Mineral Logistics

[skoormit]

Why not just have civilians build on any body with a mineral that's 10k rich?

In other news, this conversations has prompted me to standardize my freighters into 4 classes.

- Light freighters with small cargo bays to haul minerals in convoys

- Standard freighters with standard cargo bays that haul infrastructure for colony fleets. Colony ships are based off of these designs so they can be built from the same shipyard.

- Heavy freighters with large cargo bays to haul mines and mass drivers

- And Super-Freighters with 4+ large cargo bays to haul the really heavy stuff like spaceports and labs and such.

Whats great about standardizing these designs early on is that the only thing you need to upgrade is the engine (which should always be the same size), meaning you can just refit.

I find that refitting freighters is not cost-effective. Engine cost is usually in the 40-50% range on my designs, which means I'm paying half (or more) the cost of a new ship to refit.
Say I have two ships at speed Z (giving throughput of 2 * Z), the new engine tech is 25% faster, and the refit cost is 50% of the cost of the new design.
Then, for equivalent costs, I could either:
A) Refit the old ships, for a total throughput 2.5 * Z.
B) Build a new ship, for a total throughput 3.25 * Z.

[Jorgen_CAB]

Why not just have civilians build on any body with a mineral that's 10k rich?

In other news, this conversations has prompted me to standardize my freighters into 4 classes.

- Light freighters with small cargo bays to haul minerals in convoys

- Standard freighters with standard cargo bays that haul infrastructure for colony fleets. Colony ships are based off of these designs so they can be built from the same shipyard.

- Heavy freighters with large cargo bays to haul mines and mass drivers

- And Super-Freighters with 4+ large cargo bays to haul the really heavy stuff like spaceports and labs and such.

Whats great about standardizing these designs early on is that the only thing you need to upgrade is the engine (which should always be the same size), meaning you can just refit.

I find that refitting freighters is not cost-effective. Engine cost is usually in the 40-50% range on my designs, which means I'm paying half (or more) the cost of a new ship to refit.
Say I have two ships at speed Z (giving throughput of 2 * Z), the new engine tech is 25% faster, and the refit cost is 50% of the cost of the new design.
Then, for equivalent costs, I could either:
A) Refit the old ships, for a total throughput 2.5 * Z.
B) Build a new ship, for a total throughput 3.25 * Z.

What about fuel costs... more fuel efficient engine WILL make a huge impact.

If you build new engines and you can get both faster AND better fuel economy for engines that are almost the same price. The idea here is that every generation of new engines you reduce the efficient one additional step and have a better fuel efficiency and better engine technology. That engine probably is even less expensive even if better technology...

Example...

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T1 - Commercial Nuclear Thermal Engine
Engine Power 150.00    Fuel Use Per Hour 10.8 litres    Fuel per EPH 0.07
Thermal Signature 150.00    Explosion Chance 5%
Commercial Engine
Cost 37.5000   Size 3,000 tons   Crew 30   HTK 7
Base Chance to hit 100%
Materials Required: Gallicite  37.5   

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T2 - Commercial Improved Nuclear Thermal Engine
Engine Power 172.80    Fuel Use Per Hour 8.6 litres    Fuel per EPH 0.05
Thermal Signature 172.80    Explosion Chance 4%
Commercial Engine
Cost 38.8800   Size 3,000 tons   Crew 27   HTK 7
Base Chance to hit 100%
Materials Required: Gallicite  38.88

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T3 - Commercial Nuclear Pulse Engine
Engine Power 192.00    Fuel Use Per Hour 6.3 litres    Fuel per EPH 0.03
Thermal Signature 192.00    Explosion Chance 4%
Commercial Engine
Cost 38.4000   Size 3,000 tons   Crew 24   HTK 7
Base Chance to hit 100%
Materials Required: Gallicite  38.4

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T4 - Commercial Improved Nuclear Pulse Engine
Engine Power 210.00    Fuel Use Per Hour 4.3 litres    Fuel per EPH 0.02
Thermal Signature 210.00    Explosion Chance 3%
Commercial Engine
Cost 36.7500   Size 3,000 tons   Crew 21   HTK 7
Base Chance to hit 100%
Materials Required: Gallicite  36.75

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T5 - Commercial Ion Drive
Engine Power 225.00    Fuel Use Per Hour 2.7 litres    Fuel per EPH 0.01
Thermal Signature 225.00    Explosion Chance 3%
Commercial Engine
Cost 33.7500   Size 3,000 tons   Crew 18   HTK 7
Base Chance to hit 100%
Materials Required: Gallicite  33.75   
Example T1 and T5 ships...

