New ship: Panther Clipper

Hi All :)

What a nice end to the day! :D

I don't think anybody's mentioned about ship skins for the Panther yet?....I guess the predominant colour or favourite colour will be a silky black? :LOL:
Someone I believe has already mentioned fitting 'whiskers' to this ship, obviously in jest (though I personally saw the funny side), but I think a pair of feline shaped and coloured 'eyes' as decals and appropriately positioned near the front of the ship might go down well? ;)...🤔...actually, thinking about those whiskers, perhaps that's not such a far fetched idea, if you think how this could be achieved by various forms of ship type cosmetics, incorporated into one type of ship kit or other for this model.

An observation and random thoughts on the current concept art and design....
For some reason those large landing pads (undercarriage legs) just scream out to me as needing a caterpillar track type base, (and ones that would enable the ship some extra fine movement when landed on a planet?)....as I said, it was just a random thought. Perhaps it's the combination of the oblong and square serrated design that at a quick glance reminds me of such. 🤷‍♂️

I'm happy generally with the design though :cool:, and there's been quite a bit of change in the graphical, articulation and animation of some of these newer ships individual parts now, in comparison to the first ships released when the game first started out 10 years ago.

Jack :)
 
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The Python MK2 is not a freighter but the Panther MK2 is.
Frontier's Python had a payload of 400t, Elite Dangerous's is 294. Frontier's Anaconda 650t, Elite Dangerous's is 470t. People keep comparing Frontier's payload stat to Elite Dangerous, but this is an entirely different game, with different considerations (being massively multiplayer), and Frontier payload isn't even a comparable stat to ED's maximum cargo capacity (in ED things like the FSD are separate, in Frontier they came out of the payload).
 
Certainly, but bigger thanks go to CMDR @Bigmaec even, who kept this topic alive for so many years, so it ultimately became a community meme even!

Be honest, virtually nobody actually believed FD would listen. Regardless of possible practical reasons justifying such a ship, @Bigmaec was the only one who kept the thought of it in our minds, and for years.

I bet it wouldn't be there without him.

Now while we stand here in fear and awe, don't forget the man who forged the meme!

O7,
🙃

0CLF4EI.jpg
 
Be interesting to see how it flies.

Back when Prometheus came out, I tried building a Prometheus-style ship in KSP and the vertically-asymmetrical thrusters made for some wacky handling.
Basically, it was okay flying straight and level but it struggled to climb and was really eager to dive.
Difficult to explain but it due to it having a centre of thrust not aligned with the thrusters and each pair of thrusters not being equal distances away from the centre of thrust.

I assume (hope) FDev just "fiddle" all that in ED and we'll assume the thrusters are intelligently throttling their output to give it manageable handling.

No need to worry about that. The vertical thrusters in ED are a kind of pretty wild space magic that would make even the FSD blush.
 
Hi :)

It's actually remarkable that behemoth does have some panther like shape. Now it needs an antenna kit that looks like whiskers!
Aha!...so it was you who made this remark! :D
Yep!...that's a good observation and a very good solution.;)

The front end of this ship is already over represented in the game and the Quad-Quad-Quad thruster bodies show a distinct lack of professional restraint.

Well...🤔...It will be some time before a final design is considered completed by the ship design arm of Frontier, so maybe there will be some tweaks to come in this respect.
The Toucan (sorry 😈) The Corsair's front end had some smoothing out with the addition of a ship kit, so maybe there will be similar stuff done either on the general design before final release or in the Panther's (ultimately expected) ship kits to follow that.
Beauty as always is in the eye of the beholder, or as the designer wants it to be as a statement. Those four engine thrusters were always going to be iconic to this ship and the first ideas gleaned from the original Frontier games (FE2 & FFE), so some over indulgence there is to be expected. :)
I understand what you mean by your statements though ;)

Jack :)
 
I think it rather ironic that THE most anticipated ship this game has ever had has been a huge honking massive flying cargohold with wings. Not a combat ship, bounty hunter, interdictor, passenger ship or even an explorer. But a cargoship. Lol

Glorious.
The Frontier ship building system of letting you put anything inside the fixed tonnage meant that you could use it for anything and people did it use it for everything. There's already a mention here of someone filling it with shield generators (common use) and making it a gunboat. That ridiculous flexibility is why there's so much nostalgia for it. It was never just a hauler.
 
The Frontier ship building system of letting you put anything inside the fixed tonnage meant that you could use it for anything and people did it use it for everything. There's already a mention here of someone filling it with shield generators (common use) and making it a gunboat. That ridiculous flexibility is why there's so much nostalgia for it. It was never just a hauler.
Mines going to be a..... Miner
 
The Frontier ship building system of letting you put anything inside the fixed tonnage meant that you could use it for anything and people did it use it for everything. There's already a mention here of someone filling it with shield generators (common use) and making it a gunboat. That ridiculous flexibility is why there's so much nostalgia for it. It was never just a hauler.
But you know it will be. Those Colonies aren't going to build themselves.

Search your feelings..... you know it to be true. :cool:
 
I never heard about the older Elite games before Elite Dangerous, they were very obscure titles from decades ago. I know some here have been waiting for the Panther Clipper but I noticed it was barely ever brought up until Trailblazers. In context of needing larger cargo ships is seemingly what brought it to the forefront of the community again.

We already have big un-fun bricks to fly in ED. If this doesn't bring home the bacon on the tonnage then thumbs down.
People screamed about it constantly for the last like 8 years or so. I it was brought up constantly.
 
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