Well technically "until it is ready", but I think the wings beta lasted a week or two.
I really hope we see some changes to the courier and Diamondback before they go live.
Super-eagle is not what I imagined a courier ship being. In fact, dog fighting performance is not something that I'd expect to be at the top of the priorities list for a courier ship. Quite the opposite in fact.
How long is this beta supposed to last? I want this in my game.
best fix except that sometimes I use this to reset the map (clicking "Current Location" doesn't always seem to work):
-Galaxy map camera now caches its current position for retrieval on returning to the galaxy map
Most unrealistic fix:
-Police ships shouldn't ram the player just because they are scanning them
The increased markup on illegal goods sounds awesome. I've done a bit of smuggling and it's fun.
So, thruster optimum/max ratings vs ship weight. Presumably you want to have your ship's weight under the optimum rating; does it matter at all how much under you are?
Yes, the amount you are UNDER the optimal rating still affects your speed and agility. I heard somewhere that hard limit is at 40% under the optimal rating. So if your thrusters have an optimal mass of 200T, you will gain speed/agility until you hit 80T, at which point any lower does nothing extra.
So, thruster optimum/max ratings vs ship weight. Presumably you want to have your ship's weight under the optimum rating; does it matter at all how much under you are?
The short answer is yes. That said, my experience is that your ship's mass matters more at that point. So if 20-ton C thrusters have you under the optimum rating, upgrading to 30-ton B thrusters might be a bad idea.
3DS: 4098-4243-6127
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That_GuyI don't wanna be that guyRegistered Userregular
edited May 2015
But if the optimum mass of your thruster assembly is, say 30 tons, you don't get better handling if you are below 30 tons.
Wow. I've been taking a break and waiting to try Powerplay, but if it's no longer possible to sell modules without a loss, I definitely won't bother.
Why in the seven hells would they want me to commit to a ship build? It's no exaggeration to say that screwing with my ship configuration every thirty minutes is more than half of the fun for me.
Hopefully they'll rethink this? It's hard to imagine anyone liking the idea.
Wow. I've been taking a break and waiting to try Powerplay, but if it's no longer possible to sell modules without a loss, I definitely won't bother.
Why in the seven hells would they want me to commit to a ship build? It's no exaggeration to say that screwing with my ship configuration every thirty minutes is more than half of the fun for me.
Hopefully they'll rethink this? It's hard to imagine anyone liking the idea.
That particular issue has stirred up a huge storm of negative response. I don't expect the module tax to survive to the live version.
But another item on my list of complaints:
The stupidly glacier slow "Speeding" threshold near the station. I feel like I'm in danger of the station blowing me out of the sky for loitering.
edit:
While my opinions of the Courier were mostly theory crafting from second hand info up until this point, I have now been able to try her out firsthand.
My conclusion: I was wrong. Its actually WORSE than I thought.
If you had any aspirations to use the Courier as an explorer or a courier ship, then you can kiss them goodbye because the basic hauler and adder are both LIGHTYEARS ahead of Imperial Courier in that race. (I'm sorry @Cilla Black . You and I were both hoping that the Courier might be usable as a long range explorer type ship in some fashion, but that ship simply isn't the ship that is present here in the power play beta).
Did someone mention to you the potential for 32 LY of jump range? They neglected to mention that this is only possible by stripping every piece of equipment off of her and then reducing her down to a pitiful two tons of fuel. I hope you like getting stranded upon encountering your first unscoopable star. You can forget bringing any cargo or exploration scanners with you because that will sink that range in an instant.
Speaking about fuel scooping, the Courier can't. Or at least it can't scoop well. Where the hauler and adder with A class power plants can basically dive into stars to replenish their fuel tank with an A3 fuel scoop, the courier instead bursts into flames. Fuel scooping with the courier is a much more careful and time consuming process. This is a shame because you will need to be scooping much more often because you need to dramatically shrink your fuel tank to match the jump performance of the Hauler or Adder.
All in all, I am EXTREMELY disappointed with the ship. I expected a viable courier ship and instead got a ship that is, if anything, yet another small fighter that is outclassed by the Vulture (something that IMO the game doesn't need).
It may be futile and I may be a silly goose, but I'm going to continue voicing my feedback on this ship to FDEV in the hopes that this wreck can be salvaged into something more fitting of its name.
