Modding cargo size

[alex_brunius (OP)]

Have anyone been able to mod how much cargo size installations & minerals require to transport?

If not does anyone know roughly how to go about doing it / if it's possible or easy to do?


I love the deep logistics aspects of Aurora but would love some additional options to play around with like houseruling I can't use Mass Drivers and modding minerals to take up say 50 times more cargo space so you need to set up a serious freighter network to haul minerals instead of having a few generic transports be able to deliver years if not decades of mining efforts from a body in a single run.

[Steve Walmsley]

It is the CargoPoints field of the DIM_PlanetaryInstallations table for installations. Mineral size is hardcoded.

[alex_brunius (OP)]

It is the CargoPoints field of the DIM_PlanetaryInstallations table for installations. Mineral size is hardcoded.

Thanks!  A bit of a shame on the mineral size though, was afraid it could be hardcoded.
It might be an interesting thing to consider making into an option then if it's hardcoded and not too tricky to do ( although I should probably post that in the suggestion thread  )

Or perhaps some sort of overall transport efficiency multiplier changing the sizes of all cargo holds ( possible to modify at start only for obvious reasons ) would be an easier way to do it ( maybe as a dropdown with options like 0.5  0.25  0.1 ... to not screw up installations fitting evenly too much ). Although tbh for what I was looking to do Id love to be able to tweak minerals separately as I feel they are on an order of magnitude off from installations for what would "feel realistic" for me. I do realize in the official lore the minerals are highly refined / valuable right from extraction but I like to imagine that refining is what most of those millions of workers do when turning them into useful stuff so in my stories Id love to have to devote much more shipping tonnage for raw "unrefined" bulk ore to get a closer to our world logistical feel. Another bonus would be having to make more interesting tradeoffs like locating or moving production sites closer to the where the relevant minerals are extracted as the empire expands when shipping becomes too stretched thin.

[nuclearslurpee]

Besides what Steve mentions, there is a somewhat more involved approach you can take. In the table FCT_ShipDesignComponents you can edit the ComponentValue column values for each type of Cargo Hold. You can use the relationship that 1 unit of minerals = 2 cargo points to revise the ComponentValue so that each cargo hold can contain the number of minerals you think is reasonable for your desired game type.

After doing this, you almost certainly will need to follow Steve's advice and modify all of the installation sizes in DIM_PlanetaryInstallations. If you do not do this, it is almost certain that you will break the NPRs as they will not be able to ship installations to outlying colonies effectively. As always, modding the DB means you cannot submit bugs from a game played with that DB unless you can verify them in an unmodded version.

[Steve Walmsley]

Besides what Steve mentions, there is a somewhat more involved approach you can take. In the table FCT_ShipDesignComponents you can edit the ComponentValue column values for each type of Cargo Hold. You can use the relationship that 1 unit of minerals = 2 cargo points to revise the ComponentValue so that each cargo hold can contain the number of minerals you think is reasonable for your desired game type.

After doing this, you almost certainly will need to follow Steve's advice and modify all of the installation sizes in DIM_PlanetaryInstallations. If you do not do this, it is almost certain that you will break the NPRs as they will not be able to ship installations to outlying colonies effectively. As always, modding the DB means you cannot submit bugs from a game played with that DB unless you can verify them in an unmodded version.

The above would work in theory, but you would severely penalise the ability of cargo holds to transport ship components as that is based on component size.

[Jorgen_CAB]

While I understand the underlying ideas of making minerals take up more space I think you can get the same feeling if you just build your mineral haulers much smaller with 1-5k cargo holds and really slow engines.

I usually automate my mineral hauling with small specialized mineral haulers with very small cargo holds and as efficient engines as possible. I can even specialize them to concentrate in just one or two ore types.

I tend to try and distribute industry so I don't need to move facilities around more than absolutely necessary so moving minerals around to make sure the industry works everywhere is important and require much less logistics in general but is a fun puzzle to solve. I really don't like to have one centralized industry at Earth outside the very start before you have any decently developed colonies.

