Questions related to mechanics

[Theokrat]

That's quite the understatement I'm afraid.  Did the survey (didn't find a way to automagically transfer the whole team to the planet so I just moved them via ship) and found 1100 units of uridium with 0. 6 accessibility.  Oh well at least now I know that I can do this.   
Is there any point in colonizing a planet that doesn't have it's own mineral base? Any other than hoping that after terraforming and sending fleets of freighters in their direction they'll turn into productive planets that are just very dependent on constant supply that is.   
When I think about it it seems safer to establish these kinds of outposts in my home system where they'll probably be quite far from the danger of combat in some other sector even if that means they have to still be supplied from asteroids in the system and freighters from a different one.   

But hey Venus has over 30 million units of pretty much everything (with acc 0. 1) so I can always tap that.   

Note that the team has a chance to repeat the survey, as long the body is not marked as "geosurvey completed". The way this works is that they will always find one deposit at a time until at some point they declare that is it and no more can be found. Also note that the chance of ending the survey depends on the skill of the team, so a less skilled team is more likely to close the body to all future surveys, even by more capable teams. For this reason some players will train their geosurvey teams on less important bodies (asteroids) before sending them to earth/mars etc when they hit 140 points.

Another reason to establish colonies even on barren pieces of rock is that small populations grow faster (~10%/year instead of ~2%/year), and less population is used in the (inaccessible) "service" sector. It also helps your civilian shipping lines if they have some destinations to service (brings in cash). Lastly, governer boni can be a good reason to create some specialized financial-capital world or shipbuilding centre.

Also dont ignore comets. They often have very large deposits of high-accessibility minerals across the band -  and can be worked by asteroid miners.

[Theokrat]

The classic empire start is hard O_o. 

I mean I established some basic tech, working on gravity scanners right now but only now I realise how easy it is to simply hit a wall in terms of resources, I'm running out of Duranium (in fifteen years my homeworld will run out) and the income I get from asteroid miners alone is pathetic. 
I'm wondering if it might be more valid if I stopped expansion for a longer while (a period of few years maybe) changed like 70% of my homeworld mines into automated ones, while i'm doing that building 3-4 freighters with with 5x Cargo Holds (but that would require adding another 10k slipway capacity onto the civilian shipyards) and than transporting all that either to the asteroid near earth or a comet that has more resources but is much further away. 

Just to avoid a misunderstanding: The number of slipways of a shipyard and the maximum tonnage of the shipyard are not connected- you can have a singe slipway- mass 100,000t shipyard, just as well as a 6-slipway, mass 1000t shipyard. Both mass and the number of slipways has an influence on the build costs and worker requirements, but if you want to build a ship of a given size you will want to expand the mass, adding slipways is not going to help if you do not have the mass.

But yes, a standard freighter has 5 cargo holds and some cargo handling. Often they are build in groups of 5 as well, so to transport large installations in one go. Converting a lot of mines to automines is completely viable and is efficient if you do not have a decent colony where normal mines could be operated. That being said, 15 years worth of supply is still quite a long time to expand and maybe find a decent source in a neighbor system.

I'm not entirely sure if that would be valid at all.  maybe I should just construct a load of asteroid miners with 5 asteroid mining components each instead?

Why instead, you can do that as well... Basically: If you have good use for your mines, dont convert them yet and build asteroid miners instead. If the mines are not getting you anywhere, convert them.

Also while I was toying around with construction I noticed that I can create separate parts for ships (engines, survey components etc), does this effect anything else other than the possible speed of construction? It seems pretty obvious that having 30 premade engines to strap onto ships would accelerate the process of construction (not to mention the output of planetary industry seems much bigger than that of a single shipyard) but does it actually affect the cost in any way?

Its cost-neutral and simply a way in which you can use your industry to pump up the output of your shipyards.

1).  Since I moved my first mass driver off world with a freighter I noticed how tedious the process can be, I manually told the freighter to pick up and drop off the mass driver one by one.   Is there any way to just tell the damn thing to move the mass driver as one order so that it will pick it up in parts automatically? I was trying to play around with the cycle moves and repeat (5) options but got nowhere so I just did it all manually. 

Repeat works fine for me, just keep in mind that the number you enter is how often it will add the process. So if you have a 1-cargohold freighter and you want ot move one installation, then you will want to:

• Manually enter the process once (Pickup from Source, Drop at destination, (refuel)). Keep in mind that the last point of this trip must be in the same system as the first, so maybe you will need a jump
• Then enter "4" and hit the "repeat" button, so that it will do it five times in total

The "cycle" move really is more advisable for things that you would like to be done until perpetuity. I currently have a freighter that hauls minerals from Alpha Centauri to earth with cycle moves, and a tanker that fetches fuel from a harvester fleet in Bernards Star. These two guys can be on continuous orders. Most installations-moves should not. Especially mass drivers should not be moved with this command, as you most certainly want to make sure that one remains on earth.

