Cargo haulers will probably get nerfed

Thalstan

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After today’s ship talk with John Crew and his discussion of the Merchantman’s cargo, plus the revelations of the Kraken privateer, I think we need to re-evaluate our expectations on the cargo capacity of these bigger freighters.

Kraken Privateer is the big dog flying mall here at 1700 USD. There is no way the BMM will come anywhere near that hauling capacity for the price point it is at. my personal suspicions are 1500 SCU max, maybe less, with about 5 store around 200 SCU, and a cargo hold of about 3-500 SCU.

That means the Hull C has to come down to about that level too, so figure 1500 SCU there.

that puts the Hull D at 4K or so, and the E around 15k

the B will probably be at 2-300, maybe less.

the Idris and Jav may also come down

those are my thoughts. I don’t like it, but I understand the need to do it.

What do you think?
 

DarthMunkee

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Yeah, all of the big stuff is going to change a lot from the concept just because the state of the PU has changed so much. Honestly I'd like to see something of a rapid currier ship instead of more giant haulers. You know, something like the Herald that is mostly engine and like 100 SCU or less and that's it. All about getting that vital shipment from system to system as fast as possible.
 

NaffNaffBobFace

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I've not seen the video yet, but there are other ways of balancing huge haulers than simply changing their capacity. Planet sized cities like ArcCorp will be a huge sink of consumeables that will be needed at scale unless that city generates produce and caters to its own needs.The ability to even load or unload a big container box freighter like an Hull C/D/E will be severely restricted to port-side equipment which may only be available at the largest of ports, such as the System to System hubs I expect there to be in every major population center and be moving large scale consumables like food, water, toilet rolls, cloathes, components, medical supplies, fuels etc that can be moved at such a scale as to make it pointless to put 4 SCU of it in your 350R unless there is a drastic need for it somewhere and it is requested specifically. The Planet/Moon Trade Center to System Hub can be taken care of by large landable freighters like Cats etc, and the production facilities to Planet/Moon Trade Center can be for Connies/Freelancers.

I don't expect the Kracken standard version to have the equiptment to be able to unload that cargo quickly by itself and it will need port facilities to move any amount of gear quickly. The Kracken Priv I not only expect to have less cargo in favour of a marketplace, I also expect it to have internal auto-load systems to fill customers cargo holds very quickly and empty suppliers holds just as quickly without port facilities. The Standard version you'll be pulling all that stolen swag out of your cutlasses fairly quickly as there won't be much dribbling in to your cavernous hold, but you won't be stopping a Hull and just filling up your hold super quick as if by magic. No port loading facilities, you are doing it the long way... Or sacrifice some of that cargo space to install an auto-load...? Lets say... 50%?

You ever notice how Semali Pirates hold huge freighters and their crews hostage but don't seem to be in to keeping the ship and unloading the gear for their own personal gain? Those pirates don't have the facilities to get that freight off the boat and if a Hull D washed up on the shores of some fringe system I very much doubt they'd be able to unload without a few days or even weeks of Argos shuttling the containers off the craft, if they even have Argos on the Fringe at all. Manually moving SCU's off a Hull could take months.

I think the craft with a sizeable hold that can land, like the Kracken and the BMM will be the maximum, but even then I don't think the non-marketplace versions of them will be very practical without port facilities. I don't expect the BMM to loose it's capacity even with an Auto-loader, but I don't think you'd be able to look at the thing and not think "Loot Pinata" either. Potentially a BMM could be used as the end-game trading game, where you land on a major planet and compete with the whole planets commerce system. Cue some planets banning BMM's and they'd have to saty in orbit and compete from there.

I also expect the main cargo that would demand a ship with a 3500scu+ hold to be low value consumeables like food that only make a decent haulge value at such quantities and would not be worth being targeted by pirates. unless they were starving pirates, then throw them 20sku and they'll eat for a year.

Balanced!
 
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Phil

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I just watched a Noobifier video yesterday where he kind of said something similar, we already saw the Carrack get nerfed from like 1000 down to 400's? If I remember right, I also heard the MM was going to get nerfed as well. Honestly to me as the game progresses we see a ship like the Hercules come out and start around 600's its only natural to bring some of the other ships in line to the newer ones. Then you watch videos where people are making over half a million cargo runs in a Cat or a Starfarer so it doesn't surprise me.
 

