Theorycraft: 4 Freelancer Max's versus 1 Caterpillar

MISC Freelancer Max, 120 SCU
Crew:1-2
Top Speed: 1000
Mass: 336,230 kg
aUEC Cost: 2,181,500
$ per SCU: 18,179

Drake Caterpillar, 566 SCU
Crew: 2-4
SCM speed: 130 m/s
Afterburn Speed: 890 m/s
Mass: 1,608,205 kg
aUEC Cost: 4,686,600
$ per SCU: 8,280




The question is, will four freelancer Max's be able to out haul one caterpillar?

In terms of SCU, the Freelancer Max has 120 SCU, even with four Max's the combined SCU of 480, is 86 SCU less. Nearly an entire Constellation Andromeda's worth. Looking at the price per SCU even though the caterpillar cost over four and a half million credits, it only costs 8,280 credits per SCU were one Max will 18,179 per SCU. Speed and mass is where the freelancer Max excels over the caterpillar, but can four Max's earn more profit per minute than the Drake Behemoth?  Let's find out in this in this article.

Let's check the most profitable routes on Gallog,

Slam from Private Property to Cru-L5, look profitable, but looking closer the demand is limited to 500 units, and only 20 units a minute or tick. In other words if I somehow got a load of SLAM it would take me 10 hours to sell the load if I sold 1 batch every minute. I wonder if there are other places that buy SLAM? I'm going to have to check this.

Let's filter out SLAM and go to the next one: Neon.

It would be great if this were true, let's check the supply and demand. The highest demand for E'tam is at Reclamation & Disposal Orinth, but it only demands 200 units a minute. Let's say we could supply that, we'd earn 5,896 credits per minute. This is competitive to what we make with the caterpillar right now, but usually these theoretical maximums don't pan out. Let's say we take a full max there, we sell 200 units a minute, that'll take 60 minutes being on location. That will likely be too long of a wait. So we're saying that's 353,760 profit in 60 minutes? The max inventory is 1000 units so the first trip would earn 29,480 profit in one sale. Every sale after that would generate 5,896 per sale, but each sale takes a minute waiting for the refreash rate. Let's look at supply.

Supply wise, there's actually a surplus, as there are 400 units produced per minute among the four drug labs that produce it. So theoretically you could send a freelancer to each lab, wait for them to fill up, about two hours, then fly out to Reclamation and disposal and sell. This sounds like a lot of waiting time for not much more profit. Let's see if Orinth will buy other things too from Paradise Cove.

Looks like we can mix E'tam and Neon. But how much? Okay so Neon and E'tam have the same refresh rate 200 units a minute with a max inventory of 1000 units. So in one go we could sell 1000 units of E'tam and Neon for a profit of 49,480. Well that's better than just E'tam.

Let's map this out, we fly to Paradise Cove, there is 2000 worth of E'tam and Neon. Let's just buy it all since we're here, that fills up 4,000 units of our 12,000. We fly to Orinth. Now we sell 1000 of each instantly. Then wait 5 ticks to sell of the rest. That would net us, 98,960. Let's figure about 25 minutes of travel time, so that puts us at 30 minutes for 98,960. That's not going to beat our Tram & Myers. That would put us at 3,298 profit per minute. That's just not good enough.

What else can we sell at Orinth? Looks like they take a number of things at Orinth.

Let's start with the most profitable, Medical Supplies and Titanium to see how those would look. Ok so we're stuffing our cargo hold with 1000 units of Neon, 1000 units of E'tam, and the rest we fill with medical supplies for a profit of 2.57 per unit with the medical supplies. Nope, Orinth only takes 1000 units of medical supplies a minute, that's pretty bad, and we have to add another outpost to the route to grab those, those 1000 medical supplies will earn us 2,570 profit. That doesn't seem worth it. How about Titanium? Well they have a max inventory of 50,000. Let's say we bring the caterpillar, add E'tam, Neon, and now 50,000 units of Titanium @ 1.8 profit per unit, one click sell all of this. We're looking at, 139,480.  We're still saying 30 minute transit time so that's 4,649 per minute. That still doesn't sound good enough. And we brought a Caterpillar to do it too.

