Escort Ship

[argyle]

I've been experimenting with different ships to find the "ultimate" escort ship. There's no one point in particular that I'm interested in, but rather the overall performance.

Light Fighter:
My first attempt: the idea was a ship that's virtually impossible to shoot down while flown evasively, and still enough of a danger that it can't be ignored while the pirate focuses on the trader. In the end, this fell on one point - lack of firepower. I simply couldn't make it dangerous enough. Now, my computer is a piece of crap, with low fps, and this may be why it's not effective enough - maybe I simply can't hit enough.

Gunship:
So I tried super-heavy... Another approach - stay in formation with the trader, and use a ship with superior firepower to the rear. Of course, this fell through big time: As the trader activates the cruise engines, so do you, and your guns go offline. If the trader thrusts - you do NOT... leaving your ship hopelessly behind, with insufficient speed to catch up. To top it off, you now have to somehow hit a small fighter spinning around a trader - hitting the fighter and NOT the trader... Only way I could see this being feasible is some kind of missile boat. Anyway. Bad idea. This really doesn't work, other than as a scare tactic.

So, now I'm thinking and in need of advice:
I think what I'm after in the end is something small, agile, with overwhelming firepower. Hehe... easier said than done, right? Looking over the wiki over and over, I'm having trouble deciding on what to do next. A cruise disruptor isn't really that useful, except to kick a player from engine-off into engine-on mode. A better option might be a mini-razor. More oomph.

Now, a light fighter makes the mini-razor a non-option, as they don't have torpedo mounts.

A VHF certainly has survivability, but I'm not sure it's really agile enough to be a real pest to deal with. Besides... there's something about VHFs that just rubs me the wrong way. Too big. Too obvious. Boring.

I've considered a standard heavy, something like the Civilian Marauder. There's room for a mini-razor, and the 7 (!) hardpoints make plenty of room for both pulse weapons and things that rip off armor. Being a heavy, it's hopefully small enough and agile enough to be a royal pain to take out. Still, I worry that it's unable to deal with pirate gunboats. Then again, what can you really do? A bomber only makes a good escort if all the enemies fly gunboats, and they just don't...

Anyway, before I set up my next experimental characters:

What's your experience? What, in your opinion, makes the ultimate escort?

Argyle