Shaka Quatuic
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Posted - 2009.01.20 17:48:00 -
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this is an area where ccp has seriously fallen flat on it's face in many respects.
those of you who have read my posts in other threads know that I am fond of using real-life analogues, and that trend is going to continue here. to put it simply, there are far too few different models of cargo transport vessels.
I see current industrials such as the mammoth and itty5 to be akin to modern day river barges - intended for short range transport of small to medium loads (although they are able to maneuver on their own). this is all well and good for individuals and mining gangs for belt to station runs, as well as small to medium-scale industrialists who need to move modules and such from system to system. Unfortunately, CCP chose to completely skip other transport vessel types when they introduced the freighter - which is closest in capabilities to a real-life bulk carrier type of transport.
what should have been happened was the introduction of other classes of cargo ship as the economy of eve grew, following a closer to RL model of how cargo transports are designed and what roles they fill. for example:
- Industial ships should have been far less hauler and more small-scale mining command ship along the same lines as a Battlecruiser - capable of specifically fitting mining-gang related command modules (only one at a time of course) and tanking belt rats - ECM would have been a decent secondary ability as it would allow the industrial to draw the attention of belt rats for that purpose. T2 versions should have been the industrial equivalent of fleet command ships - no need for a field command equivalent
- what we now know as industrials should have been the Bulk Carriers. lower tier models of this class would be smaller and intended for hauling in support of miners (a Tier 3 Bulk Carrier would be roughly equivalent to a fully expanded and rigged Itty 5), with the ability to manipulate/load/unload cargo in space, while higher Tier models would forego the ability to manipulate cargo in space in favor of much higher capacities on the order of 250kkm^3. This class would be limited however in that it would be specialized for the handling and transport of ore, raw ice, and other non-perishable raw materials such as moon minerals
- the next class of ships would be Container Ships. Intended (and specialized) for the transport of manufactured goods, these ships would specialize in transporting a fixed number of containers externally, the number and size of which is a constant dependent upon the vessel's Tier. the typical Tier 1 vessel of this class might carry 12 Large Secure Containers, while the Tier 5 might carry up to 12 General Freight Containers. These ships, due to their nature, are all capable of manipulating cargo containers in space, and so are the principal class used for the anchoring of POSes. the secure containers however are not compatible with the ore transfer systems used by miners, as they cannot handle raw materials. While they can carry packaged vessels in their containers, carrying large quantities of large ships is the domain of the final class: the Heavy Lift Transport
- the third class of cargo vessel is the Tanker. these are specialized in handling refined materials such as tritanium, fernite, liquid oxygen and ozone in large quantity, with the upper tiers reaching truly gigantic proportions of well over 1Mkm^3 in volume.
- the final class is the aforementioned Heavy Lift Ship. the sole domain of this vessel is the transport of large packaged vessels such as Battleships, Carriers, Dreadnaughts and Titans over long distances. as such, it is a T1 Capital class equipped with its' own jump drives, and is restricted from entering 0.5 space or higher unless contracted (and cynoed) by an NPC empire agent.
of course there would be T2 variants, some of which would be jump-capable, able to cloak etc. |