a revised barge

[cmfalconer]

As the main purveyor of the fine vessel that is the current Barge, I will say this has some good, and bad, parts to it.

-I agree that the biodome is unneeded. The Barge is not self-sufficient, nor should it be. It relies on the transports that dock with it to bring supplies, in return the transports haul away goods from the Barge.

-This is space, why not have the mooring fixture attached sideways, or at the aft of the ship. First in First out, and if you're packing supplies and materials back to front. Or, the mooring fixture could be put between the refinery sections, coming UP from the top of the ship too. Or, a hatch going down from the bottom of the "Hoop" structure under the ship, and making it an inverted "T", with the mooring fixture horizontal.

-The Cargo section of the current barge is what I personally envision as what it should be; one continuous hold. These sections look like they are made of the current cargo-modules that could be loaded/unloaded from Gulls and Trains. Problem is, that the Shetland, Ryujin, and Colossus use different cargo pods, and the Mastodon uses none, so standardization doesn't work.

-If there's really no reason to change the model other than a bad texture, I vote that it doesn't get changed.

-The Refinery/Habitat section look good, but symmetrical. That is possibly why the biodome was added, I'm not sure. I have noticed that many of your models, Jinx, have an asymmetric quality to them, and I think you tried too hard this time for that with the dome.

Many of these are aesthetic, but some are from actual experience flying the ship. One small bump by some over-zealous player and the Barge gets flung 2-3k from where it originally was. I was lucky I was in open space, but some have to deal with asteroids and such. Getting the thing back into position, especially with large protrusions like the mooring fixture and the biodome hanging out, is a challenge at best.

$0.02

---

.