Today, I’m going to discuss the ships best-suited to medical players, whether in concept or release. I can’t promise you will agree with me, but I do hope I give you some things to consider.
Right off the bat, I will admit that picking the ships to fill out your fleet is a highly-personal and completely-subjective exercise at the best of times. It gets even more complicated when you look at just how many ships are still trapped in concept, since many players refuse to buy ‘jpegs’ which they can’t even fly.
That said, there are seven announced ships which could suit a space-medic, four released, three unreleased or otherwise unavailable ships, plus one option that seems to have fallen off everyone’s radar.
In game, we have:
- Anvil C8R Pisces Rescue
- Drake Cutlass Red
- Origin 890 Jump
- Aegis Carrack
Unreleased options so far are:
- RSI Apollo
- RSI Galaxy Medical Module
- MISC Endeavour Hope-Class
Each ship has a distinct identity, so let’s look at them all.
Dedicated Medical Ships
If you fancy yourself a space-doctor or medic, you’re going to want a ship that plays into that fantasy. Thankfully, five of the seven current options are primarily (or completely) medical.
Anvil C8R Pisces (The Ambulance)
The C8R is a medical variant of the Pisces, with a single tier-3 medical bed and a medical fridge that contains some basic food, drink, and med-pens. It also has a jump-seat for a second crew-member. That means it can deal with T3 injuries, reduce a BDL that’s getting a little high, and resupply players who need to stay out in the field.
That said, it’s entry level and very small. Compared to the rest of the Pisces series, it loses the base Pisces’ 4SCU cargo grid (although it retains 4SCU of internal storage for now) and it lacks the extra fire-power of the C8X. Worst of all, it only has a small fuel tank, so the range with the fastest drives is massively restricted. Another consideration is the lack of a non-medical bed. You are not going to be logging out in this.
I think these features (and limitations) make the C8R a perfect choice for a carrier-based ambulance; three of the ships in the list (890J, Carrack and Galaxy) can easily accept a C8R and it’s manoeuvrable enough to land in some tight spaces as well as having a huge rear entrance for loading and unloading patients. At the same time, it’s a low-investment ship with a short insurance timer, the cheapest medical ship by a great margin; if you buy an Atlas drive, it isn’t too slow and still had enough range to cross Stanton on a single tank of fuel.
Drake Cutlass Red (The Search and Rescue Chopper)
A variant of the Cutlass with fewer weapons and a pair of tier-3 beds, the DCR2 is a battlefield ambulance. Tier three represents the lowest-grade beds, but can heal minor injuries and keep two patients with more complex injuries stable during transport to a station or one of the more specialist ships. It also has crew bunks and a small cargo grid at the back, making it versatile and longer-range than the Pisces C8R.
Compared to the cheaper Cutlass Black, this ship does trade away its armaments for medical facilities and sensor package; while it keeps the four basic weapons-mounts, it loses a size-six turret and its six missile racks. It also suffers from being the original medical ship, so it has lost some popularity since the C8R came out with its more efficient use of space and lower price-tag.
To me, the Cutlass Red doesn’t sound like a dedicated *treatment* ship, it sounds like either somewhere to get patched up when a fight goes bad or else the ship that swoops in to grab you. Compared to the C8R, the Cutlass has range thanks to a larger fuel tank having the beds for an actual crew.
RSI Apollo (The M.A.S.H.)
The first respawn-capable ship on this list and the first concept too, the Apollo is only slightly larger than the Cutlass Red, but sports a pair of medical bays which look like they could potentially be upgraded separately. The brochure describes three tiers of bed; three ‘regular care beds’ per bay, which sounds like a tier three bed; two ‘intensive care beds’ in a bay, which sound like a tier two bed; and one ’emergency bed / operation room’ which is likely to be a standard tier one bed in a dedicated room.
One interesting detail is the use of medical drones which can collect patients and return them to the ship. Being a fairly fast ship, potentially faster than the Cutlass Red, it’s no surprise there’s a Medivac variant which seems to be for pulling casualties out of active firefights, but I can’t help looking at the Apollo’s armaments and thinking that even the Medivac variant is not going to be a dogfighter.
The choice of medical bays and the medical drones mean that an Apollo could be used as an ambulance with six tier-three beds, a trauma centre or mobile respawn location with two tier-one beds, or anything in-between. It might be overkill in many cases, but I like the idea of a mobile trauma clinic.
