Anyone else use the their Erlking as a cargo ship?

[oddgit]

I tricked out my erlking to be very fast and because of its very large cargo capacity i have been using it to move station building stuff to areas i want to expand to. I still use it as a combat ship, but i found it to be super helpful in station building.

[LameFox]

It's certainly occurred to me. I think if I ever take it early on in a game I'd use it for high volume manual trade runs. Though it would have to be really quite early because soon everything is automated and even with that volume it would hardly be worth bothering.

[gorgofdoom]

Yep. I used it manually to clear out a sector, then two more by order. Then decided to go back to using a few hundred nova's and an armada of Syns... I suppose mostly for aesthetic reasons I don't use it.

That said: it can hold just about a whole defense station in it's cargo hold while soloing every the xenon in the universe at the same time. It's a little OP

[GCU Grey Area]

Interesting idea, however still put off by the poor turn rates of XL ships. Instead tend to use an Odysseus-E as a ludicrously fast 'freighter' for e.g. running cargoes of ship parts past Xenon forces to the Yaki shipyard. Although it's own cargo capacity is nothing special, fill it's docks & hanger with a bunch of Magpies & Vultures, & you can end up with a combined cargo capacity of around 70k...

[oddgit]

Hah yep, that is how i use it. as i am capturing sectors it and another cargo ship have my beachhead platform supplies, drone materials and everything.
i also used to to build out stations outside of the 5 hex range of my core area.

[oddgit]

Interesting idea, however still put off by the poor turn rates of XL ships. Instead tend to use an Odysseus-E as a ludicrously fast 'freighter' for e.g. running cargoes of ship parts past Xenon forces to the Yaki shipyard. Although it's own cargo capacity is nothing special, fill it's docks & hanger with a bunch of Magpies & Vultures, & you can end up with a combined cargo capacity of around 70k...

That is a cool idea! i May try doing that, i never though of doing smuggling runs to the Yaki before. I always let the xenon take a bunch of Zyarth space while building up my empire, then go clear them out and work on Yaki rep.

[PV_]

That is a cool idea! i May try doing that, i never though of doing smuggling runs to the Yaki before.

I'm using Prometheus with "ignore" respond and proper waypoints on repeat orders for that purpose. Delivering food and medicine as I'm draining Yaki crew for my staff. It solely brought me from +10 to +21 Yaki rep already and not a single time yelled for help.

[GCU Grey Area]

That is a cool idea! i May try doing that, i never though of doing smuggling runs to the Yaki before. I always let the xenon take a bunch of Zyarth space while building up my empire, then go clear them out and work on Yaki rep.

Don't like to do too much damage to the Xenon. In most games Xenon station demolition missions are an important source of weapon mods for me & a strong Xenon faction means they have plenty of resources to swiftly replace the stations I need to destroy to complete the missions. I consider the Xenon to be a precious resource that needs to be carefully managed & conserved (& sometimes fed the occasional other faction so they can truly prosper).

Consequently during my Terran Defector game (Terran Cadet start but sided with the Yaki) when I wanted enough Yaki S&Ms to fill a couple of carriers, I needed a blockade runner to supply the Yaki shipyard without needing to clear the route beforehand. Odysseus-E carrying a squadron of S/M freighters proved ideal for the task. Incidentally, also tried Zeus-E in the role. However, although it could carry a lot more Vultures, Zeus-E was far less capable of fighting Xenon fleets. Often the really fun part of each trade run was at the Yaki shipyard end - inevitably had to slow down at that point to launch the freighters & that usually meant fighting all the Xenon ships in the sector while the Yaki shipyard turned the parts I'd brought them into new ships for my fleet.

Guess Erlking would also have worked well in the same role, however as mentioned in my earlier post I'm really not a fan of XLs due to their poor manoeuvrability.

[oddgit]

I got pretty lucky with my engine and chassis mod rolls.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/ ... 3143069557

[Mr.Killer]

Did occur to me that it is usefull to pick stuff up, but besides the unlimited picking up items from fighters you kill next to your Erlking, the limit of items that an Erkling can store is limited, not only by size but also the kind of material. Ore for instance would not be picked up by the ship, so, to go from station to newly build site, you still need another cargo ship that can handle all items needed for construction, or am I wrong here?

[Nanook]

All station building materials are of type 'container'. Ore is 'solid' and is not used to build stations.

And the largest freighter in the game, cargo-wise, is the Incarcatura Sentinel, which holds 54,000, while the Erlking holds 56,000.