How do I unload Sorium Harvesters

[Griswel (OP)]

The "If Fuel Full" "Unload 90% at colony" isn't moving my sorium fleet from Jupiter.   It sits at 100%.   There does not appear to be an unload fuel or unload 90% of fuel order.   Any idea what I'm doing wrong?  The harvesters fill up just fine, but they stay at Sorium containing planet forever unless I manually order them away.

[TheDeadlyShoe]

Set them to be tankers

[Griswel (OP)]

Arrrgggg.   Thanks!

[Mastik]

In my noobish opinion, fuel harvesters should rarely leave their harvest point.  Design a basic tanker with the best fuel efficiency you can.  And have the tanker haul fuel back to your colony. Tweek tanker speed to arrive roughly when the harvest fleet has enough fuel to fill the tanker.

Cycle something like this:

Unload 90% at colony
Move to harvest fleet
Refuel from target fleet
Move to colony

[TheDeadlyShoe]

FYI you don't need seperate move orders

[SteelChicken]

In my noobish opinion, fuel harvesters should rarely leave their harvest point.  Design a basic tanker with the best fuel efficiency you can.  And have the tanker haul fuel back to your colony. Tweek tanker speed to arrive roughly when the harvest fleet has enough fuel to fill the tanker.

Cycle something like this:

Unload 90% at colony
Move to harvest fleet
Refuel from target fleet
Move to colony

If you can get it to work, great.   I just build my harvesters with engines and have them unload fuel directly.   It also means I dont have to worry about towing them around or I can move them to safely quickly If I need too.

[Griswel (OP)]

I'm reasonably happy manually moving my two massive (for me, around half of all the ships I've built) Sorium fleet around.   One question: is there a way to set the default tour of duty to something other than 3 months?  My original harvesters all stay at 25% because I forgot to change it.   Not sure morale matters at all but I feel bad having depressed crews all the time.

Managed to spend nearly 20 hours playing my first game over the weekend.   No aliens to bother me yet (I set them weak, 30%), and in some respects it's been 30 years of pitiful confusion in game terms, but a whole lot of fun learning the ropes, terraforming and colonizing.   "Dwarf Fortress in space" was the best game search I've ever entered.

[Paul M]

Since I found that sorium production where I need it (extra solar) is what got rid of a massive fuel issue my feeling is that more smaller harvesters that can move where you want them (including having jump capacity for the group) is a good solution.

Each group of three can produce 736 000 l of fuel per year which is sufficient to refuel a typical freighter group that has expended all its fuel.

My sorium harvesters are my fastest civillian ships (outside of my tankers) since I want them to do the transits as quickly as possible.  I can see towed harvester stations in Sol but otherwise I'm happy to be able to shuffle my harverster groups around without worrying about tugs etc.  The 24 orders I have to issue every year is low enough I don't even notice the overhead of not using conditional orders.

The duration is editable in the design window, you will find it in the upper left corner of the ship design page...just change the 3 to something else.  I typically use 24 months for my civillian ships as they get shore leave once a year anyway, I just view it as compensation for how boring a lot of their journeys are.

[Griswel (OP)]

The duration is editable in the design window, you will find it in the upper left corner of the ship design page. . . just change the 3 to something else.   I typically use 24 months for my civillian ships as they get shore leave once a year anyway, I just view it as compensation for how boring a lot of their journeys are.

Right, but is there a way to set the default to 24 or 48 months instead of 3 for when I forget?  I can't imagine wanting it to be 3, myself, and I'd prefer to have something longer if I don't change it.