Post your non-Cheaty tips

[BrigandPhantos77]

It also sells for an easy 54 million per ship minimum in the neighboring sector.

There is no way a Zeus sells for only 54 million. I can sell Brigantines and Galleons at 60 million. Check your reputation with the faction you're selling to. Always sell to the highest.

Thats what you get if it has nothing on it. I'd rather quote conservative there than more than someone actually gets. (Heaven's Assertion - Paranid; Rep has 4 green bars and 53%) And a Zeus is one of the cheaper ships. Unless it came with Turbo Mk2 which they sometimes do.

I've never seen my rep level change the sale price. Interesting.

[Jimmy C]

Thats what you get if it has nothing on it. I'd rather quote conservative there than more than someone actually gets. (Heaven's Assertion - Paranid; Rep has 4 green bars and 53%)
I've never seen my rep level change the sale price. Interesting.

I was quite surprised to learn that rep does change sale price myself. The 60 mil I quoted you was for Green 5 and a bare ship at that. It really is worth the extra fuel to send the ship further to a faction with your best rep. It's usually the Teladi in my case, what with it not being easy to lose rep with them.

[BrigandPhantos77]

Thats what you get if it has nothing on it. I'd rather quote conservative there than more than someone actually gets. (Heaven's Assertion - Paranid; Rep has 4 green bars and 53%)
I've never seen my rep level change the sale price. Interesting.

I was quite surprised to learn that rep does change sale price myself. The 60 mil I quoted you was for Green 5 and a bare ship at that. It really is worth the extra fuel to send the ship further to a faction with your best rep. It's usually the Teladi in my case, what with it not being easy to lose rep with them.

I checked it right after I read your reply. That 6 / 7 million credit difference is significant. Learning new things still, this long after the initial release. Also, adding on those extra components (Turbo Mk2 or Internal Sentry Lasers), that's quite nice. Spending 220 energy cells for that big a changer. I'm also thinking that price difference plays a key role in what you get as a rep bump for selling at specific faction shipyards.

[fireanddream]

1) Honor is a thing and it will vastly boost bail chance once you get it in the 30s. Most of my bails happen first/second try now on everything.

2) beam weaponry has completely changed capital ships.

3) Xenon capitals like K and I can carry jump beacons.

4) Abducting marines from RRF M7M.

5) The dukes always have 2 basically unguarded M7Ms roaming out every once in a while. Perfect for your first space walk boarding.

6) Running best buy/ best sell for ore and food on the Xenon hub can turn it into a trading center that nets you 10m/h upward for the starting cost of just a few TS and nothing more. No pilot training time like UT and ST either.

7) The Valhalla has a billion single-use jump beacons that you should steal to get it grounded. It also infinitely respawn Thors that get sent to other sectors to do... something? You know where to force bail an infinite amount of Thor now.

Drone repair is really, really good. No only you never need to train marine engineering, but now you don't care if your K is limping back with 37% hull after a tough fight.

[L1thorex]

6) Running best buy/ best sell for ore and food on the Xenon hub can turn it into a trading center that nets you 10m/h upward for the starting cost of just a few TS and nothing more. No pilot training time like UT and ST either.

I have tried that in my current run and just don't see it. Even with 30 TS (Caiman Superfreighters) the Hub never reached those purported numbers:



And these ships simply die a lot, even with 100% shield emergency jump threshold and full shields equipped:



UTs are just much, much less of a hassle.

[BrigandPhantos77]

UTs are just much, much less of a hassle.

Looking through your list I am seeing the sectors being visited and it dawns on me that you don't use the Blacklist properly. Also, the armoured transports may actually survive some of those encounters you showed. Something to think about at least.

I don't let any of my ships "except combat ships" go into places like Scale Plate Green, Black Hole Sun, Grand Exchange Delta, and I try to avoid the pipelines between Xenon sectors. The ones you lost in paranid space seem to be getting hit by a roaming Xenon fleet. Those Qs are what's making me think that.

When you set up a black list, apply it to block specific sector's. Ships will ignore any blacklists setting that state specific factions. At least, if your on vanilla it does. If you use the global blacklist without creating a profile, it will block everything. If you instead make a profile for it, you can have your hub freighters use this specific one instead without it affecting the rest of your ships.. and you apply those profiles under individual ship settings.

It'll be tedious to start, because you have to add each sector you want to avoid, then set each ship. But once it's done it should help keep your loss count down.

