Great question, let's see (last chance to grab a cup of coffee, this is a long one)... I'll break this down to categories, sub-$100, $100-$200, etc.
Firstly, let's talk of the sub-$100 offers. The issue is, these are kinda rare. There have been a few, for sure, but I wouldn't hold my breath. In the past 3-4 years I've been hunting for deals, I've seen Mustang Delta go from $60 to $65 (saving you $5), Nomad ($80) being offered $10 off, Spartan (now $80) was pretty good at $65, saving $15. And Hull A went from $60 to $90, saving you a whopping $30 in one go. You can look at https://starcitizen.fandom.com/wiki/List_of_ship_and_vehicle_prices to give you some idea of how many discounts there have been, if you compare the current standalone price and warbond / concept sale prices, though a lot of those have not come in CCU form.
There is some hope however. Even this event, we might (/will) be seeing a new small ground vehicle. This might come with a minor $5-$10 discount and based on what I know of it, it's more likely in the sub-$100 category. All in all, the sub-$100 is the most precious category, since even though the discounts tend to be just $5 or $10 tops, with some ultra rare situations like the Hull A going $30 up in price, these discounts are applicable to just about every single CCU chain you can think of. So whenever you can see one such discount, you basically want to secure it.
If you got store credits kicking about, you might also tie some of those to CCUs TO the yet to be released ground vehicles, X1 variants and Ranger variants, in hopes that some of those might go up $5 when they become flight ready, though their concept sales came with $5 discounts already so that might be wishful thinking, though Nox did go from $35 to $45 so it's not that unlikely. Something like Mustang alpha -> Ranger RC and Nox -> X1 Force could net you a $10 discount total if things go well. (There needs to be $5 difference in CCUs for you to be able to buy it, so if Ranger RC goes from $35 to $40, you can still buy the missing Ranger RC -> Nox CCU for $5 to complete that chain.) Oh, that might be bit pointless if you're starting from Titan though, but if you're developing a second ship, that's more useful for that.
Also, I'm not sure if I still got it since I'm a concierge, but Hull A is giving me the warbond CCU option. If you got that available, you definitely want to grab that, though it's just $10 discount now (not the full $30 you'd gotten if you bought it in concept).
Total price to clear the sub-$100 range, hmm, $60 would be already really lucky, maybe $80 would be more likely. There's really not that many nor that big discounts here.
In the $100-$200 there are far more discounts and far more often. The normal ones are around $10, but ultra rares can be up to $40 (For example, some time ago they announced that Taurus will go up in price. This allowed you to speculate quite easily, and even use store credits to get like $5 CCUs from Razor to Taurus. The Taurus then went up $40, and is $190 now.) Even though that sort of insane discounts do not happen that often, it's relatively easy to get $10-$20 off per CCU here. Even now, you might want to put some store credits to Legionnaire, it's bound to go up in price like $10 or so once it's flight ready.
With some patience, and some luck, it's entirely possible to clear the $100 to $200 range with just... I'd say $25 to $50, depending on your luck, patience and skill.
Over $200, well, you might be thinking "I'm not going to spend over $200!" To which I say "I sincerely hope you manage to avoid such fate, but the odds are not in your favor." In any case, the discounts here start to get a bit extreme. If you had the foresight to get a CCU to BMM and then just stuck with that since the beginning of time, you'd be looking at $300 discount from that alone. Even just last year, the Hull C went from $250 to $350, likewise the Hull D went from $350 to $450. And I'm still expecting all those 3 ships to get a bump when they're actually flight ready. Those kinda price increases don't happen for just any ships though, just for very old concept ships that haven't seen major bumps yet, it'd be worth getting a $10 CCU from Gemini to Endeavor / Crucible (or both). Those are the remaining ships that still might go up a whole lot. Also, if you can get a CCU to Corsair, that might see a bump in flight ready as well, though it'll likely be a more reasonable $10-$20.
Not going to estimate how much it takes to clear "over $200" range, as there's no clearing it. But I dare say, the BMM is currently $550, if you get a CCU to it now (to lock it at $550) and then get CCU to Endeavor / Crucible, you just might be going from $200 to BMM for like $100, depending on how the other CCUs between $200 and $340 pan out.