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Centipede class Cargo Ship      190,528 tons       637 Crew       1,557 BP       TCS 3,811    TH 3,000    EM 0
787 km/s      Armour 1-294       Shields 0-0       HTK 173      Sensors 4/4/0/0      DCR 1      PPV 0
MSP 5    Max Repair 50 MSP
Cargo 125,000   
Lieutenant Commander    Control Rating 1   BRG   
Intended Deployment Time: 3 months   

T1 - Commercial Nuclear Thermal Engine (20)    Power 3000.0    Fuel Use 7.22%    Signature 150.00    Explosion 5%
Fuel Capacity 2,000,000 Litres    Range 26.2 billion km (384 days at full power)

EM Sensor EM0.5-4.0 (1)     Sensitivity 4     Detect Sig Strength 1000:  15.8m km
Thermal Sensor TH0.5-4.0 (1)     Sensitivity 4     Detect Sig Strength 1000:  15.8m km

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Centipede class Cargo Ship      188,667 tons       397 Crew       1,381 BP       TCS 3,773    TH 4,500    EM 0
1192 km/s      Armour 1-293       Shields 0-0       HTK 160      Sensors 4/4/0/0      DCR 1      PPV 0
MSP 4    Max Repair 50 MSP
Cargo 125,000   
Lieutenant Commander    Control Rating 1   BRG   
Intended Deployment Time: 3 months   

T5 - Commercial Ion Drive (20)    Power 4500.0    Fuel Use 1.21%    Signature 225.00    Explosion 3%
Fuel Capacity 500,000 Litres    Range 39.5 billion km (383 days at full power)

EM Sensor EM0.5-4.0 (1)     Sensitivity 4     Detect Sig Strength 1000:  15.8m km
Thermal Sensor TH0.5-4.0 (1)     Sensitivity 4     Detect Sig Strength 1000:  15.8m km
You can both refit the old ones for very cheap and build new ones cheaper and better too... you also gain way better fuel economy which is primary for doing allot of logistics work. 

I know that the cost to refit a ship is relatively expensive so scraping the ships and build new ones is one option... the important thing is to keep your fuel economy sane. In my opinion the running fuel economy is more important over time than a small upfront production cost. I rarely see all of my cargo yards working 24/7 in my games... I would get too many cargo ships this way if I did so and I certainly have the time to upgrade the old ships to new ones... although, I usually skip on one or sometimes two tech levels and then upgrade them. I don't upgrade every freighter or commercial ship to every new engine types.

[skoormit]

I find that refitting freighters is not cost-effective. Engine cost is usually in the 40-50% range on my designs, which means I'm paying half (or more) the cost of a new ship to refit.
Say I have two ships at speed Z (giving throughput of 2 * Z), the new engine tech is 25% faster, and the refit cost is 50% of the cost of the new design.
Then, for equivalent costs, I could either:
A) Refit the old ships, for a total throughput 2.5 * Z.
B) Build a new ship, for a total throughput 3.25 * Z.

What about fuel costs... more fuel efficient engine WILL make a huge impact.

If you build new engines and you can get both faster AND better fuel economy for engines that are almost the same price. The idea here is that every generation of new engines you reduce the efficient one additional step and have a better fuel efficiency and better engine technology. That engine probably is even less expensive even if better technology...
...

The fact that the old and new engines are the same price does not change the cost of the refit. You pay full price for the new engines (plus some percentage as the cost of doing a refit).

Refitting a T1 to a T5 makes sense, because the 50% increase in speed over that four-tier gap justifies the 50% refit cost.
But refitting for each new engine tier is not economical, unless you place an enormous value on the fuel efficiency (or on the increase in speed for its own sake, because it reduces the amount of time your population/minerals/installations are in transit and therefore not providing value).

Your T5 ship is roughly 50% engines by cost and is roughly 7% faster than a T4 ship (assuming otherwise equivalent design).
To refit a T4 to a T5, you are paying 1/2 the cost of a new T5 to gain the throughput of about 1/14 of a new T5.
Sure, you gain some fuel efficiency, but I'd rather have 7x the marginal throughput per cost.

