[X3AP] are TMs useful?

[Space100]

I never used the TM military transport, they can be useful? if so, what tasks?
Thank you.

[Sinxar]

I like them early game to carry around my ships. They are also great for jumpdrive haulers.

I like to carry an explorer/fast transport M5 like a Kestral along with my current main M3 for combat. Then use the last two slots to move captured fighters around faster.

For jumpdrive transport duty I just load it up with ecells and have something like 4x M5s to transfer the drive and ecells to the newly boarded capital.

[RAVEN.myst]

I consider the TM to be a must-have utility craft - extremely useful. In the early game, it serves as a mobile base of operations. Also, everything that Sinxar said

[Space100]

yes i unsertand, in early game it is true a good base of operation, carry personal M3 and then use jumpdrive superior distance of the TM.

I now go around with my M7C (grifon sentinel) (M7 carrier) then i have miss to use TM in early game.

So i presume now in my situation, the TM are not useful. What a pity!

[RAVEN.myst]

As Sinxar explained, they are still handy in the later game, as ways to transport JumpDrives. For example, imagine you capture a capital ship but it has no JumpDrive - you bring in your TM with several fighters with JDs onboard, and you swap some drives around to give one to your new capital ship. Likewise, if you order a new ship from a shipyard, you can deliver a JD to it by means of a TM with docked fighters with JDs. Also, because TMs are faster and better protected than TSs, they make a good ship to fetch weapons and shields for new capital ships - it's faster and cheaper on energy than having your new carrier or destroyer flying all over the universe from one equipment dock to the next; also, capital ships can't dock at factories, but TMs can, so a TM can get you a weapon that is hard to get at an equipment dock (for example, Cluster Flak Array), or get a large number of a particular gun for cheaper at a factory that is full or nearly full.

For the same reasons (speed and shielding), TMs can be assigned to stations that either buy or sell high-value, small-volume wares - for example, fetching crystals to a solar power plant, or delivering the finished product from a crystal or microchip factory.

A TM with a cargo life support system can also be used to remotely collect marines from various military outposts and marine training barracks - a TP can do this, too, but a TM has a larger cargobay, so can carry more jump fuel, making it a bit more convenient (though it can carry fewer marines - however, it's quite unlikely that you would find more than 8 marines with good fight skills on a single round trip.)

Another possible use is to deploy satellites remotely, especially when replacing them, without having to personally go to the necessary location - the TM is fairly secure, moderately fast (unless it's a Teladi one!) has decent operating range, and enough cargo capacity to carry a substantial number of satellites at a time.

From a combat perspective, in the late game a TM can fulfill various purposes. It can serve as a rearming vessel, bringing ammo and/or missiles to wherever you are, or even modest refuelling. Alternatively, it can serve as a fairly formidable assault platform - four M3+ heavy fighters can be backed up by a considerable number of drones, for example (and the TM also carries replacement missiles/ammo for the fighters.)

[rashak]

I can't live without them

adding to the above:

- called in after a "sector pacification" to collect the spoils of war while you go to bring peace somewhere else

- they are in general faster than TSes, albeit with smaller cargo space, which makes them nice CLS1-2

- perfect boarding training ground...if you are not the owner

If you want to get dirty with fleets handling:

- perfect to refuel a squadron from the mid-front area of the battlefield while the TLs are safely behind

- perfect to quickly deploy/retrieve a flight of whatever kind you wish (interceptors, light bombers, etc...)

imho it's the more versatile ship class and definitely one of the most useful

[Rive]

So i presume now in my situation, the TM are not useful. What a pity!

It still has good shielding and speed so it'll do fine as an automatic support craft.

Just set it up to automatically maintain e-cell, missile or ammo levels on your carrier.

[Sirrobert]

Also great to fetch replacement fighters for your carriers

[ancienthighway]

TMs have plenty of use in later game.

Don't use a sledge hammer to drive a nail to hang a picture.

1. One of your complexes is being attacked. A task force of 1 or 2 TMs with 4 fighters each and an M6 or 2 jumps in rapidly and resolves the issue.

2. In fleet operations, that same task force above can be set to protect your bigger carriers, missile frigates and bombers. Is that protection needed all the time? No, but the when need it and it's not there, you'll wish is was there.

[Honved]

Ever get a mission to retrieve a ship, and find that the fighter is in such pathetic shape that it can't reach the mission giver in time? Either you can eject and spend several precious minutes trying to patch it up to where it can fly fast enough to meet the deadline, or you can have it dock with your TM, jump or fly the TM to just shy of the target station, and unload the fighter to let it dock.

