Orca is a lovely ship for sure, but sadly, it seems to have been designed for some different game. Even if we had the possibility to carry people around, the only purpose of this ship would be probably doing some missions that involve carrying passengers. Which means this ship will remain one that's used by almost no player. Its layout and internal compartment would place it somewhere Type 6 and Type 7 if somebody wanted a slightly better trading ship, but that would require its price to be dropped to something between 20-30mil. At its current price there aren't many reasons to choose it over Python, which is much, more capable in all possible tasks (including exploration).
Only Frontier knows how important carrying passengers is going to be in the future. So perhaps it would be best to leave it as it is and introduce Orca Mk2 instead (or Orca Explorer). The idea is to make it an exploration vessel, not so much a passenger one. This would require replacing class 4 Fuel Tank with Class 5 one and Class 5 FSD with Class 6 one. And / or shave off its weight to something like 300T.
The trade off would be removing most of the passenger space (turning it more into an observation deck, similar to one on Anaconda) and replacing most of its windows with metal hull.
The internal compartments of this ship are pretty ok for an exploration vessel, armamaments and armour are sufficient for an exploration vessel, the canopy is good, but the jump range is really rubbish (D-rated Orca with A rated FSD can do 17-18 Ly only, which is not good enough, it would need to be between 25 and 30 Ly). I feel there is a need for some ship that would sit somewhere between Asp Explorer (which doesn't have enough compartments) and Anaconda (which is an overkill and a bit too expensive to be an upgrade from Asp E, plus, a bit unwieldy when it comes to landing on planets). Saud Kruger is probably not the best manufacturer for that kind of ship, but they can always have shares in some other company, manufacturing the exploration version of Orca. Perhaps under a different name, perhaps with the cockpit being more utilitarian, perhaps with hull being standard issue grey instead of white, perhaps with adding another internal compartment class 4 or smaller.
So my suggestion would be to drop the price of current Orca to something below 30 million, to make it an alternative to Lakon Type 7, slightly more capable in combat situations. And introduce a new ship based on its frame, designed with exploration in mind and costing something between 40 and 50 mil.
Only Frontier knows how important carrying passengers is going to be in the future. So perhaps it would be best to leave it as it is and introduce Orca Mk2 instead (or Orca Explorer). The idea is to make it an exploration vessel, not so much a passenger one. This would require replacing class 4 Fuel Tank with Class 5 one and Class 5 FSD with Class 6 one. And / or shave off its weight to something like 300T.
The trade off would be removing most of the passenger space (turning it more into an observation deck, similar to one on Anaconda) and replacing most of its windows with metal hull.
The internal compartments of this ship are pretty ok for an exploration vessel, armamaments and armour are sufficient for an exploration vessel, the canopy is good, but the jump range is really rubbish (D-rated Orca with A rated FSD can do 17-18 Ly only, which is not good enough, it would need to be between 25 and 30 Ly). I feel there is a need for some ship that would sit somewhere between Asp Explorer (which doesn't have enough compartments) and Anaconda (which is an overkill and a bit too expensive to be an upgrade from Asp E, plus, a bit unwieldy when it comes to landing on planets). Saud Kruger is probably not the best manufacturer for that kind of ship, but they can always have shares in some other company, manufacturing the exploration version of Orca. Perhaps under a different name, perhaps with the cockpit being more utilitarian, perhaps with hull being standard issue grey instead of white, perhaps with adding another internal compartment class 4 or smaller.
So my suggestion would be to drop the price of current Orca to something below 30 million, to make it an alternative to Lakon Type 7, slightly more capable in combat situations. And introduce a new ship based on its frame, designed with exploration in mind and costing something between 40 and 50 mil.
