Greetings! Hopefully I have this in the right place.
I have an idea for Freighters and Jump Freighters. I take inspiration from Star Trek, Enterprise S2:E20 Horizon wherein pirates are attacking a cargo ship and the freighter crew has the option to jettison some or all of their cargo compartments as a means to escape with crew and vessel.
What if freighters’ cargo compartments could be filled/fitted with “Jettison Modules”? The freighter pilot could chose to jettison all or some of them.
There could be different variants such as this:
- A small one for high isk/m3 when you’re desperately trying to keep the cargo from being destroyed.
- Rapidly (5,000 m/s) travels out 50km in a random direction and then cloaks before de-spawning after two hours.
- Gankers would need to pay attention to the direction and time/place of jettison to try and decloak it.
- Maybe it could make a BM for the jettisoning/freighter pilot?
- This would drive content as the JF Pilot would be coming back discretely to reclaim the high value items…the gankers could lie in waiting if they couldn’t find/decloak it.
- A larger one for generic cargo.
- This one is slower, 500 m/s and only goes 5km, but it has a 5-minute timer before it self destructs with a zero loot drop rate. The gankers would have to chase it, and use a data or relic hacking module to stop the self-destruct.
- A nasty one that you could fill with enriched uranium to increase smartbomb damage.
- One with an immense active shield.
- Say the Amarrians are shipping some priceless cultural/religious relic, so they put it in the shield module so the royal fleet has time to come and save it?
- Inspired by Star Trek TNG S5:E21, “The Perfect Mate” (I’m a nerd, judge all you want! :D)
The jettisoning of these cargo modules could drop the mass / align time / speed of the freighter. This could increase the chance of escaping for the JF pilot.
I’ve never lost a freighter, but I was around in Uedama a few times to see it all go down. I always imagined it would be so horrible as the JF Pilot to just have to wait and do nothing while getting bumped and eventually ganked. This could give that pilot something to do…a way to play with ganking playstyle.