Confused about harvesting sorium

[Garfunkel]

Yeah so because the harvesters pick the nearest colony to unload their fuel at, once you have colonies elsewhere in Sol it is best to create a fuel storage colony on Pan, the innermost colony of Saturn. That way they will not go to random colonies to unload. Then once you have a tanker, you can move that fuel to Earth or wherever you need it.

[Antonin1957 (OP)]

Yeah so because the harvesters pick the nearest colony to unload their fuel at, once you have colonies elsewhere in Sol it is best to create a fuel storage colony on Pan, the innermost colony of Saturn. That way they will not go to random colonies to unload. Then once you have a tanker, you can move that fuel to Earth or wherever you need it.

The only populated colony I have is Earth. I have 8.8 automated mines on Mercury.

How do you get harvesters to load *some* fuel on Earth, then go to Jupiter or Saturn and harvest sorium, then return to Earth when full, then unload enough sorium to only leave, say, 200,000 L in its tanks, and then return to Jupiter and Saturn? I have been trying to find the right settings in Standing Orders, but with no luck.

How do you set a reserve level of fuel for your harvester? Where is that setting?

[Zap0]

Read up and play with the tanker setting.

[paolot]

Antonin, you should build harvester/tanker ships with rather large tanks, i.e. 1 million or more litres capacity.
Together with commercial engines, consuming very, very low fuel, you can easily go from Earth to Saturn, or even more distant, with 10% or a bit less fuel left in the tanks when you leave the Earth.
Otherwise, you are producing fuel just to move back and forth the tanker.

[Garfunkel]

Fuel reserves are set in the class design window for the entire class.

[Kurt]

I generally create a colony on the innermost moon of the gas giant I'm harvesting from.  The colony acts as a fuel dump, and stores the fuel harvested by my harvesters.  It also, and this is important, has STO's stationed on the surface to deal with any enemies that poke around, along with deep space sensor stations to see the enemies.  My harvesters have engines so that I don't have to fiddle with tugs every time I want to move them, so if an enemy is detected they can move to the nearby moon and shelter under the base's STO's.  Very important if you've got Spoilers active in your campaign. 

Kurt