Yet another question! (about cargo this time)

[Ravenplucker (OP)]

Sorry about all the posts!

I have found a truly delicious amount of minerals on Mars.  I've designed a freighter will is going to carry automated mines and a mass driver over there.

But I don't know how. . .   

How do I load the mines onto the freighters and put them there?

[voknaar]

Assuming your freighter is built and has no design flaws, push F12 find the task group your cargo ship is in order that task group to load a automine from earth and deposit it on mars.

Heres a step by step if you're unsure:

The default Task Group ships are built at would be shipyard TG go there or to the TG you've put the cargo ship. Its in the top left section of the task group screen (F12) find the name of the ships TG in the drop down and select it, then find the system location (for you it's earth) in the bottom left section. Select it then next you'll have a list of actions from the actions available area, find the load automine command then click "add move". That order shows up in the third area so you know what that task group selected is doing. With that order complete select mars and find the order to unload all or unload the loaded cargo (automine if its on the ship) command and add move.

If you want to be fancy you could create a loop to continuously load mines or what ever by ticking cycle moves. or repeat moves a certain number of times. Just be careful you don't assign a infinite loop to ships that ignores their need to refuel or resupply as necessary

[Hawkeye]

If the freighter is in the "shipyard TG" and you are building another ship, you can´t move this TG (it has, after all, a partially build ship in it, that is just not visible for you yet). So you have to create another TG and move the frieighter there.

[James Patten]

In the F12 Task Group window, you can click on the ship in the Shipyard then click the "Detach" button.  This creates a new TG from that ship you highlighted.  This TG should now have a movement number greater than 1.

[Brian Neumann]

If you want to set a loop order for a fleet there can be problems.  If the entire order is finished before the time cycle you clicked on is up there is a problem with using the cycle order button.  They can sometimes get out of order, which will cancell the whole setup.  My approach is to set up 1 cycle then use the repeat command a couple of times, insert a refuel order and then repeat for 20 times.  This will last a long time for just a trip inside the same system, and gives you a check every couple of years if you want to modify the setup.

Brian

[sloanjh]

And don't forget that you need 5 cargo holds to carry a typical installation (like mines or factories).

John

[Ravenplucker (OP)]

Awesome, many thanks everyone!

My slipways can't hold a ship with 5 cargo holds, I'm just building lots of 1 cargo hold ships instead.

[Eagle_eye]

that'll be considerably less efficient. . .  it would probably be cheaper in the long run to just increase your slipway size.

[James Patten]

You may be able to still move objects around with less than 5 holds.  Steve put in the ability to move partial loads in one of the last releases.  It will just take you a long time to move things.  It would be more effective to increase your slipway sizes.

[Brian Neumann]

It is far more efficient to build 1 ship with 5 cargo holds than it is to build 5 ships with 1 hold each.  This is for a couple of reasons.  The larger the ship the faster the construction speed is, so using 1 slipway will build a ship the size you need about 2.5 times faster per month.  The larger ship is probably not 5 times as large as well so it will be fairly quick to build. 1 slipway will use less people to support it than 5 smaller slipways do, and will probably cost you more in minerals to build the 5 individual slipways.  The second reason is that the overhead of crew quarters, any sensors, maintenance, cargo handling facility, ect is not that much more for the larger ship than for 1 smaller ship.  Ie the larger ship will need 1 maintenance, 1 crew, and 2 cargo handling facilities.  The smaller ship will need 1 of each, which is about 4 times more stuff.  This goes up even more if you want any kind of sensors on your ships.  I like putting a .5hs active sensor or thermal sensor.  This lets you know when somebody else is in a system without increasing the price of the ship by much.

If you already have more than 1 slipway on the shipyard it will probably be faster to build a new shipyard and have it expand it's size as fast as possible.  Somewhere between 35-40,000 tons should do for a minimalilst design freighter.

Brian

[sloanjh]

Don't forget the difference between civie and naval shipyards - you want to use a civie yard to build cargo and transport ships.

John

[Sheb]

So yeah, I got a bunch of Destroyer not moving.  They have fuel, engins, and the game is saying that they're doing 4237km/s, but they are plainly not moving.  Plus, there is "-Oveerhaul" next to each of the ship's name, even tough they are in Deep Space.

did I do something wrong?

[Hawkeye]

Ouch! This should not happen.
1) Ships in overhaul  are not able to move. In fact, they should never have been able to leave your base.
2) I think I remember a bugreport of a similar case, not sure however.

Ok, what you can try:
Form a new TF over your base (simply hitting "create TaskForce" should be enough)
Select the TF with the ships in question
Transfer the ships to this new TF and let the port finish the overhaul.

[schroeam]

Or, as long as you are in SM mode you can go to the History/Officers/Misc. tab of the Task Groups window and move that task force to the appropriate planet/system using the dropdowns on the right.  Hope this helps.

Adam.

[Sheb]

Yup thanks! Now, I have to deal with a huge mineral shortage: I love this game!