Built to take advantage of shield-dropping tactics and group combat, the reaper rag sports a 80m/s combat speed (for missile stacking) and shared group radar at the expense of spin-torque, turbo speed, armour, cargo hold, and turbo drain.

3 variants below: Please vote on which you like, and possible modifications to each. I will update this thread as stuff is suggested.

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Variant: Stacker
Level: 7/4/8/-/-
Cost: 89,950
Armor: 12500
Cargo: 4
Weapons: 2L 3S
Mass: 12500
Length: 19 m
Thrust: 420 N
Turbo Thrust: 440 N
Max Speed: 85 m/s
Spin Torque: 7.5
Turbo Speed: 180 m/s
Turbo Energy: 55/s

Designed specifically for turbo-less stacking. Decreased mass/armor as suggested, removed integrated radar share.

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Variant: Command
Level: 7/4/8/-/-
Cost: 89,950
Armor: 14000
Cargo: 6
Weapons: 2L 2S
Mass: 16000
Length: 19 m
Thrust: 420 N
Turbo Thrust: 400 N
Max Speed: 80 m/s
Spin Torque: 7.5
Turbo Speed: 160 m/s
Turbo Energy: 55/s
Equipment: Integrated Shared Group Radar Extender

Designed for group combat operations. Turbo-less stacking combat speed with shared group radar (instead of extra small-port). Low top turbo speed (group needs to protect this beast), other stats similar to previous entry.

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Variant: Energy
Level: 8/5/10/-/-
Cost: 89,950
Armor: 14000
Cargo: 12
Weapons: 3L 2S
Mass: 18000
Length: 19 m
Thrust: 420 N
Turbo Thrust: 400 N
Max Speed: 60 m/s
Spin Torque: 8.0
Turbo Speed: 180 m/s
Turbo Energy: 100/s
Equipment: 2 powercell slots

Dual-powercell model with extra L-port in place of S-port. Designed for heavy loadouts, with two powercells, and matching doubled turbo drain and increased mass/decreased armor.

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Give it to any neutral faction. Ineubis seems good? Thoughts welcome. I know we need a special rag and figured I would open the discussion ;)

a special rag model with an 80-85m/s cruise speed would make it considerably easier to turn to follow missiles like when doing static queens that love to turn all over the place

Turbo speed is at least 50 m/s too low, especially with a 55 drain rather than 50. Mass should be trimmed to 10,000, and turbo thrust is 50 N too low. Drop cargo to 3. Gut the shared extender - if people want it, they should sacrifice a port for it. XX is a better faction, given their history of violence, close association with deep Grey space, and lack of special ships.

drazed, there were many suggestions about rags, but 80 m/s is something new :D

+1 to idea, but raise licenses. so total newbs couldn't use it and remove group radar extender+ drop cargo space to 3, like doc suggests.

P.S. oh, and armor looks to high. I believe 12,000 or 10,000 is ok, and set weight 15,000 or 14,500.

Modified slightly and added 2 additional variants. I know this is kind of crowded, but please give feedback and vote on the one you like. I will update the thread and tally up votes as posts accrue.

energy +100, very interesting idea

stacker is nice aswell, but imo limit max speed to 80 m/s..

I get what you're trying to do with the faster speeds being better for missile-stacking, but consider that the playable ships with the fastest non-turbo speeds in the game, the Superlight and Vulturius, top out at 75m/s. Most ships, including all of the Heavies (Centaur, Ragnarok, Behemoth) and all of their variants, top out at 65m/s. Sacrificing the ship's attributes in other fields helps to counterbalance that, but I remain apprehensive.

most ships have lower combat speed because combat at higher speeds isn't very fun. This ship would be next to useless in combat, since it has less armor then a standard rag, and less spin-torque (think a super heavy greyhound?). Add to that rags are generally not used for PvP anyways, and this quickly becomes much more feasible to add without breaking balance (the standard mkII/mkIII rags would still be better at PvP then this faster boat).

I really think we need some real *bombs* before we go trying to completely re-work bombers. At the moment we stack Chaos Swarms, which are fundamentally an anti-fighter weapon, as a work-around since there's no anti-shield or anti-capship weapons in the game.

Making a Ragnarok variant with a higher cruising speed to make stacking up Chaos Swarms easier is just adding another work-around to make the work-around easier.

Since we have no "BOMBS" neither torpedoes, at least improve our 'almost a bomber' Ragnarok weapons hold, making it 4L, 3L2s, or 3L1s. That woudl be a change.

Instead of making its speed 80/85, integrate the SwarmTurbo plugin into regular VO, as a sort of addon, or simply a key only available when you install swarms.

More large ports makes it a player-swarmer or too good of a miner. It needs to be a bomber. We need bombs.

The heavy weapon license is too high on the swarm rag. 8 Perhaps? I'd like to see it happen.

integrate the SwarmTurbo plugin into regular VO

omg -100, never used it.

"integrate the SwarmTurbo plugin into regular VO

omg -100, never used it."

I agree. I suggested an 80-85m/s combat speed because it means you can stack swarms AND control your ship (and smooth control), rather then being stuck in a jerky-controlled plugin-driven attempt at maintaining stacking speed.

As for needing new bombing weapons, I couldn't agree more. But those weapons making stacking useless? Really, if people stack current weapons they WILL stack any future weapons. Stacking exists more to combat how shields were implemented then how bombs are/were/will-be. Shields require an instant hit of massive damage to be brought down, regardless of bomb size (some cappies with more shields then the bomb payload can reduce) stacking will remain the most effective tactic to pull shields down.

If you don't like the idea of stacking weapons, shields are what need a redesign, NOT weapons used against them.

that 3rd rag variant seems pretty interesting