...and once Panther Clipper appears, the proper name would be MAGRATHEA INC HAULING.
Panther clipper please
- Thread starter Vasja
- Start date
So, when we have ship interiors, we could say "It's bigger on the inside"?
LOL funny joke. But I don't think we truly understand how pathetic the cargo capacity of our ships are. To make sure I'm not crazy I did some research.So, when we have ship interiors, we could say "It's bigger on the inside"?
So the biggest ship we have is the Cutter footprint-wise I believe, also in cargo capacity. It's about 200 meters long.
A standard roll on/roll off car carrier ship is about 200 meters long and has a dead-weight tonnage of 20,995 tons give or take. So maybe that helps put this into perspective of just how much a ship in ED actually optimized for cargo hauling could take without increasing pad size or anything like that.
If you want to make comparisons, on the other hand, the Saturn V was 111 meters long and had a capacity for lifting 141 tons into LEO.
I've just spent 4 days grinding to get a bottom rung outpost using an FC & a Lakon Type-9 Heavy I call the gravity well. What a tedious grind with nearly everything in my favour. Not only that if I want my shiny new outpost to have a custom name I have to pay for the privilege. Up yours FDev grind pimps.
The Cutter has a max cargo capacity of 794 tonnes. Do they use a shrink ray?
4 days or 4 weeks this is a grind.
Yeah, jokes apart, even considering extra space needed since every ton of goods are stocked in their own presurised and shielded container, with structures to deal with zero-g and heavy g stability, let alone maintainance and load/unload operations, a Cutter should probably be able to carry a few tens of thousands tons of goods, or at least a few thousands.
But then cargo units don't take into consideration volumes, so i guess that a ton of a dense material is stocked in a standardized container with the same volume of a ton of light material.
Last edited:
Aside from the fact that we have no real idea what its internal volume is, yes it probably should be able to carry more, but so should every other ship too. From a balance perspective - without adjusting the values for everything else, it already carries too much. It certainly should not be the best cargo ship in the game (carrying capacity + defenses) because it's supposed to be a multipurpose... all the more reason to release the Panther Clipper.
Last edited:
Yeah you maybe could make that argument before Colonisation...now that just sounds crazy.
It is multipurpose. It's the best cargo ship in the game, the best combat ship in the game, the best mining ship in the game, and the best platform for building a single ship that can complete two or more of those tasks in a single loadout, which it should be, as the most expensive ship in the game.
If you're of the opinion that the grind to colonise a star system as a solo player is unfair, I can see why you'd think that. I am not of that opinion.
Multipurpose =/= best at everything. It's not anyway, it certainly isn't the "best combat ship in the game", but I do think that if we're not going to have a dedicated hauler with higher capacity - and Fdev is unlikely to adjust the values of current ships now - it's probably not expensive enough for how good it is at everything.
True, though only 10m in diameter, so it's still only about half the volume of the T-6 Transporter, which only carries 114t at most. The Saturn V also carried over 2500t of fuel, whereas the T-6 can carry just 16t. So the total internal fuel+cargo space of the SV was almost 25 times that of the twice-as-big T-6. Indeed, the total laden mass of the SV was 3000t - heavier than even a T-9 packed out with Reinforced Limpet Controllers can get, while being 40 times smaller.
The Sidewinder is a reasonably realistic size, mass and capacity for a spaceship. (Well, it's a tiny bit on the light side compared with 21st century ones, but we can handwave that as "advanced 34th century composite materials" and "not needing to carry reaction mass")
Everything else scales up its length relative to the Sidewinder to make it look properly bigger in-game
... which scales up its volume by the cube of that
... but things like ship mass and capacity only scale up by slower than the square of the length
... so the big ships almost entirely consist of empty space.
Meanwhile, we know how big a cargo container is - they're 2m long and 1m diameter - so any reasonable estimate of the size of an optional internal means that either a Size 8 should be able to just about fit inside a Sidewinder (though not in such a way that you'd have a flyable ship afterwards), or that the average spaceship cargo bay has sculpted walkways and gardens to allow each cargo pod - sited on its individual fountain pedestal - to be properly admired.
I'm not a solo player, I'm in a squad. But a system shouldn't be balanced so that already-powerful squads can ice solo players and small player-groups completely out of a feature for all extents.
Or do you actually want a map full of abandoned small outposts?
We need a new large ship that can carry a LOT more cargo. Full stop. It makes too much financial sense right now for FDEV to not do it. I'm ready to literally throw my wallet at them and I know I'm not alone.
Perhaps I'm a little more optimistic than most, but I can't see FDev not giving us a Panther Clipper eventually, considering how successful the new ships have been. However, as I've mentioned before, I'd want it to be a bit unique in one or more aspects. Perhaps it's a pure space ship, far to large and heavy to function on planets - there could be some nuance there, based on gravity and atmosphere or lack of. Also, I want to to be too large for current L-Class Pads. It cannot dock in a conventional sense. It uses smaller shuttles to move cargo. We'd request docking as we do now, but the ship would then park near the station, within 7.5km, to trade. How would outfitting and repairs be handled though... I could waffle on for paragraphs on that, but I'll keep this one short: Robots / Drones deployed from the station perhaps? Options options.
Imagine, a ship that's conventionally flyable BUT has smaller ships docked to it. Not many, perhaps four non-FSD equipped shuttles in a Hauler configuration, but can hold perhaps 4 Small or maybe two Medium regular ships, with the correct modules installed. Give it basic repair abilities, and able to transfer fuel from its own tank to docked ships and there's a lot of fun to be had.
Ah, I have high hope for the eventual introduction of the Panther Clipper. However, it cannot just be another Large ship...it needs to be BIGGER! lol.
Imagine, a ship that's conventionally flyable BUT has smaller ships docked to it. Not many, perhaps four non-FSD equipped shuttles in a Hauler configuration, but can hold perhaps 4 Small or maybe two Medium regular ships, with the correct modules installed. Give it basic repair abilities, and able to transfer fuel from its own tank to docked ships and there's a lot of fun to be had.
Ah, I have high hope for the eventual introduction of the Panther Clipper. However, it cannot just be another Large ship...it needs to be BIGGER! lol.
I'm not of the mindset that colonisation is a competitive feature at all. Sure, squadrons working together can do it faster (another big hauler won't change this dynamic anyway), that's not really a problem though and it doesn't prevent a solo player from being able to colonise a system if they're prepared to put in some effort.
That's a seperate issue that has more to do with colonisation range, but I don't anticipate the map being "filled" in any sense (at least not within my lifetime).
Not in disagreement with this at all; I wanted the Panther Clipper long before colonisation arrived, I still want it.
It honestly was a baffling decision to NOT do that. Both gameplay wise and financial wise.
This much spacetrucking is literally PAINFUL. I would seriously be willing to almost pay Star Citizen prices for a bigger ship lol.