I know we're pretty much at the "end of the list", minus a couple of ships that never made it into ED, but I had a few ideas come to mind and I'm wondering if anyone else would care to see some neat things like these come into existence. Specifically for this thread, Player Owned "Cruisers".
Now, a cruiser is significantly larger than a corvette, but let's say this. You take the concept of the FCs, and shrink it down to cruiser size, and add a docking bay capable of carrying 1 Large, 2 Medium and 3 Small ships. It would require a cruiser drydock system to be setup all across the galaxy, but you could generally take your favourite ships with you everywhere you went. Or a few of your friends can come along and sit in the bay during travel to a group activity. They'd be unable to walk around the cruiser, because internal ship design doesn't exist... yet... I'd like to think it'll get implemented one day, but I'll not hold my breath for now.
As for the internals and hardpoints. The Hardpoints should be pretty numerous. Mostly smalls and mediums, with a few larges... all of which can only be turrets. Like a mobile "bunker" I guess? Let's go with 6 smalls, 4 mediums, 2 larges, for a start. Now, utilities. Let's go with 10 slots. Can mount plenty of defensive options there. Onward to Core. Cruiser equipment should be unique at this point. Class 10 and Class 9 equipment, with a mix of Class 8. Let's go with this:
1C Armor (starts with Lightweight Alloy, as is standard)
10E Power Plant
9E Thrusters
10E Frameshift Drive
8E Life Support
9E Power Distributor
8E Sensors
8C Fuel Tank (Cap: 256)
Seems alright to me. Now, these things are going to be weighty. Even with maximum upgrades (which will be priiiiiiiiiiiiiiiicey). Onward to the Optional Internals! 9 slots. NO FIGHTER BAY, considering you'll be launching your own ships from it, they can launch their fighters instead (if they have bays installed).
Class 10 (Unique Slot - Class 10E Shield Generator stock) literally the only thing available to this slot unless FDev decide to start making Size 9-10 Optionals one day
Class 8 (Class 8E Cargo Rack [Cap: 256] stock)
Class 7
Class 7
Class 5
Class 4
Class 4
Class 3
Class 1 (Supercruise Assist stock)
Now, it will already be a heavily armoured monster. The shield can be boosted to make it even tankier, but this thing is definitely not designed for combat. This is more of a transport cruiser than anything else. Easily obtainable and requires no maintenance fees, can only transport a very small amount of things, has no services on board but can be used to refuel ships using fuel limpets or repair them with repair limpets, but otherwise has no additional internal features like an FC has. Jump range would not be able to exceed something like 52LY after full engineering and the addition of an FSD Booster. It isn't really meant to explore, more to carry your little fleet. Additionally, something like this could be used to have a player-owned fleet operating on its own (provided FDev cares to lift the pointless restriction and allow us to have all 3 AI Crew Slots active at once). I get it... Balance.... yadda yadda... Balance flew out the window yesteryear. Just let us have some actual fun for goodness sakes. I would love to have a wing of non-SLF ships following my corvette around.
Of course, if for some reason the ships are destroyed, or the cruiser is destroyed with all of the internal docks full, you'd have to buy back at a station (unless you die, in which case a full rebuy would appear for everything that was lost). Obviously, this would be pretty expensive, but at least it won't be Fleet Carrier levels of management. Unless 10 full wings armed with max-sized torpedo launchers across the board come to kill your cruiser, it isn't dying anytime soon. It will have a crazy amount of hull. Fully Engineered, you could see numbers like "12k to 15k" hull. It's not meant to go down pathetically. It will take a monumental amount of effort to kill one. On the flip side, they could add NPC cruisers in, with wanteds showing up once in a while. Consider them like pirate mobile hubs with a full wing of baddies coming out of the ship. So you'd see this "hulk" in the background, and 4 ships coming after you. Take them out, and then attempt to take out the cruiser while its turrets are busy going nuts in your direction.
Just a thought. I know I'm going to get a lot of "Just get an FC" messages. No thanks. With the rushes over, farming billions to run it for an extremely long amount of time (5-10yrs) will be painstakingly frustrating. I'll pass. I'd accept something like this as an "in between" that can be obtained by all players who didn't make 20-80 Billion Credits during the great rushes of 2018, 2019 and 2020. I got in on the tail end of 2020's rush. Now that THAT'S over and things are all switched up (without properly fixing deepcore mining... it is PAINFUL to look for 2 hours and find a single rock at a hotspot), getting that kind of money is not as feasible as before.
