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

[Antonin1957 (OP)]

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.

I created a new harvester design, setting a fuel reserve level of 200,000 L in the class design window. I built a ship, with "Primary Condition/Conditional Order = Harvester Transfer and Return." Then I gave it a movement order "Jupiter--->Move to Location."  Then I clicked "Add Move."

I advanced the game 5 days, but the ship is still in Earth orbit, with 2 mil L of fuel in its tank.

I'm still doing *something* wrong, I guess.

My new harvester design:





Gobi class Fuel Harvester      74,522 tons       309 Crew       941.3 BP       TCS 1,490    TH 672    EM 0
450 km/s      Armour 1-157       Shields 0-0       HTK 113      Sensors 0/0/0/0      DCR 1      PPV 0
MSP 7    Max Repair 50 MSP
Cargo 25,000    Cargo Shuttle Multiplier 6   
Lieutenant Commander    Control Rating 1   BRG   
Intended Deployment Time: 3 months   
Fuel Harvester: 12 modules producing 480,000 litres per annum

Commercial Nuclear Pulse Engine  EP168.00 (4)    Power 672    Fuel Use 2.66%    Signature 168    Explosion 3%
Fuel Capacity 2,000,000 Litres    Range 181.1 billion km (4657 days at full power)
Refuelling Capability: 60,000 litres per hour     Complete Refuel 33 hours

This design is classed as a Commercial Vessel for maintenance purposes
This design is classed as a i for auto-assignment purposes

[Andrew]

It is probably returning. it has full fuel tanks so that triggers the return order.
After creating it , give it an order transfer fuel to colony , then send it to jupiter

[Garfunkel]

Remember to tick the box in class design window that marks it as a tanker.

[Panopticon]

Designing and using a harvester.

You will need a ship with Sorium harvesters on it, as well as a reasonably large fuel capacity and a refueling system or whatever it is called. Slap a commercial engine on it and mark it as a tanker in the design window, this will mean they will be built with 10% fuel as a default, that should be enough for it get to your local gas giant and start mining, it will automatically refine Sorium into fuel as it is mined with no additional input from you. leave it alone until the game starts giving you alerts that the fuel is at 90% or more capacity. From there you can either have the harvester move to your location of choice and Unload Fuel, then move back, or have another dedicated tanker move to your harvester and Refuel from the target fleet. The latter option is most efficient as your harvester never stops harvesting.

You can save resources and build the harvesters using construction factories if you build without an engine, this makes a fuel harvesting station. You will then need to use a tug to move it to its location, but the added micro is generally considered worth it in many cases.

You should build many harvesters, they are fairly cheap and you will need lots of them to have a good consistent supply. Some people basically never stop, dedicating a percentage of the CF capacity to building them constantly. This means you will need to constantly be keeping an eye on your messages, which you should be anyway of course, and moving or tugging harvesters to Join the appropriate task group on their mining site of your choice. You don't want multiple task groups of harvesters on the same site, make sure they are all combined in one fleet for ease of fuel pickup.

Keep in mind defense too, in multiplayer games or games with active NPRs and spoilers harvester groups are easy to forget about and similarly easy to blow up, the computer will happily do so at the slightest provocation. Building without engines helps here too to keep the size and emissions down, but if your game has the possibility for raids of any kind, you'll want to consider some sort of reaction force or dedicated escort element nearby.

[mostly_harmless]

Couple of things from my side.
I assign my harvesters fleets to Industrial Commands to give them the production boost from commanders.

When going with the stationary harvesters and fuel shuttle approach, you can further increase efficiency by working out how long the harvester fleet needs to produce enough fuel to fill up your shuttle. Then use the Delay Order setting (in [sec]) to only send out the shuttle when its needed.

I think the latter might be obsolete with changes to refuel commands in the upcoming version.