Back to the drawing board, let's take a look at Widow: Nope. Not enough demand, Grim Hex is the best at only 10 units a minute.

Altruciatoxin? The best case is 46,760 from The Orphanage to Grim Hex selling 4000 units as their Max inventory. The orphanage can supply that, having 5000 max inventory. We could also add 800 units of E'tam giving us a profit of about, 63,040. If I recall correctly I remember another trader recommending this. Let's say it takes 30 minutes, that's only 2,101 profit per minute, not very good.

Well that seems to be all the good vices, Let's look at something else. Laranite.

Laranite has been a hot commodity, and it's pretty rare to get a caterpillar load full of it nowadays. Maybe the Max will do better.

The best place to buy Laranite is HDMS-Bezdek on Arail, Surprisingly the best places to sell is Grim Hex, the Orphanage and the CBD. The orphanage will actually take 10,000 units, so theoretically one could run 10,000 units from Bezdek to the orphaage, then take another load from the orphanage to Grim Hex. Grim Hex will buy the same amount of Laranite as the CBD and Area 18, 500,000 units max inventory. That's alot of Laranite. That would take over 8 caterpillars worth to fill each location. It's too bad there's not enough supply of laranite. Let's consider it anyways.

We know all these outposts very well because we've run them quite frequently. However, so does everyone else, and the supply of Laranite is limited and growing smaller. One key route we can note here is Tram & Myers to Grim Hex. It's not the lowest price but it's a quick run and ideal for the Max as the Cat can't land at Grim Hex. In fact, it seems like Grim Hex might be the key sell location for the Freelancer Max. When Widow was a big deal Jumptown to Hex was one of the top profit per minute routes, even beating the Caterpillar. Looking at the numbers the max could earn 38,280 in the best case scenario on that trip. Let's say you could do it in 10 minutes, that's 3,828 profit per minute. Not bad. It beats most of those drug runs above and it's a blazing fast route. Can the Caterpillar beat it?

Let's say we took the cat on the same route, Tram & Myers to Grim Hex, Laranite plus Diamond. I know we can run the cat to olisar to Tram in 10 minutes. Right now running diamond we're making 60k a trip. Gallog says we should be making only 56,000 a trip. (numbers on gallog must be wrong). So let's say wee do Tram to Grim Hex, what's the difference? 15,000 units of Laranite plus the 41,600 units of diamond. 47,850 for the Laranite, 41,600 for the Diamond, giving us 89,450 a run in a caterpillar. That sounds good. 8,945 profit per minute.

How would the four max's do? Well one max would be pure Laranite, 12,000 units, for a profit of 38,280. ArcCorp Mining 141 has a supply of 18,000 units of Agricium, let's take 12,000 units of that, selling for 31,920. (70,200) The other two freelancers we could also get agricum and Laranite from ArcCorp and Hurston's moons. From Bezdek, that would be 42,360. (112,560) And from Lyria you might get another 10,000 Agricum, giving us another 34,900. That gives us a grand total of 147,460. We might be able to find a better alternative for those last two, as there doesn't seem to be enough agricium out there. But overall we take 1 caterpillar earning 89,450 versus 4 Max's earning a cummulative of 147,460.

What about a return trip?

Tram & Myers will buy
16,000 distilled Spirits from Gallete Family Farms or Terra Mills, 0.76 cm, for 12,160 profit. The Max can hold 12,000 so that would be 9,120 profit.
5,000 Medical Supplies, from Hicks for  4,250 profit
2,000 Stims, from Hicks for 2,000 profit.
576,000 Processed foods, from Gallete family farms for a profit of 172,800 profit. It would only take, 10 Caterpillars to do that. 

It would be interesting to see if supplying the outpost with it's demand would effect anything. Looks like it could be done with 11 Caterpillar trips. Not for much profit but for science. I'm not sure how you'd keep track of or record the effect.