The original reason was to be able to maintain a large fleet stationed on non-core planets, which requires these planets to be continuously supplied with all resource types in the event that a fleet is parked there.

Next update, with the overhaul of maintenance mechanics, it will be much simpler as maintenance is simplified into only requiring one item that can be shipped around as needed.

The original reason was to be able to maintain a large fleet stationed on non-core planets, which requires these planets to be continuously supplied with all resource types in the event that a fleet is parked there.

In which the simplest solution is a planetary (PDC) based hanger large enough to accommodate the fleet. Ships in hangers do not use resources of any kind. While you could argue this as an exploit you could also argue that the ships are simply kept in docking births either in orbit or on the surface depending on their size etc, to allow for any RP misgivings you have about it just force all ships to take a few hours or so of doing nothing when needed to replicate them getting all the crews aboard and the fleet into a position to take action.

I can see why you might want to have a set stockpile to maintain the fleet from an RP perspective but each time any ship changes any component or you add/subtract vessels or commanders you could find the maintenance requirements also change. Thus you get left with the issue of if it more or less micromanagement to use set stockpile orders or to just also a repeat round trip. Or even is the RP factor even worth all that extra work keeping the colony stocked with exact amounts that constantly change.

For the above paragraph reasons I tend to make heavy use of planetary hangers and generally have three types, first is a smaller type that could hold a few of my smaller military ships only and acts as either a patrol base or part of the forward outpost of outer colonies, second is a much larger hanger that can hold an entire fleet at one time and is generally reserved for homeworld and what I consider developed core worlds only. Finally I have a couple of huge hangers that are used to house groups of commercial craft that are currently not in use, here I keep things such as specific transport groups that are not being used to develop a colony, or ships like gate constructors and so on. Really it just serves as somewhere to keep my task group list down to a nice tidy small number rather than having to scroll through all the time.

If you have a suitable industrial output you can get these hangers up and running quite quickly, simply get them constructed wherever you have the both the minerals and greatest construction output as parts. Ensure you have a transport that can carry as many troops as is practical to build so you can move at least 10-20 construction brigades in one go (multiple ships may be required). Combine all this with a dedicated freighter group that is designed solely to be able to move both all the needed PDC parts and minerals for assembly in a single trip. You then essentially have a IKEA style task group that can setup a planetary hanger well in advance of the colony slowly developing. Through in something to carry a large amount of maintenance supplies too and you can have them arrive with spares for the fleet to use while waiting on the hanger to be assembled.

The original reason was to be able to maintain a large fleet stationed on non-core planets, which requires these planets to be continuously supplied with all resource types in the event that a fleet is parked there.

Have you considered only telling a freighter to load a specific X amount of a mineral? If you have a planet with lots of Duranium and Gallacite then simply set up a repeat order to go to that colony load say 3000 tons of each mineral, move to colony B unload all minerals and then refuel at your fuel point. Set this as a cycle order and forget about it for a few years until your mineral needs at various colonies change.

In your current situation you have 3 colonies so you could do it with 3 freighters:

1. Freighter 1 loads X tons of each produce mineral type at colony A and unloads them at colony B before refueling, then does the same but unloads at colony C.
2. Freighter 2 loads X tons of each produce mineral type at colony B and unloads them at colony C before refueling, then does the same but unloads at colony A.
3. Freighter 3 loads X tons of each produce mineral type at colony C and unloads them at colony A before refueling, then does the same but unloads at colony B.

Each freighter has these orders set to cycle and after a couple of runs each you now have 3 colonies with a supply of every mineral type they need to start building up their own constructions and facilities.

While this is far less elegant than the reserve method, you said you are getting errors trying to do that, and this way you will end up with each colony having a much larger stockpile to build from than a basic reserve level.

That approach can work but the issue is that it requires calculating how much each freighter should carry which is a bit annoying as it requires find the travel time and needs to be adjusted for any changes (either mineral output or ship speed). The problem is that it is fairly easy to make a mistake and end up with most of a particular resource ending up at one one of the colonies (for instance if there is 1 "producer" colony for each mineral and 2 or more "consumer" colonies). I am trying to find a way that minimizes the amount of fiddling it takes to keep things balanced even as production and demand changes.


An idea that I am experimenting with is using a "mineral dump" colony for each real colony. The idea is to make use of mass drives to toss all excess minerals to the mineral dump for the colony. The mass drivers effectively keep the colonies from going over their reserve levels. I then have freighters perform a circle of picking-up minerals from the mineral dump colony and unloading them on the next real colony in the cycle. The idea is that this will makes it so that extra of all minerals will get passed around. With this setup the hope is to be able to re-position minerals from any where to any where just by changing the reserve levels and the existing mass drivers and freighters routes will take care of it. I know its not very efficient but that's not a high priority.

The answer seems pretty obvious. Either; set up different freighters to have different reserve levels of different minerals. Or, set up each tanker to have a small amount of everything in its reserve level.

I didn't know there is a reserve level on freighters. Where/how do you set it?

The only reserve level I know of is on each colony in mining/maintenance.

I tried that but when the Unload/Load Minerals to Reserve Level order does fill up the freighter then the Load 1 duranium order fails because the freighter is full.

The answer seems pretty obvious. Either; set up different freighters to have different reserve levels of different minerals. Or, set up each tanker to have a small amount of everything in its reserve level.

I tried that but when the Unload/Load Minerals to Reserve Level order does fill up the freighter then the Load 1 duranium order fails because the freighter is full.

It looks like the Unload/Load Minerals to Reserve Level should do what I want but it always seems to produce a database error (Error 3420 was generated by DAO.Recordset) if the freighter is carrying minerals. I tried to have the freighter drop off all minerals first and then Unload/Load Minerals to Reserve Level, which seems like it should result in extra being picked up again. However, the order only seems to pick up anything if there is enough extra to completely fill the freighter, so it doesn't pick up anything a lot of the time. This leads to the next unload failing because there is nothing to unload.

I've been focusing on developing only mining sites that have both high accessibility and high quantity which lead to this problem of needing to move a lot of minerals around. Doing this manually doesn't scale so I was hoping there was a way to automatically balance the minerals.