Panther clipper? What stats?

[Captain Willard]

Forget the 400t hull. The Anaconda was a mistake that FD aren't going to repeat.

But then they have proved beyond a doubt that they are incapable of learning from past mistakes, so maybe a 400t hull is going to happen.

The annie is a 750-800 ton ship, it has the max internals and hard points and over sized modules. A beta ship left in the game. I remember the guy who got the annie and left the game because he had the end game ship early in the game. to funny.

 

[Noobilite]

https://s.orbis.zone/23g5

This is the max jump range anaconda. If the panther were 400t hull like the anaconda it could do 520t minimum setup, "without fuel". 8) So, it could do some mean jumping.

I think the cutter/panther would get 0.033ly to the ton. At least if subtracting from an equivalent cutter build. Panther could not excede 78LY max jumps. I think that is slightly higher than the diamond back that maxes at like 77.xxly. Edit: Nvm, 75max https://s.orbis.zone/23h1

Another cool thing they could do is add more than 8 utility slots so it can have extra strong shields. It would be the beast of the east! Doesn't another ship have that already?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=93TRQD-QEDg

Crawler weighs 2500 tons and can transport 6000 tons. I thought it was easier to move in space than along the ground. We are not getting good cargo weights. Or would the spaceships have much weaker relative propulsion power?

Also 130 feet long and 115 feet wide. What is that compared to the panther clipper? And I think it said 2 diesel engines.

I think the large pads were said in one video to be 220 feet long and around 150-170 feet wide and at max 50 feet tall. I presume from going into the internal space. Or am I using the wrong measurement? Either way, potentially comparable.

 

[Cmdr. Numa]

I think it'll have a class 8 FSD. Everything else ? No idea.

 

[SAB380]

People get very weird about the Panther.
A model has existed since the Kickstarter showing it fitting on a landing pad and against an Anaconda.
But there is some sort of fantasy that it should be so big it can’t get into stations and should be an entirely new form of gameplay.
Even if that old model is not the Panther, If a Cutter fits with its wingspan then a Panther could while having a truck load more volume.

And while I’d love one, I’m not sure how they’d balance it to stop it being an I win button. The drawbacks are going to have to be speed and jump range .... so most people will go back to the Magiconda.
Or maybe they just let it be completely unbalanced and let everyone fly a Panther instead.

 

[voidwalker]

You know, given the traditional size of the Panther, it wouldn't surprise me if this particular ship is going to be just one variation of Squadron Carrier when they become available.

 

[Stealthie]

It said it had 2100 tons or cargo and 400 tons hull mass.. That is basic weight of 2500 if doing full cargo.

I'll assume it's as big as an anaconda

Somebody's living in a fantasy world.

A ship with 3x the payload of a T9 or Cutter better not have a hull that's half (or, in the case of the Cutter, a third) of the mass. [where is it]


Let's take a look at this a bit more closely though.

If a ship weighs, say, 100t and has a maximum payload of 100t of cargo, we could call that a "payload factor" of 1 (cargo mass / hull mass).
If a ship weighs 100t and has a maximum payload of 50t of cargo, it'd have a "payload factor" of 0.5.
If it weighs 100t and has a maximum payload of 150t it'd have a "payload factor" of 1.5.

So, bigger number is better.

Currently, every ship in the game has a Payload factor ranging between 0.2 (The DBX - heavy hull but small payload capacity) and 1.6 (surprisingly, the Hauler - light hull and decent payload capacity).

Even the magical Anaconda only comes in with a Payload Factor of 1.2 (400t hull and 468t of cargo capacity).

The dedicated freight ships in the game are fairly average in this regard.
T6: 0.7
T7: 0.7
T9: 0.6
Keelback: 0.5
T10: 0.4

If the Panther Clipper could carry 2,100t of cargo and had a hull-mass of 400t it'd have a Payload Factor of 5.25!
It'd be at least 3x more efficient than any other ship in the game and it'd be fully 7x more efficient than any cargo ship in the game.

Based on the stat's of other ships in the game, a Panther Clipper capable of hauling 2,100t of stuff should have a hull-mass of around 3000t which would mean it'd probably have a dry-weight of around 4000t or 6000t when fully-loaded.

Which does rather raise the interesting question of how fast it could move, and how far it could jump, using existing modules or what size of modules would be required to make it viable.

 

[Cmdr. Numa]

People get very weird about the Panther.
A model has existed since the Kickstarter showing it fitting on a landing pad and against an Anaconda.
But there is some sort of fantasy that it should be so big it can’t get into stations and should be an entirely new form of gameplay.
Even if that old model is not the Panther, If a Cutter fits with its wingspan then a Panther could while having a truck load more volume.

