Light merchant ship

[hurepoix]

And I will start with Large merchant ship Like most people I find Large ships disappointing, however I have a few of it, for personal usage mostly to spare me tedious micromanagement when I need large amount of goods.

But small ones ? Of course, often, when I look at my medium ships I see they trade only small quantity, so why not small ships ?

Are small ships cheaper ? no, it is the first surprise a small merchant ship cost about the same than a medium one.

-Regular speed ; second surprise small ships tend to be as fast or even slower than medium one.
-Agility ; it is not important but surprisingly small ships tend to be less agile than medium ones.
-Acceleration ; an other thing of poor importance for business ; here small ships always win.
Cruise speed is the only real advantage you can have with small ships. I say you can, because it is not obvious with teladi ones. However this advantage can be shortened with highway usage.

Just an example ; I compare in my shipyard the courier sentinel and hermes vanguard. hull cost is the same price and require almost the same number of component to build, despite ; Hermes hp is double and load capacity triple. Does it make sense ?

Imo balance is poor here. Is it possible to make small ship cheaper, or medium more expensive, increase light ship performance or decrease medium ones ? both or something else ? I dont know, but there is probably something to do for a better balance.

[Ghostwind]

wanted to try out S traders too, but after trying to outfitting one, i had the same thoughts as you... it makes no sense

[ghorlist]

I find that the Medium trade ships tend to be more defensive than the small ones. I can make the small ones work if I outfit it with a Travel engine so that it can outrun the pirates. For my stations small trade ships work well.

[dogshocker]

I only have one small trader, assigned to station supplies/trading. I also wonder at the stats on small ships.....they go slower !!!!! Without a doubt, I'd second the need for a bit of balancing. The next thing I found disappointing was vanilla frigates and heavy fighters...bit naff. I installed More Guns and it seemed more like what it should be to have heavy fighters and frigates.

[eMYNOCK]

small, medium and large transport ships have dedicated roles...

one benefit for small ships is that they almost every time can dock at a station because Docks usually support 6 small Docking Pads.

Medium Transports can haul more Cargo but it is not guaranteed that their Trade Partner has the capacities for fast Docking and undocking.

Large and Xtra Large Ships can transport even more but require Drones to load and unload their Cargo, they are best used when dealing with really bulky Goods or big ammounts of usual Items.

[hurepoix]

Originally posted by eMYNOCK:

one benefit for small ships is that they almost every time can dock at a station because Docks usually support 6 small Docking Pads.

I not sure dock capacity is an advantage. Worst that can happen with a medium ship is you will wait a very short time, and it is rare.

I know it for sure because I tried to neutralize HOP by saturation of its docks on both M/S and L/XL shipyards. The idea was to cut shipyard supply to forbide it to build ships. It succeed For L/XL only Where I docked ad vitam eternam 6 large miner ships (3 on each). However the 1M/6S docks just absorbed and stocked the myriads of discover and nemesis I sent.

[eMYNOCK]

hehe...

nice approach... and almost right too.

only thing you would have needed were way more ships, it is indeed possible to fill up the internal Hangars completely.

but as mentioned, this will need many, many ships.

[hurepoix]

I can believe it requires a horde, especially for the S/M shipyard where Fabrication bay can also be used as dock.
Anyway I can reasonably suppose we will never find in game a situation where a station will attract at the same time as many ship as I sent to the HOP.

For small ships, I still think tuning a bit values would balance small ships and add diversity in player merchant fleet. It is my feed back at least.

Dock saturation ; It is something, I myself considere as an abuse. Just paralysing XL HOP docks on its XL/L and M/S shipyards, HOP large merchant fleet was put off ( a dozen wait endlessly for a free place). May be a time out, after transaction end, that would automatically undock Large ships, could counter that.

[Pathogenic]

I have a mod which results in ship crew getting paid, and I have a personal rule that all ships I own must have max crew levels in order to perform their functions. So at least the way I play, larger ships with larger crews cost more to operate than smaller freighter with smaller crews.