Concept: large/XL ships only?

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captainradish
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Concept: large/XL ships only?

Post by captainradish » Sat, 19. Sep 20, 20:11

I am curious if anybody else has tried this: large and XL civilian ships ONLY. No medium/small traders or miners.

pref
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Re: Concept: large/XL ships only?

Post by pref » Sat, 19. Sep 20, 20:42

I am doing that setup for all my plexes except the ones selling to drug dealers. Apart from the occasional bugs in trader AI i don't have to touch them ever, ime it works pretty well.
Still have a couple M traders here and there but their effect is negligible.

GCU Grey Area
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Re: Concept: large/XL ships only?

Post by GCU Grey Area » Sat, 19. Sep 20, 22:01

Mostly L/XL freighters & miners is standard for most of my games. Generally only use M freighters for internal logistics, primarily so I have different icons for such ships to make them easily identifiable on the map. Don't use M miners at all & just a single S miner for personal use (mining drill is by far my favourite tool for opening lockboxes).

captainradish
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Re: Concept: large/XL ships only?

Post by captainradish » Sat, 19. Sep 20, 22:20

I've almost only ever used M-class ships due to how cheap they are in relation to their size. Sounds like I may be gimping myself slightly.

leoriq
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Re: Concept: large/XL ships only?

Post by leoriq » Sat, 19. Sep 20, 22:34

Actulally L miner is only twice as effective as M miner, but costs almost ten times more.
So M miners pay for themselves almost 5 times faster than L miners.
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For traders its even worse, given their tendency to make trade runs with 50 eCells of load.
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jlehtone
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Re: Concept: large/XL ships only?

Post by jlehtone » Sun, 20. Sep 20, 00:06

Looking at "average prices" from Roguey's site, a Demeter S is about one million. A Shuyaku S is 11 million. By initial investment, one Shuyaku vs 11 Demeters?

One Shuyaku and five Demeters have about same amount of cargobay. Trading that amount of cargo with one station, the L will get sightly better average price. One lump vs small chunks.

Docking multiple M will have traffic issues on small docks. However, hauling from one edge to other edge of X Universe, I bet a fleet of M makes the journey significantly faster than a L does. Then again, who does such hauls?

The game has two stages: when credits matter and when they don't. It might be easier to pass the first stage if you don't avoid small freighters.
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Re: Concept: large/XL ships only?

Post by LameFox » Sun, 20. Sep 20, 01:27

I don't do it exclusively because the small ones seem better for my personally issued tasks, and for training pilots apparently since it's per-trade that they gain xp. Most of my civilian ships are large though. I always cap a Minotaur Raider with my starting ship and then use it to cripple and board L ships to fill out my fleet. Their high initial cost doesn't really matter then, it's only an issue if I want to afford high tier thrusters on them.

Whether they are better or worse I'm not sure, but I feel they're probably less of a performance hit in the map later in the game.
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pref
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Re: Concept: large/XL ships only?

Post by pref » Sun, 20. Sep 20, 01:43

My only issue with Ls is the time they take to dock, sometimes i observed 5-10mins or even higher delays because of that. If there are too much non-highway travel involved then Ls are faster ignoring docking, gate passage times have improved a lot i think since 2.x.

Of course this only really matters if production and demand are both so high that timing becomes important. Ms can move a lot of stuff as well, but you need more of them and at later game just the extra UI hassle for 2-5x the ships is not worth it no matter their costs.

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Re: Concept: large/XL ships only?

Post by GCU Grey Area » Sun, 20. Sep 20, 01:45

For me it's the durability of L, & particularly XL ships, which is the big draw. The sort of ships which, if they call for help, there's a decent chance they're still intact when help arrives. If I'm feeling really paranoid, or sending one somewhere I consider a bit risky, can also give such a ship it's own fighters and/or defence drones to look after it. XL's are particularly good for this - can carry 100 drones, along with a small fleet of S/M warships & can repair those ships if they get damaged. Generally one of my early goals in a new game is to acquire a small fleet of such ships to use as manually operated freighters. Some of my favourite ships in the game.

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Re: Concept: large/XL ships only?

Post by dtpsprt » Sun, 20. Sep 20, 03:46

GCU Grey Area wrote:
Sun, 20. Sep 20, 01:45
For me it's the durability of L, & particularly XL ships, which is the big draw. The sort of ships which, if they call for help, there's a decent chance they're still intact when help arrives. If I'm feeling really paranoid, or sending one somewhere I consider a bit risky, can also give such a ship it's own fighters and/or defence drones to look after it. XL's are particularly good for this - can carry 100 drones, along with a small fleet of S/M warships & can repair those ships if they get damaged. Generally one of my early goals in a new game is to acquire a small fleet of such ships to use as manually operated freighters. Some of my favourite ships in the game.
Makes sense but from what I've seen only the Atlas Sentinel has a big enough cargo hold (34 K) for efficient use as a trader.

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Re: Concept: large/XL ships only?

Post by GCU Grey Area » Sun, 20. Sep 20, 09:41

dtpsprt wrote:
Sun, 20. Sep 20, 03:46
Makes sense but from what I've seen only the Atlas Sentinel has a big enough cargo hold (34 K) for efficient use as a trader.
Nomad Sentinel has the same cargo capacity. Used a great many of them in my Argon game as my default freighter (think I ended up with over 70 of them by the end of it), though did have a completely self-sufficient shipyard in that game so could build as many as I wanted for essentially nothing. Nomad Sentinel was the very first blueprint I purchased. However the smaller capacity XL's also do an acceptable job as traders. Early part of my current Split game built up a trade fleet of 6 Monitors (29k cargo) & they did fine. Full cargo of, say, Antimatter Converters was still worth around 800k profit. Not quite as much as I could get with the Nomads in my previous game, but still a reasonably big pile of cash for a single trade run.

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Re: Concept: large/XL ships only?

Post by Gavrushka » Sun, 20. Sep 20, 12:07

GCU Grey Area wrote:
Sun, 20. Sep 20, 09:41
dtpsprt wrote:
Sun, 20. Sep 20, 03:46
Makes sense but from what I've seen only the Atlas Sentinel has a big enough cargo hold (34 K) for efficient use as a trader.
Nomad Sentinel has the same cargo capacity. Used a great many of them in my Argon game as my default freighter (think I ended up with over 70 of them by the end of it), though did have a completely self-sufficient shipyard in that game so could build as many as I wanted for essentially nothing. Nomad Sentinel was the very first blueprint I purchased. However the smaller capacity XL's also do an acceptable job as traders. Early part of my current Split game built up a trade fleet of 6 Monitors (29k cargo) & they did fine. Full cargo of, say, Antimatter Converters was still worth around 800k profit. Not quite as much as I could get with the Nomads in my previous game, but still a reasonably big pile of cash for a single trade run.
After having just lost another Shuyaku to FAF, I'm building an initial 10 of these, and will have a fleet of Cerberus on each. Will pension off all my L traders in due course, and replace with these. Thanks for the heads up.

But it just goes to underline something. - The game is missing a category of *genuine* XL freighter. - It doesn't have to have a bigger capacity by much, just more shielding an M port, and maybe an L turret or two.
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leoriq
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Re: Concept: large/XL ships only?

Post by leoriq » Sun, 20. Sep 20, 21:44

jlehtone wrote:
Sun, 20. Sep 20, 00:06
One Shuyaku and five Demeters have about same amount of cargobay. Trading that amount of cargo with one station, the L will get sightly better average price. One lump vs small chunks.
Between theorycrafting and actual experimental data, I always choice experimental data.
GCU Grey Area wrote:
Sun, 20. Sep 20, 01:45
For me it's the durability of L, & particularly XL ships, which is the big draw. The sort of ships which, if they call for help, there's a decent chance they're still intact when help arrives.
I use only split ships now. Boas and Alligators always escape unscathed.
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Raevyan
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Re: Concept: large/XL ships only?

Post by Raevyan » Sun, 20. Sep 20, 22:47

Aren’t those XL Aux ships super slow? Can’t imagine that they would be able to ship stuff fast enough.

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Re: Concept: large/XL ships only?

Post by jlehtone » Sun, 20. Sep 20, 22:59

leoriq wrote:
Sun, 20. Sep 20, 21:44
jlehtone wrote:
Sun, 20. Sep 20, 00:06
One Shuyaku and five Demeters have about same amount of cargobay. Trading that amount of cargo with one station, the L will get sightly better average price. One lump vs small chunks.
Between theorycrafting and actual experimental data, I always choice experimental data.
I have Shuyaku and I have Demeters. MORTing them all.
The Shuyaku does buy and sell 3700 Hull Parts with single transactions.
The first Demeter gets/sells 790 Parts with the same price that Shuyaku gets, but at least the fifth M tends to trade at clearly worse terms (unless offers are really huge). Hence the average for 5*790 is worse that the price of 1*3700.
That is theory supported by experimental observations.

However, I presume captainradish may not have planned MORT-only empire. Station- and auto-traders most likely have other factors that affect their behaviour. My hypothesis about those is that they are a bridge that I'll cross, if I get to it. :roll:
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dash1
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Re: Concept: large/XL ships only?

Post by dash1 » Tue, 22. Sep 20, 02:23

XL Aux are way too slow.. :(

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Re: Concept: large/XL ships only?

Post by GCU Grey Area » Tue, 22. Sep 20, 03:20

dash1 wrote:
Tue, 22. Sep 20, 02:23
XL Aux are way too slow.. :(
Not necessarily...
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dholmstr
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Re: Concept: large/XL ships only?

Post by dholmstr » Tue, 22. Sep 20, 09:28

One thing with bigger ships is upgrades. Say you have 5 M vs 1 L it is cheaper to put one engine upgrade and hull upgrade on that 1 ship. You might even go for better grades just because of that.

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Re: Concept: large/XL ships only?

Post by GCU Grey Area » Tue, 22. Sep 20, 10:57

dholmstr wrote:
Tue, 22. Sep 20, 09:28
One thing with bigger ships is upgrades. Say you have 5 M vs 1 L it is cheaper to put one engine upgrade and hull upgrade on that 1 ship. You might even go for better grades just because of that.
Certainly the case in my game. Nothing but the best for my fleet of XL MORTs, purple Slingshot engine & Nanotube chassis mods, while the L freighters working for my stations have to manage with basic green mods - Nudger engine & Polisher chassis mods which make them just about fast enough to outrun an FAF Rattlesnake on conventional drives which they're waiting for travel mode to kick in.

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Re: Concept: large/XL ships only?

Post by Nort The Fragrent » Tue, 22. Sep 20, 20:36

For those dangerous places I use the Raptor as a we'll defended trader.
But then I have Billions in loot, so can afford to be opulent.
Plus they look so cool lumbering around, with a purpose.

Got sick of my traders getting killed off, so went huge.
No one messes with my fleet of Raptors.
:)

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