Obviously in the 34th century, we are spoiled with the technology available to us, and that is why a single CMDR can fly an anaconda, however reading the forums and seeing the interest in Jameson's early model cobra at the crash site, and the amount of forumites who would like access to such a vessel I had an idea, bring back old ships complete with foibles. What do I mean by that, lets take an easy example of Jameson's Cobra, presumably a mkI cobra at that, would it have flight assist, not likely. SO... to fly a Jameson cobra the CMDR would either have to learn the ways of 100% FAoff, or lose an internal slot to a flight assist computer akin to a docking computer on more "modern" ships. (I put modern in inverted commas as some of these designs have been in service for centuries according to their lore)
What other character enriching traits could we introduce to old ship models to add to the diversity of game play and potential immersion? I recall from Frontier Elite 2 a ship called the Tiger Trader having a turret, on which you could fit a weapon, but unlike modern turrets you had to manually aim the turret, like a proper gunner did/does...
[video=youtube;T_OSeRxhGOY]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T_OSeRxhGOY[/video]
So bringing back the Tiger Trader would really mean it would either need multicrew, or an NPC gunner, or the cmdr to jump into the turret (possibly with helm controls still available to them?), or install a fire control computer (like a docking computer but for the gunnery) in an optional slot.
There was also the Boa, "the anaconda's big brother", which required, brace yourself for it, 12 crew to operate. Obviously with the current crew model of them siphoning a percentage of your revenue but not absorbing that percentage of your costs, the presence of 12 crew would make the Boa totally non-viable. But if we could go back to crew being salaried and specialised, with abilities that affect game play such as a good gunner being more accurate than a bad one or our current automatic turrets, or having a great engineer reduces your ships heat and increases its regen rates, a good tactical officer getting an extra half kilometre or so of range out of your sensors etc... Then there would be a lot of fun in building up a crack team of a crew and making them super effective.
You could add in certain other attributes such as these "Legacy gun mounts" only being able to take fixed weapons, (not an issue for the ships with turrets incorporated into their hull) some of them being unable to fuel scoop, others being blessed with missile pylons as well as hard points, so they could carry more diverse weapons systems load outs.
Previous episodes in the Elite franchise didn't have utility mounts as such, so why should the older hulls like the Boa? Which again gives them a disadvantage, but if "Utility Racks", optional internal that had a number of slots in it for utility mount based systems to be installed into, were made available, both current ships and "Legacy" ships could be stacked with much more utility modules, creating even more diverse loadouts.
I know some of these ideas rely on the addition of other "enablers" to make them work, but I have focussed on ones that wouldn't necessarily require significant changes to the core game to make them work. I'd like to hear what you think of my suggestion(s), and any ideas you may have on how to go about bringing back "vintage" ships while simultaneously giving them a distinct flavour of their own.
What other character enriching traits could we introduce to old ship models to add to the diversity of game play and potential immersion? I recall from Frontier Elite 2 a ship called the Tiger Trader having a turret, on which you could fit a weapon, but unlike modern turrets you had to manually aim the turret, like a proper gunner did/does...
[video=youtube;T_OSeRxhGOY]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T_OSeRxhGOY[/video]
So bringing back the Tiger Trader would really mean it would either need multicrew, or an NPC gunner, or the cmdr to jump into the turret (possibly with helm controls still available to them?), or install a fire control computer (like a docking computer but for the gunnery) in an optional slot.
There was also the Boa, "the anaconda's big brother", which required, brace yourself for it, 12 crew to operate. Obviously with the current crew model of them siphoning a percentage of your revenue but not absorbing that percentage of your costs, the presence of 12 crew would make the Boa totally non-viable. But if we could go back to crew being salaried and specialised, with abilities that affect game play such as a good gunner being more accurate than a bad one or our current automatic turrets, or having a great engineer reduces your ships heat and increases its regen rates, a good tactical officer getting an extra half kilometre or so of range out of your sensors etc... Then there would be a lot of fun in building up a crack team of a crew and making them super effective.
You could add in certain other attributes such as these "Legacy gun mounts" only being able to take fixed weapons, (not an issue for the ships with turrets incorporated into their hull) some of them being unable to fuel scoop, others being blessed with missile pylons as well as hard points, so they could carry more diverse weapons systems load outs.
Previous episodes in the Elite franchise didn't have utility mounts as such, so why should the older hulls like the Boa? Which again gives them a disadvantage, but if "Utility Racks", optional internal that had a number of slots in it for utility mount based systems to be installed into, were made available, both current ships and "Legacy" ships could be stacked with much more utility modules, creating even more diverse loadouts.
I know some of these ideas rely on the addition of other "enablers" to make them work, but I have focussed on ones that wouldn't necessarily require significant changes to the core game to make them work. I'd like to hear what you think of my suggestion(s), and any ideas you may have on how to go about bringing back "vintage" ships while simultaneously giving them a distinct flavour of their own.