I... I thought the other half of the fun was going too fast in stations? I don't think I understand this game at all.
Someone somewhere trolled 0.00000001% of the playerbase by repeatedly ramming them at a station. In a futile effort to stop the troll, restrictions were placed on 100% of the game's population. In a sense, that troll has now trolled everyone thanks to the help of FDEV.
Somewhere that troll is still ramming people to death because he doesn't care about being fined/blown up in a video game so this whole fiasco was a massive waste of development time.
In fact, he has a new means to troll people now. He can take his unshielded 1% hull integrity sidewinder and wait for a passing ship that looks like it might barely be over the glacial 100 m/s speed limit. He then rams them, gets destroyed in the collision, and the victim gets slapped with a bounty for destroying a ship within the no-fire zone and the station's defense guns blow him out of the sky. (this isn't speculation. It tested it. If a participant gets blown up in a collision, the station reacts to the bounty like it reacts to everything else. Lethal force).
A pretty simple fix to the scenario you propose would be to only give you a bounty if you're going faster than the other guy. It'll be pretty hard to ram someone going at aforementioned glacial 100m/s speed limit.
They're both light fighters. There is nothing multi-role about them. The courier is not a courier and putting the word "exploration" anywhere near the diamond back is deceptive.
The diamond back is a lighter weight cobra with a better silhouette and weapon groupings.
The courier ship is the better fighter. She is agile and her low mass makes her shields disproportionately strong. What upsets me is that combat performance was obviously the primary concern when designing the ship , when it should have been the last concern for a messenger ship.
The diamond back doesn't have a place in the game. It just isn't different enough from the cobra.
The courier is arguably an upgrade from the Eagle or viper. But the vulture is better still. I'm just baffled by all the people ignoring the elephant in the room that a messenger ship shouldn't be a combatatant in the first place.
I'm going to try out the mining drones and other power play features later, but as far as I'm concerned both of the new ships were massive wastes of development time.
The diamond back doesn't have a place in the game. It just isn't different enough from the cobra.
Maybe it's for people who want something like the Cobra but don't like the Cobra's look?
Also, the dev mentioned something about it not taking as much module damage if it's hit from the top. Has anyone verified that?
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That_GuyI don't wanna be that guyRegistered Userregular
The 10% tradein tax on modules really sucks. The speed limit doesn't really seem like that big of a deal. You really shouldn't be going over 100 inside a station anyway. Once outside the station, it's going to be really hard to run into someone unless they are trying to get rammed.
The 10% tradein tax on modules really sucks. The speed limit doesn't really seem like that big of a deal. You really shouldn't be going over 100 inside a station anyway. Once outside the station, it's going to be really hard to run into someone unless they are trying to get rammed.
It is 100 relative to the collision participants. All it takes is one unshielded sidewinder hitting boost into a type 9 and the station goes weapons free.
Even if it was 100 relative to the station, that is really slow. The freaking docking computer is faster than that.
I dislike the Cobra's weapon placements, so if the Diamondback has a better layout that's interesting to me, at least. And I really like the Eagle, though it doesn't have much of a punch, so if the Courier is in the Eagle/Viper progression then that's fine too.
I also dislike flying a ship that has extra, empty seats in the cockpit. I'm controlling all the ship's functions already; what are you for, empty Cobra co-pilot seat?
And I really like the Eagle, though it doesn't have much of a punch, so if the Courier is in the Eagle/Viper progression then that's fine too.
It really isn't. Unless I'm in some kind of Twilight Zone. A "courier" is still a messenger here right? I'm not just making that up? That's not some delusion of mine? Somebody who delivers messages and packages, not a fighter that kicks ass and chews bubble gum.
The ship either needs to be re-worked to fulfill it's namesake role (because it can't do that right now. It is only good at fighting) , or it should be renamed to the Imperial Fighter.
Mr_Rose83 Blue Ridge Protects the HolyRegistered Userregular
Relatively easy smuggling upgrade: shielded cargo racks. A shielded rack (and its content) doesn't show up on normal scans but it's mass is still there so an astute pilot might spot an anomaly and perform an extended scan.
