Freighters Chart - The good, the bad, and the ugly

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Kamenjar
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Freighters Chart - The good, the bad, and the ugly

Post by Kamenjar »

Well.. I always manually compared these freighters to try get an idea of how good they are. I wish I had my list when I was buying my batches of UTs.

For you who want to find out which are the "GENERALLY BEST" freighters, here is the list top-list:

Code: Select all

Name:                       Spd:   Cargo: Efficiency:
Caiman Super Freighter 1    89.99  10325  929147
Demeter Super Freighter 1   79.2   11210  887832
Mercury Super Freighter 1   72     11800  849600
Vulture Super Freighter 1   57.59  13275  764507
Dolphin Super Freighter 1   53.98  14000  755720
Caiman Hauler               99.99   7000  699930
Demeter Hauler              88      7600  668800
Mercury Hauler              80      8000  640000
Caiman Super Freighter 2    96.24   6475  623154
Dolphin Hauler              59.99  10000  599900
Demeter Super Freighter 2   84.7    7030  595441
Vulture Hauler              63.99   9000  575910
Mercury Super Freighter 2   77      7400  569800
Caiman Tanker 1             81.24   6650  540246
Dolphin Super Freighter 2   57.74   9250  534095
Vulture Super Freighter 2   61.59   8325  512737
Demeter Miner              117      4370  511290
Mercury Tanker 1            65      7600  494000
Dolphin Tanker 1            48.74   9500  463030
Vulture Miner               85.59   5175  442928
Caiman                     124.99   3500  437465
Caiman Tanker 2            124.99   3500  437465
Demeter                    110      3800  418000
Demeter Tanker             110      3800  418000
Mercury                    100      4000  400000
Mercury Tanker 2           100      4000  400000
Dolphin                     74.98   5000  374900
Dolphin Tanker 2            74.98   5000  374900
Vulture                     79.99   4500  359955
Vulture Tanker              79.99   4500  359955
Efficiency is calculated by multiplying Cargo by speed. It is supposed to give you an idea of which freighter can get more units of cargo faster. The higher the number, the more units of cargo can the freighter from A to B in a given (long) time.

Well there are other speed factors though... Like acceleration, turn radius etc.. But freighters mainly spend time going from gates to stations at max speed, so we can disregard those numbers.

Among other things... There are shielding and weapon power, but when it comes to that, it's clear that Caiman is just fine if not perfect. It takes 4x25MJ, and it can even load 4 guns in the front and 1 on the turret, of which any can be IONDs. It's fast so it escapes most M3s, and most likely the clear winner for most scenarios.


I hope you all enjoy this list!
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Last edited by Kamenjar on Thu, 8. Dec 05, 04:38, edited 1 time in total.
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-XTM-
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Post by -XTM- »

Interesting sheet but I'm wondering if this says it all.
My guess is the true comparisson would be made by sending all of them off in a Vanilla universe, clocking them for a certain amount of time, redoing that a couple of times and in certain states (Like being ST vs UT)
and then adding to the factsheet a calculus of the average credit's per/someting-time one makes.

Also taking into account how likely a freighter is to being attacked (I can only imagine that a slow Dolphin MUST have a worse score then a 'fast' Demeter Miner on this), which all influences succesfull/ not succesfull trade-runs.., nr of fighter drones deployed, jump-fuell used etc. etc.

Still basically right though....I always go for the caiman cause it brings in tons of cash fast.
For shuttle-duties I use the Miner.
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Red Spot
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Post by Red Spot »

dont forget that a killed trader doesnt deliver ..
so speed might (sometimes) just matter more than cargo in the end ..



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Post by AsterXiphos »

I nearly lost a UT to a missile . . . shielding is what mattered there. I guess there are a lot of parameters to look at.

I like your list, cargo and speed are the first two things I look for. It's a safe assumption, I think, that profitability will be effected most by these two factors in relation to each other. You've illustrated the important middle ground.
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Post by -XTM- »

Ive only lost UT's when assigning them a home-station cause this makes them come crawl back to them right trough Xenon sector's if they run out of fuell.

Agreed, my Caimans run out of shield FAST, but they always seem to be able to jump-out of a tight spot rather fine.

My main freighter killers are complex-hubs and jump-gates but both are no real biggy...carefull management reduces the first crashing ratio and the last is just a hmmm....well.. another bug:)

Try loosing a TL to a jumpgate...now that one still hurts.
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Post by jlehtone »

Two notes:

Those who suspect that speed is important, well the ship on the top of the list is a fast Caiman. Actually, if you just compare the same variant, you notice that it is speed, not size, that varies more. All superfreighters are about the same size, but differ in speed. In X2 the size and speed were more balanced variables.

