Player Features and Ideas Discussion

Hey dudes I have an idea, okay? I want a SHIP that can carry SHIPS. Yo dawg, I heard you like ships. Basically, it would be a ship that can carry assembled and fitted ships.

THE PROBLEM

Now I know what you're thinking. "But Mr. Justice, carriers and rorquals already do this, and they have fancy jump drives that can carry them across lightyears at a time! And Orcas can carry fitted stuff too, even through gates! And if you courier contract them, freighters can carry your fitted ships. And think about supercaps! They can carry all kinds of crazy ****!"

I know this, friends, I know this well. But each of these ships do not fill the role themselves, and none of them do a good job of it. Carriers are awesome, I have one. They work great at carrying what you need around, but they can't go through gates and thus cannot go through high sec. Rorquals and supercaps too, obviously. Orcas can, but they only have an SMB of 400k m3 of space. That's not enough for a single battleship. Freighters don't work either because they're just a little too small and they're not even supposed to carry fitted ships. Courier contracts are a workaround.

THE SOLUTION

I propose the creation of a ship that carries ships. Essentially it would work like this.

Here's what I'm thinking:
- one million m3 Ship Maintenance Bay
- 1,500 cargohold
- no fitting slots, no jump drive
- I dont care about any other stats (I assume it would be kinda like a freighter)
- make it the next iteration of ORE industrial ships after the noctis, thus requiring ORE Industrial Ships V (4x), so about 16 days to train. Seems reasonable, right?

This size SMB is like a carrier and rorqual's, and it would allow a person to carry a combination of battleship (or 2) and some collection of smaller ships inside. The cargo space is small enough that it does not replace the usefulness of industrials, freighters, and orcas, but large enough that someone could move modules and ammo along with their ships. It would also be a big, dumb and slow ship like a freighter, and probably have a similar price tag.

Now, I know you guys got some sweet industrial ship designs in that create a starship contest. This is a chance to use one of them, amirite?

THE WHY

We live in an amazingly nomadic EVE ONLINE. We have transient alliances that travel from one end of space to the other looking for fights, space or whatever. We have people who follow incursions from constellation to constellation like it's a herd of buffalo. We have people who decided to move somewhere else and need to move ships JUST BECAUSE. It's exceedingly tedious to move fitted ships one at a time, and can get insanely expensive to repackage them and destroy the rigs just to ship them in a freighter.

I see this ship as being specifically for that lifestyle player. It is, at its core, a nomadic gypsy living caravan for New Eden's transient hobos.

Man, that is way wackier than I had in mind. I just want a tow truck.

You could, ya know, dock it and get in something else. Like most people do with Orcas and carriers. And I don't really forsee anyone trying to ghostride this like they might a carrier because it doesn't have a jump drive.

'ship maintenance bay' is what that little hold is called on ships that have one, and there is a thread already that is basically this. Can't be arsed to find it, but it talks about a 'tug' that does the same thing.

And here I was afraid you were going to ask for a ship with a jump drive and the ability to move 1M m3 of assembled ships. I was even formulating my condescending response before the page finished loading. What a let down.

Your proposal is completely reasonable, I support it.

Supported. Players are already doing this with courier contracts and freighters, which is just a pain in the ass. It's about time it was made into a proper feature.

Here's an idea: Give the existing freighters a single subsystem slot, into which they can fit a 'Ship Maintenance Configuration' subsystem or something. This would basically convert their cargo bay into a ship maintenance bay which can only be accessed in station, with a small space left for regular cargo.

Full support on this.. 100% (Love the 'Tow Truck' idea) - Guilty of being a 'Traveling Gypsy' myself many times over in the past few years.

Well they're late. Bamp

You miss the point entirely.

Also, I haven't been allowed in high sec in over a year.