Freighters obviously produce income by hauling cargo. Thanks to numerous roleplaying sourcebooks, most ships have a well-documented cargo capacity expressed in metric tons. The problem: these numbers represent a measurement of weight opposed to volume and thus can vary widely between ships of a similar size, not to mention they also depend on the extent of local gravity. For the sake of balance, that's what made me discount using them as the basis for a direct scalar conversion of income when I originally explored the idea. So that's not what I've done here.
Instead, freighter income is now based on a relative scale of cargo capacities from ship to ship. In other words, if one ship has a greater tonnage than another, it will also produce relatively more income, just not the same as you would get from directly comparing the two. The exact values are also partially derived from the volume of the ships themselves with prudence given to economies of scale in bulk freighters, which is just my in-universe way of saying that balance played a small role. The foremost example of this is in light freighter/transports, which have cargo capacities some orders smaller than anything in the freighter class, yet still produce comparable incomes. They are, however, fast enough to run blockades and evade customs patrols, so it's assumed that transports can haul illicit, and therefore more lucrative, goods. So it's not an exact science, but it's a lot more interesting than having every freighter be equal.
When that was the case, there was no reason to have more than one light freighter and one bulk freighter per faction; after all, why spend credits researching a ship that isn't meaningfully better? Since freighter income now varies, there's suddenly quite a good reason: more credits. And that can only mean more ships. To fill this need, I've revived the classic modular conveyor and container transport designs under the designations MCF Modular Conveyor and CTF Container Transport, as well as given the BFF Bulk Freighter a makeover to match.
First, my reasoning for the prefixes. Since these are descriptive of a specific model of ship, just using "modular conveyor" or "container transport" would be insufficient; those are ship classes, like an "assault frigate". The X-wing series only gave us the model name for one of these units, the BFF-1 Bulk Freighter. Unraveling the "BFF-1" designation, I surmised that it stood for its class attached to its role, followed by the model number. That would yield "Bulk Freighter, Freighter - Model 1". They're all designed to haul XTS cargo containers, so if you assume the trio is part of a cross-company product line akin to the DX/ATR/ETR series, you can produce the names for the other two. Hence, MCF and CTF.
The Alliance gets the MCF Modular Conveyor after the GR-75 and the Empire gets the CTF Container Transport after the Action IV. The MCF isn't as capacious as either of the other two container freighters, but it's value lies in being able to move a small amount of valuable goods securely. The CTF, on the other hand, is the queen of bulk freighters, able to haul massive quantities in a compact package. Both start with a respectable armament for self-defense against the stray squadron, but neither can stand up to a direct assault alone and should have a proper escort. Overall, they should invoke some interesting choices into your upgrade decisions.
As I mentioned earlier, the extent of income upgrades has already been reduced from 400% to 250% of the starting value for v1.1. This was, however, for the old system. As a final point, I want to mention that this is still the case. All income upgrades are relative to their initial numbers; they are not fixed by any means. So that should be added incentive to research up.
Stay tuned for Part II in the series!
Edited by Phoenix Rising, 12 September 2008 - 07:21 PM.
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