Most sellable ship?

[Jimmy C]

What's the most profitable ship you can make from the PHQ out of the raw materials fed to it? I'm looking for something that, despite the markdown at the shipyard, can let you sell for a better price than selling the raw materials on the open market.

[Deathifier]

I don't think ships are the thing to look at, the production times are so long that if looking at most value per time unit I think ships fail miserably.

I did some quick math when looking at a similar topic of what should the HQ build to maximise earnings (for the 100 billion credits achievement) and the two I focused on were boarding pods and the TOA's.

For Boarding pods you make around 1361 credits per second (based on average value), you can always sell the pods at average value, but the average value of the input materials is only slightly less than the output so it's more a conversion of value to a more easily saleable product.

For TOA's things look much better.
~59.5m credit value input, ~4.5 hour build time, and the TOA kits sell for minimum value (203.3m) when on board a TL being sold at a shipyard (at least if you have max rep with the race owning the shipyard, I did not test for lower rep).
That means you produce 12678 credits per second, with input costs being ~30% of that, so a nice profit overall.

Now the TOA values are a bit bugged, as the minimum value is higher than the maximum value (i.e. the values are swapped), but even if that was fixed you should still get ~197.6m per TOA.

For comparison the only capital you can make in about the same time as a TOA is a Xenon J, which takes about 4hrs.
It has ~23.1m in input costs and sells for ~25.7m at a shipyard of a race you have max rep with (~23.5m if you only have +5 green bars).
So with costs being 90% of the sale value, you needing max rep to get that sale value, and the value produced per second being ~1749 credits, it's a bit better than making pods but not by much and you still have to get the ship to the right shipyard.


So from a pure value perspective it looks like you should make TOA's, load them on a TL (use a cheap one, or go board one from your least liked faction), and sell the TL at the race you have the best relations with.

For added complexity you can consider making and using boarding pods, and selling the capped ships, vs. making TOA's.

[Jimmy C]

Thanks for the analysis. I was wondering if there was a more profitable way to dispose of the materials from my production complex. Seems like converting them to ships won't be worth it. I'll stick to building pods for boarding.
If it's a matter of what to sell for the most credits, I've seen EBCs being recommended as the most promising and am testing it out myself.

[BrigandPhantos77]

What's the most profitable ship you can make from the PHQ out of the raw materials fed to it? I'm looking for something that, despite the markdown at the shipyard, can let you sell for a better price than selling the raw materials on the open market.

Honestly, I've used Excel to figure this. Most of the time the profit, if there is one, it's like 10,000 credits. My suggestion is to buy used ships for sale, then sell those. Less time consuming, and if you get a Drone Carrier, it becomes fast to repair those used ships. If you want to know the profit potential, buy one for sale sitting at a shipyard, try to get them less than 90% hull, then check what the sell price is un-repaired. I've seen M3s sellable immediately for double what I paid. When you repair it, that value goes up significantly. Especially on the bigger ships. This is also how I acquire many of my BP at my PHQ. Plus it's the best way to get a few of the Variants that are not for sale at any shipyards.

I bought both Consus and Moa's for 2 - 3 million. Repaired they sell for 6 million easy. And if you have an Ozias TL, you can move them easy as well.

Oh, and building at the PHQ is cheaper than purchasing at a shipyard. Especially if you mobile mine Silicon and Ore. Plus it's obviously the only way to get a hold of additional, of a few ship types. As in, it is definitely worth it to produce your own. Just not for selling.