' Wrote:The current problem is that the barge is more or less unbalanced with respect to the economy.
What other options are there? What combinations? Your thoughts please?
Remove possibility to jump and use cloaks. The powertrading with barges is simply ridiculous. No wonder the economy aspect is unbalanced. In RL, a barge is something that's towed after another ship. Translated to FL, I think that means: Don't go alone! I think the Barge should have more turrets for defense, and maybe also a different shield. Maybe a cruiser shield, or something like that. The Barge already has more armor than any other ship here. Slap a CAU 8 on that, and it should be able to hold it's own for a while. If you have a valuable cargo, and want to haul it on a Barge... Bring some heavy escorts! It could make some great RP, especially when/if you travel to a different House. Make it easier to use lanes and gates. Speed is good as it is.
If you still wanna go alone... Accept the risk of getting pirated. We can't have ships that are impossible to kill because they have astronomic armor and shield, have a built in jumpdrive and has a cloak. That would just set the economic balance off even more. Docking access should be restricted to certain types of bases, i.e some planets or shipyards. This could be related to how many people there are on the base/planet/shipyard.
And last but not least... If it's not possible for everyone to buy, then remove it altogether, and replace it with some kind of supertrain that's slow and bulky. Cargo max 8-10k.
