What a gold mine of info!! This was a lot of hard work and thank you for keeping a high standard of data. This has changed my trade ship preferences. But reinforced my favorability for Barbarossa, less micro management of pirates and if you have the BP you don’t really need to worry about cost. I like to throw some mods on them get them to 10k travel.
Very useful data, thank you! Next time you do a mass-transit test, you might consider using an alternate route that includes some large sectors and some smaller ones. Saturn to Second Contact, for example. I might be wrong, haven't done the math, but it looks like your current route is mostly large sectors, which might skew the results towards ships with a high max travel speed, as opposed to high travel acceleration or maneuverability.
I actually thought that Saturn is a small system. I didnt checked before that its actually a very huge one. 😅 But yeah the longer the system the more the time ratio that two different ships need should converge against the ration of their max speed, if I had no knot in my head. Means shorter systems, the closer the times of the ships are together. Fortunately the Heron E and Pelica S are more on the slow side which lets them look even better.
Pilots are worth a lot, you dont want to lose them, and that is why L traders that can survive pirate attacks are the best investment, they do a much better job protecting your biggest investment, your pilots.
good thing is, on teladi shipyard you can get Heron E for free. Just wait for SCA to buy one ;) You can then use them, to supply the ship yards. SCA are so generous^^
Using the total cargo capacity seems a bit off to me. The only traders I see with a full load are those selling energy cells, even my medium traders tend not to have a full load.
Thanks Immi. Do you know if manually ordering a given ships trades is a detriment to its pilot/crew skill change rate, when compared to rate of skill increase of a ship with some version of automatic trades.
I know that we can grind rep by splitting up trades into very small packages. Shouldnt it be possible to level crew that way to? I never paid attention to that.
Great analysis as always! This also confirms my thoughts on the Barbarossa - it's basically less a real trade ship and more like a 'light destroyer' with the ability to transport a decent amount of cargo. So as long as you buy your ships and need to be money efficient - go for real traders, it's more efficient. Once you get to the point that you can just produce them yourself or you don't have to worry about the buying price, it becomes totally worth it. The fact that they could potentially even deal with some psg destroyers (depending on equipment) if they would attack them is reason enough.
Thank you for this useful video. May I comment on your good English. You make four pronunciation errors. "since and hint" are not pronounced as in science and height. The "in" is pronounced the same as the word "in". "Heron" is not prounounced "Heeron". The "Her" is pronounced like the German word "Herr" or the English word "her". "Agility" does not have a hard "g". It is pronounced "ajility".
A good and in depth look at the straight data of just L ships moving cargo very detailed. As some have said, it's all just one piece of the puzzle but your time in writing this down is appreciated. A couple of other factors to also take into account with L v M ships is if you decide to buy escort ships for the m traders for some peace of mind, and also that L ships can do one trade at the current price for goods. The price of the goods goes up with each trade that depletes the inventory, however large ships can completely deplete a stations inventory of a good in one trade at one price, thereby increasing the profit margin. And can also sell to a station having a high demand price for that good in one trade, adding in even more profit margin.
That confirmes what i always knew. M traders are the way to go. But since even those often run around half empty, it is even worth to mix in some S traders for small batches. It is still random what ship picks which batch but the average amount of load per ship goes up when you mix in 25-50 % S traders depending on the good you produce and state of the economy. Late game NPC stations often order very small batches of energy cells, so S traders make even sense for energy.
TIL part of the reason my Pelican got stuck for hours was a crap crew. Now, granted, there's no way that was the whole reason, i suspect the pathfinding algorithm got confused by the shape of my custom station. But it could have been confused faster and more visibly (and therefore made it easier to spot the problem) if the turning speed was buffed by a crew and captain that knew things.
very useful, thanks a lot. I think money does not mater, best in class is the best. For regular trading missions, stantion trading and boarding barbarossa is preferably. But when i build gate defence station i use 3 shuyaku with claytronics cells and sheathing powered by close loop method.
Based in getu fune as terran in my new playthrough. I only have L miners and traders. They are expensive and slow. Yes. but they are strong. The sectors is constantly under attack by khaak and xenons. And expect for a destroyer. They dont risk much at all. If i had gone with m i would have lost plenty of them. I have lost 0 L. So yes m are more business effective but L are peace of mind. Especially in border sector. Go with L
I'm shocked that people still don't know that the trading system doesn't fill ships. So having 10 L ships running at 5-10% cargo is the RULE not the exception, so it's a weird lie to use a full L ship. (NO, it doesn't change a damn thing if you just have 1 L ship, it still end up doing low volume runs) A CORE fact of L ships is you need them full to compete and the game has no way for us to ensure full cargo runs. I'm right now watching my Erlking run around doing trades with the auto trider, I have L ships on my station and trade stations and all of them end up running with small amounts of cargo. Repeated orders is not perfect, but I can seem to get some efficiency improvement, but it is a NIGHTMARE to use if you have 10K+ ships to configure, I even start to rage quit at just 10, but the number I need is insane to make a large operation work.
