Civilian fuel harvester?

[Rich.h (OP)]

I noticed a few of these being launched by companies in my current game but what are they for? The wiki states that civilian ships do not require fuel, crew, maintenance etc. So then where is this fuel going? I do not see a way to buy it as I would do a CMC, is the fuel just going into the economy as a trade good? If this is the case is there any way I can prevent this, I would rather not allow them to get a foot into my monopoly of the sorium market.

[Prince of Space]

In the Changes for 6.00 thread (which used to be Changes for 5.70), Steve posted:

"Civilian Fuel Harvesters

Civilian Shipping Lines will build fuel harvesters in v5.70. These harvesters will (slowly) make their way to gas giants with Sorium and start harvesting. Unlike other civilian shipping, these fuel harvesters will appear as potential destinations when you select Task Groups on the F12 orders window, so you can order your fleets to refuel from them. Refuelling from civilian harvesters costs 1 wealth for each 10,000 litres of fuel.

Once a civilian fuel harvester is full, any excess fuel is sold to the private sector. This also generates tax revenue equal to 20% of the fuel price."

Personally, I confiscate fuel harvesters using my tugs to keep them from pillaging my strategic fuel reserves, but I've been considering allowing them to do their work and just setting a small tanker to cycle orders to refuel from them and dump the fuel on a nearby moon.

[Bryan Swartz]

I let them do as they please.  Granted I'm still ramping up but at the current pace it will take me thousands of years to extract all the sorium on Saturn.  They are going to Uranus, Neptune also has some, they can take it all because we'll either all be dead or I'll have plenty of fuel in other explored systems by the time I ever have to think about worrying about Saturn running out. 

[Paul M]

Jump for joy every time the launch one.  They are ships you don't have to build.  They will go out and mine sorium for fuel and you send a tanker to them and buy their fuel (just give your tanker the "Refuel from " order).  I think they are great, saves me having to build refinery ships for Sol.

Really there isn't a single thing wrong with them...just makes sure to send a tanker to them when they first show up as they come with a full set of fuel and you want to get that before they head off to refine.

What isn't clear is if they stop refining if they have full tanks but in my case BIC makes sure that they have get more than 100K litres of fuel before a Petrocan tanker shows to drain them down again.

[CaptainBipto]

Oh man my civvies haven't built one of these yet. How soon have people had their civvies build these babies? I'm at year 40:(

[Rich.h (OP)]

After watching them a little more it seems I was somewhat over zealous in my initial thoughts about civilian harvesters. All it took was a redesign of my tankers, so they now move slowly and only carry a small amount of fuel. This gave the civilian ships enough time to harvest between trips so I was able to set up repeating orders and forget about it all. Of course finding a 127m ton sorium site did help ease my concerns also.