I never use Split transports in hostile sectors either, there shields absolutely suck. lol...

One other tip, and this will keep the need for blacklist use down as well, use automatic jumping with minimal range set to 1. Keep a reserve fuel setting for at least double the range your going to let them jump.

[BrigandPhantos77]

One more non cheaty tip.....

Barter System- I'd imagine this a highly under-used system that let's you sell in large quantities. Now there are ways to manipulate it, and you can exploit some cheaty things. I have 4 Ozias loaded up with miner variant Owls. I have one set to mine Silicon, one for Ore, one for Nvidium, and one that is a swing transport.

It has a high setup cost per Ozias, those TLs plus 10 Owls per ship aint exactly cheap, but it keeps you stocked with everything you mine. And Nvidium, sells for a nice sum that recoups the setup fee when clearing out the 2 primary sources for it. Like, completely recoups the fee when you sell it via the barter system.

Spoiler

Show

(You need to manipulate the market with Spacelab to get high volume sales.)

The silicon and ore operations are great for keeping factories operating with the minerals.

[L1thorex]

Also, the armoured transports may actually survive some of those encounters you showed. Something to think about at least.

The armoured transports also cost 10 million credits a piece and have inefficiently large cargo holds. The optimal cargo space sizes for trading with NPC station are between ~6k units and ~10k units, since the commands aren't smart enough to realize that a TS with 15k cargo shouldn't service a station that can only take 8k worth of cargo space in its required resource.

I never use Split transports in hostile sectors either, there shields absolutely suck. lol...

Caiman Superfreighters have 100 MJ shields, I doubt the 25MJ difference I can get by going for Mercury variants would help much. Especially since Mercuries are so slow.

Grand Exchange Delta

I've deliberately not even explored space east of Wastelands so that my tradeships don't get the idea of going there.

[BrigandPhantos77]

The armoured transports also cost 10 million credits a piece and have inefficiently large cargo holds. The optimal cargo space sizes for trading with NPC station are between ~6k units and ~10k units, since the commands aren't smart enough to realize that a TS with 15k cargo shouldn't service a station that can only take 8k worth of cargo space in its required resource.

Caiman Superfreighters have 100 MJ shields, I doubt the 25MJ difference I can get by going for Mercury variants would help much. Especially since Mercuries are so slow.


I've deliberately not even explored space east of Wastelands so that my tradeships don't get the idea of going there.

You trade the cargo capacity for survivability. Most of the transports are weak that way.

Your ships in Wastelands are in as much danger as those east of it. That's a pipeline for the Xenon. Xenon Sector 472 (Black Hole Sun) launches invasions along both routes towards Scale Plate Green and Grand Exchange. And the reciprocal Xenon sectors at the ends of those will do the same.

Xenon Sector 598 in my experience always sends its invasions along Delta > Gamma > Beta (Grand Exchance) and then on to Belt of Aguilar. On rare occasion it will hit alpha instead. The key to safety here, is satellites and defenders of your own.

I have assets all along that route as midnight star beta is one of my random sectors... I almost never get my assets attacked aside from my defenders. Those I set permanently at the Delta / Gamma gate. Both sides. A couple M2+ on one side, an M2 with M7 suppors on the other side.

As for transports, I use Athena's, and Hayabusa's. You can easily obtain Athena's for free by making Duke's bail. Thats how I got mine. I didn't buy a single one. (I only sell them - fully repaired of course for 6 million credits each )

[beast_regards]

Pirate Ships (TS available from Pirate Shipyards) are the fastest TS in the game discounting Terran's Baldrics. They are unarmed (despite the lore claiming otherwise) and have barely any shields, but are dirt cheap and fast so if you want to get anything anywhere fast, they are best choice with 3500 cargo. It is best paired with the station manager, and to ferry goods to HQ, but not for UT. UT doesn't require the cargo, or even the speed, they require survivability, hence TS-AT are the best. This was different in AP where you could be friend with everyone.

***

If you want to discourage Xenons from visiting the sector, drop 50+ lasertowers at the gate. Right at the gate, upon jumping in, drop everything.

Lasertowers aren't that powerful in the FL. The Xenon K has a certain chance to survive the setup, even if heavily damaged, but the navigational hazard the field creates is not worth the effort for them.

