Player Features and Ideas Discussion

While that may be true, this thread is about dedicated haulers like the sigil, bestower and charon that are designed with a single goal in mind, hauling capacity. You can rig / mod them and tweak their stats but ultimately the are still dedicated haulers at their core as would the new 'baby freighter'.

Hears a copy of a request I did over a year ago I think its quite a reasonable option. While not as tanky as requested buy this thread I thinks it would be a good starting point.

MID RANGE FREIGHTER

Mass 300-500,000 kg
Cargo capacity 200-400,000 m3
Warp Speed 2.5 to 3.00 AU/s

Although these are rather lose requirements there are some possible existing presidents to work with.


Remodelling of Chimera class carrier.
This ship was evolved from an existing bulk carrier so it may be fitting that it might form the bases of a new class of ship.
1 Removal of excessive Armour by 80% should take the ship down to about the required Mass
2 Removal of Jump drive will also relive the ship of considerable mass and provide much needed volume although it should be taken into consideration that a later J-drive version may be required.
3 Replacement of Power plant with a unit 20-25% of the existing should provide ample power though its final size must be dictated by the speed performance required.
4 Shield capacities should be reduced by 80% inline with the power plant reduction. This would also bring it into line with the shield strength of the Charon. Removal of the extensive emitter arrays and there subsystems will make a dramatic effect of CPU load and final cost
5 Fitting points should be reduced to 2-3 High 2-4 mid and retain the existing 4 low if possible.
6 Cargo space to be carved out of whatever volume is available with the possibility of retaining a drone bay of no more than 100m3 along with the bandwidth to operate 5 drones.
7 The Chimera has extensive link abilities and fighter control facilities, which are no longer, needed and should be removed. Some ECM ability will be helpful and if it can be retained without too much cost it would be useful. Triage module ability is not required but if any practical use for it can be proven in the freighter roll them some accommodation may be made.
8 Mastery Requirements should be reduced to no more or less than the requirements for a Charon
9 Acceleration to warp is an important factor and should take advantage of all necessary power to reach warping speed within a short a time as practically possible.
10 Cost Ideally the ship cost should fall in the 250-600,000,000-isk brackets.


CCP Ship Design Team
Hello I know this is probity just another load of work for you but taking control of the game is what you want the players to do so this is what I want. Many players cannot even half full a freighter and most chugs slowly around less than half full while the small industrials don’t hold enough.
Working of the existing ship should help simplify the 3D modelling although I know nothing of the technical aspects I suspect that you have earlier 3D models that were never used somewhere on file. I want to this ship to look like a simplified ship less sticky-out bits, Simple boxy keel additions. This is a strip out, bolt on rebuild which I expect to evolve over several years into a more refined craft.
Please take this request seriously and reply even if it is just a refusal.

Players NOTE:
The existing Charion is a large bulk freighter costs 1.2 billion ISK
The Chimera is a fleet super carrier with extensive EW fit and technical bays cost 0.9 billion ISK

(note these were the prices when I first wrote this ticket over a year ago)

Baby Freighter? NO! There is already enough options in the game about what ships to pick. In fact, there is too much choice that chokes teamplay. DO NOT ADD Ships that can do everything!
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Remove JumpFreighters/CloakHauler/CloakTrick and make a new T2Freighter(ca700km3+mjd+T2resists-JumpDrive). Because we need more opportunities for piracy, escorts and decentralised economy!

Pay enough and you will get someone to escort you.
Not enough isk from hauling - ask for more.

I support every new ship , as long as it is balanced.

There is no such thing as too many options, especially in a case like this where the logical progression goes from T1 industrial to freighter.

T2 ships are supposed to be specialized, and the Blockade Runners and Deep Space Transports are indeed specialized, but also kind of sit in a niche where there should be a bigger hauling option at a lower price point.

A better range of hauling options is definitely a niche that begs to be filled in the game.

Following the ORE line of Yeild, Capacity, Defense an Interbus line of haulers could go with traits like Raw Speed (Courier), Capacity (Bulk Transport), and Defense (Armored Transport).

I would suggest the line be Armor Tanked and capacity around 10x that of industrial ships (30k-40k m3 BASE total). T2 variants emphasizing their roles with couriers getting either extreme speed, nullification, or jump capability + microjump drive activation time bonus. Bulk Transport would fill the baby freighter role with more capacity (150-250 m3 Base Total), and armored transports getting a resist and raw up bonus (space megabrick)

If the numbers seem inefficient, take a courier with you. Fenrir triple i stabbed is what you want. sub 25 second warp, 400k cargo. Or is that not what you want?

