(11-10-2023, 08:40 PM)Haste Wrote: The only real way to realistically let the ship keep its laning ability - which is easy enough to re-enable - would be to drastically cut into the ship's cargo capacity. I'd expect to have to bring it down to 10,000 or so. It'd end up not too different from how it is right now in terms of viability. Fundamentally I believe removing laning makes more sense if we believe in the ship's infocard, which hints at the ship operating in very remote regions. It still excels there, for the record. A simple division of cargo space by cruise speed shows you that objectively the barge can move more cargo per hour off the lanes than a 5k could. Sure, the long charge time reduces the margin a bit, but the Barge objectively is not a bad ship.
I would agree with the concept of reducing the Barge's cargo down to 10k and re-setting the stats to make it not OP so long as it was also reduced in scale by 2/3 as well. Since the current Barge is called "Type 2", call the new iteration the Type 1 or 3. Make it useable and laneable and set other stats to make it "correct".
Also leave the Barge as a specialty ship and no longer sell them. Let people trade the existing ships only.
