Why not simply use a big, enormous C2 Hercules and chain all of the small missions? Why would we ever use a small or medium ship at all?
TL;DRChaining missions in a big hauler is allowed and encouraged, but smaller ships remain viable because players may only own them, contested missions run out, fuel costs can undermine efficiency, and a large ship is a bigger target.
From a mission design point, you can. This isn't something I want to limit. I want you to choose. I mean, it was way ago, but back when we used to have the old delivery system where you could chain your own cargo missions together, that was exactly the point. Players could have this huge ship and take quite a lot of small jumps and then go, oh, this one goes to this location and then I have a pickup from there and it goes back over here and I can make my own round delivery loop. From just reading contracts and understanding where everything is locality-wise, I know that this outpost is right next to this outpost, so I'll drop off here and I'll do a quick hop, grab it and make my time more efficient. But sure, Nick might have some other reasons as to why not. It's not the most efficient route. You're wasting your time.
No, no. I mean, you're absolutely right. Obviously, not only can you do it, but you definitely should be doing it. The question isn't so much whether you should or shouldn't be using a C2. Why would I ever use a small or a medium ship? Maybe that's all you have. Maybe you only have a small or medium ship. Not everyone has C2s like Salty Mike. So if you only have a small or medium ship, then we wanted to make sure that you still had access to the hauling gameplay. The other thing to bear in mind, of course, is that there are only so many of each type of mission in each part of space. If you are in a very trafficked part of space and there are more people who are doing hauling and they have small or medium ships, they may have taken all of those small and medium-sized contracts. So there may be one or two you could grab, but you aren't going to be able to fill a whole C2 with them if you're in a heavily trafficked part of space where everyone else is scrabbling over those same missions. And then, of course, there are the more economy-based answers. So can you make an efficient delivery route? If you have to go back and forth and forth and back and out of atmosphere and back up again, and sometimes you quantum, sometimes you're using hydrogen, fuel costs alone might make it not economically viable to do eight different small missions when you could just do two medium or two large ones.
Also, depending on where you're going, a C2 is a really big target. If you're seeing a C2 fly between big commerce areas, people are going to start to figure out that that's what folks are doing, and those become bigger targets. And imagine losing not just one mission's worth of cargo, but four simultaneous missions' worth of cargo to four different providers.
Absolutely. That is a really good point. I mean, imagine there is a trade lane, a small trade lane, which is traditionally Nomads and maybe Cutlasses or whatever, Hull As, hauling this lane. And maybe there is a pirate lurking. If they see a C2, which one are they going to go for? The Titan or the C2? So there are considerations. But by all means, take multiple missions. Be as efficient as you can.
And the rep hit to that: if you do get caught out, there's four missions that are going to fail, and you get a rep hit times four. You might have a bit where it's like, right, I can't play cargo missions for the next hour or so.