Player Features and Ideas Discussion

Why?

None of the empires have any mining ships of their own anymore. All current mining ships come from the organisation known as ORE ( Outer Rim Excavations)

So where is the T1 exploration ship?
ORE ships are not pirate ships, ORE are a sub faction with a limited ship line but T1 & T2 ships.
SoE are a pirate faction.

Totally different.

Probe, imicus, and I can't remember the name of the other two.

Only technically. They are listed as pirate ships and, as such, have two rather than one set of racial traits and attributes, even if SoE are far from being a pirate organization.

I feel like SoE is considered "pirate" only because their ships currently require 2 factions, one per bonus. If they had their own starship skill, that could be paired down to one like the ore ships.

Not supported. The current system works. The T1 exploration frigates get plenty of use. They logically continue to their T2 counterparts. This was not the case with the useless, deadend T1 mining frigates we had before.

You misunderstand. The current ones out there would be the T2s or whatever. T1 versions of them would be added for beginners to learn with. Also, you could later add a combat probing version or whatever you need within the SoE line.

Yeah I totally see the logic here.

We need an SoE equivalent of the venture to replace the factional exploration ships.

What they get repurposed into though? No idea.

Oh and as an aside, I think ships like the tristan, tormentor, breacher, and kestrel need their own AF variants for the weapon system that they match best to, similar to how the command ships were changed.

Tristan hull Ishkur
Tormentor hull Vengeance
Breacher hull Jaguar
Kestrel hull Hawk

Not terribly important in most uses but they are small advantages in some situations.
One more low slot
Lower inertia modifier
Faster align
Faster warp
Higher HP
Of course there are negatives as well but you asked how or why the Helios may have advantages. Personally I prefer the Anathema anyway.

To the OP I have to ask why as well.
The differences in the 4 are small but they are there and with proper fitting and implants they each fill a role that the others cannot do as well so why would we want to limit our choices.

The only skill difference between the 4 current is the racial frigate skill. Since the SOE ships are classified as a "pirate" faction they require two racial frigate skills so the training time is essentially equal so where is the advantage to this?

Staying with skills your single ship idea would actually punish some players. There are those who alreay have a racial frigate skill to 5 and would only need to train the cov-ops specific skills to fly a T2 exploration ship. With your change they still have to train those cov-ops skills but they may have to train a second racial frigate skill as well.

Overall I have to give your idea a -1. There are some negative aspects to it that your proposal does not adequately balance out with positive sides.

And you get a -1 because you offer us no ideas as to what the current line up of T2 exploration ships should become when they are superseded by your new SOE exploration ship.