I dont belive that the Dragon could not being sold to Privatters, the war have ended 10 years ago and the Dragon, despite being a powerful fighter can be sold without extras (the cloak device) after all what is wrong with that Idea?, the Deamon in privatter is more capable as the Stilleto fighter and they are being sold in the open market.
And we dont, the mumbers are from the WC IV novel, there is no way that we can know what happen within the time frame of WC IV / WC P, we can only especulate, nothing more. There is nothing about the dragon in either the WC P or SO and since there is no data about the fate of the Dragon (what happen to the factory and the designs? were they lost in space as well?) especulation is as far as we can get, unless Origin tell us about the Dragon Fighter fate.
About those T-bolts, well the bugs used mantas as a heavy fighter and that work very well(they fool us in the start since we are not expecting those ships with torps and plasma guns, and yes they are Red but they still can fool us until we find out about that), confed have gone to the Fighter especialized type, never like to use the shrike, its overrated to me.
note. I did not gone over the Galaxy, that with the right stuff could be use as a Corvette our at least as a gunboat.
And dont start Knight, we all have the right to our belives on that matter, just because you and other have gone over that it, is still something that shows up from time to time in here, Its a very loved ship and that question was never fully explained. We have to wait until origin shed some light on that subject.
There are 10 years to be work with, just because there is something over in the SO does not mean that is sacred, Origin can still pull a fast one in all of us in that subject.
[Edited by Dragon on 01-27-2001 at 20:27]