Richard Bong

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Yeah, all of the big stuff is going to change a lot from the concept just because the state of the PU has changed so much. Honestly I'd like to see something of a rapid currier ship instead of more giant haulers. You know, something like the Herald that is mostly engine and like 100 SCU or less and that's it. All about getting that vital shipment from system to system as fast as possible.
It is called a Mercury Star Runner.

Though the Freelancers and Constellations also fill this role.
 

NaffNaffBobFace

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I finally watched the video and can see what they mean about metrics changing and wanting to keep ships at a certain size so you can get the most out of them, like having the Carrack still be able to be spawnable on Olisar pads rather than having to have to go to ArcCorp to load it up.

One thing that did occur to me was an SCU is a meter squared. the things that fill a SCUbox are not always going to be that big though, so a unit of medical supplies may be as small as a MedPen, in which case you'll get hundreds of units per SCU - so when they say three or four hundred SCU that doesn't mean you'll only have 400 units of product on board unless they are a meter squared. Inversely if they are 4 meter squared you'll have a lot less, too.

Also, the dev in the backgrounds meme game was on point, yo. Everything you could see on their screens from the whole vid (did the 5second skip thing so may have missed one or two):

Shiptalk Memes.jpg
 

DarthMunkee

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It is called a Mercury Star Runner.

Though the Freelancers and Constellations also fill this role.
That will work well for it, but I mean basically a nitro powered, balls to the wall, hope you survive fork lift. All it does it get your goods from A to B as fast as possible and can't really do much else.
 

atpbx

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After today’s ship talk with John Crew and his discussion of the Merchantman’s cargo, plus the revelations of the Kraken privateer, I think we need to re-evaluate our expectations on the cargo capacity of these bigger freighters.

Kraken Privateer is the big dog flying mall here at 1700 USD. There is no way the BMM will come anywhere near that hauling capacity for the price point it is at. my personal suspicions are 1500 SCU max, maybe less, with about 5 store around 200 SCU, and a cargo hold of about 3-500 SCU.

That means the Hull C has to come down to about that level too, so figure 1500 SCU there.

that puts the Hull D at 4K or so, and the E around 15k

the B will probably be at 2-300, maybe less.

the Idris and Jav may also come down

those are my thoughts. I don’t like it, but I understand the need to do it.

What do you think?
That is why I have not melted my standard Kraken, its the only bulk cargo ship released with the latest measurements and design intents.

John Crewe himself coming out with comments that the had to *artificially* limit the cargo carrying capability of the standard Kraken as it had the potential to break the economy is an indication that yes, you wont be seeing anything much larger other than the Hulls or indeed anything else coming close to it in capacity.

The BMM is going to be a sub 700 SCU ship, effectively a C2 with a shop bolted on.
 

atpbx

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I finally watched the video and can see what they mean about metrics changing and wanting to keep ships at a certain size so you can get the most out of them, like having the Carrack still be able to be spawnable on Olisar pads rather than having to have to go to ArcCorp to load it up.

One thing that did occur to me was an SCU is a meter squared. the things that fill a SCUbox are not always going to be that big though, so a unit of medical supplies may be as small as a MedPen, in which case you'll get hundreds of units per SCU - so when they say three or four hundred SCU that doesn't mean you'll only have 400 units of product on board unless they are a meter squared. Inversely if they are 4 meter squared you'll have a lot less, too.

Also, the dev in the backgrounds meme game was on point, yo. Everything you could see on their screens from the whole vid (did the 5second skip thing so may have missed one or two):

View attachment 14566
You will get a 100 units of what ever it is an SCU.

There is nothing smaller than one cargo unit, and 100 cargo units per SCU.

Having one cargo unit not = one cargo unit would make the whole system pointless.
 

FZD

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Well, you should keep in mind that the Kraken Privateer is an entirely different beast than BMM, you can't just look at it's capability of hosting a shop and then the cargo capacity.

Now, when we're looking at the Hull series, we got to keep in mind that the figures listed are the old estimates.

