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[ductape]

yes, the zoom is smooth

[forsaken1111]

Zoom is much smoother than before, yes.

[Paul]

In my latest game I seem to be having a serious problem with my civilian's transportation system.

90% of my transport ships are way out in the ass end of nowhere apparently attempting to trade with some other race across the map (most of whom I don't even have a free trade agreement with), and almost all of them are limping around with no fuel.

The few ships I do have in my space are hauling luxury goods from place to place, although looking at the amounts apparently all my civilians are freaking retarded. For instance, a large transport ship just hauled 50 resources from point A to point B a huge way away, and 50% of the trip it was out of fuel - so it spent probably 10 minutes hauling 50 resources, when the base itself had 25,000 resources, and the target it was flying to quickly used up the 50 and needed more shortly thereafter.

The fuel problem seems to come not from a shortage of fuel, but from nobody actually bringing the fuel from my mining stations to my space ports. I checked, every single station mining caslon and hydrogen have completely full cargo bays - yet half my space ports and planets have no fuel.

The civilian sector is quickly losing money because they have about 300 cargo ships and I have lots of mining stations so they're paying lots of money, but aren't getting crap for income because all my colonies have really low development due to not getting their goods. My homeworld at one time was 160 development from loros fruit and spice (I control both which are actually a very short distance from the homeworld), but now nobody ever brings either to the homeworld. The three ships that I see trying to transport spice are shipping a few hundred at a time to OTHER empires and none at all to my own. I unchecked trade with all other empires and after 6 months I still have no spice or fruit at my homeworld, although a couple border colonies received large transports loaded with a whopping 50 units of one or the other (the spice and loros fruit mining bases are big, each currently has 50,000 in stock).

I used cheat mode to add 200 small freighters and 1 year later now I have even more ships limping around out of fuel and even more ships trying to fly across the galaxy to trade 50 units of dantha fur to the ackdarians (but failing, since they have no fuel). Nothing has improved. I just don't get it. WTF?

[MrWiggles]

It sounds like the AI has taken up permeant residence in Dipshit town, and running for mayor.

Have you tried hitting up the dever forums?

[Paul]

I made a similar post there a few minutes ago. I'm really hoping for a response along the lines of "Oops, AI gitch, will be fixed in the next patch." since currently the game is nigh unplayable due to this mess. Anyone else having this problem, or is it limited to me? I have to use resupply ships just to keep my fleets refueled (that or send them to a gas mining station), because none of my ports ever have enough fuel to refuel more than 1 or 2 ships. Using the refuel at nearest order always ends in them flying there and refueling 2 ships and my when I need the fleet I have 2 ships ready to go and 18 sitting there with no fuel.

Looking at my other game save I had the exact same problem there too but didn't notice it since I wasn't paying attention to my resources and was on cluster map where I was using resupply ships anyway since the clusters were so far apart and all my military action was in the enemy cluster.

-edit- Reading their forums apparently im not the only one having this issue. I see a few other similar posts.
The problem is that ships just don't move enough of a resource at one time. My ships with 20k cargo holds are just a waste since they only transport 200 at a time. I watched one of my major fuel mining stations (mining caslon and hydrogen) for a while to see what ships came there. Turned out there was a constant stream of ships coming and going, the only problem is they were all only picking up 200-500 at a time - and since they're old designs from the start of the game they are guzzling down more fuel than they are transporting, so by the time they deliver their fuel they immediately refuel and take it all back.

[ductape]

the dev team has been really good in the past with fixing things up, they will certainly get it ironed out soon.

[forsaken1111]

Yeah, I really think the shipping could be tweaked but honestly the game is not "nigh unplayable" in the slightest. I have played and completed several games both with and without the expansion.

The biggest annoyance to me is that the troop loading orders are a bit borked right now, requiring me to manually give them orders to load troops individually as a fleet 'load troops' order has half of them warping to colonies halfway across the map.

