As of right now there is no use for the "shipping" companies. But say there were shipping containers and ships that could carry a few at a time, then they would be in business. Heres how i envisioned them working:

Each container looks very similar to those on the roads today. They would carry say 60 to maybe 100 cu's. At a station the client would purchase his container and put down a deposit on it.
Each container can be locked, as to say the person who purchased it can only open it. Also to facilitate actual shipping companies the container the client purchased can be set so that when it arrives at a preset destination it can be either sold or stored. So if a miner found herself a good 'roid in Helios she could buy a few containers fill them up with heliocene and have it shipped to Deneb where the value is very high.
The containers would have to be shipped in a new kinda ship or maybe when we get capships they could fit. Of course it's not perfect, pirates will be able to steal the containers and such, I suppose there would be a way around the lock. Also I figured that the containers would last longer in a sector then the cargo does now. They could be a good way of storing goods. If they last 72 hours then you could leave a few in an empty sector for safe keeping. This also creates a way to become a legit smuggler, could use several companies to move containers around full of say newt 3's for Itani space to Serco space...
Not sure about who gets the XP when a crate is shipped. I guess that's why it's a suggestion not a implemented feature.

I like.

Maybe a barebones ship with a pilot cabin and a spine to haul two containers at a time. 200cus sounds good.

Make it even slower then the Behemoth though.

Maud was already supposed to be similar to this.

Capital ships, when introduced to players, will act as ships with huge storage, which will essentially solve the same problem, if I understand your suggestion correctly.

sounds cool to me. and as for stealing these shipping containers or cargo pods It should be little trouble to simply cut the damn thing open to get at the goodies.

Yeah i figured you could blast the buggers open, but you would lose a percentage of the cargo, maybe a good percent... kind of insurance on the whole thing.

Opening it could be as easy as hauling them to a Corvus station and opening it. Of course, whatever is inside would be stolen goods, and only pay about half the price, maybe less.

The basic idea sounds awesome. I sure want 100cu freight containers!

Some ideas:

- Containers could be named or have a text attached
- Containers could be transferred in-station between players
- Containers could be colored, a lot like how ships are
"I'll transfer you a green container marked Heliocene" :D

- In space you can only jettison the whole thing, not individual items inside it.
- It's impossible to put cargo from space directly into a cargo container. You'll need a ship with it's own cargo management (Constellation-class and bigger freight ships) or a station.

Yeah, I really like this idea!

Demonen, who's to know that it's stolen? (unless you tell them)

Take it to courvus, open it, and sell it where the profit is!

It's more like Corvus are thieving bastards who'll buy as low as they can and sell as high as they can.

The container will be "marked" with a players name, so at a Corvus station if a player sell the container there and their name is not on it then half off.... All of those ideas I thought of Demonen, and I was about to put those here... but you beat me to it : )

zamzx zik, like moldy says, Corvus would know. Cracking it open at their stations would imply selling it there, or paying them a fee to do it.
They sure wouldn't do it for free!

What if their fee (or the price they pay for stolen goods) is linked to your standing level? That would make a lot of sense.

Fees and favorable pricing linked to faction standing levels... sounds like a good idea. We already get that with trade goods, right?

I think the shipping container idea would be pretty cool, it would make the Marauder what it was intended to be: A space tractor. With multiple "containers" behind it. But in the maud's case, I think there should be smaller containers.

However, trailing a long line of cargo containers would require the same "inverse kinematics" physics code as the wriggling leviathan, and would require a basic change to how ships register damage (since shooting the containers would not damage YOU), and the containers would have to be able to "break free" if someone severs the chain.

That would be very cool... but I think that would be a lot of work.

So whats to stop me from putting the container in my moth leaving me room to spare and simply oxy/fuel cutting the damn thing's door off? Then I could unload it directley from the container to the dock, leaving the cut up container in my ship to be jettisoned into space, preferably into a docking bay simply to be annoying. Ohh theres an idea make the damn things solid objects then we could clog up stations and drive prices up with the new economy.

The Behemoth has no discernible cargo bay doors. My guess is that ships can only pick upthe small cargo crates.

I'm all for it, since it gives the maud its role back, as has been mentioned already in this thread.

Very rear of the ship looks like it has docking doors. Tiny, though.

So you'd have to reverse on the container to pick it up. This would actually be pretty interesting, because the one trying to pick it up would become a sitting duck, creating an opening for the escorts (what escorts?) to reclaim the cargo.

If there were small ships with no weapon ports, slow but very maneuverable essentially a tug, it might fix the problem with how the cargo "magically" gets on the the cap ships. I guess the connies could carry 100's of cu's of loose cargo... But having it full of containers makes more since, look at the huge cargo ships of today. Have the tugs transport the cargo containers from the stations to the ships and back again.

I think that depends. Modern cargo ships only use containers because there's no way to quickly unload a ship with oodles of small trinkets in its hold, and usually, the different containers contain different stuff, belonging to owners different from one another. I imagine that in the 43rd/44th century, it should be very well possible to have a stowing and discharging machinery taking care of the logistic problems, and thus allowing for very minute 'smallest possible cargo units'. PErhaps they would have huge internal 'tanks' that could be filled with just about any cargo there is...

Still, giant containers would be fun. Imagine taking out a connie and watching the containers float around , being pillaged by scavenging pirates. Great player-driven content could be made that way.

Pirates with little slow helpless tugs... oh the possibilities... Anywho, modern cargo ships use containers because unless you want to build a metal box for every individual peice of cargo the whole system will crush the cargo on the bottom, the load would shift, and bad things would happen. Pluss unloading 100 containets would take less time than unloading 100,000 boxes. And what station will need all however-much-the-connie-holds of cargo anyway, the ship will make stops unload some, pick up some, just like modern cargo ships. I would guess.

It would be neat to allow low-level types to get trade levels for loading up Connies/Behemoth heavies/Teradons/HAC's/Tridents, in much the same way that dockworkers load up massive container ships.

The tug idea is interesting, but why couldn't the damn things have small maneuvering thrusters. Nothing fancy just enough to slowly move it from the connie to the stations docking bay. It shouldn't be any trouble for people who have mastered interstellar travel to make a program that can determine the route from the ship to the station once the ship isn't moving relative to the station.

"The Behemoth has no discernible cargo bay doors. My guess is that ships can only pick upthe small cargo crates." So I smash the damn thing into a roid and pickup all the crap.