Okey, so there's very little modularity currently in game, just a few ships got a room or two you can theoretically swap out but for now they basically resemble variants, so it's easy to forget that pretty much every larger ship is intended to have some modularity. Even the Merchantman.
Here's what the concept sale says:
Black market trade platform would probably mean trading some cargo space for shielding the cargo hold.
Now of course the BMM has gone through various redesigns since the initial concept. But there's still certainly room for modularity, so, let's go over which rooms could be altered and how:
1) Sanctuary. This is honestly probably going to be a pretty useless room for most players. It's a good sized room too, with an elevator access. Pretty deep inside the ship too, so it could be for example a secondary shielded cargo hold for smuggling. Or possibly the battle bridge. Or with the Q-ship being mentioned as an option, one module could be throwing bunch of remote operated turrets around the ship, and then make this the control room for those. This room could honestly be just about anything.
2) Quest rooms. Obviously if you swap these out, you couldn't have quests. But maybe you don't want quests, maybe you want something else. Like passenger cabin to transport some travelers on the side. Well, that's kinda same as quest rooms, but it'd be less of a VIP 1st class and more of a 3rd class.
3) Conference. Bit larger than the quest rooms. There's some options here, like a Carrack-style repair room.
4) Conference + Quest rooms. Take down that wall, and you got a lot more room. You could really have a full-sized 3rd class passenger cabin there. Make it so cramped that the people want to peruse your market rather than remain seated.
5) Markets. That's a good sized space. Could have some exploration themed rooms, like lab space to analyze stuff you find. As the sorta voyaging trader, BMM would probably already have a pretty good range, so exploration wouldn't be a stretch.
Or more quest rooms, to improve the VIP transport capabilities, in which case you could also just replace 3 shops instead of 4, leave one kiosk there.
Or a casino. Casino would be cool.
6) Top turret. If there's exploration options for modules, the top turret could be swapped out to a powerful scanning array. That turret has a huge room anyways, could accommodate a huge dish.
7) Cargo hold. It's literally just a huge empty space with more cubic meters than what medium ships have. There is no limit to what this room could be. It could even be a second hangar. Though of course if it's something other than a cargo hold, then you won't really be doing much trading.
8) Hangar. More large empty space that could easily be something else. Could just fill it with cargo, or divide it into a bunch of smaller rooms, top could be a greatly reduced hangar for a snub ship, below that you could have couple extra rooms for whatever. Actually, could be a whole standalone exploration module, with the aforementioned snub hangar above and then repair room and lab room below that.
Or put like a gigantic fuel tank there and never stop for gas again.
Basically the only bits you can't really touch are Engineering, Bridge, Mess, Hab, Med and docking collar + the corridor there.
Apart from that, there is really no limit to what sorta modularity BMM could have. Of course, CIG could also just scrap the idea of BMM modularity altogether.
What sorta modules would you guys want to see and where in the BMM?
Here's what the concept sale says:
Strange, I kinda thought BMM was a q-ship by default. I suppose that means you can swap something out for even more hidden guns, or perhaps the idea was that you could swap out the cargo hold for a hangar. This was, of course, written before BMM came with a hangar.https://robertsspaceindustries.com/comm-link/transmission/14332-Clipper-Ship-Banu-Merchantman said:
Black market trade platform would probably mean trading some cargo space for shielding the cargo hold.
Now of course the BMM has gone through various redesigns since the initial concept. But there's still certainly room for modularity, so, let's go over which rooms could be altered and how:
1) Sanctuary. This is honestly probably going to be a pretty useless room for most players. It's a good sized room too, with an elevator access. Pretty deep inside the ship too, so it could be for example a secondary shielded cargo hold for smuggling. Or possibly the battle bridge. Or with the Q-ship being mentioned as an option, one module could be throwing bunch of remote operated turrets around the ship, and then make this the control room for those. This room could honestly be just about anything.
2) Quest rooms. Obviously if you swap these out, you couldn't have quests. But maybe you don't want quests, maybe you want something else. Like passenger cabin to transport some travelers on the side. Well, that's kinda same as quest rooms, but it'd be less of a VIP 1st class and more of a 3rd class.
3) Conference. Bit larger than the quest rooms. There's some options here, like a Carrack-style repair room.
4) Conference + Quest rooms. Take down that wall, and you got a lot more room. You could really have a full-sized 3rd class passenger cabin there. Make it so cramped that the people want to peruse your market rather than remain seated.
5) Markets. That's a good sized space. Could have some exploration themed rooms, like lab space to analyze stuff you find. As the sorta voyaging trader, BMM would probably already have a pretty good range, so exploration wouldn't be a stretch.
Or more quest rooms, to improve the VIP transport capabilities, in which case you could also just replace 3 shops instead of 4, leave one kiosk there.
Or a casino. Casino would be cool.
6) Top turret. If there's exploration options for modules, the top turret could be swapped out to a powerful scanning array. That turret has a huge room anyways, could accommodate a huge dish.
7) Cargo hold. It's literally just a huge empty space with more cubic meters than what medium ships have. There is no limit to what this room could be. It could even be a second hangar. Though of course if it's something other than a cargo hold, then you won't really be doing much trading.
8) Hangar. More large empty space that could easily be something else. Could just fill it with cargo, or divide it into a bunch of smaller rooms, top could be a greatly reduced hangar for a snub ship, below that you could have couple extra rooms for whatever. Actually, could be a whole standalone exploration module, with the aforementioned snub hangar above and then repair room and lab room below that.
Or put like a gigantic fuel tank there and never stop for gas again.
Basically the only bits you can't really touch are Engineering, Bridge, Mess, Hab, Med and docking collar + the corridor there.
Apart from that, there is really no limit to what sorta modularity BMM could have. Of course, CIG could also just scrap the idea of BMM modularity altogether.
What sorta modules would you guys want to see and where in the BMM?
