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[Micro102]

I can't keep playing until I fix this "no colony within jump distance" problem and "no ship with high enough jump rating" problem. One requires me to constantly micro manage my survey ships and the other is preventing me transporting stuff between systems.


Also, how do you get civilians to build more ships. They have already started 3 mining sites and I'm buying from them. Should I make a cheaper cargo ship with 1-2 holds? Or is what they build random?

[Metalax]

Civilian mining operations aren't actually linked to the civilian shipping companies at all, their number and how you deal with them(tax or purchase minerals) has no effect on civilian shipping.

Assuming you are playing anything past version 6, Civilians will design their own ships, so the only thing you can do is subsidise them from the civilian company overview.

There also needs to be a "need" before civilians will start producing ships. So you need a colony(with at least some population you shipped yourself) with sufficient infrastructure that there is room for more population to get colony ships/luxury liners and there needs to be a market for shipping civilian produced goods for freighters to be produced.

For the jump rating problem, post your jump-ship design and the design of any other ship that is trying to jump with it.

For the "no colony within jump distance" problem, can you post a screen-shot of the taskgroup orders tab and special orders/organisation tab for the survey ships.

[Micro102]

Here are the designs for my ships:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Valet class Jump Ship    24,950 tons     330 Crew     580 BP      TCS 499  TH 500  EM 0
1002 km/s    JR 2-25(C)     Armour 1-76     Shields 0-0     Sensors 1/1/0/0     Damage Control Rating 1     PPV 0
MSP 15    Max Repair 324 MSP

JC40K Commercial Jump Drive     Max Ship Size 40500 tons    Distance 25k km     Squadron Size 2
Nuclear Pulse Engine E0.9 (5)    Power 100    Fuel Use 9%    Signature 100    Armour 0    Exp 1%
Fuel Capacity 50,000 Litres    Range 40.1 billion km   (462 days at full power)

This design is classed as a Commercial Vessel for maintenance purposes

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Mule class Cargo Ship    34,750 tons     243 Crew     385.2 BP      TCS 695  TH 700  EM 0
1007 km/s     Armour 1-94     Shields 0-0     Sensors 1/1/0/0     Damage Control Rating 1     PPV 0
MSP 7    Max Repair 25 MSP
Cargo 25000    Cargo Handling Multiplier 10   

Nuclear Pulse Engine E0.9 (7)    Power 100    Fuel Use 9%    Signature 100    Armour 0    Exp 1%
Fuel Capacity 50,000 Litres    Range 28.8 billion km   (330 days at full power)

This design is classed as a Commercial Vessel for maintenance purposes

And here are the screenshots of my task group:

http://imgur.com/62d0z7B

http://imgur.com/KDO0EvG

[RulerOfNothing]

IIRC a ship can't open a jump portal bigger than itself, even if the jumpdrive is rated for larger ships.

[Dorfs R Fun]

@Micro, your ship will continue to survey locations until condition A or B is met. Since condition B is resupply at less then 20% and you are at over 50% supplies. It's still doing exactly what you told it.

[Shooer]

Yeah, just turn your jump tender into a fuel tanker to make it bigger to allow it to actually use the full potential of it's drive.

Also I never bother with setting condional orders for resuply because if a ship is using up supplies then it is past it's maint life and should have it's clock rewound in a shipyard.  It'll save you more money in the long run, also time from fewer back and forths while possibly suffering from missing an engine.

[Micro102]

@Micro, your ship will continue to survey locations until condition A or B is met. Since condition B is resupply at less then 20% and you are at over 50% supplies. It's still doing exactly what you told it.

Well yes, since I recently manually sent it to restock. But when it runs out of supplies it just gives me the "no colony within range" notification. And it's only one jump away.

Also I never bother with setting condional orders for resuply because if a ship is using up supplies then it is past it's maint life and should have it's clock rewound in a shipyard.  It'll save you more money in the long run, also time from fewer back and forths while possibly suffering from missing an engine.

My survey ships are military. I usually have them away from any shipyard for years, scanning the surrounding systems, so of course things break. It isn't due to deterioration.

[Metalax]

Jump size rating isn't entirely self explanatory. The jump size rating on the jump-drive is the limit to the maximum size of a ship you can design that will be able to self jump. When a jump ship jumps other ships however, the jump size limit is the exact size of the ship equipped with the jump-drive.

