Author Topic: Default Orders for Harvesters and Miners  (Read 5215 times)

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Offline Steve Walmsley (OP)

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Default Orders for Harvesters and Miners
« on: February 22, 2018, 10:53:07 AM »
I've almost completed writing the default orders code (and associated path finding). There are one or two new orders, such as "Move to System Requiring Geosurvey", which you can set as a secondary order for "Survey Next Five System Bodies" (for example) and you no longer have to worrying about moving Geosurvey ships between systems. There is an equivalent for gravitational surveys. All the path finding takes into account whether the fleet is jump capable, the presence of jump gates and any danger ratings for systems.

Which leads me to "Move to Gas Giant with Sorium" and "Move to Mineral Source" (the latter being mainly for NPRs and the former for civilians and NPRs, although they are open to the player). The issue is (in both VB6 and C#) that default orders cause an order to be created when the fleet has no existing orders. However, that means whenever the fleet reaches the target, the default is triggered again (and again, and again). It isn't visible to the player because it is all happening behind the scenes.

So, when those two default orders get completed I am going to unset the default orders. Instead, I will add a construction phase check for civilian and NPR harvesters and miners without default orders, so if they are not harvesting / mining anything, the order is re-instated.

The only downside is that players would have to reset the order manually (assuming it is even being used). I'm mentioning that here in case there is an issue I haven't considered.
 
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Offline JacenHan

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Re: Default Orders for Harvesters and Miners
« Reply #1 on: February 22, 2018, 11:55:30 AM »
Nothing to say about Sorium/Mineral orders, but I was wondering how the "Move to System Requiring Geosurvey" works for systems with extremely distant bodies (ie: binary systems)? Will it take into account the same distance limit that the normal "Survey Next Five System Bodies" does? It sounds really useful and I'm looking forward to being able to use it.
 

Offline Steve Walmsley (OP)

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Re: Default Orders for Harvesters and Miners
« Reply #2 on: February 22, 2018, 12:05:08 PM »
Nothing to say about Sorium/Mineral orders, but I was wondering how the "Move to System Requiring Geosurvey" works for systems with extremely distant bodies (ie: binary systems)? Will it take into account the same distance limit that the normal "Survey Next Five System Bodies" does? It sounds really useful and I'm looking forward to being able to use it.

Each system has a flag for 'Default Geo Survey Complete'. The default order for "Move to System Requiring Geosurvey" looks for systems where this flag is not set.

The flag is set when a survey ship with an order of "Survey Nearest Body" or "Survey Next Five System Bodies"  cannot find a system body within ten billion kilometres. it doesn't mean the system is completely surveyed, but that it is surveyed in practical terms. If you need to you can send a survey ship to a distant planet or star (more than 10b km) and it will still automatically survey everything within ten billion kilometres of the last surveyed body, but the earlier setting of the flag means that other survey ships will not arrive automatically to survey the very distant bodies.
 
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Offline Garfunkel

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Re: Default Orders for Harvesters and Miners
« Reply #3 on: February 26, 2018, 07:32:07 PM »
I've never used either of those two orders.
 

Offline Erik L

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Re: Default Orders for Harvesters and Miners
« Reply #4 on: February 27, 2018, 12:42:36 PM »
I've never used either of those two orders.

I have. Easy to make fire & forget survey forces. Just include a conditional for 50% fuel to fuel at nearest location, and survey. Only need to stop them for upgrades and the like.

Offline Kytuzian

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Re: Default Orders for Harvesters and Miners
« Reply #5 on: February 27, 2018, 05:02:06 PM »
I have. Easy to make fire & forget survey forces. Just include a conditional for 50% fuel to fuel at nearest location, and survey. Only need to stop them for upgrades and the like.

This is also what I do.

However, I typically do both Survey Nearest 5 Bodies and Survey Nearest 3 Location for gravsurvey too. Will there be a similar order for "Move to System Requiring Gravsurvey"? Obviously I couldn't have all four at once (with the correct system), but I could just make two kinds of ships.
 

Offline Steve Walmsley (OP)

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Re: Default Orders for Harvesters and Miners
« Reply #6 on: February 27, 2018, 05:23:43 PM »
This is also what I do.

However, I typically do both Survey Nearest 5 Bodies and Survey Nearest 3 Location for gravsurvey too. Will there be a similar order for "Move to System Requiring Gravsurvey"? Obviously I couldn't have all four at once (with the correct system), but I could just make two kinds of ships.

