Carrier Jump times and old Elite ships...

[Lord Baron Von Vaderham]

I've been trying to get my carrier back from Colonia since before Trailblazers dropped. Now that I'm stuck in space, I took some time to dig into old Elite lore and started finding all kinds of ships. A few of them caught my attention and, having nothing better to do, I decided to try and scrap together a Mk. 2 concept for the Gupta Industrial Corporation "Lion" from Frontier Elite II. Apparently it was a "small medium" transportation ship known for having bad thrusters. For some reason I got it in my head that this thing was a "Super Hauler" and also recalled a reviewer somewhere calling the Adder a Hauler with a child safe rubber parts kit.

I tried to add some color to it but Fusion 360 was being a piece of junk as usual.

I largely ignored the underside as I had no idea how big anything was, i.e. the cargo hatch. Then again, given the staircase on the Imperial Cutter, I doubt that FDev knows either.

The large rectangular hunks on the top would open and close with heat to expose the radiator. There are two small weapon mounts, one on each side.

I've got more images but I don't want to press the file size limits.

What do you all think?

 

[shadowhand]

I remember the Lion from FE2 and FFE, and yeah that sorta looks the part.

Both the Lion, and the Puma had a top turret that could hit the ship it was mounted on if you weren't careful. So my first (and only...) Lion wound up in a fight against pirates. I fired the turret and blew up my own ship

10/10, would explode again. But also it was slow, and while on paper it was slightly better than a Tiger Trader, it was just so much worse in performance.

Not that I'd be caught flying a Tiger either, I was not really a fan of bulk trading, and if I really had to do it, I'd have gone for an Imperial Trader instead. It was much faster, had decent jump range, and most importantly didn't have a turret that might cause an instant game over when fired.