Hello, I recently started another game as I saw the new patch and played it for over 200 years in. I happened to stumble across an error that has already bugged me in the version before, yet I didn't report it because I wasn't sure what the cause was. I have figured it out now though.
In 6.3x I used a huge star fortress with (fighters included) over 200 ships in the task group. This task group had caused me more and more error windows popping up upon task group selection, depending on how many ships I had added. This is the error:
Since the fortress was composed of (at the time) 3 huge modules, each of 150m tons, considering the general fallibility occurring at those ranges, there was huge capacity of errors coming from all kind of directions, so I didn't really have a chance of deciphering it there. The rare phenomenon here was that the first mega-module (did not matter which) did not cause any error at all, while each later one, and even the numerous fighters and bombers would supposedly increase the error window number by 1 (didn't count them exactly, but there were
many). After clicking through all of them, I could use the task group just normally. Of course having to click through 200+ windows is a little too much then for practicality. I would have dealt with 3 or so, but this? No.
Now in 6.4-6.42 I have (luckily?) encountered the same problem again, yet not with such a hybris project but instead with a new strategy of mine: Fuel Depot Modules. Basically I forfeited fuel harvester ships this time, as they just don't work the way I want to - their automatic orders make them deposit their fuel at some pointless mining colony or asteroid instead of the headquarters where I want it. So in the pursuit to minimize micromanagement, I started building fuel harvester bases instead which had no engines anymore. Whenever their relatively small tank would run full, I would just transfer all the fuel of the bases on location towards a special built Fuel Depot Module, which could store
alot more. Looks like this:
Should the depot eventually run full too, I just issued an automatic order for one of my tugs to fly there, take the tank back home, release 90% fuel and then take it back to the original task group. I experimented alot before coming to this, and finally found this to be the least click and think intensive method.
Now, since the Ferry here is basically nothing but one giant fuel tank, it is coming into the range where maximum fuel capacity of the game becomes relevant. Here are its specifications (unnecessary stuff hidden due to spoilers):
Naquadah Ferry Ia class Tanker 1,400,000 tons 119 Crew 83032 BP TCS 28000 TH 0 EM 0
1 km/s Armour 24-1114 Shields 0-0 Sensors 1/1/0/0 Damage Control Rating 3 PPV 0
MSP 130 Max Repair 128 MSP
Intended Deployment Time: 60 months Spare Berths 1
Fuel Capacity 1,365,000,000 Litres Range N/A
Gravity Shield [just a renamed techy CIWS] Base 50% To Hit
This design is classed as a Commercial Vessel for maintenance purposes
Now, this is important - The games maximum possible fuel storage is 2^31, which is ~2.1475 billion liters, so this design is around half way up to that already. Upon building multiple of these thingies to have some sort of stock I could rely on, I suddenly had to discover that those ships would produce the very same error that the fortress task group had before. One would be no problem, but more in the same TG would spawn a single or more error windows.
Perfect! A ship with only fuel tanks and a couple ciws - finding error sources doesn't get any easier than this. Obviously the error is related to the total fuel capacity in the fleet. It seems that though you could have up to ~2.14b liters on a single ship without problems, having more fuel than that number in total fuel capacity in a fleet will still cause an error. ..Nothing fully game breaking, but annoying.
I started to analyze this problem a bit more closely. I had so many error windows before, so I expected that every ship that was added to the TG after the limit was broken, would spawn another error window. As I thought I got exactly one error window when pairing two ferries in one group:
However, when adding a different ship to that - one that didn't have any fuel on its own, I unexpectedly did not get a second error window:
..So it seems that the error is not multiplied by simple ship count. But it could still be that every actual engine carrying ship would be a problem. Method of elimination, and...
...Nope. Still only one error window. It seems something has changed towards 6.4, since otherwise the hundreds of error windows in my last game could not be explained. A special thing to notice in the last picture is the total fuel count of the fleet in the lower right corner: It shows only the added fuel capacity of one ferry and the tug. The actual capacity should be 1.365b greater, yet it seems the game cannot process this.
Ok, so how to get more error windows. I had more in the same game when many ferries were in my shipyard TG, so it seems there is some correlation to actual fuel tank size rather then just number of ships now. Surprisingly I did still not get a second error window when adding a third ferry, but finally received it when having four ferries in one group.
Now it is just calculation:
Total fuel capacity of two ferries - 2.73b = 1.27 times the games maximum of ~2.147b
Three ferries - 4.095b = 1.9 times maximum
Four Ferries - 5.46b = 2.54 times maximum
I had one window with 2 and 3 ferries, and two windows with 4, so one can conclude that for every Multiple that the fuel maximum in a fleet has been breached, it spawns exactly one error window.
Now one last thing I wanted to eliminate. Maybe landed fighters and such could still cause more windows, since I had so many in the last game (mainly due to 240 fighter+facs), so I tested that too with a loaded PDC hangar (which had 1b fuel capacity on its own):
..Luckily it didn't cause any extra windows, so I guess 6.4 has really changed the wind here, making huge fortresses with fighters feasible again.
Number of error windows = times the 2.147 maximum has been breached, rounded down.
That was the error report. I would love if the maximum fuel capacity for a fleet could be heightened a bit over the ship maximum. Though with the fighter problem eliminated it is not that daunting anymore, and definitely not breaking, it still is somewhat bothersome that when you build huge ships, you can basically only ever have one in a fleet if you don't want to deal with error interruptions. Also, it isn't like 2.15b is really far up for fleets or single ships alike. In my current game I started conventional with the given 500 million guys this time, so very basic, and didn't even have a rich starting system (I think it was only around 1m duranium and few other minerals). Yet, upon discovering a few systems in the neighborhood and starting to exploit them, I easily had resource to build a fleet of my large 50 cargo stores freighters again (which I like since it reduces micromanagement, and I wouldn't ship structure in smaller increments either) - and the ferries who caused the problem here are just the same size equivalent of those, so it really isn't hard to stumble across this limitation with normal budget already.
Depends on play style of course. I see most people here prefer the small and many ships instead, which is strictly speaking really more effective because of options to divide force or freight/whatever capacity finer. I prioritize minimizing management burden and versatility of single ships though, and thus I clash onto this barrier.
/// If it helps, here is a link to my current stevefire.mdb:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B3vZFhO9KKngOFdaa1h1aDZ2OGc/edit?usp=sharing
