Swimming in useless caslon

[Osito]

Every game I seem to face this problem:

I have about 500k of caslon. But there is none of it at my main shipbuilding space port, at my empire capital. There hasn't been any there for years. I haven't built any ships there for years. I haven't refueled any of my own ships there for years.

I have two other shipbuilding spaceports, at my second and third largest planets. One of them also has no caslon. The other has about 200k of caslon, but it lacks other resources it needs to make any ships.

So I'm resigned to building ships, then waiting ages for them all to make their way to somewhere they can refuel at (that's assuming I don't make the mistake of putting them in a fleet before they have been built, then watch them fly half way across the galaxy with no fuel).

Anyone know a solution to this problem (specifically the problem that my capital always runs out of fuel, even though I have tons of it)? I realise it's an alternative to switch to hydrogen, although I don't have fusion yet in my present game. The difficulty is that the problem seems to be related to what the private fleet does, and I can't control that.

Edit: actually the picture is worse than I thought. I lack the resources to make any of my ships at any of my starbases, even though my empire has tens of thousands of every strategic resource. One or more of the important ones is missing from every space port. Personally I'm suspecting my private sector is in league with the pirates.

Osito

[Darkspire]

On prewarp there is normally some in the starting system, should be the same for a normal empire, make caslon the top of your priorities to mine when you have the abilityand a constructor, I equip my Mk0 constructors on prewarp with a resource sensor so they do not need a scout to find the resource, it is normally on an orange or a whiteish gas giant, slight risk there wont be any but with also making an increase to the range on the sensor by making that the first thing to research in hightech it means you can see if there is by keeping an eye on the planets in the system, if there is not just turn it round and try another. I would say 8 times out of 10 I manage to get it right for where the Caslon is, next thing would be steel, lead, gold, iridium then carbon fiber, aculon and nekros stone.
Just ensure that the first thing in every system you colonize that the first mine is for caslon (if available, if not have a look on the Galaxy map for the closest caslon and build a mine there), most of the time hydrogen is on the same planet, build a chain of fuel mines across your systems.

Darkspire

[Osito]

I should have mentioned that although this is a pre-warp start, I'm a couple of decades in. I have tons of Caslon, it's just that literally none of it is in the right place. I'm mining it on several planets in my capital's system, but the private sector has moved it elsewhere - primarily to places with no ship building facilities, it seems.

[Zangi]

How is your private sector doing financially? Do you have any freighters buzzing around? They should be ferrying the Caslon from the mining stations.

A solution may be to build a bunch of freighters yourself?

[Osito]

ORIGINAL: Zangi

How is your private sector doing financially? Do you have any freighters buzzing around? They should be ferrying the Caslon from the mining stations.

A solution may be to build a bunch of freighters yourself?

Private sector had about 5 million in the bank. I'm beginning to wonder if the problem is that I expanded too rapidly, and all my cargo is being ferried elsewhere. I still don't have a good feel for how many colonies you need, so I do tend to grab them quite a lot in the early stages.

[Darkspire]

ORIGINAL: Osito

ORIGINAL: Zangi

How is your private sector doing financially? Do you have any freighters buzzing around? They should be ferrying the Caslon from the mining stations.

A solution may be to build a bunch of freighters yourself?

Private sector had about 5 million in the bank. I'm beginning to wonder if the problem is that I expanded too rapidly, and all my cargo is being ferried elsewhere. I still don't have a good feel for how many colonies you need, so I do tend to grab them quite a lot in the early stages.

That would be the problem, I operate 5 constructors and make sure each system has a caslon mine in, or near it, before colonizing another, try to ensure that caslon, steel, lead, iridium and gold are mined before getting another system going, a few more games and you will learn to judge it, we all did the same when we first started playing. I used to be a very active GalCiv I+II player so when I got DW I was doing the 'colony rush' and got the same problems, still happens that you end up short but in Shadows it is nowhere near as bad as you used to end up.

Darkspire

[Darkspire]

ORIGINAL: Zangi

How is your private sector doing financially? Do you have any freighters buzzing around? They should be ferrying the Caslon from the mining stations.

A solution may be to build a bunch of freighters yourself?

A prewarp empire can not build freighters, pirates can [;)]

Darkspire

[Kayoz]

ORIGINAL: Darkspire
A prewarp empire can not build freighters, pirates can [;)]

Care to verify that statement? I'm absolutely sure you're wrong - but maybe you'd like to test it yourself.

