Timbur's Log 19 Nov 2949
Teaming up with SQ, Selwyn and Rich_Banks, we wanted to test scaling up our cargo operations to see if flying a command ship, plus multiple cargo ships would result in a faster profit per minute.
The theory comes from the long transit times running to and from the buy and sell console. If we give this job to only ONE ship owner, could we spawn multiple cargo vessels while still sharing the same minimum time running from ship to console? The ideal run would have the command ship arriving before the cargo vessels to buy and sell at the trade console the second the cargo ship arrives. An added advantage is that multiple cargo ships could also be added to the route to multiply the profit of the run. Factor in the high supply and demand for some commodities, we can push them to their limits with this method.
The standard method of hauling cargo is by having two players on one caterpillar. The Owner and the Pilot. The Owner buys/sells commodities and the pilot fly's the ship. Times start and end at the trade terminal. The Ship owner sprints to the ship the pilot opens the elevator, the owner jumps on board, then the ship makes the jumps to quantum. The pilot navigates to the trade location in the fastest manner. After completing the trip, the ship owner jumps off the elevator sprints to the outpost trade terminal and buys, then sprints back. The pilot spools the quantum drive, fly's to jump altitude and jumps to the end destination. After landing, the owner sprints to the trade terminal at the port and sells the goods. This has been the core method of trading.
Now the new theory, The owner spawns two cargo ships and one fast lead ship. This requires a little setup time to spawn all the ships in, as only one can be spawned at a time. The first cargo ship, is spawned, takes off, the second is spawned, takes off, then the third. All ships meet at the outpost, ideally the last ship is fast enough to arrive at the outpost first. The owner goes to the outpost trade console, buy's for each ship then sends them out as soon as the commodities are on board. The pilots of the cargo vessel depart as soon as the cargo is on board and make the jump back to the sell location. The owner runs to their ship, launches, QT's and hopefully arrives before the other two to sell at the trade terminal.
In my figure above I illustrate that not only will this lead to shorter cycle times, (because the lead ship arrives before the slow cargo ships) but it also doubles the profit of the run. This should be able to be scaled up by adding more crew members until the supply and demand limits are reached.
In practice, it's much more difficult to keep all the players moving in tandem, but I believe it is a fun game play loop for all players involved. We've tested this multiple times in the past, but now after getting a little more experience under our belts, we tried it again, and were surprised to see how fast it was.
SQ was in the Caterpillar, Rich was in a Starfarer and I was in the M50. Selwyn swapped between his freelancer max and one of my constellations. We found that the Drake caterpillar is a really fast ship for the job and depending on how fast I could sell at the console, it was difficult to beat even with the fast M50. (I'm going to have to hit the race track to improve my times.) The starfarer on the other hand is slow and sluggish, combined with the low cargo capacity I don't think it's worth doing. The other ships seem to be too small to make a difference, so it seems like we should just focus on adding more caterpillars to the fleet.
We flew for about 50 minutes and were able to get 384,000 profit. It comes out to a little over 7,000 credits per minute. Comparing this to yesterday's runs we managed to stay right on par with the one caterpillar's profit per minute. Personally, I think this number is low, but we did run into interdiction, buy/sell limits, and getting used to the setup, we have plenty of room to improve, also adding a second caterpillar to the account will be the biggest boost.
Will we be able to beat the 10,000 profit per minute threshold?
The theory comes from the long transit times running to and from the buy and sell console. If we give this job to only ONE ship owner, could we spawn multiple cargo vessels while still sharing the same minimum time running from ship to console? The ideal run would have the command ship arriving before the cargo vessels to buy and sell at the trade console the second the cargo ship arrives. An added advantage is that multiple cargo ships could also be added to the route to multiply the profit of the run. Factor in the high supply and demand for some commodities, we can push them to their limits with this method.
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| An example how having a lead ship could double profits and shorten loop time |
Now the new theory, The owner spawns two cargo ships and one fast lead ship. This requires a little setup time to spawn all the ships in, as only one can be spawned at a time. The first cargo ship, is spawned, takes off, the second is spawned, takes off, then the third. All ships meet at the outpost, ideally the last ship is fast enough to arrive at the outpost first. The owner goes to the outpost trade console, buy's for each ship then sends them out as soon as the commodities are on board. The pilots of the cargo vessel depart as soon as the cargo is on board and make the jump back to the sell location. The owner runs to their ship, launches, QT's and hopefully arrives before the other two to sell at the trade terminal.
In my figure above I illustrate that not only will this lead to shorter cycle times, (because the lead ship arrives before the slow cargo ships) but it also doubles the profit of the run. This should be able to be scaled up by adding more crew members until the supply and demand limits are reached.
In practice, it's much more difficult to keep all the players moving in tandem, but I believe it is a fun game play loop for all players involved. We've tested this multiple times in the past, but now after getting a little more experience under our belts, we tried it again, and were surprised to see how fast it was.
SQ was in the Caterpillar, Rich was in a Starfarer and I was in the M50. Selwyn swapped between his freelancer max and one of my constellations. We found that the Drake caterpillar is a really fast ship for the job and depending on how fast I could sell at the console, it was difficult to beat even with the fast M50. (I'm going to have to hit the race track to improve my times.) The starfarer on the other hand is slow and sluggish, combined with the low cargo capacity I don't think it's worth doing. The other ships seem to be too small to make a difference, so it seems like we should just focus on adding more caterpillars to the fleet.
We flew for about 50 minutes and were able to get 384,000 profit. It comes out to a little over 7,000 credits per minute. Comparing this to yesterday's runs we managed to stay right on par with the one caterpillar's profit per minute. Personally, I think this number is low, but we did run into interdiction, buy/sell limits, and getting used to the setup, we have plenty of room to improve, also adding a second caterpillar to the account will be the biggest boost.
Will we be able to beat the 10,000 profit per minute threshold?
We can easily outstrip the single caterpillar pace
ReplyDeleteGive it some time!
you do lose the crash insurance if you lose a cargo pilot you lose the ship
ReplyDelete