The following considers modification to the Reliant line of spacecraft. Before being critical I will say I like the Reliant a lot. They are manufactured by MISC, they are simultaneously graceful dragonflies but also flying telephone poles, and that's as intended. They are an exploratory collaboration between Xi'an and human designers, in ways that were never intended, and likely never will be again, meant for a plethora of functions, but master of none, as you would expect from such a scenario. Just messing around but aiming to improve on the Reliant, make the interior more functional, without putting it in a tier above where it is currently, a tier 2 starter ship, whatever that means. The Reliant in its current form is composed in six parts; The Outer Wings - these hold the armament, secondary thrusters, one landing gear, stabilizer wings, S1 cooler and shield module, and also 1 fuel tank each. No really. So if you lose one, good luck steering, staying cool, keeping your shields up or landing! It can be done. :slightly_smiling_face: This isn't like losing a wing on a gladius or a mustang though. Also the wings make the reliant one of the widest small ships and at one point they were supposed to fold up to be able to land on a carrying ship. The wings do also dwarf the modules, the modules are currently oriented in the wing vertically and you could probably fit 50 each of the shield and cooler in there. Non Reliant pilots, aim for the wings! The Wing Struts - these appear to house structure connecting the outer wing to the cockpit, the headlamps and some sensing equipment, but are primarily composed of ducting that appear to be required to allow the engines to run while in horizontal mode. The Cockpit - a squished half of a globe, or possibly a pita pocket, one of those red wax cheese wheels, or maybe one of those rubber things your grandparents gave you to keep pennies in, but I think they were going for alien dragonfly head, the cockpit houses a sealing door, the piloting seats, computers and fuel collecting intakes. The shell of it is so thin in a couple places the interior mesh actually intersects the exterior mesh. The Barrel - connects the front to the back, is actually a lightly tapering cylinder, and is filled with 8 access panels and some white bumpers down low that might be drawers or might just be a nod to the millennium falcon. The hardpoints for power plant, quantum drive and fuel are located here. The Body - contains radar, countermeasures, air brake flaps, the ramp for exiting the reliant, the rear landing gear, the hard points for the main thrusters, a fire extinguisher, and will hold 6 scu. It also contains a prodigious amount of pipe greeble that is unexplained, but it makes sense to me that the ceiling of the body is where the raw fuel that gets brought in through the intakes is refined into useable fuel. The body is also where interior variant kits for the reliant are placed, replacing 4 scu of cargo space. The Engine Pods - give the reliant it's primary thrust. They currently vector thrust either down or back in relation to the reliant body, and need complex venting through the wing struts to function while the wings are horizontal in horizontal flight mode. To-dos: A. Move habitation functions out of the body and into the barrel so that all variants have bed logout and have more room for cargo and or other variant function. B. Consider location of modules for best function. C. Make losing a wing less crippling, improve fighting power just a teensy tiny bit. D. Move landing gear onto wing struts so that outer wings can fold up. E. Rethink venting of engine through wing struts. F. Consider leaving the body the same size (so interior hold capacity goes down to 4 SCU) but add a 4 scu Hull style cargo spindle for the kore series A. I've increased the size of the barrel by just 15% in width and 1.25 model units in length, projecting into the body by that much, and lengthening the body to maintain the current size of the cargo hold. I've modelled very roughly so far an interior to the barrel which contains a modified bath module, two beds and an area for kitchen and lockers. Further a second door between the cargo area and the barrel means the barrel can be airtight when the cargo hold is open, whenever they implement that. The interior of the barrel now rotates independently and can link up access to the body or the cockpit in both modes of flight. B. I've placed the quantum drive and power plant modules under the floor panels. I thought about placing everything in the wings to make more room for hab, but there is so much room below the floor once the barrel is upsized. Flipping the floor panels up gives easy access to the modules. I also moved the counter measure modules out from the pocket between the airbrake flaps to farther out on the body hull, so that the barrel can rotate more freely and also the current location would just mean the flairs hit the underside of the wing or ding off the stabilizer wings when in vertical mode if they really came out there. C. The compartment under the extended habitation area is now quite spacious, so I've added an additional S1 cooler, shield and power plant. According to Erkul, S1 power plants are about 20% the power of an S2 power plant, which is what a ship like the Cutlass will have. So this gives the Reliant double it's current power and an additional 50% cooling and shielding capability, but that's still shy of half the power of an S2 having ship. The reliant would still have the same weapons it currently has, but would be able to sustain fire for much longer. By comparison, the scorpius also runs with two S1 power plants and is armed with 4x S3 and 4x S2 guns and 1x S2 shield (9000 HP) and 2x S1 coolers. The modified Reliant would have 2x S1 power plants, 2x S1 and 4x S2 guns as currently, and 3x S1 shields (4500 HP) and 3x S1 coolers. So improved, hardened somewhat against loss of a wing, but definitely not overpowered, especially not for immediate dps or damage absorption, but better than it was at sustaining or taking dps. C. While currently standard fuel is located only in the wings. with the barrel and body upsized, there is now a pocket in the body next to each main thruster that would be a good space for storing fuel for use by the main thrusters. I'm also considering adding four thrusters at the corners of the tail of the body similar to what the freelancer has. This would be misc consistent and greatly increase the survivability of losing a wing. :smile: