Federal Ships
23 Nov 2015Lothal Vanderheim
Most of the ships the Federation only wants their best pilots to fly are rather awkward tubs. The Dropship and the Gunship have their uses, but their horribly slow turners. The Federal Assault Ship on the other hand was apparently constructed by other, more sane engineers because the ship really flies well.Something I'd like to test as well, but the Federation only ranks me as "Petty Officer" so far, which means I'm only allowed to fly the Federal Dropship.
Recently, I've heard rumours of a larger ship, one of the main patrol ships of the Federal Navy. The (a bit uncreatively named) Federal Corvette! Sounds like a fine ship, but far out of my league in terms of finances. Would be a nice long-term goal, though I don't know what I'd do with my very own warship.
So today I was deciding which one of the special snowflake ships available to my ranks I could try out for mining. At first glance, the Imperial Clipper wins in everything: Looks, cargo space, internals, weapons, jump range. Everything.
But then again, the Imperial Clipper can't land at outposts, which makes mining more annoying than I deem necessary. Because I'm just that lazy, I went ahead and bought a Federal Dropship, then fit it as a mining ship.
And I'm surprised, because so far the Federal Dropship looks like a good mining ship: It has enough and large enough internals to give me good shields (for emergencies), good cargo space (96 tons) and enough free internals for a good refinery and nice prospector and collector limpet controllers. There was even a little bit of space left over for a docking computer: After all, I expect after hours of mining I'll probably be too tired to haul this lump of ungainly metal back onto a pad without crashing.
Now I've set up shop in a nice, lonely Federal system and will mine nearby metallic rings. If it works out, maybe I can do some mining missions for local groups? It would certainly be ironic if, after tons of shooting and transporting goods around the Federation, shoveling dirt finally gives me the rank to try out my favourite shooting ship so far.