Ships & Modules

Q Ships
After watching a history program I thought would it not be exiting to bring in a series of Q ships. This would enable miners and couriers to fight back at the gankers. Or the serious Pvp’s to set traps for others.
A series of ships that to all outward scans and checks appears to be a transporter, industrial, miner or freighter but once under attack can reveal it’s true colours and turn the tables on the attacker.

A way to make this work would be if "Q" ships could affect other people's overviews. E.g. like tech 3's that change appearance due to subsystems.

In station you can customize the look of the ship, e.g. click disguise as (Retriever, Iteron Mk V.) which changes the look of the ship and how you'd appear on the overview, BUT, if you clicked look at them, you'd see weps on the ship hull etc.

Q-Boats were essentially fishing boats with an Anti Tank Gun designed to be so small Submarines would surface and shoot them with their AA Gun because they thought it would be a waste to fire a torpedo into the side of them. Sort off like if you put a 200mm Cannon in the extra high slot on your Stealth Bomber and tried to kill a shuttle because Torps are expensive.

Q-Ships were near wholly unsuccessful because 9 times out of 10 the Sub could just sink the Q-Boat with there 37mm - 88mm AA Cannon if they even bothered to surface at all. Sometimes they thought the target was too small to even bother with other times they thought they had enough Torpedo's to last them anyway and just sunk the thing.

If you want a real Hauler to surprise people with an Auxiliary Cruiser is 100x better and cooler anyway.

Auxiliary Cruiser Page

Auxiliary Cruiser Schematic

Auxiliary Cruiser 3D Model

Things that make the Auxiliary Cruiser better.

* They are comparable in size to Haulers while Q Ships are comparable to Shuttles.
* They had real 6 Navel Guns hidden on Elevators below deck and Seaplane (Scout Drone) Catapults.
* They were very effective when compared to Q-Ships.

Imagine it, they appear on the overview as Badger MK II's or Itiron IV's but attack them or they attack you and out come the 5-6 Damage Bonused Heavy Assaults or Blasters and 5 Drones. MWD, fitting for 35-50k EHP, cost as much as a Battlecruiser with Dmg / Tank of a Cruiser and its intentions being hidden till it attacks you or you attack it. Good Lock Time, moderate Speed but low Agility.

Also the hull should be swappable like you can you fit Badger MK I Skin as a special Module or the MK II Model giving it the same stats but a different appearances.

A real hidden danger that would be so much more awesome then a dinky little Q-Boat I.E. a shuttle with a 125mm Autocannon.

I smell a 'we would like a T3 industrial' thread. Imagine ... an ORE industrial chassis with a series of modules, and among them is an offensive build. hehe.

There was a thread asking for Q-ships a few months ago. You can make your own Q-ship in game now. We dont need more ships, we need the current ones fixed before they add anything.

Could you please list any and all ships you are experiencing problems with. Along with fault reproduction steps.

Next stage up from a Q-ship would be a commerce raider...ie an Indy ship fitted for offensive pvp rather than defensive.

And that would fit with the current line up of ships because of course in real navies, thats what BC's were designed to catch and kill

H

I've suggested Q ships before (and made threads here)

*Old idea:
It would take advantage of the fact that mining lasers use turret hardpoints, but strip miners do not.
Essentially, my idea would be to have a ship with 8 turret slots, and enough CPU to fit 6-8 mining lasers.
Then you give the hull a mining laser bonus (like the old mining frgs, but with 3-4x the number of turret hardpoints).
It would have a relatively small cargohold, but a strong hull and plenty of lows (2-3 mids)

When fit for mining, its highs are full of mining lasers, its lows are full of cargohold expanders (reducing its hull HP) and mining upgrades, and its mid has a rock scanner in it.
However.... it could also be fit with 6-8 medium turrets, a web and point (burner?), damage upgrades, and a DCII (since its hull HP is higher than normal, this is its tank. All we would need after that is a viable weapon turret that has the external model of a mining laser, so people that look at the ship without using a ship scanner think it is fit with mining lasers...
Of course, the concept isn't too different from a battleship - a rohk or apoc can be fit as a very good miner ship, Minerthrons aren't bad either.
-You'd have a hard time convincing anyone that they are ming fit when they are actually combat fit though, as they'll notice you aren't shooting rocks with a mining laser (or maybe if you are a little more deceptive, you'd use 1 or 2 mining lasers, but its still pretty obvious)


*New Idea:
Maybe what we need rather than a dedicated Q ship hull, is a weapon to allow us to fit BS's to function as Q ships.

We already have a "modulated mining laser" that can swap crystals (although I don't think anyone ever uses it, and it seems using a crystal in that turret is a waste of a crystal when you can put the same crystal in a strip miner and get a much higher yield per unit wear on the crystal)
- make a modulated mining laser able to fit frequency crystals (as used by the laser weapons)

So in your combat fit, you sit in a belt, shooting your modulated mining lasers at rocks, looking like a mining fit BS.
Someone comes in, you swap mining laser crystals for damage dealing crystals, and target them, essentially armed with 8 light beam lasers and a massive tank, you might manage to take them down (if they come in a smaller ship, if a BS shows up with "real" weapons, your tank will break long before theirs does.

I did see a fit with a somewhat similar philosophy on Battleclinic: an Occator with a heavy tank, scram, web ... and cyno. I'm just not sure whether that fit is obsolete due to people looking out for a cyno Occator...