Mineral Logistics

[stabliser]

Are people actually making each system self-sufficient? I would be surprised if that was the case. The most logical way to me is to use mass drivers to get all minerals into one central location of that system and then Cargo ship to get it off there wherever it is needed (implies a different system). I have a colony that is actually supposed to be a copy of what Earth is in about 1/5th of the systems I have, probably even less (not to mention it takes a lot of time and effort to get there).

If the system has sufficient duranium, neutronium and Corundium, then I like to make the system build itself up. If any of these 3 are missing then mines and/or factories need shipping in, which makes the system of less value

[DFNewb]

I use small cargo ships (smaller than 10k tons) on cycle orders.

What size cargo and engines? What range? I got mine down to being pretty small, but 10k for a freighter that can go anywhere is extreme.

This is my very first cargo ship in my current campaign, still using it 50 years latter.

Acheron class Cargo Ship      9 966 tons       70 Crew       290.3 BP       TCS 199    TH 160    EM 0
802 km/s      Armour 1-41       Shields 0-0       HTK 22      Sensors 0/0/0/0      DCR 1      PPV 0
MSP 18    Max Repair 100 MSP
Cargo 3 000    Cryogenic Berths 10 000    Cargo Shuttle Multiplier 4   
Commander    Control Rating 1   BRG   
Intended Deployment Time: 3 months   

Commercial Improved Nuclear Thermal Engine  EP80.00 (2)    Power 160    Fuel Use 10.06%    Signature 80    Explosion 5%
Fuel Capacity 250 000 Litres    Range 44.8 billion km (647 days at full power)

This design is classed as a Commercial Vessel for maintenance purposes

It is more than enough to drop off colonists on a planet so the civs can pick up the work from there, and also enough to move colonists at a decent rate between planets and move minerals around. I will be making an updated version with a faster engine soon seeing as I am 4 tech levels past this engine haha.

[Jorgen_CAB]

Are people actually making each system self-sufficient? I would be surprised if that was the case. The most logical way to me is to use mass drivers to get all minerals into one central location of that system and then Cargo ship to get it off there wherever it is needed (implies a different system). I have a colony that is actually supposed to be a copy of what Earth is in about 1/5th of the systems I have, probably even less (not to mention it takes a lot of time and effort to get there).

If the system has sufficient duranium, neutronium and Corundium, then I like to make the system build itself up. If any of these 3 are missing then mines and/or factories need shipping in, which makes the system of less value

Outside of kick-starting colonies with construction factories I tend to just ship in the minerals they use, that is way more efficient if those minerals are not available. That means less ships needed to ship facilities around everywhere. As long as a colony have enough factories to build build new facilities to put all of the new workers to work that means the colony is self sufficient.

Shipping minerals is from a strategic point of view less of a strain on your infrastructure.

[kenlon]

Pick a mineral that won't run out any time soon, and use Load Minerals When X Available followed by Load All Minerals, setting X to be an amount which gives a reasonably full hold when the load minerals command is issued.

That's really clever - I'll have to remember it. What I've done so far is to always centralize minerals onto the largest colony in the system, and periodically send out megafreighters (500Kt+ ships) to siphon them up and bring them to a production system - production systems being ones that had all varieties of mineral available in sufficient quantities to be self sustaining. But with that trick I very well might repurpose some of my earlier-game freighters (50-100Kt) and have them on pre-defined circuits.

[Jorgen_CAB]

Pick a mineral that won't run out any time soon, and use Load Minerals When X Available followed by Load All Minerals, setting X to be an amount which gives a reasonably full hold when the load minerals command is issued.

That's really clever - I'll have to remember it. What I've done so far is to always centralize minerals onto the largest colony in the system, and periodically send out megafreighters (500Kt+ ships) to siphon them up and bring them to a production system - production systems being ones that had all varieties of mineral available in sufficient quantities to be self sustaining. But with that trick I very well might repurpose some of my earlier-game freighters (50-100Kt) and have them on pre-defined circuits.

Another way is to just use very small mineral haulers and have each one only handle one or a few type of minerals at a time, the hold can be as small as 1000t for handling shipping to small colonies. You don't even need a cargo shuttle bay as you likely have a cargo station present anyway at these colonies.

I find that a ship with really large cargo holds are huge overkill when it comes to moving minerals around, especially if I like to setup an automated system that I might adjust once every few years or so.

But I then tend to make pretty much every colony to build their own facilities, more or less. So I want minerals to be as spread out among my colonies as possible. This is as much for role-play as anything else. I do try to avoid using population for mining operations as much as possible.

