Player owned Tridents are now mostly used for bulk trading. Not sure what devs have in the pipeline for P and S variants but I do hope we could get some kind of a combat variant that will have smaller cargo capacity, armory (so user can swap and configure weapons & equipment on docked fighters and trident itself) and a hangar for docking max 5 fighters (pilot + 4 gunners), buffed shields, slightly higher cruise and turbo speeds and slightly better spin torque and maybe a light version of the battery (2000 cap).
Hangar capacity could be limited to accept only ships up to 150 cu (this effectively excludes all heavy ships).

Here is what I had in mind:

Armor: 1000000
Shield: 50000
Cargo: 300 cu
Armory: 100 cu
Hangar: 5 ship slots up to 150cu each
Weapons: 3 L, 4 turrets
Battery: light variant 2000 cap
Mass: 2800 Mg
Length: 210 m
Thrust: 11000 N
Max Speed: 45
Spin Torque: 6500 Nm
Turbo Speed: 145 m/s
Turbo Energy: 48/s

Also... Tactical tab (interface) for effectively using Trident is currently pretty messed up.
Tridents should have directly accessible tabs for:
1. Command bridge (or Cockpit)
2. Turrets
3. Armory
4. Hangar

Pressing "m", or "n" to get to Tactical and then entering Tactical and switching to turrets or hangar is highly impractical.
How about a dedicated bind (key) that leads directly to tactical with 4 aforementioned tabs?

Hangar: 5 ship slots up to 150cu each

I'd really like separate docking bays again. :(

3 lp, 1 sp. I could care less about the turrets.

+1 split cargo & docks.

Max speed 50-55 m/s
Max turbo 160 m/s

I'm not clear about how the battery offers game play optimization for a combat variant.

+1 to a sensible interface.

I also don't see the point of an armory.

@Fluffy

3L & 1S could be too much since with a 4000 cap battery you can fire till the cows come home
I think 2L and possibly 1S port with light 2000 cap battery could solve the 'overpowered' issue?

In my opinion, max speed should be lower then on the moth so I went for 45, also 160 turbo speed might be too much for a ship of this size.

Atm we have a dent battery with 4000 cap that weights 200 tons. Giving combat variant more forward weapon slots 3 or 4 with a 4000 cap batt makes it a bit overpowered and, in my opinion, that can be balanced with a lower capacity batt (2000 cap).
Also, 2000 cap battery can weight 60-80 tons and that will have a slight impact on the better ships maneuverability.

Armory is a very nifty addition.
Say you have 3 megaposis equipped on your dent and you want to switch weapons and install avalons or AGTs instead. Or you want to go mining in a heavily bot infested sector and put on mining beams?
Why go to M7 all of the time, you can do it on the fly by using armory.

Also, maybe you want to switch equipment on your marauder you have on board and put aaps instead of flares or mining beams or aeolus rep guns or whatever? Use the armory and it's done.

I am envisioning a pirate vessel to the Class M. Perhaps the slight speed increase along with a significant improvement in thrust will suffice.

My 3 lp and 1 sp is based on that 2 lp weapons are not sufficient to drop shields (I'm not sure 3 is enough without being able to look up stats, which I'm not atm). The sp for light weapon or pcb. Unless the ship is carrying swarms, it's not going to do much against light fighters, and even then, there would be little difference to what the M can do, esp if the turrets are removed. Added speed and thrust would give the ship a better chance against being deshielded itself.

I love the idea for the Armory.

The risk of lowering the weight on the battery without making them trident exclusive (which I am opposed to for entirely selfish reasons) would be to enable players to use them on ships like the rangerok, like is commonly done to create mining or repair ships and have even greater maneuverability.

"I am envisioning a pirate vessel to the Class M. Perhaps the slight speed increase along with a significant improvement in thrust will suffice."

I was not aiming at a pirate vessel per se, heh, it should be military/combat variant that can effectively fight another Trident on his own or in combination with a few support light fighters.

"My 3 lp and 1 sp is based on that 2 lp weapons are not sufficient to drop shields (I'm not sure 3 is enough without being able to look up stats, which I'm not atm). The sp for light weapon or pcb. Unless the ship is carrying swarms, it's not going to do much against light fighters, and even then, there would be little difference to what the M can do, esp if the turrets are removed. Added speed and thrust would give the ship a better chance against being deshielded itself."