Heron-E TER engine with basic travel mod and basic mass mod earns eight times as much as a Boa with a split mk3 combat drive. 2 million credits/hour vs 200-300k credits/hour.
From my experience, I had the opposite problem with the Barbarossa: they seem to be coded as a military ship, so they were constantly starting the fights against K's. Plus, as a military asset they are attacked on-sight in neg rep systems like Zyarth while a normal trader wouldn't
For me large traders comes down to what role i need filling if we are transporting between mining outpost to regional hub across multiple sectors then its Shuyaku sentinel (mostly because of their cargo size and look) with default loadout just upgraded engines and the likes if we are selling from regional hubs to npc stations its m ships if we are transporting between regional hubs(1 hub every 5 sectors) its again shuyaku's so that their stock is nicely divided if we are transporting to my shipyard or phq or station building its shuyaku's fully kitted out with terran shields and beam turrets and a TEL L all round engine so that their travel speed is a max of 2579 and max normal speed of 83.2, while boasting 138k shield strength and 101k hull strength. Add in their 216 dps they can take on most threats and either kill it or survive long enough for my fleet to arrive. EVEN IF they cost me 28M a piece if i was to buy them but given i make these ones from scratch its worth it. All others are brought from other places before being retrofit accordingly just to keep the economy flowing. Also a side note nothing is more fun then watching 50+ shu's jump into a sector ready to rain hell on any unsuspecting xenon that's bugging a miner or something.
When listening to the parts of the video devoted to crew a random thought struck me. Imagine if one day the AI captains would utilize the L and XL combat ships to their fullest. Like Asgard staying at maximum range, firing its cannon. I'm kind of tired watching Terran Asgards ram Xenon stations and die in ten seconds...What's even the point of AI having these ships, if they are unable to use it. Normally an Asgard would be able to blockade an Jump Gate indefinitely, AI just dies after a few minutes of spinning around like in that song.
Thank you for your work. I find myself leaning toward miners and away from traders. With this data I'm willing to try again. I hate the pirates. I pirate them back, but I'm not interested in the expensive loss of trade ships.
When I did math a long time ago and one of the argon ships was the best L trade for volume/cost vise. It seems the Demeter still keeps the most profitable spot. If only this game would utilize better multicore CPUs or would perform better with 16k player own ships ingame I would be happy.
Nice video, but S ships have a lot of advantages early to mid game. 1. More cost effective mk1/2 2. Faster captain training 3. Less losing to pirates Mid/end game i take Barbarossas with good captains from the S ships 😊 Btw npc's do a nice job, i dont need much traders. Only endgame for big projects.
I've been using the Pelican S because they seem to be the most cost effective. I'm glad you're data has vindicated my decision. I take it that the Heron E is a new ship introduced in 7.0? I play the game almost everyday and did not even notice there was such a ship.
Nice! You give the Barbarrossa it's well deserved spotlight! Sure it's not cheap but the price can be cut by a third when delivering enough hullparts to the shipyard. Not to mention that you save yourself the trouble of creating a patrol-force which could cost you way more.
even with 12 shih(4 groups of 3) patroling in sector i regularly lose M and S traders... thinking about going only fast S ships for trading stations for hauling only barbarossas
Ok, I had a quick lock and I would argue that the Shark has around the same travel speed as the Barbarossa while the TER travel drive reaches faster his max speed. Also, the Shark has only 1.5 cargo capacity more while it costs twice as much. Further, the turning speed of the Shark is around 1/3 lower. From this, I would argue that two Barbarossa's are the better investment over one Shark. I hope this answers your question in a satisfying manner.
Thanx for testing, started using the Barbarossa before your videos, currently replacing M traders, keep lossing them because they tend to park in hotzones while searching for trades, than dock at the homebase. Wish we had a L sized Manticore, spend millions just to replace them ^^
![X4 Oversimplified: Minor Guide to the Major Factions [New & Improved!]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/0RlN855SxeM/mqdefault.jpg)
What a gold mine of info!! This was a lot of hard work and thank you for keeping a high standard of data. This has changed my trade ship preferences. But reinforced my favorability for Barbarossa, less micro management of pirates and if you have the BP you don’t really need to worry about cost. I like to throw some mods on them get them to 10k travel.
Very useful data, thank you! Next time you do a mass-transit test, you might consider using an alternate route that includes some large sectors and some smaller ones. Saturn to Second Contact, for example. I might be wrong, haven't done the math, but it looks like your current route is mostly large sectors, which might skew the results towards ships with a high max travel speed, as opposed to high travel acceleration or maneuverability.