And while I’d love one, I’m not sure how they’d balance it to stop it being an I win button. The drawbacks are going to have to be speed and jump range .... so most people will go back to the Magiconda.
Or maybe they just let it be completely unbalanced and let everyone fly a Panther instead.

This is probably the main reason why it isn't in the game yet. Peoples' expectations are bordering on the absurd, so FD simply don't release it at all to not to disappoint all of them. Well, they do continuously disappoint people like me, who just want a lumbering freighter that finally dethrones the multirole Cutter as Omega trading ship. That just doesn't sit right. There have been multiple perfect times to introduce it. When the Thargoid attacks on stations started, the Panther would have been the perfect ship to haul the enormous amounts of cargo needed to repair a station. But no, it didn't appear. Next was the mining update, though it's probably not the best idea to use such a behemoth for deep core mining. Now the last straw of hope is spacelegs, with the Panther as biggest flyable ship showcasing the feature with it's massive interior. If FD really make it the fleet carrier, I'll be very disappointed.

 

[Stealthie]

If FD really make it the fleet carrier, I'll be very disappointed.

See, I wouldn't mind that.... with a couple of caveats.

I hope that, when they do arrive, carriers are more than just generic, erm, ship-carriers.
I hope that FDev make the effort to create a variety of different carriers with different strengths and weaknesses; an exploration carrier with a big jump-range but weak defences, a combat carrier with strong defences but a short jump-range, a trading-carrier with average defences and jump-range but a superior ability to carry cargo etc.

Not entirely sure what features would be compatible with carriers though.
For example, it'd be nice if a trade-carrier could actually carry cargo but I'm not sure how that'd work.
I'm not sure if it could be created in a way that'd allow players to store their own, personal, cargo aboard the carrier or whether, perhaps, it'd require some new kind of "mission" where you'd be completing your part of the "mission" by delivering cargo to the ship's store.
Alternatively, perhaps Commodities and the Market could be used as a way to manage a carrier's inventory?

With appropriate features in place, I think it'd be kind of cool if a squadron could buy a Panther Clipper, jump it to, say, a system with a VO hotspot, and then spend a week with members mining VO's while other players defend the carrier from the inevitable attacks (when/if it's located by NPCs or other players) and then jump it to a system where players could then offload and sell all the VO's and receive a payout proportional to the amount they contributed.

 

[aRJay]

Didn't you get to use cargo shuttles to load/unload your Panther Clipper at stations, so instead of a new version having SLFs it should have SLShuttles to transfer stuff with a a maximum range of 7.5 Km.

 

[Screemonster]

I wouldn't put any stock in the figures from FE2 as to its hull mass. Let's compare the ieagle (or eagle mk3) - FE2 gives it a hull mass of 8t and a maximum mass, fully laden and fitted, of 30t. In ED, the ieagle has a hull mass of 50 tons, and you can just about pare it down to 62 on a racing build - most builds capable of doing anything more than boosting at 932m/s will be considerably heavier.

 

[Dash]

I'm not really sure there's a good place for the Panther Clipper, especially with existing lore.

It's got to be monumental in size with an obscene amount of cargo space, and a stupidly tough hull. It has to be ludicrous in every respect:
* Nightmare to get through the letter box (although I'd love to see the introduction of the idea of anchoring a ship and shuttling in cargo, which could work at outposts too).
* A hull so stupidly tough, and shields pathetically weak (coz, you know, it's massive).
* Truly terrible manoeuvrability, horrible top-speed and so much drift you'd think you're running FA off.
* The jump range has to be pretty dire, when fully stocked. If you're going to be able to buy out a station of stock, then there needs to be the cost against just how long it'll take to move it.
* Lots of large hard-points, lots of them, but placed along the dorsal and ventral edges, with the cockpit/bridge at the front, making turrets the only feasible weapon option.

Whenever somebody turns up in one, you'd have to be left thinking "what were they thinking?". It can move truely epic amounts of commodities, but like freighters today, take a lot of planning in changing direction or docking. All other ships would run rings around it, but with such an epic hull mass, it would only find end-game ships a serious threat, anything else being mere gnats.

It would be fantastic for those wanting to do space-truck-simulator. And due to the silly cargo size, when empty, potentially a fantastic exploration ship, being able to jump long distances when empty and due to the insanely heavy hull, fairly well protected against gankers - all at the cost of being worse than an Anaconda for turning in super cruise.

Whatever it needs to offer traders what combatants get in end game ships. I think Vogon Constructor Fleet in the same sentence as Panther Clipper.

