Demeter vanguard vs Hermes vanguard

[Max Horo]

Demeter has 7900 cargo vs 7100 hermes, but 9% less top and travel speed.
What is more important for autotrade?

[conrado.lacerda]

Demeter Sentinel.

[Max Horo]

Originally posted by conrado.lacerda:

Demeter Sentinel.

Isn't it too slow?

[conrado.lacerda]

The cargo capacity more than makes up for it. Also, if the trader often uses a highway such as the big ring, its max speed becomes almost irrelevant.

[conrado.lacerda]

If you really want speed, check the Split medium trader (Boa); if you want amazing cargo capacity, check the Vulture Sentinel from MIN.

[Azunai]

I'd always go for the Sentinel version for every cargo or mining ship. Demeter Sentinel is my favorite trader overall.

[joeball123]

Originally posted by Max Horo:

Demeter has 7900 cargo vs 7100 hermes, but 9% less top and travel speed.
What is more important for autotrade?

There isn't a universally-correct answer; how you're setting up your traders matters, as does what the market looks like. Fill Shortages and Advanced/Expert Auto-Trade are more likely to benefit from high cargo capacity than Local Auto-Trade or Repeat Order trading, (over-)saturated markets tend to result in overstocked suppliers and under-utilized freighters, and certain goods such as foodstuffs are generally not demanded in sufficient volume to merit a high-capacity freighter even when AI stations are completely out of stock.

Some other things which may be worth considering:
- I find Vanguards to be marginally better at escaping from pirates or other attackers than the corresponding Sentinels.
- Faction relations gain from trade doesn't care about either trade volume or trade value, so small, fast freighters are slightly better in this regard than large, slow freighters.
- Traders buying from your own stations can benefit from setting a minimum price at the station that's greater than the minimum price for whatever wares that the station produces, as this tends to make it more likely that the buyer wants enough of whatever you're selling to fill up the freighter.
- If you're operating in Avarice, fast freighters may be preferable to slow ones since high speed slightly improves their likelihood of getting out of the system before a Tide hits. Having said that, I don't find it worth operating S or M ships in Avarice without hazard damage reduction modifications.

[SirProsik]

I would not use an M trading ship for automation as it will get attacked by pirates too often. Capturing an SCA Heron E and a few minotaur SCA captured escorts might be enough :)
The Pilot you leveled up to do auto trading is a bit difficult to obtain to put them in an M IMO.

Leveling the pilot up in say a discoverer (which usually does not attract attention) is decent though you will lose credits with distribute wares.

[Gibbo]

Yeah I use Frogs. If you don't have your own shipyard to build them yourself then look around for cheap couriers. Not as good as Frogs, but will do the job and quickly raise rep with all factions near your station. The more you use the quicker the rep rises. You'll lose some. Quite a few actually, but you'll lose M class as well and that hurts more.

I normally have 100 Frogs assigned as traders on my shipyards. Any factions nearby will be +20 rep in less than an hour, my transaction log on the station will just be pages and pages of small profit from my Frogs which quickly adds up and they even fetch stuff for terraforming. Out of that 100 I'll probably lose 20? No matter where you are in the X universe there will always be pirates near.

If I cannot use Frogs (they are expensive to buy) then I use the cheapest courier from the ANT wharf which is the sentinal version.

[Konril]

The initial question does kind of scream "context" to me. I haven't seen people posting any lists that compare the traders with their price tag attached. The Demeter and Hermes Vanguard are probably the best two M class traders you can get from the Alliance wharf, possibly. Without your own wharf shopping anywhere else is a waste as the Alliance of the Word isn't constantly depleting their supplies of resources, and driving up prices, to fuel the major factions' war machines. I only wish there was such a convenient alternative for the mining ships as well. The Split Boa may be the best performing trader per ship. But if I can get two Demeter or Hermes class for the same price, then that seems to me to be a much better option.

Regarding auto trade, the AI has a built in delay after each trip to decide what to do next that is directly tied to the crew's (or manager's) skill. This tends to reduce the advantage the Hermes has in speed as you are more often losing time to the (deliberately) indecisive AI. Demeter is better in this specific case since the better cargo capacity means that you can do more per trip and lose less time to the AI's indecisiveness. But honestly the difference is going to be hard to notice. It's unfortunate that the other race's ships are a little too slow. Even with the increased time loss for the AI, the Demeter and Hermes are still better than larger capacity ships when not on the superhighway.

