Precursor orbial habitats?

[mckamx (OP)]

I have just run accross a pair of 25 million ton "ships" with thermal readings of 1.   This sounds like orbital habitats.  They are identified by aurora as owned by the same aliens I find near ruins, so I assume they are precursors.   I am trying to destroy these things, but am getting a LOT of "Error 6 Overflow in ApplyInternalDamage" errors.   I am using v5.42.

Anyone know what these things are, and if it I should destroy or ignore them?

[Ziusudra]

You are correct. These are Orbital Habs.

You can destroy them but then you'll have wrecks that take a lot of cargo space to scavenge for not as much minerals as you might think.

You can also capture them by using drop ships to get troops on them and then scrap them if you can get them to a shipyard. They're so big you're better off getting a shipyard to them.

You can ignore them, though if they are in orbit of a body you want to colonize you should know that they have the same default sensors as any other ship. I don't know how the Precursor AI will react to that.

Edit: Oh, and it will take about 5000 damage to destroy them. With that error being displayed each time you damage them.

[Peter Rhodan]

Great - I have two of the bloody things - and the one in  orbit of my main defence planet against an advanced NPR I just came across keeps dropping combat troops onto my colony - 3 brigades at once last time

[Dutchling]

Can't just capture them with soldiers and than abandon the ship?

[Steve Walmsley]

I have removed these for v5.50. They are causing too many issues

Steve

[waresky]

I have removed these for v5.50. They are causing too many issues

Steve

Thx Steve..

Ur game are enough deep withouth others issues..

[Peter Rhodan]

i wil miss them - discovered my new colony ships are faster than my old troop transports by sending colonists and troops to a planet with one of those things in orbit. I wasn't paying attention but the colonist got there first and then the OH dropped 6 Assault Battalions on my shiny new colony with highly rated Xeno Team and munched it while the troops were still in transit.
I captured it with 3 battalions of Marines. Then made the mistake of attempting to tow it with one of my tugs - which can only manage 1k........
Question would a bigger ship with lots of engines be able to tow it faster?

[Mel Vixen]

I wonder what kind of ingame justification this Orbital-habs had. I imagine them as giant Production centers for more Precursor ships and weapons. Gigantic storage rooms and 3D Printers big enough to print 20K-ton ships.

[Thiosk]

I figured it was a sort of population escape, since the invaders were coming its time to go.

Didn't help.

[Brian Neumann]

Question would a bigger ship with lots of engines be able to tow it faster?

Yes a bigger ship with more engines will work better.  The formula is really basic.  The total mass of the tug plus what it is pulling is used to figure out the top speed you can move at.  A ship that is four times as large and has all of the space possible put into engines will probably be several times faster than what you were using. 

Good Luck
Brian