Noone knows better than me that the light freighter is awful. The argosy does not carry enough cargo to make it worthwhile as a trading vessel (the light freighter does not either).

I want to know which plugs provide some good trader ships. I consider a good freighter to be something with 200+ cargo, tolerable maneuvering, and with enough shields/armor to prevent death while entering hyperspace. The plug containing the ship should also provide decent trading routes so the ship is useful.

Some good freighter ships I have seen:
Several plugs make the bulk freighter available (500 cargo, 150 space). After upgrades, it makes a tolerable trading ship, but there are many better.
Jumbostar from Clavius and Beyond (220 cargo, 3 turrets, overpriced)
Secure Transport from Pale (I forgot the stats, basically a corvette w/ ~200 cargo, and fewer guns)
Ore Hauler from Pale (5000 cargo, excellent armor)
The Trugati Trooper from {forgot, i think Galactic Scourge} (40 cargo, but cost only $30,000, great ship after the shuttle)

My current favorite:
AX-5000 from Galactic scourge (5000 cargo, well armed and shielded, but cost $25 mil) It mounts fighter bays (hawks i think), 3 or 4 turrets, ESG system (plug specific weapon), and shields+armor on a par with the kestrel. This ship was Fort Knox in space.

Quantumire had several ships with 10000 cargo space, but that plug has some other serious problems (not least of which is the lack of trading opportunities).

What have you got?

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Oh, everyone overlooks the classic Escape Velocity trade and merchent vessel...The Kestrel! As long as you don't buy tons of mass expansions, the Kestrel is the safest and best means of transporting and hauling cargo.

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~Captain Skyblade

The new Corsair Development team: Devoted to bringing you the best plugins for the Escape Velocity games. (url="http://"http://artworks.tmgmedia.net")http://artworks.tmgmedia.net(/url)

Mega Class.

Can't remember the plugin. More cargo than the Bulk Freighter by a long way, as
fast or faster, has a fighter bay and upgrade space.

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Don't play with changing names:
Esponer - 130 posts
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Quote

Originally posted by Captain Skyblade:
**Oh, everyone overlooks the classic Escape Velocity trade and merchent vessel...The Kestrel! As long as you don't buy tons of mass expansions, the Kestrel is the safest and best means of transporting and hauling cargo.

**

REALLY? Wow, I gotta get me one of those! Wait, how much cargo space are we talking? 100, 150, 200?

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"English? Who needs that? I'm never going to England!"-Homer Simpson

i never found freighters that useful. i found plundering much more fun and profitable personally. but the best freighter in my opinion is the light freighter, the price and large amount of cargo space make it much better than the argosy, whose price tag is rather rediculous.

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No Exit

Quote

Originally posted by Rawzer:
**REALLY? Wow, I gotta get me one of those! Wait, how much cargo space are we talking? 100, 150, 200?

**

I believe the Kestrel has 150 tons of cargo space without any mass expansions, but I could be wrong...

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~Captain Skyblade

The new Corsair Development team: Devoted to bringing you the best plugins for the Escape Velocity games. (url="http://"http://artworks.tmgmedia.net")http://artworks.tmgmedia.net(/url)

Quote

Captain Skyblade said:
**Oh, everyone overlooks the classic Escape Velocity trade and merchent vessel...The Kestrel! As long as you don't buy tons of mass expansions, the Kestrel is the safest and best means of transporting and hauling cargo.
**

The kestrel does not have enough cargo space to justify the $10 mil price.
As the kestrel is very well armed, you will make more money as a pirate than as a trader. A proper trading ship has the property that you will make more money trading goods and running missions with it than you will fighting. A trading ship worth $10 mil will have 1,000+ tons of cargo space and 1 day hyperjump engines so you can make lots of money trading.

Quote

huis clos said:
**i never found freighters that useful. i found plundering much more fun and profitable personally. but the best freighter in my opinion is the light freighter, the price and large amount of cargo space make it much better than the argosy, whose price tag is rather rediculous.
**

Back in a thread "mistakes we made in EV", I described in detail the problems with the light freighter. Briefly, it cannot survive an attack from even the weakest foes, it cannot be upgraded to survive such attacks, and has only 3 jumps of fuel (nixes timed missions, afterburners). 150 tons of cargo is barely sufficient to make trading work. The argosy should be thought of as a light corvette.

Playing as a trader is a totally different experience from playing as a pirate/privateer/bounty hunter. You go to dangerous places on tight deadlines with a ship that has few guns. You follow news reports for worlds having profitable disasters. Your cargo space, hyperspace speed, and ability to absorb damage are more important than your guns and normal space speed.

With the right ship, trading can be more profitable than fighting, but standard EV does not supply such a ship. The bulk freighter works OK, but you cant buy it. Escorts dont work well because they cost too much money per ton of cargo space. Just to make sure that merchant fleets were unprofitable, Matt Burch put in a "feature" that adds 1 day to your hyperspace time for every 2 escorts in your fleet (ref: empire plugin readme).

A problem with freighters in plugins is that they tend to be priced like similar sized warships, but without similar shields, armor, guns, agility (ie, the things you pay a premium for in a warship).

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