Passenger Cabins OR Passenger SHIPS?

[DraQ]

I can't be the only one thinking "what exactly makes Malabar suited for passenger transport and Vatakara for cargo?".
I mean stat-wise - cosmetically it's obvious, Malabar's hull is dotted with all those little windows, but the way ship stats currently work it's hard to make this cosmetic distinction translate into gameplay in any meaningful manner - no matter what changes are made to distinguish those ships, at the end of the day you could still fit more passengers into supposedly transport one and still use the passenger one to haul almost as much cargo (does it fit behind all these windows?).

Therefore I propose that all ships have some built-in passenger capacity corresponding with their looks - if a ships hull has a lot of windows and it looks like it could take a lot of people, it can take a lot of people.
Actually, why not drop the distinction between different kinds of people in favour of general "people capacity"? - a ship could have certain shared habitability after the pilot/commander that could be occupied by extra crew and leftover space could be used to ferry passengers, so a passenger hull could be used as passenger ship, or whatever operations would require a large number of crew - after there is enough different functionality to actually benefit from large number of crewmembers - (or something in between).

Now, the only remaining question would be what to do with extra passenger cabins?
I see following options:

1. drop them - it's not the first time Frontier carryovers would fail to fit into Pioneer
2. drop 'passenger' from the name (shared habitability) and make them work as usual, but make them disadvantageous compared to integral cabins so a dedicated passenger/large crew ship would perform better (mass, capacity) than a converted one
3. drop 'passenger' from the name (see above) and make them work as usual but make them distinct "economy class" cabins (no windows, for example), separate passengers into a better paying category that demands some luxury and low paying (or sometimes high pay - high risk) category that simply needs to get from A to B. Crew could default to lower standard cabins, so that it wouldn't block the premium ones.
4. Combination of 2&3.

What are your thoughts?

[nozmajner]

What if you want to strip your seats / empty your cabin to make a makeshift budget freighter?

[DraQ]

What if you want to strip your seats / empty your cabin to make a makeshift budget freighter?

Then you blow up on takeoff due to unsecured cargo stuffed into cabins tearing your ship apart when subjected to multi-G accelerations. :P

Besides, you can't fire your crew or strip crew cabins to take a few more cargo containers either, you definitely shouldn't be able to scrap the integral structure to fit more equipment (and external windows indicate such internal structure in place) and game doesn't differentiate between cargo and equipment space.
Since those windows can't be made dynamic based on cabins installed I think that's about as reasonable solution as possible, and being able to use the same habitable space for crew and passengers would increase flexibility.

If you want a ship with cavernous hull all up for your disposal, you don't buy one full of cabins built right into the hull as faithfully portrayed by game's art assets.

[nozmajner]

Like in Hollywood, where a stray bullet can blow up a car?

And what takes you from installing the needed structure for securing cargo anyway? There are quite a few cases of makeshift conversions in real life, either for planes, helicopters or even cars/buses. Some of them are even routinely convertible.
And you missed my point altogether with that cavernous hull. Makeshift means something you have to work with when you need to solve a situation and you can't get the necessary tools. Like the money for a proper freighter. Or an available freighter. Like the early airplane carriers made out of freighters and lots of wood plating.

A direction could be that there's default equipment for any ship, which would come with it when you buy it, and a reduced cargo capacity even when you strip everything from it. So it does the job, but a similar freighter for example would do the job better without modification. And/or maybe striping some of these would cost you, instead of giving the reduced the buyback price, and you might even need to buy some kind of "cargo space" equipment to make that makeshift cargo hold.
Still cheaper then buying a real freighter, but you can freight until you get the money for one.

And the game does differentiate cargo and equipment space in a way, since you can define overall capacity and cargo capacity separately.

[DraQ]

The first part was tongue in cheek. :)

Sure I agree that it would be the best to be able to customize everything, maybe even design and assemble ships from scratch, but Pioneer already doesn't support this, for example you can't axe half of its numerous thrusters from Pumpkinseed to obtain version with much lower acceleration, but much higher fuel fraction and consequently delta-v, or strap extra boosters onto a freighter to let it take off from heavy planets with hold full of cargo.
Hell, as of now you can't even take more cargo or equipment at the expense of propellant.

And since game already has (beautifully done) assets for Malabar's freighter version (Vatakara) then maybe the form and function should get together and let all those glowy windows actually mean something in game?

[DraQ]

One more observation - separate crew and passenger capacities make especially little sense in the context of S&R missions where you can't save people you could easily accommodate on your ship just because you don't have dedicated passenger space. I wouldn't have expected stranded survivors to be this picky.

Your ship already has crew space that can't be repurposed into cargo space so why not let you at least repurpose unused crew quarters into passenger cabins while tying this built-in habitable space to ship's look?