Also, if you have civies you can of course use a civilian contract to move things.

2).  If I have 2 mass drivers on one world sending material to another one that only has 1 mass driver on in will that cause a catastrophic event? In other words does the receiver need equal amount of mass drivers to all the senders or does it only need 1(or 2 for safety if I accidentally tell someone to move it off world)?

You one need 1 mass driver to receive mineral packets safely, regardless of how many drivers had send the minerals.

[Victuz (OP)]

Just to avoid a misunderstanding: The number of slipways of a shipyard and the maximum tonnage of the shipyard are not connected- you can have a singe slipway- mass 100,000t shipyard, just as well as a 6-slipway, mass 1000t shipyard.   Both mass and the number of slipways has an influence on the build costs and worker requirements, but if you want to build a ship of a given size you will want to expand the mass, adding slipways is not going to help if you do not have the mass. 

Yeah I formed the sentence wrong.  I know that the actual number of slipways represents just how many ships of the same type you can build at once.   What I thought was of the tonnage capacity of the shipyard. 

But yes, a standard freighter has 5 cargo holds and some cargo handling.   Often they are build in groups of 5 as well, so to transport large installations in one go.   Converting a lot of mines to automines is completely viable and is efficient if you do not have a decent colony where normal mines could be operated.   That being said, 15 years worth of supply is still quite a long time to expand and maybe find a decent source in a neighbor system. 

I am getting around to building gates and getting jump engines so I might just do that.   I also prepared my civilian shipyards for 10x asteroid miners that should do a pretty nice job with that comet I mentioned.   All in all despite the slight panic I felt at one point I'm starting to get ahead in understanding how to bend the game economics to my need.   Hopefully behind one of the 5 jump gates in my system is going to be an uninhabited Eden full of duranium right there on the surface.   A man can dream

Its cost-neutral and simply a way in which you can use your industry to pump up the output of your shipyards. 

So about as I expected.   Good to know, might use that in the future if I get in trouble.   Could always have some low quality engines, weapons, etc.   lying around if I suddenly need to mass an emergency fleet, because that precious hiperexpensive fleet I had flying around just got blown to bits. 

Repeat works fine for me, just keep in mind that the number you enter is how often it will add the process.   So if you have a 1-cargohold freighter and you want ot move one installation, then you will want to:

• Manually enter the process once (Pickup from Source, Drop at destination, (refuel)).   Keep in mind that the last point of this trip must be in the same system as the first, so maybe you will need a jump
• Then enter "4" and hit the "repeat" button, so that it will do it five times in total

The "cycle" move really is more advisable for things that you would like to be done until perpetuity.   I currently have a freighter that hauls minerals from Alpha Centauri to earth with cycle moves, and a tanker that fetches fuel from a harvester fleet in Bernards Star.   These two guys can be on continuous orders.   Most installations-moves should not.   Especially mass drivers should not be moved with this command, as you most certainly want to make sure that one remains on earth. 

I actually got the hang of it now that I had a bit of practice with it.   I just misunderstood the way it works previously.   I thought I have to select an order  than click on cycle moves and than add the order.   While in fact what I was supposed to do is make the whole order chain and than press cycle moves at the very end, I over complicated it for no good reason.   This way one of my freighters is going to transport infrastructure 2 at a time from earth to mars till the end of time. 
As for repeating orders thank you again I myself was over complicating it.   I think while I'm going to use this mainly for transporting mass drivers I might actually use this in the future for setting patrol paths (if I eventually get to that point). 
I would first sent a group through the path once to determine how long is the run and how much fuel they burn on it, than I would calculate the same parameters from the beginning point of the patrol to a resupply point (a colony or a gas giant Sorium harvester).   After doing that it would all be a matter of setting the fleet in position, pathing the patrol route x ammount of times, (based on the previous calculation on the amount of fuel burned to get to the station it would be that value plus say 8-10%) than add the parameter to go to the station, refuel, and go back to the beginning patrol position.   From that point I'd just cycle moves. 
Might seem a tad convoluted but from what I've seen so far the behavior of ships that automatically commit to the "refuel at colony or tanker within 4 jumps if fuel is below x%" it's kind of weird.   I'm talking about mainly the geo scanners but an asteroid miner did it once too, where they return to earth to refuel despite being way over the limit (say it's set to 30% and they have 75%) and they have not finished their orders yet (scan nearest objects in that case, the miner just decided to go back to earth for no valid reason), and on the other side of the coin is the fact that sometimes they return with barely any fuel so they run the risk of being stranded till I check the event log 5 months later and notice they've been stuck in space this whole time. 

