Player Features and Ideas Discussion

Well, not so much mini as quarter sized.

For those people who don't have a full freighter load to move, and don't want to risk that large investment. And who don't want to have to cross train mining to get an Orca.

Say, a quarter of the cargo capacity, at half the price.

You mean about 32k m3 for a Mastadon, with t2 rigs? Only slightly more than a Mammoth (with 2 t2 rigs and a t1 rig. like anyone would be crazy enough to fit that). Even An Occator doesn't break the 40k m3 mark.

Yes, the 20k ehp tank is nice, but I'd want something a little bigger than that.

Maybe a 50k ehp tank, with a 200k m3 cargo bay.

Actually, I was thinking Freighter 1. It's not a step in the journey to a larger freighter. It's just an option, for when a larger freighter isn't needed. A way of reducing the risk on your investment.

Possibly something a little faster on align times and warp speed, but those aren't my main concern. Sometimes you don't need a super tanker. Just something bigger than a tramp freighter.

Supported. +1

There is a large gap in cargo between the largest subcap hauler and smallest freighter, with nothing in between to fill it. Orca, an "ORE Mining Capital Industrial Ship," isn't a viable workaround. With 30k cargo, it's not larger than itty v or impel by a large enough amount to fill the gap, just safer from highsec ganks, which is besides the point.

Actually, he wanted to move smaller mass of goods. Freighter is still around.

Oh, and I guess you weren't around back in 2003. Now that's variation.

2k m3 more cargo isn't close to enough. All DST but Impel will still be smaller than Itty 5, and nowhere close to orca, much less taking the halfway spot between freighter and subcap hauler that's now sitting empty.

It sounds like what OP really wants is a faster, cheaper freighter and/or an industrial with more room. However, you can haul .01 m3 in a freighter. It may seem like overkill, but that's not really the point. There is no logical reason to create an entire subclass of freighters for the purpose of hauling LESS. Is it somehow not possible to move less than a full freighter load in a freighter? I get the annoyance with the slowness of the freighter but once you've got all the relevant skills maxed out and some good implants, they do pretty well. Take those skills to a JF and they get downright awesome. Align to warp time in a nomad with the right skills/implants is 16 seconds.

Also, consider the ISK to risk values for the proposed ship class. If its a 'mini' freighter, I'd expect it to have less room, be smaller, and have less EHP. The rough (very rough) current gank worthy threshold is in the 1 to 1.5bil range. That's based on a calculation of what it takes to destroy a freighter vs. loot drops to make the gank worth it. With less EHP, you'd have to carry less valuable cargo or you'd actually increase the risk of being ganked. And since some of the most valuable items are actually very small, you'd still be hauling less volume than you're able to carry. With no slots for mods, it'd be like an unfitted orca. And it would carry a similar volume.

If freighter 1 was the skill req, then i'd have a choice of freighter or mini freighter with the same training time, less cargo volume, less EHP, less of an ability to carry valuable cargo, and the only benefits I would get would be a vaguely defined "faster" and "more agile" (but those would still have to be slower/less nimble than industrials/orcas to fit the game design pattern). Presumably they'd be cheaper, but as soon as I needed to haul more than my max volume, I'd need to either make more trips (which means its not actually faster in practice) or buy a freighter.

Looking at this, the answer is right there


the only difference here is we don't want it to be a t2 ship or a jump freighter

Instead, it would be a t1 frieghter, but instead of having reduced cargo capacity because of the jump drive, it has reduced capacity simply to allow it to move faster. So it would align faster, warp faster, and have a faster base speed.

This ship could simply be a reskin of the existing freighters if CCP didn't wanna create new skins for them.

However, these ships would be more designed for heavy hauling with more speed. They will not get a bonus to capacity per level, but instead a bonus to warp speed/velocity/agility, or all 3. So they would have the base capacity of a jump freighter.

At lvl 5 they would be equal or just under equal to the velocity, agility, and warp speed of the orca. perhaps someone else might suggest that they be slightly better than the orca since they have no other function, but this is the general concept.

Smaller capacity in exchange for speed and price, no capacity skill buff in exchange for skill buff to movement.
I'd say it's a perfect exchange, but I would still suggest that these ships require less materials than larger frieghters. So this perhaps may require them to have a new skin in order to make this "fit with lore"

Just reskin the Orca, the Ore Industrial skill is already existing, so require Racial industrial 4 and Ore Industrial 4 to fly a new repurposed/reskinned Orca mid-sized freighter. Give it the handling characteristics of the Orca, 2 rigs slots and 4 low slots and a base capacity of 200k m3.

Not sure if the game really needs another transport/freighter, but this may be a viable option.

Take an Orca, rip out the Ship Maint Bay, ore hold, corp hangar, and mining related bonuses. Bump up the Cargo hold space that it reaches ~300k m3 with T2 expanders. Adjust the blueprint so it still costs about the same as an Orca, and change the skills to match a Freighter?

Can it access normal jet cans?

I know I would love a ship that can carry around that much for Multi-factory PI duty. Especially if it could keep the Corp Hangar so it could feed alts/corp mates their PI materials with fewer visits to the station.