Jacob Holland
Weyland-Vulcan Industries
Alliance not Found
18
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Posted - 2012.02.29 17:32:00 -
[1] - Quote
Dry-Dock Freight Container:
Applying some of the rules from station containers to shipping containers GÇô Station containers can hold assembled ships (but are obviously too large to be shipped from place to place). A shipping container large enough to limit its use to freighters (and therefore prevent deployment in belts as a mining container for example) and with rules and capacity to contain an assembled Battleship allows the movement of (particularly) rigged ships which will not fit inside an Orca more efficiently than flying it, shuttling backGǪetc.
External Size: 450,000m3 (Allowing two to be carried in any max skilled freighter, although in the case of the Fenrir, only just).
Internal Size: 500,000m3 (A minimal level of expansion, suitable for almost all BS (see below)).
My current thinking is to keep the packaged size small, perhaps ten or twenty thousand cubic meters, partially to allow the containers to be moved by standard haulers and also allowing a freighter to carry packaged containers without significantly impairing its normal operation.
A note on container capacity:
The size chosen creates slightly more than a 10% expansion which shouldnGÇÖt ruffle too many feathers.
There is an issue however... The Machariel is about 20% larger than the GÇ£averageGÇ¥ battleship and will not fit within this type of container. While GSCs allow a 30% expansion they cannot be used in freighters. While there is no danger of allowing packaged capitals into Empire using this method there is still a certain reluctance to increase Freighter cargo capacity more than is absolutely necessary.
Finally, the rules for these containers would have to be considered quite carefully to prevent freighters loading up on fully expanded haulers full of containers (further increasing their expansion). The right choices of ships could, after all, significantly increase the capacity of the freighter if used in this manner - easiest would be to apply the rules for Ship Maint Arrays, meaning that only ammunition could be carried in the holds of ships inside the containers (though that's a large amount of ammunition none the less) but I wouldn't want to prevent a Fenrir from moving two battleships at once simply because they each have a can of cap boosters in the hold so the container rules would have to be carefully considered. |