I wrote a lovely article at lunch today and the browser crashed when I saved, discarding the entire post.

Words were said.

Anyway, the BETA!

Played a few hours last night and I can confirm the Chieftain costs 18,897,696 CR (subject to change) and is a really good ship. That puts it in the price pool between the Federal Assault Ship and the Imperial Clipper – both of which require Navy Rank to obtain!

I like it more than the slightly-cheaper Federal Assault Ship and it is a crazy-fun combat ship. With a Grade 5 engineered FSD (I stripped my old FAS) and A rated modules across the board, I was getting just over 20Ly jump range. The cockpit is really well styled, but lacks clear canopy underside that Lakon ships usually have.

Between real life, the BETA, the ongoing Vehicle Codex project and another side project I’m working on for someone else, I’ve not had a lot of time to post more on the blog.

I may take a day’s holiday and work on the Chieftain blueprint.

Time will tell!

Tonight's Elite:Dangerous livestream gave us the most complete information about the chieftain so far.

"It's Between the Python and the Federal ships"

Firepower

The hard-point placement is all along the centre-line and combined with its agility, this makes it a perfect ship for fixed weapons.

The medium hardpoint is on the underside of the cockpit. This means most of your firepower is on the top of the ship.

Outfitting

	Core internals	Class	Base fitting
	Power Plant	6	6E
	Thrusters	6	6E
	Frame Shift Drive	5	5E
	Life Support	5	5E
	Power Distributor	6	6E
	Sensors	4	4E
	Fuel Tank	4	4C

Here it is! The Lakon Type-10 Defender blueprint.

Hats off to Frontier and whoever modeled this ship. It is one of the most detailed ships in the game. No copy-n-paste left side to right here!

4096x2305 JPG

The Type-10 Defender

UPDATE: Due to a short-lived bug in 2.4, CMDR Eric Grovum was able to in the shipyard on the XBOX version of Elite. Sadly, he didn’t have the funds to purchase the ship, but what he did grab added to our overall knowledge. We got a general peek at the shape and some extra stats.

So what’s changed?

We now know the cost will be 124,755,342 CR, which as theorised, is between the Anaconda and Type-9 stablemate. The Defender image shows the little winglets deployed and a very noticeable spoiler (which we saw in photos at the the Frontier Expo and assumed was a ship kit).

The ship description is:

The Type-10 Defender is the result of collaboration between the Alliance and Lakon Spaceways. With the threat of xeno-war looming, the Alliance’s naval arm saw the urgent need for a weapons platform capable of withstanding heavy, sustained attack. Utilising a reinforced Type-9 chassis as a starting point, Lakon overhauled and geared every aspect of the design for combat, producing a military behemoth that could be produced in volume at short notice.

The hardpoints are not the same as previously thought, with 4 large, 4 small (not 1) and 1 medium (not 3) which lowers the calculated firepower factor to 18 (from 20) and with the core internals being identical to the Type-9, the FSD and power plant are the same. This is not-so-good news. It means this beasty will be armoured out the wazoo, but will fly like a whale and while it's firepower theoretically could match a cutter, it lacks the power systems to run many energy weapons, so this will rely on kinetic weapons to keep the hurt coming in combat.

Thanks to the description we know this will be the first Alliance ship in the game.

Strangely for this heavier (and lower jump range) variant of the Type-9, the cruise and boost speeds are higher! Does this mean the ship will be more agile than the Type-9? Maybe. But unless it is impossibly agile, then this ship is going to rely heavily on turrets and the deployed SLF.

It won't outrun a Thargoid (or anything else for that matter) but it will probably take extreme amounts of punishment and still limp away.

As long as the power-plant will take it, Class 8 shields plus all that armour will make it THE in-game ship-tank. People are going to have a lot of fun in outfitting with this one.

What we (think we) know so far…

The Type-10 Defender is a Lakon ship and a variant of the Type-9 Heavy transport ship. We’ve seen clips of the ship in Frontier's Beyond teaser video and it has a lot more engine power on display than it’s stable-mate.

Recently a CMDR anonymously posted game-data mined from Elite: Dangerous that reveals yet more details of this as-yet-unreleased ship. The data gives us a wealth of information about the ship and it’s place in the game.

Stuff we didn’t know

The ship designation in the game code is “TYPE-9_MILITARY/FORC_FDEV_V_MAMMOTH”

The internals are as follows: -

• Class 8 Power plant (Class 6 on the Type 9)
• Class 7 Thrusters (same as Type 9)
• Class 7 Frame Shift Drive (Class 6 on Type 9)
• Class 5 Life Support (same as Type 9)
• Class 6 Power Distributor (same as Type 9)
• Class 4 Sensors (same as Type 9)
• Class 6 Fuel tank (same as Type 9)

UPDATED thanks to Reddit for spotting my error - I had compared to Type-7 (I think) - I plead old age!

The Class 8 power plant puts the T10 right up there with the Cutter, Corvette and Anaconda. The Class 6 power distributor, same as the Type-9, seems a little low, but this ship doesn’t have any Huge hard-points, so maybe a Class 7 wasn’t required - either that or they are trying to limit the ship to kinetic weapons only which draw less power. The Class 7 FSD is a winner for sure, as only the Cutter and Beluga (the two largest ships in the game) have this size of Frame Shift and this vessel is smaller than a Type 9! That means this ship might have a reasonable jump range – especially for a combat class vessel that may have to ship out to Merope.

