I was just looking at the little icon that pops up before you buy a ship and noticed that it looked exactly like an OS item. Hence this idea.
Idea: Let carriers very rarely drop ships, or “ship building kits” like those “build your own car” kinda things that people buy. It would be insanely expensive, as in 75% of the ship’s store value, but would also be valuable for obtaining that specific ship. It could be used, along with one “multipurpose ship part” to build that ship. For unlimited use, just as if you bought it in the store. Salvaging the ship kit would yield few random ship parts.
Name: Multipurpose Ship Part
Type: Ship Part
Crafting: monos(15), metal blank(10), processing block(5), credits(100,000)
The ship kits would only be dropped from cargo ships. High rank sectors give high rank ships. Low rank sectors give low rank ships.
To prevent level skipping: you must have a ship of at least 3 ranks away from the kit’s rank to manufacture it.