[Jorgen_CAB]

Yes.. I edited my post above to reflect that.. and the reason why I do it...

I would get way too much throughput if I kept building new ships while fuel economy is more important in the long run.

[Borealis4x (OP)]

Why not just have civilians build on any body with a mineral that's 10k rich?

In other news, this conversations has prompted me to standardize my freighters into 4 classes.

- Light freighters with small cargo bays to haul minerals in convoys

- Standard freighters with standard cargo bays that haul infrastructure for colony fleets. Colony ships are based off of these designs so they can be built from the same shipyard.

- Heavy freighters with large cargo bays to haul mines and mass drivers

- And Super-Freighters with 4+ large cargo bays to haul the really heavy stuff like spaceports and labs and such.

Whats great about standardizing these designs early on is that the only thing you need to upgrade is the engine (which should always be the same size), meaning you can just refit.

I find that refitting freighters is not cost-effective. Engine cost is usually in the 40-50% range on my designs, which means I'm paying half (or more) the cost of a new ship to refit.
Say I have two ships at speed Z (giving throughput of 2 * Z), the new engine tech is 25% faster, and the refit cost is 50% of the cost of the new design.
Then, for equivalent costs, I could either:
A) Refit the old ships, for a total throughput 2.5 * Z.
B) Build a new ship, for a total throughput 3.25 * Z.

I only upgrade when its substantial to do so. Every 3 tiers or thereabouts.

[Jorgen_CAB]

Why not just have civilians build on any body with a mineral that's 10k rich?

In other news, this conversations has prompted me to standardize my freighters into 4 classes.

- Light freighters with small cargo bays to haul minerals in convoys

- Standard freighters with standard cargo bays that haul infrastructure for colony fleets. Colony ships are based off of these designs so they can be built from the same shipyard.

- Heavy freighters with large cargo bays to haul mines and mass drivers

- And Super-Freighters with 4+ large cargo bays to haul the really heavy stuff like spaceports and labs and such.

Whats great about standardizing these designs early on is that the only thing you need to upgrade is the engine (which should always be the same size), meaning you can just refit.

I find that refitting freighters is not cost-effective. Engine cost is usually in the 40-50% range on my designs, which means I'm paying half (or more) the cost of a new ship to refit.
Say I have two ships at speed Z (giving throughput of 2 * Z), the new engine tech is 25% faster, and the refit cost is 50% of the cost of the new design.
Then, for equivalent costs, I could either:
A) Refit the old ships, for a total throughput 2.5 * Z.
B) Build a new ship, for a total throughput 3.25 * Z.

I only upgrade when its substantial to do so. Every 3 tiers or thereabouts.

How often you upgrade probably also depends on the technology speed you play the game on too. I currently play on 15% technology rates and that probably will force me to upgrade due to fuel issues much sooner. Somtimes it might even be worth doing it using the same technology just with bigger and more fuel efficient engine tech. When you have to wait 30-50 years to get all the necessary technologies between each level then getting even a 30-50% boost in fuel efficiency will matter allot on your commercial freighters.

in my current new campaign I'm only about 30 years in and the best engine I have is this one...

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Engine Power 62.50      Fuel Use Per Hour 6.99 Litres
Fuel Consumption per Engine Power Hour 0.112 Litres
Size 25 HS  (1,250 tons)      HTK 5
Thermal Signature 62.5      Explosion Chance 5%      Max Explosion Size 15
Cost 15.6250      Crew 12
In about 5-10 more years I will be able to create this one...

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Engine Power 90.00      Fuel Use Per Hour 5.50 Litres
Fuel Consumption per Engine Power Hour 0.061 Litres
Size 40 HS  (2,000 tons)      HTK 6
Thermal Signature 90.0      Explosion Chance 4%      Max Explosion Size 22
Cost 20.2500      Crew 18
I have about six 200.000t freighters but they are roughly 80% idle right now as all my colonies are still in Sol. But having my fuel economy on the ship reduced will make a huge impact when I soon start to colonise my first colony outside Sol. A change from 0.112 per powerhour to 0.061 are quite substantial for me at this time.

[bankshot]

Why not just have civilians build on any body with a mineral that's 10k rich?

