Are all the ships depicted in the in-game?

Oscar Mike

Oscar Mike
Is the ships that appears in the in-game the only ships in the ED Universe?

I've never seen a Navy frigate, destroyer, or cruiser, do they exist?

Is there a myriad of manufacturers and ships class off the screen like Star Wars?
 
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Defacto

Defacto
Ships that are flyable for us commanders are generally introduced as if they are entering production - they were not present previously because they didn't exist yet, and when they became available to us commanders they also entered the spaceship market in-universe.
This was also true for the fleet carriers.

However AFAIK things like megaships did not get 'invented', they were added to the game and have always 'existed', a retcon addition. And of course, previous games also had megaships. There is no reason to suppose that ships such as cruisers could not be added in such a way, if FD decided to implement them.
In fact, I believe that this ship class is even mentioned in 'Early game designs', but I can't find it right now. Have a look for yourself maybe:

Community Event / Creation - (PDF)Elite Dangerous. The Beginning. Early Game Designs. 2014

Hey there! I was browsing all available information about the game design and mechanics just to know what to expect and found out many interesting things, so i have decided to put it all together. This might be very interesting read after 5-7 years to see how the initial design ideas evolved...
forums.frontier.co.uk forums.frontier.co.uk
 

CMDR Yates

C
It's safe to assume the ships we see currently are not the only ships that exist in the Elite galaxy.

In the game's text there are casual references to a heavily-armoured "military Asp MK 2", specially-adapted Anacondas that can launch Sidewinders, and the Panther Clipper (which admittedly, has been "coming soon" for about 7 years).

According to GalNet, Narwhal Liners were in service until at least 3302, when the remaining Narwhal serving as Spaceship One was retired, but it's reasonable to suspect that privately-owned Narwhals may still be in service somewhere. GalNet articles have also described huge automated mining robots which, while not ships per se, are capable of flying and navigating independently, and we would realistically expect to encounter these from time-to-time as part of the "ship" traffic around extraction sites, etc.

And while we're looking beyond ships in the classical sense, presumably something more substantial than a limpet is involved in building and maintaining the exterior of a station, constructing megaships, and so forth. There are official images, used in-game (GalNet, again), that depict Exopods active around capital ship docks, so these proposed mini-ships are supposed to exist in the galaxy and this is seemingly just one of their uses.

Of slightly more questionable validity are ships mentioned in official ED fiction including the Merlin and Krait Lightspeeder. These may or may not be considered "canon", but either way it highlights the probability that these and other older, out-of-production ships would likely still exist in limited numbers among collectors and in backwater systems... excepting some headcanon-y dragnet recall of every obsolete ship in every star system in the galaxy... which... why?

There's also no reason that the other ships hinted at in-and-around the game are the only ones that might be imagined to exist without us encountering them.
 

CMDR Yates

C
Oh, and an "orbital cargo shuttle" is also mentioned in the GalNet article about the mining robot.

This is ambiguous as it could just mean a Hauler or something serving in the role of surface-to-orbit transporter (in the sense that an Apex Adder is sometimes just referred to as a "shuttle"), but it could also hint at an entire unseen class of vessel not designed for hyperspace travel, but for short hops with a system only. Such ships did exist in previous Elite games.

I might be wrong, but I think this isn't the only time such a vessel has been indicated on Galnet, either.
 

Gibbonici

Gibbonici
I've always assumed that there are loads of other ships in service out there, but we only get the ones we get because we effectively buy them (at a massive discount) via the Pilot's Federation.

This doesn't really explain why we don't see these other ships out there, unless for some reason they don't show up on our Pilot's Fed issued sensors. Maybe that's part of the agreements the Pilot's Fed has with all the various powers to operate freely in all jurisdictions. We can go where we want, take whatever dubious contracts come the Pilot Fed's way, but we're kept away from civilian shipping so as not to interfere (too directly) with local civic interests.
 

Sapyx

Sapyx
Other ships mentioned in Galnet, pilot resumes, and elsewhere, which have never been seen:

O'Brien Class Federal battlecruisers.

The giant invisible megaships the ship-and-module transport company uses to ship your stuff from one end of the galaxy to the other.
 

Machnette

Machnette
I have no idea how accurate this is, but I always had the impression that the actual Navies, not us auxillaries in the Pilots Federation, had been mobilising for centuries now. I can only speculate what such vast fleets would look like and their composition. What we do know though is that a FSD is not a requirement of a Navy vessel. (Cruisers appear to hyperdrive into conflict zones, the old fashioned way.)
This leads me to believe that much of the fleets are composed of just as much of heavily retrofitted antique hulls, as fresh off the galactic production line modern ships. If it can still fire a nuke, then it's good enough for the front lines, even if it's not something that a Pilots Federation member would ever get any use out of in the modern age. I'm envisioning hundred of billions of ships on both sides, where tonnage has be preserved, lest the deterrance fall and the Cold War turns hot.
Damn shame that all of this is only in my head lol
 
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