Notes about LTI: This usually means you got to buy a whole new ship at once. Once, they did sell a warbond CCU with an LTI, that's how I managed to upgrade my non-LTI game package to LTI, but I've not seen such offer since. You might want to ask around, someone might still have Warbond Nomad CCUs... I know @vahadar had quite an extensive shop, though seems the CCU shop is closed. Wouldn't hurt to ask him if he still has one or two of those kicking around though. ( Sorry @vahadar , I'm telling others to bug you
) Now, you might get lucky and see an extremely cheap new ship come with LTI, and I mean extremely, like maybe even just $35. Who knows, maybe that new ground vehicle, Mule. That is, however, an extra $35 (or it could be an extra $50, or more, if that's the cheapest token you find) besides your game package, so if you were aiming for discounts, that sets you back a bit. While I got LTI on all my stuff, I'd still maintain that getting a 120-month insurance upgrade from a warbond CCU during ILW or IAE is more than enough. Sure, you'd probably be playing Star Citizen on and off for over 10 years, but in those 10 years you've probably accumulated enough in-game wealth that some minor insurance fee is entirely unnoticeable. And who knows, maybe 5-8 years in there's some new offer / method to upgrade to LTI.Also, what @Patrick Spaceman and @DrunkSpacePeej said about getting a base ship (or what I call CCU FROM) as close to the value of the target ship (what I call CCU TO) isn't wrong, though I'd tweak that advice a bit. What you want to do, is get the cheapest possible warbond CCU, always. If there's a $5 option, you basically want the $5 option. Even if that ship isn't always available. The trick here is, you then also get a CCU TO that ship. So for example, let's say they put Glaive ($350) out with $20 warbond discount. Mole $315 is the closest permanently available ship, however, there is redeemer at $325 that has limited availability. What you want to do, is get a CCU from Redeemer To Glaive for $5, AND a CCU from MOLE to Redeemer for $10. There are two important reasons for this: Firstly, you have to spend new money on the warbond CCU to Glaive. If you got MOLE to Glaive, that'd be $15. Redeemer to Glaive, it's $5, so you can spend $10 store credit on the rest. Secondly, and perhaps more importantly, there is a non-zero chance that redeemer will go on sale at some point, allowing you to combine more discounts in the chain.
Some rules of thumb:
New ships are offered at an initial concept sale discount. This might be around 5-10% of the ships price, so sub-$100 ships will get just $5-$10 concept discounts, or sometimes even none.
Ships moving from concept to flyable go up in price. This tends to be another 5-10%.
Sometimes, a ship expands in function during development, and gets a price bump. Sometimes this gets announced, sometimes not. These price bumps can be a lot larger than concept/flyable bumps, and can be quite extreme especially for really old ships.
Even flight ready ships may get a price bump when they get their gameplay implemented.
Sometimes ships just get a price bump, for no real reason. Caterpillar got one because " With the utility and especially cargo capacity of the Drake Caterpillar, its value has come to exceed its pledge price. "
Any ship can, at any time though usually at ILW or IAE, be offered with a warbond CCU. This tends to be 5%-20%.
Especially ships that have just had a price bump, can be offered with warbond CCU that negates that price bump as a sort of 'last chance.'
Some suggestions for a plan:
- Forget LTI, just get a warbond CCU with 120 months instead. This saves you the trouble of buying a second ship. Unless you're planning on spending more, then, sure. Go right ahead.
- Hull A warbond CCU, if you got that available.
- Legionnaire CCU with store credit (if you got any). If you melt your game package, remember you need to get a new one to play. What's the melt value of your game package?
- Since you got Avenger titan, and are thinking of maybe getting a Cutlass Black, this means you got at least $45 to play with. Try getting warbond CCUs to ships below the $200 range as well as grab a CCU to Corsair. If you do well, you might be looking at Drake Corsair for a bit over the price of Cutlass Black. If you run out of patience or something, you can just melt those CCUs and fall back on Cutlass black. That's an awesome ship as well, and I use one on daily basis myself.
- There is a pretty decent looking discount on C8X starter pack (that is, if you melt your current game package) (also a version with SQ42 if you want that). Already comes with 120-month insurance, so you don't need to worry about that, and the Pisces is valued at $45, so you're basically getting the Pisces + Game for the price of Pisces. The problem, however, is that if you're melting your current game package, that's then store credit. Can't use store credit to make use of warbond discounts, so if your original budget was 'around cutlass black,' you're very likely to go over that if you get any warbond discounts, which then makes you unlikely to get that great of discounts (other than the pisces, that's actually pretty good discount already.) Store credit isn't entirely useless though, even with warbond discounts you need to bridge the gaps in the CCU chain, and that can be done with store credit. And there's that Legionnaire I'd advice to get a CCU to, which, likewise, store credit.
Of course, if your current game package already was discounted, then it'd probably be pointless to melt it to get another discounted game package.
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