In other news, this conversations has prompted me to standardize my freighters into 4 classes.

- Light freighters with small cargo bays to haul minerals in convoys

- Standard freighters with standard cargo bays that haul infrastructure for colony fleets. Colony ships are based off of these designs so they can be built from the same shipyard.

- Heavy freighters with large cargo bays to haul mines and mass drivers

- And Super-Freighters with 4+ large cargo bays to haul the really heavy stuff like spaceports and labs and such.

Whats great about standardizing these designs early on is that the only thing you need to upgrade is the engine (which should always be the same size), meaning you can just refit.

I find that refitting freighters is not cost-effective. Engine cost is usually in the 40-50% range on my designs, which means I'm paying half (or more) the cost of a new ship to refit.
Say I have two ships at speed Z (giving throughput of 2 * Z), the new engine tech is 25% faster, and the refit cost is 50% of the cost of the new design.
Then, for equivalent costs, I could either:
A) Refit the old ships, for a total throughput 2.5 * Z.
B) Build a new ship, for a total throughput 3.25 * Z.

In VB6 I would scrap the freighters and reuse their old engines in fuel harvesters.  After the initial trip out they only have to occasionally move to the hub moon to unload so slower/less efficient engines aren't a big concern.  I do need to put a colony on a nearby moon with a refueling station instead of just dumping it on a random rock but I consider that an acceptable price for reduced management.

I haven't kept a C# campaign on long enough to do much harvesting yet though.

[vorpal+5]

I like to keep old components around, in reserve. I may use them for third-class 'colonial ships' at time, or scrap them when I have an acute lack of a mineral...

[Thrake]

I find that refitting freighters is not cost-effective. Engine cost is usually in the 40-50% range on my designs, which means I'm paying half (or more) the cost of a new ship to refit.
Say I have two ships at speed Z (giving throughput of 2 * Z), the new engine tech is 25% faster, and the refit cost is 50% of the cost of the new design.
Then, for equivalent costs, I could either:
A) Refit the old ships, for a total throughput 2.5 * Z.
B) Build a new ship, for a total throughput 3.25 * Z.

What about fuel costs... more fuel efficient engine WILL make a huge impact.

If you build new engines and you can get both faster AND better fuel economy for engines that are almost the same price. The idea here is that every generation of new engines you reduce the efficient one additional step and have a better fuel efficiency and better engine technology. That engine probably is even less expensive even if better technology...
...

The fact that the old and new engines are the same price does not change the cost of the refit. You pay full price for the new engines (plus some percentage as the cost of doing a refit).

Refitting a T1 to a T5 makes sense, because the 50% increase in speed over that four-tier gap justifies the 50% refit cost.
But refitting for each new engine tier is not economical, unless you place an enormous value on the fuel efficiency (or on the increase in speed for its own sake, because it reduces the amount of time your population/minerals/installations are in transit and therefore not providing value).

Your T5 ship is roughly 50% engines by cost and is roughly 7% faster than a T4 ship (assuming otherwise equivalent design).
To refit a T4 to a T5, you are paying 1/2 the cost of a new T5 to gain the throughput of about 1/14 of a new T5.
Sure, you gain some fuel efficiency, but I'd rather have 7x the marginal throughput per cost.

One of the only things that I expect from a cargo ship is, of course, to carry things around, but do it with a minimal cost per trip. Not updating engines incurs an economy this is true, but also comes with a cost when during decades it will pollute and make space unbreathable.

For exemple now, I will swap 2 100 HS ion engines with 0.5 fuel efficiency to one 160 HS magneto plasma engine with 0.4 fuel efficiency. The freighter will be 10% faster with 1% fuel efficiency rather than 1.6%. I personnaly would rather build more freighters that are more fuel efficient for a similar transportation capability than keep using outdated freighters. Eventually the rationale would depend both on gallicite stockpile and gallicite to litres of fuel conversion you wish for but I wouldn't say that not upgrading is that much of an obvious choice... Unless you're talking of refiting at every slight improvement obviously.

