In the recent conversation of zoners, the issue of jump capability being restricted to capital class warships has come up, as a reason odd situations in rp terms. While jumping operations are not meant for regular use by any and everyone, it would be wise to consider an alternative to using Battleships (House / Unlawful / Zoner) in commercial jumping.
Therefore I propose the creation of a science vessel with enough capabilities to perform survey and jumping operations, of civilian design, that would provide companies and medium groups with the jumping capability, and leaving the use of the Battleship jumping capabilities to the military that rightfully control them.
Unnamed Science Vessel (transport class)
Civilian Shipline
4x transport turrets (or less)
1 x CM
Transport shield
Transport Hull (lowest tier maybe)
7.200.000 powercore (enough to start all the modules in existence)
1500 or 2000 cargo space (can equip all modules, and carry minimum supply for the lowest ones)
Very expensive price compared to transports (+400Mil or something).
2 Hyperspatial Module spaces (does it need more?)
These are just some sketchy details I thought up, and I do not possess the knowledge to create such ship. I believe that it could be a good solution to a topic that involves several distinct problems in the current Discovery gameplay.
As a ship's background, you could say that is derived of some prototype science vessel from one of the many research stations spread around Sirius, which had created a special ship to fit a gigantic powercore and sensitive research equipment. The drawbacks being that is very fragile on it's own, and most certainly requires an escort.
Can also be used to rp a very specialized research group, a mobile laboratory and stuff like that, without being a possible threat (those zoner caps need to defend someone in the Omicrons right?).
Pros:
Removes the need of using supposedly restricted military capital ships.
Still requires attendant ships to perform convoy jumps.
low weaponry and defenses prevents hostile abuse of the gigantic powercore.
low cargo space detracts the potential for the ship being a solo trader.
Might be used for more discreet surprise military operations
Cons:
Might provoke jumping operations proliferation
Might increase the burden on house lawful forces, require house laws to be changed.
Suggestions:
- no CM (so it can't equip a cloak + survey module and do invisible scanning)
- one equipment slot, so it cannot jump to existing coordinates to scan them again (it should not be made that easy)
- no guns, escort is mandatory or take the risk
- if its hull is equal to a lower tier transport (50-60k), it should have decent agility to provide some survivability
- matching bot-bat capacity (150-200)
Name: some kind of bird name to fit into the civilian shipline (Pidgeon, maybe?).
On another server, we made the Renzu Liner the dedicated jump ship. Its stats were same, except it was only ship able to mount the JD mk IV, and had enough power to use it.