A small collection of custom ships: primarily drones and multipurpose freighter/utility ships, most of which can carry varying amounts of drones. If the ES Defense Drone Plugin is also installed, non-miner merchants will be loaded with Defense Drones.
A small collection of custom ships: primarily drones and multipurpose freighter/utility ships, most of which can carry varying amounts of drones. If the ES Defense Drone Plugin is also installed, non-miner merchants will be loaded with Defense Drones.
ESDD link: Github.com
Alt. link: Github.com
About the ships:
CARGO DRONE - An EV Nova classic that I always felt was missing from the game. Unarmed, cheap, and fast; they're designed to be able to keep up with (Heavy) Shuttles and be easy to keep buying more of in the early game as you can afford them to exponentially grow your profits on a small scale, but watch out for your piracy threat rating if you spam them. Later on, they can also be useful in conjunction with Mining Drones and the rest of the ships in this plugin to collect flotsam and such.
MUDROCK - A medium-heavy freighter/warship hybrid; intended to be comparable to the IDA Frigate from EV Nova, but kinda turned into its own thing. It's meant to look and feel like an older design, retaining a ramscoop, auxiliary solar power, and weak anti-missile defences. Modern refits can substantially improve the ship by using its extensive outfit space more efficiently. Size- and stat-wise it falls between the Hauler III and Behemoth, but with an unusually strong hull and an emphasis on outfits over cargo; it's also comparable to the Mule.
GEMSTONE - Basically an Aerie that carries 4 drones instead of 2 fighters. With 2 guns and 4 turret hardpoints, it's intended to be a versatile platform for carrying various utility items like Tractor Beams. Its large capacity relative to its mass makes it noticeably slower when fully loaded with both drones and cargo.
DEEPVALE - Big boy ship for some real industrial-scale asteroid sweeping. With 10 turrets and 8 drone bays, it can carry any utilities it might need and follow in the wake of its drones vacuuming up all the flotsam. Being designed with mining in mind, it is relatively fast for such a heavy ship, albeit not quite to the level of the Auxiliary and Bactrian.
PACKET LINER - Passenger/cargo hybrid ship. Stat-wise it's quite literally half a Star Queen with a Freighter bolted on. It can also be described as a bigger Blackbird, and like the Blackbird it makes for a decent warship.
THUNDERER - A high-speed ship good for a lot of things since it's basically a medium warship with the weapon and engine capacities swapped. The original design intent was to be a relatively large ship that can achieve the speed to mine fast-moving asteroid fields, but it also makes for a great pirating or smuggling ship.
CAVALIER - Heavy gunboat with a 5/2 gun/turret hardpoint layout and a low-drag armored hull. Middling engine capacity and poor heat dissipation make it a little clunky, but like the Raven it is undeniably capable of punching above its weight.
LANCIER - A torpedo boat, bigger than the Navy's Rainmaker, with a total of 10(!) gun ports and a defensive turret. Its weapons array is impressive-looking but the ship itself is slow and vulnerable, so in the present day it is mainly used for intimidating merchant convoys. That said, with war looming in 3014, it might find a new lease on life.
Some of these ships also have variants in the style of the vanilla Navy Auxiliary, with different models and base stats.
