Sorium shortages - Geo Survey Ended, now what?

[Shisckatchegg (OP)]

Hello all,
 It is my first game in a conventional start, and I'm having Sorium shortages, where can I see what is consuming my reserves? I can't figure it out from the Minig/Manteinance tab.   Also, I have just surveyed the whole Sol system with three survey ships, and I won't need them for a while.   Is there a way to make them reduce the Sorium spending, (I believe it must be them that are consuming my reserves) or does the ships only consume sorium when travelling?

Some tips to solve the shortages are welcome, the event is making me advance the turns manually.

[Theodidactus]

the first issue might simply be sorting out whether you're running low on 'sorium' or 'fuel'

Your spaceships run on 'fuel' which is created by taking 'sorium', a mineral, and refining it. In my experience, most of my 'sorium' is consumed in the creation of spaceship fuel. Spaceships also use 'raw' sorium for maintanence. Spaceships that you build which have jump engines will also require sorium in their construction...but a relatively small amount.

completely running out of sorium is nasty because your fuel refineries will have nothing to refine into fuel...so you wont make fuel...so your spaceships will run out and be unable to fly anywhere. Keep some fuel in reserve so you can support a fleet to colonize other worlds to mine more sorium.

You can use the "civilian" tab on your colony screen to shut down your refineries to stop them from turning your sorium into fuel.


The best place to look for sorium in the earth system is on comets, some of the comets flying around will have reserves of sorium and other minerals.

Ask other questions if you have them!

[Erik L]

Check the gas giants too for sorium, then move a fuel harvester there.

[Shisckatchegg (OP)]

I can't believe I thought Sorium and Fuel were the same.  :S

So my fuel factories are to blame here.  .  .   I'll stop them for a while. 

Just to confirm, ships inactive on Earth won't consume any fuel, will them?

[GreatTuna]

They don't use fuel if they aren't flying.

[Theodidactus]

yeah, moving ships through space burns fuel but if they just sit at a planet they won't burn any. They will still consume very small amounts of sorium (not fuel) for maintenance upkeep.

If you have no other sources of sorium in your system, and you're starting to run out, this is indeed a global emergency: you will need to quickly locate sources in neighboring systems using what fuel you have left.

[Barkhorn]

I highly recommend using fuel harvesters.  Dozens of them in fact.  They don't take workers, freeing up population for other things.  They can easily be moved to new sorium sources.  The sorium on gas giants is not usable in any other way, so you might as well use harvesters.

[GreatTuna]

yeah, moving ships through space burns fuel but if they just sit at a planet they won't burn any. They will still consume very small amounts of sorium (not fuel) for maintenance upkeep.

They will consume sorium only if they have Jump Drives, because jumpdrive is the only ship module which requires sorium (jump gate constructor requires it too, but is commercial and doesn't require maintenance).

[MarcAFK]

Active shields also consume a ships fuel, disable them when not in combat.

[83athom]

Also, civilians (not commercial) take a lot of fuel.  In my current game Terra(Earth) ran out of sorium so I turned the fuel refiners off and was left with about 36 million in reserve, I also have fuel harvesters making the trip back and forth to unload fuel.  I was building some ships and had a few orders on repeat to load fuel (cargo reasons) but a year later (in game) I looked at my reserves, and they were at 46K, so I took a look at my civ ships and they must have multiple of the most inefficient engines a commercial ship can have (enough to go over 7K speed with the huge transport[about 150K tons]).

[MarcAFK]

I thought civilians were like NPC's, they got free fuel out of thin air.