The Aran . All purpose carrier or big white elephant.

[lexraider]

After spending vast amounts of time and resources locating and capturing the Aran (in AP) I find it to be a big disappointment. Try to jump through a gate with anything larger than a Deimos docked to it and it hits the jump gate and is destroyed in seconds. 75% of the shields are depleted every time you undock ( I know the trick of undocking remotely then transferring, its just a bit fiddly) iTS UNBELIEVABLY slow, has no armamants (though I see it has laser and missile turrets but nothing is compatable) and it steers like a lemon. Am I missing something or am I being incredibly picky? Anyone got any thoughts?

[psyclon]

I use the Aran for transport of newly captured ships (or abandoned ships for missions) to my HQ or to a shipyard. I've docked and undocked dozens of M1s, M2s and M7 and i've never had problems with jump gates or any other collisions.

With the Advanced Hub mod i also sometimes use it to deliver huge amounts of resources to a needy complex. Yes, it is extremely slow, but all my hubs are located near gates, which kind of compensates.

[brucewarren]

If you must use an Aran, just keep a tractor beam fitted m6 aboard. Send it in front and set it to tow. (You may need to be aboard it to activate the beam)Tow speed is 80ms. Not fast and you'll want to redock before jumping but it beats walking.

[Earth Ultimatum IV.]

I find the Aran extremly useless too. Just get a Megalodon or a Kyoto and pack your favorite fighter in there for any case. If you run out of energy cells just jump in Argon Sector M148 where your mercury waits with full load of energy to transfer it in your mega or kyoto. In case of boarding ops, I just call my cobra to jump in, I always fly alone in my megalodon and call other ships if it´s needed. But except boarding I never did.

[GCU Grey Area]

Personally find the Aran to be an exceptionally useful ship.

I generally use it as overflow storage for the Hub (which I use as central storage for all my guns, shields, missiles, etc). The Aran is running CLS to remove wares from the Hub, particularly important in cases where Hub's internal storage is insufficient for my purposes (e.g. heavy weapons). Once those wares are inside the Aran they are further sorted into a fleet of 29 high capacity TS ships (again using CLS to automate the process).

I also usually keep a fast TL docked to the Aran (e.g. Elephant or Ryu). Whenever I'm buying new ships I manually transfer whatever equipment those ships will need & send it off to the shipyard. Infinitely more convenient than buying the ships & sending them off to find their own gear or waiting until the shipyard has the right stuff in stock.

The Aran itself never flies anywhere so the appallingly slow engines & lack of weapons are completely irrelevant issues for me.

[Stephen_Garlick]

yeah I was like I'm going to have an Aran in every complex sector for the 120,000 storage, but then the 4 days or something you have to wait to make it at the HQ makes it way not worth it. So I opted for 2 atmospheric lifters with 80,000 cargo hold instead, they only take a fraction of the time to make, also A.L's are faster and tend not to blow up every 5min's, so I'm not sure what the fuss was all over when it came to the Aran.

[Alan Phipps]

If you are into methodology experimentation as I am, the Aran is great for jumping in a lot of different M6, M8, TMs etc all in one go into a hostile sector so that you can trial different ships, combinations and scenarios in sector clearance or capturing a prize ship, etc. It acts as a low-mobility resupply depot and garage for my various trial task force options. It can even dock and jump out the captured prize afterwards if you want.

[zapza]

I consider the Aran to be an extremely useful ship, currently I have 30 of them and I still go off hunting for more every few days.

I use four at my PHQ, each one topped up with the various items needed to maintain my production queue. Another 4 EQs around the PHQ each have their own Aran assigned. One Aran services the Hub.

There are another four, in 'orbit' (around the PHQ) each carrying 30 super freighters, each of these SFs is used to store the overabundance of missiles and weapons I produce.

The remainder of my Arans are individually distributed to my strategically placed EQs and are loaded out with ECells together with those missiles & weaps needed to sustain operations and fleets in and around those particular Sectors. OK, so I lose one cap ship docking spot but that is outweighed by the fact that each of these EQs can be used like a mini Hub.

All of this has evolved due to the fact that I have been totally self-sufficient in all weapons and missiles for a considerable length of time; I buy nothing except boarding pods.

I play vanilla TC and I don't have the Bonus pack, so most everything is done manually - my biggest struggle is keeping my credit total below the 2mill mark.

It's a logistical challenge which would become near impossible without the additional storage opportunities provided by use of multiple Arans. Self-inflicted madness . . .

Sad eh?

.

[JoeVN09]

Think of the Aran as a re-deployable space station. It has cluck-tonnes of space and can dock pretty much anything, but it isn't made for being constantly on the move and deploying all over the universe.

If you want to move it around like that, best do it OOS I reckon.

[Echofinder]

I find the Aran really useful in pirating. Since it can dock TS's I can send the ships I capture to dock at it without worrying about lugging around extra ships with jumpdrives.

[Nikola515]

I have to agree with Alan Phipps it's all about experimenting and being creative
You can use it for fighting as supercarrier it can carry one M1,M2 or M7 and it is good M8 and M6 carrier...

Also I used it as mobile nividium mining ship I take Aran(equip ore collector ) one M6,M5,TL and as many as TS as you can( find any cheap TL no upgrades they can be damaged it's all good) Use unfocused jumpdrive and than use M5 to scan asterodids for any Nividium... After you find Nividium asteroid you use M6 to brake it down ,one firestorm,hornet or Mobile Drilling System will do the job(brake it in small pieces with weapons after that) Use Aran big size and go trough rocks it will colect them and with high shields and low speed it will suck up all rocks around it Load Nividium in TS's and TL and sell them in shipyard you will make good money

Sorry bad English