 

[Nadreck]

A lot of people seem to be projecting their own notions onto the Panther Clipper (though I have to say that a 400t hull mass is the strangest I've seen: 1400t or more, maybe).

The most plausible roles are: heavy freighter or heavy battleship. But how could either concept be introduced without making the T9 or the T10 obsolete immediately? I don't think Frontier will want to do that.

Nor will they want to make it a ship that's too big to fit on a Large pad. Historically, it wasn't. Nor can I imagine them creating a special support infrastructure for just this ship.

I did put in a suggestion for a "Pocket Carrier", a Large-pad dockable ship capable of carrying maybe three Small-pad ships, with a Small pad on its topside. The Panther Clipper might be the right size for that, but unfortunately the wrong shape: the models I've seen don't have a flat enough topside for a Small pad.

Rework the model a bit, and it might work as a Pocket Carrier. But if you can still beat the T9's cargo capacity by putting cargo racks in there, that's still a bit of a balance problem.

IIRC, there has been no recent indication that it will ever be introduced into ED, apart from some of our NPC copilots claiming to have flown one in the past. So perhaps it's an old ship that was made obsolete by the T9!

 

[Dillon Fallon]

I'm expecting something similar in height, length and width to a Cutter, just more like a box so you're taking up the whole landing pad. You'd still get it through the mail slot though (maybe hard to do, but definitely manageable).

For internals I'd predict something similar to 2 class 8s, 3 class 7s, 2 class 6s, 1 class 5 (military) and 2 class 4s.

For hardpoints, something like 4 large and 2 medium set to give the best possible turret coverage (forget using fixed). That's unless huge turrets are implemented with this ship.

I think unless the fleet carrier idea happens, anyone wanting something significantly bigger than a Cutter is going to be disappointed.

 

[Xani D]

As mentioned its 2100t in the original Frontier included all equipment (Including the drive). So I would think anything around 1000-1200tons maximum capacity (Unshielded) would be a good benchmark for it in ED. Have it loose out on some smaller slots as a result, this ship is all about bulk....

Also lets not forget that lore wise, in the days of Frontier/FFE, it was sold in the manual as a ship many people owned just to fit full of shield generators (Back then you could fit as many as you had room for) and a huge gun, to be an invincible flying toaster. So I think that needs reflecing in any modern variant, decent shields, and at least 1 huge hardpoint for a weapon of choice. Rest can be small or mediums for defensive turrets.

After that it just needs to be slow, have the turn rate of a garden shed, and a poor to average jump range. It doesent even have to have that of an amazing hull, but I think it should be average for its size.

There, thats the Panther Clipper. Nothing new needed.

 

[Screemonster]

Another interesting thing to note - if you switched to the external cam while docking the panther on autopilot, it actually didn't fit in the mailslot. It just sorta poked its nose in and you went to the elevator cutscene.

 

[Dillon Fallon]

... decent shields, and at least 1 huge hardpoint for a weapon of choice. Rest can be small or mediums for defensive turrets...

This would make sense for a Zorgon ship actually.

 

[Noobilite]

Somebody's living in a fantasy world.

A ship with 3x the payload of a T9 or Cutter better not have a hull that's half (or, in the case of the Cutter, a third) of the mass. [where is it]


Let's take a look at this a bit more closely though.

If a ship weighs, say, 100t and has a maximum payload of 100t of cargo, we could call that a "payload factor" of 1 (cargo mass / hull mass).
If a ship weighs 100t and has a maximum payload of 50t of cargo, it'd have a "payload factor" of 0.5.
If it weighs 100t and has a maximum payload of 150t it'd have a "payload factor" of 1.5.

So, bigger number is better.

Currently, every ship in the game has a Payload factor ranging between 0.2 (The DBX - heavy hull but small payload capacity) and 1.6 (surprisingly, the Hauler - light hull and decent payload capacity).

Even the magical Anaconda only comes in with a Payload Factor of 1.2 (400t hull and 468t of cargo capacity).

The dedicated freight ships in the game are fairly average in this regard.
T6: 0.7
T7: 0.7
T9: 0.6
Keelback: 0.5
T10: 0.4

If the Panther Clipper could carry 2,100t of cargo and had a hull-mass of 400t it'd have a Payload Factor of 5.25!
It'd be at least 3x more efficient than any other ship in the game and it'd be fully 7x more efficient than any cargo ship in the game.

Based on the stat's of other ships in the game, a Panther Clipper capable of hauling 2,100t of stuff should have a hull-mass of around 3000t which would mean it'd probably have a dry-weight of around 4000t or 6000t when fully-loaded.

Which does rather raise the interesting question of how fast it could move, and how far it could jump, using existing modules or what size of modules would be required to make it viable.

