buying from civilians

[vonduus (OP)]

I am new to this game so please bear over with my stupid questions.

I was told that I can buy fuel from the civilians from the fleet screen by ticking the TG box. But if I send a tanker to one of the civilian fuel harvesters, I get an error. What I can do is go to the ships screen and manually steal buy the fuel in the miscellaneous tab. As it turns out, this is not stealing, because I can see in the economics tab that I actually pay for it. This is a lot of micro, I have been low on fuel for years, and it will take several years before my new fuel harvesters will change this situation. Is there an easier way with less scrolling and clicking?

Also I have heard that you can buy minerals from the civilians. But how? Just loading all minerals from the civilian colony doesn't do the job, and when I check the ships screen, there seems to be no way to manually handle the cargo. Perhaps they have nothing to sell? If they don't, how do I see this? And if they do, how do I lay my hands on it?

Thanks

[Paul M]

To buy from a CMC, click on the colony in question, go to the Civillian tab, and select "buy the minerals."  By default it is set to go to the civillian economy which earns you 125 per year.  You will have to either send a ship there or else build and ship to them (or set up a contract) a mass driver to get the minerals to you homeworld.

[metalax]

Purchasing fuel from civilian harvesters is functionally identical to simply refueling from them. First, make sure your tanker has the tanker checkbox flagged on the class design screen. give it a 'unload 90% fuel at colony' order at the colony you want the fuel shipped to, then making sure the taskgroups checkbox is checked, select the fuel harvester and give the tanker a refuel order targeting it. You can then set the tanker to cycle orders. I tend to add in move to orders for the colony and fuel harvester as well, but they are not strictly neccessary.

If you are still getting an error doing this, post up the error here.

You can only purchase minerals from Civilian Mining Concerns that will periodicaly and randomly, automatically set up on suitable surveyed bodies. As long as you have selected to purchase the minerals from the CMC colony, they will be placed in the stockpile of that colony. Either just pick them up with a freighter or use the integrated mass driver of the CMC to ship them to one of your colonies.

[Paul M]

CMC have mass drivers?  Arrgh...so I wasted a lot of time and effort shipping them my own...ah well.

[vonduus (OP)]

I set up a tanker to collect fuel, and it works alright, but my tankers are too big, so they empty the fuel harvester in one go, then throws an interrupt: Refueling of Tanker 14 could not be completed and stops the game. But no error messages. Perhaps I should make a fleet of very small tankers to avoid the interrupt. Anyway, thanks for the answers.

And thanks for the info on buying minerals. I have set the civ colonies to purchase mode now.

Will this have adverse effects on trade? Or on civilian shipbuilding? Should I leave some resources for civilian use?

[metalax]

No it will have no effect on civilian trade other than the slightly reduced income because you are buying the minerals rather than earning taxes from the civilians selling them. Civilian shipbuilding currently generates the ships from nothing so no effect there, although Steve has said he would like to change that at some point.

[vonduus (OP)]

Thanks. So far money hasn't been a problem, on the contrary. But that might change when I begin to build bigger ships.