Hello, again.
I've been thinking further.
Most here seem to be focusing on the idea's impact against mandatory cargo rewards and limpets - which is fair enough, since they're in the OP. I think there are better reasons for doing this, though.
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The cargo thing still seems like something that needs separate work, even if this gets done. I don't think mission-stacking's uncommon - even I do it, if I'm in a missiony mood. If we take multiple missions with cargo rewards, we'll still have a thing where we have to turn in the mission, back up, go to trade, find and sell the reward, back up, go to missions, turn in the mission, etc.
It's going to replace the annoyance of module-swapping with the onerosity of endless menu-switching. Half the time, it's still going to be less of a nuisance to temporarily swap a module for a cargo bay and get the turn-ins and sales done in two menu-visits. Or just eject the reward cargo each time, which is wasteful, even if the waste is just bits and bytes.
An option to auto-sell the cargo, hold it temporarily in the station or donate it to station / faction resources, would be a better solution for that, I think.
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As far as limpets are concerned, I still feel that now that we have the twin precedents of ammunition synthesis and printable SLFs, we should have similar arrangements for similarly-positioned equipment, if only for a better sense of technological consistency.
Limpet Controllers should ideally be replaced with Limpet Bays, presumably still serving
via the cargo scoop. Ammunition for both limpets and SRVs should vary by size and class.
I think it would greatly strengthen the benefits of taking larger bays, in both cases - but particularly for the SRVs, since I can think of no current reason at all to do so, short of exploring planets well away from the bubble.
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Wikiing up the Sidewinder and looking at it's dimensions, it's roughly 15 metres long, by 21 metres across, by 5
1/2 metres high. There's really not a lot of room in there, what with all the other equipment.
A cargo cannister is - at a guess - round about 2 metres tall by a metre in diameter, roughly the same size as one extremely-obese Sigourney Weaver on eight-inch platform shoes.
Can we fit four unconscious, floating Sigourneys into the free space of a Sidewinder and secure them safely? Two of them, one standing on the other's shoulders, would be taller than the ship, if we don't count the landing gear.
One or two Sigourneys stored 'in the breach', as it were, makes sense - but I think four might well be pushing it a bit. Other contributors have suggested varying minimum volumes, so I'm leaning towards two, four and eight Sigourneys, for small, medium and large ships, respectively.
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Despite me arguing for better solutions to some of the things this idea is meant to solve, I still feel this is a good idea.
It might not be Necessary, but it is Beneficial:
• it adds flexibility, which is a good thing here, in my view;
• it adds humanitarian and temptation options, where none currently exist for many builds - and ED will always need all the humanising elements it can get;
• and it adds realism, since it makes no sense at all that a fifteen-metre-long ship can't rescue even a single chubby Sigourney without fitting a cargo hold.
