Freighter roles?

[mdoolitt]

Hi, is there any difference between the 'roles' of the different size freighters?

I would have thought large freighters would go from base to base carrying huge payloads of thousands of units. But after following one of my large freighters for a couple years, it looks like they spend most of their time carrying miniscule amounts of cargo. 32 units of Emeros Crystal have been delivered! whoopee!

I'm wondering if I should restrict my private sector to small freighters only and save a whole lot on fuel usage. Actually, a lot of the freighters seem to fly around completely empty most of the time. Is there a huge market for empty cargo pallets?

[Spacecadet]

I believe they have preferences for what they tend to carry, but I can't confirm this.

However, since the game is designed to use three types of Freighters it's probably best to keep the three designs.

Also keep in mind that the Private sector will generate Bonus income from building all three designs, so there is more impact on the Economy as well.

[elanaagain]

I never followed them as you have. Based on what u have said, I think i understand why I have such shortages. I think i will switch and convert my med and large freighter to have samm cargo space, but give them longer range via more fuel tanks... and see if that helps...

[turtlefang]

I spent a long time following freighters to see if the different freighters had different roles. I would like to report that they do, but they don't from what I can see.

The biggest difference seems to be in the transit time these freighters have between pick up and drop off.

1) Small freighters are much faster. They average 1.2 stops between drop offs and pick ups. And the "optimal" cargo bays seem to be 4 from what I can tell rather than the 3 in the templates. Over time, these seem (and emphasis, seem) to convert to primarily luxury loads if they are available.

2) Medium freighters were slower, averaging about 2.2 to 2.4 stops between pick up and drop offs. These are actually your "bread and butter" guys and carry the most cargo. For some reason, the game doesn't build a large percent of large freighters, so these guys are the workhorse. I have found that increasing the cargo bays to 8 does NOT increase the average stops but does seem to increase total cargo carried.

3) Large freighters were the slowest, averaging 3 to 3+ stops between pick up and drop offs. I increase the cargo bays to 16 and it did not drive up average stops while increasing the amount of cargo carried.

Overall, this has maximize freighter usage and revenue for me.

Now, there are some other questions that you have to answer about freighters, and I have NO empirical evidence to back the following up except my own feelings:

a) I add 3 shields and 3 armor to every freighter, passenger ship, and miner to give it some time to run. Don't know if really helps, but I seem to be losing fewer freighters since doing this.

b) A Point Defense Cannon helps shoot the incoming space buccaneers down. So when I can, I put one my civilian ships.

c) Because I hate pirates, I also stick a missile on each ship. I doubt it does much good, and I do upgrade it to assault missiles in the template when I research them. eventually, the private sector upgrades everything. But putting a missile onboard makes me feel better.

d) Your best defense is the Kalisto Drive (?) - the fast hyperdrive. However, it lowers the freighters efficiency as it less thrust in hyperspace so the freighter is, overall, slower. Ergo, you have to decide what is more important - safety or efficiency.


As far as freighters go, the more you have, the better off your are.

As you increase the number of mining stations you have, the freighters will start filling up. And if you cut down on the number of freighters, your increase the shortages.

The exception is the gas mining and ore mining ships. I just can't tell if these things are worth anything at all. I see some of them working, but I notice a lot of them just seem to sit around. And I played around with various designs and never came up with anything that seemed to "motivated" them. I have even considered marking the obsolete box on the existing design and just not having them but since I haven't tested, haven't done it.

[Canute0]

This is more or less a pointless discussion.
Player can't control the build or missions of freighters or other private ships, you shouldn't bother with that.
Yep we all know the private sector is very ineffective and lazy, special at the borders and new colonies. A player would handle this much different.

The only thing you can do is, design your private ships that they don't run out of fuel that fast, that they travel at max. hyperspeed, that they can't go into warp pretty fast and that they sublight travel to the station/planet in acceptable time.

Special Large freighters with 6 engines chase a planet a long time before they even dock (alot wasted time).

Maybe at Distant World 2, we got a 3. play option, we play as Private sector.

[Starke]

Impressive info turtlefang, thanks. I've also paid some attention to the activities of my freighters and there do seem to be a awful lot of empty cargo holds. =( I've also noticed that by far, the general amount all the different designs like to have in their cargo is 300 units. I have no idea why. I custom designed all my private ships, and eventually with the improvements to my hab modules gave my large cargo ships the same capacity as my mining stations - THIRTY cargo bays - for efficient pickup, but they almost never used the space. (occasionally one would pick up a full load from a mining station, but these instances were quite rare.

It also sucks when your new colony in the SAME SYSTEM as you capital, after you've already gotten 25+ colonies up and running, still takes over a year to get a decent supply of the basic strategic resources. =/

P.S. a tangential question: I have seen gas mining stations holding a LOT more gas than their design's stated maximum. Does each unit of gas only take up 0.1 space or something?

[turtlefang]

I also give my mining stations 30 cargo bays. And I have also noticed the issue of gas mining stations holding a lot more gas that the theoretical maximum but have no idea why.

I have tried larger "big freighters" but after 16 cargo bays, it just didn't seem to make any difference. But I will admit that I didn't do extensive test so it might pay off if I had tried it for a while longer.

As far as voids (that's the term we use in the real world for empty cargo space), all the cargo ships seem to end up with a lot of them at times. And even when they have cargo they can pick up they sometimes (often) don't. Not sure why.