The expected level of technology needed to traverse space and galaxies, build bases out of various resources, upgrade equipment, yet, none of my “spaceships ‘ can hover or fly backwards in any situation.

Ill never understand this.

After using primarily fighters for hundreds upon hundreds of hours of my main save, I had finally found an Explorer that I knew had to be my new main. Helped that a natural S-Class just kinda fell into my lap. Transferred all my tech and cargo over, but decided to ditch the positron and phase beam in favour of just a dual-weapon loadout with infraknife and rockets (my fav combo anyway).

After optimizing the layouts with the given SC slots, I was resigned to the overall damage potential being 20% that of my fighter, and the infraknife achieving only 50% of the DPS. I thought I’d give it a try anyway.

Holy shit.

In the next pirate freighter encounter, I finished off the freighter in half the time. I was still skeptical, so I took on a host of combat missions, including solo pirate missions from the Nexus, sentinel freighter battles, and various random encounters. The results were all the same – the Explorer eviscerated enemies with a terrifying efficiency and brutality that my maxed-out S-class fighters could only dream of.

I had read similar stories of such performances, but hadn’t experienced it first hand. But now I know and I can hardly go back to my fighters.

Now if they can only fix that bug so both of my outboard engines are lit up.

Here we go.

There will be 2 ways to defeat pirate freighters. A bit like how there’s 2 sentinel combat methods. One of them is the current ship-freighter combat. It’s what we currently have now. You get the rewards, maybe a bit more than currently. The second way of defeating the freighter is that you have to board it. You land in the landing bay (which is similar to the standard landing bay, but without the annoying middle platforms!), and the new “pirate defense drones” are trying to kill you, very similar to sentinels. The goal is to disable equipment by reaching parts of the freighter through access hatches and shooting the control panels to break them. This will disable each part of the ship, for example, hyperdrive, fleet control system, anti-ship guns, anti-freighter guns, and finally, the defense drones controller near the heart of the freighter. There will be a time limit, if you don’t destroy the hyperdrive in time, the freighter will warp away and chuck you onto a random planet in a random system. If the civilian freighter is destroyed (by anti-freighter guns or the pirate frigate torpedoes), you will have a short amount of time to escape on your ship. However, if all systems are destroyed, you can reach the bridge of the freighter. There, you will arrest the ship’s captain (just by talking to them), which will be teleported away by sentinels. After that, a dialogue box comes up, saying that the ship is eerily silent, and that you’re alone on it. You are given the option to salvage the freighter for materials and cargo, or, you can take the freighter as your own. Currently, I can’t think of any special buffs that a pirate freighter would have, but it will have some positive buff.

HG will never see this. I have written this for absolutely no effective reason. However, it would be insane if this was in the game. Please give credit if you decide to share this by the way, which probably won’t happen.

P.S. shout-out to the guy who suggested I post this, because I really wouldn’t have if they didn’t say so(I forgot his username btw). I only intended to write this suggestion as a fun comment. So, thanks to them.

Happy exploring, travellers!

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