How to balance minerals between colonies in different systems?

[lennson (OP)]

Say I have 3 colonies in 3 different systems each of which of which mines a 3rd of the different mineral types such that together all minerals are being produced. How do I schedule cargo ships such that they keep all of the colonies at their reserve level of minerals? Assume that all colonies are using all minerals at a slow rate (say in the form of ship maintenance) so all minerals need to be topped up periodically.

[83athom]

There are conditional and primary orders that can help with that, and large, slow ships make sure to space the time out while still providing a decent amount of things. However I usually set it up so each system should be self sufficient, IE auto mines and mass drivers on any body with a reasonable level of materials.

[Rich.h]

An alternative way is a simple set of repeat orders for a freighter. The obvious goal is as mentioned to try and make sure a system is largely self sufficient in any construction projects you have in mind. But you can make a freighter run a set route picking up and dropping off minerals on a repeating cycle. For my current game I tend to have things funnel inwards, if a system has a number of bodies that are worth mining then the one either most likely to be developed with population in future or the closest one to the jump point will be designated as a depot. All other colonies will be fitted with mass drivers and so the entire system produce becomes located in one spot. A freighter then works to bring minerals from that depot in towards my home system as close as needed, once I decide a system is fully self sustaining with both population and construction capacity I push the ring outwards to the next system and so on.

In your situation I would say you need to start looking outwards from those 3 systems for the minerals they are lacking, then set up the needed mining and transport structure to bring the minerals back to each system so they no longer have to share among themselves.

[lennson (OP)]

It looks like the Unload/Load Minerals to Reserve Level should do what I want but it always seems to produce a database error (Error 3420 was generated by DAO.Recordset) if the freighter is carrying minerals. I tried to have the freighter drop off all minerals first and then Unload/Load Minerals to Reserve Level, which seems like it should result in extra being picked up again. However, the order only seems to pick up anything if there is enough extra to completely fill the freighter, so it doesn't pick up anything a lot of the time. This leads to the next unload failing because there is nothing to unload.

I've been focusing on developing only mining sites that have both high accessibility and high quantity which lead to this problem of needing to move a lot of minerals around. Doing this manually doesn't scale so I was hoping there was a way to automatically balance the minerals.

[ryuga81]

However, the order only seems to pick up anything if there is enough extra to completely fill the freighter, so it doesn't pick up anything a lot of the time. This leads to the next unload failing because there is nothing to unload.

A workaround to this could be always make him pick something, so even if it fails to load with reserve command, it will still have something to avoid failing the next command, i.e.

<go to system>
Unload all minerals
Load/unload to reserve
Load 1 duranium (or whatever you are sure will be there)
<go to next system and repeat>

[lennson (OP)]

I tried that but when the Unload/Load Minerals to Reserve Level order does fill up the freighter then the Load 1 duranium order fails because the freighter is full.

[TCD]

Again its a horrible work around, but could you build lots of small freighters with single cargo holds so that they always fill up? I guess that might be too costly in fuel.

[83athom]

I tried that but when the Unload/Load Minerals to Reserve Level order does fill up the freighter then the Load 1 duranium order fails because the freighter is full.

The answer seems pretty obvious. Either; set up different freighters to have different reserve levels of different minerals. Or, set up each tanker to have a small amount of everything in its reserve level.

[83athom]

A workaround to this could be always make him pick something, so even if it fails to load with reserve command, it will still have something to avoid failing the next command, i.e.

When a command fails to execute, it removes all orders.

[lennson (OP)]

The answer seems pretty obvious. Either; set up different freighters to have different reserve levels of different minerals. Or, set up each tanker to have a small amount of everything in its reserve level.

I didn't know there is a reserve level on freighters. Where/how do you set it?

The only reserve level I know of is on each colony in mining/maintenance.