A TM carries about 3x the shielding as a TS, and about 4x the weaponry. Need to deliver something into an area with occasional pirates? Send the TM, and load a couple of M3 fighters for assistance if needed. The TM itself will pack as much punch as the fighters.

Unfortunately, a TM or TP can't accept a mission to chase down dropped wares for some odd reason, but it can carry a couple of "Gophers" to do that (Go 'fer this, go 'fer that), and provide storage for anything collected while the M5s make another run. This works remarkably well while you're Out of Sector, but so-so while In Sector due to the ships sometimes flying in eternal circles around the items to be collected. A Disco or Fujin makes a great "gopher", since they can carry up to Medium size cargo items, while a Pegasus or Harrier can only carry Small cargo.

Add in various other minor tasks like ferrying Marines (which a TS can't do), and they're far from useless at the minimum, and can be tremendously effective as a very affordable "mobile base" and light carrier in the early game, if used properly.

[Space100]

thanks all you.


ok,ok TMs are useful yet. I going to try tasks you are suggestions.

[Timsup2nothin]

If I'm not to late:

Personal TM: Carries my fighter and my scout craft. Scout for asteroid scans, fighter for the obvious, TM itself with Split turbo for courier missions and transporting personnel who aren't picky. Extra disco to act as a "gear locker" for the spare jump drive used for ship returns of larger ships. Empty docking bay for ship return of smaller ships. This is "mission control."

Then I use TMs by the bunch to sort my property list. Instead of rooting through dozens of traders looking for "that CLS guy trading e-cells north of Argon Prime" I just look at the TM named Argon Prime Trader HQ. All my independent traders in the region are homeported to that TM, so I can select them through "owned ships." My property list doesn't show ships with a homeport, so clutter is reduced 90%, at least.

TMs are good rapid response. In the middle of something and a lame little squad of pirates is attacking one of your stations? A TM standing by with four heavy fighters, a jump drive, and a hold full of e-cells can generally solve that problem in a couple keystrokes and you barely have to look away from whatever you are doing.

If you enjoy fleet combat, TMs are cool. TM with four matched heavy fighters docked. Give the fighters "attack target of" orders, using the TM. When you order the TM to attack a target the fighters will launch and get to it first, all four at about the same time. Easier than giving four separate orders, and more likely for the fighters to arrive in a bunch instead of one by one, so they hit more effectively.

[Sirrobert]

Then I use TMs by the bunch to sort my property list. Instead of rooting through dozens of traders looking for "that CLS guy trading e-cells north of Argon Prime" I just look at the TM named Argon Prime Trader HQ. All my independent traders in the region are homeported to that TM, so I can select them through "owned ships." My property list doesn't show ships with a homeport, so clutter is reduced 90%, at least.

Now that's an interesting trick. Personally I would have used a cheap station for that

[Timsup2nothin]

Then I use TMs by the bunch to sort my property list. Instead of rooting through dozens of traders looking for "that CLS guy trading e-cells north of Argon Prime" I just look at the TM named Argon Prime Trader HQ. All my independent traders in the region are homeported to that TM, so I can select them through "owned ships." My property list doesn't show ships with a homeport, so clutter is reduced 90%, at least.

Now that's an interesting trick. Personally I would have used a cheap station for that

I've done it that way too. I liked the TMs better because there are more options for sorting the ships that are still on the property list than there are for stations. I could do a 'list by alphabetical' and have all the ships named "HQ CLS <whatever region>" be all together and all the "HQ Salvaged <whatever>" (yes, scrappy freighters have their own headquarters, scrappy BIG freighters have another, and scrappy small craft have their own too) would be all together.

Besides, you can always stick a CLS pilot in the TM and have it doing useful stuff at the same time. My salvaged ship headquarters ships can usually be found making small freight runs that keep shield fabs supplied and picking up the shields they produce so that when I get around to fixing up my scrappy ships I have shielding to work with.

[Sirrobert]

Eeew salvaged ships. I always get rid of those ASAP. Nice ordered homogony for me. All my freighters are the same type for the job (UTs are usually the super freighter variant, but all those are the same type aswel)

[Timsup2nothin]

Eeew salvaged ships. I always get rid of those ASAP. Nice ordered homogony for me. All my freighters are the same type for the job (UTs are usually the super freighter variant, but all those are the same type aswel)

Proving yet again that there are more ways to play than one. I hardly ever buy new freighters. Make that almost never. Whatever kind I need, i always seem to have one somewhere by the time I need it.

