Roleplay ?

[Tenacity]

I'm a moderate on this issue. I believe that the criminal factions have the right to control capital ship use as they see fit, but that anyone should be allowed to roleplay a snub ship using criminal.

I also believe traders have the right to fly whatever ship they want, provided they are not independent traders (since corporations would fund their ships, not themselves), though obviously with some restrictions (no Samura Mammoths).

I believe the quasilegals have pretty much a similar situation to the pirates, and I believe, lastly, that military factions have a right to unilaterally enact exclusionary policies to satisfy consistency and roleplay.

The main reason for the capital ship restrictions is that many of the player factions number among them the upper hierarchy and some of the bosses of the criminal factions, and criminal factions should have a very limited amount of capital ships, considering crew and economic requirements. Same with quasilegals.

For cruisers/destroyers to battleships and dreadnaughts, yes. I think gunboats are quite a bit more lenient, and they're certainly more common.

Honestly, I think very, very few people should be using anything destroyer sized and up. I think only players with a decently thought out RP background should be able to use those ships. They're extraordinarily expensive (in RP terms, any trader can make 200 mil in a week easy), and a faction wouldnt just hand out their most powerful vessels to some run of the mill pilot serving them.

Gunboats arent as large, they arent as expensive, and they're easier to manufacture. Most of them are really nothing but oversized fighters when you think about it - the average gunboat in discovery, from what i've been told, has a crew numbering anywhere from three to twelve people. They really arent that large.

For a lot of players, gunboats make sense though. My pirate, bloodsail, for example... Fighters do not have the cargo space to haul back 'loot' from pirated traders, and freighters/transports usually don thave the firepower necessary to pirate successfully (this goes for VHF's even, most traders can easily get away from a single VHF trying to pirate them no matter how well equipped they are).

I also use the gunboat as a matter of pvp effectiveness, I'll admit. I've tried fighters and bombers before, and I was less than successful in pirating even the weaker traders. Then again, I refused to use superweapons on my bomber, which could be part of the reason. The gunboat gives me the survivability to escape from lawfuls when they zerg me, and gives me the firepower and cargo space to pirate traders successfully.

Also, compared to cruisers and the other larger capships, gunboats are very well balanced (well, most of them *cough*BHgunship*cough*). They have about the same effective firepower as a bomber, with quite a bit less manuverability, but additional shielding and hull to make up for it. They're still nowhere near as powerful as the other capships, but maintain the size and agility required to move through debris and asteroid fields. They also dont draw the attention that something like a battleship or dreadnaught does.





EDIT:

As an example, earlier today I saw a player that was a member of a trading corporation, who had a bounty hunter tag and a freelancer ID. The ID goes up to gunboat... this player was flying a bounty hunter battlecruiser, right outside manhattan. I get the feeling a lot of players, such as this guy, dont ever take the time to read, much less understand, the rules here.

I wont mention his name though, I gave him a friendly warning about the ID limitation and he said he 'didnt realize it' and would switch as soon as he could.

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[Praetyre]

Gunboats arent as large, they arent as expensive, and they're easier to manufacture. Most of them are really nothing but oversized fighters when you think about it - the average gunboat in discovery, from what i've been told, has a crew numbering anywhere from three to twelve people. They really arent that large.

Where did you hear that? That contradicts virtually everything about RL gunboats role, size, etc. They aren't oversized fighter jets by any stretch.

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[Tenacity]

Where did you hear that? That contradicts virtually everything about RL gunboats role, size, etc. They aren't oversized fighter jets by any stretch.

There was a post on it a while back, regarding my 'defection' on virago. Someone mentioned that there's no way i could convince a gunboat crew - which in real life would number in the hundreds - to all defect to an enemy faction, and I believe it was Jinx who poked in and stated that crew populations are significantly smaller in freelancer.

Think about it - it's the future, ships are highly automated and technology does many of the tasks that have to be done by hand in modern-day naval forces. I know sizes are a bit off in the game, but if you take things comparatively... there's no way a gunboat could hold more than 20 or 30 crew members - and that's for the largest gunboats in the mod.