[Darkspire]

ORIGINAL: Kayoz

ORIGINAL: Darkspire
A prewarp empire can not build freighters, pirates can [;)]

Care to verify that statement? I'm absolutely sure you're wrong - but maybe you'd like to test it yourself.

Test it?? Ive been testing it for months [:D]

Prewarp empires are the same as normal empires, only difference is that they start with no facilities and a very limited selection of tech and obviously no warp capability and like normal empires in Shadows they do not have the ability to build freighters. Pirates on the other hand can build freighters at there SP's. The image below is from a prewarp empire, it shows the planet construction menu (no freighters and having checked all the tabs for a planet in the construction menu there is no button for building them on those tabs either) and the SP ship build menu (guess what? no freighters). On the SP menu you have buttons for retrofitting the SP, assigning a smuggling mission for the planet to pirates, managing fighters, and building ships but sadly for you not one for building freighters. I also had a quick search in the manual as well for 'freighters' and there is no mention of them being able to be built at prewarp / normal SP's, nor is there any mention of them being able to be built at pirate SP's, so the manual is not to informative on the subject, well not from my cursory glance anyway.

Darkspire

[Kayoz]

ORIGINAL: Darkspire
Test it?? Ive been testing it for months [:D]

Indeed? Months?

ORIGINAL: Darkspire
...they start with no facilities and a very limited selection of tech and obviously no warp capability and like normal empires in Shadows they do not have the ability to build freighters.

That's truly amazing. Because I started a pre-warp empire in Shadows and as soon as my space port is done and I have a mine churning out stuff - out pops a freighter. Still no warp. In fact, the ruins that require them haven't been explored.

ORIGINAL: Darkspire
The image below is from a prewarp empire, it shows the planet construction menu (no freighters and having checked all the tabs for a planet in the construction menu there is no button for building them on those tabs either) and the SP ship build menu (guess what? no freighters).

Non-pirate factions (that is, empires) do not control the building of freighters. That is automated. The player of an empire cannot order freighter construction. The construction of freighters is ordered by the civilian sector. This is entirely as designed. Playing a non-pirate, one also does not see options for constructing passenger ships, mining ships nor gas mining ships. These are all civilian ships and not under the control of the player.

ORIGINAL: Darkspire
I also had a quick search in the manual as well for 'freighters' and there is no mention of them being able to be built at prewarp / normal SP's, nor is there any mention of them being able to be built at pirate SP's, so the manual is not to informative on the subject, well not from my cursory glance anyway.

Indeed? How about this quote from p.66 of the manual -

ORIGINAL: manual
Freighters work for the player even though they are privately owned. All transportation of goods is done privately.

Note the term "privately owned". Their construction is not ordered by the non-pirate player. They cannot be controlled by the player (pirate or not). Seems pretty clear to me.

Months of testing this, you say?

[Darkspire]

The quote I originally replied to:

ORIGINAL: Zangi

How is your private sector doing financially? Do you have any freighters buzzing around? They should be ferrying the Caslon from the mining stations.

A solution may be to build a bunch of freighters yourself?

The words 'A solution may be to build a bunch of freighters yourself?' unless incorrectly worded this would mean the poster is indicating that freighters can be built by ordering them yourself from a construction or build menu, like ordering a new explorer class ship to be built. Freighters can not be manually ordered and built in a prewarp or normal empire game, only in a pirate empire can freighters be ordered to be built manually, they are built automatically on the orders of the private sector as you have so vigorously and needlessly pointed out, honestly Kayoz do you think I do not know how and when freighters are built having played this game for over two years?

Indeed? Months?

I am on the beta team, so yes months [:D]

Darkspire

[Kayoz]

ORIGINAL: Darkspire
The words 'A solution may be to build a bunch of freighters yourself?' unless incorrectly worded this would mean the poster is indicating that freighters can be built by ordering them yourself from a construction or build menu, like ordering a new explorer class ship to be built.

You wrote, "...prewarp empire can not build freighters" - this is incorrect. Whether they are built manually or automatically is irrelevant. Yes, his statement was incorrect - but so was yours.

ORIGINAL: Darkspire
I am on the beta team, so yes months [:D]

Given the quality of the release, I wouldn't hold that up as a point of pride.

[Darkspire]

Kayoz 1 Darkspire 0 [:D]

Was not meant just as a statement of pride, just a fact that I have been testing for months.

Darkspire

[Kayoz]

It was an unwarranted cheap-shot. I do apologize.