[Paul]

Maybe its something im doing making it worse, but I can't ever refuel my ships and my economy is in the crapper because my ships fail to transport anything. Even the system with the korobbian spice has 2 planets that ships absolutely WILL NOT transport spice to. If a ship would just show up and do the job it could transport spice to these worlds in seconds, but instead they fly across the map to some colony on the ass end of nowhere belonging to a race I just met with a load of 50 spice.

This has happened on 4 games so far now. As soon as I get the galaxy explored and a decent chunk of space colonized my transportation network goes to shit and nothing gets transported anymore. When I'm still small and aren't trading with any AIs my crappy artificial stupidity traders can limp along 200 cargo at a time and keep things afloat, but as soon as they're trying to trade with a dozen other alien races across the map it gets to the point that tiny loads of 200 caslon 10 sectors away just doesn't cut it for keeping my ships refueled, ending up with all my transports out of fuel - ending up with an even worse transport problem.

Now if I start with max technology and a bunch of super fast highly efficient and high fuel storage freighters things work out a bit better, since they can warp around much faster and use less fuel doing so (thus the 200 hydrogen they haul might actually refuel them and leave a bit left over after they fly 10 sectors to deliver it). But with a slow research game and everyone having slow ships with inefficient engines and hyperdrives they just can't keep up with demand when they're only hauling a few hundred at a time.

Maybe I need to change my setup, but my current games ARE nigh unplayable. Setup is this: Human democracy, 400 stars, starting research, irregular galaxy (evenly distributed stars). As soon as I explore the map my ships fan out everywhere, run out of fuel, and transportation grinds to a halt to the point that I can't even build stations (my automated construction ships pick up half the resources then sit there attempting to build a base for 5 years without the materials, my shipyards stall and never get any ships built).

For instance, I was building a fleet of ships to bombard an enemy planet (lots of bombard weapons) and my shipyard was out of iridium. Instead of a single ship grabbing thousands of iridium (a station 1 sector away is sitting there with 15,000 of it) and loading the station up good so it can finish them all, I have to wait 5 years (not exaggerating here) for a dozen out of fuel ships to slowly bring it in 50 at a time. If I could build military cargo transports I could have just said "Transport 10k iridium to that planet" and had it done in a month with loads to spare for later.


Maybe my problem is building too many space ports? I built one on every system. I guess I'll try a game with just one big space port over my home planet, maybe if I can get them to focus on delivering bulk stuff to that one space port they can keep it stocked up enough that I can actually build ships.

It's not just my empire though, I can sit here and watch the AI traders doing the same thing and all their planets are out of fuel too. For instance, the Securans near me have a large space port in the same system as a hydrogen mining station, yet attempting to refuel ships there fails because their space port is out of hydrogen. I can refuel at the mining station, its just nobody will transport the stuff.


I'm assuming a denser galaxy shape might work better? like spiral? I didn't like any of those maps (seemed wrong to have a whole spiral galaxy with only 400 stars in it), but I'm thinking the closer together stars might ease the transportation problem...

[forsaken1111]

Interesting, I haven't encountered that before. I have noticed freighters shipping smaller amounts than they can hold. You said they are shipping spice to someone else? They should only be doing that if you have it set to trade your rare resources with that race (diplomacy screen). In any case, shipping is directly controlled by demand, so if the aliens have a super high demand for the stuff it might do that. I guess the best you can do is improve the freighter design (smaller more fuel efficient design?) I dunno. In the expansion there are fuel-efficient engine branches you could research.

[Paul]

I've researched better designs, but 90% of my freighters are the old slow design that they built early in the game before I researched better stuff. And theres no way to get them to retrofit to the new ones.

The spice was just an example, they were trading 50 to a neighbor that I allow them to trade with but never deliver it to any of my colonies. Setting them all to not trade didn't help, though - after several years I still didn't get any transported to my colonies. I assume since they were so busy trading other stuff since all my colonies had shortages of every luxury and everything had shortages of fuel. The problem was they only transported minute amounts of it. I'm not sure why it was doing it.