I actually thought that Saturn is a small system. I didnt checked before that its actually a very huge one. 😅
But yeah the longer the system the more the time ratio that two different ships need should converge against the ration of their max speed, if I had no knot in my head. Means shorter systems, the closer the times of the ships are together.
Fortunately the Heron E and Pelica S are more on the slow side which lets them look even better.
Just found your channel, this is great stuff, binging your X4 vids rn
Pilots are worth a lot, you dont want to lose them, and that is why L traders that can survive pirate attacks are the best investment, they do a much better job protecting your biggest investment, your pilots.
good thing is, on teladi shipyard you can get Heron E for free. Just wait for SCA to buy one ;)
You can then use them, to supply the ship yards. SCA are so generous^^
They also supply me with free Behemoth E's and Phoenix E''s!
Using the total cargo capacity seems a bit off to me. The only traders I see with a full load are those selling energy cells, even my medium traders tend not to have a full load.
Thanks Immi. Do you know if manually ordering a given ships trades is a detriment to its pilot/crew skill change rate, when compared to rate of skill increase of a ship with some version of automatic trades.
I know that we can grind rep by splitting up trades into very small packages. Shouldnt it be possible to level crew that way to? I never paid attention to that.
Thanks Immi now i know how to play this game
Great analysis as always!
This also confirms my thoughts on the Barbarossa - it's basically less a real trade ship and more like a 'light destroyer' with the ability to transport a decent amount of cargo. So as long as you buy your ships and need to be money efficient - go for real traders, it's more efficient. Once you get to the point that you can just produce them yourself or you don't have to worry about the buying price, it becomes totally worth it. The fact that they could potentially even deal with some psg destroyers (depending on equipment) if they would attack them is reason enough.
but we have to remember, that Barbarossa can defend itself quite easily
Thank you for this useful video.
May I comment on your good English. You make four pronunciation errors.
"since and hint" are not pronounced as in science and height. The "in" is pronounced the same as the word "in". "Heron" is not prounounced "Heeron". The "Her" is pronounced like the German word "Herr" or the English word "her". "Agility" does not have a hard "g". It is pronounced "ajility".
Thanks for your hints =) I will try to improve, even though I like the hard "g"
A good and in depth look at the straight data of just L ships moving cargo very detailed. As some have said, it's all just one piece of the puzzle but your time in writing this down is appreciated.
A couple of other factors to also take into account with L v M ships is if you decide to buy escort ships for the m traders for some peace of mind, and also that L ships can do one trade at the current price for goods. The price of the goods goes up with each trade that depletes the inventory, however large ships can completely deplete a stations inventory of a good in one trade at one price, thereby increasing the profit margin. And can also sell to a station having a high demand price for that good in one trade, adding in even more profit margin.
That confirmes what i always knew. M traders are the way to go. But since even those often run around half empty, it is even worth to mix in some S traders for small batches. It is still random what ship picks which batch but the average amount of load per ship goes up when you mix in 25-50 % S traders depending on the good you produce and state of the economy. Late game NPC stations often order very small batches of energy cells, so S traders make even sense for energy.
TIL part of the reason my Pelican got stuck for hours was a crap crew.
Now, granted, there's no way that was the whole reason, i suspect the pathfinding algorithm got confused by the shape of my custom station. But it could have been confused faster and more visibly (and therefore made it easier to spot the problem) if the turning speed was buffed by a crew and captain that knew things.
very useful, thanks a lot. I think money does not mater, best in class is the best. For regular trading missions, stantion trading and boarding barbarossa is preferably. But when i build gate defence station i use 3 shuyaku with claytronics cells and sheathing powered by close loop method.
Based in getu fune as terran in my new playthrough. I only have L miners and traders. They are expensive and slow. Yes. but they are strong. The sectors is constantly under attack by khaak and xenons. And expect for a destroyer. They dont risk much at all. If i had gone with m i would have lost plenty of them. I have lost 0 L. So yes m are more business effective but L are peace of mind. Especially in border sector. Go with L
I'm shocked that people still don't know that the trading system doesn't fill ships. So having 10 L ships running at 5-10% cargo is the RULE not the exception, so it's a weird lie to use a full L ship. (NO, it doesn't change a damn thing if you just have 1 L ship, it still end up doing low volume runs)
A CORE fact of L ships is you need them full to compete and the game has no way for us to ensure full cargo runs.
I'm right now watching my Erlking run around doing trades with the auto trider, I have L ships on my station and trade stations and all of them end up running with small amounts of cargo.
