What is the plan for loading and unloading external cargo on ships like the Hull series?
TL;DRThe team is still exploring how to load external cargo on large ships, considering cargo drones, tractor-beam tugs, industrial ports or loading docks; the Hull C is expected to be the first test.
We briefly talked about the plan. We're looking at cargo drones and things like that. We were actually looking at bigger ships as well. Is there a way to take the Argo and things like that? Do we want to put tractor beams on smaller ships, tugs and things like that? Treat smaller ships that would feed larger ships, like the Argo. When you arrive at certain ports, they already have either NPC or player characters that can load for you for a small fee, things like that. They are starting to fall into a weight class of more industrial cargo ships, that you would see at the port of Los Angeles or the port of San Francisco. Those kind of carriers would take two days, 48 hours, just to unload, before even leaving the bay, kind of thing. It's a full-time job and all hands on deck to clear that. We could see a similar system where you can only take your Hulls to certain... like Port Olisar may not be set up for it, but a more industrial trading post might be. These are things that we're looking at now. We have our infrastructure, and then we have bigger ships that need to integrate it. Is it worth just putting an umbilical off the side and just automating it, or do we want to encourage players: oh, you've got a big ship, you're going to have to take that somewhere else.
There might be specific space stations that are more suited for something like that.
Yeah, or we start adding loading docks as a concept that's separate from the private docks of just landing pad off and away. That's the next question, whether we designate loading docks. The Hull C is in progress, and I think that's going to be the first test of cargo point two, the next iteration of where we are right now. We've got it in, and most of our internal cargo grids, aside from a few lift problems, are working really well. So it's the outliers now, and the Hull C is the new big outlier that's kind of like, okay, how are we going to integrate that? Because we're also going to see that on the Starfarer: its external tanks are designated as cargo storage space as well. So yeah, that's the next big step for cargo.