Well, no money - no war.

Avorion is about two major things:

• Mining
  
• Trading

Freighters I build so far below. Altough, this doesn't mean all of the meet the criteria developed in this guide.

In order to find the right speed lets remind ourselfes what a freighter basically does:

1. load/unload cargo
   
2. calculate jump
   
3. aim at jump point (while calculating)
   
4. jump
   
5. charge hyperdrive
   
6. travel to target destination
   
7. dock/get in transporter range
   
8. go to 1.

So in order to be at peak efficiency you always want to be in motion when you could be.

The longest time for a Intersystem-Freigther is the Hyperdive recharge time. This is the maxiumum time you want to stay in the system - keep jumping!

But this means also effctively since the bigger the ship is, the greater the hyperdrive reload time is and therefore the slower the sublight engine speed can be.

Since charging the hyperdrive, jump calculation as well as docking are pretty rigid they form the baseline for the needed speed of the freighter.

After a Jump who far does a freighter has to travel?

I think usally travel distances are between 20-40 km.
10 km is I think pretty close and 80 kms pretty far.

According the the average required speed is:

Lets assume the following:

• load/unload cargo - 0 secs
  
• calculate jump - 10 secs (?)
  
• aim at jump point - 5 secs (but since aiming is done while cacluating you can omit it).
  
• jump - 0 secs
  
• charge hyperdrive - 70 secs
  
• travel to target destination - 40,000.0 m (40 km)
  
• dock/get in transporter range - 10 secs

This would result in an average speed of 800 m/s.

Since, you have to accellerate and decellerate the top speed has to be even higher.

Furthermore the ship of concern is a slot 6 ship.

So, a big engine has its limits and you definitely need boosting.

Accelleration by boosting seems to be tripple the base value.

After some back and fourth I came up with the following requirements for the freighter to minimize the time in the system (see figure below).



Important insights I gained:

• since accelleration is limited by engine size and there is a maxiumum effective size per ship slot size, decelleration is also very important to cut travel time.
  
• a reduced ship mass will decrease accelleration time and therefore energy upkeep at cruising speed. Bigger ships burn more energy to maintain speed.

If I would travel with 600 m/s the 40 kms would be covered in 67 seconds.

So what wouldthat 17 seconds mean economically?
They add up to 34 seconds if you travel between two systems.
So the freighter with 600 m/s would need point to point 174 seconds,
while the example above would just need 140 seconds.

In a recent game I had a water hauler with a capacity of 5000 which made 20,000.0 credits per journey. Given that you can always load and sell with the same conditions the profit is as follows:

• 115 credits/second for a travel time of 174 seconds per journey
  
• 143 credits/second for a travel time of 140 seconds per journey

The difference is 24,3% more, so pretty significant

Lets check how good my Koala is.

Old version:






Here are the calculated values (subject to mistakes maybe, so be careful)
So battery to small or power output to low and decelleration also to slow.
In order to not use the battery the power output would have to be 18.18 GW.
Which would need a generator upgrade of 42%.
Which could be achieved with "uncommon".
Upgrading a inertia dampener would consume additiontal 2 GW but this could be offset by a generator upgrade.




So definitely doable with some tweeking.





to be continued...

Finding the right cargo size really depends on the cargo.

Low value cargo with big volume needs big cargo holds.
Such as:

• water
  
• ores, raw materials

High value cargo with low volume does not need big cargo holds.
Such as:

• processors

Furthermore the production cylce of our good source is important.
You want to keep the prices at the optimium level.
So, you should not buy more than what has been produced during you travel.
The minium time for one cycle with max. production is 15 secs.

Here it really depends, since, sometimes the hyperdrive slows you down.

...