Gigurums revisited

[ezra-r]

Do you guys use them? at all?

My question goes towards:

* Missions: They are so slow speed and manuvering, any escort missions results in tedious and boredom.

* Trading: Slow. In the current state of the game they go nuts if you tell assign them to a station in empty space so you can just "usefully" "use" them in not empty sectors. Slow and No Weapons make them way easy to kill, and too boring to babysit, so there is really no valid option, no escort, no babyshit is going to make the game any fun to have them.

In my game, with a full empire I don't ever use them. So the point of them to be npc traders and easy pray when you are looking for certain resources.. Is this enough to make them worth having in the game as they are now?

Opinions please

Edit: what I would do is definetly increase their speed and agileness .

[Rail_Balco]

certainly not. Too slow as you said. And stupid also. I played 3.50 last but even then they were flying around even in sector full of stations. Never docked, always chasing spaceflies or whatever...
Capital trading ships are were much more effective

They'd be better if they could reach higher speed. Or if they'd actually really land on nearby stations. It isn't necessary to have capital ships trading with stations in same sector (sometimes feels like ultimate overkill to use capital ships to only buy or sell few units of this or that). Would be much more useful to have working Gigurums trading in same sector with possibility to choose capital ships to trade in different sectors.

[mr.WHO]

Weak, slow with small cargo hold. Even if they are cheapest they are not cost effective comparing to larger freighters.


Yes they should be much faster in order to be any competition to big freighters.

[vadiolive]

i use thousand i believe my save i have around 600-700

[Tamina]

They need a small ship turret for defense and more hitpoints.

In XR small ships never got really thoughtfully implemented.
The discrepancy between capital and small ships is just too high and the ability of capital ships to jump anywhere in seconds (and boost) renders everything else completly useless.

However, if you think about it we didn't had small ships until patch 3.0 or so, before only capital ships were available and had to manage every part of the non-functioning universe.

That said: Quantity of capital ships should be reduced as well as capital ships should be way more expensive while on the other side quantity, defense and offense of small ships should be increased.
Especially Gigurums but also civilian ships including police.

[Sparky Sparkycorp]

I don't use them for basically the same reasons as above:

1. Although probably a bit quicker in a zone than capital traders (lower speed than Large but easier manoeuvring), many trades are inter-zone and they are relatively slow and vulnerable at that (e.g. easily chased down by fighters and no realistic defence). Although M trader speed relative to S/M hostiles is probably about the same as in earlier games, L/XL traders have similar speeds to L/XL hostiles and are relatively protected from S/M hostiles attacks (and my boost or jump away).

2. In terms of storage per credit*, there isn't much difference across Medium (Albion or TO), Large and XL ships able to carry Bulk, Container or Energy wares. For Liquid, M Traders are a bit more efficient but there are only 4, low-cost Liquid wares.

In principle, their advantages are that they are cheap starting points that need fewer crew found, fewer types of wares for construction, and no drones. In practice, crew are not a finite resource, shipyards don't seem to be low on their non-needed wares (Bio-Optic Wiring & Plasma Flow Regulators or Plasma Pumps & EM-Spectrometers) and NPC stations tend to have drones if none are available for L/XL traders.

For me that just leaves cost and they are about 11-times cheaper than Rahanas counterparts. For a pure trading play-through that is a substantial saving. If doing some missions, or maybe boarding something to sell, saving up 7.5 million for a fitted out Rahanas isn't so difficult. Although the Plot and Trading game starts come with a Large Container+Energy trader so you'd need to actively try in order to begin with M traders.

Medium mineral Miners have it worse, with ~30% less storage per credit and less drone capacity than Large counterparts. Medium fluid miners are a sort of ray of light since they offer about 4-times the storage per credit than Large counterparts (but less drones probably means longer fill times and more danger).


*Ship cost based, where applicable, on hull cost (calculated from 2 x base price of all build materials), full crew, full surface elements, 5 construction drones and 15 cargo drones.

capital ships should be way more expensive

Interestingly, in terms of the base cost of construction materials, Gigurums only costs about half as much to build in Omycron Lyae than in Albion or DV. Their prices seem about the same in my game though. Although people starting out in Albion (e.g. plot or Free Play) may not have a chance to experience OL's potentially higher cost-effectiveness until they might have moved on to L/XL traders.