Large quantities of Frogs doesn't sound like all that bad of an idea. Costs a lot more mined resources, but a lot less in personnel. Actually, I think I might want to try this with Magpie ships, from the Alliance wharf, as hiring the crew for M traders does get a bit expensive compared to the ships themselves.

[Gibbo]

Originally posted by Konril:

The initial question does kind of scream "context" to me. I haven't seen people posting any lists that compare the traders with their price tag attached. The Demeter and Hermes Vanguard are probably the best two M class traders you can get from the Alliance wharf, possibly. Without your own wharf shopping anywhere else is a waste as the Alliance of the Word isn't constantly depleting their supplies of resources, and driving up prices, to fuel the major factions' war machines. I only wish there was such a convenient alternative for the mining ships as well. The Split Boa may be the best performing trader per ship. But if I can get two Demeter or Hermes class for the same price, then that seems to me to be a much better option.

Regarding auto trade, the AI has a built in delay after each trip to decide what to do next that is directly tied to the crew's (or manager's) skill. This tends to reduce the advantage the Hermes has in speed as you are more often losing time to the (deliberately) indecisive AI. Demeter is better in this specific case since the better cargo capacity means that you can do more per trip and lose less time to the AI's indecisiveness. But honestly the difference is going to be hard to notice. It's unfortunate that the other race's ships are a little too slow. Even with the increased time loss for the AI, the Demeter and Hermes are still better than larger capacity ships when not on the superhighway.

Large quantities of Frogs doesn't sound like all that bad of an idea. Costs a lot more mined resources, but a lot less in personnel. Actually, I think I might want to try this with Magpie ships, from the Alliance wharf, as hiring the crew for M traders does get a bit expensive compared to the ships themselves.

I think I've used Magpies and they're ok? Any small courier ship will work. I mean if a pirate faces a high spec Frog or a cheap courier the outcome is quite often the same. But Frogs do have that extra shielding and decent cargo space and speed so I reckon they are the best bang for buck but only when you can build them yourself and don't forget you will always lose some no matter what you choose. I do have some M traders as traders help with terraforming, but you don't control what they buy and sell the station manager does although overall they have been feeding my terraforming projects relentlessly. When you start terraforming on your HQ all your profits go out the window.

[Persony Person]

The Vanguard variant and possibly the Hermes (though I don't see the point in the Hermes tbh) are probably better suited for personal trading. The better mobility will help you far more than it will ever help the AI.

For Autotrading, go for the Demeter Sentinel variant if you can. The speed limitations are less than the potential profit that you can gain from the extra cargo space. I will say though, once you've figured out which sectors in Paranid space are the dangerous ones (Trinity Sanctum VII, Lasting Vengeance, Pious Mists IV and XI to give some examples), then you'd want to replace the Demeter in these sectors with a Helios E. The Priates/Kha'ak will rarely (if ever) touch L class freighters.

[Max Horo]

Originally posted by Persony Person:

which sectors in Paranid space are the dangerous ones

Yeah, I have problems with pirates in these sectors already. Thanks for the advice guys!

[braman]

I got on almost all stations Dolphin`s they do good job , its checked, for bad sectors with piracy use Cormorant Vanguard. Check maybe You will swap for those 2

https://www.qsna.eu/x4/ships

[Leto]

there are many, many X veterans who are obsessed with the game and have spent ages creating Excel spreadsheets with complicated calculations
the result, in trading, speed is the most important thing, it brings the most profit in a given time
what you make of it is up to you, but I always take the ships that have the best average cargo space/speed, regardless of whether they are miners or traders

[SiliconStew]

Originally posted by Leto:

there are many, many X veterans who are obsessed with the game and have spent ages creating Excel spreadsheets with complicated calculations
the result, in trading, speed is the most important thing, it brings the most profit in a given time
what you make of it is up to you, but I always take the ships that have the best average cargo space/speed, regardless of whether they are miners or traders

I feel the recommendations being repeated in this thread haven't accounted for the fact that with the engine changes in 7.5 all of these tests and lists people had been using as the basis to claim which traders are "best" are now invalid.