Deliveries

[Jumpp (OP)]

If you wanted a freighter to pick up three mass drivers at earth, and then drop one each at Io, Ganymede, and Europa, what sort of orders would you give?  I can't figure out how to unload only 1 mass driver.

[davidb86]

If it is your freighter, you would need to unload all at the first destination, then load 2 mass drivers, unload all at the next destination, then load 1 mass driver which you can take to the final destination.   Another option is to split your TG into individual ships and send each to a single destination with a single mass driver.   Finally you could use the Civilian network by entering orders on the civilian tab of the production window.

[Jumpp (OP)]

I suppose I'd gotten out of the habit of using civilian shipping since they mostly ignore my contracts anyway.  It's probably worth giving them another chance.

[sloanjh]

There should be an amount box at the bottom in which you can type a "1" before giving the unload order.  Just be sure to put it back to "0" after giving the order or you'll get a surprise

John

[Jumpp (OP)]

That box appears to be grayed out when I'm giving unload orders.  Am I doing it wrong?

[Bgreman]

You aren't doing anything wrong.  That box is disabled for unload; it is only enabled for load.  A strange oversight, but understandable, as the order validation routine in Aurora is not very robust or flexible.  Since there's no way to know how many items are aboard the ship when plotting orders, there's no way to reliably set that amount.  It'd be nice if the game let you do it anyway, but I'd imagine trying to unload three mines when only one is in the hold might throw an error that would cause someone to come to the forum and post a bug, which is why the box is simply disabled.

[Thiosk]

I found in pre 6.0 that civilian shipping would tend to ignore minor planets, preferring only to haul from mega production centers (earth) outward.  They would never go to titan to pick up a mass driver which was to be dropped off at io (or to earth), however, they are happy to take mass drivers from earth to io.

I assume it has to do with the prioritization of orders and where jobless ships are.  If the jobless ship is at earth, it may choose to run trade goods rather than make a no-cargo run to titan to pick up mass drivers or a bunch of mines. 

[Jumpp (OP)]

Yeah, that's what I found too when I started trying to use the contract shipping again.  They were pretty quick to pick stuff up on Earth and take it even to far-distant comets in neighboring systems, but absolutely refused to do short in-system hauls to earth from mining colonies.

I'm not sure why it should be this way.  Hauling hardware from Titan to Earth is just as easy as hauling it from Earth to Titan, and either of those is a lot easier than hauling from Earth to some comet that's 12 billion km away from the JP the next system over.  It's kind of weird that they so strongly prefer to have an empty hold on the return leg rather than the outbound.

[nafaho7]

Recall that civilian shipping only plans one run ahead.  They do not consider the consequences of filling a contract dropping goods off at an empty world.  Civilian shipping only uses simple pathing, from wherever they happen to be to the closest available trade run, either public or private.  Also, civilian shipping only makes a maximum of one trade run per major time increment.  As in, if you run a 30-day time increment, all civilian shipping will only make a single trade run, at most.  Conversely, if you cycle 30 1-day increments, all civilian ships may make up to 30 trades runs.
  In my experience, civilian ships are awarded contracts in the order they are listed on the Shipping Lines screen, found with the hotkey of "Ctrl + L".  Once all ships are busy, they will not accept new contracts until they are finished with their present business.  This is why, if you want civilian shipping to handle most of your material transfer, you need inhabited colonies in as many separate systems as possible, particularly along the path you wish installations and other items to flow.  Additionally, you want to make use of small time increments and the Auto-Turns feature.  Just make sure to have a book with you, or have something else to do while turns process.  Whenever you get tired of watching turns cycle, just click the checkbox for the Auto-Turns option again, and after your next time increment, the game will hold, awaiting instruction from you, the Glorious Leader.