[Video] Roadmap 3.5 and 3.7, 3.8 added
- Thread starter Montoya
- Start date
From previous talk about the Hull ships, the A and B series can land fully loaded with cargo because of their small size, however, for the C, D, and E models to make landfall, they could not carry any cargo and had to be the in "folded" position. This may change in the future though.
Hull C can land with a full load of cargo and it can do it fast. The speed it can deliver cargo to a landing pad makes up for the time spent waiting for insurance to recall your ship.
Yes, but the merchantman also packs stores, is a space costco. The Hull C is just a giant space dong with a bunch of cargo containers hanging off it.
This update really bummed me out with the amount of gameplay that has vanished. We needs things to do at this point over many of the items on the road map. Why even have the Carrack released if there is no exploration profession to test? I was hoping at the least that true group functionality(mission profit-sharing, etc.) and being able to transfer credits easier would be a high priority.
[theorycraft]
I think the main bonus for the HULL ships will be loading time. You arrive, they bolt on a few boxes at the specialist port facilities, you leave.
The BMM arrives and lands on a pad and every single pallet and shipping box has to be loaded on individually.
Think of the difference between a coal train stopping at the mine and having a conveyor belt dump coal directly into the car then when it gets to the power station they open the hatch on the bottom of the car and the coal basically falls out double-quick, and a lorry that has to have every single pallet of stuff loaded on to it individually by a fork-lift. Essentially in the time it takes to load a lorry with a fork-lift you could have delivered five times the weight of coal with the specialist train.
I think that will be the benefit of the HULL line - where there are the facilities nothing will shift bulk faster.
[/theorycraft]
The hull series will shine with large cargos between secure space hubs on well established planets. Think Port Olisar to a similar station above Hurston, and another above ArcCorp, etc. Food goes to arccorp, refined minerals to Hurston and crusader, etc, lots of low cost, low margin stuff, but you make up for it in volume. Yeah, you might only make a tenth Of a UEC/unit, but you are talking 460,800 units. That’s 46k profit for a fairly safe run, riskier cargoes will be run by smaller ships like the Freelancer, etc., while station to surface runs will be the domain of ships like the caterpillar where you buy at the main port and then deliver to ground side cities/outposts.
One thing not mentioned was the Connie Taurus was completely removed from the current roadmap. This is one of the ships a lot of people were looking forward to. It might be a SQ42 thing, or it ight be a scanning thing, but it looks like another year or more for that ship.
lol no? It's job isnt to freight stuff, its job is to be a mobile market place. Probably doesnt unload or load as fast as a Hull series. <-- just a guess
Keep in mind that a lot of stuff is NOT on the roadmap because CIG wants to surprise us along the way as well. They mention exactly that in the latest RTV.
In terms of game mechanics. How do you think the marketplace will work?
I love everything about the ship but I’m yet to see anything about how operating a bazaar will work in practice.
I'm thinking something more along the lines of global inventories being easily accessible. It's one thing to have a hull-c-d-e loaded to the space nipples with stuff, but no good to have people you meet enroute wanting to make purchases, trying to find that specific crate in an external environment would be nuts, in space. Where the merchantman could have stalls/kiosks in place that just instantly draw from the larger hold. No need to have someone on hand to pull stock or do a physical trade. I see it sort of like the UO days where you had npc merchants outside your house with goods to sell.
Thats a great question. I dont think CIG has given us very much to go off of. But if I were to take an educated guess, I would imagine that the ship lands, unfolds/opens up. People can walk into it and shop around like a bazaar or grocery store. Or perhaps they will shop via kiosk instead of browsing physical goods on display. It will be interesting to see how CIG makes this work.