[Suggestion] Increase freighter speed from 3 to 20

Freighter ships may be 20x slower, but they can carry 100x more capacity.

That makes them 5x more efficient when speed is less important.

Poseidon and sea chart archive can help a lot.

I think we got spoiled by the Festival!

Starman

Their speed is perfectly fine. i have 16 of them and don't really have any problems with lack of them. i have colonies quite close together though, but on other hand i don't use Poseidon a lot. They are meant to be able to transport bulk cargo, but be very slow, so you cannot immediately empty your towns of resources.

You can set them to lower capacity 10000 resources instead of normal 50000 and they get 66.7% speed increase. so if you have extra freighters you can use more of them to cut travel time almost in half. in addition to Poseidon and sea charts.

For example it takes 55 minutes for a cargo ship to transport goods from one of my islands to another (no Poseidon or sea chart). While it takes 18 hours and 20 minutes for freighter. with 10.000 capacity it takes "only" 11 hours. i can add Poseidon to that, and the effect of sea chart archive.

Not to mention that you can buy triton engines to significantly boost those massive long range operations. the costs are fixed for 1 journeys so it costs 18 ambrosia whether you are sending 1 trade ship with 500 goods or 100 freighters with 5 million goods.

For journey all across the map ~ 100 islands across it takes freighters 17 days to move (and that is without any speed bonuses). if you spend 18 ambrosia it takes 4 days and 8 hours, add Poseidon to that, and sea charts, and perhaps lower capacity or world bonuses to ship speed and the time becomes manageable. and remember this is all across the map

Quote from Scythe

For me, being able to distribute resources between my cities is my biggest bottleneck for progress. I just can't keep the resources flowing well enough to keep building. The game doesn't allow for enough cargo ships to move everything around and gold income just isn't high enough to make it happen directly either.

This is your biggest problem and you don't use Poseidon, why?

Freighters are already very strong, it has already been pointed out why they are slow.

They're also easy to use if you're not that much online, or if you only have 1-2 poseidon/hermes, with just timing the wonders accordingly whenever you send the Freighters.

For me my Freighters are handling all the distributing of ressources between my cities, the normal trading ships are only used for pillaging.

Just today I sent Ressources from one end of the Server to another via Freighters, taking a bit more then 3 Days (with Server Bonus +25% and Event-Bonus +25%), but it's over 4million ressources so it's only fair, that they take some time.

Quote from Scythe

I suppose it largely depends on your play style.

If you are a casual player and/or strictly a builder, I can see how this would not be an issue for you.

For those that pillage, and need their cargo ships for that or use the Trading Post and need to be able to jump on good deals... Then it could be problematic. Because you have to juggle around what you are doing and when, in order to not halt progress. Perhaps you even have an account developed enough that everything takes weeks and days to build, so being able to keep resources constantly flowing into cities is not an issue.

For me, being able to distribute resources between my cities is my biggest bottleneck for progress. I just can't keep the resources flowing well enough to keep building. The game doesn't allow for enough cargo ships to move everything around and gold income just isn't high enough to make it happen directly either.

I have to dedicate at least two to three days a week to just redistributing resources between cities, and that with an account that doesn't require wine to be distributed. With the account that I have that has 5X as many freighters as that one, I strictly use the freighters to distribute wine once a week.

Maybe there needs to be a more intermediate type of ship that is faster than a freighter, and has a capacity in between them. I was looking for a simpler solution than that, by merely increasing the speed of the existing freighter.

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How many freighters do you have?

I don't have governor residence of high enough level so i only have dockyard in my capital. i currently have 16 freighters. once i get dockyards in more cities i could easily get 10 - 20 more in short amount of time. their cost is also quite forgiving, as the increase is quite small compared to normal trade ships. and you can get a lot of them (lv5 dockyard in 10 cities is 50 freighters in total). not to mention that you can buy up to 40 of them with ambrosia.

