Ships chasing planet

[Insert_Gnome_Here (OP)]

I have a freight task group headed for Mars and it is too slow so it keeps chasing it around the orbit never catching up.
What should I do?
(Noob here - been playing for about 1 week. )

[GreatTuna]

Build faster freighters, duh.
Station them somewhere on the orbit, wait, until planet approaches them, then order them to fly to Mars.
Or SM them in.

[xeryon]

Approach from the front.  Once you have delivered your cargo send them back to Earth (presumably from a forward angling line to avoid the same problem) and refit them with an additional engine or two.

If you are really frustrated you can edit a couple additional engines into the design so that you can carry on with your game without wasting too much more time on this issue.

[boggo2300]

use them for target practice?

not very helpful, but surprisingly good for your mood!

[linkxsc]

Aaaaaaaaaahhhhh I did that when I first started. TOTALLY did that.

Best bet is to order them to a position on mars's orbital path, and wait a year or so for mars to run into it (you will still need to order it to go to mars when it gets close)
just out of curiosity, how fast is the trouble fleet in question?

gnome, try to always make sure your fleets are at least breaking 150km/s else theyll be wasting a lot of time chasing planets.

Once you get your first real engine tech (nuclear thermal), Itll be gone from your problem list forever, as even cargo groups will be averaging well over 500km/s.


Also I advise that any of your scouts and geosurvey/grav survey ships (the ones you use to explore other systems) have over 3000m/s of speed, that way if they run into a black hole, they might survive.

[Vortex421]

Had this happen... had a tug towing a massive shipyard.  Speed?  11 km/sec.  It took FOREVER to get to it's destination and almost as long for me to figure out how best to get it to the planet afterwards.