How to tractor civilian line ships?

[deoved (OP)]

I want to scraps some old designed ships of civilian shipping lines and read that they became yours when you tractor them. But i cant figure out how to tractor them with mein Fleet Tugs? How can i choose this civ ships in the menu?

[Girlinhat]

I don't think you can.  It's an old problem to have your civvies running around with nuclear pulse freighters.

[metalax]

Make sure you are in the same location as the cicilian ship. This is normally easies to accomplish by having your tug wait at the colony that the civ ship is headed for and waiting until they get there and start loading/unloading, using small time increments as neccessary.

Go to the individual ships screen, select the tug, go to the Miscellaneous tab, in the tractor link box you can select the civ ship.

If you are doing this to get rid of ancient slow designs, give the civ line some funding to cover the cost of the ship you have requistioned.

[Girlinhat]

...so wait, does this mean you can design absurd civilian ships, like orbital habitats with 1 cargo container, and a civilian line will eventually produce one.  Then tractor it and it's yours?  *starts designing civilian battlestations for future recapture!*

[sloanjh]

...so wait, does this mean you can design absurd civilian ships, like orbital habitats with 1 cargo container, and a civilian line will eventually produce one.  Then tractor it and it's yours?  *starts designing civilian battlestations for future recapture!*

It's a bug/exploit.  If you want to do this, it's simpler to simply go to SM mode and instant-OOB it....

Yes, I'm a party-pooper

John

[Din182]

...so wait, does this mean you can design absurd civilian ships, like orbital habitats with 1 cargo container, and a civilian line will eventually produce one.  Then tractor it and it's yours?  *starts designing civilian battlestations for future recapture!*

Of course, they don't produce military ships, and any weapons, shields or maintenance bays will make it military.

[metalax]

Yes it is somewhat of an exploit, however it is presently one of the few ways of keeping the civilians numbers in check and keeping the current fleet relatively up to date by subsidising the civ line for the cost of a newer replacement. I'd be all for having it removed as long as the civ lines are given the ability to be ordered to "refit class" or "retire class" (preferably both so we can still choose to keep the numbers down).

[Girlinhat]

Agreed.  An imperfect solution to an annoying problem, it'll serve as a "good enough" measure of control until something more realistic gets added.  Joy of playable alpha bugs and such~

[blue emu]

...so wait, does this mean you can design absurd civilian ships, like orbital habitats with 1 cargo container, and a civilian line will eventually produce one.  Then tractor it and it's yours?  *starts designing civilian battlestations for future recapture!*

There are certain designs that would fit that pattern and would be fairly useful. Maintenance stations, for example.

And of course, you could always steal civilian ships that were specifically planned for future conversion to military designs.

Of course, they don't produce military ships, and any [...] maintenance bays will make it military.

Not true.

Make sure you are in the same location as the cicilian ship.

  Wouldn't Sicilian ships be crewed by Mafia?

[sloanjh]

Yes it is somewhat of an exploit, however it is presently one of the few ways of keeping the civilians numbers in check and keeping the current fleet relatively up to date by subsidising the civ line for the cost of a newer replacement. I'd be all for having it removed as long as the civ lines are given the ability to be ordered to "refit class" or "retire class" (preferably both so we can still choose to keep the numbers down).

I was talking about using it to create new ships for your fleet, rather than using it as a "poor man's SM mode" to clean up the civie fleets.  I was just trying to make sure that people realized that this is a bug (which has graduated to an SM "feature"*) rather than an intentional implementation of the rules of the game.

John

* "feature": A bug that someone found a use for.  I first saw this definition in an old C64 disk operating system book - apparently they accidentally put a sector "0" on the disk, but only started writing stuff at sector "1".  When people noticed this, they started putting stuff in sector 0, so that there was no way to fix the bug without breaking a lot of user code.  I still find the definition hilarious.

[Steve Walmsley]

Yes it is somewhat of an exploit, however it is presently one of the few ways of keeping the civilians numbers in check and keeping the current fleet relatively up to date by subsidising the civ line for the cost of a newer replacement. I'd be all for having it removed as long as the civ lines are given the ability to be ordered to "refit class" or "retire class" (preferably both so we can still choose to keep the numbers down).

Yes, this is a bug I not fixing until I add code for the shipping lines to scrap old ships.

Steve

[Din182]

Of course, they don't produce military ships, and any weapons, shields or maintenance bays will make it military.

Not true.

It's a bug. Unless Steve fixed it in 5.55.