3 megaposis with infinite fire for 10 sec. can drop queens shield (I believe queen shield is 80000).
Stacked avalons or swarms or screamers can also drop shields incredibly fast

"The risk of lowering the weight on the battery without making them trident exclusive (which I am opposed to for entirely selfish reasons) would be to enable players to use them on ships like the rangerok, like is commonly done to create mining or repair ships and have even greater maneuverability."

True, 4000 cap Trident batteries are used on mining rags and I have effectively used it for killing queens in under 20 sec. The situation with the 2000 cap light batt can be solved so it does not drop when dent is destroyed and cannot be bought separately or we can just stick with the existing 4000 cap battery.
I don't have any problems with more firepower. :)

And about Armory... I think this addition could make a lot of people happy , enhance gameplay and reduce boring runs to M7.

I like this idea, but I'm of the belief that until we get some other change that provokes people to bring their tridents out in PvP situations this is not worth doing. And since we haven't really heard any new Trident news from Incarnate in...forever... I'm not really holding out hope that player owned capital ship battles are going to become any more common than they currently are for the indefinite future.

*sulks*

A trident type M can de-shield another type M currently if using the main gun and turrets. Making a trident with enough front weapons ports to de-shield another trident will make more tridents collect dust in the M7 docks. My opinion on trident variants is to stick to turrets, weight, speed, maneuverability, and capacity. The armory idea is cool, if implemented it should be for all trident variants.

The trident is already a light frigite, and you're proposing a light trident? What it gonna be, Trident Very Light Frigite?
Great idea though, make it easier to build if it's going to be undockable by XCs.

@danielturtle
Seems you missed the point of this thread - I am not proposing "very light" trident but a combat capable military vessel that sacrifices its cargo & docking capacity for better weapons, stronger shield and enhanced maneuverability.

It should not be easier to build, in fact, it should have additional manufacturable components that complement its role.
Current Trident owners could get an upgrade manufacturing mission if they want their dents converted (upgraded) to combat variant.

T U R R E T
P L A C E M E N T

How about a dedicated bind (key) that leads directly to tactical with 4 aforementioned tabs?

Also this...

@bojansplash
1. Interesting idea, I can see the signs: "Dent too slow to take on HACs? Get it refited now at..."
2. The Light Light thing was a half baked attempt at finding humor in the Dent's full name.
3. Sounds great, the more shield is good. Maybe we could make Shield Boosters as a component?
4. +1

Turtle,

1) a trident should never be able to take on a Levi, connie or hac by itself. That is the role of the Teradon. But it should be able to do some damage to another trident or queen.

2) I got it. ;)

The fact that I usually refer to the Trident as a Corvette, rather than a Frigate, is not by accident or intended to diminish the Trident. Corvettes are capship escorts. They primary responsible is to contain sufficient defensive armament for protecting larger ships against fighters or other capships. We will have other ships with dedicated offensive roles, but we keep trying to make the Trident into some kind of a battleship. What's next? A request the Trident have 4 L-ports, then ask for a cap-avalon? (Believe me - this sort of thing will happen if we ever start getting some serious cap vs cap PvP)

The idea of dedicated containment areas (e.g. armory or hanger bay storage separate from cargo storage) is not new and has been mentioned before. That does not mean it isn't a good suggestion. That so many keep suggesting the same things should be interpreted that those are good ways forward. What is most useful about this thread is that it should be received as a discussion on future customization of all capships. That way, if we ever get Connies, we can have discussions about the defensive vs offensive roles that class might play. (I'm actually in favor of multiple classes within a given type, even if they're all based off a base class, as happens regularly in RL)

@Keller

Corvette, Frigate, Destroyer, Cruiser, Battleship - if we are going to go with the strict military order and roles then current VO Trident is neither of those.

Corvettes are small, fast & agile and have mostly offensive weapons and are considered 'recon' ships.
Frigates are slightly slower but have an array of offensive and defensive weapons.
Destroyers are more heavily armed then smaller ships and are considered 'hunters' or in our case 'interceptors'.

Can you really see VO Trident (as it is now) in any of this real military vessel categories?

Uhh, it's a support ship. Not an assault ship.

I suppose the Teradon would fall under the category of destroyer then. The Connie is more of a support ship than the dent. The dent is the smaller escort/patrol ship of the cappies. If they made a larger shielded version of the rag that could be a corvette. It'd probly need a few turrets though.