Freighter Design

[mSterian]

If you've seen some of my earlier posts, I'm trying to get into designing ships.
For the moment, I'm uncertain about designing the freighters.

1)Why do i need 3 types of freighters? Does the AI manage what freighters to fulfill what demand? Will it send small ones to fulfill small requests and bigger ones to fulfill big requests? This is kinda brainless but, I thought I'd ask it.

2)Can I design multiple versions of the same freighter? Say, I design multiple ships with the role "small freighter". How will the AI know which to use and when? Or does the game just not allow it?

3)How do I know what's a "small", "medium" or "large" quantinty?

4)Should I just let the cargo hold as it is now designed by default and just add engines and what-not to make them faster as I go along? Or do you have some tweaking ideas for the cargo space as well?

[elliotg]

ORIGINAL: mSterian
If you've seen some of my earlier posts, I'm trying to get into designing ships.
For the moment, I'm uncertain about designing the freighters.

1)Why do i need 3 types of freighters? Does the AI manage what freighters to fulfill what demand? Will it send small ones to fulfill small requests and bigger ones to fulfill big requests? This is kinda brainless but, I thought I'd ask it.

Having three types is mainly to provide some variation in appearance for freighters. The extra cargo space of medium and large freighters is also sometimes useful, but that depends on what transport needs exist at a given time.

2)Can I design multiple versions of the same freighter? Say, I design multiple ships with the role "small freighter". How will the AI know which to use and when? Or does the game just not allow it?

Yes, but the AI will just use the latest non-obsolete design for each type. However if you are playing as a pirate then you can directly select which design to build (right-click popup build menu shows all non-obsolete designs)

3)How do I know what's a "small", "medium" or "large" quantinty?

Not really relevant. As your cargo tech progresses your freighter cargo storage space will all grow, so this changes over time.

The default designs give you an idea of what the AI is anticipating to be available - don't make the cargo holds too small. Nor will making the cargo space very large provide a significant advantage.

The main factor in freighter transport is distance between pickup and dropoff points.

4)Should I just let the cargo hold as it is now designed by default and just add engines and what-not to make them faster as I go along? Or do you have some tweaking ideas for the cargo space as well?

The most important thing you could do would be too choose the fastest hyperdrive and ensure that there are enough reactors to run it at full-speed. By default civilian ships do not spend extra money on engines/reactors, etc. They add just enough to get the job done [:)]

More engines would be a good idea too.

[Canute0]

Not allways are the fastest hyperdrive are the best option. A slower hyperdrive with a shorter time to go into hyperspeed might be usefule when the ship need to escape.

Don't forget to but enough energy to the design for max. hyperspeed.

Have you seen that private ship chase planets a long time before they even dock ? Add more engines to reduce the sublight traveltime.

[mSterian]

ORIGINAL: Canute

Not allways are the fastest hyperdrive are the best option. A slower hyperdrive with a shorter time to go into hyperspeed might be usefule when the ship need to escape.

Don't forget to but enough energy to the design for max. hyperspeed.

Have you seen that private ship chase planets a long time before they even dock ? Add more engines to reduce the sublight traveltime.

Thanks for the post. I haven't gotten to designing ships with hyperdrives yet. I'm still in the Prewarp design.
And so I had figured out the slow docking of ships myself. It is indeed because of thrusters and because of the low impulse speed. Yes ladies and gentlemen. That's what the "Impulse" speed is used. DOCKING. And I figured it out all by myself

[mSterian]

And thank you Elliot for your helpful as always posts.

[Fenrisfil]

The different types of freighters essentially just mean you have a balance over optimal use of time and getting things where they need to go quickly. The larger ones will make more stops out in the field before returning to their drop off location, so overall time for the amount of cargo delivered will be decreased. Small freighters will make a single trip, so they deliver less over time but are always able to get things to their destination quickly.

The other thing of course is that smaller freighters are less of a loss if they are destroyed. Usually I don't even put shields on small freighters and never any weapons (I rarely put weapons on any freighters).

At pre-warp I usually make sure I can't build anything but small freighters and max out their engine capacity (same for miners) or lese they tend to spend the entire pre-warp period making a single trip (Another reason why the AI races suck at pre-warp).