Number of Civilian Shipping Lines

[davidr (OP)]

Does anyone know if there is there any specific formula that determines how many civilian shipping lines exist?

In my v6.43 game I have Earth plus 6 other developing colonies , yet only 2 civilian shipping lines have emerged and one of those was founded at the start of the game.

I do not want to cheat and add a shipping line using the SM mode , I just wish that the programme would produce additional lines.

DavidR

[ZimRathbone]

No, there is no formula.   Creation of a new line is a random event with low probability.  I have had games running 50+ years that only ever had one civ line! and other games that had 4 or more lines after less than 10 years, and I haven't really seen any consistent factor determining the creation once you pass the initial requirement of having somewhere for the line to go ie another colony.w

[Brian Neumann]

To actually get another shipping line up and running does take some of the players wealth.  Very few ships are cheap enough for the initial 2000 credits to actually get the line going.  When I use the SM mode to create a new shipping line, I also subsidize it with another 8-10,000 wealth.  That way it is not a "free" shipping line.  It also makes it feel less like cheating when I have to put my own money into the line to start it up.  Think of it as a government subsidy to a private corporation.

Brian

[alex_brunius]

To actually get another shipping line up and running does take some of the players wealth.  Very few ships are cheap enough for the initial 2000 credits to actually get the line going.

Are you sure about that?

A small magneto plasma tech freigther (F4) with 35k ton and 25000 Cargo costs 641 BPs = 641 wealth, so a startup can afford 3 of them.

I'm pretty sure almost all tech small ones and even some large ships of earlier tech can be built using the initial 2000 credits.

Just click the "Show Civilian Designs" checkbox in ship design to check yourself

[Brian Neumann]

Are you sure about that?

A small magneto plasma tech freigther (F4) with 35k ton and 25000 Cargo costs 641 BPs = 641 wealth, so a startup can afford 3 of them.

I'm pretty sure almost all tech small ones and even some large ships of earlier tech can be built using the initial 2000 credits.

Just click the "Show Civilian Designs" checkbox in ship design to check yourself

I checked and you are correct.  I think this may be something that changed around 6.0 as before then you had to design a ship, and the lines would only build what you designed.

Brian

[Paul M]

One thing I've seen is that the firms seem to wait an ungodly amount of time before starting to buy ships...so often a good part of the 2000 starting money is used for paying dividends rather than for ship purchases.

Personaly my feeling is that new firm checks should be disabled if any of the existing firms have a share price below 2.  Clearly if this is happening the market is saturated.

I have 7 firms but most of the business is going to the largest firm, the smaller firms are even more looped if they only have a colony ship since colonization isn't that common.  Increasing the cost for buying civilian fuel and a higher priority to production of refinery ships would help a great deal as well.

[CaptainBipto]

I added a bunch of extra lines using SM and set up contracts to move a massdriver, mines, and infrastructure to Mars, luna, Venus and mercury.   Nothing happened until I had infrastructure on mars.  The moment I did: civilian trade Renaissance!  Now I wish I could prune the extra lines but whatever!

Civvies are a big reason I love this game. 

[linkxsc]

Do the ais have their own civilian shipping lines?

I dont honestly know if they do, they always seem to only have military ships other than the occasional miners etc.

[Bryan Swartz]

I'm 61 years into a 6.2 conventional.  I've really liked the way the shipping lines developed.  There are three major ones and possibly a fourth on the way.  Early on there was one that dominated, had market share in the 70s for a while, but they didn't adjust when fuel harvesting ramped up and another firm has effectively quadrupled it's business in less than a decade.  There are 13 firms, 5 of which had no operations last year and another I think three did virtually nothing.  Booms and busts. 

I do wonder what's different about my game and why it hasn't done what others describe here. 

[83athom]

I do wonder what's different about my game and why it hasn't done what others describe here.  

Same with me, no problem with civilian lines and I'm about 100 years in. How many colonies do you have? I have only 5 colonies including auto-mine worlds, so that might be it, with 1 line with a total of 5 ships (truth) currently (had more but were deconstructed due to age).

[Bryan Swartz]

That has a lot to do with it I'm sure.  There are(not counting Earth) nine populated colonies and another 18 or 19 automine operations but the civilians aren't involved with shipping to them.  They harvest fuel from Uranus and ship a lot of insfrastructure to Mercury and Venus. 

I have 203 civilian ships in my game as of a year ago. 

[davidb86]

Civilian Shipping lines are like gremlins, if you feed them they will grow.  Colonizing a world like Venus or Titan that requires significant infrastructure will feed the shipping lines as they transport the demanded infrastructure so they will build more ships.  If you stick to colonizing terraformed or low cost worlds then the growth will be more reasonable and the civilian lines will be less of a hassle. 

[Zerkuron]

Civilian Shipping lines are like gremlins, if you feed them they will grow.  Colonizing a world like Venus or Titan that requires significant infrastructure will feed the shipping lines as they transport the demanded infrastructure so they will build more ships.  If you stick to colonizing terraformed or low cost worlds then the growth will be more reasonable and the civilian lines will be less of a hassle. 

This!

I got a conventional start, gave me the Trans Newtonian base tech via SM. Starting with 500M pop 5 RL and 1x 1k Tons Naval shipyard.
Colonized Luna even without minerals on it. And set 1 Day autoturns. This really boosts shipping lines. The Travel time between Earth and moon is nearly non-existent, wich leads to fast trading.
Also the 1 Day increments lead to vast amount of trades. I think this is because of Orderqueue of the civs. They get trade order to transport colonist/infrastructure from Earth to Luna. when done they seem to wait for the next increment to set a new task. This leads at 30Day Increments to 1 trade per ship and month. at 1 Day increments They check every day for a new task. So this happens:

1 Day increment:                                           30 Day increment:

Loadings infra from earth (10 hours)                   Loadings infra from earth (10 hours)
Move to Luna (5 min)                                      Move to Luna (5 min)
Unload infra at Luna (10 hours)                         Unload infra at Luna (10 hours)
Wait for next increment (3h 55min)                    Wait for next increment (29d 3h 55min)
check for next availible trade                            check for next availible trade
                   =                                                                =
Potential trades per month: 30                         potential trades per month: 1


Now in Year 33 and have this:

Dangel Transport Corporation: 195 ships 8 544 650 Tonnage
Trattner Company:                137 ships 6 214 600 Tonnage
Welke Colony Group:              15 ships  678500 Tonnage
Hamburg Lines:                      7 ships 301800 Tonnage

[83athom]

Now in Year 33 and have this:

Dangel Transport Corporation: 195 ships 8 544 650 Tonnage
Trattner Company:                137 ships 6 214 600 Tonnage
Welke Colony Group:              15 ships  678500 Tonnage
Hamburg Lines:                      7 ships 301800 Tonnage

Good God. "Honey, hand me my railgun! I'm going hunting."

[Zerkuron]

Just for showing the benefits of shippig lines, here wealth/trade of the last month:

Tax on Passenger Liners:        5880 / 63.6%
Tax on Populations:               2608.5 / 28.2%
Tax on Shipping Trade Goods: 260 / 2.8%
Tax on Exports:                    250 / 2.7%
Financial Centers:                 226.6 / 2.5%
Tax on Civilian Fuel:              21.5 / 0.2 %

Total:                                 9246.6