Repeated orders is not perfect, but I can seem to get some efficiency improvement, but it is a NIGHTMARE to use if you have 10K+ ships to configure, I even start to rage quit at just 10, but the number I need is insane to make a large operation work.
My experience with medium ships is they are made of paper walls and get taken out way too fast. I prefer large as they dont get destroyed very often.
Heron-E TER engine with basic travel mod and basic mass mod earns eight times as much as a Boa with a split mk3 combat drive. 2 million credits/hour vs 200-300k credits/hour.
From my experience, I had the opposite problem with the Barbarossa: they seem to be coded as a military ship, so they were constantly starting the fights against K's. Plus, as a military asset they are attacked on-sight in neg rep systems like Zyarth while a normal trader wouldn't
You can change it's reaction to ignore attacks, instead of retaliate.
For me large traders comes down to what role i need filling
if we are transporting between mining outpost to regional hub across multiple sectors then its Shuyaku sentinel (mostly because of their cargo size and look) with default loadout just upgraded engines and the likes
if we are selling from regional hubs to npc stations its m ships
if we are transporting between regional hubs(1 hub every 5 sectors) its again shuyaku's so that their stock is nicely divided
if we are transporting to my shipyard or phq or station building its shuyaku's fully kitted out with terran shields and beam turrets and a TEL L all round engine so that their travel speed is a max of 2579 and max normal speed of 83.2, while boasting 138k shield strength and 101k hull strength.
Add in their 216 dps they can take on most threats and either kill it or survive long enough for my fleet to arrive.
EVEN IF they cost me 28M a piece if i was to buy them but given i make these ones from scratch its worth it.
All others are brought from other places before being retrofit accordingly just to keep the economy flowing.
Also a side note nothing is more fun then watching 50+ shu's jump into a sector ready to rain hell on any unsuspecting xenon that's bugging a miner or something.
When listening to the parts of the video devoted to crew a random thought struck me. Imagine if one day the AI captains would utilize the L and XL combat ships to their fullest. Like Asgard staying at maximum range, firing its cannon. I'm kind of tired watching Terran Asgards ram Xenon stations and die in ten seconds...What's even the point of AI having these ships, if they are unable to use it. Normally an Asgard would be able to blockade an Jump Gate indefinitely, AI just dies after a few minutes of spinning around like in that song.
Thank you for your work. I find myself leaning toward miners and away from traders. With this data I'm willing to try again. I hate the pirates. I pirate them back, but I'm not interested in the expensive loss of trade ships.
I don't like replacing traders therefore I prefer Condors or Sharks. Also what is this money you're talking about?
When I did math a long time ago and one of the argon ships was the best L trade for volume/cost vise.
It seems the Demeter still keeps the most profitable spot.
If only this game would utilize better multicore CPUs or would perform better with 16k player own ships ingame I would be happy.
Nice video, but S ships have a lot of advantages early to mid game.
1. More cost effective mk1/2
2. Faster captain training
3. Less losing to pirates
Mid/end game i take Barbarossas with good captains from the S ships 😊
Btw npc's do a nice job, i dont need much traders. Only endgame for big projects.
I've been using the Pelican S because they seem to be the most cost effective. I'm glad you're data has vindicated my decision. I take it that the Heron E is a new ship introduced in 7.0? I play the game almost everyday and did not even notice there was such a ship.
I was just about to perform the same experiments, but a little differently. You saved me a lot of time. Thank you
I miss so much the trader ships behavior of X3... it was so op
Also mit dem Akzent könntest du den Bösewicht im nächsten Indiana Jones spielen. Schönes Video.
Man, this is so well researched. Great video!
Nice! You give the Barbarrossa it's well deserved spotlight!
Sure it's not cheap but the price can be cut by a third when delivering enough hullparts to the shipyard. Not to mention that you save yourself the trouble of creating a patrol-force which could cost you way more.
even with 12 shih(4 groups of 3) patroling in sector i regularly lose M and S traders... thinking about going only fast S ships for trading stations for hauling only barbarossas
Loving your X4 Content.
great analysis
Nice😊
Should have added the Shark to the pool of "L-traders"
Actually a good point. Give me a few days =)
Ok, I had a quick lock and I would argue that the Shark has around the same travel speed as the Barbarossa while the TER travel drive reaches faster his max speed. Also, the Shark has only 1.5 cargo capacity more while it costs twice as much.
Further, the turning speed of the Shark is around 1/3 lower.
From this, I would argue that two Barbarossa's are the better investment over one Shark.
I hope this answers your question in a satisfying manner.
Thanx for testing, started using the Barbarossa before your videos, currently replacing M traders, keep lossing them because they tend to park in hotzones while searching for trades, than dock at the homebase.
Wish we had a L sized Manticore, spend millions just to replace them ^^