Originally developed as an anti-piracy measure, naturally, legitimate licensed racks don't block scans from stations so system security tend to consider even possession of an empty unlicensed rack to be a felony… assuming they spot it, of course.
And I really like the Eagle, though it doesn't have much of a punch, so if the Courier is in the Eagle/Viper progression then that's fine too.
It really isn't. Unless I'm in some kind of Twilight Zone. A "courier" is still a messenger here right? I'm not just making that up? That's not some delusion of mine? Somebody who delivers messages and packages, not a fighter that kicks ass and chews bubble gum.
The ship either needs to be re-worked to fulfill it's namesake role (because it can't do that right now. It is only good at fighting) , or it should be renamed to the Imperial Fighter.
Dude, it's just a name, chill.
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That_GuyI don't wanna be that guyRegistered Userregular
Here's what I would expect out of a ship called a courier.
Small Cargo space
Small fuel tanks
SANIC speed thrusters
Extreme jump range 30+ly
Little to no weaponry
Little to no armor
Little to no shielding
I see the Diamondback as a legitimate upgrade from a Viper. The same punch, yes, but better hardpoint placement. Twice as many utility mounts. Twice the jump range. Four times as much fuel. At, I'm guesstimating, a cost of about half that of the Vulture. A great step up for the combat oriented pilot.
The Courier. Meh. I dunno. Theoretically it's got better dps than the other medium fighters, but the hardpoint placement is troublesome. That ventral point will lose line-of-sight pretty easily. I guess it's a good option for the Imperial enthusiast. Otherwise, the only Imperial ship you can fly is the Clipper.
Yeah, but what does a Courier do in Elite currently? What is there to Cour?
It's a dumb name, but it's not like if it were fast and agile and gunless it'd have a role in the current game.
That's where power play and the expanded mission system should come into play. ED lacks ftl comms, so there should be a huge demand to move messages across all of civilized space. Especially for the military and government organizations where information can be time critical and of huge importance .
A handful of messenger missions are available, but they are all aimed at sidewinder to give them their first few bucks.
Realistically there should be bulletin board missions available at all times to move messages around. As you become allied with the stations, you should be trusted with more sensitive info. Time critical messages should have short deadlines and higher profits. (the local political situation is a powder keg, get this info back to federal high command in Sol, 300 ly away. You have 10 minutes. Gogogo)
Additionally, it is invaluable for traders to have price scouts to check prices. When I am hunting trade routes, I can easily check dozens of stations and traverse thousands of light years. Right now the best price scout is the asp, followed by the hauler as a budget option. I would easily be willing to pay millions of credits to get a small courier ship whose only claim to fame is godlike jump range.
So if they follow through with this 10% buyback penalty, I'll be buying an Asp solely for the purpose of storing my 20% discounted 6A shield once they go on sale for that CG. Selling the shield for 7 million or whatever and having to buy it back at 10 million even once would kill me.
edit: although it would be nice to also store a 6A fuel scoop. Realistically if I ever go exploring in my Asp, it won't even cover the cost of selling back the fuel scoop
Yeah I kind of thought the courier might fill the intro Scout role better than like the Hauler/Adder.
Both the Adder and Hauler can definitely be retrofitted to have big jump ranges/fuel tanks/fuel scoops, but it would be neat to have a ship that was a pure, dedicated scout. That way you could, reasonably early on, say "I tried doing light cargo with a Sidewinder and light combat with an Eagle, and now I want to really just explore and only that" and hop on to something with like a 20LY default jump range. That would be neat!
Crap, managed to get a small fine slapped because I attacked a wrong target when doing bounties for persephone. I tried to go back to persephone to pay the fine and redeem my bounties but I wasn't even allowed in the station. How do I pay the fine if I can't even dock in an imperial station?
EDIT: ah, it's a bounty, I can apparently pay that anywhere else
Don't know if anyone's noticed the "explore near Azaleach" CG, but a couple points:
The station is ~15,000ls out.
Don't forget that to sell the data, it must be 20ly from Azaleach, so you're looking for systems in the 20-200ly range (assuming the top bound actually matters at all). I kinda f'ed myself on this.
Boo fell down to top 100% in the Persephone CG p, guess I need to get some kills in.