Yes, there is an equivalent for gravitational surveys.
 
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Offline mtm84

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Re: Default Orders for Harvesters and Miners
« Reply #7 on: February 28, 2018, 04:35:15 AM »
I almost always use Sorium harvesters with slow engines with the default "Move to Gas Giant with Sorium" and an "unload at nearest colony" condition when full.  This system works well for me and I would hate to see it changed.  Though I guess I could set up the same thing with normal orders on repeat?  Is there a normal "wait till tanks full" order?
 

Offline Titanian

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Re: Default Orders for Harvesters and Miners
« Reply #8 on: March 01, 2018, 11:44:24 AM »
I sometimes do that too if for example i have a colony on a moon of the gas giant that is harvested.
 

Offline Steve Walmsley (OP)

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Re: Default Orders for Harvesters and Miners
« Reply #9 on: March 01, 2018, 01:03:42 PM »
I almost always use Sorium harvesters with slow engines with the default "Move to Gas Giant with Sorium" and an "unload at nearest colony" condition when full.  This system works well for me and I would hate to see it changed.  Though I guess I could set up the same thing with normal orders on repeat?  Is there a normal "wait till tanks full" order?

There is a new "Harvester Transfer and Return" order which be used with the condition "Fuel Tanks Full".
 
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Offline Whitecold

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Re: Default Orders for Harvesters and Miners
« Reply #10 on: March 01, 2018, 03:22:20 PM »
I almost always use Sorium harvesters with slow engines with the default "Move to Gas Giant with Sorium" and an "unload at nearest colony" condition when full.  This system works well for me and I would hate to see it changed.  Though I guess I could set up the same thing with normal orders on repeat?  Is there a normal "wait till tanks full" order?
Yeah. Could one not issue a 'harvesting' order for working miners/fuel harvesters to keep them from spamming the order?
 

Offline Steve Walmsley (OP)

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Re: Default Orders for Harvesters and Miners
« Reply #11 on: March 01, 2018, 03:37:17 PM »
Yeah. Could one not issue a 'harvesting' order for working miners/fuel harvesters to keep them from spamming the order?

They could but then I am checking the movement order every movement phase instead of the standing order. Having them unset the standing orders is the best performing option.
 

Offline dukea42

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Re: Default Orders for Harvesters and Miners
« Reply #12 on: March 02, 2018, 08:09:54 PM »
Is there a way to make harvester platforms that can lack any significant fuel storage?

Implying their tankers will be directly loading fuel until full, with default orders to do so and the existing conditional to empty at a colony.    An order to "withdraw fuel from harvesters (from parent fleet)" perhaps?

Right now I aim to have fuel harvesters have a years worth of tank capacity and then equally large tankers use a repeating series of normal orders 1)refuel from fleet 2) refuel from target colony 3) unload 90% at target colony.    If I set the speed low enough that all three orders take a year to complete it works to continue forever.  .  .  just tech and orbits mess with it a lot. 
 

Offline Steve Walmsley (OP)

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Re: Default Orders for Harvesters and Miners
« Reply #13 on: March 03, 2018, 05:26:47 AM »
Is there a way to make harvester platforms that can lack any significant fuel storage?

Implying their tankers will be directly loading fuel until full, with default orders to do so and the existing conditional to empty at a colony.    An order to "withdraw fuel from harvesters (from parent fleet)" perhaps?

Right now I aim to have fuel harvesters have a years worth of tank capacity and then equally large tankers use a repeating series of normal orders 1)refuel from fleet 2) refuel from target colony 3) unload 90% at target colony.    If I set the speed low enough that all three orders take a year to complete it works to continue forever.  .  .  just tech and orbits mess with it a lot.

There is a way to do this in C# Aurora.

1) Designate the fuel harvesters as tankers and set their refuel status to 'Fleet';
2) Add a large tanker to the fleet but don't set it as a tanker.
3) Give the tanker a Condition of 'Fuel tanks Full' and a Conditional Order of 'Transfer Fuel To Colony'

The harvesters will continually refuel the tanker. When it is full, it will leave and find a colony with refuelling facilities. You will just need to order it to return.
 

Offline Titanian

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Re: Default Orders for Harvesters and Miners
« Reply #14 on: March 03, 2018, 06:10:08 AM »
Hm, that is a bit inconvenient as the tanker flag is set per class. Thus a special class of tankers would be needed for this.

Would maybe that harvester conditional order of unload and return work in this case too? Then the return would not have to happen manually.