We have three classes of fighters from a much more recent update, each with multiple subvariants, but for rolling about on planetary surfaces, it's the Scarab and the Scarab only.
This is kind of baffling to me. About the only reason it would make sense from a meta standpoint is if there was a monopoly of some kind on SRV manufacture, and there's NWIH. If it was a Federation monopoly, the Empire would ignore it, if it was an Empire monopoly, the Federation would ignore it, if it was an Alliance monopoly, they'd BOTH ignore it.
There should be more classes of SRV in this game.
At the very least I could see the following
A SRV with higher speed at the cost of shields, armor and weapons
A SRV with lower speed, but more torque in the engine and comparable to the Scarab in other ways
A SRV with lower speed but more powerful shields, armor and weapons
A SRV with lower speed, comparable shields, armor and weapons, but a 6 ton cargo capacity.
A SRV with lower speed, comparable shields, very limited armor and weapons, and a greatly increased thruster capacity.
Finally, the big one:
A SRV designed for low gravy envornments and specifically restributes its weight to be bottom-heavy and stable so you don't go head over heels every time you go over a rock on a .0006 radius moon.
While you could do all this with Engineering upgrades, that doesn't really address the meta problem. More than one company should be competing to provide SRV solutions, and should be trying to fill niches. The Scarab is a perfect jack of all trades SRV, but customers would want specialized SRVs too and there's no plausible reason alternatives that diversified into more specialized fields such as mining, high grav performance, low grav performance, thrusters, and armaments, wouldn't be developed since there's a clear market for such things.
And at the end of the day, it's just a g dune buggy with thrusters, life support and an airtight driver's compartment. Don't tell me competitors wouldn't get in on that when we have a competitive market for starships, a thing much more labor and materials intensive to design, assemble and service.
There should pragmatically be about 4,000 more Ship types too, but that's forgivable because making stuff under license is always cheaper than designing it yourself. But for SRVs, the financial barrier to enter the market is so low that NWIH there should only be one model on the market right now.
Imagine someone doing a surface landing with a 2 bay vehicle hangar. He could get one Scarab speced for stability and thruster performance for low G worlds, and one specced for durability and torque for high G worlds. Or swap one out and have a base raider. Or whatever. Or a cargo hauler and a tank. Or whatever. It would mean an actual use for that second SRV rather than just backup after the first one gets blown up, and would make multibay hangars much more useful.
Just food for thought. Personally I've always thought it was weird that Horizons didn't release with multiple SRV classes. It just doesn't fit the meta of such a massively diverse universe.
This is kind of baffling to me. About the only reason it would make sense from a meta standpoint is if there was a monopoly of some kind on SRV manufacture, and there's NWIH. If it was a Federation monopoly, the Empire would ignore it, if it was an Empire monopoly, the Federation would ignore it, if it was an Alliance monopoly, they'd BOTH ignore it.
There should be more classes of SRV in this game.
At the very least I could see the following
A SRV with higher speed at the cost of shields, armor and weapons
A SRV with lower speed, but more torque in the engine and comparable to the Scarab in other ways
A SRV with lower speed but more powerful shields, armor and weapons
A SRV with lower speed, comparable shields, armor and weapons, but a 6 ton cargo capacity.
A SRV with lower speed, comparable shields, very limited armor and weapons, and a greatly increased thruster capacity.
Finally, the big one:
A SRV designed for low gravy envornments and specifically restributes its weight to be bottom-heavy and stable so you don't go head over heels every time you go over a rock on a .0006 radius moon.
While you could do all this with Engineering upgrades, that doesn't really address the meta problem. More than one company should be competing to provide SRV solutions, and should be trying to fill niches. The Scarab is a perfect jack of all trades SRV, but customers would want specialized SRVs too and there's no plausible reason alternatives that diversified into more specialized fields such as mining, high grav performance, low grav performance, thrusters, and armaments, wouldn't be developed since there's a clear market for such things.
And at the end of the day, it's just a g dune buggy with thrusters, life support and an airtight driver's compartment. Don't tell me competitors wouldn't get in on that when we have a competitive market for starships, a thing much more labor and materials intensive to design, assemble and service.
There should pragmatically be about 4,000 more Ship types too, but that's forgivable because making stuff under license is always cheaper than designing it yourself. But for SRVs, the financial barrier to enter the market is so low that NWIH there should only be one model on the market right now.
Imagine someone doing a surface landing with a 2 bay vehicle hangar. He could get one Scarab speced for stability and thruster performance for low G worlds, and one specced for durability and torque for high G worlds. Or swap one out and have a base raider. Or whatever. Or a cargo hauler and a tank. Or whatever. It would mean an actual use for that second SRV rather than just backup after the first one gets blown up, and would make multibay hangars much more useful.
Just food for thought. Personally I've always thought it was weird that Horizons didn't release with multiple SRV classes. It just doesn't fit the meta of such a massively diverse universe.
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