The burning question is:
How many shipping ships could a shipping ship shipping ship ship if a shipping ship shipping ship could ship shipping ships?
[hypothetical] your specs for a bulk ship transporter.
- Thread starter Flin
- Start date
The burning question is:
How many shipping ships could a shipping ship shipping ship ship if a shipping ship shipping ship could ship shipping ships?
I was trying to load that image and the forum wouldn't let me. I thank you sir
to ship ships or to be photoshipped, that's the question!
They do actually have these shipping ship shipping ships to move bulk container ships around en masse... They're just mental.
i've a hard time finding economic sense to those colossal freighters. maybe in military or big mining operations, and only if they have a truly spectacular range. say, such a thing could be spooling up its jump drive whole day but then get in minutes to any point in the galaxy, maybe even instantly.
without extreme range, downsizing i think makes a lot more sense. for transferring ships for individual customers you don't need freighters at all, just a network of willing pilots. elite 'uber'! for transferring damaged or disabled ships any 'truck' with a regular jump drive will do.
of course in any case an escort would be in needed. those extremely long range freighters wouldn't probably need one at all except when idle, and that could well be stations or a small local fleet if need be.
without extreme range, downsizing i think makes a lot more sense. for transferring ships for individual customers you don't need freighters at all, just a network of willing pilots. elite 'uber'! for transferring damaged or disabled ships any 'truck' with a regular jump drive will do.
of course in any case an escort would be in needed. those extremely long range freighters wouldn't probably need one at all except when idle, and that could well be stations or a small local fleet if need be.
Oh my God... It's full of Orcas.
That's not really a ship, it's a dry-dock for repairing damaged ships - http://www.shipschematics.net/startrek/federation_data.php?filter=DockStation - everything you never wanted to know.
Though I wouldn't mind seeing something like this scattered throughout "the void" for emergency repair/refuel needs.
As for an actual hauler craft for ferrying about our far-strung fleets... I'm thinking either repurposed capital ships, or a capital-ship sized Type-7.
But then why create a carrier when we can simply create NPC Valets to fly our ships out to where we want them, and even create player Valet missions and have some fun with this?
It's also important to note that those are riverboats, even though they look like giant ocean oil tankers (some people might mistake them for those)
It was able to mount a 900 ton plasma accelerator and several hundred shield generators. A 900 ton plasma accelerator would be a size 10 weapon mount, holding weapons up to 1024 tons. A weapon as big as the ED Anaconda.
Panther Clipper was a big ship. Heck I miss the Boa, which was twice as big as the Anaconda.
But here's a couple more "bulk freighter" ideas:
Space Dredgers from the old elite games.
Maybe a place to dock and buy black market ships and equipment? Want a Imperial Clipper but don't want to grind for imp rank? Buy a (STOLEN) one from a dredger, avoid imperial navy ship scans or else you become permanently wanted in imperial space and have a mission added to pay a "fine" equivalent to the cost of the ship or have to do a 3-6 mission chain successfully to remove the (STOLEN) ship tag.
Also how about mobile refineries in asteroid fields? Always liked X3's aptly named "Mobile Mining Base Ship".
Think of it as a big mobile storage container/refinery/large ship hangar that can be summoned to the player's location like how a SRV can summon the player's ship. Player mines an asteroid, summons the MMBS, docks and unloads, restocks on limpets and then goes back to mining.
Well I am sure that this whole ship transport thing had been hashed out already but I think of it this way.
Having on demand ship transports for anywhere in the galaxy is a convenience that makes little sense for immersion purposes.
What they should have done is set up key systems around the galaxy and these transports would visit them on a schedule. Ships can be picked up and dropped off at these stations for transport.
To make it to surrounding stations, for say, if you have a ship 30 ly away you want to get to one of these hub locations, I would like to see being able to hitch a ride as a passenger to that station. This could be by npc or player.
Those hub stations can offer special missions like escorts for the freighter. Not that failing the mission will be a loss to players ships but perhaps the more successful escorts maintain timelines while failures can delay the shipment. Like an ongoing community goal.
It will occasionally get attacked by large pirate fleets.
I don't want to complicate things for the sake of "immersion", but I think it would add something to the universe and add functionality to multi passenger ships, and some life to ship transports
Having on demand ship transports for anywhere in the galaxy is a convenience that makes little sense for immersion purposes.
What they should have done is set up key systems around the galaxy and these transports would visit them on a schedule. Ships can be picked up and dropped off at these stations for transport.
To make it to surrounding stations, for say, if you have a ship 30 ly away you want to get to one of these hub locations, I would like to see being able to hitch a ride as a passenger to that station. This could be by npc or player.
Those hub stations can offer special missions like escorts for the freighter. Not that failing the mission will be a loss to players ships but perhaps the more successful escorts maintain timelines while failures can delay the shipment. Like an ongoing community goal.
