My Questions of Perplexity

[Father Tim]

No, only a system body.

Don't use the 'build JG at nearest jump point' conditional orders.  Choose where you want your jumpgates built and program them manually with regular fleet orders.

[sloanjh]

You should be able to "ban" a system on the F9 system information screen.

Isn't that only for the civies?

John

[Charlie Beeler]

Isn't that only for the civies?

John

Good point, I believe that is the intent.  And as Father Tim points out it is only for system bodies. 

I do seem to recall that once you've set a body as 'banned' there are some odd issues with task group orders.  That was why I was thinking that default orders would be effected.

[Iamwinterborn (OP)]

I've been toning down my exploration these days, and have since gotten used to the Jump Drive system, so I won't be making like the Ancients anymore.  Hmmm... I wish there was a "do not send any ships into X system" option.  That would prevent me from accidentally destroying a survey fleet because I forgot Gilese 36 has the aliens and Gilese 37 has the potential colonies.  I mean, I suppose I COULD rename the systems, but I mean, that would be so much work.   


How do military commanders apply that Factory Construction bonus? Is there some sort of ship that can operate as a mobile factory or something?

[Beersatron]

....
How do military commanders apply that Factory Construction bonus? Is there some sort of ship that can operate as a mobile factory or something?

Jump Gate Construction ships.

[Thiosk]

I always rename my systems   helps a lot, actually, in setting paths.  Even if you jsut put the letter A out front of them, that means they'll be at the top of the list, generally.

[Father Tim]

I rename all my systems into sectors with names that all start with the same letter; so for example the Home System is surrounded by systems with names starting with 'H', whereas Purgatory System is surrounded by Philodendron, Portsmouth, Peru, Patagonia & Persephone.

Of course, I also never use the 'Real Stars' option, so I avoid the 'twenty-one systems named Gliese and sixteen named Wolf' problem.

[Zed 6]

Of course, I also never use the 'Real Stars' option, so I avoid the 'twenty-one systems named Gliese and sixteen named Wolf' problem.

I like the Real Stars option, but use SM mode ON and Pick the Name from a list Checkbox in Task groups / Misc before entering an unexplored system to avoid all those Gleise and Luyten and Wolf etc systems.

[Sotak246]

To keep from sending fleets into Hive nests and Precursor Bases, I use the galactic map ALOT, and I mark the systems with NPCs with their national flags.

[Harmonica]

Is there any point to constructing mining ships? When I started playing last week my idea was to construct the Nostromo, an absolutely huge mining ship, and send it out into space to haul rocks.  Since then I've discovered that the world of Alien is slightly different to Aurora, because such a ship wouldn't be able to actually haul the stuff it mined, and you can't have people go into cryogenic sleep in order to complete their operations.

But I still planned to construct a huge mining ship nonetheless - only now, I've run up to the limitations, namely that in order to build a 440,000 ton ship with 90xmining modules, it would take me 3 years to first expand my space port, but in that same time I can construct enough automated mines, and ship them to a colony, and have them produce more per year than the ship.

So my question is, why do asteroid miners exist in the game? They're nowhere near being cost effective - even if you had a 3m ton monster (which would take 30 years to expand a shipyard to fit), with a captain with 100% mining bonus, it would produce less than the same automated mines you could produce, and so on.  If the civvie industries built them, then perhaps due to scale they would actually become favourable and useful.

[Brian Neumann]

Asteroid miners are good for supporting a fleet on the move.  A Troop transport with a couple of divisions worth of engineers can be dropped on an asteroid with the minerals needed and the miner goes to work.  The engineers make maintenance supplies and your maintenance facility ships all cluster around to support the fleet.  You have just made a temporary fleet base to keep the fleet from adding time on the clock while they are deployed at any distance.  When the minerals are used up go to the next asteroid and repeat.  1 asteroid mining bay is 1/5 the hull space of moving an auto mine into place and if you need to move quickly it does not take time to load the mine back into the ship.

This is primarily where I use the asteroid miners, maintenance facilities, and why I build lots of engineer brigades.

Brian

[Harmonica]

That's a good idea, I haven't got that far with big fleets yet (no battles to speak of).

I have also thought since I posted that maybe it's not a question of either-or with automated mines OR ships? Maybe it's better to have mining ships in orbit AND also produce and ship out automated mines? I still can't think of a way that mining ships can compete, though - unless perhaps having a fleet leader with mining bonus AND a ship captain (+ administrator) with mining bonus could work out better than automated mines + administrator?

[Brian Neumann]

That's a good idea, I haven't got that far with big fleets yet (no battles to speak of).

I have also thought since I posted that maybe it's not a question of either-or with automated mines OR ships? Maybe it's better to have mining ships in orbit AND also produce and ship out automated mines? I still can't think of a way that mining ships can compete, though - unless perhaps having a fleet leader with mining bonus AND a ship captain (+ administrator) with mining bonus could work out better than automated mines + administrator?

The ship commander and the colony administrator are the only two officers that would contribute to the mining speed.  They also do not stack with the administrator's bonus not applying to ships in orbit for any purpose.  The ship commander's appropriate bonus do add to the ship production values.  The three primary items that this applies to are the asteroid miners, sorium harvesters (both for mining value) and terraforming modules (terraforming bonus).

The real reason to use both is flexability.  It is much easier to order a ship to go to an asteroid, create a colony there and leave it there.  when the asteroid is out of minerals you will get a message (one for each mineral as it gets depleted) and you just order it to go to the next asteroid.  This works well with asteroids that have a small amount of ore at a high availability.  For big deposits the mines work better.


Hope that helps
Brian

[jseah]

I don't think it would be feasible to use mining ships for maintenance.  I've estimated that the number of mining vessels needed to maintain a certain fleet vastly exceeds the tonnage of the military fleet. 
The same applies to sorium harvesters. 

It would be far easier to attach a few fuel tankers and one or two freighters full of minerals to the maintenance ships.  Sure, you don't get an *unlimited* independent movement out of them, but five years of maintenance ought to serve quite well for any normal operation. 

[Iamwinterborn (OP)]

I use the autoturn thingy to get myself through the AIvsAI fights somewhere off in the unknown reaches of space.


I recently hit 30 days with it, and the game was processing it for 45 minutes before it finally unfroze... and it had gone one day ahead.     There was around 15-20 15 second increments in the game events.

Is there any tips for faster "turns"?  (Turn off X, etc.)