The second thing is that people have already tested X2 UT transports. There the clear winner was Dolphin. Guess which X2 TS has best "Efficiency" value? Dolphin.

Someone is likely to run a test. Something like:
- have 100 lvl 25 UTs
- transfer them to a studied ship type
- let run for time X
- check profit and number of killed (and cause to demise)
- repeat for other ship types (from same starting point)
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Post by AsterXiphos »

I'm not sure how accurate that would be. I think to have a test like that accurate enough, you'd have to try it many, many times. It just seems that too much could change; for instance pirate raids, goods surpluses and shortages, and general economic conditions. There are just so many things that could change . . .
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Post by Deleted User »

Mox2002nl wrote:Ive only lost UT's when assigning them a home-station cause this makes them come crawl back to them right trough Xenon sector's if they run out of fuell.
Really?! I've always assigned my UTs to a homebase cause it's easier to find them all and restart them when they get upset or confused... Never lost one... well ok pirates got a couple in the beginning before I started my Teladi defence campaign!!

Still I use the spoiler station from the plot and there's no ecells to be had there...

Incidentally - anyone know why some of them stop trading go into command none - even though they don't send me a message to say why...? Last night I had 8 stop and only 4 sent me a message... also of the 34 usually 5 or 6 go into standby - when they get restarted off they go and then a few mins later another one is in standby...??

Still, they make around 10million per hour now... seems to be a limit - used to make about that with 26...
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Post by Rapier »

Good work, but if can be taken further. What you've calculated is the transport efficiency, but for cost eficency you need to factor in price as well. How much does it cost to max out your Dolphin? Is it worth doing that or spending your money on buying a second basic ship instead?

I have a little spreadsheet for all the ships in X2 that can do these calculations, but it only has about 98% of the ship data in it. If the OP, or anyone else, wants to help me update it by providing the ship data for X3, I'd be happy to share it, and the credit when it finally goes public. Drop me a PM. I've seen some of the ship data tables already in existance but I haven't found one with all the necessary info yet.
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Post by Nyadach »

Whats also not shows is when the idiot UT's will take your super freighter, and "fill it" with only two sheilds of something and cross the universe with them. Been watching just a couple of base Mercurys and 90% of the time the lvl25 UTs in them still won't fill them, which kinda leads to the point of why bother with bugger ships when you can make more cash from having more smaller ships due to them being faster, and still not fully loaded?
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Post by GCU Grey Area »

Nyadach wrote:Whats also not shows is when the idiot UT's will take your super freighter, and "fill it" with only two sheilds of something and cross the universe with them. Been watching just a couple of base Mercurys and 90% of the time the lvl25 UTs in them still won't fill them, which kinda leads to the point of why bother with bugger ships when you can make more cash from having more smaller ships due to them being faster, and still not fully loaded?
Good point - for an even more extreme example consider a selling ship for a mass driver forge. The most cargo it will ever carry is 4, since that is the maximum a single equipment dock will hold. No point using a Caiman Super-freighter when an M5 can do the job better, e.g. Jaguar Vanguard has a cargo capacity of 27 & can manage 596m/s with fully upgraded engines. (It's also considerably cheaper :))
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Post by phiend »

"There are lies, damned lies and statistics"

In truth the best freighter will be the one you "perceive" to be the best. I cannot see without running scripts (which would null and void the result for a typical X game) how you would test these freighters fairly.
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Post by Sandalpocalypse »

I also like the advanced TPs (express hauler...iguana vanguard..etc) for delivering low volume stuff. The speed can't be beat; they are faster than hauler M3s or M4s, even, and give hauler M5s a run for their money.

I always pirate those when I can find them...
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Post by Lise »

can you buy superfreighters at shipyards? I only ever see the small ones and tankers for sale.

i've stolen all my superfreighters so far,
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Post by Sandalpocalypse »

Yes, you just need to look around a bit.
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Post by Kamenjar »

Well I agree that you gotta find the right ship for the right job, but if you wanna get maximum possible number of units delivered from A to B in least possible time, Caiman SF 2 (the one from east shipyards) is proly the best. It would be likely a big overshot if you wanna sell Silicons because he will be "almost" full on all runs (max silicon load is proly 25% of caiman Cargo), but if you wanna stock a complex with ECells from an XL SPP.. Most likely it is the best for the job.