Edit: Maybe ships like Gigurums and M miners need less material costs to build in OL, but at comparable economic cost, as a efficiency thing.

Edit 2: Typo time strikes again!

[spankahontis]

And they just DON'T MAKE SENSE LORE WISE!!


Think about it, Rebirth is what? 40+ years after Albion Prelude; back then they had the for example to the Gigurum.. The Mercury, it had greater storage capacity and at least a couple of back turrets, they weren't super fast, but they were fast enough to not drag the game down.
Technologically superior in every way to the Gigurum.

They shouldn't exist, they're a technological step backwards.

[Ormac]

All I used the Gigurum as a way point to collect the few bailed fighters I was able to get. It's certainly too slow to do inter-sector trading and too vunerable when PMC and Reviers and Xenon want's to shoot you and your assets on sight.

I would currently always prefer to work a few extra missions to get that 7 million to start with a Rahanas.

@Spankahontis aside from the poor speed a think the Gigurum and the baseline Mercury are equivalent. potentially closer to a base vulture in actuality [and those were still fast enough]. If compared to a Mercury SF or the Mistral SF loses out in cargo capacity and speed.

The Gigurum makes more sense from a lore perspective in DV where they canibalised parts and just keep what they have operating so a degrade in speed can be accounted for. your right it makes no real lore sense in AL either the competition would have produced a better product that would have dominated or forced the Gigurum to have been developed to a slightly better standard.

-- Ormac

[linolafett]

All medium vessels got rebalanced in terms of speed for an upcoming patch.
The vessels now fly with around 120m/s trough the universe. Gigurums for example were before that around 45m/s slow.
This puts them between capital ships and small vessels regarding their speed.
Hull/shields/cargo was not changed.

This should make them way more useful than before.

[Sparky Sparkycorp]

Still catchable by hostile fighters (as it should be) but a potential niche beyond cost to help them be an option after L/XL are affordable

[Ormac]

Yay for better ship building standards.

Personally may have liked a few 1,000 more cargo space for the Bulk Gigurum but speed is the main negative.

-- Ormac

[mr.WHO]

@linolafett:
Good to hear it! No changes to Hull/shields/cargo are also OK, but I think that adding 2 or 3 HIT/MA turrets wouldn't hurt (or would it? I assume that only newly spawned freighters would have additional turrets, yes?).

[vadiolive]

well i use fasters ships XL/X fly around 120ms and S/M fly around 200m/s

its probably dont feel this pain while using S/M ships like guys above

[werewolves?]

well i use fasters ships XL/X fly around 120ms and S/M fly around 200m/s

its probably dont feel this pain while using S/M ships like guys above

I don't think the speed helps in my experience, they are still too squishy and the AI is pretty unpredictable.

[vadiolive]

I atm have 132 station
to complet fill all station with production i need set up around 4 ship XL for each
to Build 4 ship supose in my game have 6 shipyard(Build station mod)
i spend around 7-30min (sometimes drones stuck)
I going smal shipyard and build 30-40 ships and use Multi Assingment to give 4-6 for each station in less 5min

And yes my S/M ships have kind miracle not get destroyed often
maybe CWIR?(i leave in default) ( if you build AES shipyard using build station , cwir use this shipyard to build taranis/araws/trade ships with AES flag and AES its neutral for everyone , its probably help alot)

[spankahontis]

All I used the Gigurum as a way point to collect the few bailed fighters I was able to get. It's certainly too slow to do inter-sector trading and too vunerable when PMC and Reviers and Xenon want's to shoot you and your assets on sight.

I would currently always prefer to work a few extra missions to get that 7 million to start with a Rahanas.

@Spankahontis aside from the poor speed a think the Gigurum and the baseline Mercury are equivalent. potentially closer to a base vulture in actuality [and those were still fast enough]. If compared to a Mercury SF or the Mistral SF loses out in cargo capacity and speed.

The Gigurum makes more sense from a lore perspective in DV where they canibalised parts and just keep what they have operating so a degrade in speed can be accounted for. your right it makes no real lore sense in AL either the competition would have produced a better product that would have dominated or forced the Gigurum to have been developed to a slightly better standard.

