It doesn’t take nados to down a freighter. Plenty are downed with just catalyst murderballs.
Hah omg
I’d normally approach a choice like that by deciding what I’m actually likely to do. Are you only going to haul? Then it makes sense to get the best hauler, and learn the tricks of hauling to make it as safe and fast as you can. Time is also a factor. If you have stuff that needs to be hauled, and making 1 trip instead of 4 or 8 means you can get it done in your available time, then that’s an issue.
If you want to do “some hauling, plus other stuff” then the more flexible ship makes sense. Especially if it’s capable of hauling what you need hauled in the time you have available.
And if you actually need both, then train to Orca and use it to feel out the hauling process with a slightly safer ship while you continue on training towards a freighter.
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This seems reasonable for sure
Don’t over think it. Or, because that is what you do - to your apparent benefit - make sure you compare apples with oranges. Freighter and orca can both be considered haulers, but they do different things, so think of them differently.
Orca will hold 260,000 m3. That’s 187,000 for ore hold and 73,000 across both cargo and fleet holds. Ore hold will not take minerals but will take compressed ore or ice. Also, don’t forget ship hold - these have to be built ships but you could carry your own DST or whatever, get to a LS border system and ship in and out. I often do this with miasmos; shuttle cargo from LS and lift it all, miasmos included, in orca. Can’t do that in freighter.
As you noted, above stats for cargo/fleet combo can be changed. A lot. This is just numbers for my mining-rigged orca. I do have a separate hauler orca, but as I mainly haul mining-related anyway, it’s not that useful. What is perhaps useful to you is the old 3M isk per 1k EHP. That’s a working rule of thumb - around 1 B isk hauled for 300 k EHP. On those numbers, you should be able to cart far more value in an orca.
The freighter holds slightly over 1,000,000 m3. That’s the point of difference. It will though take a minimum 3x more time to align and will warp at about half speed of orca. And at about 200k EHP. They really are different beasts. In terms of long haul, the orca is far superior, juts because of the MWD-assisted align time. Yes, you can boost EHP for freighter, but then you get down to more like 450,000 m3. You really really want to have bulky material, like tritanium or possibly T1 PI mats, routinely, for freighter to work. All personal observations, as a solo primary producer. Best advice you’ve had so far is from @Kezrai_Charzai - trial orca first and then continue to freighter at need. In your case, you probably will have to.
Says the guy who was recently expounding about what a mighty battlewagon the orca is… 
I believe that several orcas in a fleet would be formidable.
The problem is (as is now self-evident), carrier proliferation is just too easy.
I had OVER estimated how difficult it was to get a carrier.
To use one competitively is another issue…but you have to just stop skill training entirely to not get to carriers. If you need defense that badly just spend the 3 months and land in a shitty 1B carrier basically…
I’m disappointed.
If there wont be capitals. Orca can be a beast.
Save yourself the time and headache and hire a hauler from Hauler’s channel to take the risk for you and move your goods wherever they need to go.
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Maybe try the option of playing for fun and just simply try out the first ship you feel attracted too. And then see what comes next 
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Don’t forget about those Giant Secure Containers. For 3000m3 you get 3900m3. Can increase your cargo hold quite a bit in addition to cargo expanding items.
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Train the Orca…if you need a freighter, use Push…
Oh yeah. That obvious physics mistake that was never fixed.
Nice Doctor Who reference btw. You know, bigger on the inside.
0 isk of goods
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If you have DST with 60000 m3 and only 65k EHP then it is something wrong or you don’t count impressive overheating bonuses of DST.
You can have DST with 66400 m3, 449k EHP (overheated), Cloak-MWD capable, 3.3 AU/s warp speed and MJD and cloak in case of being bumped.
Even with Transport Ships IV and not perfect tanking skills it is 63900 m3 and 412k EHP (overheated).
Here is a source of the fit (drop the gun - you will not shoot to anything anyhow): http://news.markeedragon.com/beastly-occator-fit-haul-like-a-pro/
I dont know anything about this…explain better?
I’m counting only passive.
If you saw a dst undocking without actives due to lag or fat fingers (if that’s able to be seen) wouldn’t you kill it onsight?
You know DSTs are for hauling high value. So either you get a good kill or you get good stuff.
Briefly reviewing the massive tank…It looks like 1.3b risk where if you lag and cant activate your tank you’re murdered by 10 catalysts?
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There are?
I quickly scanned through the highsec freighter losses since the bumping nerf, and there are exactly two near-empty freighter kills, both of which had a plastic wrap.
Perhaps in the past this happened on occasion, but both freighter and Orca ganking are pretty rare in general these days and almost always for profit now. It’s of course still good advice not to make yourself a lucrative target, but really, tanked freighters and Orcas are statistically so safe, you might as well auto-pilot them around without a second thought. I don’t think there really is any difference for the OP between the risk profile, especially after the bumping nerf.
They are both essentially perfectly safe if you respect sane hauling limits.
Whatever floats your boat… but…
- Insta-undock bookmarks.
- You have just 6 keys to press on keyboard to have all hardeners active and hover mouse over “overheat rack” icon to click just in case.
- Depends where you undock. In 1.0 systems, near trade hub where CONCORD is almost non-stop on grid 10 Catalysts will be concorded immediately. What you should watch for is 10 Tornados.
- Insta-undock bookmarks.
I do.
I think it’s more of a concern of just lag.
True. But without actives theres only like 30k ehp.
I dont know how much that matters tactically.
