To boldly go where thousands have gone before...

Bold Pilot Log, Entry #30

Since the review for the Blog Banter 30 is out, I thought I owe an expansion to my banter post... Since, guess what, Bold Pilot Log entries are hitting 30 as well! So, Stan probably has got a take on the original concept, or if not he thought it was fitting into the profile of ORE and aptly named the mothership concept "Athena", which in his honor, I'll use as the name of the Gallente Mothership.

So, we have ourselves a ship that's capable of serving as a core for a deep space operation, such as Freebooting Freelancer Inc. Unauthorized Bounty and Resource Extraction, Manufacturing and Research Company. The idea here is to help small entities that probably wouldn't have the numbers to get a hold in wild space. They're only a few people a corp, with possibly less than ten active members, who usually are online for a limited time. They think the life in null or wormholes is really fun, but the POS is too permanent for their liking. Setting up a tower is too tedious if you have to be constantly on the move. Sou our wily space nomads get themselves a Mothership, the type of ship that'll serve them as their makeshift home, and will allow them quick movement if the ground gets too hot for their liking. All they have to do to move the whole base around is have it unanchor (come out of deployment mode), and jump the whole fleet at once (if they are on grid, and unless they are in combat) to a system far, far away...

Development of the Mothership concept

But guess what... It wasn't ORE's idea in the first place! In fact, the Minmatar people, especially the Thukkers always had a taste for a nomad lifeform... The problem was, they couldn't afford to run stations or towers in the far reaches of space, so what they did was is to re-purpose an existing capital ship design to suit their needs. Now they had everything they needed in the place they wanted in the time they wanted. The military implications of such a mobile outpost had not been considered at this time, and the concept was dismissed as a civilian effort. With the strengthening of the capsuleer militia however, the Republic started to look at ways to mix the effectiveness of the capsuleer vessels with the mobility of the Thukker Motherships. After a few months of engineering, this resulted in the Wolverine, the first capsule-fitted Mothership ever designed.

Meanwhile in the Empire... A few very bold Blood Raider attempts were led by ships with huge cargo and docking capacities, hauling hundreds of Raider dropships to the site of the Raid, similar to the first Incursion tactics. Soon, the military experts at the Empire realized what was happening - and that they can't fight off the Raiders without their own forces having a way to deploy full mobile operations. Searching for ways to achieve this goal, they put forth a commission for the most effective Mothership design. It was shortly decided that the Imperial Armaments' 'Reclaimer' will win.

The Caldari agents had ears and eyes everywhere again, and the Raata kind of liked the idea of having a ship serve as a mobile base for the quick response fleets. The race began as every major armaments provider started to test their own designs fr the task. In a somewhat heated discussion, the leaders of the State finally decided that the Kaalakiota Corporation's Albatross will be fitted for capsuleer usage.

The Gallente Federation's own engineers were still busy revising their Hybrid designs, when this new challenge was put forth. Luckily, ORE had been in the process of creating a ship design that would be more suitable for the hostile environment of capsuleer-inhabited outer space than the Rorqual. They sold the plans for an undisclosed (and probably incredibly high) sum of ISK to the Federation. A small group of talented scientists from all areas spent about a year, re-purposing the original blueprints to fit into the Federation's military profile.

Properties - what makes a MS a MS?

So, here we go. All the four factions have their own Mothership designs. There are things they share, in the form of base stats and bonuses, coming from their role. However, them being racial, this allows for a diversity of small boosts they can give to the fleet they are supporting. Let's go through the commonalities first:

• They have no drone bay or hardpoints. There should be a whole group of people that are (should be) able to defend them at all times.
• They have the ability to fit POS modules as if they were regular ones, and have the role bonuses to reduce the grid requirements to an acceptable level. The POS modules allow them to be used the corresponding station service. A list further down.
• They have the resources comparable to that of a Tier 3 Battleship. If they had more, they could fit capital modules in their spare slots, or they shouldn't have spare slots, both of which makes them too pewerful in combat or much less interesting to fly.
• They can support up to two gang links in their high slots.
• They can use their POS modules and gang links when in deployed mode, other modules can only be activated when they are mobile.
• Deployment itself does not consume fuels, but the usage of the station functions does.
• They cost about three carriers' worth of materials to build, and their hit points are tuned in a way that they have sufficient buffer to last through a low-number capital engagement with capital support. Dreadnoughts will be the bane of these ships.
• They have a cargo hold of 5000 or more. There are a lot fo things that you'd want to put in them even if you don't plan to participate in cargo heavy activities.