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That_GuyI don't wanna be that guyRegistered Userregular
As long as I can stay in the top 40% for both CGs I will be happy. Hoping that it will net me a combined 12mil bonus when the events finish. I have about 15 mil in cash on me. Hoping this will be enough for an A rated shield and the B rated power plant.
I can't believe the A rated power plant for the Python is more than the ship itself cost.
Well, hopefully we've got our fill of low to mid range combat ships now, and we can see if FDEV can deliver on any non-combat designs. Designing ships for combat is easy. Designing ships for trade is easy. Designing ships for other roles is a lot trickier.
Let me design a courier ship:
Small and lightweight
Oversized fsd
Oversized thruster
Almost no guns
Only has room for a fuel scoop, a token shield, and maybe two tons of cargo.
BAM. A courier ship.
Also, while they are expanding upon the bulletin board missions, they should make the "deliver this message to____" missions scale better with your reputation. High payout missions to travel long distances with very short deadlines should be another type of courier mission.
Now we have more things to do with courier ships and courier is a profession you can follow like exploring, mining, trading, etc.
What you should not do is build your courier ship like a space superiority fighter.
(at this point I'm just hoping they rename the Imperial Courier because that will bug me forever)
General_Armchair on
3DS Friend Code:
Armchair: 4098-3704-2012
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That_GuyI don't wanna be that guyRegistered Userregular
Let me design a courier ship:
Small and lightweight
Oversized fsd
Oversized thruster
Almost no guns
Only has room for a fuel scoop, a token shield, and maybe two tons of cargo.
BAM. A courier ship.
Also, while they are expanding upon the bulletin board missions, they should make the "deliver this message to____" missions scale better with your reputation. High payout missions to travel long distances with very short deadlines should be another type of courier mission.
Now we have more things to do with courier ships and courier is a profession you can follow like exploring, mining, trading, etc.
What you should not do is build your courier ship like a space superiority fighter.
(at this point I'm just hoping they rename the Imperial Courier because that will bug me forever)
Hidden in the mess of release notes was a line that said missions will scale to your reputation. Not sure what it applies to.
Let me design a courier ship:
Small and lightweight
Oversized fsd
Oversized thruster
Almost no guns
Only has room for a fuel scoop, a token shield, and maybe two tons of cargo.
BAM. A courier ship.
Also, while they are expanding upon the bulletin board missions, they should make the "deliver this message to____" missions scale better with your reputation. High payout missions to travel long distances with very short deadlines should be another type of courier mission.
Now we have more things to do with courier ships and courier is a profession you can follow like exploring, mining, trading, etc.
What you should not do is build your courier ship like a space superiority fighter.
(at this point I'm just hoping they rename the Imperial Courier because that will bug me forever)
Hidden in the mess of release notes was a line that said missions will scale to your reputation. Not sure what it applies to.
Some missions were improved. I saw a hunt pirates mission with 800k payout. I haven't seen a scaled courier mission. I don't think it is even on their radar. The existing message delivery missions are aimed at sidewinders who somehow managed to sell their cargo bays, Discovery scanner, and guns and need a quick buck. The other flavor of messenger mission is to transport precious jewels or metallurgy samples in the pilot's personal safe in the cockpit.
I really do wish they'd just rename the ship. I am baffled by the number of people that seem to think it is appropriate for a courier ship to be strong at combat but completely un-noteworthy for its ability to move messages and small packages around.
I'm convinced that many of them either:
A: legitimately don't know what the word courier means
B: are stuck in fanboy white Knight mode and automatically praise anything the devs create regardless of any flaws.
Let me design a courier ship:
Small and lightweight
Oversized fsd
Oversized thruster
Almost no guns
Only has room for a fuel scoop, a token shield, and maybe two tons of cargo.
BAM. A courier ship.
Also, while they are expanding upon the bulletin board missions, they should make the "deliver this message to____" missions scale better with your reputation. High payout missions to travel long distances with very short deadlines should be another type of courier mission.
Now we have more things to do with courier ships and courier is a profession you can follow like exploring, mining, trading, etc.
What you should not do is build your courier ship like a space superiority fighter.
(at this point I'm just hoping they rename the Imperial Courier because that will bug me forever)
Hidden in the mess of release notes was a line that said missions will scale to your reputation. Not sure what it applies to.
Generally harder/more interesting missions with higher rewards.