[Kristover]

While I understand the underlying ideas of making minerals take up more space I think you can get the same feeling if you just build your mineral haulers much smaller with 1-5k cargo holds and really slow engines.

I usually automate my mineral hauling with small specialized mineral haulers with very small cargo holds and as efficient engines as possible. I can even specialize them to concentrate in just one or two ore types.

I tend to try and distribute industry so I don't need to move facilities around more than absolutely necessary so moving minerals around to make sure the industry works everywhere is important and require much less logistics in general but is a fun puzzle to solve. I really don't like to have one centralized industry at Earth outside the very start before you have any decently developed colonies.

This is what I do.  I tend to build three types of freighters.  Small cargo ‘shuttles’ that transport minerals within systems as a supplement to mass drivers - I play with a house rule where colonies with atmospheres can’t have mass drivers; only LG vacuum colonies can have mass drivers - or one system over.  They tend to be 2-5K size and slow.  The second type are my massive superfreighters which transport planetary installations.  They are very large and have the most efficient engines I can make.  I then make a few mid size freighters which are much faster than the first two.  They usually can haul 25K are they are for emergencies where I need to get something somewhere fast.

[alex_brunius (OP)]

While I understand the underlying ideas of making minerals take up more space I think you can get the same feeling if you just build your mineral haulers much smaller with 1-5k cargo holds and really slow engines.

The challenge I'm looking for is having to devote/invest resources and shipyard/shipping capacity to solve harder logistics, not a challenge of micromanagement and extra clicks just for the sake of it.

Much like playing against yourself ( controlling all empires ) as a replacement of proper Multiplayer I think that such a challenge would feel artificial and not quite the same thing as having a "real" challenge of needing to build large amounts of massive ore haulers to move the minerals around.


Your suggestion did give me an interesting idea of a better workaround however...
It should be possible to add a custom ship component much larger than a normal cargohold and require all freighters I use to transport minerals to have one such component per cargo hold as well

[Droll]

Your suggestion did give me an interesting idea of a better workaround however...
It should be possible to add a custom ship component much larger than a normal cargohold and require all freighters I use to transport minerals to have one such component per cargo hold as well

I do something similar using misc components with regards to megastructure construction. I have a max size "orbital construction crane" which designates the parent ship as a construction vessel. I then use the cargo capacity of the fleet to carry the actual resources needed for whatever structure I will build in space. In my case this is usually a 2.5bn or 5bn ton planetary ring to house 1/2bn population in orbit. Once I get the needed materials I move the fleet with the construction cranes into orbit of the planet and based on the number of construction cranes I use "send message" with an order delay to simulate the construction time. Once the "construction complete" message is sent, I use SM to spawn the planetary ring as well as empty the cargo holds of the fleet that did the construction.

Misc components are cool as they allow you to simulate/RP functionality that otherwise does not exist in the game itself. My only complaint about them is that the max size is too small, which I think is a bit limiting.

[Jorgen_CAB]

Yes... you can construct a mineral tank component and then you match them in a specific ratio with cargo holds and you then use RP to decide that only ship with Mineral tanks may pick up minerals.

If you require the Mineral tank to have a 1:1 ratio the cost of a 5000t mineral tank would be 100 production (50 Duranium, 50 Mercassium) in comparison with a 5000t cargo hold that only cost you 12 build points thus making mineral haulers allot more expensive. So the tanks probably are even more expensive than the engines.

[TMaekler]

I haven't used misc components yet. Is there a way to specify what minerals they cost? If so, that would be perfect to simulate whatever module you want to create.

[Jorgen_CAB]

I haven't used misc components yet. Is there a way to specify what minerals they cost? If so, that would be perfect to simulate whatever module you want to create.

It is set to Duranium and Mercassium but you probably could set or change it in the DB, even on component level if you like. But from the game itself you can't do that.