Starter transport?

[Star Admiral Damon Nagasawa]

Any recommendations for a transport for a newer player? Pretty much all I want to do in this game, at least, early on, is just go around trading supplies between stations. Sadly, I have no clue what sort of ship to actually look for on the market while steadily raising cash for anything.

[Xenrek]

Originally posted by Briggs:

Any recommendations for a transport for a newer player? Pretty much all I want to do in this game, at least, early on, is just go around trading supplies between stations. Sadly, I have no clue what sort of ship to actually look for on the market while steadily raising cash for anything.

that depends, are you trading specific item types, or just whatever is possible? if it is specific items, i would look at the gallente haulers as they each have a MASSIVE dedicated hold for certain items, if its just whatever whenever, use the T1 haulers for each race (bestower,iteron,mammoth,badger i think those are right, been ages sicne i looked at industrials)

though honestly, for the sake of security, i would look at buying/reselling MASS quantities of items from one hub to another, calculate how much potential profit you have, then use Red Frog Freight, http://red-frog.org/jumps.php, that site will tell you how much a trip will cost as well as how much maximum cargo theyll transport.

Its safer, because all you have to do is set collateral to be slightly higher than the value of what you want transported, that way, if they DO lose it, you still make money, or at least recover your losses, but if they Do complete the trasnport, you have alot more supplies delivered in usually a fraction of the time (1-2 days for about 650,000 i think it was cargo).

[Star Admiral Damon Nagasawa]

Originally posted by Hekantonkheries:

Originally posted by Briggs:

Any recommendations for a transport for a newer player? Pretty much all I want to do in this game, at least, early on, is just go around trading supplies between stations. Sadly, I have no clue what sort of ship to actually look for on the market while steadily raising cash for anything.

that depends, are you trading specific item types, or just whatever is possible? if it is specific items, i would look at the gallente haulers as they each have a MASSIVE dedicated hold for certain items, if its just whatever whenever, use the T1 haulers for each race (bestower,iteron,mammoth,badger i think those are right, been ages sicne i looked at industrials)

though honestly, for the sake of security, i would look at buying/reselling MASS quantities of items from one hub to another, calculate how much potential profit you have, then use Red Frog Freight, http://red-frog.org/jumps.php, that site will tell you how much a trip will cost as well as how much maximum cargo theyll transport.

Its safer, because all you have to do is set collateral to be slightly higher than the value of what you want transported, that way, if they DO lose it, you still make money, or at least recover your losses, but if they Do complete the trasnport, you have alot more supplies delivered in usually a fraction of the time (1-2 days for about 650,000 i think it was cargo).

In most cases, I prefer bulk runs where I go through tried and true routes that I don't vary often. Randomly grabbing supplies and selling them wherever it looks profitable is just too unreliable of a system for my tastes.

[Shotgun]

You can use any T1 hauler, because they're all pretty much the same. They will hardly take any time to train for. Make sure to use up all of your PG for shield extenders and resist mods.

Also, I recommend you don't transport anything worth over 75 million in total value in a T1 hauler. Just trust me on this. If you want to transport high-value, low-volume items, use a small, agile ship, fit for reduced inertia. And don't ever use autopilot when trading. Well, you can if you're carrying less than 50 million in something with more than 5,000 EHP, but that's the limit. Any more and you risk getting ganked.

[Star Admiral Damon Nagasawa]

Originally posted by Shotgun:

You can use any T1 hauler, because they're all pretty much the same. They will hardly take any time to train for. Make sure to use up all of your PG for shield extenders and resist mods.

Also, I recommend you don't transport anything worth over 75 million in total value in a T1 hauler. Just trust me on this. If you want to transport high-value, low-volume items, use a small, agile ship, fit for reduced inertia. And don't ever use autopilot when trading. Well, you can if you're carrying less than 50 million in something with more than 5,000 EHP, but that's the limit. Any more and you risk getting ganked.

Currently, I'm not bringing in anything worth 1m at a time. As I said, new to the game. Though, I DO know what I'm doing, since I did a full 14 day trial a long time ago, and would have had the cash for PLEX if it wasn't for the restrictions on transports trial accs have. Anyways... Sadly, I'm just having issues trying to find decent supplies of resources that A, aren't being sold for prices above any buying prices out there, and B, aren't being bought in bulk and sold in small amounts. Still, nothing beats being a transport pilot. Entered my first .4 system today, made 200k profit from it, at least.

[Shotgun]

Honestly, you should just switch to exploration/salvaging, or maybe even mission-running for now. There's nothing wrong with trading, but it requires capital, and experience with the game. After you make a few tens/hundreds of millions of ISK, you'll be better able to leverage market opportunities. Also, exploration would require you to learn combat skills, which will be crucial in the long run.

[Flightless]

As said, if you really want to make money on the markets, you need money. You also need knowledge of what's contributing to the current market flows. It's difficult to predict what will make the biggest profits when you aren't familiar with where wars are, what kind of resources are backing each of these, where resources are coming from, where they're going to, are there any connections you know to get discounts on them, etc. Best thing to do is start at the lowest levels of combat or economy and work your way up. That would be explorer, protection for fighting and mining for economy. Joining a new player friendly corp will also help. For hauling, at the start, just get a T1 hauler. I'm a Caldari pilot and therefore use the Badger which, for the most part, gets the job done. You can get cargo modules but be aware that doing so will reduce ship integrity.

