Newbie Question #2 "Various Fuel related questions"

[voteslave (OP)]

Hi all

I have several fuel related questions, here goes. . .

1)  If a ship is scrapped at a colony do i get all the fuel back?

2)  Conditional Order to "unload 90% of fuel" - is this bugged?  Only i have a ship parked at earth with 100% fuel and no orders.   If i give it a conditional order to unload 90% of fuel if tanks are full i get an error message "Error 5: Invalid procedure call or argument" and it stays at 100% fueled.   Is this a bug or am i doing something wrong? 

3) There is a conditional order to "Unload fuel at colony and move to Sorium {can't see what next word is}.   How does this work? It implies all fuel is unloaded so how does it move?  Or does it keep some fuel based on nearest Gas Giant with Sorium?  Or what?

4) How best to automate (as far as possible) Sorium harvesting?

5) If civilian ships harvest fuel do i auto buy it.   I haven't got that far yet but as you can't set up a colony (can you?) on Gas Giants there is no civ tab to select buy or tax??

many thanks

[AL]

1) Yes
2) I've used that order successfully with fuel harvesters before so its probably something on your end. Not sure what though.
3) It's actually quite similar to the previous order, the ship unloads 90% fuel to the colony then moves to a sorium source. The full text is "Unload fuel at colony and move to Sorium Giant" if I remember correctly
4) So assuming you have a ship equipped with sorium harvesters, what I just do is set conditional order: when fuel tanks full, Unload fuel at colony and move to Sorium Giant (the order you described in 3).
5) As far as I know civilian fuel harvesters just turn sorium into money via taxation, the fuel just disappears from the game or something.

[voteslave (OP)]

thanks AL - i think thats sorted everything

regarding 2) - i was trying out the order on a cargo ship so maybe that was the problem

cheers

[MarcAFK]

To buy fuel from civilians just order any ship to refuel from it, you'll lose wealth to pay for it. Your ships will actually refuel from civvies anyway if they gave the conditional refuel order.

[voteslave (OP)]

To buy fuel from civilians just order any ship to refuel from it, you'll lose wealth to pay for it.  Your ships will actually refuel from civvies anyway if they gave the conditional refuel order.

thanks - at least there is some small way i can access "my" fuel

[Rich.h]

A point to note I noticed about the automated sorium dump order in my last game. A ship will dump it's fuel off at the nearest colony to the gas giant it is mining at that time, in addition when going back to a gas giant it will go to the one in the system with the largest amount of sorium available. This can cause you some logistical problems if you are not careful as I have had happen before such as.

1. Sol has fuel in both Jupiter and Saturn (Saturn happens to have lots more than Jupiter).
2. I send a large fuel harvesting task force to Jupiter on a 3 year mission (the design happens to have huge tanks that will take around 3 years to fill up), with the conditionals to unload/move to
3. Mars has been setup as a military style base with shipyards etc and I am wanting the fuel to go there.
4. I happen to have an  automining colony on both Io and Titan.
5. The sorium task force sits at Jupiter for 3 years filling up, they then dump 90% of their fuel at Io and move to Saturn (largest fuel source), sit there for 3 years and dump fuel at Titan before continuing a Saturn-Titan loop.
6. When the sorium level of Saturn dips below Jupiter the sorium task force switch to a Jupiter-Io loop.
7. Half my ships run out of fuel as I didn't realise none of it was getting to Mars.

The way II found to avoid this issue is to carefully set your sorium mining up in advance. In the example above I would have first sent the task force to Saturn having seen it had the largest amount of sorium. Then set up a small fuel tanker design on a constant loop to transport fuel from Titan-Mars. In the event that the colony on Titan did not actually exist I would have made one there and just renamed it "Titan Fuel Depot" or some such so I knew what it was for. this would mean my fuel harvesters would not waste time and fuel in transport trips when they could be harvesting.

Of course this only applies to harvesting designs that move under their own steam and is all moot if you have a towed harvester design that is simply meant to sit over the gas giant and have tankers arrive at it.

[sloanjh]

thanks AL - i think thats sorted everything

regarding 2) - i was trying out the order on a cargo ship so maybe that was the problem

cheers

Did you have the "tanker" box checked for the design?  I think that order only works for tankers....

John

[Prince of Space]

To buy fuel from civilians just order any ship to refuel from it, you'll lose wealth to pay for it.

Specifically, you'll pay 1 wealth for every 10,000 liters of fuel.

http://aurora2.pentarch.org/index.php?topic=4835.msg52452#msg52452

[voteslave (OP)]

A point to note I noticed about the automated sorium dump order in my last game.  A ship will dump it's fuel off at the nearest colony to the gas giant it is mining at that time, in addition when going back to a gas giant it will go to the one in the system with the largest amount of sorium available.  This can cause you some logistical problems if you are not careful as I have had happen before such as.

1.  Sol has fuel in both Jupiter and Saturn (Saturn happens to have lots more than Jupiter).
2.  I send a large fuel harvesting task force to Jupiter on a 3 year mission (the design happens to have huge tanks that will take around 3 years to fill up), with the conditionals to unload/move to
3.  Mars has been setup as a military style base with shipyards etc and I am wanting the fuel to go there.
4.  I happen to have an  automining colony on both Io and Titan. 
5.  The sorium task force sits at Jupiter for 3 years filling up, they then dump 90% of their fuel at Io and move to Saturn (largest fuel source), sit there for 3 years and dump fuel at Titan before continuing a Saturn-Titan loop.
6.  When the sorium level of Saturn dips below Jupiter the sorium task force switch to a Jupiter-Io loop.
7.  Half my ships run out of fuel as I didn't realise none of it was getting to Mars.

The way II found to avoid this issue is to carefully set your sorium mining up in advance.  In the example above I would have first sent the task force to Saturn having seen it had the largest amount of sorium.  Then set up a small fuel tanker design on a constant loop to transport fuel from Titan-Mars.  In the event that the colony on Titan did not actually exist I would have made one there and just renamed it "Titan Fuel Depot" or some such so I knew what it was for.  this would mean my fuel harvesters would not waste time and fuel in transport trips when they could be harvesting.

Of course this only applies to harvesting designs that move under their own steam and is all moot if you have a towed harvester design that is simply meant to sit over the gas giant and have tankers arrive at it.

A timely comment (for me) as this has just happened in my current game - so thanks for the tips in getting around it

cheers

[83athom]

2)  Conditional Order to "unload 90% of fuel" - is this bugged?  Only i have a ship parked at earth with 100% fuel and no orders.   If i give it a conditional order to unload 90% of fuel if tanks are full i get an error message "Error 5: Invalid procedure call or argument" and it stays at 100% fueled.   Is this a bug or am i doing something wrong?

Question; is the design marked as a tanker (in the design window)?

[voteslave (OP)]

Question; is the design marked as a tanker (in the design window)?

no it wasn't  - have learnt that lesson now though