First off I would like to say that I am very happy with the new ships that have been released since the beginning of last year. For the past year Elite has finally felt back on track. But with the Gutamaya Corsair on the horizon I have a concerns. Frontier have made it pretty clear with these 4 new medium ships, that I will describe as 2nd gen ships, that they are meant to be best in class for their pad size. I also have no doubt that eventually the same thing is going to happen with the large and small pad ships too. Eventually this is going to mean that in a lot of cases unless you the pilot specifically like a feature or design of one of the 1st gen ships you're probably going to get a 2nd gen ship with better support for SCO, improved hardpoints, better cargo, etc.
The other issue that has been highlighted by the arrival of the Gutamaya Corsair is that it's just a ship made by Gutamaya, rather than an Imperial Corsair. Now on it's own that's fine, but I suspect it has to do with the new early access Arx model. It doesn't feel right that Frontier could make you pay Arx and then also make you grind out Imp rank to actually use. Or you run into the other issue if Frontier make it so Arx purchases don't need the Imp rank which could easily lead to comments about it being pay to win. Because I think the Arx early access system has been relatively successful I would be surprised if we ever see a rank locked ship again.
Enter my idea to save two birds with one feature: Retrofits.
Q: What is a retrofit?
A: A retrofit is the process of taking a ready built ship to a "space garage" for what would mostly be a side-grade, but with some minor improvements like native-SCO support
Q: How would a retrofit work?
A: I envision the retrofit system working similar to engineering. You unlock retrofit engineers and provide materials to them along with a ship and in return they give you a retrofitted ship that is modified in some significant way that ultimately changes the feeling of how the ship works
Q: Can we have an example?
A: Sure, take the Type-7. I consider the Type-7 to be the easiest example of a ship that you should never buy anymore since the Type-8 came out. The player would take a Type-7 they own, along with some engineering materials to "Timmy the Type-7 retrofitter" who takes your Type-7, cuts the roof off to make it shorter, adds some width to retain the same cargo space, and reinforces the structure to make it super-cruise overcharge optimised. Congratulations! You now have a Type-7 that fits on medium pads and is still relevant in this new age of Elite. Maybe there would be some other changes like a size change to some core or optional internals like trading a smaller fuel tank for larger thrusters, etc. But those are details that can be ironed out later.
Q: How would Retrofit Engineers work
A: Retrofit Engineers would work more like Odyssey Engineers than Horizon Engineers. Each Engineer would have 2 or 3 ships that they know how to retrofit and once you are referred by the previous Engineer you can use them immediately.
Q: Okay, so that stops older ship designs collecting dust in a junkyard somewhere. But how does it save the Fed/Imp rank system
A: By having a set of Imperial and Federal Engineers that you must unlock with their respective rank and provide retrofits to ships already in the game/introduced in the future. As an example, there were some complaints when the Corsair was first shown off that it was too angular to be an Imperial ship. Well at Frontier Unlocked it was stated that the Corsair was meant to be the successor to the Clipper so since you unlock the Clipper at Imp rank 7 why not unlock an Imperial Retrofit Engineer at rank 8 that takes the Corsair, gives it a more rounded hull that more aligns with the design language of the other Imperial ships, ups the size of shield that it can take and call it a day. It would officially become an "Imperial Corsair".
Final notes:
There are already a couple of ships in the game that I think could be converted to retrofits; The Imperial Eagle and the Keelback. Both ships are very similar to their base counterparts and could be used as the introduction engineers, while at the same time providing native-SCO support. Not every ship needs a Fed, Imp and non-aligned retrofit, but it would be nice to see overtime for every gen 1 ship to eventually get at least 1 retrofit. All while retaining Frontiers ability to sell ships as early access packages on the Arx store.
The other issue that has been highlighted by the arrival of the Gutamaya Corsair is that it's just a ship made by Gutamaya, rather than an Imperial Corsair. Now on it's own that's fine, but I suspect it has to do with the new early access Arx model. It doesn't feel right that Frontier could make you pay Arx and then also make you grind out Imp rank to actually use. Or you run into the other issue if Frontier make it so Arx purchases don't need the Imp rank which could easily lead to comments about it being pay to win. Because I think the Arx early access system has been relatively successful I would be surprised if we ever see a rank locked ship again.
Enter my idea to save two birds with one feature: Retrofits.
Q: What is a retrofit?
A: A retrofit is the process of taking a ready built ship to a "space garage" for what would mostly be a side-grade, but with some minor improvements like native-SCO support
Q: How would a retrofit work?
A: I envision the retrofit system working similar to engineering. You unlock retrofit engineers and provide materials to them along with a ship and in return they give you a retrofitted ship that is modified in some significant way that ultimately changes the feeling of how the ship works
Q: Can we have an example?
A: Sure, take the Type-7. I consider the Type-7 to be the easiest example of a ship that you should never buy anymore since the Type-8 came out. The player would take a Type-7 they own, along with some engineering materials to "Timmy the Type-7 retrofitter" who takes your Type-7, cuts the roof off to make it shorter, adds some width to retain the same cargo space, and reinforces the structure to make it super-cruise overcharge optimised. Congratulations! You now have a Type-7 that fits on medium pads and is still relevant in this new age of Elite. Maybe there would be some other changes like a size change to some core or optional internals like trading a smaller fuel tank for larger thrusters, etc. But those are details that can be ironed out later.
Q: How would Retrofit Engineers work
A: Retrofit Engineers would work more like Odyssey Engineers than Horizon Engineers. Each Engineer would have 2 or 3 ships that they know how to retrofit and once you are referred by the previous Engineer you can use them immediately.
Q: Okay, so that stops older ship designs collecting dust in a junkyard somewhere. But how does it save the Fed/Imp rank system
A: By having a set of Imperial and Federal Engineers that you must unlock with their respective rank and provide retrofits to ships already in the game/introduced in the future. As an example, there were some complaints when the Corsair was first shown off that it was too angular to be an Imperial ship. Well at Frontier Unlocked it was stated that the Corsair was meant to be the successor to the Clipper so since you unlock the Clipper at Imp rank 7 why not unlock an Imperial Retrofit Engineer at rank 8 that takes the Corsair, gives it a more rounded hull that more aligns with the design language of the other Imperial ships, ups the size of shield that it can take and call it a day. It would officially become an "Imperial Corsair".
Final notes:
There are already a couple of ships in the game that I think could be converted to retrofits; The Imperial Eagle and the Keelback. Both ships are very similar to their base counterparts and could be used as the introduction engineers, while at the same time providing native-SCO support. Not every ship needs a Fed, Imp and non-aligned retrofit, but it would be nice to see overtime for every gen 1 ship to eventually get at least 1 retrofit. All while retaining Frontiers ability to sell ships as early access packages on the Arx store.