I've been wanting to do this for awhile and have been doing these values on a calculator on the spot to compare a few ships in the past, but here's my official post.

Basically, these spreadsheets compare values in units of (items carried*distance/sec) (multiplied and divided by several constants and then scaled down to comparable values) of many different ships, taking into account hull, speed, slave slots taken, aug slots, and more.

In Order:

Battle Thatch (by almost 5x)
Santa's Special Sleigh
Leviathan+
Leviathan
Massif+
Massif II+
EFF (with slave travel aura)
Vazaha Prototype (EDIT: Now Awesome)
NCC-Special
NCC-BULK
OS Tortoise
Massif II
Massif
Pax Selen
Warden
Scrupling
Sergeant's Enforcer
Bulk Trader+
Bulk Trader II+
Shrimp+
OS Rosfire
Pax Xmas (LOL at those who thought it was good)
Big Roswell+
Bulk Trader
Enforcer
Paxian Prismatica
Bulk Trader II
Shrimp
Orca
Bule Stealth Traer
Porpoise+
Pax Celestica (LOL to me who thought it was good )
Hotrod mega
Didus Ineptus
OS Rosburst
EFF (No Aura)
Helga+
Serenity
Big Roswell
Mini Mad Scientist
Hotrod+
Inferno
Turtle
Asteroid Freighter
Goldenboy Coin
Paximinus
Faranji Wingship
Hotrod
Goldenboy Bar
Wingship IV+
Wingship II+
Unforge
Zebucart

General Slave Tips:

Trade Slaves need Trade Controlbots, there are also several DG Drop controlbots such as Ultimate Trader Controlbot that increase useful stats but are rather rare.

For trade slaves in your own galaxy, maximizing interior space is key, so use items that have small space but are still efficient. Low bank shields are usually small in size, but leave them open for sabotage.

The Programming skill (available up to level 30 in Iq' Bana) gives you 2 more slave orders per level, useful for galaxies with many bases or long distance trading.

------------------------Trade Value...? What?-------------------------

1) What IS the trade value and where did you get it?

I multiplied the speed*hull, and divided by # of slave slots taken.

Speed is the speed of the ship (duh). For some ships tech 13+, the 3rd or 4th Aug in a setup should be speed because capacity augs' effect weaken as you stack them, like all augs.

Hull is the maximum possible hull with the augmenters for that level and the skills available. Usually this means capacity augs, but if you have Slave Tweaking, Hephaestus Augs are actually the best way to go and I included this in my calculation for Pax Selen, etc.

2) Okay so I have a few slaves in mind... Which to choose?

Trade value is divided by the number of slave slots already that the ship takes up. So if you filled slave slots to the max with two slaves of different techs that had the SAME trade value, there'd be no difference.

For instance a bulk trader+ has the same efficiency as a Bulk II+, so you'd need 2 bulk+'s for every bulk II+ but they would fill the same slots and move the same goods just as fast. At 8 bulk+'s= 4 bulk II+'s.

Sometimes there's a dilemma with the number of slots, such as you'll have slots left over but not enough for the ship you'd like, making lower tech ships more versatile. Also you can more more TYPES of goods with lower tech ships because currently you can't move 2 goods effectively with 1 ship.

Also higher tech ships are usually more expensive and so are their augmenters.

------------------------------Gear---------------------------------

Shield- Use a Paxian speed shield (Paxian Sovereign Explorer) or Stream Shield (Slipstream, Spiritstream, Phantomstream) to drastically increase slave efficiency.

Energy: Micro hotfusion is 1 space, just something that can power your shield, radar and travel field if one is equipped.

Radar: Not a priority space-wise, unless it's a mining slave in which case it needs a stronger radar to see some asteroids.

Engine: Engines with low size and high power such as
Grape Influence, Cute Drive, Lion Thruster

Travel Fields: Capital Ship Slave Travel Field for Earthforce Frigates, adds a significant boost and is a must. Apparently Beserker Travel Fields also work on slaves and so should be used accordingly.

Augmenters: Almost always capacity, in the case of good and exc, 1 aug past 3 should be speed. E.g., on Paxian Selenologica you would want 3 exc. cap and 1 exc. speed without Slave Tweaking.

--------------------------------Skills-----------------------------------

Slave Tweaking:

Trainable in Liberty up to level 15 with commodities from Liberty DG, it is a must for combat and trade slaves alike. Use slaves to kill the ai because all other forms of attack have a huge disadvantage in Liberty.

