Shank, I agree that the Raptor needs, well... anything at all to improve it and make it more widely used and useful. Your ideas are really good too. As it stands VO has dedicated pursuit ships, dedicated combat ships, dedicated mining ships, dedicated cargo ships, dedicated cargo ships for hostile areas, and dedicated nation ships. There are no ships specifically for chasing off hostiles and repairing ships that have been damaged.

All the ships of the VO universe are well represented with the exception of the Raptor, yes it has the dedicated storm radar extender... but because of its stats, ridiculous size and the fact that its a giant target it sits largely unused.

Frankly, given the veritable cornucopia of ship variants there is really no reason not to implement the RFR as well as your ideas for the raptor.

EC, 7 variants
Centurion, 6 variants
Vulture, 7 variants
Warthog, 7 variants
Hornet, 4 variants
Revenant, 3 variants
Atlas, 5 variants
Centaur, 4 variants
Ragnarok, 3 variants
Behemoth, 4 variants

All of these ships and variants are fairly well used for their intended purposes. Then there is the Raptor with its one variant. Both of which, by and large sit unused. It is ill suited for combat due to large size, low armor, poor weapons placement and less than desirable speed and maneuverability.

shank tank i like your ideas but what about combining the first 2 ideas? one thing id change is teh armor you suggested though. the least armored heavy combat ship has 14500 and the most armored heavy ship excluding the prom has 19000. the raptor is already a pretty big ship 2m smaller than a ragnarok so a higher mass and armor of say 16500 sounds ok.

ryan reign I would buy the rfr and use it for convoy duty. the stats you gave are good and it seems balanced. its like a reverse greyhound instead of chasing and harming it can get to you fast and fix you.

I just realized another niche the Raptor First Responder could fill...

It would be great to have one of these on larger Border Patrol missions... a lot of folks do the BP missions to help out newbs, by getting a good sized group together. Imagine how much better Border Patrol would be if a group of newbs had a veteran pilot or two to not only provide combat assistance but also zip in and repair them when they were damaged... similar to a field medic.

The same idea would hold true for Border/Hive Skirmishes and Border Battles. In battles involving Tridents, Connies, Terradons and HACs a group of Raptor First Responders could significantly change the potential outcome, as the cappies have quite a few people on board and once the shields were cracked the RFRs would become integral to the ships continued survival.

There are no ships specifically for chasing off hostiles and repairing ships that have been damaged.

Well, to be honest these are two distinct roles, both of which are a lot more specialized than the others that you mentioned. Using that logic, we should also have a ship specifically designed to chase down convoys, blow them up, and haul the loot.

And thus, I bring propose the...

Corvus Centaurius!
(Centuar hull)

225 m/s turbo, 60 m/s combat
47 energy/s turbo drain
2 L 1 S ports
60 cu cargo capacity
10500 armor
Available only to people with 900 Corvus standing and hated by the three major nations.

I'm actually only half kidding. Well, maybe 3/4, but you get the idea.

"a ship specifically designed to chase down convoys, blow them up, and haul the loot."

That would be the Atlas X.

Heh, ladron. Seriously, though, as it stands, Corvus has a line-up of ships that could possibly work efficiently in teams of 4, namely, one 'hound, two CVs and a Merc Maud, although the last one is the weakest link. So perhaps the Maud should get a buff in the cargo hold department?

The problem is, of course, that you have to have traders or their loot to pay for 4 people...

Trust me, I'm pretty familiar with the workings of group piracy. It always ends up working out best to have one or two guys in hog2's and another in a moth.

Like you mentioned, that's rarely profitable unless we're batch-processing NPC convoys.

I would definitely like to see 10+ variants of every kind of ship scattered across the galaxy... but may I throw this out there that GAWD I HATE THE CENTAUR HULL. Ugliest most ill-balanced and ill-proportional in the game. Until someone makes a new goddamn hull design for it let's delete it and replace it with the wraith hull model. Or atleast give it the least goddamn attention of all the ships, although we need SOMEONE to fill in the 2L 1S sector.

That aside, I'd definitely say it'd be cool to see more Revenant variants. Seeing that it has 2S (neutron blasters or some-such) and 1L (repair module) it might make a good test-bed for hybrid interceptor/repair ship designs. It's too cool of a model to let waste on newbie trade ships.

This does sound cool. Need a flashing red light and a siren too. :)

Because you can hear sirens in space.

hrm... the sirens sound could over ride the pilots hail and hail with a siren sound! Or not, the flashing light bar would be kinda cool though.

i dont like the siren idea it could be distracting in combat or make the Raptor First Responder more noticable to pirates or other people who were out for a easy pk. i like the idea for it though.

+100