X3: Albian Prelude

M7 Frigates are a new development sitting between M2 Destroyers and M6 Corvettes. They represent significant anti-shipping capability. Like Corvettes, they are also regarded to be capable of taking on any other ship, but their lack of maneuverability and large size make them difficult to maneuver around a dogfight and a large target for the guns of an M2.

Unlike M2 Destroyers, the forward weapons on many M7 Frigates are manually fired, giving the player control of a large portion of the firepower offered by this class.

Some M7s have hangar bays for a small fighter wing; the Split Panther has many and qualifies as a light carrier.

M7C Light Carriers are a a new class of fast and light escort carriers. The distinction between M7Cs and other M7s was introduced in Albion Prelude along with four new ships, but several ships in Terran Conflict, like the Griffon exhibited a similar concept.

M7C mount significantly less shielding than M1 Carriers, but they are significantly faster, averaging about 40 m/s faster than their race's counterpart M1, and they are significantly cheaper to buy and equip.

In their in-game descriptions, the ships are designed to deploy large amounts of fighter drones, and indeed, scanning their cargo reveals a “Drone Hauler” ware, but this has no in-game function.

The M7M Missile Frigates are dedicated missile platforms, and in practice are used largely differently from M7 ships except for similarities in size and shielding. These ships carry few laser turrets, if any, and only for point defense purposes. Their primary form of attack is Missile Barrages, a capability unique to the class, where the ship can launch as many as 16 missiles simultaneously. This ability easily overwhelms the point defenses of their targets, allowing the M7M Frigates to have tremendous anti-capital power. They are also a major threat to fighters as well due to their ability to launch deadly fast-moving swarm missiles. Generally speaking they are the deadliest ships in the game since they can overwhelm anything with the size of their barrages, though their reliance on missiles makes them expensive and supply intensive. They are slow for their size, but have good carrying capacity.

The missiles used by M7Ms are unique to the class. Commonwealth and Terran weapons vary, as show below:

Commonwealth ships mount:

• Hammer Heavy Torpedo, a heavy anti-capital missile.
• Flail Barrage Missile, a swarm anti-fighter missile.

The ATF Skirnir, as with other Terran ships, is incompatible with Commonwealth weaponry. Instead, they fire:

• Shadow Missile, the counterpart to the Hammer.
• Ghoul Missile, the counterpart to the Flail.

In addition, most Commonwealth M7Ms can fire Boarding pods for Marine boarding operations. Using Boarding Pods makes delivering marines to the target significantly easier, and once they are there, using the pods significantly reduces the Mechanical skill required to cut through the hull.

The OTAS Aquilo and the ATF Skirnir are incapable of firing boarding pods.

The OTAS Sirokos is a special M7M intended for boarding, and can mount boarding pods, but not any offensive missiles. It can also carry 30 marines to the others' 20.