-- Ormac

I don't know the Mistrals were pretty bad ass, even the S.Freighters were jacked in terms of defensive turrets to other Freighters, even the Splits Caiman S.Freighter didn't compare and they love their guns.

But yeah, great point, seeing as O.L is basically using a hybrid of Terran/Argon Tech from when a Terran Fleet got stuck there during the Gate Shutdown, you would think their M freighters would have the acceleration potential of Terran Tech.. Not even the weapons made it through, but one could argue they lacked the facilities to reverse engineer Terran Weaponry.

But suddenly all sectors after the gate shutdown started using Gigurum freighters?
I think it's just down to a lack of time on Egosoft's Part to build the diverse ship roster of each Race.
Teladi Outpost roster is a good start, but there is too much clone ships involved, hopefully 4.0 addresses this concern as well.

Also like to see diversity in terms of Argon/Terran.. Did all the non-White Humans die out or something?

[mr.WHO]

I think that Gigurum in OL might be a mistake/leftover. They replaced OL big freighters with OL design, but forgot the small freighters. This still don't explain why there are Gigurums in DV, maybe PMC/HoA sold them to DV shortly before PMC/HoA all out war? This would make Gigurum Albion origin.

As for OL Terran tech reverse engineering, I think it was too-high tech to be cost-effective for production after gate shutdown (e.g if the huge solar flare would hit Earth today, I doubt anyone would bother producing Tablets/Smartphones for next several years, instead focus on crude electronics esential for recovery).

Still some of Terran simple anti-matter tech went to mass production (Anti-matter engines are now standard issue along HIT/MA turrets).

I bet Terrans at Sol would laugh at these beign crude and inferior to what they currently have (Sol was more or less self sufficient economy with it's TOA/highways web build long before other races).

I always wanted some badass and angry Terrans in X-Rebirth as the main enemy (that you could join to or fight against like in Albion Prelude).
The Canterans are just sorry sight to watch.

[ezra-r]

thank you very much linolafett for your description of what's coming!

Speed is a good start to make them less boring to follow or escort, specially in missions, so probably that part will be addressed correctly.


Now onto trading.

Do you guys think a shielding comparable to... lets say Half a capital shield generator would make them resistant enough to not be a waste and give escorts some time to defend it?

[GCU Grey Area]

Do you guys think a shielding comparable to... lets say Half a capital shield generator would make them resistant enough to not be a waste and give escorts some time to defend it?

Think no. Any extra kit (shields or guns) would likely make them significantly more expensive & I doubt it would make that much difference to their survival chances.

Main reason I use them is they're a cheap option right at the start of the game for my first few stations (assuming I've built those stations in sensible locations to minimise travel times to NPC suppliers & customers). I also don't give them escorts (since that would increase the cost) so making them last slightly longer if attacked is fairly irrelevant to me since there's no one flying to their rescue. The cash I save by not providing escorts means I can afford to replace them if they are destroyed - buying a new Gigurum is significantly less expensive than buying a fighter to protect each one.

As for M class miners - these days I definitely prefer them for my stations, again assuming I've built in a sensible place (e.g. zone which contains all the resources the station needs). It's not just that they're a lot cheaper, I also find I get a much more steady flow of resources into the station using a small fleet of M class miners, rather than a single L class.

[vadiolive]

in fact based shield/hp i propose 3 third time to reduce price 10x

why pay 600-1m if XL/L cost around 4-7m and have at last *5 more stregth?

1 - well i like S/M ships but its expensive ideal price be around yea 60-100k
2 - S/M ship engine/turning rate at last *4 vanila its very fun to see several S/M ships kick ass big ships and avoid turrets (thanks faster ships and wevans for work MICT/MOCT)
3 - i see one mod to add enginner in ships its other thing to consider prety suck take care to see if ship 100% , XL/L i agree include you need push to back XL/L dock but S/M maybe after ship deal trade(ship dock inside station) can spend while in repair of course have fee , or give option to all classes to automatic repair and ship after deal or order check if need repair and move to nearest friendly dock