No, the baby freighter would be 1/3 the size of the Fenrir, able to be rigged and modded, not be a capital ship. cost a lot less, align and warp faster, have far fewer EHPs.

It is actually a large T1 hauler not really a small freighter.

About, "take someone with you", game balancing. This is like telling combat pilots the cannot have cargo holds for ammo and need someone running around with them jet-canning them ammo when their projectiles run out, could it work, sure should a projectile turret pilot have to have a constant side-kick to do his basic job, no.

If baby freighters were a thing teams of gankers could still gank them. In fact, they would be gankable with less than what a freighter takes, making the smaller loads still worth attacking.

The point is that not every load is worth the risk of a freighter. Not every load is worth the hassle of safely moving a freighter.

It's not really about avoiding gankers as much as it is not using a sledgehammer when all you need is a 12 ounce claw hammer.

Combat ships come in 9 T1 sizes from frigate to titan. Surely we can spread that love around at least a little.

sigh.....i have to explain this again.....

The dedicated hauler line for the Amarr is, sigil. bestower then a huge, massive. titanic, enornous, gigantic, colossal, mind-numbingly large epic leap in carrying capacity to reach the providence.

I hope the wording there will help more people see where the hole in the dedicated hauler line up is that this new hauler is intended to fill.

You cannot in any reasonable conversation about dedicated haulers toss that abomination called an Orca in the discussion, it is the swiss army knife of ships, it must take huge penalty as a hauler because it has so many uses and the more generic and diverse a ship's range of abilities the more it must be punished for that range of abilities.

The Orca's justly deserved penalties include (but are not restricted to): being expensive, having a wasted capacity for general hauling because you cannot do general hauling in its huge maintenance bay, large mass, near capital class align times, divided general hauling holds which because it us divided wastes hauling efficiency and makes some loads impossible to haul in it just because its hold is divided into two compartments and not because its total capcity is too small. It has a hidden penalty with regards to hauling because even though it is bonused for general hauling if it was a dedicated hauler its capacity to haul would be larger initially and so the hauling bonus would be bigger on a dedicated hauler, and to avoid a wall of text i will stop here giving the plethora of reasons the Orca is not a dedicated hauler and does not fill the role this discussion is about, nor should it.

A finer but still important reason precludes the DSTs from being true dedicated haulers, a dedicated hauler is designed around only ONE purpose hauling and nothing else. The DSTs in their description explain they serve TWO masters BOTH hauling and being tough. The DSTs are one if several branches of haulers that stray away from the dedicated hauler line up because while intended as haulers the are special environment haulers that have one or more side stats that do not increase hauling capacity but usually survivability. Another branch that follows the hauler+survivor branch of haulers are the blockade runners.

sigh....and i repeat this next part again....

While i have adopted someone else's term,'baby freighter', the new class is not being designed 'down' from the frighter class but rather 'up' from the smaller dedicated haulers like the sigil and bestower, the justification being that the freighters are capital class ships and are both granted bonuses like high EHPs and penalties like slow align times and slow warp speeds, which it would be unfair to build down from since the new ship line would be only 1/3 the size of a capital class ship and therefore not even close to capital class in size. Further, the capital class haulers come with, and justifiable so, capital class price tags, while this new sub-cap ship would not.

sigh...and ill just repeat some more.....

The caps align in 40 secs and have warp speeds of 1.4 AU. again this is for a capital ship and is punished for align time and warp speed accordingly.

The T1s sit at: 10 sec align and 3AU warps.

Since the new ship line is not a capital its abilities are bulit closer to its sub-cap brothers and (not claiming this is balanced just tossing out an example) and so might have these stats: align 25 secs and warp speed base value of 2.4 AU. Rigged it could push both numbers but surrender capacity to do so like the sigil and bestower can.


sigh...and i hope i dont have to repeat this all again......

sigh...hopefully people start reading some of the previous posts or for that matter at least the OP.

Tell me what fitting gets 400,000 m3 of cargo in your DST and you got a deal, else it does me and eve, zero good for solving the problem at hand.

My current round trip is 18 jumps, so if use your suggestion i get to....

1. be restricted to 100.000 m3 capacity.
2. It would take me a total of 72 jumps, IF IM LUCKY but if the inefficiencies of breaking my load apart force me to take another round trip or two, then my total jumps required would be bump up to respectively: 90 or an awe inspiring 108 total jumps.