In your case, while the Valet class has a jump drive rated at 40500 tons, due to the size of the ship, the largest ship that will be able to jumped by it will be 24,950 tons. As the Mule class significantly exceeds this at 34,750 tons, it will be unable to be jumped.

@Micro, your ship will continue to survey locations until condition A or B is met. Since condition B is resupply at less then 20% and you are at over 50% supplies. It's still doing exactly what you told it.

Well yes, since I recently manually sent it to restock. But when it runs out of supplies it just gives me the "no colony within range" notification. And it's only one jump away.

Are your survey ships jump capable or are they relying on a jump tender being present at the jump point? Also, do they exhibit the same behaviour when they need refuelling, or do they successfully jump back?

[Shooer]

Military ships don't start breaking down until they are close to or past their maint life.  The longer they go past it the more often the'll break down.  My grav survey ships usually have a 3+ life time, while my combat military get 2 and my other military get by with just 1.

I seriously doubt you've built a ship with an 11 year maint life, they've probably already peaked at their cap break down chance for a bit anyway.  So if you're fine with how often you need to resupply them then keep going.  Just know that 20 supplies probably won't be enough to fix a broke down jump drive, or larger engine.

[RedKing]

Gaaah. So sick of dealing with Precursor sandblasters. Even with 12 CIWS's with a 6 shot per 5 sec rate and a tracking speed of 32000 km/s, my battlecruiser eventually gets worn down into oblivion. When you're having to fend off several thousand AMMs with a speed over 36000 km/s....

[Rince Wind]

In that case I like to sandblast back. 2-stage missiles that release lots of fast size 1 missiles, so they have to spend their AMMs quickly, especially as they are not always hitting. Warheadsize is not really important, though it is nice to do some damage with the ones that get through.

[gimlet]

Attrite the incoming missiles with AA ships stationed on the line between the shooters and the targets, multiple groups each at least 1 time interval away from each other if you have the ships.  Don't turn their active sensors on so they won't be targets.  Then ideally the CIWS will only need to handle leakers.  Stay at long range 'til they're out of missiles.

[Micro102]

Are your survey ships jump capable or are they relying on a jump tender being present at the jump point? Also, do they exhibit the same behaviour when they need refuelling, or do they successfully jump back?

They rely on a jump ship and yes they behave the same when refueling. They function fine when manually telling them to transit and refuel/resupply.

Military ships don't start breaking down until they are close to or past their maint life.  The longer they go past it the more often the'll break down.  My grav survey ships usually have a 3+ life time, while my combat military get 2 and my other military get by with just 1.

I seriously doubt you've built a ship with an 11 year maint life, they've probably already peaked at their cap break down chance for a bit anyway.  So if you're fine with how often you need to resupply them then keep going.  Just know that 20 supplies probably won't be enough to fix a broke down jump drive, or larger engine.

Interesting. I thought the maintenance life was an estimate of how long they could go until they needed more supplies, and that this reset merely by being in orbit of a colony with maintenance facilities. I've been giving my ships some maintenance storage and extra engineering so they can sit out there for a while. Sadly this doesn't solve my ships not being able to refuel or resupply automatically.

[Bremen]

Interesting. I thought the maintenance life was an estimate of how long they could go until they needed more supplies, and that this reset merely by being in orbit of a colony with maintenance facilities. I've been giving my ships some maintenance storage and extra engineering so they can sit out there for a while. Sadly this doesn't solve my ships not being able to refuel or resupply automatically.

It's midway between the two. A ship could have a maintenance failure a day out of the shipyard, but it's very unlikely. Instead, the chances of maintenance failures go up the longer the ship goes without maintenance; the expected maintenance life is an estimate of how long it will take for the ship to deplete its maintenance supplies, compensating for the fact that each year maintenance failures will be more likely. So doubling your ship's maintenance supplies wont double the maintenance life, for example.

[Shooer]

I've never left a ship with conditional orders that didn't have it's own jump drive or have a gate route back.  Never used a series of jump tenders.  That may be your issue, specifically the ship can't find a route because it may not be able to see the jump tenders.

My grav survey ships are usually 6k with their own jump drive.  Rather make them self sufficient on long range exploration then have to wait on gate construction, or sacrifice another jump capable ship to tend to them. 

Geo surveys though run in packs and can wait for gates for systems I don't care about on first inspection.  Systems that could contain a colony though are worth enough to send a jump capable ship to let them into the system.  Being commercial and usually having multiple years worth of fuel means I don't care about abandoning them in a system.