Work Horse Mk5 class Freighter      36,647 tons       105 Crew       464.3 BP       TCS 733    TH 1,000    EM 0
1364 km/s      Armour 1-98       Shields 0-0       HTK 31      Sensors 0/0/0/0      DCR 1      PPV 0
MSP 7    Max Repair 100 MSP
Cargo 25,000    Cargo Shuttle Multiplier 3   
Capitaine de corvette    Control Rating 1   BRG   
Intended Deployment Time: 24 months   

Commercial Ion Drive  EP500.00 40% 0.5 100H (2)    Power 1000    Fuel Use 1.60%    Signature 500    Explosion 4%
Fuel Capacity 250,000 Litres    Range 76.7 billion km (651 days at full power)

Work Horse Mk6 class Freighter      34,425 tons       89 Crew       456.1 BP       TCS 688    TH 1,024    EM 0
1487 km/s      Armour 1-94       Shields 0-0       HTK 22      Sensors 0/0/0/0      DCR 1      PPV 0
MSP 8    Max Repair 204.8 MSP
Cargo 25,000    Cargo Shuttle Multiplier 3   
Capitaine de corvette    Control Rating 1   BRG   
Intended Deployment Time: 24 months   

Commercial Magneto-plasma Drive  EP1024.0 40% 0.4 160H (1)    Power 1024    Fuel Use 1.01%    Signature 1024    Explosion 4%
Fuel Capacity 250,000 Litres    Range 129.2 billion km (1005 days at full power)

It will take me at least 20 years before I can make another upgrade of similar magnitude.

Refitting would cost me 205 gallicite now. Not refitting would cost me 981 000 litres of fuel per freighter (16 litres per hour instead of 10.4) during those 20 years. It means it equates to a 4 785 litres of fuel per gallicite conversion rate.

In practice I will also spend extra time developing military engines as well as researching and improving jump drives, so more like 30 years and ~1 500 000 litres.

[skoormit]

...
It will take me at least 20 years before I can make another upgrade of similar magnitude.

Refitting would cost me 205 gallicite now. Not refitting would cost me 981 000 litres of fuel per freighter (16 litres per hour instead of 10.4) during those 20 years. It means it equates to a 4 785 litres of fuel per gallicite conversion rate.

In practice I will also spend extra time developing military engines as well as researching and improving jump drives, so more like 30 years and ~1 500 000 litres.

I like the analysis. It is a very useful way of framing the tradeoffs.

What you are saying is that this engine upgrade has a one-time cost of 205 gallicite (and wealth) and an ongoing benefit of ~49kL fuel per year, assuming that the ship is in constant use.
If you have access to gas giants, a single Sorium Harvester module produces more than 49kL per year.
That module costs 10 duranium and 20 boronide. It is 85% cheaper than the refit, and uses minerals that, on balance, are easier to come by than gallicite. Duranium is twice as abundant as gallicite in the universe, and I never come close to using all the boronide I dig up incidentally when I'm mining the minerals I actually want.
Even with the overhead costs for moving harvester ships into orbit of a gas giant, it is going to be much cheaper (in wealth terms) to harvest the extra fuel than to refit the engines.

As an example, my 80-module stations are 87.7% harvesters by cost.
My tug costs as much as 130 modules, but I use them to tow miners and terraformers as well, and the harvesters don't use much of my total tug time, since they generally stay in the same place for many decades.
A single 4ML tanker costs the same as 7 modules, and one tanker can keep up with a station's output at a distance of ~12 Bkm, while consuming less than 1% of the fuel it transports.
My total logistics overhead for sorium modules is therefore somewhere around 25%.

So unless you don't have access to gas giants, or you have an unusual mineral crunch, or you have much more gallicite (and wealth) than you can find uses for, it is cheaper to make the extra gas than to prevent its consumption.


If your ships are in constant use, then your freighter fleet is either just barely meeting your freight needs, or it is not meeting your needs.
In either case, you should be seeking to increase the bandwidth of your fleet, and you probably want to do that as cost-effectively as possible.
So, this refit provides more value than just fuel savings--it also provides a 9% increase in bandwidth.
But you have another option to increase bandwidth: build new ships.
For roughly 2.2 times the cost of a refit (but no additional gallicite), you could build a new Work Horse, which provides more than 12 times the increase in bandwidth.
That's more than 5 times the return on your wealth, in terms of bandwidth gained per wealth used.
If you are gallicite constrained, building the new ship is even more attractive, since you are getting 12 times the bandwidth for the same gallicite cost.

[Zincat]

That assumes, however, that you'll always have a gas giant with Sorium available. It's a valid cost analysis, but with that important corollary.