[Rich.h]

Have you considered only telling a freighter to load a specific X amount of a mineral? If you have a planet with lots of Duranium and Gallacite then simply set up a repeat order to go to that colony load say 3000 tons of each mineral, move to colony B unload all minerals and then refuel at your fuel point. Set this as a cycle order and forget about it for a few years until your mineral needs at various colonies change.

In your current situation you have 3 colonies so you could do it with 3 freighters:

1. Freighter 1 loads X tons of each produce mineral type at colony A and unloads them at colony B before refueling, then does the same but unloads at colony C.
2. Freighter 2 loads X tons of each produce mineral type at colony B and unloads them at colony C before refueling, then does the same but unloads at colony A.
3. Freighter 3 loads X tons of each produce mineral type at colony C and unloads them at colony A before refueling, then does the same but unloads at colony B.

Each freighter has these orders set to cycle and after a couple of runs each you now have 3 colonies with a supply of every mineral type they need to start building up their own constructions and facilities.

While this is far less elegant than the reserve method, you said you are getting errors trying to do that, and this way you will end up with each colony having a much larger stockpile to build from than a basic reserve level.

[lennson (OP)]

Have you considered only telling a freighter to load a specific X amount of a mineral? If you have a planet with lots of Duranium and Gallacite then simply set up a repeat order to go to that colony load say 3000 tons of each mineral, move to colony B unload all minerals and then refuel at your fuel point. Set this as a cycle order and forget about it for a few years until your mineral needs at various colonies change.

In your current situation you have 3 colonies so you could do it with 3 freighters:

1. Freighter 1 loads X tons of each produce mineral type at colony A and unloads them at colony B before refueling, then does the same but unloads at colony C.
2. Freighter 2 loads X tons of each produce mineral type at colony B and unloads them at colony C before refueling, then does the same but unloads at colony A.
3. Freighter 3 loads X tons of each produce mineral type at colony C and unloads them at colony A before refueling, then does the same but unloads at colony B.

Each freighter has these orders set to cycle and after a couple of runs each you now have 3 colonies with a supply of every mineral type they need to start building up their own constructions and facilities.

While this is far less elegant than the reserve method, you said you are getting errors trying to do that, and this way you will end up with each colony having a much larger stockpile to build from than a basic reserve level.

That approach can work but the issue is that it requires calculating how much each freighter should carry which is a bit annoying as it requires find the travel time and needs to be adjusted for any changes (either mineral output or ship speed). The problem is that it is fairly easy to make a mistake and end up with most of a particular resource ending up at one one of the colonies (for instance if there is 1 "producer" colony for each mineral and 2 or more "consumer" colonies). I am trying to find a way that minimizes the amount of fiddling it takes to keep things balanced even as production and demand changes.


An idea that I am experimenting with is using a "mineral dump" colony for each real colony. The idea is to make use of mass drives to toss all excess minerals to the mineral dump for the colony. The mass drivers effectively keep the colonies from going over their reserve levels. I then have freighters perform a circle of picking-up minerals from the mineral dump colony and unloading them on the next real colony in the cycle. The idea is that this will makes it so that extra of all minerals will get passed around. With this setup the hope is to be able to re-position minerals from any where to any where just by changing the reserve levels and the existing mass drivers and freighters routes will take care of it. I know its not very efficient but that's not a high priority.

[TCD]

This may be a stupid question, but are you looking at this from the wrong angle? Why do you need all three colonies to have equal access to all materials? Could you specialize each colony so it only consumes the minerals it produces, then move the end product around?

For instance, instead of each colony producing mines, construction factories and research labs, could you have one just produce mines, one just factories, one just labs and then move the finished installations around?

Of course you'd probably need duranium on every colony, but IMHO that is such a given that I'd have to think very carefully before starting a major colony in a system without any duranium resources available.

And this wouldn't work for shipbuilding, but that probably happens in a single central location anyway, I imagine?

[lennson (OP)]

The original reason was to be able to maintain a large fleet stationed on non-core planets, which requires these planets to be continuously supplied with all resource types in the event that a fleet is parked there.

[TCD]

Ah, maintenance, that makes sense.