Interstellar Civilian Contracts?

[Barkhorn (OP)]

I have a colony in Proxima Centauri I want to ship auto mines and mass drivers to, and I was hoping to use civilian shipping to do it.  I have a demand for 120 automines and 2 mass drivers on Proxima Centauri 2, and a supply of 120 automines and 2 mass drivers on Wolf (a comet in Sol) scheduled.  There is a working pair of jumpgates between the systems.  Why are these contracts not being filled?

[Erik L]

Chances are there are shorter routes/contracts that they are fulfilling.

[Barkhorn (OP)]

I have no other contracts.  Could it be trade taking up all their time?

[Detros]

Check position of comet and JP - possibly Wolf may be currently on the other side of Sol and shipping lines have usually quite big and thus slow ships. Maybe can some comets even get out of their range.

Check Ctrl+L Shipping Line screen. There you see both what transports they have recently done, what ships they have and where are those currently going and with what cargo. Do they even have some freighters? If yes and they seem too busy with other tasks, try to clear their orders or subsidize the shipping line to build more ships.

Another idea: if the system is considered dangerous civies won't go there. This is related to the damage ships (yours only I think?) have taken in that system in recent weeks. It can be mitigated by positioning some warships in given system.

[Titanian]

In my experience civilian shipping lines won't ship installations from bodies without population present.

[davidb86]

If I remember correctly, civilian ships evaluate the available requests after they unload at a colony. So if they just unloaded something on earth, they will look to pick up something there to take on the next leg.  If Wolf is not in the inner system, then they are likely finding a more profitable run rather than wasting time and fuel making a deadhead run to the outer system.

One way to get them out to Wolf would be to send something to Wolf, but as there is probably nothing you want to send out to a depleted mining colony, you will probably need to use your own freighters to bring the automines back into the inner system or wait for the comet to come back into the inner system.
 
Also check to see if the total trip (current location to wolf, to JG to colony in Proxima) is less than the range on they civilian freighter. you can find the range of the civilian ships under the fuel button in the system map.

[Michael Sandy]

Yes, civilians re-evaluate after dropping off cargo.

Had a huge surge of colony ships over pop a colony, going from 5 million to about 30.  So I switched it to source, and they loaded up...  then the colony was below 25 mil, and the colony ships said, "hey!  Lets dump them there!  And get paid for it!"

Lather, rinse, repeat, until the infrastructure finally arrived.