Sorium is not a renewable resource. As such, burning precious fuel is not something you would normally do indiscriminately. Since I always roleplay, I try to keep things "realistic", hence I go for efficiency when feasible.

Even if you do not roleplay, if you do not use civilians you'll have to build a ton of cargo ships and colonizers yourself. The fuel consumption can become very high very quickly if you keep using old engines.

[skoormit]

That assumes, however, that you'll always have a gas giant with Sorium available. It's a valid cost analysis, but with that important corollary.

Yes. I said as much in my post. Twice.

Sorium is not a renewable resource. As such, burning precious fuel is not something you would normally do indiscriminately. Since I always roleplay, I try to keep things "realistic", hence I go for efficiency when feasible.

Even if you do not roleplay, if you do not use civilians you'll have to build a ton of cargo ships and colonizers yourself. The fuel consumption can become very high very quickly if you keep using old engines.

Gas giants contain a lot of sorium. It is really hard to imagine fully depleting all of the ones you find.

I use civilians, and I still build a TON of cargo ships and colonizers.
In year 2067 (started in 2025), I have 154  freighters (with total capacity of 182 standard holds), and 203 colonizers (with total capacity of 8.82M colonists).
(I'm playing with 25% global tech rate; you might find it easier to reach these numbers sooner in your own game.)
The colonizers are in constant use. They don't need to be, but I like to roleplay that the billion people on the homeworld have a very strong desire to be elsewhere.
The freighters are at least 95% utilized.
The total annual fuel consumption of these ships, plus the tankers needed to keep enough fuel at the colonies, is roughly 64ML.
I have never upgraded any of these ships for new engine tech.
My first generation was size-60 Nuclear Pulse, 30% power, 0.8 fuel consumption. My current generation is size-100 Improved Nuclear Pulse, 30% power, 0.7 fuel consumption.
(I just finished Ion Drive research. I will finish 0.6 fuel consumption in a year, and will design my next generation. Yay!)

At full shipyard production, I am capable of increasing the capacity of these fleets by ~7% per year.

I have harvesting stations with a total of 640 modules, and my harvesting tech is 64kL.
With commander and admin bonuses, these stations produce 62ML per year, consuming 31kt of sorium in the process.

I have explored 15 systems outside my home.
The best gas giant contains 10.8Mt of sorium with 1.0 accessibility.
That's enough to supply my current usage for nearly 350 years.

Even if my fuel use increases at a constant annual rate of 7%, this single gas giant will provide all the fuel I need for more than four decades.
During that time, it is a near certainty that I will find another 1.0 gas giant of equal size.
If I don't, I'll just have to use the next best one I have found, which has 4.5Mt of sorium at 0.9 accessibility.
If another decade goes by and I use that one up and I still haven't found a stellar (ha!) replacement, then I'll just have to settle for the 226Mt, 0.8 accessibility monster one system over. That one should last another half-century, but I will have to build 25% more harvesting stations to make up for the reduction in accessibility.

It is really hard to use up all the gas giants.

[Thrake]

...
It will take me at least 20 years before I can make another upgrade of similar magnitude.

Refitting would cost me 205 gallicite now. Not refitting would cost me 981 000 litres of fuel per freighter (16 litres per hour instead of 10.4) during those 20 years. It means it equates to a 4 785 litres of fuel per gallicite conversion rate.

In practice I will also spend extra time developing military engines as well as researching and improving jump drives, so more like 30 years and ~1 500 000 litres.

I like the analysis. It is a very useful way of framing the tradeoffs.

What you are saying is that this engine upgrade has a one-time cost of 205 gallicite (and wealth) and an ongoing benefit of ~49kL fuel per year, assuming that the ship is in constant use.
If you have access to gas giants, a single Sorium Harvester module produces more than 49kL per year.
That module costs 10 duranium and 20 boronide. It is 85% cheaper than the refit, and uses minerals that, on balance, are easier to come by than gallicite. Duranium is twice as abundant as gallicite in the universe, and I never come close to using all the boronide I dig up incidentally when I'm mining the minerals I actually want.
Even with the overhead costs for moving harvester ships into orbit of a gas giant, it is going to be much cheaper (in wealth terms) to harvest the extra fuel than to refit the engines.

