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[Metalax]

Do you have a colony created on the asteroid? Ship based miners still place the mined minerals onto the surface the same as surface automines and need a colony there to put them on the surface. Did you use the move to order to move them to the asteroid rather than the orbit order? The orbit at 0 distance order does not consider the ships to be at the body so the mines wont work in that case.

[Flying Dice]

I just remembered why I kept the crew training level firmly set to 1. >.<



Also, with the asteroid miners, a checklist:

1. Is the asteroid marked as a colony? (In other words, if you open your economics tab, can you find it on the left?)
2. Are there minerals present (yes, from what you said)?
3. Is the ship configured properly (again, yes)?
4. Is there a MD on the surface (no)?
5. Has the asteroid been fully surveyed (yes)?

[PTTG??]

I just remembered why I kept the crew training level firmly set to 1. >.<

Why? I recently set it very high so that I could ensure I get more high-skill researchers, since they seem to take so much time to level up on their own, and 1 25% researcher is better than 5 5% researchers any day.

[Sowelu]

Someone's reference to Space Romans made me think of this.

[Mictlantecuhtli]

Also, with the asteroid miners, a checklist:

1. Is the asteroid marked as a colony? (In other words, if you open your economics tab, can you find it on the left?)
2. Are there minerals present (yes, from what you said)?
3. Is the ship configured properly (again, yes)?
4. Is there a MD on the surface (no)?
5. Has the asteroid been fully surveyed (yes)?

Well, I don't have Mass Drivers on asteroids due to the fact that my Asteroid Miners do not work, at all. So I'd rather not waste my V-name mineral (the hard to find one, I don't remember my trans-newtonian metals very well, I'm better with Fe and Cu) building the things to send for no reason.

I just have every single body with minerals marked as a colony for future/current civilian mining operations. About 4 asteroids now have their own little cities of Mining Complexes, sending me materials.

I appreciate how gung-ho my little humans are, much better then my fleets.

Note: I never knew how helpful the Civilian Corporations could be until I realized that as they gain money, they're doing my job for me in a much quicker (and cheaper!) timeframe, much more efficiently. I wish civilians would upgrade their own ships, though.. I don't like them CHOOSING my old Ion-Engine colonizers and freighters when I have my new models.

[Metalax]

If you have civs building old designs and you have newer designs you want them to build, remember to obsolete the old designs in the ship design screen. You can actually abuse this to get the civs to only build megafreighters by keeping your smaller freighter designs obsoleted as you only need to have them available while you are setting a shipyard to retool to the class and can then reobsolete them while the retooling/ship production occurs.

[Flying Dice]

I just remembered why I kept the crew training level firmly set to 1. >.<

Why? I recently set it very high so that I could ensure I get more high-skill researchers, since they seem to take so much time to level up on their own, and 1 25% researcher is better than 5 5% researchers any day.

Actually, I believe it doesn't even affect the skill of commanders you recruit. Here's the rollover text:

Set level of racial training. Default = 1. Each level adds 100 to grade points of academy crewmen. Academies produce (1000/training level) per year. Max level is 5.

Crewmen are the naval personnel that man (or woman) your ships (think about the crew requirements on your ship designs). When you increase the training level, you increase their talent (and ship grade), so a ship may be launched with, say 7% or 12% grade, rather than 0%. The upside is that this provides you with an early boost to ship capabilities. The downside is that increasing the training level directly affects the number of crew you recruit each year, which in turn means that if you are producing a reasonable number of ships, you could very easily fall behind on crew, producing new ships with negative grade, indicating that they are undermanned, and reducing their performance until they can take on additional crew.

IOW:
Crew Training Level =1
# of Academies = 5
Total naval personnel trained in 1 year = (1000/1)*5 = 5000 crew.

Crew Training Level = 3
# of Academies = 5
Total naval personnel trained in 1 year = (1000/3)*5 = 1666 crew, or 1667 if the game rounds up.

Crew Training Level = 5
# of Academies = 5
Total naval personnel trained in 1 year = (1000/5)*5 = 1000 crew

You can see how increasing it will severely affect your ability to crew new construction. It may be feasible early on to use a high training level, but once you start building a proper navy, it just isn't practical.


Incidentally, I wish there was a way to change the average lifespan of humans ingame, to replicate antiaging treatments (okay, really, to preserve the good ones for a few centuries).

[BishopX]

It's feasible to have a high naval training rating as long as you:

a) Mark all noncombat ships as conscript only
b) Design relatibly small ships
c) Give your manpower pool a couple years to rebuild between fleets
d) aim for 1 military academy per 10,000 tons of naval ship yard.

[Flying Dice]

The thing is, when you've got to the point where you have 10+ systems with populations to protect in 6 or 7 different warp chains, you can't really afford  to design only small ships or just let military building 'cool down' if you're involved in multiple conflicts. As for academies, if I followed that rule of thumb, I'd need 58 academies, and at the moment I only have to protect Earth and a handful of low population colonies, and I haven't run into anything beyond a few Precursors. (Let's just say that I don't believe in allowing anything to stand idle, because if I ignore fleetbuilding when I don't need it, I won't have enough ships when I do.)

[Scout1]

Well I have been doing so well so far, but my civilians finally made a ship. Problem is it seems to be constantly at earth, with the orders to 'Move to Earth Trade Location'. I even set up some infrastructure supply/demand orders so it might do something, but it just remains there, with the same order. What do?

[Flying Dice]

Do you have other colonies for it to trade with?




Unrelated: Thank goodness I upped my missile frigates to a 4-thick armor belt when I designed the 2nd run, as I just had to deal with jump sickness on a point being covered by a trio of Precursor ships that outmassed my frigates by 1500 tons, and had a slight speed advantage. They near-crippled 6 of my 8 frigates before my FC came back online, but because they only put a single salvo into each, I killed them all and 7 of my ships survived with almost no armor and internal damage ranging from a few repairable systems to pretty much every component. Sure, I had to tow one of them back to Earth for repairs, but it lived. That said, I can't wait until I get the last of my destroyers out of the refit yards, so my proper TGs can go back to offense and the frigates can sit at home keeping the civvies pacified.

[Scout1]

Yep, got mars colonized for shits & giggles. A competing line has actually sprung up by now, and made a colony ship. That one's actually doing something.

[Canalan]

I always pray for competing civvie shipping lines.  It makes me feel like my universe is dynamic.
Also, I think that, if you don't mind "cheating", you can SM edit your old ship designs up to modern specs.  It will automagically make all the ships of that class currently built have the new design, unless it doesn't work on civilian ships.  I would do it and then not subsidize the company for a year or two to cut off it's shipbuilding power to balance the "cheat" out, if you feel guilty.

[Flying Dice]

Or you can just use the tractor beam trick to sieze old, outdated ships, allowing you to scrap them for resources. If you really feel like balancing it, you can then feed a bunch of wealth into the commercial lines, to simulate your government running a trade-in program where companies can sell old ships to govt. scrapyards. Of course, if you're careful to not give them any wealth, they'll often only have a handful of ships well up to the 20-30 year mark. Then, once you've got a decent level of tech (around IC drives), pump them full of money and stop thinking about them altogether until you get to the point where it takes less time for them to rebuild dozens of ships than it does for you to research the next engine tech.

[Canalan]

Does anyone else always find aliens in Procyon?  I always gear up before I enter it because it always has (what I believe are) Precursors.