(01-15-2019, 06:34 AM)Tenacity Wrote: The term "Frigate" is already in use though, albeit by only one current ship (and one upcoming ship). Frigates are transports that have low to medium cargo space and can use gunboat equipment. Currently the junker salvage frigate is the one available (3350 cargo and 7 gunboat turrets with a light gunboat power core and transport shield). The upcoming borderworlds frigate is supposed to be similar, with gunboat weaponry (and a gunboat shield, I believe) but some cargo space as well to make it a better escort on trade routes (or a better pirate).
I think it's a bad idea to reduce the cruise speed on any transports, as it would require a huge overhaul of the trade/mining system to maintain profit per second on routes that dont include trade lanes.
I'm generally ok with reducing cruise speed on caps, but it should not be the same for cruisers, battlecruisers, battleships, and carriers - there are absolutely massive size differences between these ships, and I already have a bone to pick with battleships that cruise up on smaller ships in combat to negate their speed weakness. If we were going this route, transports would all have to stay at 350 speed, and I'd leave gunboats at 350 as well since they're often used for piracy (or used to be, when piracy even existed). Cruisers might drop to 300-325, possibly based on the individual ship (with light/medium/heavy cruisers possibly having different speeds, say 325, 315, and 305 respectively). Battlecruisers would be slightly lower, possibly 300-305, with battleships dropping down to 275-280.
The real issue when it comes to varying cruise speeds is formation flight. It becomes very difficult to keep a group of ships together when they're all moving at different speeds - this is already more than evident when using freighters or light fighters in formation with other ships. If you form up on a faster ship (say a freighter or LF, while you're in a VHF), you'll speed up slightly but not enough to actually keep up, and the formation leader will slowly pull away until formation breaks due to distance. If you're in a faster ship like a light fighter and form up on a slower ship, you'll constantly be overshooting and then having your cruise engine shut off and recharge again to try and keep the pace.
I consider the Junker Salvage Frigate to be something of a misnomer but naming conventions aren't terribly important in the grand scheme of things. I think "Corvette" is a term Discovery has yet to use for ship classification, but that's beside the point.
Good point, though. Xoria has enough work to do regarding trade balance as it is, and I certainly don't want to wait an extra 5 minutes to cross the large, laneless swaths of deepest Omicron in a transport. I think it'd be weird to give your idea of gunships a cruise speed slower than gunboats, although I think it would make sense to give your rebalanced SHF "gunships" a reduced thrust speed. Put them at 180m/s for max thrust instead of 200m/s like the rest of the snubs.
Formation flight speeds are already a problem, although all the times I've ever used formation in anything other than a VHF I've had people chew me out for how wonky it gets. Half the time when you try to form up two or more of anything larger than a bomber you end up bumping into people in the formation anyway, so I would surmise for that reason a lot of people avoid using it anyway.
The challenge that this presents for fleet coordination might be worthy of consideration as a feature anyway. Send a vanguard of snubs ahead to scout the area and (assuming your whole fleet left at the same time) progressively larger ships drop into the fray as time goes on. Maybe it would be worth exploring more varied impulse and thrust speeds for capital ships as well.
A way a lone a last a loved a long the riverrun, past Eve and Adam's, from swerve of shore to bend of bay,
brings us by a commodius vicus of recirculation back to Howth Castle and Environs.