As an example, my 80-module stations are 87.7% harvesters by cost.
My tug costs as much as 130 modules, but I use them to tow miners and terraformers as well, and the harvesters don't use much of my total tug time, since they generally stay in the same place for many decades.
A single 4ML tanker costs the same as 7 modules, and one tanker can keep up with a station's output at a distance of ~12 Bkm, while consuming less than 1% of the fuel it transports.
My total logistics overhead for sorium modules is therefore somewhere around 25%.

So unless you don't have access to gas giants, or you have an unusual mineral crunch, or you have much more gallicite (and wealth) than you can find uses for, it is cheaper to make the extra gas than to prevent its consumption.


If your ships are in constant use, then your freighter fleet is either just barely meeting your freight needs, or it is not meeting your needs.
In either case, you should be seeking to increase the bandwidth of your fleet, and you probably want to do that as cost-effectively as possible.
So, this refit provides more value than just fuel savings--it also provides a 9% increase in bandwidth.
But you have another option to increase bandwidth: build new ships.
For roughly 2.2 times the cost of a refit (but no additional gallicite), you could build a new Work Horse, which provides more than 12 times the increase in bandwidth.
That's more than 5 times the return on your wealth, in terms of bandwidth gained per wealth used.
If you are gallicite constrained, building the new ship is even more attractive, since you are getting 12 times the bandwidth for the same gallicite cost.

Your analysis is true. This was in fact my first thought when preparing my answer. However, I then realized that the issue here is that both fuel and minerals are generated with no cost other than building a module. Therefore, it's hard to put a value on mined minerals when looking only at the initial corundium cost which will have an almost limitless return on investment, just like it is hard to put a value on fuel harvested. Eventually, the conversion rate felt more elegant since I am comparing two ressources which are produced at virtually no cost, yet are limited in supply with varying availability.

You are right that I am slightly overestimating my fuel consumption. However most of my freighters are on cycling orders, a back and forth trip will typically take some 400 days at this point with up to 4 stops to fill/empty cargo (load/unload installations and load/unload minerals on the way back). Grossly, this is a 1 to 2% decrease in my earlier yearly fuel consumption.

Most of my freighters are busy most of the time, except for a handful used for short-term needs. Eventually freighter management is a major source of micro so I am lax in that part of the game as a personnal choice, ie. I could be more proactive and use more freighters. Let's call it galactic bureaucracy inefficiency

[Jorgen_CAB]

More fuel also means more tankers though, which might or might not be a concern. There also are allot of overhead producing and moving fuel harvesters as well so it can't be completely disregarded.

Another concern might also be commanders to run the ships/harvesters. The less ships you have the more capable commander with logistics/production skill you get to use which will also effect the overall efficiency of both ships and harvesters.

At some point it probably will be more or less irrelevant to replace commercial engines when older engines already are very efficient and your fuel production is greater and the cost to replace ships still remains quite high, but early on it is very effective to give older ships new engines and perhaps use the old engines for secondary tasks or simply scrap them and gain some of the Gallicite back.

When you play a game at 10-20% research rate the time between significant research tech can be like 50 plus years. In the early game an engine change can be like a million or more litres of fuel per year for a single big freighter in difference. When your production rate of Sorium to fuel ration is around 50000 litres... let's assume that with planet efficiency and commander ability just for the sake of argument. Each refinery burn 20 sorium per year. In this case I need 20 refineries per year to keep the ships running 24/7 and that is 400 Sorium per year. If I run that particular ship for 200 years which is not too uncommon in some campaigns that is 80k sorium and one entire station with 20 harvesting modules dedicated to one ship (obviously the efficiency of the station will go up over time). The cost of the station is around 700 BP (270 Duranium, 435 Boronide and some other minerals in smaller amounts)

Another point is... what happens if your harvesters is attacked and destroyed, that will be an expensive thing to parry as well.

In my opinion running costs is generally more important than some small amount of Gallicite once in a while. I also tend to pay less and less for the engine on my freighters over time as well, eventually the engines are very cheap.

Although scraping might be bugged as it seem you get resources back when scraping a ship and then again when you scrap the components. I just realized this when I scraped a ship and got the Gallacite for the engines and then the engine components as well, then I got the Gallacite when I scraped those so a total of about 300 Gallicite for engines that cost 600 Gallicite. As far as I know you are only supposed to get 25% back when you scrap something. In any way replacing the engines in the example above would cost me about 250 Gallicite after I scraped the old ship engines.