RSI Galaxy with Medical Module (The Mobile Trauma Centre)
While the Galaxy is a modular ship, making it a bit of a jack-of-all-trades, the medical module is a solid option for medical players. It’s essentially one each of the three options from the Apollo; one T1 bed, two T2 beds, and three T3 beds. The ship also has an XXS hangar for a Pisces and a ground-lift big enough for an Ursa, both with easy access to the medical module. In terms of defence, three pairs of S5 turrets and eight S4 missiles are more of a deterrent than anything on the smaller medical ships.
Perhaps the greatest problem with the Galaxy as a medical ship is that it’s a $90 module for a $380 ship; the medical bay is an add-on, not an integral part of the design. I can see the modularity of the Galaxy being very good for someone who loves to switch between engineering loops – it already supports refining and cargo hauling, plus they have mentioned manufacturing in future – but medical gameplay feels like an odd-one-out.
As a medical ship, the Galaxy is the smallest and cheapest option for a complete medical centre. It will have landing facilities, medical facilities, ground-vehicle access, and the ability to land on a planet. This makes it sound more flexible than the Endeavour, the only other ‘hospital’ ship in the game. It’s also worth noting that CIG stated their plans to work on the Polaris, the Perseus and then the Galaxy with shared RSI design language and assets, so the Galaxy should enter production before too much longer.
MISC Endeavor Hope-Class (The Flying Hospital)
Another unreleased ship, the Endeavour is a modular science ship with a flying hospital variant called the Hope-Class and the largest medical ship we know about. This package comes with a medical bay – listed as having ‘operating theatres, recovery rooms and more’ – and a landing bay which they advertise as fitting multiple Cutlass Reds. Given the Cutlass getting bigger and the C8R Pisces Rescue being released, I would expect that the landing bay will be sized for the smaller Pisces instead.
Unfortunately, the Endeavour is a massive ship with multiple mechanics attached to its modules. At one point, it was stated that the Endeavour would be the final ship to be developed before launch, so this one will be quite a long-term investment.
In essence, the Hope-Class Endeavour sounds like a flying hospital which needs to be kept back from combat and you might consider keeping an escort nearby. Unlike the Galaxy, the core Endeavour frame is designed to facilitate its modules and let them take centre-stage, but that leaves it as very much a non-combat ship. The current price of the Endeavour at $350 plus $75 each for the medical bay and landing module puts it at $500 and almost on par with the Galaxy, so I foresee the price rising dramatically before release.
Ships with a Medical Bay
Not every ship with a medic on board will be a medical ship. Fleet Medical will be providing medical staff to capital and sub-capital ships, after all. Right now, we have two ships which can provide Tier 2 medical services.
Anvil Carrack (Explorer)
As a large exploratory vessel, the Carrack maintains a single T2 bed in the medical bay. While not enough to fix every injury, it can stabilise a tier-one injury and I think this is likely by design. The Carrack is not a medical ship, it’s an explorer; what medical abilities it has are meant to allow it to stay out in space as long as it can.
The lack of a tier-one medical bed, the ’emergency bed and operation room’ from the Apollo, means that decisions will need to be made when a crew-member is too badly injured to continue; I can’t see many players spending the rest of a deep-space voyage in a medical bed, so respawning will be the most common option, especially while death penalties are so lenient and tier-two beds support respawning.
In the end, the Carrack is not meant to be a medical ship and so critical care will go to specialist support ships.
Origin 890 Jump (Luxury Yacht)
On paper, the 890 Jump is a luxury yacht. It’s a toy for rich kids with enough money to have a private doctor on staff. As such, it has a medical bay among the other facilities. Like with the Carrack, this is a tier-two bed for dealing with moderate injuries. This is better than a Cutlass Red or a C8R Pisces, but it’s still not quite enough to deal with everything life in the ‘verse might throw at you.
Thematically, the 890 Jump is not a deep-space explorer, so just being able to stabilise a tier-one injury until you reach a hospital (or have a medic visit in their Apollo) makes sense. Even a military organisation is not going to take an 890 out without some support ships.
Again, this is not a specialist ship and isn’t trying to be.
Conclusion
There will be other ships expected to come out – the Aegis Retaliator was always meant to have a medical module or variant and the calls for a medical Ursa seem persistent – but the current selection of medical ships spans a range of functionality and wallet-sizes. What’s right for me might not be right for you, but it does look like fleet-based medics will have the chance to serve on a variety of ships and already have options.
Get out there and save some lives, medic!