[RAVEN.myst]

Eeew salvaged ships. I always get rid of those ASAP. Nice ordered homogony for me. All my freighters are the same type for the job

Hehehe! I play the same way (except when playing a pure piracy game) - I like my trade fleet (and my combat fleets, too) neat and tidy (On top of that, again with the exception of pure piracy playthroughs, I always restrict myself to one race or faction, which further excludes most salvaged/"second-owner" ships)

[Honved]

Eeew salvaged ships. I always get rid of those ASAP. Nice ordered homogony for me. All my freighters are the same type for the job (UTs are usually the super freighter variant, but all those are the same type aswel)

I understand the homogenous fleet aspect, and I've done that in some games. In others, I'll use a ship that matches the race of the territory where they operate, and start them at a station of that race so they pilot's race matches the ship's as well. Some of those may be salvage, generally repaired with the suit laser in the early stages of the game. By mid-game, my time is too valuable to spend gradually hosing down a ship with some funky negative-damage weapon, so I buy what I need.

What I don't understand is using a bigger ship for your UTs. Normally, I've got a bunch of "Local Traders", sector traders with a range greater than 0, operating within specific areas. They handle the routine bulk cargo, and some of those get the big ships for carrying Ore and E-Cells in quantity. The few Universal Traders I do run get the faster ships, so they can get to the lucrative deals in smaller volume high-end goods before the competition. If they're hauling bulk resources, their capabilities are mostly wasted. Besides, how often do you see a UT or ST with more than 25% of the cargo bay full?

Normally, I run about 10 LTs or STs, as well as 5-10 CAGs, for each UT, and I STILL lose more UTs than all the other types combined (blacklisting a sector won't stop that UT from passing through it). UTs are a high risk, high reward assets, while STs/LTs are more like the basic "bread and butter" of my trade fleet. I can control exactly which sectors the LTs will operate in through home sector and range settings, and prevent them from ever straying into Pirate or Xenon sectors (aside from the one or two "incidents" per game where a hostile wandering patrol attacks them and they randomly jump into some sector where they don't belong).

[ancienthighway]

When it comes to a transport fleet, I use what's available. I buy every TS and TP I run across on the used ship market. I only buy new transports for special use or if I'm not finding used fast enough for my current needs.

Speed and steering are always maxed. Rarely will I add any cargo expansion upgrades. Those upgrades and triple or even quadruple the cost of the ship.

Combat feet support transports are one of the few exceptions. I'll purchase some new Mistrels and fully upgrade steering speed and cargo. My current combat fleet consists of an M2, M7M, 3 M6s, 2 TMs and 44 M3s, all set to use missiles frequently. It's takes a lot of missiles to rearm after a major conflict.

Bigger is not better when it comes to trading transports.

1. The bigger transports are slow. While the AI rarely upgrades ships, some NPC transports will be faster than an upgraded big transport.

2. While you can buy just about any bio, food, or mineral and fill up a big transport, there are only a few wares that will buy the full hold. The AI for Mk3 traders doesn't appear to look for new deals in emptying the hold and you have to manually find consumers to empty the ship.

3. Because of #2, the Mk3 AI tends to limit buys to what the consuming station needs, so big transports tend to fly around mostly empty.

However, big transports are ideal for CLS1 and CLS2 trading.

Using CLS1, I can have a Super Freighter or bigger pick up multiple products from multiple owned stations/complexes and deliver them to multiple owned stations/complexes. I can fill the biggest possible hold and not worry about left over wares that had to be manually traded.

CLS2 allows similar techniques but you aren't limited to owned stations. Timsup2nothing has several lengthy posts about using CLS2. He has closed down almost all NPC trading in a region, and those that do make it through either join he fleet are permanently put out of business.

[Honved]

Agree with 90% of what you said. The one exception is about cargo upgrades. The first couple of upgrades are close to free, and it pays to expand your hold by at least a few spaces. As the price per space increases, it becomes increasingly less practical to upgrade it further. You can buy a lot of extra cargo slots for the 500,000 cost of another Mk.3 Trade package, a ship, and all the shields and accessories for it. I generally add around 50-150 spaces to most of my freighters; beyond that it starts to get more practical to buy another ship instead.

Same goes for M5s, where I often use them to collect salvage and dropped wares. An extra slot is cheap, until you get more than a few. Still, if it costs 1000 credits to add another slot and I manage to salvage one more Firelance missile because of it, I'm more than 1000 credits ahead. The value of a cargo slot depends on what you're carrying in it.