[liveware]

Honestly, with the tools we have, it doesn't seem like all that much effort to set up inter-system mineral hauling orders.
A cheap early game freighter with 7 engines and one cargo hold travels 1000 km/s with 35bkm range, easy. Nuclear Pulse, 30% power, size 60, 150kL fuel. That's roughly optimal throughput per cost at that tech level.
This guy can make a round trip per year at a distance of 15bkm.
So just one freighter is needed to move 12.5kt per year between systems at that range.
That's a lot of mining output handled just by giving one ship cycling orders.
And like you said, mass drivers easily centralize the mineral output in each system.

I used freighters similar to this to establish my first populated extrasolar colony in Alpha Centauri. After the colony was well established, the freighters were repurposed as mineral haulers.

I think I used them on a cyclical mineral hauling route between Sol and Alpha Centauri for like 100-150 game years before I felt like I needed a new freighter design.

[Borealis4x (OP)]

I wish that civilians would build CMCs anywhere there was a good amount of minerals instead of only in places with Duranium. Having to setup mining colonies for every little asteroid is a pain, even if you use civilian lines.

[Gabethebaldandbold]

I wish that civilians would build CMCs anywhere there was a good amount of minerals instead of only in places with Duranium. Having to setup mining colonies for every little asteroid is a pain, even if you use civilian lines.

asteroid mining modules are very good at dealing with this, just build a bunch of asteroid miners, tell them to move to nearest mineral source, and go grab it when you need some with a freighter

[SpikeTheHobbitMage]

I wish that civilians would build CMCs anywhere there was a good amount of minerals instead of only in places with Duranium. Having to setup mining colonies for every little asteroid is a pain, even if you use civilian lines.

asteroid mining modules are very good at dealing with this, just build a bunch of asteroid miners, tell them to move to nearest mineral source, and go grab it when you need some with a freighter

Asteroid miners cost Corundium, which is the critical mineral involved in mineral crunch.  Getting the civilians to help pay the mineral cost of mining can go a long way to alleviating that.

[Father Tim]

Every mining colony gets its own freighter on cycling orders to carry its production to the major colony of choice.  When I want to adjust the rate at which minerals are piling up (or not, as the case may be) on certain colonies I re-route one or two or twelve freighters to supply a different population.

[Droll]

Every mining colony gets its own freighter on cycling orders to carry its production to the major colony of choice.  When I want to adjust the rate at which minerals are piling up (or not, as the case may be) on certain colonies I re-route one or two or twelve freighters to supply a different population.

Alternatively you can also vary the speed of the freighters to change the rate of shipping along a route.

[xenoscepter]

Hauler Class Light Freighter:

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Hauler class Light Freighter      3,000 tons       42 Crew       131.5 BP       TCS 60    TH 64    EM 0
1066 km/s      Armour 1-18       Shields 0-0       HTK 12      Sensors 1/1/0/0      DCR 11      PPV 0
MSP 27    Max Repair 25 MSP
Cargo 500    Cargo Shuttle Multiplier 2   
Lieutenant Commander    Control Rating 1   BRG   
Intended Deployment Time: 3 months   

T1250/64NTi "Hauler" Starship Drive (1)    Power 64    Fuel Use 4.48%    Signature 64    Explosion 4%
Fuel Capacity 95,000 Litres    Range 127.2 billion km (1380 days at full power)

Mk. I Planetary Scanner (1)     GPS 4     Range 2.5m km    MCR 227.1k km    Resolution 1
Mk. I Sensor Calibration Module [TH] (1)     Sensitivity 1     Detect Sig Strength 1000:  7.9m km
Mk. I Sensor Calibration Module [EM] (1)     Sensitivity 1     Detect Sig Strength 1000:  7.9m km

This design is classed as a Commercial Vessel for maintenance purposes*Technology Used: High-Density Duranium Armor, Improved Nuclear Thermal Engines, Minimum Engine Power 0.4x, Fuel Consumption 0.7%, Trans-Newtonian Cargo Shuttles, Commercial Damage Control
*Required Technology: High-Density Duranium Armor, Improved Nuclear Thermal Engines, Minimum Engine Power 0.4x
*Optional Technology: Trans-Newtonian Cargo Shuttles, Commercial Damage Control, Fuel Consumption 0.7%

 - This is the design I'm using for Mineral Hauling in my current game... it has room for improvement. It only has 1x Cargo Shuttle Bay, I just have Trans-Newtonian Cargo Shuttles; weight could be saved by removing the sensors and the Commercial Damage Control.

