Cargo bay / resupply ship weirdness

[jacozilla]

The amount of mined fuel my resupply ship can hold is really weird, and confusing.
*note this is before I learned I can make them to max base size, so cargo numbers below are small - point is not how big they can get, but why the numbers don't match up?

TL-DR = My maximum stored hydrogen/caslon on resupply ship cargo bay is LESS than the total max cargo bay size


This is really weird because up till now, I saw cargo as either same max for dry goods like parts, more than cargo bay max for things like mining stations and gas (maybe some kinda volume thing), or in very special case of planet based stations - infinite cargo as they share capacity with planet.

So, let's just talk about what I thought would be apples to apples comparison -->
Resupply ship parked on exact same gas giant as gas mining station

1 - Mining station: cargo bay max = 13k
Still mining away at 17k+ caslon, 16.5k+ hydrogen in cargo, getting close to triple stated value - unsure where it stops as station keeps chugging away

*Conclusion = mining stations can hold heck of a lot more gas units than what the max cargo bay 'size' says. Ok, so far so good.

2 - Resupply ship: cargo bay max = 5850
Stops mining at max stored = 4520 max caslon / hydrogen

**Conclusion = resupply ships don't even have a 1:1 ratio between stated cargo max and actual gas cargo stored, unlike mining stations which have at minimum 257% the stated max and keeps going - so maybe it's 1:3 or infinite for all I know. Watched as long as I could stand, and little mining station just kept on going.

Ok - so now that I know resupply ships are like colony / constructors and can be built to max base when not at colony size, not just ship size, I will make mine bigger and stuff a ton more cargo bays in.

But even my mid game fleet of say 20 ships is taking 10k hydrogen units to refuel all ships. I can certainly add a ton more cargo bays now to accommodate that, but what I'm mostly confused about is why resupply ships have less than a 1:1 ratio of gas cargo storage vs cargo bay rating? Especially when mining stations, which seem to be immobile resupply ship analogy, over exact same position and gas giant I tested my resupply ship on, can hold a whopping ton more - at minimum ~2.5x more than stated cargo bay rating.

Anyone know what the cargo bay rating vs actual stored mechanic is?

And in particular, why resupply ships seem to be crippled / handicapped with LESS than the cargo bay rating when everything else is at minimum 1:1. lot more than 1:1, or infinite in case of planet side bases.

-edit: I found a gas mining station that currently holds 51k+ hydrogen/helium combined. That is now more than 400% of cargo bay max rating. Resupply ship seems to be barely ~77% of cargo bay max rating

[jacozilla]

Another thought puzzler re: resupply ships -

1 - How do I get rid of cargo I don't want? (just taking up space)

When I first build resupply ships, I like to have both caslon and hydrogen in cargo. So far so good.
When resupply ships are retrofitted, nothing is lost or transferred from cargo to planet - also good I suppose, it would suck to have to re-harvest lot of fuel if you had lot on board before retrofit
FAIK, private ships never-ever dock or transfer stuff from resupply ships. Only military ships - either your own manual control or automated will come to your refuel periodically

But because nothing is lost or transferred, the only way to ever get anything out of your cargo is via fuel transfer. Now, if I were dumb and built say a luxury extractor into the ship, then I'd be stuck with all that cargo, but I can live with that because like I said, that is poor design and up to me to get into that mess.

But by using a gas extractor, the resupply ship will hoover up anything that is gas when parked over a gas giant, and many gas giants are combo resources - caslon, hydrogen, the less common batch of other gases like He, Ar, Kr, etc.

So once your max cargo bay (which already has issue above in my OP), starts to get used with these extraneous gases - and I include caslon in that because at some point the higher tech engines switch over to Hydrogen. I suppose you can stick with caslon all the way to end of quantum mastery but that lacks a lot of energy production the fusion lines gives, and at end line, advanced fusion balance, there is no option - it's hydrogen.

So point is, at some point caslon becomes a non-used option for your military, it's all hydrogen. And since even if I stayed caslon with my civilian designs, they never dock with resupply ship, I have this ever growing mound of caslon taking up cargo space.

Essentially, the above OP I posted re; cargo being much smaller for gas on resupply cargo bays, is further compounded by fact that over time, your effective military fuel cargo capacity gets cut by another ~50% unless you somehow painstakingly pick out and never, ever deploy over any gas giant that is not hydrogen/caslon combo, but just hydrogen.

So long post short - how the heck do I get any cargo, and specifically the extra caslon I am buildig up in my resupply ships, out of the cargo bays? