Civilian ship lag?

[happy2pester (OP)]

I've noticed that after a while, my civilian ships start to cause some lag - not much, but it mounts up. I understand that the civ-ship spam will be fixed for 6.4, but for the moment, are there any penalties for simply executing civilian ships?

Secondly, what's the best way to go about it? I can field a basic ship, but I can't see any way to target the civilian ships. However, i do remember reading something about grabbing them with a tractor beam?

[Ziusudra]

If you grab a civilian ship with a tractor beam, it then becomes yours and you can do anything with it that you can do with any other of your ships. Like scrap it or transfer it to an enemy race and use it for target practice and then salvage practice.

[MarcAFK]

Or you could randomly fire missiles with Hugh very large thermal sensors near them, then salvage the wrecks, either method is rather micro managey

[boggo2300]

are people named Hugh unusually hot? or unusually cold?
 
Matt

[ShadowLop]

So,I've got about 50 civilian ships sitting in/on Earth. They're trying to trade, but don't actually do anything.

They don't appear as valid targets for tractoring.
They are ignored by active sensor missiles fired in their general direction.

These damn things are crippling my game and getting worse as time goes on.

Can someone either post a step-by-step on how to nuke these guys or shed some light on how to use SM to delete specific civilian TGs?

Thanks.

EDIT: Cleared an imbalanced shipping order, that got them moving. Still doesn't help the lag situation, since they can't be targeted by anything.
Oh, and version is 6.3.

[TheDeadlyShoe]

have you tried canceling their orders in the shipping lines dialogue?

[ShadowLop]

have you tried canceling their orders in the shipping lines dialogue?

Several times. It's quantity that's the problem - there's just too many of them.

At the moment, I'm planning on opening the jump gate to a hostile system and telling them to ship infra over there...

[TheDeadlyShoe]

okay a couple points:

it's Thermal sensors on the missiles recommended earlier - so they seek on a random object nearby with high thermal emissions, like say big old civilian freighters.  just...be careful heh.   I haven't actually fooled around with that myself...

I believe the tractor beam method uses the Ships (F6) dialog, try going through that rather than the Task Groups (f12) dialog.

[ShadowLop]

okay a couple points:

it's Thermal sensors on the missiles recommended earlier - so they seek on a random object nearby with high thermal emissions, like say big old civilian freighters.  just...be careful heh.   I haven't actually fooled around with that myself...

Tried that, didn't go for anything. I think it can't have active sensors as well...Might test that later.

I believe the tractor beam method uses the Ships (F6) dialog, try going through that rather than the Task Groups (f12) dialog.

Been to every ship-based screen and civ ships do not appear anywhere as possible targets.

[MarcAFK]

I could have sworn thermals worked against civilians, I can't remember having actually tested it though.