Ships & Modules

Caldari freighter has the largest capacity.

Amar freighter looks good.

Right now is kind of a bad time to pick a industrial. They're going to go through tiericide soon-ish so we're not sure what they're going to be like 3 months from now. Freighters are all pretty similar, but I think the amarr is ever so slightly tankier than the caldari one.

For the most part though pick the ones that look the best to you.

If you're really worried about performance differences and you're going for transport ships caldari are probably better. They can fit full capacity while getting a decent sized shield buffer tank. If you just want a brick of a ship the amarr transport ship can get beefy ehp, but fitting anything cargo related kind of ruins the tank quickly. So it really depends on what you're looking for, but we really can't answer very well because we don't know what's going to happen in a few months.

This came up recently here.

If you fly any of the "Deep space transports" you already fail. The only good t2 haulers are the blockade runners.

Minmatar blockade runner is the only one with 2 high slots, can fit a cloak and prober for WH duty.

Freighter differences are pretty minor, differences amount to about 25% variation in speed, 14% variation in align time, and 8% variation in cargo capacity. However, if you want to ship for big contract corps like red frog, check their cargo capacity requirements to avoid having to do things like train (racial) freighter 5.

As mentioned before, the industrial ships are going to be tiericided, so choosing the based on today's conditions is probably going to backfire this summer.

between caldari and amarr freighters, the caldari freighter has the most space, the amarr DST has the most space, and both blockade runners are meh since the prowler beats them both due to it's high slots.

that being said, you may as well ignore everything that isn't the freighters due to the impending industrial rebalance. hence, you should go with caldari because of the charon's massive cargo space.

Your point stands, but I thought red frog had a cap on cargo size that was no greater than the smallest freighter (Minmatar) at freighter 4 specifically to address this problem. I could be wrong, I looked at red frog months ago.

And I don't know how anyone can call the DST ships bad. I mean they have a 5% active tank bonus, when every other active tank bonus is 7.5%. They also have 50% more mass and only warp at 3au/s. The shield tanked ones aren't too terrible if you want to have ~50k ehp with max cargo capacity, but the armor ones are horrible with the discord between armor tanking, astronomic rigs, and cargo expander modules. Unless flying a 100m paper tank DST full of stuff is your idea of a good, well thought out plan.

I think you missed a little bit of the sarcasm I put into this post. I'll be a little more straight forward, since sarcasm is sometimes hard to pick up on the internet.

DST's having an active shield tanking bonus is bad design, especially when their other bonus is buffer tank. They're slow to align compared to the tech I because they have so much mass, and they also warp at 3 au/s compared to the 4.5 the tech I's do. Why they decided this was balanced is beyond me.

Out of the 4 DST's the minmatar and caldari ones are better though. The minmatar one can sport ~50k EHP with a ~31.5k m3 cargo hold, while the caldari one is ~48k EHP with ~33k or 35k m3 cargo hold. The amarr and galente DST's are very bad though, because the discord between armor tanks, cargo expander rigs, and cargo expander modules not meshing well together. You can either end up with a giant cargohold and paper tank, or you can end up with a pretty good tank but a 5k cargohold. All of the fits between these two extremes heavily conflict with bonuses and drawbacks to create a ship that performs poorly compared to the caldari and minmatar boats.

I apologize for any confusion my previous post caused.

i accept your point; but due to the fact that the industrials are all coming up for rebalancing soon means most of this may or may not be true 3-4 months from now.

granted, freighters may be the same, but it will take longer to get around to changing those so there's a longer period of certainty attached to them.

also with the addition of blockade runners being able to light covert cynos, the prowler is the only one that can do it, and still fit a cloak. which, in my opinion makes it more valuable than being able to carry a packaged cruiser.

then again, due to the skill changes and industrial 3 + ASC V being the requirements for freighters, there's no real reason not to train to fly all the freighters, which will also give you access to all the t1 industrials. at that point i'd say go minmatar, because i still think the prowler is awesome. however the OP is trying to pick between amarr and caldari, at which point i don't think it really matters, i find their blockade runner and DST's are both middle of the road with the only notable exception being the impel having the most cargo of the DSTs.

Just pick the one you want to use based on style. The differences between them really are negligible in the end.
Pick the Providence, it looks pretty nice imo.