Civilian shipping woes

[Shadow (OP)]

Government-owned colony ships and especially freighters are useful. Sometimes you need something transported ASAP (like minerals to a colony with shortage-halted production), and using your own vessels is generally more reliable.

As for encouraging the development of the private sector, the best thing you can do is create a demand by setting up contracts to ferry facilities and infrastructure within the solar system. Once there's the latter in, say, Mars, they might feel a stronger incentive as they can now also start transporting colonists. Also, don't forget to subsidize the companies a bit. At least enough to allow them to buy a ship or two.

EDIT: I did something that may be fixing my original issue. I SM'd a thousand infrastructure on my outermost colony and set up the necessary contracts to have it transported to Earth. A lot of freighters seem interested in the job!

[jseah]

Government-owned colony ships and especially freighters are useful. Sometimes you need something transported ASAP (like minerals to a colony with shortage-halted production), and using your own vessels is generally more reliable.

Oh, of course they are useful in a pinch and if you really really need something to go somewhere.  Esp. if that destination is on the far side of a no-gate jump point. 

But that's all I use them for.  Minerals and emergency transport.  Can't make contracts for civilians to transport minerals.  =(

I find 20 is already too much for my first 10 years.  They spend alot of time idling above my homeworld. 


What I would really like to see is a trade developing between worlds that is not infrastructure.  So far, real trade is practically nil (it's about 10% of total at my estimate)  Then if I depend on my civilian lines for my wealth, I might actually use frieghters for hauling. 

[Tarran]

I guess that saves on pathing calculations, but I'm not sure those designs are efficient in other regards. They're terribly slow, and each purchase, at least in the colony ship's case, is a big hit to the civilian lines' wallets. And I'm also guessing they're comparatively spending less than they would on a larger amount of smaller vessels with a similar tonnage. What I mean is that, perhaps, they'd be more inclined to buy ten 20-kiloton ships than one big, 200-kiloton vessel.

It wasn't pathing calculations I had in mind, it was how much they could carry per-load. I was preferring my freighters to transfer more each load.

Also, I tried cutting the ship in half with half everything, and the speed and basically everything else was the same. The cost of the half one was also around half that of the big one. So there wasn't really any loss building them big. And I give the civies a lot of money anyway.

[jseah]

There is a loss:

Imagine two civilian lines, one uses small design, one uses big design (10x small one)
We'll approximate it as the big design hauling 10x more and costing 10x more, everything else equal. 

(Inaccurate) Simulation Conditions:
Civilian lines launch ships whenever possible. 
Income of 1 small ships equivalents (sse) per year = 1 small ship cost (this is about right if your civilian freighters work around the clock)

Year Start:
Civilian lines have 20 small ships or 2 big ships.  net income = 20 sse

Year 0.05:
1 sse earned by both lines.  Small ship line now has 21 ships. 

Year 0.10:
Big ship line earns 1 sse.  Total 2 sse (needs 10 to launch a ship)
Small ship line earns 1.05 sse.  Small ship line now has 22 ships and 0.05 sse. 

Year 0.3:
Big ship line earns 1 sse.  Total 6 sse (needs 10 to launch a ship)
Small ship line earns 1.25 sse.  Small ship line now has 26 ships and 0.75 sse. 

Year 0.35:
Big ship line earns 1 sse.  Total 7 sse (needs 10 to launch a ship)
Small ship line earns 1.3 sse.  Small ship line now has 28 ships and 0.05 sse. 

[Tarran]

Still no loss to me though, as I just give civies loads and loads of money anyway and money is cheap. In fact, since you say they launch lines whenever possible, I'd say I'm actually gaining more than small ships since they're building more for the same amount of time which means more moved colonists and cargo than with small ships.

[Mini]

How do you people attract such blooming civilian sectors?  I've played dozens of games to the 15-20 year in mark and if I'm lucky I'll get 5 civilian ships. And they each do about one trip a month (despite an Earth-Mars trip taking only a days).  And then the civilian shipping lines pay out my thousands in subsidies as dividends and never buy anything.

So what am I doing wrong?

Use 5 day increments instead of 30 day ones, civ ships only get a new task at the end/beginning of increments.

[Narmio]

Use 5 day increments instead of 30 day ones, civ ships only get a new task at the end/beginning of increments.

...That's really quite a limiting factor, then.  My government owned freighters can run infrastructure to Mars almost an order of magnitude faster, then. Surely their routines could be moved to operating on sub-pulses without significant slowdown? I don't relish the idea of having to advance in one-day increments just to have a functioning civilian sector. 

[jseah]

Ah, that could be it. 
What increments do you normally use? 

Because I use 1-day increments... (86k construction cycle time)

[Tarran]

Use 5 day increments instead of 30 day ones, civ ships only get a new task at the end/beginning of increments.

...Hmmm, that might be the reason I got so little ships: I use 30 day increments all the time.

[Shadow (OP)]

I play with the default construction cycle (400k or roughly five days), and use 5-day increments generally.

[sloanjh]

Moved to The Academy at request of original poster.

[Thiosk]

The Original Post described a problem with loitering ships, something I've had as well.  My civ fleet ground to a halt earlier, ticking me off.  Then I realized a candidate problem:

I had uneven supply\demand orders.  Earth was supplying 5 mass drivers.  Penumbra and Corundius were demanding 2 and 3 automated factories each.  Nothing happened, civs collected at earth.

I wiped out the uneven orders, and the whole fleet took off on their missions.

Perhaps this is in fact a bug worth bugging out about?

[sloanjh]

The Original Post described a problem with loitering ships, something I've had as well.  My civ fleet ground to a halt earlier, ticking me off.  Then I realized a candidate problem:

I had uneven supply\demand orders.  Earth was supplying 5 mass drivers.  Penumbra and Corundius were demanding 2 and 3 automated factories each.  Nothing happened, civs collected at earth.

I wiped out the uneven orders, and the whole fleet took off on their missions.

Perhaps this is in fact a bug worth bugging out about?

Yours sounds like it's worth logging a bug for.  In the original post, I think it depends on the orders.  If he clicks "Show Next Order" on the Display tab of the F3 screen and they show "Unload trade goods at X" but there's nothing actually on the ship, then I'm pretty sure it's a bug.  If it says "Load trade goods at X", then there's a good chance that it's WAI (Working As Intended) - there's just nothing to pick up at the location they're at, so they go looking for stuff at a different location (I think I remember this being part of the civie AI).  It's probably still ok to mention in the bugs thread to confirm WAI, he should just make sure to describe exactly what the orders look like.

If they're really ignoring contracts at the spot he mentioned (or within 4 jumps), then yes, it's probably a bug.

John

[Shadow (OP)]

Ultimately, I guess the bug's that they trade emptiness sometimes.

I'm not sure what I did, but now the freighters seem to be working correctly as far as contracts are concerned. I found a couple of uneven ones out there and wiped them. I thought civilians simply ignored those, but apparently such contracts actually confuse them. I also had infrastructure shipped to the core colonies as opposed to from them. In the end, either one thing or a combination or something else fixed the responsiveness issue.

[Thiosk]

The stuck part was "load trade goods at earth." 

The contracts were imbalanced.

I would assume normal behavior was "are there available contracts?  no?  trade normally" but it didn't seem to be the case.  They were still trying to load trade goods, but wouldn't move anywhere.