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My opinion on capital ships

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Dec 14, 2004 Professor Chaos link
Oh, one more thought. I saw another post somewhere about cargo pods that could be left in deep space to stow cargo (Pirates could use it well) or be towed. A good idea for a large (and small would work, too) cargo ship would be a tug with a huge engine, and it would dock with the back of a large cargo pod. More cargo pods could be added on the front, etc, adding cargo cap, but of course also adding mass. Variations on cargo pods could upgrade to having turret ports, or added armor, etc. This I think would be the most realistic cargo ship, functioning much like a semi truck with one or two trailers. Also, it would look cool, and the cargo pods could connect to a station to transfer cargo.
Dec 14, 2004 Lord Q link
 Professor Chaos,

i like you idea about a cargo ship with pods. But my idea reagarding freeiing cargo was that the owner of the cap. ship could do it himself by flying a cargo shuttle of some sort (maybee an atlas or a centaur). While doing this however the cap. ship would be defended soly by ai fighters, and automated turrets.
Dec 14, 2004 Professor Chaos link
Good idea, the only problem is, with how much a cap ship would realistically carry compared to any other ship, this would get very tedious. I wouldn't hesitate to escort a cap ship to defend it, but ferrying cargo would bore me. Also, should the captain of a ship really risk his neck like that? If I were to attack a cap ship, I would have someone in my wing seek out the commander, ferrying cargo.... not safe.

"I know what you're going to say, Number One, I'm the captain and my place is on the bridge, you should command the away team."

:)
Dec 14, 2004 exDragon link
It was mention earlier about a stowaway in Captial ships. Instead, make all ships that fly a certain distance to the capital ship to not be seen by AI controled guns or anybodies radar. The size of the Captial ship vs. the size of the other ship would determine the maxium distance.
Dec 14, 2004 Celebrim link
"Good idea, the only problem is, with how much a cap ship would realistically carry..."

*Celebrim gets out his cross and holy water*

Realism!!! Back to the pit that spawned you I say! We don't need any realism here. If we were to be realistic we might extrapolate that capital ships could carry 2.5 million cargo units. No no no no, back to the abyss with any such thoughts before they utterly ruin _the gaaammme_.
Dec 14, 2004 KixKizzle link
lol Celebrim
Dec 14, 2004 Lord Q link
Well, as for the issue with making the captain ferry cargo, I think that the option should be available but like Professor Chaos said you could always finde people to ferry the cargo for you, but if noone would agree, or if you didn't want to pay than you should have the option of ding it yourself.

As for stow awaws, my idea was that you could dock with somone els's capitle ship and take controle of a turret and cause some havac by firing at things the captain doesn't want you to. Unfortunately this seems troublesom and i think on whole it wouldn't add much to the game, and would be anoying to program.
Dec 14, 2004 johnhawl218 link
just add a jetison button to the seat that the mad gunner is sitting at, let him taste the deep freeze of space >:)~
Dec 15, 2004 cajal link
i imagine the devs have already thought through these things but:

1) as much as i like the idea of a few cap ship docks at nation capitals (you don't land your 747 at a municipal airport), there might be a problem with having only 1 or 2 widely spaced docks. imagine that i'm in my cap ship 7 sectors away from the nearest dock and need to log off suddenly. i'd feel pretty uncomfortable just leaving it floating around, no matter how many automated turrets it has. some kind log-off activated force field could take care of this i guess, or the cap ship could disappear like happens now provided no players in their fighters are on it. also,

2) a great part of the game now is being able to switch ships at any station, any time you like. i love getting in a valk after a few cargo runs in a centaur, for example. it keeps the drudgery of trading/mining at bay. eventually, slogging your way through sectors kicking ass in your cap ship will get boring and you'll want to zip around in a fighter for a while. should you have to travel all the way to a remote dock for this?

Finally, i really like the idea of small corvette/gunboat type ships that aren't too far removed from the biggest current ships and could dock & be piloted normally. introduction of these would make CTC even more fun than it already is. imagine having to fight through a couple of heavily armed & armored but sluggish gunboats to get at the transport. suddenly you'd need to bring along some rags or proms in order to intercept; valks and vults wouldn't be enough. and presumably these sorts of ships wouldn't be too difficult to implement (i'm basically thinking of a slow sluggish armored rag with a couple of autoaiming turrets).

my 2c