The POS modules would all fit to High Slots, allowing the following functions:

• Assembly Array: We want to be able to sustain ourselves in space, right? That means it has to be able to fit assembly arrays, fuel cost linked to manufacture job scale. It should also be able to construct ships, so allow the fitting of up to Large and Medium Advanced arrays.
• Ship Maintenance Array: Docking (as in a station) of up to a balanced number of people with subcapital ships only. Timed ship and module repair and capacitor recharge (which use fuel), fitting service (only when docked).
• Corporate Hangar Array: Storage of modules, commodities and ores within the hold of the ship. Essentially a corp hangar that's again only accessible if docked. Moving items, stacking, repackaging should cost fuel if there was at least one item to be executed on.
•  Mobile Laboratory & subtypes: Research slots. Each job consumes a certain amount of fuel depending on the scale it represents.
• Moon Harvesting Array: Yeah, you read it right. They can mine moons. Fuel is consumed for each cycle.
• Reactor Array: If they can mine moons, why not be able to react the materials? Well, they should be able to. Fuel, again is consumed per cycle. Silos are not wanted here, the materials could be placed in the cargo of the ship.
• Refining Array: The ability to reprocess minerals in deeps space is a really good thing. It should definitely not step on the toes of the Rorqual (compressing ore must remain a valid way of operation) and neither should it be more preferable than a station. Stuff can be refined from a corp hangar or the cargo and a balanced time will lapse before the end product appears in the location of origin.

Racial Bonuses

Now that we have looked at what the Mothership can do, let's stop for a moment. I did wish for factional ships rather than only one, but we can look at it from the other angle - why would I pick an Athena over a Reclaimer? Well, because they have different bonuses, meaning that the other might suit your play style! Remember, this has to keep small group in mind when in design. So, let's look at what kind of bonuses the ships would offer.

Wolverine:

• Bonus to traditional Minmatar Command links.
• Bonus to capacitor need of jumps.
• Bonus to Refining Array efficiency.

Reclaimer:

• Bonus to traditional Amarr Command Links
• Bonus to the maximum number of docked ships (when a ship maintenance array is fitted)
• Bonus to  Assembly Array slot number

Athena:

• Bonus to traditional Gallente Command links
• Bonus to jump range
• Bonus to Corporate Hangar capacity

Albatross:

• Bonus to traditional Caldari Command Links
• Bonus to jump fuel consumption.
• Bonus to Laboratory slot number

Closing Words

So, here we have them. The pride of any nomad group - their Mothership, their mobile home. No longer are they forced to carry around POS modules in clumsy ships, and no longer does it take hours to move from one system to another. Just unanchor the Mothership and go. Well, there obviously have to be some drawbacks, righ? Well, here is the list I can offer:

1. The whole stuff only works if the pilot is online. Account sharing is a bannable offense. I leave the conclusions to you.
2. It consumes fuel for every freaking operation (just as a POS would, maybe even more). You have to keep the checkbooks tight if want to rely on this thing.
3. The tank on this ship is really thin for its size. No capital modules means that the Motherships can barely be fitted to be saved by a good triage carrier when caught by a gang.
4. The only safety this ship has is that in can sit on a deep space bookmark and cloak up.

I'm pretty sure there are a lot of ways that you can exploit these things, and there may be big holes in the idea, but that's why I'm putting it out there - take a look and please comment if have any suggestion as to how it could be improved.

Sessym out.