Anyway, just a fun suggestion that crossed my mind. I doubt it would ever make it into the game.
Now, a cruiser is significantly larger than a corvette, but let's say this. You take the concept of the FCs, and shrink it down to cruiser size, and add a docking bay capable of carrying 1 Large, 2 Medium and 3 Small ships. It would require a cruiser drydock system to be setup all across the galaxy, but you could generally take your favourite ships with you everywhere you went. Or a few of your friends can come along and sit in the bay during travel to a group activity. They'd be unable to walk around the cruiser, because internal ship design doesn't exist... yet... I'd like to think it'll get implemented one day, but I'll not hold my breath for now.
As for the internals and hardpoints. The Hardpoints should be pretty numerous. Mostly smalls and mediums, with a few larges... all of which can only be turrets. Like a mobile "bunker" I guess? Let's go with 6 smalls, 4 mediums, 2 larges, for a start. Now, utilities. Let's go with 10 slots. Can mount plenty of defensive options there. Onward to Core. Cruiser equipment should be unique at this point. Class 10 and Class 9 equipment, with a mix of Class 8. Let's go with this:
1C Armor (starts with Lightweight Alloy, as is standard)
10E Power Plant
9E Thrusters
10E Frameshift Drive
8E Life Support
9E Power Distributor
8E Sensors
8C Fuel Tank (Cap: 256)
Seems alright to me. Now, these things are going to be weighty. Even with maximum upgrades (which will be priiiiiiiiiiiiiiiicey). Onward to the Optional Internals! 9 slots. NO FIGHTER BAY, considering you'll be launching your own ships from it, they can launch their fighters instead (if they have bays installed).
Class 10 (Unique Slot - Class 10E Shield Generator stock) literally the only thing available to this slot unless FDev decide to start making Size 9-10 Optionals one day
Class 8 (Class 8E Cargo Rack [Cap: 256] stock)
Class 7
Class 7
Class 5
Class 4
Class 4
Class 3
Class 1 (Supercruise Assist stock)
Now, it will already be a heavily armoured monster. The shield can be boosted to make it even tankier, but this thing is definitely not designed for combat. This is more of a transport cruiser than anything else. Easily obtainable and requires no maintenance fees, can only transport a very small amount of things, has no services on board but can be used to refuel ships using fuel limpets or repair them with repair limpets, but otherwise has no additional internal features like an FC has. Jump range would not be able to exceed something like 52LY after full engineering and the addition of an FSD Booster. It isn't really meant to explore, more to carry your little fleet. Additionally, something like this could be used to have a player-owned fleet operating on its own (provided FDev cares to lift the pointless restriction and allow us to have all 3 AI Crew Slots active at once). I get it... Balance.... yadda yadda... Balance flew out the window yesteryear. Just let us have some actual fun for goodness sakes. I would love to have a wing of non-SLF ships following my corvette around.
Of course, if for some reason the ships are destroyed, or the cruiser is destroyed with all of the internal docks full, you'd have to buy back at a station (unless you die, in which case a full rebuy would appear for everything that was lost). Obviously, this would be pretty expensive, but at least it won't be Fleet Carrier levels of management. Unless 10 full wings armed with max-sized torpedo launchers across the board come to kill your cruiser, it isn't dying anytime soon. It will have a crazy amount of hull. Fully Engineered, you could see numbers like "12k to 15k" hull. It's not meant to go down pathetically. It will take a monumental amount of effort to kill one. On the flip side, they could add NPC cruisers in, with wanteds showing up once in a while. Consider them like pirate mobile hubs with a full wing of baddies coming out of the ship. So you'd see this "hulk" in the background, and 4 ships coming after you. Take them out, and then attempt to take out the cruiser while its turrets are busy going nuts in your direction.
Just a thought. I know I'm going to get a lot of "Just get an FC" messages. No thanks. With the rushes over, farming billions to run it for an extremely long amount of time (5-10yrs) will be painstakingly frustrating. I'll pass. I'd accept something like this as an "in between" that can be obtained by all players who didn't make 20-80 Billion Credits during the great rushes of 2018, 2019 and 2020. I got in on the tail end of 2020's rush. Now that THAT'S over and things are all switched up (without properly fixing deepcore mining... it is PAINFUL to look for 2 hours and find a single rock at a hotspot), getting that kind of money is not as feasible as before.
Anyway, just a fun suggestion that crossed my mind. I doubt it would ever make it into the game.
