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[Megas]

There used to be civilian booster skill and hullmods that further boosted militarized civilian ships.  That was probably the reason why Gemini received Civilian-Grade hull a few releases back (when it did not have it for many years).  Since those civilian boosting skill and hullmods were removed, civilian does not have much point on Gemini aside from exploiting meta systems that favor civilian ships.

I agree that Gemini and Mule (and Wayfarer for that matter) should all either have civilian-grade hull or none of them have it.  I would prefer civilian-grade hull removed on Gemini because Mule does not have it and currently, Civilian-Grade Hull on a good enough combat ship is more of a buff by bypassing combat ship DP pool for skills and making the ship count less for fleet strength calculations (and thus, player gets more bonus +xp%).

[Amoebka]

Civilian-grade hullmod does nothing for bonus XP calculations. "CIVILIAN" ship tag does, and it's not the same thing. Most ships with civ-grade hull don't have the tag.

[Big Bee]

I honestly just thought that everyone just used the buffalo/colossus/atlas freighters...

maybe I'm just bad at outfitting the gemini and mule but they always just die or get pushed back against anything but the smallest pirate fleets, might as well go with the ships with more storage and less maintenance.

[Candesce]

maybe I'm just bad at outfitting the gemini and mule but they always just die or get pushed back against anything but the smallest pirate fleets,

The Mule's pretty quick, but it doesn't have that much firepower - getting pushed back is about what you'd expect, but getting pushed back slowly means you've got time for the rest of your fleet to clean up and go save it from the ships its been distracting.

The Gemini, on the other hand, is a slug without being tougher or much more dangerous. Expect it to just die if it ever gets separated from the rest of your fleet. It's also subject to the same buggy system as the Drover.

[Thaago]

I honestly just thought that everyone just used the buffalo/colossus/atlas freighters...

maybe I'm just bad at outfitting the gemini and mule but they always just die or get pushed back against anything but the smallest pirate fleets, might as well go with the ships with more storage and less maintenance.

Following the discussion of the missile ship thread, I put together a pirate mule with pilum, 2 harpoons, a wasp wing, and missile racks, 1 railgun and 2 vulcans. It provides pretty decent missile/wasp support, can plink at frigates that try to attack it, and has a good combination of toughness and speed. Its not close to a full destroyer in power, but its only 7 supplies and has good logistic stats for campaign (and shielded cargo holds too!) - its worth deploying at least in these early fights.

[Amoebka]

S-modded Prometheus (the civilian version) is actually quite competitive with Enforcer in fleet support role, too. It benefits from capital-grade hullmod scaling, and s-modding makes everything cost 0 OP, which bypasses the main limitation. Heavy armor makes it disgustingly tanky for a 10 dp ship, and capital ITU railguns are about the same range as destroyer ITU hypervelocity drivers.

[Brainwright]

Giving the Gemini the flux stats and armor it would have with Militarized Subsytems, plus placing it on par with the Mule in speed is all the Gemini really needs, and it will be a good counterpoint to the Mule.  It has two forward ballistic turrets and a large missile hardpoint, giving it decent long range supression ability, but it can't get into any furballs because once the fighters are gone, it has only an omni shield for point defense.  It's a fundamentally better support ship than the Mule, which has better skirmish capability than the Gemini thanks to maneuvering jets.

None of these are really going to perform well against a fleet with a couple overdriven Brawlers, but that's a given.

It would be nice to have an area of play where using these subpar ships might be possible, but that's a big ask.  All I want is for these ships to be strong enough they aren't purely a resource drain in combat.

[Amoebka]

It would be nice to have an area of play where using these subpar ships might be possible

Some kind of covert missions, where you are required to do combat with only civilian/hybrid ships?

[Candesce]

It has two forward ballistic turrets and a large missile hardpoint,

Medium missile hardpoint. If the Gemini had a large, none of us would be arguing it needed a buff. More like a nerf.

But an increase to base speed is pretty much all it needs to be worthwhile, yeah. Maybe more than the +10 needed to match the Mule, given the Gemini doesn't have a mobility system, but it doesn't need buffs beyond that.

[Thaago]

I think that the Gemini is severely hampered by the Reserve Deployment bug tbh - it has like half a flight deck right now instead of a boosted one. Fix that up and it becomes a lot more competitive instantly.

[Brainwright]

Some kind of covert missions, where you are required to do combat with only civilian/hybrid ships?

You already have those.  The problem is relying on these ships for any length of time is expensive, limiting their endurance more than fuel supply.  And you have to dump off those four corrupted nanoforges and eight tachyon lances somewhere.  Which means you don't have them when you need them... It's just too many extra steps when you could get an Atlas and slap Insulated Engine Assembly on it.  Then you have three Ventures' worth of cargo space at a quarter of the maintanence cost, half the fuel cost, and you still end up with a smaller sensor profile.  It's just worse with Militarized Subsystems, because the true civvie ships don't even use that much crew.

I would prefer it if the civilian distinction made ships lose more CR in each engagement and recovered less over time, so that they are quickly ground down to non-functionality.  This is so that if you are trying to chip away at a big fleet, and you misjudge, civvie ships will start to cost you big.

Combat freighters would work better if you had the option of more limited engagements, but that isn't where we're at.

[Rusty Edge]

Perhaps the gemini could become a fast support carrier? With one hangar it would never have quite the same force projection as the other two carrier destroyers, but it could quickly flit from one engagement to another to take advantage of an enemy weakness, or defend a faltering ally.
 You could increase the speed, make it hard for destroyers or bigger vessels to catch it, but weak enough that frigates or repeated fighter strikes can easily overwhelm it.
 Shields, hull, and Flux could remain unchanged since it's role is support or harassment.