Edit: Moving BIG units (and how to make them smaller).

[Panpiper (OP)]

I added a few STO units, you know, the BIG guns, to my topmost command unity for my garrison army corps. They are deep behind the lines of the garrison, and the enemy will have to get through them all to reach them. Nice. Problem is I built two such army corps, one for my brand new terraformed Mars colony, and my troop transports refuse to pick up the unit that contains those STOs. !!!?

How the Bleep are we supposed to move them? My freighter fleet won't do it. My troop ships won't. Are STOs only allowed on the world that built them there natively? How in god's creation are we ever to defend our colonies without them, cause there is no way in hell they'd be able to build them natively in the first hundred years of the game.

[Black]

STOs are transported by troop transports. Are you sure that the troop transport you are trying to use have enough capacity to load the STO formation?

[captainwolfer]

I added a few STO units, you know, the BIG guns, to my topmost command unity for my garrison army corps. They are deep behind the lines of the garrison, and the enemy will have to get through them all to reach them. Nice. Problem is I built two such army corps, one for my brand new terraformed Mars colony, and my troop transports refuse to pick up the unit that contains those STOs. !!!?

How the Bleep are we supposed to move them? My freighter fleet won't do it. My troop ships won't. Are STOs only allowed on the world that built them there natively? How in god's creation are we ever to defend our colonies without them, cause there is no way in hell they'd be able to build them natively in the first hundred years of the game.

Can your troop transports move other units?

Possible reasons:
- If the individual unit you are trying to pick up is too big for any single transport, then it can't be transported
-Troop transports need cargo shuttle bays to pick up and unload units, unless the planet has a cargo shuttle station or starport
- Your troop transports don't have troop bays. Cargo ships can't move ground units.

[Froggiest1982]

STOs tend to be very big to transport, so I usually dismantle them if I am in need to move them and reassemble them on site.

You can do that through the unit management screen on the ground unit section. Just flag the relative options after having created "ad hoc" template on the unit formation.

[Jorgen_CAB]

I tend have all of my HQ formation are in sizes of 5000, 2500, 1250, 500, 250 or 100 tons. Although at 100t I don't have an actual HQ in the unit, that usually are just a squads worth of troops assigned to a small ship as a security force. Any commanding HQ larger than 5000t also can never exceed the 5000t limit and when moving an entire formation the commanding HQ is what dictate the troops ship capacity.

Make sure that no individual formation exceed 5000 tons for logistical reasons.

This makes it easy for me to transport ground units. My smallest dedicated troop transports usually are 5000 tons, this also happens to be roughly the size of planetary garrison forces.

I might not always fill up units to max size as that leave room for expansion of specialized troops or just reinforced formations.. but I generally just assume my forces are the size of the HQ for simplicity sake when doing transportation. It can leave room for some reserve formations or extra engineers companies to follow the forces to their destinations.

Most of my STO batteries are grouped in 5000t sized units as well, this makes them easy to move around as I need them.

[Panpiper (OP)]

I have (for the moment) two troop transports each with "Troop Capacity 50,000 tons". The highest level garrison unit, the Corps command with three divisions under them, is 70000 tons (due to having 1000 supply trucks). I would have thought that two such troop transports would, working together, be able to transport the unit. I expect now that is not the case, that no unit may exceed the capacity of a single transport. All the subordinate units they had under their command were just shy of 5000 CP/tons, and 'could' be transported.

I have no idea if it is possible to transfer some of those trucks out of that unit. Shoot, I'd settle for just deleting them. I cannot for the life of me figure out how to cause them to upgrade the build, despite reducing the number of supply trucks to 550 in the template and telling them to update, which would bring them under the 50,000 mark. I do NOT want to have to scrap the whole unit or have to build those STOs again along with new forces, they were freaking expensive!

Is there a video tutorial out there maybe that visually steps us through exactly what buttons to push to make this happen?

[captainwolfer]

It is possible to move elements out of templates you have already built.

1. Go to the ground forces screen. Above the list of units you have, there are 6 checkboxes. Click on the checkbox labeled "Show Elements". Additionally, click the checkbox labeled "Amount Popup"
2. Open up the tree for your Corps Command. At the bottom of its tree, below all of the units it is commanding, there will now be a "Formation Elements". Open that up, and it will have a list of all the elements in your Corps Command. You can drag and drop the elements to transfer them to other formations.
3. When you do so, a box will pop up with a number you can put in. That number is how many of that type of element you want to transfer. So if you have 1000 supply trucks, you drag "Supply Trucks" to another formation, and put 450 as the number, so that 450 supply trucks are transferred out and leave you with 550 supply trucks in the formation. The reason the box pops up is because you clicked the "Amount Popup" checkbox, otherwise it would just transfer all of the supply trucks without asking how many you wanted to transfer.

[Panpiper (OP)]

You are a scholar and a gentleman Sir. Thank you.

[Jorgen_CAB]

I just tried to see if there was an issue... but I could lift my entire division with 12 5000t capable troopship with no problem. My division have a total HQ of 80k but they rarely are maxed out and units with about 60k are most common size for them.

Now... I don't normally use so many small troops ships. I do have a fair amount of them but that is mainly to be spread out and doing regular lift of smaller formation and shuttle troops formations and reserves around my colonies. This was just a test...

So I guess as long as the ship can carry every single element in the fleet you should not have a problem with carrying them.

[captainwolfer]

I just tried to see if there was an issue... but I could lift my entire division with 12 5000t capable troopship with no problem. My division have a total HQ of 80k but they rarely are maxed out and units with about 60k are most common size for them.

Now... I don't normally use so many small troops ships. I do have a fair amount of them but that is mainly to be spread out and doing regular lift of smaller formation and shuttle troops formations and reserves around my colonies. This was just a test...

So I guess as long as the ship can carry every single element in the fleet you should not have a problem with carrying them.

Yes, but none of the templates you use are larger than 5000 tons, correct? Your troop ship works because all individual templates are not more than 5000 tons, ignoring sub-units

[Panpiper (OP)]

My problem was that I had a unit, the top-level 'Corps' command unit with three divisions under it, that was 70,000 tons due to having 1000 supply trucks in it to resupply three divisions for a reasonable period of time. However, my troopships carried 50,000 tons, max. None of them could carry that particular unit. When with captainwolfer's help I reduced those units to just under 50,000 tons, my troopships were able to transport it without issue.