What do I do with the freighter?

[Nonomori]

I recently just got myself a freighter, but I'm not really sure what to do with it? I know there's these missions I can do with frigates but what else is it used for other than extra storage?

[Jaggid Edje]

Freighters have the best potential hyperjump range in the game since the Waypoint update.
So for people who like to travel long distances and who care about the jump range when doing it, it's a solid primary vehicle for travel.

It makes a good mobile base; some of us use it as our primary base. Some people use it even as their ONLY base.

It makes a good place to grow things, if you want to get into the growing side of the game, either just because you want to or because you want to support a Fusion Igniter/Stasis Device production chain.

It looks cool if you get a nice one.

But mostly, it's great for having mobile access to your storage containers at all times.

[Lindy Bomber]

All of the above plus it is where your ships will respawn.

[Johnny in the Clouds]

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2629903485
Big time saver, build the scanner room and a trade terminal room. Use the galactic map to hop between systems and you can freely scan all planets without having to individually scan each planet using your space ship.

Buy and sell trade goods directly on the freighter to make enormous amounts of units following economic trade routes between appropriate system economies. For example buy at a power energy economy and sell goods to a mining economy etc. The trade goods info hint at where best to sell them and use the economy scanner to select the next correct system to sell. The massive storage capacity enables you to buy trade goods in bulk and sell for millions.
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2846004729
It's not the only way to trade in the game but it actually is fun since the endurance update added NPCs on freighters (your pilots and crew) it now has a good vibe of activity and you can interact with all your specialists and crew.

Install the matter beam and freighter and cargo storage is available on the surface of a planet wherever your freighter is called.
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2857725682
Build a portal room and you can travel to bases. Easily have a constant collection of plants to farm high value items. The frigate missions bring back items to increase your living ship capacity and inventories if you have one. Manage your squadron pilots and frigates. Use the explorer frigates to reveal Ancient Ruin sites to loot valuable treasures and relics.

The stellar extractor rooms will collect resources like gases or metals when near planets at different rates. Over time they can collect a lot of useful valuable material.
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2857725580
Use the huge storage space of the freighters to off load your loot from pirate raids or freighter raids.

You can travel with your friends in a group to the same destination when you warp.
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2838312168
You can build a massive, absolutely massive interior sixteen floors I think and exterior platforms. Make a living breathing freighter for your crew. Freighters are easy to call into existence and land on with your ship. You can also buy and sell from landing NPCs evening buying their ships. You freighter also is central to repairing your frigates.

It's fun to teleport to your frigates and wander around them or even jump off them,

The freighter is also a place to escape to from attacks. The expedition focused on freighters, introduced new warp drive tech not yet in the main game that uses 'black hole' tech to travel.
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2669585293
Just a few useful things for freighters. They are a useful cog in the game like your own base or settlements to earn units and progress and develop your character and store and improve your fleet of starships. They look fantastic too. Other threads have more info on them.

[Zak]

I was asking the same question few weeks ago. I acquired a freighter by luck and was caught by surprise, I didn't know what to do with it, it's not obvious at first.

By now I'm rather indifferent about freighters. Too much work to get one upgraded. I prefer ground bases, large mining outposts and biodomes for farming and I fly my starship everywhere, I can warp far enough with it. You can't take a freighter through a black hole, for instance, or I haven't been able to figure this out yet.

But there are some useful aspects of owning a freighter.

The Interstellar Scanner Room is super useful, the only reason I use my freighter pretty much. I wish it was available for starships, I wouldn't use a freighter then.

There is also the Stellar Extractor Room that will extract some gases and metals from space but it's awfully slow so not very useful, even thought you can build several of these. You can extract gases and minerals a lot faster by building extractors and silos in planetary bases.

You can summon a freighter at will once in space and land on it right away so you don't have to fly to a space station. If you have a Teleporter Room on your freighter this makes for quick travel between systems and your planetary bases. Since you can summon a freighter from anywhere, even 10,000 light years away, it makes it almost too easy. You can always have your resources on call. You can never run out of anything even if you find yourself in a system with no space station and no warp fuel left to go back. Just use the quick menu to call the big guns in:)

NPC pilots will land on your freighter, you can trade with them and buy ships from them. But you can have a trade terminal on your freighter too, just like in your ground base.

You will see all/most of your starships in your freighter's bay while you can only see one in your ground base unless you put in some effort to build more landing pads and summon your ships one by one, although they will eventually disappear from your base.

Or, it's a just a large storage container that follows you around or call it a mobile base if you will:)

And you can earn some rewards, rare items by running expeditions.

It's really down to your play style. Personally, I prefer the openness of planetary base to a confined space of a freighter or a space station. But if you spend enough time upgrading your freighter it will indeed make a very capable mobile base. You can do everything you can do in a ground base and some more with a freighter, except building on a freighter is more limited, I enjoy building bases more. But many players don't care about planetary bases, its a choice. All functions of a base are available to be built as freighter rooms including storage containers, refiners and biorooms. But you may do without a freighter altogether and have a fun game too. It's up to you.

Although, I'd love an Interstellar Scanner for my ship!

[Xautos]

freighters take a lot of investment and time to fix up right. if you manage to dredge up what you need to get the freighter in a good place, it can be useful, but ultimately it depends what you want off the freighter and if it can perform to the expectations you expect off it, like all the above written replies.

while a freighter is good at covering quite a bit of ground, it doesn't cover absolutely everything. at least that's one positive that freighters aren't self-sufficient and neither do i want them to be the full one-stop shop for everything.

[NZ.Zero]

TLDR: Look at the console; see the upgrades you can do?
They let you use your freighter as
- A portable farm
- A trading point without visiting stations
- An extra storage tab in your inventory when you're on a planet.
- a portable bank of refiners/ nutrient processors
- a portable exocraft summoning station.
- an easy way to manage all your ship inventoroes in one place.
- a roulette wheel for rare items (ie spend frigate fuel on missions, random stuff comes back)
- a ship with a very powerful warp drive.
- the best part: a system scanner that scans all the planets in a system at once. Amazingly useful for exploring.

[BlackWater]

Since they are harder to come by then honest politicians, I'd save the upgrade modules you find for your freighter for the hyper drive upgrades, specifically the red/green/blue star ones. Its nice to be able to summon the freighter to each place you go.

[RPG Gamer Man]

Freighters are good to do to send out frigates to missions. They make actually quite a bit of money for me, and also collect rare items on run. Be aware you need fuel for it, and watch the star levels. Eventually, you will have enough money to buy multiple frigates.

[EpicalSma]

Freighters are also very good for storage. If you have a certain upgrade (don't recall which one) you can access your core storage from anywhere and your storage containers if your freighter is in the same system as you.

[SharkPlush]

Hyperdrive upgrades and you can summon it on any planet for 0 cost, then summon any exocraft on any planet without building anything is the biggest tangible thing.

Didn't know it could do that for storage, nice.

[Zak]

Originally posted by yassy:

Hyperdrive upgrades and you can summon it on any planet for 0 cost, then summon any exocraft on any planet without building anything is the biggest tangible thing.

Didn't know it could do that for storage, nice.

Yup. If you're into exocraft, you can do that. Exocraft are good for finding caves. Start driving it in any direction and guaranteed within 15 seconds it will find a cave and fall into it But again, their scanners are useful.