To level 30, use the commodities in the second DG of Liberty, and train in Copper.

Merchant Fleet Master:

Making even a zebucart+ better than any other slave that doesn't have the skill, Merchant Fleet Master gives a HUGE bonus to trade slaves at 10% capacity per level, and 2% of other stats per level.

Notes:

Notice how bad light fighters really are at trading. However an important thing to note is if you will be trading in dangerous areas, slower ships will not survive ai attacks and therefore you may need a faster ship.

Also useful for decayable commodities like Promethium.




Spreadsheets:

http://db.tt/asBaPEng PDF Speed Table BY POPULAR REQUEST
http://db.tt/CzG92fkM Excel

Normal Tables
http://db.tt/cAMwJsro PDF
http://db.tt/YbgtdYdI Excel
http://db.tt/4nYbaCmU Excel sorted by tech

http://db.tt/V6ppCmQA PDF Comparison ST to non-ST
http://db.tt/rfO9cUMl Excel

http://db.tt/IrPq9Ydl Comparison ST MFM to non (ridiculous)
http://db.tt/7YSIy164 Excel

Very cool! I'm wondering how you know you have the optimal aug setup for each ship irrespective of hull tech and aug slots.

I used capacity augs for each ship and did it respective to tech, so for NCC-Bulk I used 2 basic capacity (Hull+Hull*.3+Hull*.3) and so forth for other ships. Capacity ALWAYS gives the highest trade value, but speed is optimal in some situations such as through juxtas, etc.

You can edit the excel files to find the trade value by editing the formula if you wish but it seems to me capacity is always the way to go. I never tried any special augs like heph but I may recalculate a few to see

EDIT: with ST30 and Hephaestus augs, I calculated .848 as the aug cap bonus, as opposed to .72 for a sup. capacity. Not sure if anyone actually uses hephs on trade slaves but could be useful with Slave Tweaking...

Good work so far. Now take into account Merchant Fleet Master and non Merchant Fleet Master, and also take into account that slaves can use Berserker Travel Fields if they are on a Merchant Fleet Master Berserker.

An idea to also add in would be the turning/thrust rates from the different engines that is typical to use on the different ships.

I wholeheartedly agree on this. I always aug my ships with a type of a Sardine Augmenter, then I gain speed through sleek items, PGE/PSE, MFM skill and Travel Fields of all kinds.

merchant fleet master will always be a set multiplied number better for every ship so no use including it ^.^ Well.... It would clutter the table but I could include MFM and non MFM for every ship in the same table

What about speedy cap augs in the case where the tech level allows it?

Wouldn't the beserker travel field thing be an abusable bug? Unless it's somehow intentional haha. Well it's pretty obvious which ships will be heavier, Suchas you can't really aug Hotrod+ 5 capacity because it will be too heavy.

I could include some popular slave engines in the post:
cute drive (low size)
No idea what else actually

I really labored over including those but I figured there was no way you would find 3-4 of them to put on a ship. But you can edit the ship capacity aug value for those if you wish, if you only have 1 or 2 you can average it out (like if it has 3 slots but you only have 1 spacey basic capacity, you'd average the 3 percentages)

With the previous nerf to Trade Slaves I don't see it as an abusable bug, as most people use it and it has a really huge impact on trade slaves if you weren't allowed to use it.

If you are to include some engines, I would include Grape Influences, Rhino Charges and Lion Thrusters for higher end trade slaves.

I use SSS's and Vazaha prototypes seems I'm good to go

Nice post, I've been meaning to make a similar sheet. I think you're discounting speed augs too easily though on higher aug ships and that could skew the results (for those of us who don't use zerker slaves). Due to how aug stacking works I feel like in almost all cases the 3rd aug (where applicable) should be a speed aug.

/Looks at 30 selen slaves
/Cries

I was quick to discount this at first but I'll give it a try, simple math could prove it. It depends on whether the multiplier x*tradevalue is greater for 30*(800+800*.3+800*.3+800*.3) compared to 30*800 or for (30+30*.12)*(800+800*.3+800*.3)

Where 30 is speed and 800 is hull and the decimal values are aug multipliers. I'm sure it depends on the number of aug slots but you may be correct I'll look

that is ofc unless your 2 bases are ontop of each other, or does a speed aug effect that stupid pause while they undock, sit there for a second to decide which way they are going