Nine Hardpoints

4 x Class 3 “Large”
3 x Class 2 “Medium”
2 x Class 1 “Small”

8 Utility slots (twice as many as the Type 9)

That gives this ship a firepower factor of 18 20 (Sum of Class x Qty) which makes it equal to an Imperial Cutter the ship with the most firepower in the game. Interestingly, all the AX weapons released so far are all Class 2, which means the Type-10 is not built as a weapons platform for those AX Multicannons and Missiles released already. Does this mean the ship will be putting Class 2 guns in Class 3 hard-points, or is there a bigger Class of AX weapons to come?

The hard-point names also indicate their position on the ship.

The two small hard-points are located front-left and front-right. Two of the medium hard-points are on the top-left and top-right of the ship. There are two large hard-points top-left and top-right and two large hard-points bottom-left and bottom-right. The final medium hard-point is mid-ship, but it's unclear if it is located top or bottom of the ship.

Layout of optional internals

1. Class 8
2. Class 7
3. Class 6
4. Class 5
5. Class 4
6. Class 4
7. Class 3
8. Class 3
9. Class 2
10. Military slot
11. Military slot

This gives us Class 8 shields in battle or 532T of cargo (256 + 128 + 64 + 32 + 16  + 16 + 8 + 8 + 4) which is unchanged from the Type-9 Heavy.

What else?

According to our anonymous source, the ship lists 53 different paint jobs. That's a lot of new looks to try out! Probably not all on sale on day one though.

The Type-10 has a Ship Launched Fighter Bay and crew positions for a pilot, as well as a second and third seat; meaning it's also a multi-crew ship.

Conclusion

This ship will be (as it's name suggests) a Mammoth! With the better thrusters and top-of-the-line FSD drive, it will be more than adequate to handle (although I doubt any will describe it as agile) and will have the jump range needed to get itself to the Thargoid war zones. With Imperial Cutter level firepower and a lower price-point this will be a popular ship. Being somewhere between the Anaconda (146M CR) and the Type 9 (76M CR) in price, I would speculate the cost of the new ship to be a little over 100M CR.
Sadly the Class 6 power distributor is a bit of an Achilles heel; all that Class 8 power and no way to pipe it out! The Class 7 Thrusters mean this ship is going to be a whale to handle. While slightly smaller than the Type-9, it will be heavier with armour, so don't expect to run rings around anyone.
This looks to be a slow-moving multi-cannon gun platform.

For the various brochures, charts and illustrations I've drawn in the last two years there are a number of Elite: Dangerous corporate logos I've needed to draw. Following a request for logo vectors on Twitter, I'd thought I would publish those I've done already.

Company	Logo	Vector
Achilles Robotics		achilles-robotics.svg (12.80 kb)
Brewer Corporation		brewer.svg (3.06 kb)
Caine-Massey		caine-massey.svg (3.77 kb)
Core Dynamics		core-dynamics.svg (13.63 kb)
Faulcon Delacy		faulcon-delacy.svg (7.02 kb)
Gutamaya		gutamaya.svg (196.85 kb)
Lakon		lakon.svg (33.20 kb)
Remlock		remlock.svg (6.39 kb)
Saud Kruger		saud-kruger.svg (59.78 kb)
Vodel		vodel.svg (3.72 kb)
Zorgon Peterson		zorgon-peterson.svg (9.76 kb)

This is the bluprint for the Lakon Spaceways Type-9 Heavy. The only ship with a manoeuvrability rating of zero, the super-size freighter and foremost mining ship, the Type-9 is the cow of space.

First introduced in version 0.1 Alpha 4.

This is the blueprint for the Lakon Spaceways Type-7 Transporter. The Volvo of the skies, this ship is "boxy but good" and the ideal trader stepping stone before moving on to a Python or Imperial Clipper.

First introduced in version 0.1 Gamma 2.

This is the blueprint for the Lakon Spaceways Asp Explorer. The most popular long-range exploration ship, the Asp has brought many commander back safely from the far side of the galaxy. Better equipped than it's smaller Diamondback cousin, the Asp is far bigger; more cargo, more jump range and more utility slots. The only ship with better jump range (currently) is a stripped-down Anaconda. Something requiring a much larger budget!

First introduced in version 0.1 Beta 2.

This is the blueprint for the Lakon Spaceways Asp Scout. The cheaper and faster version of the Asp, the scout harks back to the military combat origins of the Asp rather than the exploration role of it's better known sister-ship.

First introduced in version 1.5 for the Ships expansion.

Thanks to CMDR Aidan Abacus & the CMDRs of www.elitedangerous.de for German translations. Thanks to CMDR Nicou, CMDR Aymerix & CMDR Duita Rider of www.elite-dangerous.fr for French translations.

English Version 1920x1080 4096x2305

Deutsche Version 1920x1080 4096x2305

Version Française 1920x1080 4096x2305

This is the blueprint for the Lakon Spaceways Keelback. The militarised version of the Type-6 transporter, the Keelback is tougher, meaner and also the smallest craft to be able to carry a ship launched fighter.

First introduced in version 1.5 for the Ships expansion.

Thanks to CMDR Aidan Abacus & the CMDRs of www.elitedangerous.de for German translations. Thanks to CMDR Nicou, CMDR Aymerix & CMDR Duita Rider of www.elite-dangerous.fr for French translations.

English Version 1920x1080 4096x2305

Deutsche Version 1920x1080 4096x2305

Version Française 1920x1080 4096x2305