Civilian Shipping Lines

[RottenBanana (OP)]

I'm having an issue with a civilian trade ship.  I set up a contract to deliver construction factories to a colony, but the freighter just sits at Earth with the tag: [Move to Earth Trade Location] Distance: 0k ETA: 00:00:00.  I just started playing yesterday so I'm still very new to the game.  Anybody know where the problem may originate from?

[tryrar]

did you set up earth as A source of factories?

[telegraph]

there are currently a few bugs in regards of civilian shipping lines. I know these:
1. line will not create any ships if you do not have two inhabitable colonies (Earth is one and you need to move some infrastructure somewhere to make second.).
2. civillian shipping lines try to satisfy the demand, i.e. if you create a demend for infrastructure somewhere but not supply - chances are that civillian freighters will cycle around your trade locations as if they were looking where to get that governmental infrastructure (civilian infrastructure does not satisfy the demand). And even if you create supply and demand for something else (factories for example) the freighters will ignore it and will continue their pointless cycles in search for infrastructure.

You have most likely either screwed up the contract settings(demend, but no supply; supply, but no demand; messed up destination and source...) or experinced 2. (some other product have demand set, but does not have a proper supply).

[sloanjh]

there are currently a few bugs in regards of civilian shipping lines. I know these:
1. line will not create any ships if you do not have two inhabitable colonies (Earth is one and you need to move some infrastructure somewhere to make second.).

I'm pretty sure that this is not a bug - it's WAI.  If the reason you want to have civie lines when the only place to haul stuff is uninhabitable colonies (i.e. automines), then I'd recommend putting something in the official suggestions thread...

John

[Panopticon]

The most probable problem is you haven't set up a contract to supply the factories from somewhere first. Every contract needs both a demand at the destination and a supply at the source.

Another possibility is your destination is too far away, I vaguely recall there being a limit to the jumps civilian ships will make to ship stuff, but I admit I could be misremembering.

If there was fighting in the system recently civilians will take some time to start shipping there again as well, cowards that they are.

[SakSak]

Additional problem may be JumpGates.  If memory serves, Civilian ships require jumpgates to travel to other systems.

Is the target colony within the same system, or in another system?

If the latter, is there a jumpgate to the target system? If not, you'll find the civilian lines cannot enter it and thus cannot take on tasks to deliver cargo there.  And if there isn't a gate leading back, the ship will be trapped within until a return gate exists.

[telegraph]

I'm pretty sure that this is not a bug - it's WAI.  If the reason you want to have civie lines when the only place to haul stuff is uninhabitable colonies (i.e. automines), then I'd recommend putting something in the official suggestions thread...

everything is Working As Implemented. the problem is that sometimes it is Implemented not as Designed, or Designed not as Desired.

So currently it works as: I build a freighter, move 200 Infrastructure to Mars and I do not need that freighter for a very long time (until I need to fetch minerals from the other system). When I finally need a freighter - my old one is pretty much outdated and need to be replaced with more modern design.

The question is: why do I have to build a whole freighter only to move 200 Infrastructure?
Looks like a bug in either implementation or design

[Panopticon]

I'm not understanding the complaint, you want to move stuff without freighters somehow? You don't like having to update your freighters?

[Conscript Gary]

No, he'd just rather sponsor the civilians to move things for him in the first place with their freighters.

[RottenBanana (OP)]

I set up the supply contract on Earth and the demand contract of Mars for the factories prior to the freighter arriving.  Once it arrived and didn't move, I cancelled both and set up the same supply and demand contract.  At some point, I used my own colony ship to move some people to Mars to see if that did something, but nothing changed.  I know it's not a distance issue because it's a quick trip to Mars and I know the ship design is functional because I use the same freighters to ship my minerals.

[telegraph]

check for 2.
Is there any other outstanding contracts without a proper supply?

[RottenBanana (OP)]

Nope.   It's just the two contracts for factories. 

Edit: So I made a new set of contracts for infrastructure and the freighters started moving.  I'm not sure why they wouldn't move the factories.

[chrislocke2000]

Probably an obvious one but your freighters do have 25kt of capacity?

[Garfunkel]

Civ's don't like moving things in fractions if I remember correctly. And sometimes it just takes a while for them to undertake a contract. Case in point, my v6 test campaign had a contract for civs to haul 100 automines from Earth to Io. It took over ten days (2 build cycles) for the civilian shipping line to start hauling the first mine over.

And yes, it is useful to have a bunch of your own freighters from the start because the civs grow so slowly, so if you only rely on them, your growth will be horribly bottlenecked. Colony ships you don't need, civ's will be happy to transport colonists as long as there's some initial infra waiting at Mars.

[RottenBanana (OP)]

Probably an obvious one but your freighters do have 25kt of capacity?

My freighters have 50kt of capacity.

Civ's don't like moving things in fractions if I remember correctly.  And sometimes it just takes a while for them to undertake a contract.  Case in point, my v6 test campaign had a contract for civs to haul 100 automines from Earth to Io.  It took over ten days (2 build cycles) for the civilian shipping line to start hauling the first mine over.

And yes, it is useful to have a bunch of your own freighters from the start because the civs grow so slowly, so if you only rely on them, your growth will be horribly bottlenecked.  Colony ships you don't need, civ's will be happy to transport colonists as long as there's some initial infra waiting at Mars.

Yeah I was just using my own freighters while the civs were sitting idly, but I just wanted to make the most out of them so I could let them unload infrastructure on Mars while I moved infrastructure and other installations elsewhere.