Suggestion: Ship retrofitting/ Hard Modification

Calrissian · Mar 11, 2015

I've mentioned this on a YouTube video and wondering what you folks think. How about a place/space station/shop that specializes in the retrofitting/modifications of ships to add even more variety to Elite Dangerous? Some thing like "Curtis Cutter's Retrofit and Modification Station." Pay some loot and have your ship modified to a new specified model.

Here are a few I've been thinking of. .....

Cobra Mk III C3TB : A Cobra with its Class 2 and Class 1 hard points removed and replaced with one Class 3 slot on the top centerline and a Class 3 slot on the bottom centerline.

Anaconda ELB : An Anaconda with the Class 4 hard point removed in favor of an extended launch bay to house a bigger ship. ( Sidewinder, Eagle, Hauler, maybe even a Viper.)

Hauler HA : A Hauler with its' Class 1 weapon hard point removed and replaced with a Hauler specific engine supercharger that gives it a Max speed of 300 and a boost speed of 420. (I think you know what HA stands for.

)

The ship models would only need slight adjustments for the game so the labor of a new ship design isn't needed and it adds another dynamic to the game.

brianpansky · Mar 12, 2015

Calrissian said:
(I think you know what HA stands for. ) .

Does it start with "haul" and end with "ss"?

Calrissian · Mar 12, 2015

brianpansky said:
Does it start with "haul" and end with "ss"?

Very much so.

The Hauler is one of the ships that I often wonder what Frontier Developments was thinking when they made it. The ship is nothing more than a duck in PvP as it literally can not out fight or out run anything.

A Retrofit from ole' Curtis turns it into a Roadrunner in a desert of coyotes.

Aussiedroid · Mar 12, 2015

If this was done right, I think it could be a cool feature. It would be like a second tier of customisation that you can do on your ship (which I think should be a huge amount of credits btw). Just like customising a car or something, it can be done but very very expensive if you want something more unique.

It would be good for some of the multipurpose ships to be able to specialise them further than just the modules you install. It would have to be very strict on the configurations you can choose too to prevent unbalancing the ships, but also from a design perspective it would be difficult to incorporate it all into the game specs as it is now (I would imagine). Weapon slot changes might mean changing the actual designs of the ships for the mountings etc, so would need to fit somehow into the current design. Likewise if you could mod internal compartments, it could be tricky to retrofit into the size/shape of the ship.

Great idea, but just not sure if it would work in practice without substantial changes to the game.

Calrissian · Mar 12, 2015

Aussiedroid said:
If this was done right, I think it could be a cool feature. It would be like a second tier of customisation that you can do on your ship (which I think should be a huge amount of credits btw). Just like customising a car or something, it can be done but very very expensive if you want something more unique.

It would be good for some of the multipurpose ships to be able to specialise them further than just the modules you install. It would have to be very strict on the configurations you can choose too to prevent unbalancing the ships, but also from a design perspective it would be difficult to incorporate it all into the game specs as it is now (I would imagine). Weapon slot changes might mean changing the actual designs of the ships for the mountings etc, so would need to fit somehow into the current design. Likewise if you could mod internal compartments, it could be tricky to retrofit into the size/shape of the ship.

Great idea, but just not sure if it would work in practice without substantial changes to the game.

Thanks and I agree. That's why the retrofits would be to specific model specs and could not be undone. One would have to sell the whole ship if they were tired or unhappy with it. In the model specs I presented above, I take away something substantial for a gain in order to maintain play balancing ( Something I still think Elite Dangerous needs some work on.)

The Hauler HA can outrun all the pirates and murderers trying to get you but can't fight at all.

The Cobra Mk III C3TB now has a large Class 3 weapon slot on the top and bottom making it the only ship in the game capable of having a full 360 degree global weapon coverage, but you go from 4 to 2 weapons and the use of C3 weapons will likely have more of a power drain on the power plant.

The Anaconda ELB gets to carry a small player ship of choice (like naval ships today with a helicopter landing pad) but loses the "super weapon" slot.

Thinking more about it now, If a shop of ole' Curtis is setup, make it be in Alliance space somewhere by the capitol system since the Federation and Empire have their own exclusive ships, let the Alliance be the main ones that are exclusive to the retrofitted versions of ships from the other factions.