Right now, the greyhound is both the fastest ship and the lowest drain ship (225 m/s at 50 drain). It can kind of get away with that imbalance because of its poor combat ability. However, it still doesn't quite make sense overall to me.

There should be a faster fighter with high drain. To be effective, I think it would need to go 240 m/s with 62 drain. This would be a fair complement to the greyhound. Not nearly as good over long distances, but very good for short bursts. That extra 15 m/s speed would make it able to catch an infini-boost 220-225 m/s ship over a short distance, but it wouldn't be able to keep up with it for long.

I think that this fighter should be a raptor. The raptor makes sense because it is not a great combat ship, so it is free to fulfill another role. Putting this speed onto a vulture wouldn't make sense, since the vulture is already great at other stuff, mainly PvP combat. The greyhound sort of used the same principle by using a weak warthog as the platform for its speed.

The exact stats of this raptor are unimportant at this stage of the discussion. If it were to be added as another model onto the existing line of raptors, it should probably be weaker in combat than the other models to make sure that it is balanced with the rest of the raptor line. However, a better idea might be to update all of the raptors to make them go 240 m/s with 62 drain, since they are already pretty cruddy in combat anyway, so making a new model even worse might not be optimal. Then if they all went 240 m/s with 62 drain, you could have the difference between the models just be tweaks of the other stats and the entire line would still be balanced with the other ships of the game. We could RP this by saying that after years of research and development, TPG finally has released the state-of-the-art "raptor engine" to be put into immediate production in all the raptor models, etc...

This would serve to make everything catchable. It would discourage running after initiating combat. I think we'd need some combat-improved Raptors to go along with the speed buff, as it's still a very big, easy to hit ship. I think this is exactly the right direction for the ship to take. The description talks about TPG's trademark "inverse-pulse gravitic drives" - they should have different performance characteristics from other ships. We have plenty of infiniboost ships, but no sprinters.

[Stamp of approval]

[Stamp of approval]

It gives the raptor a nice role! Yes to this suggestion.

I was discussing the hound in-game with someone today, and this idea came up again. It is a good idea.

I like it.

+2

+5!
...but don't get rid of the 56/s version. I like it for escorting convoys :)

+1 but as Raptor mk.3... we need more ships! Preserve old Raptors...

I'd like to see two variations of it, keeping the storm radar and adding:
mk.3 - Strike Force, with integrated addon scanner
mk.4 - Border Patrol, with integrated cargo scanner

I'm not sure I understand adding a cargo scanner. This wouldn't be a pirate ship and it wouldn't be a nationalist ship. We already have those. If anything, this would be an anti-pirate ship, which is something we don't really have right now. I also would like to modify my earlier statement that this variant should be weaker in combat to balance with the other raptors. The two things this ship needs to be a successful hound/pirate hunter is speed and PvP combat ability, so a modest boost in combat ability over the current raptor models would be best. It doesn't need a lot of cargo capacity either, just the ability to quickly run down and kill a hound, which is impossible right now.

Also, I'd like to note that since the time I started this thread, the hound's turbo drain was reduced even more, down to 45/s, making it even more powerful, and making this idea even more important.

If it's a chaser, it needs combat ability no more than does a Hound. Blow it out your ass, Strat.

Pirates in hounds hunt traders in moths. That doesn't require a lot of combat ability. This ship isn't hunting moths, it's hunting the hunters, which means it can't totally suck in combat, or no one will use it. Once the raptor catches up to the hound, the hound is likely to turn and fight. It's a different situation. It shouldn't be the best PvP ship (the raptor frame essentially guarantees that anyway), but it should be decent. It's not going to match up to a valk, prom, corvult, or rev c, but it should be more than a match for the hound, and probably should be equal or greater in combat ability than the current raptor models, which isn't saying much.

OP and others like Srat, CGH is well balanced as it is. have you even used it in battle or in chase? Or you sit in your X-1s and make suggestions "what should be done to .."

Craptor mk3? Well, it's another story..

"Once the raptor catches up to the hound, the hound is likely to turn and fight."

Assuming I were ever chased by this... I would simply keep pressing turbo and just wait for the battery to drain. After that, I might spin about and loose a bunch of sunnies... maybe.

At any rate...

-100

The craptor needs to be fixed but giving a non combat nation an uber ship is not a fix.

If the hound didn't turn to fight, it would die. It would be hit with a full tube of flares before the raptor ran out of juice. This is about correcting an imbalance while simultaneously giving the raptor a role. TPG isn't a combat nation, but this isn't an "uber" combat ship. It's a moderately proficient combat fighter that would be effective at countering the hound, which is something a corporation like TPG would be very interested in.

"It would be hit with a full tube of flares before the raptor ran out of juice."

Oh... I forgot that Hounds cannot alter their trajectory. This isn't about correcting an imbalance, this is about giving access to a ship that you think will be better than the Hound to people who are not hated by UIT while restricting it from people who are.

This whole idea is full of self serving fail.

No. That would be making a ship that goes 230 m/s with 40/s drain. This, on the other hand, is absolutely about correcting an imbalance. Regardless of the level of combat ability, introducing a high speed, high drain ship of some sort makes sense and is warranted.

"I'm not sure I understand adding a cargo scanner. This wouldn't be a pirate ship"

And with a cargo scanner it still wouldn't. It would be a ship with a cargo scanner, which has multiple purposes to different people.

If you actually are after a ship that is really fast and good in combat... I would direct you to any of the ships that already meet those requirements that are currently in game.

I would direct you to any of the ships that already meet those requirements that are currently in game.

None of which stand any chance of catching a hound, whether it be in a 1 on 1 chase situation, or a hit-and-run furball situation. This isn't about a ship that's faster or better than the hound, it's about a ship that's different to balance it out. The hound could catch this raptor over long distances, and this raptor could catch the hound over short distances. This raptor wouldn't be as good at pirating as the hound, but it would clearly have other uses that wouldn't in any way disrupt whatever balance between current ships already exists.