Civilian Shipping Lines - What will they build?

[jseah (OP)]

I have noticed that civilian lines seem to build ships that might not normally qualify. 

I have this cargo ship design that has no engines as I tug it around.  If I don't obsolete it, civvies will build it. 

Also, I had an ill-fated attempt to get civilians to transport more luxury passengers by sticking one luxury accomodation onto my colony ship.  Turns out, yes they build more luxury-colony transports than they would normal luxury transports, but apparently the cryogenic storage turns into luxury accomodation for tax purposes...

I also noticed they will build ships that have a size 1 sensor on them. 

Which brings me to the question: What exactly qualifies a ship to be built by civvies?

Can I stick a CWIS on the ship?
What about actual "good" sensors?  Making the ship a military design would probably disqualify it. 
How about armour?  I could have cargo ships carry armour and tug civvie "free" cargo ships with tons of armour depth and surface area to act as dummy targets with huge thermals to draw fire. 

[Brian Neumann]

The easiest way to see if what you want will work for a civvie design is to check the box just under the components screen that says civie only.  Things that will not make a ship military are:  Size one sensors both actives and passives are fine, armour (needed for nebula systems) ciws, military jump engines, civilain jump engines, troop transport bays, civilian engines, sorium harvesters, terraforming modules.  There are probably others but I don't have aurora on this machine.

Brian

[jseah (OP)]

Um, I'm not sure what you're talking about.  I know what makes a commercial design. 

What I don't know is this:

I have a bog standard cargo freighter.  Civilian lines build these (they show up as blue dots)
I add CWIS (or other things) to the design. 

Will civilian shipping lines build that ship?

[Brian Neumann]

Um, I'm not sure what you're talking about.  I know what makes a commercial design. 

What I don't know is this:

I have a bog standard cargo freighter. 
I add CWIS (or other things) to the design. 

Will civilian shipping lines build that ship?

They can if they have enough money.  If the additional stuff is to expensive they probably will build another design that they can afford.  Ie if you add 10 ciws the cost of that freighter just shot up a lot.  They will have a greater chance to build something cheaper if it is available.


Brian

[jseah (OP)]

Will they build military designs? 

EDIT: that still have cargo bays

EDIT2: Specifically, I'm thinking large sensors. 

[Father Tim]

If it is NOT a military design, NOT marked as 'Obsolete', and includes at least one of (cargo hold, cryogenic storage, luxury passenger accommodations) it is a legal choice for shipping lines to build.

[jseah (OP)]

Thanks for the reply, that answered my question. 

Great, so civilian built anti-missile targets is possible.  =)

[sloanjh]

If it is NOT a military design, NOT marked as 'Obsolete', and includes at least one of (cargo hold, cryogenic storage, luxury passenger accommodations) it is a legal choice for shipping lines to build.

And in the past there was a bug where they'd build PDCs.  Don't know if it's been fixed.

John

[jseah (OP)]

And in the past there was a bug where they'd build PDCs.  Don't know if it's been fixed.

John

I'll test that.  Cargo PDC coming right up. 

EDIT: you can't add any of the three qualifying components to PDCs
So the civvies won't build it even if they could. 

Why can't we build PDCs with cargo and cryogenics anyway?
They sound fun for armouring key facilities in times of war. 

[Shadow]

Great, so civilian built anti-missile targets is possible.  =)

I'm not sure that's worth the cost. Unless you cram a good number of CIWS platforms (and thus ramping up the ship'd cost and weight considerably), your civilian ships will still succumb to the AI's relentless missile fire. And aliens don't often raid your commerce, so the overall effectiveness of your private sector would fall substantially with no reasonable upside.

[jseah (OP)]

You can apply tractor beams to civilian ships. 
Civilians will build ships that have CWIS on them. 
Toggling obsolete/not changes "will civilians build X?"

Implementation left to student. 
=P

[sloanjh]

I'll test that.  Cargo PDC coming right up. 

EDIT: you can't add any of the three qualifying components to PDCs
So the civvies won't build it even if they could. 

Why can't we build PDCs with cargo and cryogenics anyway?
They sound fun for armouring key facilities in times of war. 

Noooooo.  The bug was that civies would build barracks PDCs.

BTW, on the topic of exploits:  Steve's intent is not to keep us from cheating at solitaire.  So he doesn't try very hard to prevent exploits that one has to conciously act upon in order to use.  Most of the exploit prevention is to keep one from doing something against the universe's laws of nature by accident.  Many of the players are in it for the role playing of their empires too.  So yes, you're going to find a lot of stuff around the corners that the game doesn't prevent you from doing, but most of the players have their set of "house rules" that they obey even if the game doesn't enforce them (or even if the game disagrees with them, in some cases).
John

[jseah (OP)]

Whether dummy targets are exploits or not I'm not entirely certain.  There have been times that the navy might have commandeered a few commercial vessels to fill out a fleet.  I'm not above doing that either, not if I need to do it to win a war. 

It sure does feel exploity with the tractor beams though.  I'm still not clear why tractor beaming civilian ships makes them yours... but still earn money for them...
That one did form the basis of a no-mining challenge mode. 

[sloanjh]

Whether dummy targets are exploits or not I'm not entirely certain.  There have been times that the navy might have commandeered a few commercial vessels to fill out a fleet.  I'm not above doing that either, not if I need to do it to win a war.  

It sure does feel exploity with the tractor beams though.  I'm still not clear why tractor beaming civilian ships makes them yours... but still earn money for them...
That one did form the basis of a no-mining challenge mode.  

It's a bug.  The code for tractoring a ship moves the tow into the tug's TG.  This moves it from a civie TG into one of your TGs, even though it's still a civie ship.  I don't know the details, but this is an unexpected state of the system that Steve forgot to protect against happening (i.e. he should be filtering the possible tug targets so that civie ships don't appear).

If you want to interpret the bug as a house rule of commandeering ships, that's up to you - it's your game of solitaire.  I would strongly recommend against logging any bugs having anything remotely related to TG movement, wealth generation civies, etc. in a game where you've done this - you'll have intentionally corrupted the state of the DB, and Steve has repeatedly stated that he does not want to waste his time chasing down bug reports that are due to such corruptions.

I'm not sure if there is a way to get rid of a civie TG/ship using game mechanics/SM mode  (I can't think of one).  If there is, then I would recommend using SM mode and instant OOB to implement this house rule - eliminate the civie ship using the intended mechanism, then instant-OOB a new one of the same class into your fleet.  You could also put in a suggestion for "commandeering" into the official suggestions thread - Steve might like the idea and give you a button to do it (and also to sell surplus ships back to the civies - hmmm this one might already be there).

John