yeah. I always liked the idea of secondary, more conventional ships. Right now I'm stuck in a Chimaera, but if I could, I'd make some sort of general-staff officer vehicle or something...
to be a serious - maybe a shuttle or something. - considering the size of the starflier ( its not exactly a small ship - compared to a human ) there is not much room for something else...
what could be needed is some sort of limo or so - something you can sit with a few ppl and have a "driver". - not a transport ... at least not a real transport. ( even the armoured transport is more like a ferry )
but when we look at the Cityscenes - the "airlanes" are really filled up with starfliers and fighters / freighters - and there is not a single civilian vessel around.
which is somewhat weird. Considering how traffic only involves spaceship, and how starships seems very compact in the days of Freelancer, I'd guess a spaceship is much like a car. A starflyer as such, is probably accessible by any family with a minimum of economical ease.
I've always been under the impression that even a cheap ship is beyond the vast majority of civilians, either due to price or necessary training/skillscensing, or maybe it's just too dangerous for most people.
Notice how cheaply you can buy large quantities of certain commodities, even if it's just food. A single unit of cargo doesn't have a specific size mentioned, but it's enough space to transport at least one civilian. 5 units for luxury VIP travel. This makes me think that the monetary system of credits exists as a Sirius-wide trade currency, but that individual Houses, or even individual systems or planets, have their own currency for day-to-day affairs. And it seems like the currency most Sirius civilians use is worth far less than a credit.
Luxory ships - Civilian ships with say, no weapons like the whale but very good looking etc.
Troop transports - Dedicated military transports, since they can hardly just keep sending capital ships full of troops to planets they are invading. Those ships would be needed to fight.
Racers - Originally a Dublin thing but spread quickly to Liberty etc. High speed ships with no weapons.
Command ships - For companies etc that need mobile headquarters perhaps or for mobile bases in the more hostile edge worlds. Could be large vessels that are built for mainly defense and have more of an RP value than pvp value. Unless all companies or Zoners manage to get ahold of several destroyers or Dreadnaughts to use.