I'd like to cast my vote for a slight tweak to the Marauder to help make it more attractive as a nation ship - increase its max turbo speed to 220 and add a bit of thrust. Strip some armor if necessary for these change to be balanced but the Marauder as a light ship is awfully slow (only as fast as some EC variants - that seems wrong). (I don't think these changes are appropriate for the Tung variant though; it is pretty nice for what it does already.)

As a faction-specific ship, the Marauder should be one of the ships you want to have access to for its defined role: the Valkyrie if you want a fighter, the Prometheus if you want an assault ship, and the Marauder if you want to run cargo through dangerous space and survive with ship and cargo intact.

Currently, most people seem to go for the Centaur which has the same cargo capacity and speed but is more heavily armed and armored. Also, as a heavy ship, the Centaur can accelerate better when carrying heavy loads. Or the TPG Atlas which is faster with better acceleration when loaded at the loss of only 10cu cargo space. Making the Marauder faster with better acceleration than currently would make it a better choice for running cargo than these alternatives and help it hold its own as a nation ship.

For now, the Marauder is just a medium-armored light ship with a large cargo hold. I'd like to add "fast" to that description and make it the ship of choice when you want a blockade runner.

Personally, I'd rather a substantial thrust increase; The prom has the armor, the valk has the manuverability, the maud has the thrust :P

I'd just be happy to see the option of adding more cargo containers...(some one told me that was planned)...course the thrust thing would be cool too.

You forget that the prom has the armor AND thrust :p

oh and weapon capabilities

i think just give all the mauds 210 speed and better thrust.

ive always thought that it needed more varients. its a segmented ship so in addition to extra cargo segments which would be really cool, it could also have weapon segments...each segment could have 3 small port or 2 large port or a mix.

and before anyone starts talking about balance...it would actually keep the balance...ie, reduced speed, larger target, increased battery drain...etc...etc...

I'd be happy with it being more visually attractive.

there is nothing wrong with the maud

The pizzacutter currently is not 'the best' at anything.

It's not even good enough at fighting or trading to be a jack of all trades. For fighting, it's a huge target, even if fast. For trading, not enough space to be worth it, and it's not fast enough to be worth it.

Now if it had a really large acceleration....Like, 190 in three seconds.... (or even something more reasonable)

Yeah, it would be used for trading/blockade running.

Should be kept true to the original design, which was allowing it to detach its trailing cargo "boxes" and fight, then return to pick them back up when necessary.

Variable lengths/strings of boxes proved to be a problem with ship design, however.

I agree most closely with ryan on this.

The Valkyrie is an assault fighter (maneuverability)
The Prom is an assault bomber (Armor/Thrust)
The Marauder should fit it's national mentality, which is massive trade.

I'd be inclined to suggest adding more cargo room, without the added cargo room increasing the mass, and thus decreasing the thrust/speed rate as it stands.

Agreed. Make the Marauder a ship that can hold more. Also, make more variants for your needs (example, light cargo, heavy cargo, etc.)

It would be *perfect*

This is really just a rehash of the same recurring problem, that we don't have a wide variety of ship roles. Actually, we really only have one ship role that covers all of the current ships.

But with that in mind, allowing for the fact that all of our ships currently fit the same role, the biggest problem with the UIT maud is it handles and accelerates like crap with cargo in it, which really makes it a more inefficient trade ship than your other options. If it had more turbo thrust (not regular thrust as that would risk it being unbalanced in combat) it would become what it's supposed to be, a decent trade ship that can make runs through dangerous space more easily than say a centaur or a moth.

I have to disagree with Ghost...I used a Maud in todays TFTG convoy from Dau to Odia and I blew past all the blockades with no problems and a full cargo load.

that being sid, I'd still like to see more thrust...(which would make sense in a cargo ship)...and more varients.

Well, the general consensus seems to be more thrust for the Marauder would be keen even without the increase in speed. Perhaps bump the Marauder up to medium size and give it the appropriate thrust upgrade and maybe downgrade it's maneuverability some.

I like the concept of the detachable cargo containers and it explains why the Marauder was designed as a light ship that could also haul cargo. But since this has been deemed unfeasible, it seems like the ship should be given another look.

P.S. Another more ambitious idea would be to give the Marauder the ability to maneuver while under turbo, even if in a limited sense - its six thrusters are ideally placed for this. I don't know if this is something that could be easily implemented or is even feasible with the game engine but it would definitely make the Marauder a nation ship worth having.

Ghost said "the biggest problem with the UIT maud is it handles and accelerates like crap with cargo in it, which really makes it a more inefficient trade ship than your other options", ergo it is not an efficient trade ship. It is definitely an inefficient trade ship with some combat ability, ideal for hijacking the weaker, efficient trade ships. So please to note that the Assault variant does indeed have that 220m/s turbo you're desiring.

I'm aware of the Corvus variant's speed but 1) one variant doesn't negate the deficient stats on all the other variants and 2) my last post on this topic is agreeing with Ghost and a number of other posters that more thrust would be even more desirable than more speed if you are going to use the Marauder to haul cargo.

If the concept for the Marauder is as a pirate ship, I guess it's fine (and this may, indeed, be the case given its name) even though I've yet to run across a pirate using one. If the idea is for a blockade runner (the opposite of a pirate ship), it needs a tuneup. Making the UIT nation ship a pirate ship would be pretty ironic though.

It is extremely ironic, and I agree it should be altered; historically, the marauder was at one point the ship with the largest cargo hold, right up there with the Centaur. Then the Behemoth came about... and worse, the 'moth XC.

However, increasing it's thrust will make it comparable to the Valkyrie in terms of fighting, so you'd need to counterbalance that with increasing its weight. Doing that would kind of necessitate you make it larger, or else we have an oddly super-dense ship. Doing that makes it a Centaur with small ports.

As a pirating ship though, it has decent speed when you need it, before you load the cargo, and terrible speed when you don't need it, after you have the prize. It would make a good ship for exploring, or pirating with groups in uninhabited areas, where stations aren't always present. In this universe however, each station is only ever one jump away, so when pirating you might as well use a strictly combat ship, and then come back in a 'moth. It is unique, and potentially useful, but is simply suffering from unemployment due to the hospitality of the 'verse.

Edit: The Maud will never be a trading ship in the same universe as the Centaur and Behemoth. Make it a combat ship already; kick the spin torque up to something ungodly. In a world without defensive equipment, the best defense is a dramatic, preemptive strike, and the key to doing that is rotation. A tri-rail Maud would be a ferocious force to behold, if it could bring those guns to bear in time. So roughly, Prometheus=Armor, Valkyrie=Speed, Maud=Accuracy.

Alternately, increase the Valk's stats by 33% for everything, including volume. Well, excluding max speeds and turbo drain of course. Then kick the Maud's thrust up so it has the same thrust/mass ratio as the old Valk. The Itani now have the IBG for a small, quick ship, and the Valk for a killer attack ship, instead of two nearly identical small fighters. (This is if the force required to execute a turn works the way I think it does in VO. The Valk being nearly spherical will have better turning as size and stats increase proportionally.)