Okay, I can now see myself spending dollar dollar bills on this game. The free lancer initially looked to be nothing more than a bigger aurora to me, but the variants look awesome.

https://robertsspaceindustries.com/comm-link/transmission/13926-Introducing-The-Freelancer-Line-Up

A deep exploration one could be great for finding new planets and asteroids to mine for resources.

The missile cruiser looks to be a beefy damage dealer that could throw out ordnance support in a fight, or be a low tier bomber class.

I really hope the PU turns out to be at awesome, because I am about to sink more money into this than Shoctor on TF2.

Someone made a mash up of the new freelancer commercial and turned it into everything that every citizen in the verse is helping for.

http://youtu.be/ro3ujJBU2QA

I was comparing stats of the Cutlass and the Freelancer. They seem to be in the same class of vessel with Cutlass being more maneuverable (more thrusters) and having the docking collar for ship boarding.

Weapons, sheilding, and power give the Freelancer a touch more edge. Although, they have yet to show any variants to the Cutlass. As cool as this ship looks now I think the Cutlass will see some variants that give it an edge towards better piracy and gunning.

This does bring up a point of concern for me though regarding this game. I see the game overall suffering from a touch of escalation. The ships will only ever get bigger and bigger and it will become increasingly harder to take them on. Small fighters may, in the future, require a buff just to keep up with the firepower output of these larger ships. As it stands, beginning Aurora players have zero chance at going toe to toe with any of these other vessels.

We got a freelancer in the fleet?! Aww yiss. Much feels.

You guys are going to put my puny one man fighter ambitions to shame. At least the AWACS Hornet variant I want to pick up will be useful. I think those will be the only two I buy outright though. Other ships I will look to get by way of in game credits.

Here are so many ships to be announced yet that you may want to hold off. I was perusing the ships specs section and there are a lot of blank areas yet.

 I dream of the day the FITES Bengal carrier leads a fleet across the stars.