4Game

I mean class by size. So far we have four classes of ships by size—small, medium, large and capital, although the first three can be grouped into one class "conventional".

When you start your game with Sidewinder, the essential idea of advancing and upgrading your experience is to buy new ships, which get bigger and bigger. Before, ships from the Big Three used to be the endpoint of that progression, but fairly recently, Fleet Carriers have upped the bar, and boy that bar is now so high that some players may not even reach it. Jumping from Imperial Cutter to Fleet Carrier feels abrupt, in terms of both function and availability. I'm thinking there should be a stepping stone between Conventional and Capital ships, to bridge the gap (although I wouldn't call it a "gap", more like "void").

Huge ships could be the perfect way to do it, and not only perfect, but also logical. How? When we look at categories of hardpoints, they seem to mirror the classes of ships (in name, that is). We have small, medium, large, huge and capital-sized hardpoints. So then, it would only make sense for us to have at least one huge ship. What types of ships could be introduced as "huge class"?

Cruisers (not BATTLE cruisers, don't mix them up), destroyers and frigates. Lore mentions that destroyers are no longer used on the frontline but they do exist, frigates also seem to be present, so making at least one ship of each type available for the independent pilots would be nice. It could be the same as it was with the introduction of Fleet Carriers—a resurgence of formerly obsolete ships, now being actively produced by major ship manufacturers and made obtainable for regular commanders.

How exactly would it bridge the gap? I imagine, most players aren't very happy with the fact that you can't pilot a Fleet Carrier. So, as a stepping stone, huge ships could, naturally, incorporate features from both conventional and capital ships. The main feature would be being able to freely pilot a huge ship by yourself like a conventional ship, but, like with fleet carriers, you wouldn't be allowed to approach regular stations, or even choose them in the navigation panel. Outfitting mostly like how it works for conventional ships, but with some limits that would be set by the ship's initial purpose (for example, a destroyer is obviously a combat-only vessel, it wouldn't benefit from surface scanners, SRV hangars, collections limpets and etc.). Maybe you would be even to walk around some places in your huge ship, as long as it wasn't moving.

As for balancing purposes, to start with, huge ships could still be rather expensive for the starting and inexperienced players. They could be destroyable, unlike Fleet Carriers. A combat-only huge ship could be locked behind a superpower rank, let's say a destroyer would be manufactured by Core Dynamics, so to be able to buy it, you would need to reach the maximum existing rank with the Federation Navy (finally a real purpose for it, as a bonus). You could be allowed to own only one ship of each type at a time. Etc, etc.

Some parts of how they could function would be similar to Fleet Carriers, to be more specific: you would be able to control a huge ship while being elsewhere; you would be able to dock with it via a conventional ship (so you wouldn't need to go to a compatible station every time you wanted to come aboard of your huge ship).

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And as for gameplay purpose, aside from bridging the gap, well, if it was up to me:

a destroyer for new levels of combat, give it like four fighter hangars, two capital-sized hardpoints (although with smart and thought out placement), a small hangar bay for up to four small conventional ships (maybe have an AX variant even);

a cruiser for serving as a mobile base of operations for a wing (instead of a whole squadron like with Fleet Carriers), but also make it more geared towards exploration, so no fighter hangars, but instead a huge hangar bay to allow even 4 large ships to dock inside of it;

a frigate for single-only players, not sure about its' other roles though (maybe multipurpose, to make it the most adaptable one, compared to the other two), give it a medium-sized hangar bay with three landing pads of each existing size.

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That is all. Sorry for such a long post, I just had to share this idea, couldn't sleep otherwise. Very curious what other fellow commanders think about it.

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Oh, and while we're at it, it's not really related, but I don't wanna make a separate post about it, as I don't really have any thoughts myself on this. What about having at least one conventional (not a fighter) Guardian ship? Surely, the material grind for that could be abysmal, but still, it would be interesting.

Thoughts?