Ships & Modules

Well, they could do a T3 Industrial and give you the option of equipping combat modules which would sacrifice cargo space for tank and weapons. With it fully combat rigged you would have the equivalent of a T1 Battleship for 4 times the price. (But it would look like an Industrial ship.)

I would see a T3 industrial as having a lot of subsystem slots so you could equip it on a continuum from large cargo space with low EHP, to tanky with good cargo space, to full combat with BS size cargo space. There could also be other subsystems such as Cloak, or Jump, which take up several subsystem slots, thus substantially reducing how much cargo or weapons you can equip.

Subsystem options:
- Large cargo (still smaller than a freighter)
- Cloak (Sacrifice cargo space. Expensive)
- Jump (Sacrifice significant cargo space, expensive, not enough mod space to fit much offence.)
- Tank (Sacrifice cargo space.)
- Weapons (Sacrifice cargo space.)
- Drone bay (Sacrifice cargo space.)
- Engine upgrades for more speed. (Sacrifice cargo space.)
- Manoeuverability (Sacrifice cargo space.)

Because we would not want a T3 Industrial to compete with existing ships:
- Full combat fit (Q-Ship) should be 4 times the cost of a Battleship.
- Full cargo fit should have a cost proportional to the cargo space (between an industrial and a freighter).
- Cloak subsystem cost and cargo reduction should be tweaked so as to not outclass the T2 cloaky industrial.
- Jump subsystem should be appropriately expensive, and have much less cargo space than a Jump Freighter.

Just an idea I came up with when reading posts asking for T3 Industrials. I started thinking, now how would I set that up? It works for the Q-Ship idea.

Edit: I forgot one of the most important aspects from a Q-ship perspective. There would need to be a toggle switch if any weapon/manoeuverability/engin subsystems were installed. In the off position the ship would handle and look just like a T3 setup for full cargo. But when the toggle is switched on, secret doors open on the freight containers strapped to the spine of the ship and weapon systems/ manoeuvring thrusters etc. rise into position, and the subsystems become active, changing the max speed/manoeuverability etc.

Edit 2: Swap out the term Q-Ship for Auxiliary Cruiser if you feel that is more technically correct. Either way, we are talking hidden guns, and a big surprise for pirates.