I do stand corrected though on one issue.. I think the turnng speed and acceleration is a larger factor. I watch a Super Frieghter often try to "take off" from a station in OOS. It just sits there for long time. I remote-control Caiman Tanker for my "presonal weapon trading runs" (I think it helps the economy to drain all weapon fabs in all sectors and fill all equipment docks :) :) and it fiels A LOT faster than another larger ship I used earlier. I can move from one station to another in my mamba and he already jumped and docked.
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Post by jlehtone »

Kamenjar wrote:Well I agree that you gotta find the right ship for the right job, but if you wanna get maximum possible number of units delivered from A to B in least possible time, Caiman SF 2 (the one from east shipyards) is proly the best. It would be likely a big overshot if you wanna sell Silicons because he will be "almost" full on all runs (max silicon load is proly 25% of caiman Cargo), but if you wanna stock a complex with ECells from an XL SPP.. Most likely it is the best for the job.
Yes, the key is how to use something. If a ship can always buy and sell full loads, the Caiman SF beats the rest. That is why the X2 Dolphin was a winner. However, the increased profitability of the high-end items will cut in now. The Caiman can still be the winner, flying around and clearing every full production stock and selling at every opportunity. That works only with the human pilot and huge float. UT is not that clever.

The plain Mercury which I control remotely can reach stations amazingly quickly. It did feel agile while I flied it personally, too.


As for measuring, one needs some scripting to set up an UT fleet, but one
can use the same starting point for each set. With a substantial number of ships over a long period of time, say overnigth per ship type, which is about 100 hours in-game. That should be sufficient to diminish the effects of random changes. However, that also means that to get data for the TS ships alone will take one month. Possible. Worth it? Probably not.
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Post by Kamenjar »

Yeah UT is deffinitely weird. I'm not sure how would AI treat it. I know for sure though that for supplying hubs with bease products u should generally use a SF because it can unload the whole factory. As far as selling, the tankers seem much better because SFs come back half-full. I can't even reassign them at one of my hubs without dropping their frieght. Silicon sells hard.
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Post by arcana75 »

Wow... just for this thread and since I'm oh so free, I whipped out a calculator and thrashed out a few numbers...

The below are calculations of the amount of cargo pushed by the Caiman, the Caiman Super Freighter and the Dolphin Super Freighter. The calcs are based on several factors:

1) I did trips based on 2 imaginary stations, 200km, 100km, 50km and 25km apart. Based on ship speeds I check how many complete round trips each freighter makes.

2) Based on the # of round trips, I calc how much cargo is hauled in 10hrs realtime.

3) I would have liked to check hold efficiency based on how often the hold can be filled to the brim. I'd check this by seeing the probability of meeting a factory that can give that much goods. So say a Silicon Mine will fill a 3500 hold but won't fill a 14000 hold, so a smaller hold is actually more efficient. Unfortunately I do not have a list of fabs and their output amounts.

Anyway the results are:

Round trip = 200km
Caiman = 77000 cargo hauled (22 trips)
C-super = 165200 cargo hauled (16 trips)
D-super = 126000 cargo hauled (9 trips)

Round trip = 100km
Caiman = 154000 (44 trips)
C-super = 330400 (32 trips)
D-super = 266000 (19 trips)

Round trip = 50km
Caiman = 311500 (89 trips)
C-super = 660800 (64 trips)
D-super = 53200 (38 trips)

Round trip = 25km
Caiman = 626500 (179 trips)
C-super = 1331925 (129 trips)
D-super = 1078000 (77 trips)

As u can see, the Caiman Superfreighter makes less trips than the Caiman but pushes more cargo. It also consistently makes more trips and hauls more cargo than the Dolphin Superfreighter.

This might suggest that the Caiman Superfreighter is the best freighter out there. But wait! Remember I mentioned hold efficiency?? I suspect if and when I get my hands on the factory info, the stats for the 2 Superfreighters will drop as from experience they would be regularly hauling half-empty loads, bringing their cargo hauled stats to be nearer to the vanilla Caiman.

Any thots on my theory and numbers?
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Post by jlehtone »

arcana75 wrote:Any thots on my theory and numbers?
Your numbers can basically be read from the Kamenjar's OT Efficiency value. Nice practical examples though. Some seem to understand the idea better with examples.

But you are right, station stock sizes and ware sizes can add and refine the view. What is Silicon now? 18 cargo-units/ware-unit?
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