If you look at a much different example of say a Magneto Plasma level freighter and an Ion engine level freighter then the numbers will be very different as you will not save as much fuel and your  fuel production levels are allot higher. You will need to have a much wider technology difference before it is worth scrapping old ships and build new ones.

Saying that one mineral is less important than another does not really fly with me... you can say the same thing about Galicite as you can with Sorium and fuel. You can mine more Galicite as well if you have a few really good Gallicite sources. If I upgrade my cargo ships once in 50 years and the total cost is about say 300-500 Gallicite per ship after scraping the old components. That is a cost of 6-10 Gallicite per year in running costs. I pay that cost as it probably is only one mine dedicated to each freighter in terms of Gallicite costs. Saying that Gallicite are rarer and used more can be true to some extent but military ships can be monsters in terms of consuming fuel if you get into a long drawn out war, especially if you a below their tech in engine as you need to increase the power of your engines to compensate.

I do understand that the type of campaign you play will provide a very different picture as to how often or if at all you upgrade your cargo ships engines.

[Jorgen_CAB]

I can take my current new campaign as a better example.

The best scientist I have in Propulsion is 15% and currently have 14 labs (I have a rule that labs can't be traded between science field unless I also spend 5000 Wealth through SM). This give me a total of 672 RP per year. I'm nearly 30 years into that campaign and I have just started to explore outside of the Sol system. I did give myself some tech in order to speed op the process such as TN tech in the beginning otherwise I would not be at this point yet.

Engine tech researched so far is...

Nuclear Thermal Engines.
0.9 litres per powerhour engines.
1.25% powered engines.

The next research to be done are
0.8 litres per powerhour, 2000RP
Maximum Engine Size 40, 2000RP
Minimum Power Mod x0.4, 1000RP

for the next generation of freighter engines, this will take me about 5-8 years more. Then designing the engine retooling and all that another 2-3 years so i look at around 10 more years before I can get new engines... roughly. If nothing else happen to interfere with those plans though.

In Sol I have two decent sources of fuel...

Jupiter 4.3 million Sorium at 0.6 accessibility
Neptune 1.3 million Sorium at 0.3 accessibility

In Sol I also have about 300.000 Gallicite at around 0.8 accessibility plus I already stored about 100.000 Gallicite on Earth. I have an income of 1318 Gallicite per year all coming from Civilian mines at this time.

My current cargo ship the Centipede burn about 1.8 million litres of fuel in a year of operation which at this time means roughly 1300 Sorium per year at my production rate from Harvesters, although I get all my fuel from refineries right now. I also don't use all my 10 cargo ship all the time at this point in time... perhaps half of them are constantly in use, about 625.000t of cargo space or 25 standard cargo holds.

The next line of engine I expect a 40% decrease in fuel cost.

My calculation about engines I can expect about a cost of about 100 Gallicite per cargo hold in upgrade cost over time. I probably will upgrade the cargo ships roughly as I start needing them, but once I settle my first colony outisde Sol I will need them all and then some more. I have a total of 55 cargo holds to upgrade the engines on, so that will be about 5.500 galicite or at this time about four years worth of Galicite income.
I expect these new ships to operate for at least 50 more years before the next round of upgrades. In that time these ships will save me 36.000.000 litres of fuel per ship in running costs over 50 years. This fuel is then a cost of about 15.000 Sorium per ship at my current conversion rate... although I expect this to rise during the next 50 years though.

The rate at which you find Gallicite versus Sorium is roughly 1:10. So there are about ten times as much Sorium as most other minerals. You then have to figure out how much fuel does military ship use over the cost of their engines. Military engines tend to actually be much lower in cost versus freighters than their use of fuel, this is due to the increased use of fuel for high powered engines and missiles who all use fuel. I general fuel costs for military ships can overshadow the cost in Gallicite but that depends on how many military conflicts you end up in which is a factor that you can't know for sure.

But if you only look at the rare of which the minerals exist in the galaxy you need a ships running cost to be less in one mineral over the other. As long as the cost to upgrade a ship is ten times less in Gallacite than Sorium you should be fine, so it is a question of how often you upgrade not whether you do it or not.