Seeing the odds for one, there could be much better chances for success with two, three or more Barges working together. Doing a traderun with 3 Barges and ~200 million SC profit waving allowes considerable bigger numbers of escorts that will most likely even handle bigger and well organized pirat groups.
At some Point the more Barges join, the bigger profit will be because an 15 ship escort army can guard 3 Barges as good as 5.
P.S. In case you want to give that a try, count me in (with a Barge)..
' Wrote:Aside from the movement, where do you dock?
Won't you get killed by the station when undocking?
You can dock on any station you want. Stations won't kill you when you undock, just planets.
I've found that rolling the barge on its side and lining up the little transport under its belly with the quickdock tower of the station gets me docked the first try most of the time.
' Wrote:You can dock on any station you want. Stations won't kill you when you undock, just planets.
I've found that rolling the barge on its side and lining up the little transport under its belly with the quickdock tower of the station gets me docked the first try most of the time.
Yes, you can forget about autopolot docking..i let my Barge try to dock on its own in complete peace for 2 hours with no result..and it wasnt desturbed by little ships flipping the Barge in that time.
The Barge is so cruel capped in speed and turnrate that the Autopilot tries in vain, brakes off and tries again forever probably...
' Wrote:Yes, you can forget about autopolot docking..i let my Barge try to dock on its own in complete peace for 2 hours with no result..and it wasnt desturbed by little ships flipping the Barge in that time.
The Barge is so cruel capped in speed and turnrate that the Autopilot tries in vain, brakes off and tries again forever probably...
I hope you've tried this with a few bases before making this statement.
I've been successfully able to dock on quite a few bases using autopilot that docked in a few minutes. It's not impossible. In fact, I'd say 1 in 6 bases are barge autopilot dockable.
That being said, anyone who flies a barge in Liberty is an idiot.:PSeriously, don't take ridiculous routes in barges. Not good. If you're trading for money, a direct go-to isn't that bad. Especially due to the heavy pirating fees and time/patience needed to get through tradelanes due to the cruise charging. Direct Go-to makes means you only need to charge once.
This is where I agree with, is you compare to the profit per minute the difference is not that big. I'm also glad that these pirates charge a big amount, I am also aware that doing so isn't really in role-play but neither is using a Barge as a trade ship. It's originally designed to act as a base of its own, operating independently, at least that's what I got from reading its description.
That of course does not change the fact that people still try, because its something new and challenging. Therefore, it's fun too. But yes if you ever get the crazy idea to use your Barge for trading you should have considered the risks beforehand.
Fact: The barge still makes more money even if you avoid tradelanes and jumpgates (jumpgates as much as possible that is), thereby avoiding most if not all pirates.
Also, don't try trading in places which don't have a high pirate activity. Or rather, houses with a general low activity:P