Freelancer Max - Old: 280 SCU. Current: 122 SCU
Constellation Andromeda: 134 SCU. Current 96 SCU.
Avenger Titan: 4 SCU. Current 8 SCU (Sometimes it goes the other way)
Caterpillar - Old: 3200 FU. Current: 512SCU
Starfarer - Old: 3321 FU. Current: 295 SCU + 8 tanks.

I think the conversions between FU and SCU were around 10x at most, and old SCU and new SCU around 2x at most.


Now, I would questimate that
Hull A remains at 48 SCU or thereabouts, and gets a $20-$30 price increase.
Hull B gets a slight reduction to 300ish SCU, but $30-$50 price increase.
Hull C drops to around 2-3kSCU but goes up in price nevertheless, at least $50.
Hull D drops to 10kSCUish and goes up in price by $100
Hull E drops to 30-40kSCU and goes up in price by... a lot.

As for BMM, a slight reduction to bit under 3kSCU, 2kSCU at least. And it'll go up in price, roll 40d5.

Javelin with modules optimized for Cargo, I'm gonna say it actually either stays the same or gets up to 50% increase.
 

Vavrik

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Hull A remains at 48 SCU or thereabouts, and gets a $20-$30 price increase.
Hull B gets a slight reduction to 300ish SCU, but $30-$50 price increase.
Hull C drops to around 2-3kSCU but goes up in price nevertheless, at least $50.
Hull D drops to 10kSCUish and goes up in price by $100
Hull E drops to 30-40kSCU and goes up in price by... a lot.
This is a bit of a sore point for me, because I originally wanted a Hull C or larger, but when I thought about it for a moment longer I realized... they aren't meant to land - and it doesn't make much sense to have a ship hauling that much cargo to land (or take off) with it's cargo. That said, I haven't looked at them for over 2 years now. But the images we've seen have cargo overhanging the landing gear.

The other thing I want to point out is that all CIG has to do to limit how many medpens someone can deliver, is to package them in a box, just like today's pharmaceutical companies do. You could say 1 SCU contains 100 cargo units, each of which can carry 10 or even 5 medpens, and still have something that resembles the content of pharmaceuticals we get today. If you have ever seen what comes in a box of ProAir, you'd know what I mean. It's literally 99% packaging, even after you've got it out of the box.
 

FZD

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The other thing I want to point out is that all CIG has to do to limit how many medpens someone can deliver, is to package them in a box, just like today's pharmaceutical companies do. You could say 1 SCU contains 100 cargo units, each of which can carry 10 or even 5 medpens, and still have something that resembles the content of pharmaceuticals we get today. If you have ever seen what comes in a box of ProAir, you'd know what I mean. It's literally 99% packaging, even after you've got it out of the box.
I think this is only a concern right now, because medpens are these OP cure-alls.
However, in time you'll need medical facilities, once that gameplay is implemented the med pens will be significantly less usable. Maybe they'll act like heavy duty pain killers so you can still function with that hole in your torso, but they won't heal the hole in your torso. Then it'll be irrelevant how many thousand med pens you can carry to battlefield.
 

maynard

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Now, I would questimate that
Hull A remains at 48 SCU or thereabouts, and gets a $20-$30 price increase....
what a lame, worthless ship

1. no defensive capability

2. carries less than the bog-standard Freelancer (66 SCU), which can also traverse small wormholes
and the Freelancer Max carries 122 SCU

why would anyone buy a Hull A?

if the Hull B can also fit through small wormholes it may find a role supplying remote outposts / mining operations
 
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FZD

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what a worthless ship

1. no defensive capability

2. carries less than the bog-standard Freelancer (66 SCU), which can also traverse small wormholes
and the Freelancer Max carries 122 SCU
Well, yeah, it's not going to be this awesome supership.
However, it'll still go up in price, I'm nearly certain of it. $30 might've been bit optimistic.

And while a freelancer carries more, freelancer is 12 times the size of Hull A and listed as Medium ship (so could be it doesn't actually fit small wormholes). Though I'm not entirely sure you'd even get Hull A for the wormholes, you might just want a slightly above snub sized ship to sit in your Large/Capital ship, ferrying cargo between it and a station you're too large to dock with.

Or who knows, maybe Hull series will have an advantage with loading/unloading cargo, some concept art suggests that they'd use these autonomous robots flying the crates around without even landing, whereas Freelancer you need to fill it up or suffer timer penalty.
 
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