This has 438 points and 92% upvoted in the subreddit.
Imagine if you could buy your own megaship. Drop a billion credits (Or some such stupidly high number, so they don't become ubiquitous), and you now own your very own shiny, factionless, semi-controllable megaship.
Standard fit small and medium landing pads, repair facilities, and refueling. That's it. You upgrade your shiny new megaship like outfitting a regular spaceship. Add modules, remove stuff, w/e. Pay exorbitant amounts of credits to upgrade it to have rearming, a large landing pad, outfitting, various types of wares on offer and if you're super super rich: A passenger module for accepting passenger missions.
Instead of flying a megaship around like a regular ship, you pick a system from the star map (that is uninhabited and most importantly discovered, so no sending it off to the other side of the galaxy unless you've been there yourself), pick a heavenly body for it to orbit, and off it goes!
Travel time would be stupidly long. Like a full day for a few hundred light years. But you could send it out to a lonely spot near a travel destination. It'd take a week. And then you could bank some easy credits taking passengers from the megaship to the nearby tourist destination.
You could put it in the 'gap' between stations from the bubble out to Jacques. You could tell it to orbit a star in a system right next to your favorite pirating place, so you can always be assured of a warm welcome even if you have a bounty on your head.
You could set it up around a gas giant with rings out in the middle of nowhere and just steadily make bank 'selling' ore to it, or just filling up thousands upon thousands upon thousands of storage spaces inside it with ore and sending it back to civilized space to sell it.
A fully-upgrade megaship would be the crown of any player's fleet. It would be a mobile station (Albeit with a long travel time), and it sets up almost perfectly for having your own HOME for when spacelegs arrive! You can say that a specific system is your home, but it never really is. But a megaship you paid for yourself and can order around the galaxy...?
The possibilities are almost endless, and don't break the setting of the game at all. Dotting every planet from the bubble to jacques with player-controlled outposts each with their spot needed on a randomly-generated planet with persistence tied in and all of that crap, that's difficult and annoying. But a megaship in orbit around something is just a new instance. No dynamics needed.
Buying a new ship never feels like an incredibly huge step. You can still blow it up, and it's gone forever. But a megaship? A huge mobile-station that other players can see and interact with, a way for one pilot to make a mark on the galaxy in a meaningful, indelible way?
A megaship could be your headquarters, your home, your station, and a visible culmination of all of your Elite Dangerous effort poured into one large endeavor.
Imagine being the guy that puts your megaship in the perfect spot to help out the community. Something new popped up regarding the thargoids on some lonely planet? Drop your megaship into orbit there so that everyone who visits has a safe haven for repairs and refueling and rearming; a convenient spot for respawning if something goes bad.
Want a massive goal to work towards to? Megaship.
Want the most prestigious vehicle possible to own? Megaship.
Want to put a station wherever you want? Megaship.
Megaships are the perfect end-game vehicle. For clans. For single players. For small groups. For everyone.
Imagine if you could buy your own megaship. Drop a billion credits (Or some such stupidly high number, so they don't become ubiquitous), and you now own your very own shiny, factionless, semi-controllable megaship.
Standard fit small and medium landing pads, repair facilities, and refueling. That's it. You upgrade your shiny new megaship like outfitting a regular spaceship. Add modules, remove stuff, w/e. Pay exorbitant amounts of credits to upgrade it to have rearming, a large landing pad, outfitting, various types of wares on offer and if you're super super rich: A passenger module for accepting passenger missions.
Instead of flying a megaship around like a regular ship, you pick a system from the star map (that is uninhabited and most importantly discovered, so no sending it off to the other side of the galaxy unless you've been there yourself), pick a heavenly body for it to orbit, and off it goes!
Travel time would be stupidly long. Like a full day for a few hundred light years. But you could send it out to a lonely spot near a travel destination. It'd take a week. And then you could bank some easy credits taking passengers from the megaship to the nearby tourist destination.
You could put it in the 'gap' between stations from the bubble out to Jacques. You could tell it to orbit a star in a system right next to your favorite pirating place, so you can always be assured of a warm welcome even if you have a bounty on your head.
You could set it up around a gas giant with rings out in the middle of nowhere and just steadily make bank 'selling' ore to it, or just filling up thousands upon thousands upon thousands of storage spaces inside it with ore and sending it back to civilized space to sell it.
A fully-upgrade megaship would be the crown of any player's fleet. It would be a mobile station (Albeit with a long travel time), and it sets up almost perfectly for having your own HOME for when spacelegs arrive! You can say that a specific system is your home, but it never really is. But a megaship you paid for yourself and can order around the galaxy...?
The possibilities are almost endless, and don't break the setting of the game at all. Dotting every planet from the bubble to jacques with player-controlled outposts each with their spot needed on a randomly-generated planet with persistence tied in and all of that crap, that's difficult and annoying. But a megaship in orbit around something is just a new instance. No dynamics needed.
Buying a new ship never feels like an incredibly huge step. You can still blow it up, and it's gone forever. But a megaship? A huge mobile-station that other players can see and interact with, a way for one pilot to make a mark on the galaxy in a meaningful, indelible way?
A megaship could be your headquarters, your home, your station, and a visible culmination of all of your Elite Dangerous effort poured into one large endeavor.
Imagine being the guy that puts your megaship in the perfect spot to help out the community. Something new popped up regarding the thargoids on some lonely planet? Drop your megaship into orbit there so that everyone who visits has a safe haven for repairs and refueling and rearming; a convenient spot for respawning if something goes bad.
Want a massive goal to work towards to? Megaship.
Want the most prestigious vehicle possible to own? Megaship.
Want to put a station wherever you want? Megaship.
Megaships are the perfect end-game vehicle. For clans. For single players. For small groups. For everyone.