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That_GuyI don't wanna be that guyRegistered Userregular
Let me design a courier ship:
Small and lightweight
Oversized fsd
Oversized thruster
Almost no guns
Only has room for a fuel scoop, a token shield, and maybe two tons of cargo.
BAM. A courier ship.
Also, while they are expanding upon the bulletin board missions, they should make the "deliver this message to____" missions scale better with your reputation. High payout missions to travel long distances with very short deadlines should be another type of courier mission.
Now we have more things to do with courier ships and courier is a profession you can follow like exploring, mining, trading, etc.
What you should not do is build your courier ship like a space superiority fighter.
(at this point I'm just hoping they rename the Imperial Courier because that will bug me forever)
Hidden in the mess of release notes was a line that said missions will scale to your reputation. Not sure what it applies to.
Some missions were improved. I saw a hunt pirates mission with 800k payout. I haven't seen a scaled courier mission. I don't think it is even on their radar. The existing message delivery missions are aimed at sidewinders who somehow managed to sell their cargo bays, Discovery scanner, and guns and need a quick buck. The other flavor of messenger mission is to transport precious jewels or metallurgy samples in the pilot's personal safe in the cockpit.
I really do wish they'd just rename the ship. I am baffled by the number of people that seem to think it is appropriate for a courier ship to be strong at combat but completely un-noteworthy for its ability to move messages and small packages around.
I'm convinced that many of them either:
A: legitimately don't know what the word courier means
B: are stuck in fanboy white Knight mode and automatically praise anything the devs create regardless of any flaws.
Nice. I would totally hunt pirates for 800k. The kill warrants on them will probably be another 200k minimum. Can't wait for the patch.
I have to ask again. Has anyone in the beta tried out mining with the new drones? How is that working out?
Posts
I really hope we see some changes to the courier and Diamondback before they go live.
Super-eagle is not what I imagined a courier ship being. In fact, dog fighting performance is not something that I'd expect to be at the top of the priorities list for a courier ship. Quite the opposite in fact.
Armchair: 4098-3704-2012
best fix except that sometimes I use this to reset the map (clicking "Current Location" doesn't always seem to work):
-Galaxy map camera now caches its current position for retrieval on returning to the galaxy map
Most unrealistic fix:
-Police ships shouldn't ram the player just because they are scanning them
The increased markup on illegal goods sounds awesome. I've done a bit of smuggling and it's fun.
Inquisitor77: Rius, you are Sisyphus and melee Wizard is your boulder
Tube: This must be what it felt like to be an Iraqi when Saddam was killed
Bookish Stickers - Mrs. Rius' Etsy shop with bumper stickers and vinyl decals.
The short answer is yes. That said, my experience is that your ship's mass matters more at that point. So if 20-ton C thrusters have you under the optimum rating, upgrading to 30-ton B thrusters might be a bad idea.
That is my understanding anyway
Why in the seven hells would they want me to commit to a ship build? It's no exaggeration to say that screwing with my ship configuration every thirty minutes is more than half of the fun for me.
Hopefully they'll rethink this? It's hard to imagine anyone liking the idea.
That particular issue has stirred up a huge storm of negative response. I don't expect the module tax to survive to the live version.
But another item on my list of complaints:
The stupidly glacier slow "Speeding" threshold near the station. I feel like I'm in danger of the station blowing me out of the sky for loitering.
edit:
While my opinions of the Courier were mostly theory crafting from second hand info up until this point, I have now been able to try her out firsthand.
My conclusion: I was wrong. Its actually WORSE than I thought.
If you had any aspirations to use the Courier as an explorer or a courier ship, then you can kiss them goodbye because the basic hauler and adder are both LIGHTYEARS ahead of Imperial Courier in that race. (I'm sorry @Cilla Black . You and I were both hoping that the Courier might be usable as a long range explorer type ship in some fashion, but that ship simply isn't the ship that is present here in the power play beta).
Did someone mention to you the potential for 32 LY of jump range? They neglected to mention that this is only possible by stripping every piece of equipment off of her and then reducing her down to a pitiful two tons of fuel. I hope you like getting stranded upon encountering your first unscoopable star. You can forget bringing any cargo or exploration scanners with you because that will sink that range in an instant.
