There ended up being a point where I needed to resolve this issue sooner rather than later. Otherwise, I'd be making endless trips for days back and forth. As naturally, I had ISK in my wallet to burn, and a great opportunity came for manufacturing some items I wanted to jump on.

In my Manufacturing Update post, I talked a bit about looking into getting a freighter to solve my hauling needs. I would prefer to go the Amarr route with a Providence ship. The smarter option for being the hardest to gank is simply the Obelisk.

The Obelisk gets a lot higher effective hit points than any of the other freighters. Even more so once you put reinforced bulkheads in the low slots. Freighters only get low slots for fitting (with Avalanches being the exception).

The ideal setup then requires you to have three people or accounts. You have one scout jumping a system or two ahead. You have one account that webs the freighter to shorten the turning time it takes to be able to jump. That is because all freighter ships are rather slow. The Obelisk takes almost 50 seconds to align. Using a trick with a web, you can shorten that down a lot.

Now, the good news is that the skills to fly any freighter outside of the empire of ship class you want to fly are all the same. So, I'd only need to train for Gallante Freighter and no other skills to get one.

The Obelisk can also hold over 325k m3 of cargo as its base amount. With further Gallante Freighter skills, increase that by 5% per skill level. That would solve everything if that were all that mattered.

The issue is you got gankers with twenty accounts that wait all day to suicide gank a freighter. With that kind of cargo hold, I could fit 7-15 billion ISK worth of stuff in it. That would also attract every chip head within my entire route to Jita to want to come gank me. As that is a lot of profit for them after losing a few ships.

So, what if I just don’t fill the hold full and haul a more reasonable amount? Well, that is where the issue comes into play. I went into this thinking a reasonable amount was 2 billion ISK. Turns out that is still too high.

I then looked into some recommendations. Based on the hit points that you can get out of an Obelisk. That should be around 1.75 billion ISK in stuff. Yet I fear that is still too high.

I looked into a lot of kill mails. While there are endless reasons why a freighter was killed. There were far too many of them being valued at 4 billion ISK kills. Since the hull of the ship I around 2.2 billion ISK. You can see there is already an issue.

Also, at only 2 billion ISK per load. Along with a proper setup, a minimum of 2 other accounts or people helping. The reality is it’s just not worth it.

I then looked into hiring “professionals” to haul what I needed down closer to me. Most would pick up a courier contract and have it finished in three to seven days. While most won’t deliver right to me, they will within a jump of me. They just want over 100 million ISK (I won’t disclose the actual amount).

That 100 million ISK plus price should not be the issue. There is, however, a massive catch. There is a 1.5 billion ISK cap on cargo value for most of the people who transport. If that is as high as they are willing to go. That tells me that is the amount they expect the least number of issues from gankers by hauling. That is sadly also too small a load that it’s taking way too much out of my bottom line.

At that price point, I'd almost be better off buying the materials I needed more local to me. There would still be a slight advantage to paying for it to get hauled down near me. It’s, however, quite a slim margin.

There is also the public contract route. I might try at some point. Where I either break some loads down into 1.5 billion ISK and only offer about 50 million for the job. I could also try and offer 100m for a 3 billion ISK load.

While there are options in the professional realm of higher than 1.5 billion ISK worth of goods to be hauled. The price skyrockets. Like to the point you are almost paying more than just breaking it up into smaller chunks.

So, I needed a better solution. While I love the Blockade Runner, I have been using it. It’s only got about 4,300 m3 of cargo space. Great for high-value low low-weight items. Also, great if I want to take some risks and cut a lot of time off my route to a trade hub by going through low security systems. It’s just not enough.

The good news is that there is another option. One that I already have the skills for. There are things called Deep Space Transports (DST). They can cloak, but unlike the Blockade Runners, they can’t warp cloaked. They also have a bit slower turning time.

The DST I have an Impel has a standard hold with my skills of just 3,100 m3 for cargo. That sounds worse than the other ship. The DST also comes with a Fleet Hanger that has another 60k m3 of cargo space.

That is right. I can get over 14 times the amount of cargo in another ship, which is still quite a secure transporting ship. That I can tank out a bit to try and deal with a bad situation. It’s also got another trick up its sleeve.

Since it can use a cloak. You point to a gate. Then you pop the cloak and a MWD (Micro Warp Drive). Right before the MWD is done with its cycle, you decloak and hit warp. As soon as the MWD cycle is done, the ship warps unless you are pointed or bumped.

Now I'll admit I'm not perfect yet at pulling off the cloak trick. I’m clearly not taking this thing into any LS shortcuts to get home quicker any time soon. If you mess up, it takes you longer to turn, and thus a better chance of getting killed.

Now, while there are other types of transporting ships. Along with them having their own special kinds of holds to have decent amounts of cargo space. They all have issues of being way too slow. Most of them are also rather paper-thin, so they are easy to gank.

Many of those other ships I also lack the skills for. At least for now. There is one type of transportation ship I am somewhat ignoring. Those are from the EDECOM line. They also have a freighter that can have fittings other than low slots. Those ships are even made to have some combat abilities in mind.

The issue is. If someone tries to gank you and you attack them back. Now all their friends can come and attack you without Concord (space police), at least killing a few of them. As long as they wait for you to attack back. That was a common theme I noticed on an endless number of EDECOM transport ship kill mails. Having some firepower did little when there were still twenty people wanting to kill you.

As far as using the DTS that is now part of my arsenal for hauling. I ended up having a couple of day spree where I bought over 5 billion ISK in materials for manufacturing. I ended up hauling it all over a couple of trips. It made what would have been impossible on my Blockade Runner doable.

I also found on my second trip out of it that I could, in fact, haul more than 2 billion in bulk materials that I needed in a single load. Thus, for now, making the whole should I get a freighter or not a rather moot point.

Final Thoughts

While there are loads of people all the time moving tens of billions of ISK in goods in a single go in a freighter. I’m just not at the scale where losing even something like 5 billion ISK is something to easily shake off. It would be quite the setback.

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Screenshots were taken, and content was written by @Enjar about Eve Online.