, or the Fer de Lance and the Adder. I'd expect them to handle much better in atmospheric flight than a T7, which is basically brick-shaped.