I'd love to see a fighter ( I call it a fighter because it gets launched from a fighter bay) with mining equipment.
Deep core mining requires a ship that's agile enough to shift and circle around a rock and punch resource-clusters off it or place seismic charges.
Ships with huge cargo potential tend to be sluggish and make stripping a rock a tedious activity. Some of these ships however offer the possibility to install a fighter bay.
Wouldn't it be awesome to have some "utility"-themed "fighter" with an abrasion blaster, a seismic charge launcher and maybe a subsurface displacement missile launcher and/or pulse wave analyser.
With a utility pod like that you could use your ship as a platform for your collector limpets while it keeps its turreted weapons deployed for "curious" passer-by's.
Advantages I can see:
1. It'd just be awesome to fly it, lifting some miner-tedium.
2. Multicrew mining may actually be fun with mining-fighters.
2. The variation in vessels in a ring will increase. A cutter suddenly has potential in a ring.
3. The "automatic defense" that got 'broken' with the "combat"/"scanning" mode can be used again. The main vessel can use its turrets and only needs to change mode to deploy limpets.
4. Limpets may have an easier time not flying into asteroids when the collecting vessel is stationary. The control-arduino used in them has a hard time avoiding city-block sized objects.
5. Some "Aliens power loader"-themed "fighter". Wouldn't it sell?
6. A non-aggressive use of the fighter bay. For us players who think fighting over resources in a playing-field as wide as a galaxy is done by entities that should be taken off the "Eugenics approved" list.
Fighters as they are are not really configurable, you choose the type of fighter when you install the fighter bay, don't have to involve lots of work to be made into a fighter with mining load-out.
The hardest part could very well be crewmembers (of the AI persuasion) piloting the utility vehicle. Maybe they just shouldn't (I don't want to lose mining-fighters like I lose collector limpets).
It'd certainly be easier than the entire "space legs" thing which seems like a lot of work for little added value. (A lot of new- and more complicated meshes to make it interesting close-up, "things to do" when walking around, you name it...)
Deep core mining requires a ship that's agile enough to shift and circle around a rock and punch resource-clusters off it or place seismic charges.
Ships with huge cargo potential tend to be sluggish and make stripping a rock a tedious activity. Some of these ships however offer the possibility to install a fighter bay.
Wouldn't it be awesome to have some "utility"-themed "fighter" with an abrasion blaster, a seismic charge launcher and maybe a subsurface displacement missile launcher and/or pulse wave analyser.
With a utility pod like that you could use your ship as a platform for your collector limpets while it keeps its turreted weapons deployed for "curious" passer-by's.
Advantages I can see:
1. It'd just be awesome to fly it, lifting some miner-tedium.
2. Multicrew mining may actually be fun with mining-fighters.
2. The variation in vessels in a ring will increase. A cutter suddenly has potential in a ring.
3. The "automatic defense" that got 'broken' with the "combat"/"scanning" mode can be used again. The main vessel can use its turrets and only needs to change mode to deploy limpets.
4. Limpets may have an easier time not flying into asteroids when the collecting vessel is stationary. The control-arduino used in them has a hard time avoiding city-block sized objects.
5. Some "Aliens power loader"-themed "fighter". Wouldn't it sell?
6. A non-aggressive use of the fighter bay. For us players who think fighting over resources in a playing-field as wide as a galaxy is done by entities that should be taken off the "Eugenics approved" list.
Fighters as they are are not really configurable, you choose the type of fighter when you install the fighter bay, don't have to involve lots of work to be made into a fighter with mining load-out.
The hardest part could very well be crewmembers (of the AI persuasion) piloting the utility vehicle. Maybe they just shouldn't (I don't want to lose mining-fighters like I lose collector limpets).
It'd certainly be easier than the entire "space legs" thing which seems like a lot of work for little added value. (A lot of new- and more complicated meshes to make it interesting close-up, "things to do" when walking around, you name it...)
