I wouldn't care much about WHAT got done to un-cluster the Barge as long as Something got done.
IMO, scaling it down by half and halving the cargo capacity while still denying TL's would be fine if it cruised normally.
There HAS to be some usable formula of cargo vs. speed that will not "ruin the economy" which in my opinion was mostly about people previously using barges to power trade ores. Making ores 2x cargo mostly rectified that along with the removal of the ridiculous ore payouts at the best sellpoints. A Barge with halved cargo capacity would be able to carry 7500 ore. Minus trade lanes, that would at least close the gap significantly with lane-capable 5k's. There is some point where the numbers would work, so that's where we should be rather than where we are.
Also, it seems to me that the previous version of ore pricing was an economic sweet spot intended for use by the server's "good old boy" network, and became a problem only when everyone started doing it, and additionally using Barges to do so. This is why, IMO, the Barge got nerfed to oblivion.
The ship is called the Barge Type 2. Make a Type 3 that works and let people have SOME type of value for something that they paid 15 BILLION for,
since just expecting folks to be OK with this screw job is nonsense.
Oh, and we don't need to be preached to about trading with 5k's. We've done that. A LOT of that.
How do you think we got the 15 BILLION?
