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[Lord Shonus]

My experience with tractors is that the speed of the tug is the primary (or possibly only) factor in the resulting speeds. I've towed 50 kiloton freighters with 10 kiloton crusiers with no loss of speed that I noticed, at least. If I'm wrong, now would be a good time to find out, because I'm just about to start building monitors for jump point defense.

[Shooer]

For NP engines 3k is pretty good as civilian ships go.  Remember you are only on the second actual engine tech of the game.

All of my games have one thing in common, a dedication of research to getting to at least Ion before doing anything ship related.

[Flying Dice]

Yeah, you're not going to do much with TL2 drives.

I seem to vaguely recall tractor beams being patched so that the speed properly accounts for both the tug and the ship/station it's pulling. Could be incorrect, of course.

[MarcAFK]

Yeah, you're not going to do much with TL2 drives.

I seem to vaguely recall tractor beams being patched so that the speed properly accounts for both the tug and the ship/station it's pulling. Could be incorrect, of course.

I vaguely remember this too.

[iceball3]

This is vaguely in my memories too! Darn! It is too bad none of us know the specifics.

[ThtblovesDF]

I vaguely remember you could make space trains...

[forsaken1111]

Wooo Wooo Space Train Coming Through Wooo Wooo

But more seriously, can you actually have orbital habitats over gas giants? Does anyone have an example of an orbital hab fuel base?

[RedKing]

Wooo Wooo Space Train Coming Through Wooo Wooo

But more seriously, can you actually have orbital habitats over gas giants? Does anyone have an example of an orbital hab fuel base?

Didn't we just discuss this on the last page?

Here's an example of an early-game fuel base:

Titan class Fuel Harvester Base    423 950 tons     1300 Crew     5807 BP      TCS 8479  TH 0  EM 0
1 km/s     Armour 4-502     Shields 0-0     Sensors 8/11/0/0     Damage Control Rating 5     PPV 0
MSP 43    Max Repair 35.5 MSP
Intended Deployment Time: 3 months    Spare Berths 0   
Habitation Capacity 50 000   
Recreational Facilities
Fuel Harvester: 20 modules producing 560000 litres per annum

Fuel Capacity 10 000 000 Litres    Range N/A

Ivester CIWS-200 (4x4)    Range 1000 km     TS: 20000 km/s     ROF 5       Base 50% To Hit
ThermaSens-8 (1)     Sensitivity 8     Detect Sig Strength 1000:  8m km
MagnaSens-11 (1)     Sensitivity 11     Detect Sig Strength 1000:  11m km

This design is classed as a Commercial Vessel for maintenance purposes
This design is classed as an Orbital Habitat for construction purposes

Some of that is just my idiosyncracies, like putting a 1HS thermal and EM sensor on ALL vessels other than fighters, figuring them as "navigational sensors".
The CIWS I think of as micro-asteroid defense, though in a pinch they'll fend off a few enemy salvos too. Hopefully. I've got it armored up to lvl 4 mostly because these things aren't a cheap investment so I'd like them to have some survivability. And as mentioned previously, I like to put rec facilities onboard for a couple of reasons -- one, it provides an R&R stopover for survey vessels and the like. And two, it means I never have to see spurious warnings about crew morale on these stations.

These are a "20-year" design, meaning on average (figuring an 0.8 concentration of Sorium), a Titan left to its own devices will fill its tanks in about 20 years. Obviously, you can play with that -- give it smaller tanks or more refining capacity. Or tech up fuel production rates. Or if it's for a backwater posting, you may be comfortable with a smaller station with a slower fill rate. For core systems with a lot of traffic and multiple colonies, you may want stations that fill to capacity in 5-10 years, expecting that there will be plenty of demand for that fuel.

[forsaken1111]

Didn't we just discuss this on the last page?

I brought up the topic again because I had some questions and hadn't seen anyone post an example.

