Class 4 (huge) vessels as independent playable vessel thread.
- Thread starter Azmuth Divarchchron
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- fleet carrier
The drone thing has been suggested before but no clue if frontier thinks it would be a good idea or not
Oh, I'm only suggesting something cosmetic. You'd dock the carrier near the station, or a few LS away from the station, and "magical drones" and close-range communication bandwidth allow you to access station services (bounties, missions, search and rescue, etc) and station items.
You're nearly on top of the station anyway, why NOT allow people to access it? Because docking through a slit is fun engaging gameplay? It's not. The station designs are utterly moronic, as witnessed by all the NPC ships that fail at life and get shot up inside stations after a while. It's just grandfathered in because it looked pretty in the early games, and it somehow wasn't terrible back then.
Huh, this went from cosmetic to a rant about docking slits being stupid.
I think you are reading too much into it... "Support" vessels could mean anything and not necessarily what you are seemingly assuming they will be.
As for your proposed Huge ships - not convinced they will add much of value but if we are talking ships between a Carrier and say a Cutter then I do not really have a problem with the overall idea... However, until we have precise details about Fleet Carriers and how they will work as a reference point, discussing the potential balance and implications of the proposed intermediate ships is a bit moot.
I'd have to say no to player operable huge size ships, for a few reasons.
Firstly, what would they add? It's quite a lot of dev work to add in another landing pad type and the associated stations, yet as far as I can see all they would do is add power creep into the game.
Secondly, there's plenty of headroom still available on the large landing pads. People mention the Boa, which was roughly twice the capacity of the Anaconda in FFE, as requiring a huge landing pad; however, a ship the shape of an Anaconda that is scaled up to fit the size of a large landing pad would have roughly twice the internal volume of an Anaconda. More boxy ships (such as the Panther Clipper) would be able to fit even more onto a large landing pad. There's no point adding another size of ship when there's literally plenty of space on the large landing pad.
Thirdly, currently the economy of the game is completely borked, with credit earning completely out of whack with what things actually cost. To make matters worse, there's very little ongoing costs to running expensive ships, so in the end we are stuck with the biggest and highest-performing ships being basically the default option for those that want to get work done rather than being situational.
However, that all being said, I would very much be in favour of NPC only huge ships. They would bridge the massive gap between the little escorts/freighters that fly about and the megaships/capitals. If they were made to be more like an oversized regular ship, utilising standard modules (possibly multiples of them, such as different weapon batteries using separate distributors) and weapons, they would also be able to dip into the existing loadout variety without FD having to create vast numbers of specialised weapons and modules for them.
Firstly, what would they add? It's quite a lot of dev work to add in another landing pad type and the associated stations, yet as far as I can see all they would do is add power creep into the game.
Secondly, there's plenty of headroom still available on the large landing pads. People mention the Boa, which was roughly twice the capacity of the Anaconda in FFE, as requiring a huge landing pad; however, a ship the shape of an Anaconda that is scaled up to fit the size of a large landing pad would have roughly twice the internal volume of an Anaconda. More boxy ships (such as the Panther Clipper) would be able to fit even more onto a large landing pad. There's no point adding another size of ship when there's literally plenty of space on the large landing pad.
Thirdly, currently the economy of the game is completely borked, with credit earning completely out of whack with what things actually cost. To make matters worse, there's very little ongoing costs to running expensive ships, so in the end we are stuck with the biggest and highest-performing ships being basically the default option for those that want to get work done rather than being situational.
However, that all being said, I would very much be in favour of NPC only huge ships. They would bridge the massive gap between the little escorts/freighters that fly about and the megaships/capitals. If they were made to be more like an oversized regular ship, utilising standard modules (possibly multiples of them, such as different weapon batteries using separate distributors) and weapons, they would also be able to dip into the existing loadout variety without FD having to create vast numbers of specialised weapons and modules for them.
I agree that there are exploits that allow excessive credit income but I would not call the biggest and highest performing ships the default option for any given activity. I have at least one of every ship and there are advantages and disadvantages to using each of them.
There are meta builds that promote specific ships but just relying on the publicised metas just shows a lack of originality and a true lack of understanding ship balance in ED as a whole.
There's a couple of exceptions (notably the FDL), but generally speaking you want to use the largest and most expensive ship you have if you want sheer performance. Yes, many people enjoy flying different ship types, but when it comes down to end results there's at most half a dozen truly viable ships. If you are doing any trade/courier work, you use a Cutter or T9, unless it is to an outpost in which case you bring out the trusty Python. Sure, you could use a T7 or AspX, but that's a matter of personal preference superseding actual effectiveness. Similarly, combat generally sees the FDL, Corvette or Cutter coming into play; many people do indeed enjoy the little fighters or swear by their T10s, but if it came down to credits/hour in a CZ or competitive PvP to maximise performance then we would see the majority of ships be taken out in the qualifying stages.
False IME (sheer "spreedsheet" performance is not the ONLY factor to consider to select any given ship) - there are many good reasons for not using some of the larger craft (High-G landings, hard-point positioning, and various balancing factors) in various circumstances. There are really only a handful (or less) of the smaller craft that are arguably pointless once you have certain other ships.
Overall, there is no good reason to think that the suggested Huge/XL pad/dock craft would not be appropriately balanced.
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