Fleet carriers loading/unloading ruin the trading in game?

Miroslav

M
Is there anybody who is still doing common trade activities? I am not an expert on trading but it looks like loading/unloading FC is way more profitable and easier than searching for trade routes and putting yourself at risk while hauling the commodities.
Is that ruining the trade in general? If yes, is that important to anyone?
Should developers set some daily limits on trading with specific FC?

o7
 

Screemonster

Screemonster
The only things i've really used my carrier for when it comes to trade:

  1. Storing stuff I've mined and listing it for sale at an okay price because I can't be bothered hauling it to a sell station
  2. Storing stuff I've.... """"""""mined""""""" until I can find a """""""buyer""""""
  3. Keeping a stockpile of high-tech economy goods for source missions when I was based out of a system where the nearest hi-tech was over 65ly away
 

Ian Doncaster

Ian Doncaster
Anyone who has a carrier has already bought the most expensive thing in the game, so there's not really a lot of point in trying to restrict how much additional money they make after that.

I don't use my carrier to trade (it is storing trade goods, but not for profit-making purposes) and there's not enough in-game information to make trading with other people's carriers something I'd do instead of trading with NPC stations.

You can make more money for the equivalent effort in certain circumstances by paying other people to load and unload your carrier, but few enough people actually are that it's not going to kill regular trade.
 

Miroslav

M
It will not kill just the regular trade, but the entire game itself. Because big part of that income end up in "real world trading". New commanders with 0 exp have FC and everything that Cr can buy.
 

Florenus

Florenus
I've found, sadly, there's actually no point in using Carrier for regular trading. I'll make more money faster doing regular runs. Loading the carrier, jumping, unloading- it all adds unnecessary work, because I can usually find places where buying and selling for the best profit will take the same amount of time as just loading a carrier with cargo I later would have to unload.

It would make sense for trading something like rare commodities, where commodity gains value with distance from the source, but as it is now, that's another thing that's not really worth the time.

It might also make some sense if I would use players to load and unload the carrier, while I do something else, but I would need to forgo most of the profit to make it attractive (provided I would find a place where players would find my carrier and what it offers), making it pretty much not worth the hassle.
 

Martind Forlon

Martind Forlon
Miroslav said:
Is there anybody who is still doing common trade activities?
Click to expand...
Last time I did trading CG in colonia using T7 on alt account ... there were carriers which I could use, but that specific region for that purpose worked perfectly fine with smaller trading ship and it was much more fun as just repeating load/unload routine (or wait for restock :) ). I have FC on my main account ... it have its advantages, but imo it's much more about enrich players possibilites how to do things, it's definitelly not about ruining something.
 

Jmanis

Jmanis
As someone without an FC, i frequently trade without issue. Fact is unless your goal is anything but credits, the minerals price buff means arguably the best profits are just one jump away from most systems.

And while i can't compare, i imagine most FCs are only good for simple trade if your target is multiple jumps away
 

Brrokk

Brrokk
In most trading activities FCs don't confer a time advantage, simply because they require you to haul every ton twice instead of once.

The only exceptions are when the buying or selling stations are very far from a star or for very long range hauling. Traders usually avoid those situations anyway.

Carriers do give a convenience advantage: you can buy stuff, store it and sell it much later. All that's doing, though, is redistributing your game activities in time. It doesn't actually increase profits.
 

Jmanis

Jmanis
Brrokk said:
In most trading activities FCs don't confer a time advantage, simply because they require you to haul every ton twice instead of once.

The only exceptions are when the buying or selling stations are very far from a star or for very long range hauling. Traders usually avoid those situations anyway.

Carriers do give a convenience advantage: you can buy stuff, store it and sell it much later. All that's doing, though, is redistributing your game activities in time. It doesn't actually increase profits.
Click to expand...
It's prob worth mentioning as well... each run is, starting from FC...
  • fly to market (no profit)
  • fly cargo to fc (no profit)
... (repeat til full and jump)
  • fly to market (sell goods for profit)
  • fly to FC (no profit)

As opposed to
  • buy minerals, jump and fly to market ( 10k/t profit)
  • buy import goods, jump and fly to market (1-2k/t profit)
  • no cost or time getting trit

Fly times might be shorter, depending on circumstance, but for the ongoing costs of an fc, is it really worth it?
 

Konan

K
FC is great for storing mining commodites. I fly to deep space on some prime "fishing holes" and mine til i fill up carrier then come back and sell.
 
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