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[forsaken1111]

I think they also trade between colonies too, no?

[Tarran]

Also, remember Geosurvey teams. Even if there's nothing at generation, you can still get some minerals with Geosurvey teams.

I think they also trade between colonies too, no?

Yes. But only the most profitable routes. So don't expect any cargo ships to be trading from non-Sol colonies. They'll usually just go back and fourth between Earth and Mars...

[JimiD]

Started again with this, and despite meeting one NPR and what appears to be the swarm, my major headache is the mineral crash on Earth.  It has happened much earlier than last time, so presumably I SM'd the first ships as the tutorial.

Between mineral shortages and lack of wealth, my shipyards are opperating below capacity.  With some judicious mining colonies I am inching forward.


I am getting friendly with the NPR, which is prudent since I haven't found their homeworld, but they've found me.  We have begun the creation of Jump Point Defense Base ships, "Dreadnought" class, armed with Plasma Carronades, from some first line of defence, and getting into training etc.  Going to have to have fast reactions for this duty!

I need to do some research into what all the different skills do, and how the different taskforce and sector roles influence activity.

We have colonies on Mars and Titan, principally for economic reasons, although we are building Terraformers to tug to Mars, then eventually neighbouring systems with any luck.

[RedKing]

Indeed, all it does is control how the stars are generated. The planets themselves are 100% random still.

Supposedly planet size (thus gas giants, chunks, &c), temperature, and orbital distance depend on the star's class.  So it's possible that Real Stars gives a lower chance for inhabitable planets.

Correct. With real stars, the vast majority of stuff you're going to find within 50LY or so are class M, usually dwarfs. And the bulk of planets in orbit around those are going to be frozen rocks, with the occasional N2-NH4 atmos thrown in. You will occasionally find N2-O2 worlds very close to their primary, but even then they're going to be ice worlds until you get some terraforming laid down. One of my favorite things to do is use Real Stars and generate a few dozen systems until I find a nice low-gravity, low-temperature, thin atmosphere world, then generate a new species and empire from there. Because I'll have lots of similar worlds to colonize in a Real Stars settings.

Without Real Stars turned on, the systems are totally random, and you wind up with these BII supergiant trinary monstrosities where it's 100AU+ just to get from one jump point to another. Or nebula systems that restrict your top speed down to a crawl. Can be strategically interesting, but a PITA to explore until you get your propulsion and armor techs up.

[Rask]

I tried again, with real stars. Not only did I find an alien race two jumps from Sol, they are also impossible to communicate with. They also have a stable wormhole in their system, so that's a self-correcting problem. I may be in for some fun, though.

[umiman]

I simply cannot get sorium harvesting to operate automatically. Using the conditional orders, it refuses to return to the gas giant. Using manual tankers to carry the stuff back it kinda does work, but it spams me endlessly with "refueling could not be completed".

Does anyone know how or should I just give up trying to do it?

I'll cheatyface the hell out of a new game later tonight and do some testing. Will post here if I come up with a solution.

You can do this, but not with conditional orders. For some reason they don't work right.

1. Make sure your sorium harvesters are set as tankers and they have nice fat fuel tanks. Leave your sorium harvesters at the gas giant to gather fuel.
2. Make some normal tankers of whatever size, also set as tankers in the ship design screen.
3. Set the tankers to refuel from whatever colony you want the fuel to be dumped on, and then to "unload 90% of fuel to colony" so that they have only 10% of their fuel loads left.
4. Set the tankers to refuel from your harvester taskgroup.
5. Set the tanker taskgroup to cycle its moves.

It will continually move to the colony, refuel, drop 90% of fuel, then move to the harvesters and take all of their fuel they've harvested, then move back to the planet...

Tested with jupiter as the harvesting base and earth as the drop off point.

Yes. I tried this. Like I said, it spams me with "refueling could not be completed" messages even though it works.

