If the fighter bay 3D prints fighters...
- Thread starter Malkevin
- Start date
Ian Phillips
Volunteer Moderator
Sensory overload frying their brain?
You misunderstand. It's ok - the system is confusing and weird. The fighters are remote controlled and the NPCs do not die when the fighters are blown up. Otherwise there'd be no point in having a stock of extra "3D Printed" fighters to deploy, since you'd have no one to fly them after the first one is blown up.
If your *main* ship (i.e. The ship that you're launching the fighters *from*) gets blown up, the NPC pilot dies. IE they only die when you "die"/are sent to the rebuy screen.
To make things more confusing: you can "hire" up to three NPC pilots, but only one of them can actually be on your ship at a time. The other two are inside a menu option at station services called "crew lounge," where they are for all intents and purposes frozen in suspended animation, where they don't die, gain experience, or draw a salary.
Drone fighters are unmanned so aren't safety certified to carry human occupant. Your SRV has to have a safety inspection and have a little ticket put on it by some Health and Safety inspector.
Sometimes technical mitations aren't really technical limitations, but bureaucratic ones.
It's the most viable piece of head canon that I could come up with.
Not bad, but why are buggys not just controlled via the same neural link?
Or just "space magic".
I asked the same question a while ago...
https://forums.frontier.co.uk/showthread.php/282071-3D-Printed-deployable-fighter-and-SRV-s
Flimley
https://forums.frontier.co.uk/showthread.php/282071-3D-Printed-deployable-fighter-and-SRV-s
Flimley
This is something i hope comes too with the 2.2 update =D
Agree with that.
The 3d printing story somehow feels uncomfortable.
Perhaps I don't have enough imagination.
Goose4291
Banned
It really does make little sense. I always think what they were trying to say was that the Fighters are broken down for stowage, but in such a way they can be quickly assembled as required. But that reasoning seems to have been swept into the catch-all 3-D printing justification.
Real world precedents and all that..
Last edited:
I wouldn´t dare sitting one of the 3d printed fighters if they really stick with it instead of going over to assembling from parts. Imagine the stresses such a machine needs to withstand and probably all of the metallurgic treatments it would usually go through to be able to. I really doubt any method of 3d printing is able to pull off the same quality of material, correct me if wrong.
As we're not a thousand years in the future, we can't really correct or confirm on the viability of "3-D Printed Fighters."
I can only point out that the SRVs and ship launched fighters work on different restock mechanics when it doesn't seem logical that they should be.
Well, in a lab I visited they repaired aircraft reactor blades using 3D printing* (In this peculiar case, C02 laser + metal powder mix).
Reactor blades in reactors are quite tough pieces, so it seems you can print part of them. In year 3K I guess we would have had some
improvement XD.
This is another of those where no lore will work, and we are better off not attempting to come up with a justification. Just ignore it or just call it magic. After all, we have lots of magic inserted recently. In my case ignoring it will be easy, since I see no value in the functionality, and am unlikely to think the loss of cargo space and weight makes one worthwhile. And if the hangar is 'proper size' and not a Tardis (how much does a glass cannon weigh? The hanger is supposed to have the means to magic up 7 or 8 of them), then it will certainly not be something I would fit.
- - - - - Additional Content Posted / Auto Merge - - - - -
I fully accept that by 3K we could have the technology to 3D print pretty much anything.
However, if we did, the whole economic basis of the Elite galaxy would work differently. Just why are we supposedly ferrying around stuff in spaceships being attacked by pirates when it could just be 3D printed? Etc. When you open up a can of worms, ...
You still need the raw materials, and one could postulate a varying number of explanations as to the existence of the other commodities (Proprietary designs, material can't be cut and assembled by laser, power requirements to manufacture on-site vs importing)
And let's not forget schizo tech. The empire's still using slave labour when everyone else is using proper automation, afterall...
Instead of 3d printing fighters inside the hanger. Why not consider these options:-
The eight fighters that shouldn't fit in a one fighter bay do fit because :-
1. They are flat packed and assembled by droids.
2. They are dehydrated and shrunk, they need a water spray to expand.
3. They are inflatable, like a baloon, lilow.
4. The manufacturer teleports replacements into the bay as required.
5. The bay is Tardis alike.
Well what about the weight of those 8 fighters! how does effect FSD range, handling?
My alternative idea that's close to what is planned but is more believable, yet adds more possible gameplay to.
You only get 1 fighter in the one bay, no magic required, but that fighter can dock and be repaired then return to the fight. This can happen as many times as you have enough spare parts kits. How would this work in practice? Well lets say you launch your fighter. You attack enemy but get damaged. Fighter mostly looses weapons when hit hard and never looses engines completely. Player / NPC can then re-dock and repair the fighter, fighter repaired quickly providing sufficient spare parts are available.
The eight fighters that shouldn't fit in a one fighter bay do fit because :-
1. They are flat packed and assembled by droids.
2. They are dehydrated and shrunk, they need a water spray to expand.
3. They are inflatable, like a baloon, lilow.
4. The manufacturer teleports replacements into the bay as required.
5. The bay is Tardis alike.
Well what about the weight of those 8 fighters! how does effect FSD range, handling?
My alternative idea that's close to what is planned but is more believable, yet adds more possible gameplay to.
You only get 1 fighter in the one bay, no magic required, but that fighter can dock and be repaired then return to the fight. This can happen as many times as you have enough spare parts kits. How would this work in practice? Well lets say you launch your fighter. You attack enemy but get damaged. Fighter mostly looses weapons when hit hard and never looses engines completely. Player / NPC can then re-dock and repair the fighter, fighter repaired quickly providing sufficient spare parts are available.
I'd pay serious credits to see that mechanic. Nice idea!
The military are already looking at 3d printing UAVs in the field, little spy stuff admittedly, but the thought is already there.
As for materials, I already deal with 3d printed titanium and stainless steel parts at work.
I reckon that it's not too much of a stretch that they'll perfect something that they are already working on, given a thousand years or so.
Last edited: