Ship Launched Fighters with Cargo Grapple

[wstephenson]

My Type 9 is quite unwieldy. It would be great fun to be able to use its SLF to grapple canisters/materials at signal sources. As SLFs don't have cargo holds, they would only be able to grapple or tether a single canister, and would have to release it into the cargo hatch of the larger ship, or bring canisters within range of the mothership's collection limpets.

For a more extensive, detailed suggestion along these lines, check out the older suggestion Ship Launched Work Vessels.

 

[zegram33]

whilst I love the type 9 and I'm always down for deeper slf gameplay I'm not sure how this is different from just having collector limpets?

 

[LuxAeterna]

whilst I love the type 9 and I'm always down for deeper slf gameplay I'm not sure how this is different from just having collector limpets?

I agree, sounds more like an expensive collector limpet.
Collector Limpet Controller (1C) + Limpets = 2,400 + 100cr/limpet
Fighter Bay (5D) + SLF = 575,660 + 15,270 credits (also add the price of a NPC pilot & their percentage of your profits)

 

[wstephenson]

Collector limpets are more efficient in every way, so if I was specialised in salvage, piracy or mining, I would have multiple collector limpet controllers on board. But for the occasions where you have a fighter but no limpet controller, it would be fun to be able to use the fighter this way, flying it yourself or allowing crew to do it for you.

 

[Misty_Dark]

but it would be useful if you could transport cargo between your ship and a station, like trying to unload cargo on a station with only small/medium pads, so you could then ferry cargo between your ship and station.

but this would need other tweaks to how cargo missions works, by be able to break them up to make smaller deliveries, or more precisley, to load you ship up in chunks, as if a SLC (Ship Launch Cargo) could take for example 10T, then any mission that is bigger than that would be unable to complete/collect in the current system, but if you would be able to break this dependency of all at once, and be able to collect/deliver the cargo in any amounts, 10T, 5T, 32T etc. then a SLC would be a workable solution for having a Large Cargo ship and deliver to stations that only have Medium pads.

 

[wstephenson]

I think cargo/material storage was being discussed for Beyond. If it was possible to have a small cache of cargo at a station (caveat: with mechanisms to make it temporary, such as warehouse fees, to discourage speculation) then the SLC could deliver canisters to your cache, then use that to complete the mission in one go when it is sufficient. No big changes needed to the mission system.