Shipping lines

[Icefire (OP)]

What are the requirements for shipping lines to produce ships? I thought they weren't because of money at first, but I've subsidized them to 40k and they still won't do anything.  Any tips?

[strych90]

Stuff for them to ship, mostly.
Start a colony and move some infrastructure and colonists to it manually. They'll start making ships and moving colonists and trade goods. Give 'em some contracts too, for more infrastructure, mines, etc (civilian and industry [or something like that] tab in colony overview).

Getting them to start making ships isn't too hard. Getting them to stop is. You'll have to hide civ contacts once there's hundreds of them.

[joeclark77]

I believe that their decision-making only happens once per clock interrupt.  So if you are doing 5-day turns you'll get a lot more civilian activity than if you're doing 30-day turns.  At least that's how it appears to me.  I hope this is changed in a future version.

[Icefire (OP)]

I know on the wiki it said that in older versions we needed to design their ships for them, that isn't true anymore, right?

[joeclark77]

Correct.  They design their own ships now.  They tend to be faster than my designs, because they don't use fuel and don't care about making efficient engines!

[Icefire (OP)]

Just weird because they've made mining outposts already, but no ships yet.  In a different TN game (playing non-TN now) They were making tons of ships.

[clement]

From my experience each industrial cycle (5 days by default) each shipping line checks to see if it has enough money to build a ship and then randomly decides if it will, then decides what to build by a percentage weighting between the 3 options (freighter, colony ship, luxury liner).

In my current game, one of the shipping lines is big enough, with enough ships in action, that it is making enough money every 5 day increment to pay for a new ship. In order for the shipping lines total funds to have a net decrease, the shipping line would need to be able to build more than 1 ship in a 5 day increment. The smaller of the 2 shipping lines in my game can currently sustain a new ship every 3-4 weeks and is doing that.

I am ok with this, I just wish I could ignore those message interrupts without also skipping the new Civilian Mining Center messages which I actually care about.

[kks]

If you're playing a conventional (non-TN) game, you also need to research some techs:
-At least nuclear thermal engines, as the AI can't handle conventional enignes(they sometimes can't catch up with planets, so you have to calculate an intercept course).
-If you want colony ships, you also need to research cryogenic transports
-I don't now if it's really required, but cargo handling systems are surly usefull.

[joeclark77]

I would also add to this thread that I suspect colonizing Luna is a big help.  I have done that in almost every game and never had any shortage of civilian activity.  In my current game I didn't bother with Luna because I found a cost-zero world one jump from Sol, and I've seen hardly any civilian ships despite having three civilian lines.  Luna is an extremely short trip so they make money frequently, and there are constant needs for infrastructure and colonists.

[Icefire (OP)]

Nuclear Thermal engines did it.  Thanks to all that helped