Of fighters & freighters

[Aury]

Is it just me, or do virtually all civilians fly either a gunship or a freighter?
I've noticed there is only a sole luxury ship, the sapphire yacht, and no mass transit ships, no large luxury ships, no small personal transport ships, etc.

edit: total post number #29000

[BlakeG228]

That is a very good point Wolfy! There definitely should be more civilian type vehicles.
Maybe even throw in a few random encounters where you give a jumpstart ti someones stalled reactor, or intervene and kill a few Highwaymen hassling an innocent civilian.

[Song]

Indeed. We know the EI100 *used* to carry passengers....and we know that it doesn't now (except in refuge convoy missions)....so what does?

[Aury]

That is a very good point Wolfy! There definitely should be more civilian type vehicles.
Maybe even throw in a few random encounters where you give a jumpstart ti someones stalled reactor, or intervene and kill a few Highwaymen hassling an innocent civilian.

Heh, those are almost exactly like the random encounter missions from EV; aid derelic that was attacked by pirates (it could just be a trap set by the pirates though), aid ship that has no fuel.

@shrike; no idea! XD (not yet anyways)
I've got the feeling that Empress was supposed to be a luxury cruiser or something, but didn't get in (time constraints maybe?) - the Orion seems to have been a model of super-freighter however.

From the looks of them, they were going to be escortable by korolov I think, as they appeared in .99's transcendence.xml in the list of entities/unids - however beyond a partially-started model for the orion in the 1.01 art resources, I don't think anything ever materialized for them.

[andwheee]

Maybe most civilians simply can't afford to own a ship and just fly around as they please? That would explain why almost all ships seen are either for combat or business.

But I think there should be some kind of public transport ship, or the odd luxury craft flown by a billionaire.

That would give a new flavour for escort missions, you could escort expensive luxury ships as well as freighters.

[Aury]

Maybe most civilians simply can't afford to own a ship and just fly around as they please? That would explain why almost all ships seen are either for combat or business.

But I think there should be some kind of public transport ship, or the odd luxury craft flown by a billionaire.

That would give a new flavour for escort missions, you could escort expensive luxury ships as well as freighters.

Given that you can get a ship for about 1000 credits... it should be possible (then again, it'd be a terrible ship; better than what the centauri have got, but... you'd be finding Corsairs a pretty even match XD - if you forgoe the weapons though, ie, just flying around st.k's or fairly safe systems, you can actually save quite a bit in order to go with some better armor, or a shield.)

[Song]

Well...There's the Zubrin/Sapphire (the Zubrin is the original name, but it was always called the sapphire ingame so far as i know)....but apart from those and Wolfens/IAVs/EI500s...there's nothing.


T'would be a nice way to resurrect some of the types seen in Frontier.

[Aury]

The osaka was an outdated military transport; don't know about some of the others.

Zubrin I think is the company that makes the sapphire; and the sapphire is more of a middle-class yacht? (no such think as a low-class one; but it's nowhere as fancy as one designed for the upper-class, which would likely either be along the lines of a european sports car or a miniature personal luxury cruise ship, depending on the customer involved. The former would also be more likely to play like a gunship, wheras the later would be more like a freighter, or even a small capship for the largest of them.

Wolfens & IAV's are combat ships; the EI series are all freighters; 100,200,500 being personal-use capable, wheras the 7000 is a sub-superfreighter

[Song]

The osaka was an outdated military transport; don't know about some of the others.

Zubrin I think is the company that makes the sapphire; and the sapphire is more of a middle-class yacht? (no such think as a low-class one; but it's nowhere as fancy as one designed for the upper-class, which would likely either be along the lines of a european sports car or a miniature personal luxury cruise ship, depending on the customer involved. The former would also be more likely to play like a gunship, wheras the later would be more like a freighter, or even a small capship for the largest of them.

Wolfens & IAV's are combat ships; the EI series are all freighters; 100,200,500 being personal-use capable, wheras the 7000 is a sub-superfreighter

Excuse me, the light IAV is in no way a combat ship.

There is the Ronin series.....I'd call the A and B variants hybrids, rather than fighters.

[Aury]

light IAV is... like the zulu's or hornets... or something. Basically a not-very-good combat ship

ronin A/B are both obsolete gunships, A moreso than B, but nobody uses A's anymore.

[speedofsquid]

Borers and Ferian ships are industrial. The Earthzone is like a bus or van, right?

The cost and monotony of space travel means most civilian ships would be business ventures. Small IAV's doing odd jobs and scavenging might be the smallest sustainable independent ships.

[Aury]

Earthzone is only used by anarchs & gladiators though

[PM]

I looked at the Wolfen as the sports car of Commonwealth ships. It has fast base speed and limited space. It may be "designed for combat", but I imagine speed freaks of all kinds would turn a Wolfen into their personal sleek and sporty vehicle. Now if only the Commonwealth has ships as fast as the Sung's Wind Slaver. I know about the megadrive; but it is military only, power hungry, and too heavy for lighter ships.

[Aury]

I was thinking the truly sporty vehiclews would be that fast; in the range of .27-.30c (I think battlepods get .30c)

[PM]

Hornets have .35c.

Something I thought of recently: are the number of armor segments a ship has analogous to the number of tires a car has? If so, then playerships are like cars; with EI500 freighters being trucks or SUVs, the Sapphire yachts being sedans, small and fast gunships like the Wolfen being sports cars, and heavy gunships like the Manticore or Centurion being monster trucks. Ships with two armor segments, such as the Borer or smaller IAVs, are motorcycles. Hornets and most autons are unicycles. Huge ships with many armor segments are the 18-wheelers in space.