Fleet sorting

[Fenix]

No I wasn't taking any losses, it was just that given the length of the combat timers and the reward at the end of them my combat ship simply wasn't making enough money for me to be taking my time to actually do them. I believe I figured it out to be about... 150k/hour or something like that, which is insane since my cargo ships make like 4-10 times that amount depending on how lucky I am with finding refugees. Of course with higher power ships the timers will be longer but I'm wondering if the valuables I can collect with higher power missions might help to tip the scales in COM missions favor. If not then I guess it's just a matter of numbers, having enough COM ships to actually start making more money than my cargo ships can.

Really Mata? Your ships must have been super slow... either that or you really didn't have a lot of time to play, my 3 cargo ships cover the entire 4th ring in a day taking 1/3rd of the ring per ship basically, of course that requires that I be on for more than just 1-2 hours which I can do since I work from home. Though I often close the game because it distracts me from work lol.

[JamJulLison]

I have more time for COMs then I do SOS.   So that is one of the reasons I do them more.  Also though they are better for quick cash.  I admit you can get big bucks if you keep up with SOS's.  But with how active they force you to be, I prefer to only have 1 ship do that now.  I am making plenty of solars from COMs so I have no complaints.  Many times it only takes 2-3 coms to equal what I made on an SOS ship if it had about 20-25k space.   That is in a shorter amount of time too.   One issue on SOS these days is so many people are doing tem now so it is hard to find pods sometimes or an SOS mission will vanish before you can get it.   With COMs, COMs are only a little better to do if you are mostly doing the hijackings like I am.  I just do nest when my ships need to refuel.

[Fenix]

Hmm, you have a point there I should probably prioritize the kinds of COM's I do, well in any case my COM ship is getting upgrades anyway as many of the modules were a bit outdated because of the number of upgrades I did while with ITO to corp ships and of course staring up my own corp as well. Plus I'm sort of switching tactics a bit so I need to swap out some modules. I'll have to re-evaluate the potential profit from my COM ship after those are done.

[JamJulLison]

When I was doing both I was having to keep all my COM ships in one area so I could have a cargo ship come and keep collecting all the resources I was getting from the Nest.  Wasn't bad profits once those are added in with illegal mods. But you get your solars much quicker with hijackings. Just because you don't need to wait for 2 timers to count down.  It is really annoying having to do a looting one and then a destruction one just to get the most profit you can on them.  Another annoying thing is often times when looking for hijackings I run into a crap ton of nest. 

[Matamaure001]

I have been doing a lot of SOS and COM missions (with slow ships by your standard Fenix). The SOS gave me about 3 millions a day before optimization. COM missions give me between 4 to 5 millions a day per ship. I only take the combat COMs and not the nest COM. Even if SirEmi says that they have the same rewards, they are much more trouble and not worth the effort (my opinion). I have stopped recently to do SOSs and only do COMs. I have 17 ships (between 13 and 22 millions power each) doing COMs. I am building 4 more now. They give me about 68 millions a day in average now.

[Dadds]

comms missions do cash in...there are some tricks to increasing "dpi" or "sol/per/hour" as it were with the final payouts. Nests are a pain to manage, best getting some fleet carrier management to maximise profit by minimising counter timers. I am doing every comm that comes along, simply because the pickings lately seem to leave a bunch of nest in orbit and fewer hijacks. I still turn, in crystal mats alone, around $40M solar in a 24-36hr period. that is on top of the small instant rewards they give, and the occasional $20M + drop of illegal module.
Do nest pay off? Absolutely, if you know how to hunt them well and efficiently. I still do like the Comm mission payout for immediate boost to the bank accounts, and the large 2 for 1  payout of power vs payment (ie 1M power =$2M sol, on average)
I control around 8-12 missions of varying sorts at any and all times, which needs a lot of control over moving and jumping and swapping out of ships to maintain combat counters and collection of comms missions.
As Matamure reminisces, it wasnt always this easy. My 2IC became very big based on doing com missions, where as i focused on more passive areas, such as rescue missions and mining...He made very big income early in the game and did introduce me to the free income in my area, however my ships were geared for peaceful purposes...until the great PMI-IMG wars lol
Now i am hybrid for sos-com. The secret is to take advantage of time and exploit your local area. sos missions pay more in outer rings, com pay more based on the pickup ship power <hint/spoiler, the pickup ship doesnt have to be the ship to complete the mission to gain the reward>
and now as always, i say too much lol.

