... what are you talking about. merchantment and bulkfreighters gives you Q per turn and eats food. bulkfreighters give more Q and eats the same amount of food, just slower accel
I completely forgot about them eating food >.<
In which case, they could definitely do with scrapping. If 1 food does cost me 7q to buy at turn tick (since that's what the market price is, so I'd assume it's just that), then I'm gaining 2q per turn from my Bulkfreighters and losing 8q a turn from my Merchantmen. Whenever they reach my home planet they always buy a lot less Quatloos worth of stuff than they sell back, meaning I'm making a massive loss on having them. For example:
Fleet: Fleet #30991, 50 bulkfreighters (30991) Arrived at Alpha Core (3235997)
Trading at Alpha Core (3235997) selling 50000 food for 350000 quatloos.
Trading at Alpha Core (3235997) bought 5 antimatter with 5000 quatloos
Trading at Alpha Core (3235997) new destination = Alpha Orbiter R (3093590)
I lost 345000 Quatloos last turn. It obviously didn't go to my planet, else Mind Control wouldn't have gone inactive, so it just went to my Bulkfreighters, then out into space ¬¬ *cries*
</rage>
Idea! Dave said he wanted to reform trading (I think, unless I'm dreaming about DG now...), so:
3 types of trading ships:
1) Only trades in usable resources (steel, etc). Takes Quatloos from your home planet, buys goods from other planets, sells goods back to home planet.
2) Only deals in consumables (food & hydrocarbons). Takes Quatloos from home planet, buys these goods from other planets, gives them to your home planet for free.
3) Only deals in commodities (currently only Consumer Goods). Buys these goods from your planet, sells to others, brings home Quatloos. Either half of the returned Quatloos or a set amount (whichever is higher) is used to buy Consumer Goods again from your home planet, the rest is deposited on your home planet (this will result in fleets eventually getting richer, until they can no longer fit more in their holds).
That would actually make trading a bit more interesting and certainly useful.