Speaking about fuel scooping, the Courier can't. Or at least it can't scoop well. Where the hauler and adder with A class power plants can basically dive into stars to replenish their fuel tank with an A3 fuel scoop, the courier instead bursts into flames. Fuel scooping with the courier is a much more careful and time consuming process. This is a shame because you will need to be scooping much more often because you need to dramatically shrink your fuel tank to match the jump performance of the Hauler or Adder.
All in all, I am EXTREMELY disappointed with the ship. I expected a viable courier ship and instead got a ship that is, if anything, yet another small fighter that is outclassed by the Vulture (something that IMO the game doesn't need).
It may be futile and I may be a silly goose, but I'm going to continue voicing my feedback on this ship to FDEV in the hopes that this wreck can be salvaged into something more fitting of its name.
Armchair: 4098-3704-2012
Sorry about the double post, but I wanted to keep the answer seperate from my angry rant.
The cargo capacity of an unshielded Diamondback filled to the gills with cargo racks is 28 tons.
Armchair: 4098-3704-2012
Someone somewhere trolled 0.00000001% of the playerbase by repeatedly ramming them at a station. In a futile effort to stop the troll, restrictions were placed on 100% of the game's population. In a sense, that troll has now trolled everyone thanks to the help of FDEV.
Somewhere that troll is still ramming people to death because he doesn't care about being fined/blown up in a video game so this whole fiasco was a massive waste of development time.
In fact, he has a new means to troll people now. He can take his unshielded 1% hull integrity sidewinder and wait for a passing ship that looks like it might barely be over the glacial 100 m/s speed limit. He then rams them, gets destroyed in the collision, and the victim gets slapped with a bounty for destroying a ship within the no-fire zone and the station's defense guns blow him out of the sky. (this isn't speculation. It tested it. If a participant gets blown up in a collision, the station reacts to the bounty like it reacts to everything else. Lethal force).
The entire anti-ramming system is flawed.
Armchair: 4098-3704-2012
http://steamcommunity.com/id/pablocampy
So it's also not a smuggling vessel either.
Bummer.
My single digit interest is waning, I've been holding out hope that they'll actually develop the smuggling/piracy stuff.
The diamond back is a lighter weight cobra with a better silhouette and weapon groupings.
The courier ship is the better fighter. She is agile and her low mass makes her shields disproportionately strong. What upsets me is that combat performance was obviously the primary concern when designing the ship , when it should have been the last concern for a messenger ship.
The diamond back doesn't have a place in the game. It just isn't different enough from the cobra.
The courier is arguably an upgrade from the Eagle or viper. But the vulture is better still. I'm just baffled by all the people ignoring the elephant in the room that a messenger ship shouldn't be a combatatant in the first place.
I'm going to try out the mining drones and other power play features later, but as far as I'm concerned both of the new ships were massive wastes of development time.
Armchair: 4098-3704-2012
Maybe it's for people who want something like the Cobra but don't like the Cobra's look?
Also, the dev mentioned something about it not taking as much module damage if it's hit from the top. Has anyone verified that?
It is 100 relative to the collision participants. All it takes is one unshielded sidewinder hitting boost into a type 9 and the station goes weapons free.
Even if it was 100 relative to the station, that is really slow. The freaking docking computer is faster than that.
200 would be more appropriate.
Armchair: 4098-3704-2012
I also dislike flying a ship that has extra, empty seats in the cockpit. I'm controlling all the ship's functions already; what are you for, empty Cobra co-pilot seat?
Inquisitor77: Rius, you are Sisyphus and melee Wizard is your boulder
Tube: This must be what it felt like to be an Iraqi when Saddam was killed
Bookish Stickers - Mrs. Rius' Etsy shop with bumper stickers and vinyl decals.
It really isn't. Unless I'm in some kind of Twilight Zone. A "courier" is still a messenger here right? I'm not just making that up? That's not some delusion of mine? Somebody who delivers messages and packages, not a fighter that kicks ass and chews bubble gum.
The ship either needs to be re-worked to fulfill it's namesake role (because it can't do that right now. It is only good at fighting) , or it should be renamed to the Imperial Fighter.
Armchair: 4098-3704-2012
It's a dumb name, but it's not like if it were fast and agile and gunless it'd have a role in the current game.
