I played the living crap out of the game in the early days. Got bored and quit. One of the things that really disappointed me back then was how the Alliance players were treated like second class citizens basically. Just ignored and left out to dry. And it seems that has continued through all these years.
I'm here looking through ships to buy and there's no Alliance Fighter for my Fighter Bay and no Alliance equivalent to the Federal Corvette or Imperial Cutter. It's just lame. The next ships released should be those.
Yeah the Type 10 Defender is so ugly to me that I can't bring myself to buy it. And I don't consider it equivalent to the Cutter/Corvette because those ships were specifically designed from the ground up to be big military ships for their nation. The Type 10 Defender is just a modification of a freighter basically.
I want to see an actual big military ship designed from the ground up for the Alliance. That isn't ugly.
Federation
Medium: Federal Dropship
Medium: Federal Assault Ship
Medium: Federal Gunship
Large: Federal Corvette
Alliance:
All 3 ships are medium
So Empire have no medium ships
Federation have no small ships
Alliance have neither small or large ships
Since core dynamics builds the Federations ships, then we could attribute Eagle and Vulture to the the Federation, giving them two small ships.
Gutamaya do not produce any other ships, so Empire have no extra ships to call too.
But Alliance uses Lakon as their ship builder, so they could count of these aswell then...
Small: Diamonback Scout/Explorer
Medium: Asp Scout/Explorer, Keelback and Type 6
Large: Type 7, Type 9 and Type 10
So that give the Alliance the "most" ships...
We have also ships that does not make sense....
Imperial Clipper appears to be medium ship, just that it does not fit a medium pad, to wide, just like Type-7 is to tall to fit in a Medium hangar.... These are some really strange "mistakes" when it comes to ship design....
Taking inspiration from Noobilite, I thought i would post a ship Idea that i have had bouncing around my skull for a little bit. I want a named Alliance large ship that can compete with the other Big 3, and make it a proper Big 4. I love the type 10, but it simply isnt on par with the others...
Federation
Medium: Federal Dropship
Medium: Federal Assault Ship
Medium: Federal Gunship
Large: Federal Corvette
Alliance:
All 3 ships are medium
So Empire have no medium ships
Federation have no small ships
Alliance have neither small or large ships
Since core dynamics builds the Federations ships, then we could attribute Eagle and Vulture to the the Federation, giving them two small ships.
Gutamaya do not produce any other ships, so Empire have no extra ships to call too.
But Alliance uses Lakon as their ship builder, so they could count of these aswell then...
Small: Diamonback Scout/Explorer
Medium: Asp Scout/Explorer, Keelback and Type 6
Large: Type 7, Type 9 and Type 10
So that give the Alliance the "most" ships...
We have also ships that does not make sense....
Imperial Clipper appears to be medium ship, just that it does not fit a medium pad, to wide, just like Type-7 is to tall to fit in a Medium hangar.... These are some really strange "mistakes" when it comes to ship design....
Don't forget to add the Eagle and Vulture to the list of Federation ships- Core Dynamics being as Federal as Gutamaya are Imperial here. As Imperial ships are more about size and presence, in their doctrine, a medium ship would probably be seen as lesser than the Clipper, so would sit in a fairly useless space between it and the Courier. Something like another Asp Scout probably.
The T-10 however was never built as a flagship military ship for the Alliance in the same way as The Corvette and Cutter are. This was basically a brick to throw at the Thargoids. So it's fair comment that we get an Alliance equivalent.
Hmm. The taipan is built by Faulcon deLacy. According to lore, that company is based on Reorte. Which belongs to the Alliance. It very much IS the alliance SFL, it only follows alliance tradition to sell their military equipment to anybody with enough credits to spare, without any background checks or requiring any service or loyality.
Whether you like them or not, denying their existence won't make them go away.
The Alliance doesn't have a centralised navy, so they make do with whatever warships the individual members can provide, hence the lack of rank-locking. And any new Alliance big warship would have to be balanced against the T10 and at least a little inferior to the Corvette and Cutter overall.
If you don't like the T10, use an Anaconda. That's a perfectly adequate "Alliance battleship", and it fits with how the Alliance do things.
FDev could introduce the Turner class as a large Alliance ship. It was in Frontier: First Encounters and was called Argent's Quest, built by Argent Aerodynamics Amalgamated Inc.
No it wouldnt have to be. A decentralized navy doesnt mean that they have no power to requisition a ship build. They have 3 unique ships in production for the alliance navy. They SHOULD come out with a proper large ship. It should compete with the cutter and corvette, and in no way needs to be balanced against the T10.
The T10 was rolled out as an anti-thargoid ship, not as a competitor to the cutter/vette/conda-and it clearly isnt.
The person you quoted specifically mentioned Eagle and Vulture as possibly counted toward Fed ships. You'd know that if you had, you know... read the post you were "correcting".
The person you quoted specifically mentioned Eagle and Vulture as possibly counted toward Fed ships. You'd know that if you had, you know... read the post you were "correcting".
No, the Taipan is built by Faulcon DeLacy without any input from the superpowers and is therefore the independent fighter. The Alliance might use the Taipan, but it is not the dedicated Alliance fighter. The same thing can be said about any of the non-faction ships that are used by the Federation and Empire in combat zones (including Cobras, Vipers, Asps, etc...), the insert superpower might use these ships but they were not built for the express purpose of being used by said superpower's navy.