[skoormit]

Hauler Class Light Freighter:

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Hauler class Light Freighter      3,000 tons       42 Crew       131.5 BP       TCS 60    TH 64    EM 0
1066 km/s      Armour 1-18       Shields 0-0       HTK 12      Sensors 1/1/0/0      DCR 11      PPV 0
MSP 27    Max Repair 25 MSP
Cargo 500    Cargo Shuttle Multiplier 2   
Lieutenant Commander    Control Rating 1   BRG   
Intended Deployment Time: 3 months   

T1250/64NTi "Hauler" Starship Drive (1)    Power 64    Fuel Use 4.48%    Signature 64    Explosion 4%
Fuel Capacity 95,000 Litres    Range 127.2 billion km (1380 days at full power)

Mk. I Planetary Scanner (1)     GPS 4     Range 2.5m km    MCR 227.1k km    Resolution 1
Mk. I Sensor Calibration Module [TH] (1)     Sensitivity 1     Detect Sig Strength 1000:  7.9m km
Mk. I Sensor Calibration Module [EM] (1)     Sensitivity 1     Detect Sig Strength 1000:  7.9m km

This design is classed as a Commercial Vessel for maintenance purposes*Technology Used: High-Density Duranium Armor, Improved Nuclear Thermal Engines, Minimum Engine Power 0.4x, Fuel Consumption 0.7%, Trans-Newtonian Cargo Shuttles, Commercial Damage Control
*Required Technology: High-Density Duranium Armor, Improved Nuclear Thermal Engines, Minimum Engine Power 0.4x
*Optional Technology: Trans-Newtonian Cargo Shuttles, Commercial Damage Control, Fuel Consumption 0.7%

 - This is the design I'm using for Mineral Hauling in my current game... it has room for improvement. It only has 1x Cargo Shuttle Bay, I just have Trans-Newtonian Cargo Shuttles; weight could be saved by removing the sensors and the Commercial Damage Control.

Why so small? With the same tech, you could use a standard cargo hold and multiple bigger engines to get 50x the cargo capacity (at the same speed and range, using less fuel) for less than 5x the cost.

Quick example, using same size engines and roughly equivalent scanners (I added the cryo berths just to replace the weight of your damage control, which I don't have yet):

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Hauler - Copy class Freighter (P)      50,018 tons       197 Crew       585.5 BP       TCS 1,000    TH 1,088    EM 0
1087 km/s      Armour 1-120       Shields 0-0       HTK 127      Sensors 1/1/0/0      DCR 1      PPV 0
MSP 7    Max Repair 50 MSP
Cargo 25,000    Cryogenic Berths 1,200    Cargo Shuttle Multiplier 2   
Squire    Control Rating 1   BRG   
Intended Deployment Time: 3 months   

Commercial Improved Nuclear Thermal Engine  EP64.00 (17)    Power 1088.0    Fuel Use 4.48%    Signature 64.00    Explosion 4%
Fuel Capacity 1,550,000 Litres    Range 124.4 billion km (1324 days at full power)

Active Search Sensor AS1-R1 (1)     GPS 1     Range 1.3m km    MCR 113.5k km    Resolution 1
TH-Minimus (1)     Sensitivity 1     Detect Sig Strength 1000:  7.9m km
EM-Minimus (1)     Sensitivity 1     Detect Sig Strength 1000:  7.9m km

This design is classed as a Commercial Vessel for maintenance purposes
You can save a lot of fuel (and design size for fuel tanks) by using larger engines. A size-60 engine uses ~33% less fuel than the equivalent power in size-25 engines.

Obviously you need to expand your yard to make these, which takes time and resources, but I find the investment more than worthwhile, because I expect to build a lot of freighters for a long time.

[d.rodin]

Global oranisation:
Each Sector (2 jump from central colony) has some sort of "central hub" colony : usually with biggest population, most idustrially developed, center of local shipbuilding. In my current game there are 2 big sectors : Sol and 36 Ophiuchi. Every system has its own "central hub" (some can have more) colony where all minerals from system are collected (with mass-drivers)

Intra-sector mineral transportation (Sol):
Workhorse:

Akmolinsk G9 class Cargo Ship      53 336 tons       316 Crew       4 449.2 BP       TCS 1 067    TH 16 000    EM 0
14999 km/s      Armour 1-126       Shields 0-0       HTK 53      Sensors 0/0/0/0      DCR 22      PPV 0
MSP 2 504    Max Repair 2000 MSP
Cargo 25 000    Cargo Shuttle Multiplier 10   
Lieutenant Commander    Control Rating 1   BRG   
Intended Deployment Time: 6 months   

Commercial Plasma Core AM Drive  EP8000.00 (2)    Power 16000    Fuel Use 0.44%    Signature 8000    Explosion 5%
Fuel Capacity 500 000 Litres    Range 381.8 billion km (294 days at full power)

This design is classed as a Commercial Vessel for maintenance purposes

Orders: (all minerals are transported from sector hub colony)

Hub: Unload all minerals
Hub: Load x1000 Durantium
Hub: Load x1000 Neutronium
and all other minerals x1000
Hub: Refuel & Resupply
Colony: Unload all minerals
Colony: Load all minerals

Cycle move - check.

Cargo ship loads all minerals at hub
Unloads them on target colony
If minerals are below reserve, cargo ship loads nothing and goes to hub
If minerals are above reserve, cargo ship loads all minerals that are above reserve and transports them to hub colony.

