Science & Industry

Alright, as many others I got multiple buy orders set up across various regions.

Once they are fulfilled it usually takes a bit of flying around to pile it all up at a central spot to ship it out with a freighter.

When buying large amounts of ore this becomes quite tedious using transport ships (I use a maxed out Impel with around 27,3km3) considering their total cargo is rather limited when dealing with raw ore.

So my question is really... how agile are the JF's such as the Ark compared to the regular Freighters? Does it take the same amount of time to align and jump as a freighter does or is it feasible to use the Ark as a hauler for piling up ore from multiple locations?

Flying a freighter to do pickups between stations in 10 different systems takes forever. But considering the small cargohold in even Transport ships that takes a long time as well since you have to do multiple runs.

This game really needs a 300km3 non-jumpdrive midsize freighter for these types of "fly around and pick up items" operations, but that's another discussion.

I'm just wondering if the Ark is any faster than a Providence.

I believe there is a lot of pple wanting an indie ship that fills the middle road between the T1's and the Freighters as far as cargo capacity goes. I do hope the Devs have something like it planned for the future.

No. Game design should never reduce player reliance and interaction.

Plus, at that point, you're better off just hiring a courier anyway. They're stupidly cheap in highsec.

Agility doesn't matter as much when you AFK. Most of the travel time is approaching gates from 15 km to 2.5 km jump distance. The higher the velocity, the less time spent approaching gates.

Ark 84 m/s base. Providence 70 m/s base plus 5% per level (84 m/s at level 4), so unless you train Minmatar Freighter 5 they are very similar.

Now that ONLY leaves align time... which as CrazySpaceHobo already posted in the Ark's favour (it is a smaller ship).

If you are trying to move more efficiently, the the Providence wins, as agility differences mean only 15.8 additional seconds per system for a whole lot more cargo.

No I didn't

Hence I specifically stated "base" for the speeds. Navigation skills don't matter in a comparison as they affect both ships equally, hence I only mentioned the racial freighter bonus which only applies to the T1 ship.

It's not only for the gate jumps.

I have no problems manually flying a Providence from my local area to the hubs. That's usually 10 or so jumps and I handle that manually.

What takes time is when you have a Buy order set for a 5 system range, then you need to fly to a system, then fly to 2-5 different stations within that system... then to next system and another 2-5 different stations... in order to pick up all the items. And with a Buy order with 5 system range (or even more at times) it becomes very slow and very inefficient to use the freighter for it.

And the option, using industrial/transport ships, also takes a long time considering you have very small cargoholds on those compared to the huge volume ore requires. The largest cargospace you can get on an industrial is 35-40.000m3 (correct me if I'm wrong).

Of course I know about the Orca. The Orca has a long training time though, especially if you are trained up with navigation skills and industrial ship/transporter/freighter, and not into the industrial and leadership skills required for the Orca. However, the Orca holds

With the Orca and skills you get:
2x expanded II = 60,961m3
2x Expanded II + 3x Cargo Rig I = 92,714m3
2x Expanded II + 3x Cargo Rig II = 100,951m3
Corp hanger = 40,000m3
Ship bay = 400,000m3 (which in the case of ore doesn't help too much)

I have an alt training for the Orca, though not as much for the hauling between systems as for the bonuses and moving ore in the belts. Seems the Orca is the only "cargo hauler" that can be used between a 40km3 transporter and a 900km3 freighter. The Ark doesn't seem worth it taking into account the added training, investment price and rather little difference in agility.

I was thinking about fitting an industrial ship for max cargo, fill it up and then put it into an Orca's ship bay and get extra cargospace from that, but the industrials are all over 200.000m3 size, so can only add one extra.

Correct.

Orca is a nice ship for hauling in the gap between T1 and Freighters, but its training requirements are a bit heavy for people that do not do mining and only want a hauler, not to mention its a very expensive ship if you are only getting it for its hauling capability.

I would love to see a ship come out that has a similar cargo bay, but no other bonuses (other than maybe speed / cargo as the other indies do). An in-the-middle ship would fill a sizeable gap.

If it was me, I'd be asking a more important question...

Do you want to be piloting a ship, at times worth 6-7 billion, around your hubs collecting and dropping off goods?

I think I'd take the slower times with the ship that costs a 1/5th to a 1/6th of the cost of a JF and not invite trouble into your bowl of morning wheaties.

6-7 billion?

The majority of my hauling that involves a freighter is movement of ore or stacks of battlecruisers/battleships.

Doubt people are gonna set up a gank-camp large enough to down a freighter for 900km3 worth of low-end ores.

Also, as for the battleships... considering a freighter can't scoop from space and battleships take 50.000m3 even when packaged, is it even possible to retrieve them from space after a ship has been blown up ? Even a maxed out Iteron V and transportships only take 40km3 or so.

Which means you'd need an well trained Orca and pilot just to scoop up 2 battleships?

I'm not really worried about being ganked while in the freighter.

I'm just getting really bored with the constant smaller scale hauling due to the very limited cargo capacity of the existing industrial/transport ships... or the large volume of the ores... guess it depends how you look at it.

don't packaged ships unpack when dropped or jettisoned into space?
Don't recall were I read that but it was a while back.