Also, if you have civies you can of course use a civilian contract to move things.

Actually I don't have civies.  It might just because I only have one inhabited colony so far and that's earth.  Not entirely sure how it is they work.  Do they just build ships on their own or do I have to construct civilian ships and somehow "sell" them?
I do have a shipping company (had one since pretty much the beginning) but they're doing absolutely nothing.  I actually subsidized 10k to them thinking it would do something but nothing changed.

While I'm on the subject, what the heck is money used for? Paying off the civies when they eventually show up? Diplomacy with aliens?

[Theokrat]

I would first sent a group through the path once to determine how long is the run and how much fuel they burn on it, than I would calculate the same parameters from the beginning point of the patrol to a resupply point (a colony or a gas giant Sorium harvester).

You do not have to manually track that, if you set the path up, there is a field in the task group window that will tell you the total time required for all orders, which works at least for pure movement. Given this time you can easily calculate the fuel usage.

Actually I don't have civies.  It might just because I only have one inhabited colony so far and that's earth.  Not entirely sure how it is they work.  Do they just build ships on their own or do I have to construct civilian ships and somehow "sell" them?
I do have a shipping company (had one since pretty much the beginning) but they're doing absolutely nothing.  I actually subsidized 10k to them thinking it would do something but nothing changed.

Well shipping lines transport stuff between different colonies to make a profit. Seeing you only have one colony that leaves a bit to be desired in the business chances of moving stuff from A to … nowhere else, which goes a long way to explain the reluctance of investors to jump at the prospects. In other words: Civilians will spring into active existence when you establish a second colony.

You do not need to build a ship yourself for them to use, you just need to design a suitable class (and even that wont be necessarily in the upcoming 6.0 version). Just design sensible basic freighters, colony ships and maybe luxury liners.

While I'm on the subject, what the heck is money used for? Paying off the civies when they eventually show up? Diplomacy with aliens?

You pay money for everything you build and research. If you run out of it you get negative modifiers to production/research. Just look at the overview and it will break you income/costs down for you.

[Victuz (OP)]

You pay money for everything you build and research.  If you run out of it you get negative modifiers to production/research.  Just look at the overview and it will break you income/costs down for you.

Oh so that's what racial wealth is used for.  That explains the sudden dips in income it sometimes got.
But oh well I'm at a 177 thousand and climbing so it shouldn't be an issue for a while.

[Zook]

I'm wondering if it might be more valid if I stopped expansion for a longer while (a period of few years maybe) changed like 70% of my homeworld mines into automated ones, while i'm doing that building 3-4 freighters with with 5x Cargo Holds (but that would require adding another 10k slipway capacity onto the civilian shipyards) and than transporting all that either to the asteroid near earth or a comet that has more resources but is much further away. 

I'm not entirely sure if that would be valid at all.  maybe I should just construct a load of asteroid miners with 5 asteroid mining components each instead?

Opinions differ one that, but IMO the existing mines can be put to better use on a new inhabited colony. I'd go for new asteroid mines and mass drivers. My low-tech mining ships were expensive and so slow they took many months to reach the outer asteroid belt. On top of that, manually shipping minerals costs fuel, freighters and is generally a pain in the neck.

Also while I was toying around with construction I noticed that I can create separate parts for ships (engines, survey components etc), does this effect anything else other than the possible speed of construction? It seems pretty obvious that having 30 premade engines to strap onto ships would accelerate the process of construction (not to mention the output of planetary industry seems much bigger than that of a single shipyard) but does it actually affect the cost in any way?

I've never checked the actual effect on wealth, but it definitely affects build time.

1).  Since I moved my first mass driver off world with a freighter I noticed how tedious the process can be, I manually told the freighter to pick up and drop off the mass driver one by one.   Is there any way to just tell the damn thing to move the mass driver as one order so that it will pick it up in parts automatically? I was trying to play around with the cycle moves and repeat (5) options but got nowhere so I just did it all manually. 

If you have freighters with one cargo hold, "Repeat x4" should move five parts, i.e. one installation (except the big ones like Research or Ground Training). If you enable "Cycle Orders" it will load as many parts as possible.

does the receiver need equal amount of mass drivers to all the senders or does it only need 1(or 2 for safety if I accidentally tell someone to move it off world)?

One driver can receive an unlimited amount.

EDIT: Every time I post the forum adds another space after every dot. . .  It makes things weird.

It doesn't do that for me. Strange.

BTW, keep an eye on fuel reserves as well. You'll build up your fleet over time and 10 or 20 million liters can be gone before you notice it.

[Erik L]

EDIT: Every time I post the forum adds another space after every dot. . .  It makes things weird.

