tug justification

[telegraph (OP)]

My recent failed experiment with space trains led me to thinking about situations where tugs could be used effectively.
I can think of three cases where tugs could be worthwhile.
1. Fuel conservation: To tow around big engine-less hangars with warships inside.
But as it was mentioned in other thread - I could just throw economical engines in such hangars and use those as slow carriers.
2. Material efficiency: To tow around things that do not need to move to function. Orbital habitats, Recreational facilities, Terraformers, Gate construction ships, etc... if those are produced in large numbers significant savings could be made if a small number of tugs could be used to bring those into position(instead of building an engine for each stationary ship).
With space train program failure it becomes too boring to tow such ships one at a time, so I would need not so small tug fleet to tow things around (imagine towing 300 terraformer ships from Luna to Mars with only three tugs.) So it looks like I would be better off with throwing a small economical engine in each ship.
3. Towing things that cannot move otherwise. Two situations here: A ship with broken engines and orbital shipyards.
A ship would be better of in a carrier though, because chances are it will not survive towing if it has to be towed for any kind of long distance.

Dows it leave us with only towing shipyards? what do you guys think?

[alex_brunius]

1. Fuel conservation: To tow around big engine-less hangars with warships inside.
But as it was mentioned in other thread - I could just throw economical engines in such hangars and use those as slow carriers.

It's justified if you put a long maintenance life on the hangar and/or leave them in orbit of colonies with maintenance facilities for prolonged service. Think of them like orbital versions of PDC Hangars that you can move around depending on where the need for fighter support is.

With space train program failure it becomes too boring to tow such ships one at a time, so I would need not so small tug fleet to tow things around (imagine towing 300 terraformer ships from Luna to Mars with only three tugs.) So it looks like I would be better off with throwing a small economical engine in each ship.

Why not build terraforming stations with 50 terraforming modues each instead then? Civilian shipyards are not so expensive to expand.

You could even imagine these stations are actually 50 separate modules chained together that are towed by your nice space train engine at once

[Varee]

I also use tug as high power ship, very fast military tug for moving stuff and also some stuff barely ever move, i like to use gate tender with one jump engine and fuel tank so i tug thoses around alot and they stay there till one of my builder can work on it. Mostly it for something that will hardly ever move or need replace ex mining terraformer gate builder or just orbital hangar for storage and repair engine in these will likely to be use once or twice and it will be wasted space or let em take forever to move. For smaller stuff i sometime use big "carrier" to just ut everything in then tug the whole thing, i dont know how good it is for terraformer and stuff but i usally do this for gate monitor outpost and like manned mine and stuff(yes those poor soul stuck in ship loaded with explosion waiting for something to come though the hole to end there life )

[Rolepgeek]

Here's a fairly simple justification: the size of your shipyards. Tug+Terraformer is easier to build than Terraformer with engines.

I haven't actually used tugs, but here's how I think they'd be used:
You have a ship with just a crapton of engines and fuel. It doesn't need to have a tractor beam.
You have your terraformers, your jump gate builders, etc., possibly even fuel harvesters, each have one tractor beam, and one single max size and efficiency engine(just for emergencies and catching up with planets if something gets screwed up), in addition to whatever they're job is.

Tractor beam the things to be hauled to the tug, send the tug on it's way. All those terraformers will be hauled with it, for example. And the tugs can be used as shuttles too, taking important personnel or teams around your bases. Can haul PDCs if you stick a tractor beam on either end(or, have a link-ship; tiny ship with two tractor beams to allow your tugs to tow things without tractors beams on them).

But really, the biggest consideration is expense and shipyard size. A carrier to bring damaged ships back home that can move at the same speed the tug would is going to be really big, and really expensive.

[Nate Mg]

I intended to post in the space train thread, but needed to register first.

I've had limited success with space trains.  The process is fiddly, but. . .

Starting with the Tug, I use the ships screen to link my first TF.
Then, go to the Task Group screen and update the speed of the TG by clicking Max a couple times.
Link up another TF and update speed again. 

Maybe it's a bug but the 3 ships will go together to their destination with no errors and not teleport to the sun.  That bug is exactly why you need to update the speed.

I've not tried this for bigger groups yet.

As for other uses of a Tug, put a Small Cargo Hold on it and use its speed for emergency minerals management.


Related question: Has anybody experimented with towed arrays? Sensors/missile pods/other things?
What happens in combat?

[Prince of Space]

Here's my two cents on the value of tugs:

Typically, early in my games I will expand a single slip commercial shipyard up to about 250,000 ton capacity and then I'll have it crank out a constant stream of engineless asteroid mining rigs. If I wanted them to be self propelled I'd have to either expand the yard further, delaying my initial deployment of asteroid miners (which can't happen soon enough when there's an impending corundium crunch), or sacrifice mining modules to make room for engines and fuel that will go unused most of the time. Furthermore, when I research more advanced and efficient engines I'm faced with the choice of retooling the yard and refitting the miners (which costs resources and time) or leaving the older less efficient engines in circulation (which costs fuel over time). My engineless rigs only ever suffer from outdated armor technology, which is no biggie.

Also, in practice, even an older engine generation tug can do a better job of chasing down a zippy inner system comet or remote Kuiper belt asteroid than a miner with a handful of engines can. Every production cycle spent in transit is wasted production, so I want the miners on the job site ASAP.

[joeclark77]

I tend to make terraforming and sorium harvesting platforms of 100kT-125kT size in batches of five at a time.  A fleet of five tugs hauls them into place, and can be re-used when the next batch is built.  This gets them into place a lot faster than if I put a few engines on each platform, and is cheaper.  (If you build terraforming modules or harvesting modules in your construction factories, the platforms can be build very quickly, too.)