[Sirus]

I'm starting a new game. Conventional start, SpaceMaster-created home system. After a bunch of attempts I finally created a 0.0 cost planet in a system with lots of gas giants and moons, two of which have 2.00 costs. The story is that humans got kicked to the curb by an alien race, and this is their last, hidden colony. They regressed a bunch (starting year: 4000), but are now forging forward once more, hoping to become more powerful this time.

My biggest problem right now is that the homeworld is running out of minerals. Early geosurvey efforts have been...disappointing. On the rare instances that my ships actually find something, the total of everything on the body usually comes to less than 1,000. Even the superjovians are soriumless.
I'm in a quandry here. I have a single geo and a single grav survey ship. Most of my minerals are going towards expanding my shipbuilding capacity, since a conventional start only gives you a single tiny navel yard. My biggest commercial shipyard turns out to not be big enough, and I'm tacking on another 10,000 tons capacity so I can finally build a freighter. My grav ship has found a few jump points, but I do not have a tender yet since I haven't done any jump research.

Should I concentrate on exploring other systems? Should I create a few geo teams to do a more complete comb-over? Or should I use SM to generate more minerals? I'd rather not do the last option, but I'm not totally averse to it.

[umiman]

Why don't you both? You can easily explore other systems while putting geosurvey teams on everything.

[Felius]

NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!
No Jennifer, don't abandon me!

(60% bonus for defense systems, 30 max labs, named Jennifer Price just retired from old age at 72)

That's gonna delay some of my plans.

[Earthquake Damage]

(60% bonus for defense systems, 30 max labs, named Jennifer Price just retired from old age at 72)

RAAAGE!

My scientists spend their entire career actively researching and get at most 3-4 upgrades (upgrade = +5% bonus OR +5 max labs).

[Felius]

(60% bonus for defense systems, 30 max labs, named Jennifer Price just retired from old age at 72)

RAAAGE!

My scientists spend their entire career actively researching and get at most 3-4 upgrades (upgrade = +5% bonus OR +5 max labs).

She started around +30%, 15 labs, and upgraded like crazy. She was my best scientists, and the only one to get that awesome. The rest are more normal, topping +30% bonus, 15-30 labs only two upgraded over that (+45% sensors, 15 labs, and +35% power and propulsion, 25 labs).

On a related note, I've found that the best way to get good scientists is to make lots of military academies and wait until you luck out.

[Neonivek]

I had one REALLY high ranked scientist (started off with 25 labs)

However that scientist had absolutely no bonuses.

I really hate (REALLY REALLY hate) the fact that they don't show a scientists bonuses when you select them... You have to go to an entirely different window to do that.

[EuchreJack]

Aurora works on the snowball effect.  Lousy people stay lousy, good people level up FAST.
Same with shipyard expansion and a few other things, as well.

I usually put my best survey people into a primary team, the one tasked with searching for minerals on inhabitable planets.
Then, if minerals are in short supply, I'll create a second survey team with the top people that were not good enough for the first team.  They get dumped on useless asteroids, as they need to level up on something, and the asteroids are already useless, so they can't really ruin things.  Furthermore, if a system has asteroids, it tends to have a ton of them.

[Another]

I had a 65% bonus Construction/Production scientist once. That one got a few useful projects completed like a few more levels of "+to research" in a self-enforcing cycle.

Now days I usually keep best personnel in each research category working on 1-lab half-dummy projects with decades-long completion time just to keep them progressing while I concentrate all the rest laboratories on 1-2 really urgent projects. A decade or two later with this tactic bonuses like 45% and 50% are not uncommon.

[Sirus]

Why don't you both? You can easily explore other systems while putting geosurvey teams on everything.

That might work. Part of the problem is the mentioned lack of ships and rapid depletion of resources. If the geosurvey teams do their jobs, I can start setting up automated mines and mass drivers that  will actually turn a profit. On the other hand, if nothing comes up at all, then I'll have to hoard resources even more carefully. Is it possible to actually get stuck in your starting system, if you don't get a jump tender/jump gate built before resources run out?