Once again there is a compromise. freighters make miracles such as Poseidon and Hermes more viable so you are forced to make a choice whether you want more cities on Hephaestus’ Forge or you want to diversify them. it is one of those hard choices you have to make

Freighters are really meant for the late game and once you get a critical mass of them you will see that they do not need a speed buff, you just need more of them.

Quote from Scythe

I'm thinking 20-30 freighters is kind of the baseline to make them useful, for their limited speed.

Depends.

If you only want to use them for wine-transport and/or are rarely online then 5-10 are already a huge help.

If your plan is to optimize everything, transport pillaged goods over to other cities, gather ressources for premium-trader, redistribute them between your cities and so on, then you definitely want way more then that.

As nosorog points out, once you're able to have your first Freighters you can relatively easy increase this Number in short time, since both the dockyards and the Freighters themself don't scale badly in terms of ressource/gold-cost (especially compared to normal Trade-ships).

I have 113 Freighters currently (no Phonician) and I'm still aiming for way more, not because they're bad / need a buff, but because they're still worth it.

Quote from Scythe

I have 10, and it sucks.

Ironically, my capital is the only place I don't have a dockyard...

I have a complex method of account development that has largely worked, up to the point I am at. It's great, as long as you are patient, work slowly and aren't very active. Which worked fine on my previous server. This forced merge server has greater opportunities, at the moment and faster development is possible.

My limitation on accumulating freighters is the ability to accumulate gold.

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Don't want to sound rude or anything, but how much money re you making exactly? It sounds like you have quite a large account since you have dockyards in multiple cities. and the freighters cost only ~ 8 million gold each.

I currently have 6.300.000 points, have fully employed mines and academies, and around 10k generals. and i am making 39.000 gold an hour. I have putus in all my towns but still... it takes me around 9 days to get enough gold to buy another freighter.

Just some back of the envelope calculations: assuming you have 10 cities with 3000 citizens (this seems conservative estimation). if you go in gold mode shout down all production, research and military you can earn 90.000 gold per hour. assuming you have shrine at level 36 as i do that gives you 77% extra income. that is 160.000 gold per hour. this way you can make enough gold to buy a freighter in around 2 days.

By this calculations you could easily get 10 more in 20 days

20 would be a lot, too much. I had a proposal before to just raise ship speed by +2, which would make it 5 and that would already be a big buff

Quote from Scythe

I don't expect them to be fast, but it shouldn't require so many of them to be remotely useful either.

But why?

If you take all of the stats of the Freighters into consideration, the speed, the overall costs and the capacity (and keep in mind that they're easy to use in combination with wonders and with less activity), then do you honestly believe that they're "bad" in any way and need a buff?

I don't.

Sure, they would be more comfortable imo if they were a bit faster and maybe had less capacity, but that would be a trade-off, not a straight up buff.

I also wouldn't mind an upgrade that would make them a bit faster (like +2), maybe f.e behind a costly Future Research, which could buff a Future Research (most of them could need this) and only be a small buff for Freighters in the late game.

You only have a few Freighters currently and don't use Poseidon apparently, so you still have options to improve your account/playstyle compared to others.

Because if you don't use Poseidon... it's very hard to discuss with you about "ship-speed" then because you yourself made the decision against a Wonder that improves Ship-speed.

I'm never going to argue against Freighters having more speed so I 100% support this.

That said, Scythe, you really need to simply acquire more Freighters. Your problem isn't their speed, but your lack of them. It'll be worth it to sell resources for gold so that you can get about 5 to 10 more.

Though, for me personally, the first 1 was the biggest game changer, simply because I went from being able to ship 75k to 125k. I prioritize freighters fairly heavily once I have around 1m points.

Also, if you're wondering my strategy, I start in the town that has the God's shrine and build all reducers to level 50. Then I get the GR up to 10 and do the dockyard. I usually get it to 5, then start on the God's shrine.

JOKE

Buy whatever at the highest price in your Trading Post.

Starman