I literally watched a ship transport 200 caslon like 5 sectors and then immediately refuel, taking all the caslon back.

[forsaken1111]

I'm not denying the problem, I have seen the same thing happen. Sometimes, for some reason, the distribution just gets entirely borked. Its been reported on the forum, and not everyone is experiencing the same thing, but I can only assume they're looking into it.

[Brons]

I've put some hours into this game but I was wondering how you guys do planetary invasions. I'm not sure what I'm doing wrong but it takes forever to build up troops. In a few games I've obliterated my enemies fleet and bases several times but I can't find the troops to invade his 100 colonies. I know that invading the homeworld is a known trick but I doubt I can invade it, and hold it.

Also, is there a way to prevent troop transports from automatically picking up troops? Very annoying. I'm playing 1.0.6.

[Paul]

Automated ships with troop bays automatically pick up troops if they are set to automate. Only way to keep them from doing it would be to turn off their automation.

In RotS you can turn off automatic automation for built ships, but in 1.0.6 you'll have to go to each one after they're built and give them an order (or press S for stop) to get the automation off.

It takes time to recruit troops, so you really have to build up your invasion force in advance. If I'm planning to invade an enemy homeworld I'll recruit 20-30 troops on my homeworld before I even start thinking about declaring war. Once the troops are fully recruited then you can build troop transports and load them up. My strategy for troops is to manage them completely and only build them on the homeworld, that way I can keep them centralized and won't lose them a few at a time if an enemy invades border colonies. If they're invading they'll usually bring a bunch of troops anyway, so the 1 or 2 default on colonies doesn't help much anyway. The only way it would deter them is if you built like 8 on every single colony, but thats too much maintenance unless you have a race with very cheap troops. Plus when I'm ready to invade its a one stop pickup for my troop transport fleet. The only other planets I build troops at are really important ones, like the ones with nice ruin bonuses or the ones with extremely rare resources (like korabban spice).

One thing that might be getting you is by default the destroyer designs have room for 1 troop each. If you have a bunch of destroyers patrolling around they'll automatically keep a troop onboard, which can be a real waste - especially if they're just fighting pirates. I always redesign my destroyers (and all other military ships) to remove the troop bays. I don't want to be losing troops while I'm fighting their fleets, I send in the valuable troops only when I'm intent on invading the planet - and usually after all their fleet is clear, unless they have a bigger fleet and I need to just rush the planet (which I've done before using very fast troop transports with heavy shielding and no guns). Plus its kinda dumb to be paying maintenance on a troop that isn't protecting my colony or preparing to invade an enemy colony - if they had boarding and troop battles on ships it might make sense to include them in larger warships, but as-is its just a waste of space and money.





On an unrelated note, I found a crazy way to beat the game, even if the initial odds are way stacked against you. Just be peaceful with everyone and plant as many colonies as you can, setting tax rates to 0 on all of them and trading your territory map with all the neighboring empires. Build a tiny port on each world with nothing but the medical and recreation facilities to make people super happy. Make sure your shipyards are clear to build lots of passenger ships. All the other empire's civilians, even the ones from empires that hate your guts, will flock to your happy tax free colonies. At the start I had half of everyone elses population. After a while my population was five times everyone elses and I had bonuses from a dozen races.

[forsaken1111]

If you don't leave the troop transports on automate they won't pick up troops on their own. I don't see why this is a problem though, didn't you want to use the troops to invade?

In the expansion there is a planetary facility which lets you build robotic troops, they have less strength but build much faster.

[Sir Pseudonymous]

If you don't leave the troop transports on automate they won't pick up troops on their own. I don't see why this is a problem though, didn't you want to use the troops to invade?

The problem is the extraneous troop bays the default destroyers and capships have. You only want fast, heavily shielded blockade runners loaded with troops, so you don't have to bother clearing the fleet and starport from your target planet.