Keep in mind, with dynamic relations, your laser towers will fire at traders tanking your relations with certain factions even further, but it is a effective enough blockade to keep Xenons out.

This is enough to keep the Xenon from leaving 101, and prevents them entering the Harmony of Perpetuity, for example, and it has zero negative impact there.

Xenon will still jump past this, they have jumpdrives, but they will jump farther ahead so you could keep them from certain sectors completely.

[L1thorex]

Pirate Ships (TS available from Pirate Shipyards) are the fastest TS in the game discounting Terran's Baldrics. They are unarmed (despite the lore claiming otherwise) and have barely any shields, but are dirt cheap and fast so if you want to get anything anywhere fast, they are best choice with 3500 cargo. It is best paired with the station manager, and to ferry goods to HQ, but not for UT. UT doesn't require the cargo, or even the speed, they require survivability, hence TS-AT are the best. This was different in AP where you could be friend with everyone.

A long time ago I created a TS spreadsheet (not including Terran ships and non-buyables) to figure out what the most efficient transport ships were after the FL balance pass. The prices also don't include cargo/speed/turning upgrades since I couldn't find the formula of calculating their cumulative cost:



CTS stands for Cargo Throughput Score and is simply the product of speed and cargo capacity, divided by 1000 for better legibility. Price efficiency is CTS multiplied by 1,000,000 divided by the price of the ship, again to produce legible numbers. Thus the actual numbers don't really mean anything, but the relation of these numbers means something.

Some notable results:

[*]the Pirate Ship is the most price effective TS by a significant margin, even if including the cost of a mk3 trade software
[*]the Teladi TS are now among the better ones, slow but with very good cargo for their price point
[*]Split TS remain excellent choices, especially considering that this spreadsheet doesn't consider that the sweet spot for a trader is between 5k and 10k cargo which the Hauler and Super freighter variant have
[*]the Mistral Superfreighter XL, once the gold standard, got absolutely nuked. In fact, all the Super Freighters XL are big scams. For a bit over double the price you can get a TS-HT which has nearly double the cargo but is significantly faster. TS-HTs are in my opinion too unwieldy for UTs/Hub traders, but are my go-to for high-intensity internal logistics
[*]the new TS-ATs are at the very top of CTS, but at the very bottom of price efficiency. 10 million credits for a transport ship is simply outrageous.
[*]the Miner variants would be great, great ships if they didn't force you to get their mining equipment together with them

My personal favorite TS to use as traders is the Kaiman Super Freighter since the Hauler is only available at Rhy's Crusade and Nyarth's Stand. The former doesn't have an ED meaning the ships first have to slowboat over to Ministry of Finance or Family Rhy to be equipped, while the latter is cut off from the rest of the universe.

[Hwitvlf]

And these ships simply die a lot, even with 100% shield emergency jump threshold and full shields equipped:

Counter to what seems intuitive, my traders die less with their "attacked response" to "ignore". A fast TS like the Caiman can outrun most attackers, but they stop moving when their jump countdown begins - leaving them open to additional attacks. Set to ignore, they often outpace their attackers and reach their destination without taking further damage. Anything fast enough to catch them is usually weak enough to be destroyed by dropped fighter drones.

Nice breakdown chart!

[Hwitvlf]

2) beam weaponry has completely changed capital ships.

One addendum to info on how to find beam weapons (which I didn't see mentioned in that post): satellites have "Best Buy Locator" built in and are generally easier to set up than parking an M5 at each dock. The "Merchant's Buying" tab shows black market weapons as well as normal wares which are available for the whole sector.

[BrigandPhantos77]

And these ships simply die a lot, even with 100% shield emergency jump threshold and full shields equipped:

Counter to what seems intuitive, my traders die less with their "attacked response" to "ignore". A fast TS like the Caiman can outrun most attackers, but they stop moving when their jump countdown begins - leaving them open to additional attacks. Set to ignore, they often outpace their attackers and reach their destination without taking further damage. Anything fast enough to catch them is usually weak enough to be destroyed by dropped fighter drones.

Nice breakdown chart!

Baldric is pretty fast too. But i've been witnessing them slam into the SPP in Neptune a lot whenever I sit in system. When I use an armoured transport though, they seem to escape mostly unharmed with most situations. Just gotta remember to set the auto-jump and emergency jump settings properly. The cost to purchase doesn't matter to me as most of my ships are acquired via Duke's donations.