Yes and no. Yes, the Alliance Navy collaborated with Lakon when designing the Type-10 as a stop gap measure to fight Thargoids, however to my knowledge the Alliance did not commission the design of the Type-10 as anything other than an anti-Thargoid platform. The Alliance does not have their own purpose-built warship (or similar) to counter the Cutter or Corvette (or the Anaconda for that matter).
The Alliance doesn't have a centralised navy, so they make do with whatever warships the individual members can provide, hence the lack of rank-locking.
I'd say it's more of a case of "buying ships that meet their requirements, and commissioning new ship designs if none of ships available on the market meet the requirements". Let's look at the Chieftain family as an example of this:
The Alliance determined that they needed a ship like the FAS, but the best candidate (the FAS) wasn't available to them because they weren't part of the Federation. The Alliance talked to Lakon about designing a ship that had similar capabilities and Lakon came up with the Chieftain
A few months later the Alliance determined that they also needed a ship that had capabilities similar to the FGS and FDS. Since neither the FDS or FGS were available to them, the Alliance contacted Lakon who then modified the Chieftain hull to get the Challenger
Another few months pass and the Alliance realizes that they need something that can carry SLFs while being more capable than a Keelback and less expensive than a Krait II. Since the only existing ship that met these requirements (FGS) was not available to them, the Alliance forwarded the requirements to Lakon who came up with the Crusader
Any new Alliance big warship would have to be balanced against the T10 and at least a little inferior to the Corvette and Cutter overall.
If you don't like the T10, use an Anaconda. That's a perfectly adequate "Alliance battleship", and it fits with how the Alliance do things.
The first statement does not make any sense. Also, while the Alliance does use the Anaconda, the Anaconda might not necessarily meet all of requirements that the Alliance has.
There are 3 reasons for the Alliance to buy a new type of large ship:
The new design similar to the Type-10 and/or Anaconda, but more suited to the Alliance's requirements (doctrine, potential threats, maintenance requirements, etc...). This new design would be seen as an improvement and eventually replace the majority of the Type-10s and/or Anacondas in service with the Alliance.
The new design has capabilities that the Type-10 and Anaconda do not have (e.g. something that is better at combat than bother the Type-10 and Anaconda). This new design would need to have sufficiently different capabilities than the Anaconda and Type-10 to justify the operation of a 3rd type of large ship, and would likely serve alongside both the Anaconda and Type-10.
A new design that can be built quickly and cheaply to replace ships that were lost during a conflict (i.e. the Alliance needs more large ships and they need them NOW). This new design would need to be less expensive than the existing designs and/or able to be produced in larger numbers on a short time scale.
None of these possibilities (except maybe the first one) require the new design to be comparable to the Type-10 as opposed to being comparable to the Cutter or Corvette. Given that the new design would ostensibly be built by Lakon and that Lakon is in the business of making money, Lakon is not going to bother designing a ship that the Alliance is not going to buy as that would be an exercise in wasting money. Additionally since Lakon already sells Type-10s to the Alliance, it is unlikely that Lakon would want to lose all of the sales they are making to the Alliance by designing a ship that is too similar to the Type-10 and would end up replacing all future orders for the Type-10. As such, Lakon would likely design one of 3 types of ships:
A ship that has similar or slightly improved capabilities to the Anaconda, but makes use of components that are common to other ships in service with the Alliance.
A ship that has significantly different capabilities to both the Anaconda and Type-10 (e.g. something that can fight a Corvette without getting curb-stomped)
A ship that is cheaper and less capable than the Type-10, but can be produced even faster (this would probably end up being a conversion of the Type-7)
Option 3 is probably the least likely of the bunch (and also the most boring imo) as this was this was the Type-10's original shtick (can be built quickly, cheaply, and in large numbers) and Lakon would quite literally need to out-Type-10 the Type-10. This leaves options 1 and 2 as being the most likely and most viable options (they're also the most profitable options for Lakon). Lakon could quite conceivably go with options 1 and 2 at the same time by designing a ship that has better combat capabilities than the Anaconda, uses components from the Chieftain family (and possibly the Type-10), and trims out some of the unneeded capabilities of the Anaconda (the Alliance doesn't need 60+ ly of jump range and a dozen universal optional internal slots when they're focused on local conflicts and fill their ships with heavy composite bulkheads).
I actually posted a ship possible ship design in CMDR Big Mike's Alliance Cruiser thread that goes with options 1 and 2 (I have given the concept of a proper Alliance warship to rival the big 3 quite a bit of thought) which I have lovingly named the Alliance Centurion. If nothing else, the design proves that it is possible to make a new ship for the Alliance without balancing it against the Type-10:
The idea behind this design was to make a ship that could compete with the Corvette in a one-on-one engagement, but still maintain some of the Anaconda's flexibility. The end result seems to be something is better optimized for combat than an Anaconda, but also slightly more versatile than a Corvette. It would likely excel in both combat and multi-role functions, but it would be outshone by the Corvette and Anaconda in their respective roles.
As for OP's desire for an Alliance-specific SLF, the concept art for the Hunter (I'll see if I can find it) looks like it fits the overall aesthetic of the Alliance designs, but I'm not sure how it's characteristics could be made sufficiently different from the other SLFs that are available to warrant it being added to the game.
As for OP's desire for an Alliance-specific SLF, the concept art for the Hunter (I'll see if I can find it) looks like it fits the overall aesthetic of the Alliance designs, but I'm not sure how it's characteristics could be made sufficiently different from the other SLFs that are available to warrant it being added to the game.