[xenoscepter]

@Skroomit
 - A good question, and a good refit... although I personally don't like it. It's overkill for something that is designed to only haul minerals, but I only ever build dedicated mineral haulers to alleviate the need to use my big freighters. Even then I hardly build much or any of either as I typically rely on Civilian Shipping for 90% of my installation moving needs and Mass Drivers for my CMCs, so typically a 5-10,000 Ton Freighter or two will do. At that point I just fold the freighter into an Orbital Miner and be done with it, since with a little extra work I can use the same design as a Salvager by just swapping modules.

 - That all having been said, this game I'm doing now is a Conventional Start with no Starport and no Shipyards. When I built my shipyards the first one was a Commercial Yard which I got to 30,000 Tons to build my Pre-Cryo Colony Ship, so that refit wouldn't fit. My second yard was naval, but only 3,000 and it was for my Geo/Grav Survey Ship. I've just expanded the slipways on my existing yards and built up another two, one Naval and one Commercial, and I am in the process of expanding these new yards to 9,000 Tons for the Naval and 90,000 Tons for the Commercial. Sometime after I had finished converting all 1,500 of my Conventional Industry, and right about towards the end of expanding my TN Industry I began to have CMCs popping up like nuts. My Mass Driver was still queued up and I had to wait for my Starport first for Role-Play reasons, so I built some Haulers for the interim. They got about 10 years of use, so not too bad, and I'm in the process of replacing them right now.

These are the designs that will do so:

Longhaul Class Freighter:

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Longhaul class Freighter      90,000 tons       728 Crew       3,391.6 BP       TCS 1,800    TH 7,680    EM 0
4266 km/s      Armour 3-178       Shields 0-0       HTK 153      Sensors 1/1/0/0      DCR 52      PPV 0
MSP 1,153    Max Repair 320.0000 MSP
Cargo 30,000    Cargo Shuttle Multiplier 10   
Commander    Control Rating 2   BRG   AUX   
Intended Deployment Time: 12 months   

T8000/1280MP "Longhaul" Starship Drive (6)    Power 7680.0    Fuel Use 3.09%    Signature 1280.00    Explosion 5%
Fuel Capacity 2,085,000 Litres    Range 134.8 billion km (365 days at full power)

Mk. I Navigational Computer [Planetary Detection Module] (1)     GPS 1000     Range 14.2m km    Resolution 500
Mk. I Navigational Computer [Surface Scanner Module] (1)     GPS 2     Range 1.8m km    MCR 160.6k km    Resolution 1
Mk. I Sensor Calibration Module [TH] (1)     Sensitivity 1     Detect Sig Strength 1000:  7.9m km
Mk. I Sensor Calibration Module [EM] (1)     Sensitivity 1     Detect Sig Strength 1000:  7.9m km

This design is classed as a Commercial Vessel for maintenance purposes
- This will be my primary intrasystem mule. It can move six units of Infrastructure, or one 25,000 Ton Installation with 5,000 Tons to spare. A good ship for the kinds of odd jobs I intend to have it do.

Jumphaul Class:

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Jumphaul class Jump Freighter      90,000 tons       600 Crew       2,812.4 BP       TCS 1,800    TH 3,840    EM 0
2133 km/s    JR 2-25(C)      Armour 3-178       Shields 0-0       HTK 121      Sensors 1/1/0/0      DCR 50      PPV 0
MSP 905    Max Repair 396.8 MSP
Cargo 25,000    Cargo Shuttle Multiplier 10   
Captain    Control Rating 2   BRG   ENG   
Intended Deployment Time: 15 months   

Liveman Drive     Max Ship Size 90000 tons    Distance 25k km     Squadron Size 2

T8000/1280MP "Longhaul" Starship Drive (3)    Power 3840.0    Fuel Use 3.09%    Signature 1280.00    Explosion 5%
Fuel Capacity 1,285,000 Litres    Range 83.1 billion km (450 days at full power)

Mk. I Navigational Computer [Planetary Detection Module] (1)     GPS 1000     Range 14.2m km    Resolution 500
Mk. I Navigational Computer [Surface Scanner Module] (1)     GPS 2     Range 1.8m km    MCR 160.6k km    Resolution 1
Mk. I Sensor Calibration Module [TH] (1)     Sensitivity 1     Detect Sig Strength 1000:  7.9m km
Mk. I Sensor Calibration Module [EM] (1)     Sensitivity 1     Detect Sig Strength 1000:  7.9m km

This design is classed as a Commercial Vessel for maintenance purposes
- Serves as a Jump Tender for the Longhaul, but has shorter range overall. A good ship for shunting things that are just a jump or so away. Paired with a tanker or a forward staging area, it can go a lot farther.