[Fenix]

Yea, I knew that COM's had to make more money than SoS eventually, if only because the number of ships I can have running the 4th ring for refugees is limited where as with COM's each mission pays out fairly good for the proper ship, and I can have way more ships running COM's. I just need to make enough income from these SoS runs to get things up and running is all. Hopefully I'll get better income from them before the end of the month.

[JamJulLison]

comms missions do cash in...there are some tricks to increasing "dpi" or "sol/per/hour" as it were with the final payouts. Nests are a pain to manage, best getting some fleet carrier management to maximise profit by minimising counter timers. I am doing every comm that comes along, simply because the pickings lately seem to leave a bunch of nest in orbit and fewer hijacks. I still turn, in crystal mats alone, around $40M solar in a 24-36hr period. that is on top of the small instant rewards they give, and the occasional $20M + drop of illegal module.
Do nest pay off? Absolutely, if you know how to hunt them well and efficiently. I still do like the Comm mission payout for immediate boost to the bank accounts, and the large 2 for 1  payout of power vs payment (ie 1M power =$2M sol, on average)
I control around 8-12 missions of varying sorts at any and all times, which needs a lot of control over moving and jumping and swapping out of ships to maintain combat counters and collection of comms missions.
As Matamure reminisces, it wasnt always this easy. My 2IC became very big based on doing com missions, where as i focused on more passive areas, such as rescue missions and mining...He made very big income early in the game and did introduce me to the free income in my area, however my ships were geared for peaceful purposes...until the great PMI-IMG wars lol
Now i am hybrid for sos-com. The secret is to take advantage of time and exploit your local area. sos missions pay more in outer rings, com pay more based on the pickup ship power <hint/spoiler, the pickup ship doesnt have to be the ship to complete the mission to gain the reward>
and now as always, i say too much lol.

The thing is that big chunk you get there from nest is after you have filled up after doing multiple nest missions. Unless your doing COMs in just one area with a ship around to pick up the stuff, your ships need to make more trips back to Sol then really are needed. Since I switched to just hijackings my overall profits have been higher.  The only annoying thing is nest are freaking everywhere lol

[Dadds]

yeah i am picking up around 6 nest to every 1-2 comms on average. And you are right, which is why i am down the line of using hangar and fleets to support combat ships. They carry, travel and store the materials, make and dish out fuel as required, and either travel to Sol when full, or have a cargo support vessel intercept to offload for delivery. It allows the flag, or fleet, to stay in space indefinitely while still able to turn a profit with supply runs.

[Matamaure001]

Dadds, when you will become bigger, you will want all your ships to do missions, you will not want to spare a ship as cargo and an other as support... I have tried it with big hangar and everything, but to stay competitive VS Ralp, every one of my ships has to do missions that pays.

[Dadds]

Dont you worry yourself on what my ships are doing. I can assure you they are all gainfully employed. The top leaderboard position interests me not so "competing" for a position on that list has no interest for me. I am more into building a diverse variety of fleet platforms to perform specialised roles. Anyone can just build drone ships which all look the same and do the same thing. I am building a fleet for when PvP and diversity may actually be important. Right now, Raphael's ships are nothing but floating targets for weapons practice. Trouble is, he doesnt want to sit still long enough to test his "mettle" against my finest ships. Once again he runs from combat at GJ 832 because the odds were only 8:12 in his favour lol
If there is one thing i have learned in doing "a real logistics job" is that most of the workforce is taken up in a support role to make the field operatives much more efficient. I dont give my fleet the luxury of being largely in a support role, but i do acknowledge the need to have some vessels assigned to the movement of goods, resources, sos recoveries and for rapid deployment of combat assets. Remember, i am still a miner and gain a portion of my income that way. This stance is not going to change.

[Matamaure001]

Dadds, no need to flame me, I only wanted to share my experience with you. Naturally you are free to play the game as you see fit for yourself.

As I am concern, the chalenge with Ralph is a good thing for me, it keeps me focus.

By the way, your way to optimize your ships for each mission is a bright idea. I am only too lazy to do it.