Docked Ships, Inactive Ships, Mothballed Ship ???

[Tor Cha (OP)]

Docked Ships are Ship that Have there engines Up but Not Powered?
Inactive Ships are Ships that Have there Engines Not Powered Up and will take a While to get there power up for use?
Mothballed Ship are Parked Either in orbit around a Planet (or On a Planet), Have No fuel, Ammo, (Small craft (maybe)) and are Shut down & open to space?
Mothballed ships are the Only ones that would need to be taken to a Ship Yard to reconditioned to Use Correct?
As for Inactive ship a Hour or 5 and the Ship would be ready to be moved?

[Father Tim]

Docked Ships are Ship that Have there engines Up but Not Powered?

No, docked ships are ships that are inside a Hangar.  They may be Launched at any time.*

*Possibly you'll get some sort of "not yet, wait a few hours" message if they are reloading box launchers and/or repairing armour.

Inactive Ships are Ships that Have there Engines Not Powered Up and will take a While to get there power up for use?

No idea.  I think Inactive ships are just ships in a Task Force that has been set to 'Inactive' status so that it won't throw any error messages, such as "Out of Fuel" or "Cannot complete orders".

Mothballed Ship are Parked Either in orbit around a Planet (or On a Planet), Have No fuel, Ammo, (Small craft (maybe)) and are Shut down & open to space?

Mothballing has been un and out of the game (currently out).   Last time it was in, Mothballed ships had no crew (they were returned to empire crew pool), and took six (three?) months to un-mothball and make fully functional.  Everything else was flavour text.

Mothballed ships are the Only ones that would need to be taken to a Ship Yard to reconditioned to Use Correct?

That was the rule at one point, but I beleive it changed to 'un-mothballing in place' before mothballing was removed entirely.

As for Inactive ship a Hour or 5 and the Ship would be ready to be moved?

In VB6 Aurora, it should be as simple as setting it to not-'Inactive' status.  Again, Inactive exists primariy to stop your game from harrassing you about a ship/fleet that will require days/weeks to be 'rescued' from whatever its current difficulty is.

[Jorgen_CAB]

OP are probably talking about a feature that could be part of the game.

I certainly don't think you could bring a mothballed ship to live in like five ours, that would be highly unrealistic.

Given that mothballing would require new crew and you would need to go over all the ship systems to make sure it works and the ship don't blow up the first time you switch on the engines. Something as complex as a ship would probably take weeks to bring online in an orderly fashion with all safety regulations followed. Perhaps a few days up to a week if you rush it.

I also don't think that you would want to leave a ship in the coldness of space if you plan on using it again... I don't think that every component inside the ship is built to exist in those environments. Most ships in mothballed status would probably need a minimal amount of energy used to heat up certain systems to keep them from failing when you start them up again.

You then have the crew, you can't really have any effective crew that don't work daily with their tasks and routines and then suddenly expect them to do a good job a few years later when they have very different lives. You probably need a completely new crew so you need to start training them from almost zero.

I know from experience on mothballed tanks (which are simple equipment in comparison) that need at least a day if not more to become operable if you follow all safety regulations. If you just jump in to them and start them up there is a good chance some of them will break down or not even start, even worse if someone is injured in the process.

Even a regular car need to be used once in a while or there is a big chance something breaks when you start using it if it has been unused for a long time. Most people who own a motorcycle and have it stored over the winter knows that you need to do maintenance on it before you take it out or risk problems.

Even if cars and tanks on earth are different from something in space the point is that space have its own fair share of problems to deal with.

[Barkhorn]

Inactive exists primariy to stop your game from harrassing you about a ship/fleet that will require days/weeks to be 'rescued' from whatever its current difficulty is.

Oh my god thank you thank you thank you!!!  I never knew about this feature.

[DFNewb]

How do you set a ship to inactive status?

[Father Tim]

I believe it is Shift-F7 to open the individual unit details window, and then there's a dropdown box to set the unit's status. . .  but I didn't bother opening up Aurora to check.

[DFNewb]

I believe it is Shift-F7 to open the individual unit details window, and then there's a dropdown box to set the unit's status.   .   .    but I didn't bother opening up Aurora to check. 

I'm looking through the individual unit details (F6, F7 is for fighters) and I still cannot seem to find any drop box at allows an inactive option.  .  .   I even turned off reduced height windows.  .  . 

Maybe I am just blind or something. 

Anyways if anyone could give me some more advice on this please help me! I am really sick of seeing "Geo Surv1 cannot follow default orders" and "Geo Surv 001 has run out of fuel" and stuff.

[Father Tim]

Next place to check is the Movement Orders window, and then the Task Force Organization window.

[Garfunkel]

Turn default orders off, then clear any orders for that TG that has run out of fuel. A ship without fuel will not generate warning messages if it has no orders. That's how I do it when I've miscalculated fuel and a ship gets stranded and it'll take few weeks for help to arrive.

[Jorgen_CAB]

Turn default orders off, then clear any orders for that TG that has run out of fuel. A ship without fuel will not generate warning messages if it has no orders. That's how I do it when I've miscalculated fuel and a ship gets stranded and it'll take few weeks for help to arrive.

I often cheat and give ships some small amount of fuel to reach wherever they are suppose to get unless they run out of fuel from say battle damage or by and active decision to do so in some form. A captain of a ship would never run out of fuel by mistake on routine missions such as on survey and things like that. The reason they run out is generally because of how the automatic order system is set up.

I wish that the automatic order instead of going to refuel when it is out it should be able to set a reserve fuel and then ship captain would calculate... can I reach the next destination and then back to the closes refuel station and still have my reserve fuel available. So every time it calculate a new move order it should check for this and this would at least lower the chance of ships running out of fuel and they would probably be a bit more efficient on auto missions.

Sure... you could potentially move a refuelling ship to a new position and planets will move in their orbits, but that is also why you will set a 10-20% reserve fuel limit to every ship as well so you can cover that fact. No ship captain would risk being stranded anyway so having a strategic reserve of fuel would be something they always would consider no matter what.

It would stop ships from trying to reach a remote asteroid and abandon it's trip half way to go refuel and then run out a few hundred million kilometre from the planet they are to refuel from.

[Father Tim]

I normally use 'Equalize Fuel' for this -- either because it's a mixed-class task force so not all have run out of fuel, or after the 'rescue tanker' arrives.

It helps that that vast majority of my ships' movements are cycling orders, and that I have them refuel at every major stop, so that running out of fuel is a rare occurrence.

[Jorgen_CAB]

I normally use 'Equalize Fuel' for this -- either because it's a mixed-class task force so not all have run out of fuel, or after the 'rescue tanker' arrives.

It helps that that vast majority of my ships' movements are cycling orders, and that I have them refuel at every major stop, so that running out of fuel is a rare occurrence.

For me this is mainly an issue with GEO or GRAV survey vessels operating alone.