Except that for it to fly with the given stats in the video it would be impossible at any weight. At 2500 max tonnage for cargo and hull it can only fly a max of 18 ly no matter the combo of hull/cargo. Just like the cutter basically. The set weights are pretty much there without adding larger class fsd past 8. And as I went over it's not OP at 1850 tons cargo. But that would require a class 9 optional internal slot added to get that tonnage. But, that is the max given the current max class of 8 on ships. So, it fits for current tech. Anything else would just be swapping out cargo for hull mass. My examples of 1850 are just the top end. It would have to be close to this in practice or it can't fly with current stuff. And to remove the class 9 all they have to do is add hull mass and lower it to around 1300-1400 cargo. So say it has something like 800-900 hull mass. This does remove it's alt function as explorere it's multi role though. It would need to be closer to 400 to be a good explorer(alt anaconda level). 900 would only let it be like the current beluga and series ships with a max of 60ly for exploration purposes. 400 hull mass allows it to get up to 78ly max jump range. So, it's a matter of what minimums they allow for lightly setups ships. It will be the same even if they lightly adjust the stuff stated in the video. It's basically the cutter and already max equipment.

It's a matter of how much they want to see, "FLYYIINNNG TOOASSTERRRSSS INNN SSPPAAACCEEE!!!!!11!"

Ideally a cargo ship has low base mass to max out cargo. The entire point of a cargo ship is to max out cargo. So, for them to make it so and keep it's 400 hull weight is not unreasonable. It would not be OP from existing ships. It would just be top of the line end game in some regards. Although probably slow and unmaveuverable as crap.

Although the more cargo it has the more it can be excused to have a high cost to balance. If it can carry 1850 cargo max then you can easily afford to make this thing cust 100's of millions to billions base cost with a very high minimum rebuy. It would basically be pirate heaven.

Lets say the hull cost upwards of 500 million.

The oddity is that for exploration you are going to want a tier 9 fuel scoop for it. So, if it gets good hull mass it will either be a bit worse on the fuel scoop side or it will get a new tier of optional internal added to the game. At least if it's to have any use as an explorer. Though that would be a good downside I guess compared to the anaconda. But then it would probably have higher hull mass and not be as good of an explorer.

So, it would probably have a new class 9 internal optional and 400 hull mass or upwards of 900 hull mass and only need class 8. They could add new rarer vendors for class 9 stuff though.

 

[willisit]

It's also quite possible the Clipper could appear and be nothing AT ALL like the ship from F2... in name only, perhaps?

Does anyone really want a ship with 1000+ tons that can't move, dock or be of much use outside of "Solo"?

I think it could have its place; but consider that nearly every picture of it in F2 is on an atmospheric planet in a large city - yeah, I can see it - but not in the game as it is now. Work to be done, that may never be. Plus Frontier said they couldn't come up with a role for it, and I've no reason to think the game has changed significantly enough to give it one. Yet.

 

[Noobilite]

I thought it was a cargo ship be design.

They should give it one new XL weapon slot and some lower ones and then either class 9 cargo slots..

Maybe if they make a new type of cargo restricted class 9 slot. Add two of them and let it only use things like fuel/cargo/fuelscoop or other fundamentally weightless parts.

It would be cool for it to have a new xl sized 5x plasma cannon. Or a new type of weapon. Maybe it could be a predecessor to new larger weapons for the new fleet ships.

A big one shot weapon would be good balance for it as it couldn't turn easily. Especially with access to rarer weapons no other L or smaller ship can get access too. That would be it's selling point. and then the only other ships to get access would be the new fleet/multirole ships. Maybe we will get it when those come out.

I'm assuming one shot is something with around 250 damage a hit or something.

I guess they could also give it around 900 hull mass, a class 8 fsd, and 1400 cargo max. https://forums.frontier.co.uk/showthread.php/373106-8A-FSD-Huh

It would be nice if it gets some new class of weapon. That would make it unique if it's the only normal sized ship that can fire such a weapon. Literally gun only used on larger naval vessels and new multi role. Does the current set of navy capitol ships have a higher class weapon on them? What type of damage do they do?

https://www.reddit.com/r/EliteDange...hat_are_the_weapons_on_imperial_capital_ship/

And sadly they were nerfed. They should un nerf them. Especially if player capitol ships can fight them later. Give a weapon of this size to the panther! ><

And I repeat. More than 8 utility slots! 8d Give it some shields!

 

[Nadreck]

It's also quite possible the Clipper could appear and be nothing AT ALL like the ship from F2... in name only, perhaps?
.

Prediction: it will be a Medium-sized combat ship.