Some Logistics Questions

[DuraniumCowboy (OP)]

1)  Daisy Chaining Mass Drivers:  I am still in the initial stages of my first game.   My sol system is pretty good though.   I have large settlements on Luna and Mars, with mining operations on both.   Plus I have two very productive automated colonies (Mercury and Europa) that cover all but one mineral.   I am trying to set up a cascade where the two automated settlements dump their production on Mars.   Mars then (with safety stock levels set to maintain enough material for its own construction), dumps down to Luna.   Luna retains a satety stock with all surplus being dumped down to Earth to be saved up.   I have this set up, but even though Luna might show negative mass driver numbers, Earth's mass driver is all zeros.   I can't really tell if anything is actually being retained at Earth because my production there is driving all kinds of mineral needs  Am I causing some kind of issues by having stations both receive and catch at the same time?

2)  Sorium Harvesting:  I was thinking about building a "barge" platform, basically a space station with nothing but fuel tanks to set up with my sorium harvesting platforms.   I was thinking I could let the fuel building for quite a long time, and then only once a year or so use a tug to swap out barges and import the fuel to the local economy.   Id I have a tanker barge like this in the same TG as a sorium harvester, this would work, correct?

3)  Does using my commercial freight network (CFN, yeah starfire) draw any fuel requirements?  It looks like the answer is no, but I just wanted to be sure as I am using a LOT of contracts to move facilities as I expand.   It seems like using contracts is MUCH more efficient since it doesn't use fuel.   With that being said, can my CFN freighters make a round trip where they need their max endurance one way?  Ie, can CFN freighters basically fuel at a new colony even though I don't have fuel there?

4)  It seems that all ships are built with full fuel.   In that case, I was able to build a tanker with 5M capacity and when it rolled down the slipway, my fuel supply basically went up 5M?  Is this a cheat, or is fuel/sorium being pulled during the build process?

[NihilRex]

1) Mass driver #s only show if a packet was recieved in the previous cycle and stayed in the stockpile.  I do the same thing, and never had an issue.

2) Should work just fine

3) Civs dont use or track fuel.

4) It fills the new ships from your planetary stockpiles.  If you are low on fuel, you will get a "produced" message then a message that "x ship is out of fuel."  SMing ships into being gives them full tanks too, but could be called "cheating." 

[Brian Neumann]

1.)  It should work fine.  It has been a few versions since I did this but in 5.3 at least there were no problems with having incoming and outgoing mass driver packets.  As far as having them show up in the colony records there has been a longstanding difficulty in that the amount showing is for the last time cycle when they arrive.  If you go past that arrival time (auto turns maybe) they won't show up.  Normally they are still being received and added to the stockpile, it just doesn't show up well on the colony mining display.

2.)  This should work, although you will probably need to tell the task group to equalize fuel occasionally.  Once the harvester has full fuel tanks they don't automatically keep producing and transferring to other ships in the task force.  I usually just give the harvesters enough tank capacity that they fill up in about 1 year.

3.)  The CFN does not use your fuel, it is part of the civilian economy.  That being said I have never tried to have a contract take things farther than they could go without refueling.  My best guess is that you would get away with it as the ships are run like the npr's which do not have fuel issues.

4.)  Normally when a ship or missile is built your full tank of fuel is subtracted from the supplies you have built up.  So no cheat, it is just happening in the background.  If you run out of fuel available then your ships will be built with empty fuel tanks.

Brian

[DuraniumCowboy (OP)]

Thanks for the quick response.   I am glad the mass driver was just a display issue.   Everything else makes sense too.   My biggest thing on the CFN fuel is right no I have two worlds that are just on the edge of being within freighter range without refueling st the destination.   Sometimes they make it back, and when the orbits are wrong they don't.   It won't be an issue once I get fuel production set up or stocks pushed there, but my empire is still very young.   I probably only have about 10M living outside of sol so far.   

[Gwyn ap Nud]

I once set up a mass driver circle, where all my colonies in Sol System had a stockpile set, and anything above the stockpile was set to constantly cycle until eventually one of the planets went below it's stockpile and disappeared. I would switch the order depending on which place had a particular pressing shortage so that the producing planet and the consuming planet are directly linked.

[NihilRex]

Mass Driver loops are a good way to make a system viable if there is no single planet with enough variety of mineral wealth.  I consider it standard practice in Sol as well.