It will occasionally get attacked by large pirate fleets.
I don't want to complicate things for the sake of "immersion", but I think it would add something to the universe and add functionality to multi passenger ships, and some life to ship transports
Small ships can be carried on anything that can launch a fighter. Medium ships can be carried on large freighters but I think the large ships will be flown themselves or be delivered by a medium-sized tug. Having a space station dock with a space station to pickup cargo and deliver it to another space station is too much for me.
I suggested this about as soon as ship transfer was announced. I agree they should be sub-capital class using the capital class FSD effect. They shouldn't be player pilotable but should have potential gameplay scenarios attached: Escort the carrier/attack the carrier. The ships should be very tough but capable of being destroyed. But they shouldn't actually carry player ships: too much salt!
If I was doing it I'd use a sidewinder with class 20 fsd and a tow rope. Simples.
Basically a tugboat.
Edit:
If we're stuck with putting the ship inside a larger ship then the lynx is too small. It's just a half dozen panthers glued together. The obvious contender for the job is the Farragut since we know from existing lore that it can carry a number of corvettes on board. Unfortunately said Farragut would be too expensive to divert from it's regular duty. We'd end up paying more for the transfer than the ship was worth.
Basically a tugboat.
Edit:
If we're stuck with putting the ship inside a larger ship then the lynx is too small. It's just a half dozen panthers glued together. The obvious contender for the job is the Farragut since we know from existing lore that it can carry a number of corvettes on board. Unfortunately said Farragut would be too expensive to divert from it's regular duty. We'd end up paying more for the transfer than the ship was worth.
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![[VR] Mad Mike](https://forums-cdn.zaonce.net/data/avatars/m/27/27910.jpg?1553527108){kind=avatar}
1) this must not be flyable by us imo.
2) if FD added such a ship - and i really hope they do - they could design it such a way that the cargo on the delivery ships could help defend it... ie for the purpose of transport the larger ships could be mounted around external docking clamps and fitted with turrets, which could help defend the cargo ship as well as the ships own weapons. We could perhaps knock out these weapons as part of a BB mission, as well as perhaps knock out the engines, causing it to need to be repaired before jumping to j drive again
3) they should be loaded with ship launchable fighters
4)to all intents and purposes it should be invincible , however if they used a derivative of the old drives we had in Frontier and FFE, we could mass lock it to slow it down, and so have BB missions to disrupt delivery lines for X number of minutes.
5) I suspect these should be for npc delivery ships only... given how much some hate timed deliveries i do not think many would appreciate getting a message "your delivery has been delayed 20 mins due to attack on the delivery ship which is no undergoing repairs enroute"
6) Unless in a system at war, attacking these things is looked on VERY poorly by the major powers, expect fallout for doing such a thing, but make the rewards with anarchy factions very good indeed for doing it anyway
7) possible option, allow players to dock with it, and then control said launcable fighters to defend the ship in an adhock "help us" mission
2) if FD added such a ship - and i really hope they do - they could design it such a way that the cargo on the delivery ships could help defend it... ie for the purpose of transport the larger ships could be mounted around external docking clamps and fitted with turrets, which could help defend the cargo ship as well as the ships own weapons. We could perhaps knock out these weapons as part of a BB mission, as well as perhaps knock out the engines, causing it to need to be repaired before jumping to j drive again
3) they should be loaded with ship launchable fighters
4)to all intents and purposes it should be invincible , however if they used a derivative of the old drives we had in Frontier and FFE, we could mass lock it to slow it down, and so have BB missions to disrupt delivery lines for X number of minutes.
5) I suspect these should be for npc delivery ships only... given how much some hate timed deliveries i do not think many would appreciate getting a message "your delivery has been delayed 20 mins due to attack on the delivery ship which is no undergoing repairs enroute"
6) Unless in a system at war, attacking these things is looked on VERY poorly by the major powers, expect fallout for doing such a thing, but make the rewards with anarchy factions very good indeed for doing it anyway
7) possible option, allow players to dock with it, and then control said launcable fighters to defend the ship in an adhock "help us" mission
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In any case it wouldn't feature the mechanics of cargo racks and internal slots so it couldn't be repurposed to a combat ship (or outclassed by a combat ship in terms of transport). I'd redesign the slot system and cargo anyway for transport type ships so they would actually be viable for transporting capacity-wise.
Thought about this as well.
It is absurd that we don't see any indication of economy in the ED galaxy.
There should be a full scale transport network of vast vessels caring tens of thousand of tonnes of cargo, like bulk carriers on earth.
After all, how do those mainly unvisited systems on the edge of the bubble survive?
Dumb.
It is absurd that we don't see any indication of economy in the ED galaxy.
There should be a full scale transport network of vast vessels caring tens of thousand of tonnes of cargo, like bulk carriers on earth.
After all, how do those mainly unvisited systems on the edge of the bubble survive?
Dumb.