It's a spam prevention measure to break up links for people with under 10 posts.

[Victuz (OP)]

It's a spam prevention measure to break up links for people with under 10 posts.

Ah sensible. Since I'm past that I guess I can now actually press space after a dot .

[Victuz (OP)]

Another question. I've noticed that civilian engines apart from their size and more noticeable emissions are generally superior to the military ones as examples.

• They have vastly superior range, with only slightly smaller speed because they gurgle up much smaller amounts of fuel. My geological survey ships equipped with military engines can go 176,4b km at the speed of 1900km/s while the same ship equipped with a civilian engine can go 647b km at just slightly smaller speed of 1798km/s
• Civilian Shipyards are much cheaper to upgrade, increasing the capacity and adding additional slipways is if I'm not wrong 10 times cheaper than in case of military shipyards
• They don't require maintenance. At all

I have of course noticed that they are much bigger (the example geological survey is 3 times bigger as a civilian ship) and have stronger heat and electrical emissions. They also seem to behave weirdly with elements that DO require maintenance like the geological survey parts (the AFR hops up from 6% to 104%), and you can't put them in a fleet with a jump engine because they require a jump engine of their own (meaning a ship with a civilian model jump engine).
But other than all that, if you don't really care about being detected, what's the advantage in using military engines?

[Theokrat]

The whole ship will require maintenance if there is any military component (engine or other) on board. You can only build such military ships in military yards.

Hence military designs with civilian engines will require maintaince and will require big military yards.

But as you say, the basic tradeoff is between fuel economy and vastly reduced emissions. Also military designs allow for higher overall speeds.

[Havear]

I'm going to repeat the points you made just for thoroughness.

Ton for ton, civilian drives are half the power of military drives with ten times the efficiency. Military drives make your ships much faster but eat more fuel. It's possible to match speeds with civilian drives, but then you run into simply how huge they are (and don't  forget to take extra armor into account!) which makes your ships really, really easy to spot by hostile forces. A big ship is a dead ship.

Just because you have commercial engines on your ship doesn't make it commercial -- you've still got to build a military ship at a military 'yard.

I've heard the third point, but I can't actually prove it one way or the other. A quick test with a ship design laying around has the commercial engines reducing maintenance life, though that could simply be their size pushing the ship larger.

Essentially, you're going to sacrifice performance (extremely important in a warship) for greater cruising range and less flexible design scheme. (It's harder to cram things around 25HS objects than 5HS objects.)

Actually, that kind of reminds me of a discussion back for 6.0. I want to be able to select which engines are being used.

[Victuz (OP)]

Ah I didn't know you still have to build it in military shipyard. That makes my question useless than .

On another note. I met aliens. They are being creepy and hovering around my gate building ship in Proxima Centauri. They've been doing it for 2 months. At first I thought that it's just civilian ships hovering around so that the military ones can come around and murder me. Than ships came and they are still doing absolutely nothing.

I am attempting to communicate with the aliens and I sent a diplomatic team to them. Current relations are -0.650 and going up. They are refusing to communicate but I'm pretty sure some of the ships hovering are armed. And yet they have still not done anything.

Is that normal?

[Zook]

Keep an eye on the diplomatic score. If it's still negative, they might not like your being there. The last time I saw this, it lasted for a few weeks, then my ship exploded, then Earth was blown to bits a few weeks later. Better tiptoe out of there for the time being.

[Victuz (OP)]

Keep an eye on the diplomatic score. If it's still negative, they might not like your being there. The last time I saw this, it lasted for a few weeks, then my ship exploded, then Earth was blown to bits a few weeks later. Better tiptoe out of there for the time being.

Well that might be an issue... I used a gate ship to get there, it built a gate and than hopped on the other side to build it from that one. And than aliens showed up and I freaked out a bit.

Do you think they'll mind if I'll just set a waypoint like 100b km away from the star and hang around there? .

there is like 16 ships hanging around my poor gate maker now.
Ok does the game have any kind of a measuring tool for the system view? I know there is a scale in the upper left corner but it's hard to measure distance from one object to another.

I'm asking because it seems my gate maker is close to an internal system jump point that leads a beyond the internal asteroid belt. If I can use that and not get followed by aliens than I might be able to make my gate ship go to a waypoint way away from the central star where they shouldn't be looking for me.

[Zook]

From der wiki:
"Note that until you are listed as friendly the NPR will quickly lose DR(start disliking you) for any ships of yours they see inside one of their own populated systems. This is based on the actual Tonnage of ships in their system, so the smaller the first contact vessel is the better.

If they have a population in the system, they don't want you there. If you have a trade agreement with them they make an exception for all commercial classed ships. "

Shift-left click activates a ruler function. But I guess they'll follow you.