What about Barges?

[Prysin]

As of right now the only active change in the test build of the mod is that we have applied a bumping "band-aid" that massively reduces the effects of player-to-player and npc-to-player collisions. The Barge, by virtue of being the slowest and (one of the) largest ship in the mod is one of the biggest beneficiaries of this change.

We have code ready to prevent select ships from taking tradelanes. This code is primarily intended to be used for the Barge. However, as of right now we haven't fully decided on what kind of compensation buff (if any) could be applied to offset this change. We want the Barge to be a side-grade of 5k transports with a niche or two it might be particularly good at, but given its enormous cargo space simply buffing its cruise speed or charge time will very quickly make it print hundreds of millions of credits running remote, non-lane-bound routes. Since we're aiming to keep the Barge viable, but trying to prevent it from remaining the game's most effective credit printer (which it was never intended to be, regardless of its high cost), we have to make sure whatever changes we make are well-balanced and make the ship feel worthwhile to own. It is very likely that we'll postpone Barge-specific changes to a hotfix after 5.0 itself so that we have enough time to fine-tune things.

I would like to briefly touch on the cost aspect of the Barge: in Discovery, credits do not buy you power. A Cruiser can take on a Battleship several times more expensive than itself, and win. A handful of bombers costing less than a hundred million credits total can take out a fleet of capital ships worth billions. The Barge is not an exception to this rule. It is not meant to be a straight upgrade.

Sounds like the EASY FIX for such "abuse" is simply to make the barge "unable to dock due to inadequate infrastructure" at such bases where the profit margins would be problematic. Then give it the desired cruise speed buff

It's entirely inRP reasonable to deny docking of a moon sized object on remote installations, where such giant and expensive to operate vessels would hardly if ever be found.

EDIT: Im so smart!!! i should be a transport balance dev :O

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