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[Gothars]

Made a little comparison of the different freighters and their capacity per Logistic Point/Credit invested.

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Results, in short, are:

- Even for a relatively fast fleet an Atlas with tugs is by far the best option. Only a very fast fleet (with Nav skill) should use frigates.
- The Hermes is by far the best freighter for a very fast fleet, superseding the Hound. The Cerberus is kinda rubbish.
- It's not worthwile to speed up one of the medium freighters with Tugs, frigates are better for a fast fleet.
- The Gemini is paying a high price for its flight deck, if you don't really need it, pick another freighter.
- The Atlas is of course the best pure freighter, but other than that, non of the cruisers or caps can hold a candle to the destroyer sized freighters (Except the Gemini).

[CopperCoyote]

Nice chart.
One thing i'd like to mention is the amount of personnel needed to keep the ships flying. For example between the Tarsus and the Buffalo the Tarsus is slightly better for short range or higher risk areas. It has better defenses and the ship system is better for fleeing. With the much lighter crew compliment the Buffalo is a bit better at long range travel. Using .2 less supplies per day. That is admittedly not too much, but after lots of traveling it adds up.

[HELMUT]

For raw freighting the Atlas i indeed better in every situations. But it still cost 24.000, which is a lot early game. Also, in a bad engagement when you must retreat, your Atlas don't stand a chance and its loss is a huge toll for your fleet.

Early game, the Tarsus is interesting because of its tankiness and burn drive. You can still deploy it as a point defense platform or meat shield during a battle. If things get ugly, the burn drive ensure it will get away fast.

The Mule is also a very good choice, it's a combat freighter after all! It can provide quite a lot of firepower and tankiness for an early game fleet. If you need a carrier and a long range fire support, the Gemini is the obvious choice.

For an optimal end game fleet though, then yes, Atlases with tugs is the most reasonable. Or Hermes and Hounds for a frigate based fleet, at end game you'll never deploy your freighters anyway, even the armored ones. That's when your chart shine.

[Doom101]

I like your chart, but rarely until late game does a ship get to only pull one duty, that said the atlas makes a pretty decent carrier if you outfit it properly with speed and armor hullmods and give it lots of friends to escort it. So with that in mind your chart is missing one critical piece of info. How good is it in a fight? obviously the odyssey wins that hands down with the venture a close second but with price in mind i'd take 3 or 4 ventures over 1 odyssey any day.

When it comes to my fleets I usually roll with Ventures with tugs as my freighters because more so than any other freighter, the Venture can fight back if it gets into trouble. And is capable of beating down other cruisers in a straight slugfest specifically midline ones such as the Eagle and Falcon and if handled properly Dooms.

The ventures high flux capacity, tough armor and stock flak cannons make short work of any frigate, fighter, or destroyer silly enough to fight it head to head. ( with the exception of high tech harassers) and that extra flight deck makes all the difference in fighter fleets early on.
However all that said, as soon as my ships don't have to pull double duty ( ie being a carrier, a freighter and a brawler) I usually swap my ventures for an atlas or two.

[icepick37]

This is super informative. Was actually asking myself that exact question last night, heh. Just switched to a frigate fleet instead since most of my ships pull double duty.  :p

[Gothars]

One thing i'd like to mention is the amount of personnel needed to keep the ships flying.

You're right. Updated it with that information, incorporated into logistics. 

your chart is missing one critical piece of info. How good is it in a fight?

True, but that's info I cannot condense into one number. Well, I took flight decks in for that reason. Other than that, this is purely for your freight transport concerns, everything else you know probably better yourself than I could display it in a table

This is super informative.

Glad it helps

[icepick37]

- The Mercury is by far the best freighter for a very fast fleet, superseding the Hound. The Cerberus is kinda rubbish.

Hermes?

[Gothars]

Hermes!

[Doom101]

your chart is missing one critical piece of info. How good is it in a fight?

True, but that's info I cannot condense into one number. Well, I took flight decks in for that reason. Other than that, this is purely for your freight transport concerns, everything else you know probably better yourself than I could display it in a table

Im now tempted to attempt to condense that info into a table for you the hard part would be organizing different loadouts and the effect of skills since those are important.

Edit
Been thinking about it, sticking to only pertinent information should make it possible, i'm going to go pull all the combat info for the freighters from your list and be back in awhile with a table hopefully.

Edit 2
in doing this i've realized its basically just codex info but for only a specific few ships, is this worth bothering? because you can literally just check these stats in the codex save one i came up with, which is Full PD coverage, and thats just a tick box basically saying if a ship is capable of having 360° PD coverage

Edit 3
Reduced the info to only the most relevant information for combat

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[BigWyrm67]

"The Hermes is by far the best freighter for a very fast fleet, superseding the Hound. The Cerberus is kinda rubbish."
Not by a long shot. The hound has a superior burn speed and superior cargo cap (not to mention better armor, combat speed, and firepower). Your fleet is only as fast as its slowest member and I don't want a shuttle slowing me down.

[CrashToDesktop]

I find the Tarsus to be the best freighter - it doesn't slow down your fleet to slug-speed and it carries a decent amount of cargo.  It's also a meatshield of epic proportions, so it can survive a pretty sever pounding.  I find it really hard to destroy these buggers (let alone catch them) in a fleeing battle.

If cost isn't a problem, I usually find the Gemni to be very useful.  Two medium turrets and a medium missile give it some pretty good offensive firepower, and the PD Drones and the flight deck are very good in battle.  The cost does tend to exceed 20K, which is a rather large sum of money to make it combat-capable, though.

[Andy H.K.]

Another factor that need to be taken into account is the fuel cost in hyperspace. It is not important for now but as our "playground" expand it could be worth our consideration.

I've expanded upon Gothar's chart and included data regarding fuel consumption in hyperspace travel. The speed is calculated assuming the fleet is away from gravity well (ie. with 5 bonus burn level).

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As expected any setup with Ox included is pretty fuel inefficient. You may as well not bother towing the Tarsus. Meanwhile The destroyer-sized freighter are doing OK. Of note is that Apogee has the best mileage, and Odyssey, while being a capital ship, is doing quite well due to the huge fuel tank. For this I think they exemplify exploration ships.

What I want to point out is that there's a cost to carrying alot while being fast. The obvious solution is to bring some fuel tanker. Still, for a particular long haul (if that exist, that is), we also need to worry about fuel cost eating into our profit...

[Voyager I]

"The Hermes is by far the best freighter for a very fast fleet, superseding the Hound. The Cerberus is kinda rubbish."
Not by a long shot. The hound has a superior burn speed and superior cargo cap (not to mention better armor, combat speed, and firepower). Your fleet is only as fast as its slowest member and I don't want a shuttle slowing me down.

Unless your fleet is pure Hounds the burn speed difference won't be relevant because the Hermes already has the same burn speed as most frigates.  They're also comparing storage capacity per point of logistics used, since that's what affects your overall ability to carry stuff.  A Hound carries more than one Hermes, but you can have two Hermes to each Hound and together they haul harder.

[zenstrata]

I prefer the Buffalo myself.  I pick up the pirate version with the shielded cargo holds, so if I get scanned I don't have to pay as much for random tolls.  The tiny crew compliment compared to the amount carried, and their speed is nice.  Keeps my ship moving quickly.  I basically only fly around in an Aurora however and the Buffalo's never see combat.  They are just following along to increase my cargo and fuel capacities.

[SafariJohn]

I say! Necro!
Although, these charts are a nice thing to bump, even if they are a bit outdated. Particularly with the tugs since we can only use one tug per ship now.