Inquisitor77: Rius, you are Sisyphus and melee Wizard is your boulder
Tube: This must be what it felt like to be an Iraqi when Saddam was killed
Bookish Stickers - Mrs. Rius' Etsy shop with bumper stickers and vinyl decals.
Originally developed as an anti-piracy measure, naturally, legitimate licensed racks don't block scans from stations so system security tend to consider even possession of an empty unlicensed rack to be a felony… assuming they spot it, of course.
Nintendo Network ID: AzraelRose
DropBox invite link - get 500MB extra free.
Dude, it's just a name, chill.
Small Cargo space
Small fuel tanks
SANIC speed thrusters
Extreme jump range 30+ly
Little to no weaponry
Little to no armor
Little to no shielding
The Courier. Meh. I dunno. Theoretically it's got better dps than the other medium fighters, but the hardpoint placement is troublesome. That ventral point will lose line-of-sight pretty easily. I guess it's a good option for the Imperial enthusiast. Otherwise, the only Imperial ship you can fly is the Clipper.
That's where power play and the expanded mission system should come into play. ED lacks ftl comms, so there should be a huge demand to move messages across all of civilized space. Especially for the military and government organizations where information can be time critical and of huge importance .
A handful of messenger missions are available, but they are all aimed at sidewinder to give them their first few bucks.
Realistically there should be bulletin board missions available at all times to move messages around. As you become allied with the stations, you should be trusted with more sensitive info. Time critical messages should have short deadlines and higher profits. (the local political situation is a powder keg, get this info back to federal high command in Sol, 300 ly away. You have 10 minutes. Gogogo)
Additionally, it is invaluable for traders to have price scouts to check prices. When I am hunting trade routes, I can easily check dozens of stations and traverse thousands of light years. Right now the best price scout is the asp, followed by the hauler as a budget option. I would easily be willing to pay millions of credits to get a small courier ship whose only claim to fame is godlike jump range.
Armchair: 4098-3704-2012
edit: although it would be nice to also store a 6A fuel scoop. Realistically if I ever go exploring in my Asp, it won't even cover the cost of selling back the fuel scoop
Both the Adder and Hauler can definitely be retrofitted to have big jump ranges/fuel tanks/fuel scoops, but it would be neat to have a ship that was a pure, dedicated scout. That way you could, reasonably early on, say "I tried doing light cargo with a Sidewinder and light combat with an Eagle, and now I want to really just explore and only that" and hop on to something with like a 20LY default jump range. That would be neat!
EDIT: ah, it's a bounty, I can apparently pay that anywhere else
The station is ~15,000ls out.
Don't forget that to sell the data, it must be 20ly from Azaleach, so you're looking for systems in the 20-200ly range (assuming the top bound actually matters at all). I kinda f'ed myself on this.
3ds friend code: 2981-6032-4118
I can't believe the A rated power plant for the Python is more than the ship itself cost.
Small and lightweight
Oversized fsd
Oversized thruster
Almost no guns
Only has room for a fuel scoop, a token shield, and maybe two tons of cargo.
BAM. A courier ship.
Also, while they are expanding upon the bulletin board missions, they should make the "deliver this message to____" missions scale better with your reputation. High payout missions to travel long distances with very short deadlines should be another type of courier mission.
Now we have more things to do with courier ships and courier is a profession you can follow like exploring, mining, trading, etc.
What you should not do is build your courier ship like a space superiority fighter.
(at this point I'm just hoping they rename the Imperial Courier because that will bug me forever)
Armchair: 4098-3704-2012
Hidden in the mess of release notes was a line that said missions will scale to your reputation. Not sure what it applies to.
I really do wish they'd just rename the ship. I am baffled by the number of people that seem to think it is appropriate for a courier ship to be strong at combat but completely un-noteworthy for its ability to move messages and small packages around.
I'm convinced that many of them either:
A: legitimately don't know what the word courier means
B: are stuck in fanboy white Knight mode and automatically praise anything the devs create regardless of any flaws.
Armchair: 4098-3704-2012
Generally harder/more interesting missions with higher rewards.
Nice. I would totally hunt pirates for 800k. The kill warrants on them will probably be another 200k minimum. Can't wait for the patch.
I have to ask again. Has anyone in the beta tried out mining with the new drones? How is that working out?