Commerical Shipping Question

[Bandus (OP)]

New player to Aurora, loving the depth so far! I've searched the forums and wiki for this but none of the material I've found seemed to give me an answer.

I'm trying to entice a civilian shipping company to build a ship and fill a contract to transport automated mines from Earth to Mercury.   I have surveyed Mercury via Geological Survey Scanners and by dropping a geoteam on its surface (the team completed the survey).  I have setup a civilian contract to supply 36 automated mines from Earth and a second contract to demand 36 automated mines on Mercury.   I've begun building automated mines on Earth.  I have subsidized the shipping company to 10,000 wealth.  I have designed a ship with the following specifications:

Churchill class Freighter    39,800 tons     99 Crew     315. 5 BP      TCS 796  TH 150  EM 0
188 km/s     Armour 1-103     Shields 0-0     Sensors 1/1/0/0     Damage Control Rating 1     PPV 0
MSP 5    Max Repair 18. 75 MSP
Intended Deployment Time: 3 months    Spare Berths 5   
Cargo 35000    Cargo Handling Multiplier 25   

P&W-NTE-001 (2)    Power 75    Fuel Use 12. 38%    Signature 75    Exp 5%

This design is classed as a Commercial Vessel for maintenance purposes

I have built a commercial shipyard which has the capacity to build the ship tonnage wise.  It has multiple slips available.  I have built a spaceport on Earth.  I have waited about 5-8 years now.

Despite this no civilian ships have been built and I am baffled as to why at this point.  I'd appreciate any guidance on this you all are willing to provide.   Thanks!

[Jumpp]

I'm new too, but I might be able to help.  I don't think you have to design the ships, nor the shipyard.  They'll handle the design, and they have their own invisible shipyards.  (I've seen them produce gigantic ships that no shipyard of mine could possibly have made.)  What you DO need to do is have a second inhabitable colony somewhere.  It doesn't even have to have people on it--I didn't build my own colony ships for a long time on my current game.  I don't remember if I manually moved infrastructure into place or not.

In any case, pop a colony down on Titan or Mars or Venus or something, and then the civilian shipping will spring to life.

[Bandus (OP)]

To clarify, I have marked Mars, Venus, and Mercury all as colonies.  Based on what I read a colony doesn't necessarily need an actual population of people thus the reason for the automated mines.  Am I mistaken? I appreciate you trying to help!

[Conscript Gary]

Colonies in and of themselves don't need a population, but civilian shipping lines need populations to ship things between to justify building ships.

[Jumpp]

That's a puzzle, then.  I'm quite certain I didn't build any colony ships until several of my colonies were up and running.  I relied on entirely on civilian shipping to get the people moved.

It's possible, however, that I moved the infrastructure myself, and maybe that was enough to kick the whole process off?  I dunno.

[Bandus (OP)]

@Conscript - Does that mean that I would need to have an actual population (not just a colony designated) on Mercury before civilian will ship the automated mines there? That isn't what the wiki led me to believe and it makes me wonder when automated mines (which apparently don't require workers) would be appropriate.   

Or, are you saying I would simply have to move automated mines to Mercury using freighters I built myself as opposed to trying to get civilian ships to build and do it?

[ollobrains]

what i find works is this
designate a colony , drop youre own infurusturture upon it , in my 6.1 games civilan lines spring to life setup contracts for earth to supply infursturucture and the colony to demand it.  Small amounts once the ships are built by the civs ( if im right earth civs will produce infursturucture) 1400 per annum at a 500m population start.
All the other facilities though youll need to make, colony ships ( Civ) will randomly move population to the colonies as well.

As far as what makes them start building having positive wealth for youre empire is a good start the rest is random, the civs now apparently also make solarium mining ships also

[sloanjh]

Moved thread from FAQ to The Academy.

[Silfir]

Once civilian shipping springs to life, it will snatch contracts anywhere in the system, randomly found civ mining complexes and all those wonderful things. You don't have to colonize Mercury specifically, but you have to colonize somewhere. Luna or Mars make more sense. The civilians will use their own shipyards and designs; you don't have to do anything else.

I distinctly remember that I had 500 units of infrastructure sitting around on Luna for a while with nothing happening; you probably do need to have an actual colony.

I think of it this way: Building and supplying space ships, even simple freighters, is a huge investment. With only the government as a potential business partner, no one's going to risk it. After all, outstanding government contract offers could be canceled at any time. Once a colony starts up, that's tons of individuals and corporations who definitely will need all sorts of stuff there. Not to mention the constant ferrying of colonists who want a piece of that outer space action. Shipping things for you - the government - is something they do on the side.

[Paul M]

You pretty much need to start the colony yourself then they take over.  The problem is that if they have multiple choices they tend to concentrate on the highest demand.  I had colonies set up on Venus, Luna, Mars and Ganymede nearly simultaneously.  The civillian shipping concentrated on Luna first, when it was at 25 million and I set it to "stable" then they switched to Mars, when it got set to stable they switched to Venus.  That doesn't mean they ignore completely the others but the colonization of Venus cost a lot of people their lives as they dumped a lot of people there and seriously stressed the infrastructure.  Something similar is happening with Ganymede where I think they could be shipping a load of infrastructure there once a month to meet their demand...instead they are essentially ignoring it because the demand at venus is so high.

I got really bad survey luck...of the planets and moons basically only Venus has resources and they are of the 35million, 0.1 availablity sort.  The only other places with resources are Mars (one material), and one of the rubble moons of saturn.  Outside of those I have only asteroids and comets.  Thankfully two CMC started up (one on a comet the other on an asteroid out in the Oort cloud) as I have exhausted my Durium and Neutronium which basically cripples your growth.  It took till the CMC started up on the comet that I noticed the button for "buy" the minearls.

As I put into the suggestion thead the logic for dealinig with demand needs a bit of work

But you need a colony ship and a freighters to start the process off, very quickly the civillians will take over.  They have now 3 firms, the older two have probably 35 ships between them ranging from passenger liners to 60K colony ships and freighters.  I have to admit I find them very useful for moving stuff around, and they are making serious money so far as I can tell given the strong increases in their share prices.