So I'm new to RT, my group is online based and eventually we'd like to play.

Having said that once we roll origin and warrants we're going to want a ship and I'm having a hard time deciding on hulls to pass around the group as ideas. Most of us are prior military service and I think a martial ship would serve well. (Despite our gm being a sadist)

I've seen repeatedly on forums that most people either prefer tailored smaller ships or dumping everything for a starter cruiser. Trying to go in between.

Shrike, not a lot on my mind of the Raider class at this time.

Loki-Class Q, a upgunned freighter sounds like a lot of fun outside of anything that is an over fortified military installation or patrol.

Falchion Class Frigate, simply because it seems more cramped to put torpedoes and hardpoints on a firgate as opposed to the Firestorm pocket lance. Plus we can name it Errant Messer. (My first favorite)

Goliath Factory ship, I can see some roleplaying chances for this as a harvester but it sounds fragile and in between smaller craft and the gigantic Universe class while hamstrung a little with its plasma refinery. I take it we can't mine with an asteroid mining option than refine it ourselves? (My other favorite) I'm also assuming it's refining process ia limited to certain routes because of blue stars and frontier mining worlds?

Defiant or Endeavor Light Cruisers, as far as I think we should stop here so we can have the most flexibility without Cruiser overkill.

Loki is not upgunned, it's just like Vagabond, but with extra space and hidden tricks; and if you don't insist on a lance (other than Las-Burner), Orion or Carrack are more versatile.

Universe Mass Conveyor is a niche vessel, it's cool for long-term grand missions — colonization, building orbitals, salvage operations, etc. I don't think it makes sense to ever use this one unless the PCs have a fleet or good allies to protect it, and own/start/plan to upgrade a colony (which is a whole new can of live bait).

Why not Conquest (it's below proper cruisers in almost all stats, but tougher than lesser ships and has that compatibility thing) or Orion? Merchant-oriented, yet very survivable compared to other transports. Even more so if you pay attention to squeezing high total bonuses out of upgrades and crew positions.

I forgot to mention the clipper, but I wanted a Goliath in the sense of a mining role-playing ship and not just a raider playing bug bites and support which I'd get from an Orion. Loki's are just asking for Tenebro funny sessions which is a major reason I like it compared to the Carrack which everyone saw coming.

Also now that I've fiddled around and made a Falchion, I realized no-one uses it because of the abysmally low space because it would be overpowered having two Ryzas or sunspears on a torpedoboat if you allowed it to do anything. Which leaves me in a conundrum.

So I'm going to go one step further in my insanity and convert a Firestorm into a Torpedoboat like a King Cobra upgrade package. I also just realized my mining and refinery concept goes out the window, so now I'm going to headdesk until I come up with something uninspiring.