Proposal to Change Ship Requirements for Surveying Coordinates

[First_Prime]

Greetings Everyone,

I would like to propose to make some changes to ship requirements that can be used in surveying coordinates.

I recently acquired a survey module and tried to set up a ship to do some surveying. Well, it turned out to be a bigger issue than I anticipated. While I have read all the requirement for the survey module number of times prior to purchasing one It did not dawn on me until I actually tried to make one work. For the sake of this post, I will use the requirements for the MK2 Hyperspace Survey Module which are as follows:

1. A ship with a cargo space of at least 1,200 of free space. If you throw in the guns, shield, thruster and a minimum armor you will probably need a ship of at least 1,400 units of cargo space, and that is the bare minimum.

2. The ship needs to have at leas a 100,000 unit power core.

There are only four ships in the game that meet those requirements that are not Battleships or Carriers.

1. Hogosha Armored Transport
2. Junkers Salvager
3. "Corvo" Civilian Explorer
4. "Geb" Order Battlecruiser

Hogosha Armored Transport and Junker Salvager do not have Equipment slot 1 where the survey module mounts so they will not work even though they meet the above mentioned requirements.

Corvo might work if you remove all guns, shield, thruster and armor of any kind. It will than allow you for exactly 600 units of fuel that is needed for one reading. So, for all practical purposes probably will not work. As a matter of fact I could not even unmount the survey module until I removed all of equipment from the ship including the shield.

The Geb Battlecruiser will probably work as well as or better than a BS or Carrier but you will be limited by the Order Rep.

As you can see from the above information the only ships that can currently be used to survey coordinates are Battleships, Carriers as well as the Order Assault Battlecruiser.

It is my belief that a survey ship should be suited for survey work no different than a camera ship for filming or mining ship for mining. Trying to fly around in a carrier filming would be very disappointing to say the least, no different than mining in a rock field using a battleship. A survey ship should be relatively easy to fly and should be able to hold enough fuel for a number survey missions and not the bare minimum. I think the current approach limits the amount of people who will be using the survey module and hence decreases server activity. Using BSs and Carriers is expensive and what is even more important cumbersome on long journeys instead of just being fun. BSs and Carriers are fun to use for what they were designed for but they are far from ideal for this type of work.

I propose to drop the power core requirements for the Hyperspace Survey Module down to 90,000 which will significantly diversify the types of ships that can be used to to survey coordinates. This will give players choices of ships that they might want to use, make them easier to fly and to get more reading done without the need to dock for refueling. It will provide for a better and more fun gaming experience while doing survey work. However, if the goal is to limit the amount of coordinates that people can get I would suggest figuring out a way of making the Survey Modules more expensive just like the current Code Guns in Connecticut are but not restricting the types of ships that can be used for surveying.

This is just my opinion but I suspect that many on the server would probably agree with this.

Thanks for reading

[Binski]

I think you can use the Zoner Aquilon and Nephilim for taking scans as well, or pretty much any battlecruiser/battleship/carrier.

I just stripped the guns/shield and armor off of a Corvo and it works if you use MOX. But because of unit decay, you need to be within a certain range of where you want to scan so you can get out there before losing a full unit of fuel. Otherwise the best ship to use for generic civilians is probably the Bustard.

I think it would be good to cut the cargo space requirement and power usage so that you could use just about any transport (or even a freighter) as a scanner ship. All you'd need is a ship with 600-700 free units for fuel. Many would add a scanner to their ship just to have the option, could spur some rp for permissions, etc.

[Save My Soul]

Just buy a "Corvo", eh.

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