[Darkspire]

ORIGINAL: Kayoz

It was an unwarranted cheap-shot. I do apologize.

No it was my mistake, I should have been more precise in wording my original reply.

'A Shadows player in a prewarp or normal empire can not order and build freighters from a SP build menu, only the private sector has the ability to build freighters for these types of empires. Pirates in Shadows are the only type of empire that allow players to manually order and build freighters from a SP build menu.'

Plus the fact after all these years I should know better than to take you on in word fisticuffs without very carefully reading what I have written first [:D]

Darkspire

Size Matters [X(]

[Plant]

Strange, my starting starport never seem to have any shortages problem. Where are the other 300k Caslon?

[turtlefang]

You can check a few things:

1) Do you have a gas mining station in your home system?
2) Does the private sector have any gas mining ships?
3) Are any freighters around you home space port delivering supplies? If you don't have any freighters around these spaceports, you have one of two problems (see 6 below or 8 below). You home world should be a primary trade point simply due to population size - so you should be seeing freighters in the area.
4) Check for pirates in the area. A base or a few ships will keep freighters away.
5) Do you have any free trade agreements? These maybe siphoning off your fuel from your spaceports.
6) Check for a hidden pirate base on the home planet. Unlikely, but it could happen. If so, build troops.
7) Double the number of gas mining stations you have by building more to increase the amount of fuel you have coming in - don't know your fleet size so 500K maybe a lot or little in comparison. Remember, you have to provide fuel for the private fleet as well as the military fleet too.
8) Are you losing a lot of freighters? If you are losing a lot of freighters, this can create an imbalance in resources as they get rebuilt and get back into the pipeline.

If your seeing a lot of freighters around these spaceports, then check their refueling status. If they have fuel, you have a fuel shortage problem in the empire and need more gas mining stations. If they are short of fuel, I'm at a loss.

Worse case, build a pair of resupply ships and fuel from them in those two systems.

The private sector not that great on distributing resources but fuel & LUX are usually pretty well distributed. It is not that usual to see shortages on these items if they are available without some underlying reason.

[DeadlyShoe]

I've experienced this as well. Later in the game, my starting spaceport has no Caslon and indeed freighters are very thin on the ground. Most private ships going tomy spaceport are Passenger vessels, and most of the freighters are transporting luxury goods!

In my case

1.) Yes. In fact, every ship built jumped to a particular gas mining station to be fueled after construction. It never ran short. It was actually kind of cool having a gas giant be an assembly area

2.) There are many idle gas mining ships, despite resource shortages. (In fact, I suspect gas mining ships are a little bugged, they are never as busy as regular mining ships.)

3.) No, there's clearly a freighter problem.

4.) Pirates are not a problem.

5.) I have free trade agreements, but the problem is lack of fuel being shipped in rather than fuel being used up. It literally hasn't had fuel in a decade.

6.) No base, or other pirate issues

7.) There's no shortage of gas stockpiles and income, according to the expansion planner.

8.) Freighter losses are very low and private sector cash is in the millions.

The problem is not in the progression of my empire, it's in how freighters are being managed or perhaps not enough are being built for late game empires.

I do have a suspicion that it might be related to station retrofits. I'm experiencing constant resource shortage warnings from stations that need additional resources to retrofit. This is not because of resource shortages, but rather because the stations wern't storing enough on hand to retrofit, or had used up their supplies after chain retrofits. Thus, increasing numbers of stations actually worsens the problems.

[Bingeling]

Osito. When you see something that is obviously wrong, like this. It never hurts to drop a post at the Tech forum and upload the savegame to the ftp server. If what you say is indeed happening, it is an obvious flaw in the freighter logic that should be sorted out. And that is probably easier if supplied with a savegame having the "bug".

As for the problem, I think there is something fishy in your game, I have not had these kinds of issues in my Shadows games. I make sure to build caslon mines all over the empire, and in particular every spot close to the capital. But I doubt lack of mines is your problem.

[Osito]

Thanks for the feedback, everyone.

Bingeling, I would feed this to tech support, if I felt that it was a "tech" problem rather than a "player:me" problem. At present, I'm not sure; I think it's probably me. I also think that Turtlefangs's suggestions might help. For example:

"5) Do you have any free trade agreements? These maybe siphoning off your fuel from your spaceports."

The answer is, yes I do have free trade agreements, but I hadn't realised they would have this effect.

So I'll keep playing around with it, and see whether I can find a solution, but, as I said, I appreciate everyone's input.

Osito