[Star Admiral Damon Nagasawa]

Originally posted by christopher1006:

As said, if you really want to make money on the markets, you need money. You also need knowledge of what's contributing to the current market flows. It's difficult to predict what will make the biggest profits when you aren't familiar with where wars are, what kind of resources are backing each of these, where resources are coming from, where they're going to, are there any connections you know to get discounts on them, etc. Best thing to do is start at the lowest levels of combat or economy and work your way up. That would be explorer, protection for fighting and mining for economy. Joining a new player friendly corp will also help. For hauling, at the start, just get a T1 hauler. I'm a Caldari pilot and therefore use the Badger which, for the most part, gets the job done. You can get cargo modules but be aware that doing so will reduce ship integrity.

All I've heard about hauling is that it's not worth it for the haulers unless you know the contractor. No-one has explained why, or how to GET a hauling contract, but, that's all I've heard. (Also, thank you all for your help)

[Flightless]

I'll go ahead and explain it because it's actually very good reasons. There's a separate function in game to accept hauling contracts that people put up. Theoretically, it's a very smart way of letting players benefit by getting massive amounts of goods shipped long distance quickly and haulers get a cut. However, the reality is pretty sad. I'll list them off:

1. Very little profit- People posting contracts that are legitimate are pretty stingy. They will rarely offer a reasonable pay to a hauler for the amount of jumps, danger and quantity.

2. Ganking- If you want even a modicum of return value, you'll be hauling a lot of high value goods, I'm talking each peice could be worth several million ISK and you will be hauling thousands of them during the contract. You may think you're safe in high sec space and this could be deadly. Players will team up so that one kills you and is killed by Concord whilst the second gathers up all those materials you had in your ship untouched.

3. Pirates- This is the main issue most people have with hauling. Usually they're pretty easy to spot, lots of pay for seemingly little material but one of your jumps puts you through low or null sec systems where the person posting the contract or one of their people will kill you and they effectively got free transport as they can't enter high sec. Some will make you pay them before you can accept the contract as a form of safety, just in case you try to steal it, which I'll talk a little more about next and when they kill you they don't have to pay you the amount offered but since you technically failed you don't get any money posted as collateral back.

4. Collateral- Even if it's a legit contract, most people posting will make you pay them market value of the item in question before you can accept. This isn't too bad when talking about simple mineral shipment, maybe a few million ISK. However, be they pirates or just paranoid traders, you'll see most of the good paying contracts costing in to the billions of ISK, effectively multiplying market value of the shipped goods by many times.

5. Amount required to haul- Lastly, the amounts aren't impossible to haul but they tend to be gigantic amounts. If you actually wanted to haul it all at once, you'd need a capital freighter. Otherwise, be prepared to make a dozen or more trips for many of your contracts.

In essence, if you want to haul you need to join a corp. One I was in had something set up where the person hauling charged 10 percent of whatever they could get from the markets for minerals the miners in the group mined. From there as they were the corp leader anyway they could apply the corp tax to go in to the general fund and the miner still gets most of their value back. Like that, everyone made reliable profits as the hauler helped mine as well and made trips every 3-5 days from low sec.

Edit: Fixed some spelling issues.

[Star Admiral Damon Nagasawa]

That... actually makes a lot of sense. Now I understand why hauling generally isn't viewed as worth it. Honestly, at this point, I'm just doing mining and full cargo loads of ores in my normal transport whenever I see a difference between selling and buying prices, slowly saving up and working on skills to be able to, EVENTUALLY, get an Obelisk. It'll take forever, but I know I'll eventually get there.

[Shotgun]

Just mark my words: if you completely ignore the combat aspect of the game, you'll be completely unprepared for the bad stuff that will find you at some point. And it will find you.

[Star Admiral Damon Nagasawa]

Originally posted by Shotgun:

Just mark my words: if you completely ignore the combat aspect of the game, you'll be completely unprepared for the bad stuff that will find you at some point. And it will find you.

My stance on the combat? Act like it doesn't exist, just keeping a huge amount of money in reserve to rebuy a ship if it IS lost. Aka never flying a ship that I can't afford to rebuy after insurance is done with it.

[Shotgun]

The problem with your plan is that you'll never get to that stage. You'll play long enough to either reach that point where it's profitable to go after you all the time and you're not going to have the skills to deal with it, or you'll forever gimp yourself into low-end gameplay by trying to not make yourself into a target by, well, being poor.

[Star Admiral Damon Nagasawa]

Originally posted by Shotgun:

The problem with your plan is that you'll never get to that stage. You'll play long enough to either reach that point where it's profitable to go after you all the time and you're not going to have the skills to deal with it, or you'll forever gimp yourself into low-end gameplay by trying to not make yourself into a target by, well, being poor.

Currently, for my defenses, I'm just using drones. I WILL attempt to try out combat, but I just want a reliable way to get cash before that point. 800k after around 40 minutes of mining, plus jumping to 10 systems to reach a .4 system to sell said ore isn't exactly "reliable" yet.

[Shotgun]

What you should do is start training for combat-oriented skills, and performing combat-oriented activities right off the bat. Not only will that be more useful, but you'll make more money as well.

What you're doing right now is making a mistake that a lot of new players make; you're falling into a mental trap where you think that you need to make some money and train some skills before taking part in the riskier aspects of the game. And as time goes on, you'll be assuring yourself that you just need a little bit more money, and a little bit more SP, before you venture out from your cocoon. And I'm not even talking about pvp here, although you should definitely be getting into that sooner rather than later.

[Ackaroth]

Sent you a steamfriend request, will try to link up with you so we can chat ingame.