For a long time I have been attempting to figure out the origin of some of the freelancer ship classes. Some are very obvious but some others are not. This is an intresting little thing I wrote up on my way home from work tonight.
The commonly traded space frame is a light space craft that is only partially assembled. These space frames are based around a flexible and modular design that allows the recipient to completely customize their ship to suit the local climate and the recipient’s needs.
This breakthrough “Custom assembly required’ trend in space craft design was started by Kishiro Engineering’s “M series” during mid 600 AS. The drastically reduced shipping costs of new ships creating an unprecedented boom in privately owned spacecraft. Deep Space Engineering followed up soon after with rugged and reliable “AP” series that is still in common use by the Bounty Hunters Guild today.
The easy access to schematics and parts created a booming underground ship construction industry as well. Both DSE and Kishiro were forced to have Interspace Commerce petition for a change in house patent laws allowing both companies to harshly prosecute individuals who were making ships from scratch and completely bypassing both corporations. Almost overnight the schematics for the BW series of craft appeared on neural nets across Sirius. Believed to be a collaborative design effort by disgruntled engineers of many major manufacturers, these ‘Indy’ space craft have become popular among the richest criminal organizations in Sirius as well as preformance and tech savvy freelancers.
In 770 AS Kishiro retired the aging “M” series in favour of the lighter and easier to produce CTE series. Marketed specifically at the liberty market the CTE series far exceeded expectations and has become the most widely used space frame in Sirius. Although no longer in production the “M” series still lives on through the corsair pirates who have taken to manufacturing and expanding the line themselves.
we had a thread here some time ago - a design concept sheet of one of the ship designers of freelancer. - ( i could dig it out, but i m too lazy to do ) - it showed a good example of how the ships were concepted on the BHG hammerhead series. ( the concept showed ships based on the hammerhead chassis up to something like a gunboat - but with many many more "stages" in between.
the ships are indeed modular - which is easily seen on the fighters; they use the light fighter base frame and "simply add" more elements. the effect of adding thrusters, wings, little hull elements here and there is that the hull appears much more massive after a while.
capital ships do not follow the same tradition, they appear to be fully designed as a "whole" with no intention to add more elements in order to show an increased mass.
judging from the official and very early trailer though... those concepts are also faction specific. - while BHG ships are modular ( like the BW series and the eagle ) - liberty ships are not. - instead the patriot aswell as the defender have wings that can unfoil ( they don t do it in the retail ) to be able to land on the dreadnaughts. - the defender is quite a large ship - so it makes sense for it to fold its wings when landing ( and in cruise ) - kusari ships follow the same principle. - their sunfoils can fold reducing the ships size by allmost a half.
its too bad that we cannot model ships like that anymore - with animated parts and all. i also remember a very old concept drawing of freelancer that showed the nomad ships. - they have a skeleton inside ( best seen in the battleship ) - but they only gain "solid form" when they re attacking. - while in cruise or just idling, they would "only" be an energy signature ( means, they are only an assembly of lights ) - - thats how the nomad cloaking worked ( unfortunately not put into the retail also )
in general it appears that they put quite some thoughts into the ship design. - civilian / BW ships are modular and easy to maintain due to that feature.... so are BHG ships ( and corsair ships to an extend ) - house military ships are not modular, - there is no need for that feature as they are considered to have endless resources anyway. ( compared to the pirates )
what is still unclear is - how much is needed to even build a fighter class ship. - the pride and joy of the corsairs is their titan. - and the original game dedicates the whole tripoli shipyard to manufacturing this one series of fighters that took the corsairs decades to design. - with that in mind, its hard to believe that they can build warships, too. - same goes for all other non house factions ( especially when the factions haven t had original shipyards anyway, but were added in disco )
it would be nice to list the new shipyards and write down their history - like, when they were build, who build them ( VIP chars ) what they are capable of and what exactly they produce. ( considering the corsairs haven t managed to build a single biodome or copy its technology, - having a full orbital drydock might be a hard task, too. - and when it takes decades to build a fighter - how long must it take to build a drydock capable of building a warship + the warship designs. - maybe such informations could be put into the infocard of the stations. ( i know they have their history written, but its usually only a very brief history and not a detailed one ) - but then, freelancer is not a sourcebook to read, but a game to play.
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