Red/Green jump gates? Also, how to escort civilian jump ships?

[Jumpp (OP)]

Question the first: The jump gates I find lying around are a different color from the ones I build.   Are they different in any other way?

I've had trouble getting mixed groups of military/civilian ships to jump together when there's no gate present.   My fleet was composed of:

- Several 5,000-ton warships without jump drives
- Several 10,000-ton warships without jump drives
- One 10,000-ton warship with a 10,000-ton rated jump drive
- Several civilian ships in the 30-55k ton range without jump drives
- One 60,000-ton civilian ship with a 60,000-ton rated jump drive

The fleet wouldn't go.   I tried various combinations, and the only thing that worked was separating the military and civilian ships into separate task groups and running them through like that.

Question the second: Is this what's going on, or is there something more complicated going on?

Question the third: Is there an easy way to get a warship to follow a civilian ship around even if the civilian ship is going to be using JPs that lack gates?  Grouping them into a single Task Group doesn't seem to work becasue see above.   I've been using the "follow" order, but then I have to manually kick the warship escort every time the civilian ship uses a JP.   Is there a smarter way to do this?

[madpraxis]

Ooh! I can answer the first one! The strange alien race that build the existing jump gates really like the colour red and humans totally dig green! But no, really, it's just so you have an indication a month from now when you load up the game you dropped in exchange for a new one and can that way tell which ones you built and which ones you appropriated...
As for the second one I'm guessing it's looking at the largest jump drive and saying it can't jump the military with it...But I'm drunk, so what do I know!

[icecoldblood]

Military ships can't jump with civilian ones and viceversa. This is a balancing mechanic since civilian jump drives are 10x cheaper than military ones. As for mixed task groups the problem is that it groups the largest non-jump ship with the largest jumpships. Either that or you have more ships than your jump drive can handle. Post the jumpship design.

[Havear]

It's my understanding that military jump engines *can* jump civilian ships, just that the costs for a military drive that big are huge. Squadron transit would have failed because there's more ships than the jumpship can jump at once (besides the civilian ship which can't be jumped anyway), although I'm not sure why the standard transit option wouldn't work.

[Jumpp (OP)]

As for mixed task groups the problem is that it groups the largest non-jump ship with the largest jumpships.  Either that or you have more ships than your jump drive can handle.

It's most likely that first one.   My Task Group contained a 10,000-ton military ships both with and without jump drives, and 60,000-ton civilian ships both with and without jump drives.   I expect it failed because the military ships lacking jump drives got grouped with the civilian jumpships on account of those having the larger jump drives.

So with that mystery solved, I'm left with what's probably a much simpler problem:  How to protect civilian ships on interstellar runs?

Suppose I've got a 60,000-ton civilian ship with a jump drive, and I want to send it three systems away.   As guards I'd like to assign a small fleet consisting of a 10,000-ton cruiser with a jump drive, a 10,000-ton cruiser without a jump drive, and two 5,000-ton frigates without jump drives.

I can't group them into a single TG because the military ships without jump drives will try to group with the civilian ship and the whole thing will stall at the first JP.

I can put all the military ships in a separate TG and assign that TG to follow the civilian ship, but then every time the civilian TG jumps I have to manually set the military TG to clear/jump/follow.   That's doable, but it's exactly the kind of tedium that one likes to automate.

This seems like the kind of thing people would do all the time.   There must be an easy way to do it.   Is there some way to detail one TG to follow another TG even through jump points?  Do people use only jump-capable escorts for civilian ships?

[Steve Walmsley]

It's most likely that first one.   My Task Group contained a 10,000-ton military ships both with and without jump drives, and 60,000-ton civilian ships both with and without jump drives.   I expect it failed because the military ships lacking jump drives got grouped with the civilian jumpships on account of those having the larger jump drives.

So with that mystery solved, I'm left with what's probably a much simpler problem:  How to protect civilian ships on interstellar runs?

Suppose I've got a 60,000-ton civilian ship with a jump drive, and I want to send it three systems away.   As guards I'd like to assign a small fleet consisting of a 10,000-ton cruiser with a jump drive, a 10,000-ton cruiser without a jump drive, and two 5,000-ton frigates without jump drives.

I can't group them into a single TG because the military ships without jump drives will try to group with the civilian ship and the whole thing will stall at the first JP.

I can put all the military ships in a separate TG and assign that TG to follow the civilian ship, but then every time the civilian TG jumps I have to manually set the military TG to clear/jump/follow.   That's doable, but it's exactly the kind of tedium that one likes to automate.

This seems like the kind of thing people would do all the time.   There must be an easy way to do it.   Is there some way to detail one TG to follow another TG even through jump points?  Do people use only jump-capable escorts for civilian ships?

Are you using standard transit or squadron transit?

Steve

[Jumpp (OP)]

Standard transit.