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[Praetyre]

Did Jinx post any evidence for his opinion? Since he's not a developer or anything, nor is he knowledgeable in the field of the military.

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[Baltar]

*sigh*

Yes ... I too am a bit annoyed at those who make up stories to justify their ship and equipment. I don't mind the small tweak stories to explain small adjustments ... but I cannot buy an enemy of the Corsairs using Tizonas. That's no small tweak.

With regard to unwritten rules ... they are not sanctionable. That's pretty much it. For example, I was once told that a pirate cannot use trade lanes to catch up to a trader. Um ... unwritten rule ... and I get an earful about bad role play and such. I'm used to it ... but it really gets annoying when traders always complain out of character about non-existent rules because they got caught. If a rule does not exist (in writing) and the character that has you pinned is equipped and portraying his character according to the ID he or she wears ... you have no business going OOC on them.

Now ... a trader complaining about "being pirate" is natural in character. No problem there. But don't complain because I used a trade lane to catch up with you. Just simply stay in character and plead for me to be lenient. My pirate generally pleads for leniency when he's out-gunned by a the military ... but he does so in character.

EDIT: Please stop interpreting rules outside the way they were intended to get the upper hand. Traders can be engaged and taxed/destroyed multiple times since transports are not fighting vessels. Their weapons are designed for defense only.

[Tenacity]

Did Jinx post any evidence for his opinion? Since he's not a developer or anything, nor is he knowledgeable in the field of the military.

I think it's more common sense than anything. Some of the newer patrol vessels being developed by the US navy have much smaller crews (though still numbering quite a few), simply because technology is replacing manpower.

I think it would continue in that direction. Just take a look at the gunboats in-game... I dont know of a single one that looks like it would hold more than 30 people, even when not comparing it to fighter size. Look at the 'windows' on them... you can assume most of the side windows are for crew quarters, and there still arent that many on any of the gb's.

It was a general concensus of sorts in that thread that most of the freelancer gunboats probably dont require more than a dozen crew members to fullfill all duties on the ship.

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[Tenacity]

Not trying to argue the point, really, it just makes sense to me that these ships would not need, or be able to accommodate, crew populations numbering in the hundreds. What could you possibly need so many for?

Think of the primary roles you'd need to man a bare-minimums military gunboat:
-Navigator/pilot
-Anywhere from one to eight gunners - depending on if you think each turret is manned independently or not
-Comms operator
-Medical personnel - anywhere from two to four for a ship
-Captain and XO
-Chef - which probably isnt needed since food in freelancer comes in the form of personal synthe-paste meals.
-engineer and assistants, anywhere from two to four.

Add them up, you've still only got 20-25 personnel onboard the ship. All basic tasks are handled via technology/computers, you dont need people to shovel coal into the boilers anymore.

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[Jinx]

*sigh* no, - the reason i "think" a gunboat crew is hardly more than 3 - 5 people is that most gunboats would feel like a can of sardines if there were more people on it. - of course, i don t know about "real" gunboats, never set foot into any RL military organization myself ( hate them all ) - and i never seen a real gunboat.

but these ships are maybe 3 times the size of a large fighter in FL - they appear to have more than a bridge - maybe a backroom or a restroom ( kusari BB has 2 levels for example )

if you say that gunboats are supposed to have 30 people, are horribly expensive and are as exclusive as any other battleship - have it your way. doesn t bother me much. - anyway from what i see in FL, gunboats are rather small and its mentioned in the ID of them that they re cheaply manufactured in sheer masses.

anyway, whats all the fuss about it, - who does really care anyway.

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Shipdesigns made for DiscoveryGC

[bluntpencil2001]

I believe that there is evidence of gunboats having small crews. NPC gunboats have crews consisting of 8, I believe, which seems about right.

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[Heartless]

8 sounds about right.
Captian
com. officer
nav. officer
4 gunners?
1 driver?

I enjoy looking around my ships in turret view when I'm cruising to try to get a hand of the sizes. For example, I'm debating with myself whether that tube on the top the the Corsair Gunboat is just big enough for a person to walk through. I mean it makes sence to me. And then look at the BHG gunboat, you can see 4 people in it's cockpit.

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SwissScorch --> Heartless