Here's an example of an early-game fuel base:

Titan class Fuel Harvester Base    423 950 tons     1300 Crew     5807 BP      TCS 8479  TH 0  EM 0
1 km/s     Armour 4-502     Shields 0-0     Sensors 8/11/0/0     Damage Control Rating 5     PPV 0
MSP 43    Max Repair 35.5 MSP
Intended Deployment Time: 3 months    Spare Berths 0   
Habitation Capacity 50 000   
Recreational Facilities
Fuel Harvester: 20 modules producing 560000 litres per annum

Fuel Capacity 10 000 000 Litres    Range N/A

Ivester CIWS-200 (4x4)    Range 1000 km     TS: 20000 km/s     ROF 5       Base 50% To Hit
ThermaSens-8 (1)     Sensitivity 8     Detect Sig Strength 1000:  8m km
MagnaSens-11 (1)     Sensitivity 11     Detect Sig Strength 1000:  11m km

This design is classed as a Commercial Vessel for maintenance purposes
This design is classed as an Orbital Habitat for construction purposes

Some of that is just my idiosyncracies, like putting a 1HS thermal and EM sensor on ALL vessels other than fighters, figuring them as "navigational sensors".
The CIWS I think of as micro-asteroid defense, though in a pinch they'll fend off a few enemy salvos too. Hopefully. I've got it armored up to lvl 4 mostly because these things aren't a cheap investment so I'd like them to have some survivability. And as mentioned previously, I like to put rec facilities onboard for a couple of reasons -- one, it provides an R&R stopover for survey vessels and the like. And two, it means I never have to see spurious warnings about crew morale on these stations.

These are a "20-year" design, meaning on average (figuring an 0.8 concentration of Sorium), a Titan left to its own devices will fill its tanks in about 20 years. Obviously, you can play with that -- give it smaller tanks or more refining capacity. Or tech up fuel production rates. Or if it's for a backwater posting, you may be comfortable with a smaller station with a slower fill rate. For core systems with a lot of traffic and multiple colonies, you may want stations that fill to capacity in 5-10 years, expecting that there will be plenty of demand for that fuel.

Understand about the design idiosyncrasies. I tend to put small 'station keeping' thrusters and small fuel tankseven on bases intended to be static. I hadn't thought of including the sensors. Unless it is a combat or covert design I rely on the inbuilt EM sensor. CIWS is a good idea as well. I forget, does CIWS add to a ship's protection rating for reassuring a population of its safety?

Also, when the fuel tank fills up does the base automatically stop harvesting sorium?

I suppose with enough hab space you could have shipyards in operation as well, no? Make a true space-based industry in orbit around Jupiter.

[RedKing]

Don't think CIWS affects a unit's "protection rating".

Not sure about whether a unit stops harvesting or not -- I never let one get completely full.

As for the shipyard question, I think you'd be hampered by the lack of a mineral stockpile. You could tow a shipyard to a gas giant, and in theory I guess you could have the population housed there too, but unless I'm mistaken shipyards won't pull minerals out a cargo bay in the same location and you wouldn't be able to have a planetary stockpile.
Could work for a Galilean moon, I suppose.

[Shooer]

You can't actually have a colony on a jovian world.  So you'd have to turn a neighboring body into a colony to do anything other than just gather gas.

[forsaken1111]

You can't actually have a colony on a jovian world.  So you'd have to turn a neighboring body into a colony to do anything other than just gather gas.

Even using an orbital habitat? Hm. So what is the point of the habitation capacity on the design RedKing linked? I thought with an orbital habitat you could have population anywhere that was a fixed body. Planet, moon, asteroid, etc though probably not the sun...

[Culise]

Orbital habitats obviate the need to put infrastructure on a planet with a colony cost greater than 0 (EDIT), as long as the population is below the hab capacity (oopsie).  Also, I just spotted this on the wiki entry:

Every design that includes an orbital habitat can be built by industry as well as by a shipyard. This can be used to build arbitrarily large industrial bases with Terraforming modules, Sorium Harvesters or Asteroid Mining Modules without the need for a shipyard.

So, I guess they let you build the ships without reserving a shipyard to the task.  I've never experimented with them before, but that's interesting enough to make me consider trying it.

[forsaken1111]

Ah, that makes sense. The fuel harvester is really rather large so using industry would be preferable to having a 500kton shipyard

[Shooer]

Yeah, it's how a lot of us make our orbital industrial ships.  Fuel harvesters and terraformers is the normal, I sometimes do asteroid miners so that I can empty a comet in a few months.