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Thread: Whats the Star Wars Universe without big ugly bulk freighters?
Message Edited by NattyDreadlock on 06-30-2004 06:36 PM
NattyDreadlock wrote:
Am i the only one who wants a big, ugly freighter?
Nope, I wanna be broken down and beatingmine with a hammerright next to yours.
The next expansion has GOT to be Ships & Planets. We need more than 15-20 ships up in this piece. 
Count me in.
I've argued before that one of the most recognizable aspects of all the Star Wars movies(that no one ever realizes) is the importance of commerce. Other than the heroes and the politicians, everybody's out to make a buck!
So manyscenes in every movieare bustling with commercial activity: from kids selling deathsticks in a seedy Coruscant barto moisture farmers trying to eke out a living on the windswept sands of distant Tatooine, from junk dealers to travelingdroid salesmen to clone manufacturers to crime bosses to roguish smugglers, commerce is the other great "force" in the galaxy.
As far as I can tell, it's commerce that binds the galaxy together!
The basic ground-basedSWG actually started offrepresenting this part of the epic reasonably well throughthe excellentcrafting system.Most development in the year since has been excessively aimed at combat-specific features, butSWG really does have a player economy in which crafters play an important part.
So why in the world would space not also be a place for commerce?
You bet we need freighters! Big lumberingones that can carry a lot of basic goods; small, fast ships for high-priority shipments; and -- my favorite -- the armed merchantmen that prey on the would-bepredators. We need pleasure craft, too; space ought to be full of people out seeing the sights (in "safe" areas, of course) in ships fromsmall in-systemrunabouts to enormous starfaringcruise liners.
Bottom line: Who is it that the heroes of the galaxy are supposed to be protecting from the villains, ifnot thepeople trying to make a living? If the game doesn't support characters as regular folks engaged in daily commerce -- both on the groundand in space -- thenwhat areheroes for?
--Flatfingers
Two additional words about freighters and combat, if I may.
Freighters should definitely have to make a tradeoff between cargo and weapons, and for most freighter captains long-term economic survival ought to mean the obvious answer is "cargo." So yes, most freighters ought to be pretty weak.
We can call these "NPCs."
Freighters don't have to be wimps. If nothing else, freighters will tend to be bigger than starfighters, and there are two major advantages inherent in that fact.
Defense: Bigger = more damage points available. Starfighters, which need to be nimble, simply can't absorb anywhere near as much damage as the average freighter. The defensive advantage of freighters is even greater if the freighter in question is armored and/or carries a larger shield generator (because it can).
Offense: Bigger = more hardpoints. Yes, some starfighters can pack fairly uber weaponry (especially the military fighters, which ought to have access to the best guns/missiles/torpedoes possible). But because they're basically one-person fighter craft, they're limited in how many weapons they can mount. Freighters don't have access to the most lethal weapons, but they can make up for this by stuffing far more guns, turrets, and launch racks onto their superstructure than any starfighter could ever hope to have. (They'll have to pay for this by giving up cargo space, of course.)
It's absolutely true that we're talking about two radically different gameplay styles here -- but it's just not correct to say that freighters "can't" hold their own against starfighters, and thus freighters don't need to be included in the space game. Freighters don't have to be flying meatlumps -- not when there are plausible ways to achieve parity with starfighters that still allow the smaller, faster craft to be the most powerful ships in the game.
Yes. We need big, ugly, hulking, brutish bulk freighters in Jump to Lightspeed.
(We also need profitable things for them to do up there, but that's a subject for another thread. 
)
--Flatfingers