Having lots of problems with fuel harvest

[Millitron (OP)]

I can't seem to get my fuel harvesters to actually harvest.

I've had one sitting with nearly empty tanks at Saturn for years, and nothing is being added to the tanks.   I know it has a harvester, and its flagged as a tanker.

I'm also having problems getting them to automatically unload where I want.   I can't seem to get them to drop off on Earth only.   They seem to just drop the fuel at whatever colony is closest, which is dumb because its just a geology team.

[dgibso29]

Saturn does have Sorium deposits, correct?

Post the design for your harvester.

What order are you using to drop off the fuel?

[Millitron (OP)]

Saturn's got around 470 million sorium.

This is my design:
Shell-2 class Fuel Harvester    6,700 tons     101 Crew     185 BP      TCS 134  TH 150  EM 0
1119 km/s     Armour 1-31     Shields 0-0     Sensors 1/1/0/0     Damage Control Rating 1     PPV 0
MSP 17    Max Repair 60 MSP
Fuel Harvester: 1 modules producing 24000 litres per annum

Standard Commercial Ion Engine (1)    Power 150    Fuel Use 10%    Signature 150    Armour 0    Exp 1%
Fuel Capacity 100,000 Litres    Range 268. 6 billion km   (2777 days at full power)

This design is classed as a Commercial Vessel for maintenance purposes

The orders I'm using are the conditional ones.   I use If Fuel Tanks full, unload fuel at colony within 4 jumps, and if fuel under 20% move to sorium gas giant.

I think the problem is the conditional orders can't specify what colony I want it to unload at.

Oh, And I searched the forum, and see that its a pretty inefficient design, but it should at least work.

[Erik L]

Saturn's got around 470 million sorium.

This is my design:
Shell-2 class Fuel Harvester    6,700 tons     101 Crew     185 BP      TCS 134  TH 150  EM 0
1119 km/s     Armour 1-31     Shields 0-0     Sensors 1/1/0/0     Damage Control Rating 1     PPV 0
MSP 17    Max Repair 60 MSP
Fuel Harvester: 1 modules producing 24000 litres per annum

Standard Commercial Ion Engine (1)    Power 150    Fuel Use 10%    Signature 150    Armour 0    Exp 1%
Fuel Capacity 100,000 Litres    Range 268. 6 billion km   (2777 days at full power)

This design is classed as a Commercial Vessel for maintenance purposes

The orders I'm using are the conditional ones.   I use If Fuel Tanks full, unload fuel at colony within 4 jumps, and if fuel under 20% move to sorium gas giant.

I think the problem is the conditional orders can't specify what colony I want it to unload at.

Oh, And I searched the forum, and see that its a pretty inefficient design, but it should at least work.

How much fuel is actually in the ship? Look on the F12 screen. It should read 10% fuel.

[Millitron (OP)]

How much fuel is actually in the ship? Look on the F12 screen.  It should read 10% fuel.

It's 0% now, because I've tried moving it around and re-queueing orders quite a few times.   When I first tried though, it was 10%.

[Garfunkel]

Can it actually reach Saturn with 0% fuel now? You don't get any error messages or anything?

Seems pretty strange. My fuel harvesters are towed where ever I want to place them (no point in wasting engines in them since they move so seldom) and I've never had any problems.

[Millitron (OP)]

Well it ran out at Saturn, so it doesn't actually have to go anywhere.   And yeah, I know I shouldn't have given it engines, but whats done is done.

I don't know what triggered the error, but I seem to have fixed the Not-harvesting part of my problem.   Bringing a new fuel harvester into the task group and equalizing fuel seems to have fixed it.   They're all harvesting fine now.

I still have the problem with automated delivery though.

[Moonshadow101]

I've never been able to get the default/conditional orders for fuel harvesters to work. That's why huge bases are better: since you have to do it manually, you'll want to set it up so you're doing it as infrequently as possible with as much volume of fuel as possible.

[Marthnn]

Tip : Whenever my ships with colony modules (asteroid mining, terraforming, sorium harvesting...) have problems working, I open the ship window (F6) and check to what population they are assigned (top right of the screen).

I've had the most problems with asteroid miners, who rarely assign themselves automatically to a colony, forcing me to set them manually.

[Millitron (OP)]

I'm getting around it now by using the conditional "If Fuel below 20%, refuel from nearest tanker" on all my other ships.   So instead of going to Earth, they go straight to the tanker.

Works well enough so far, but I'm dreading doing stuff like this between systems.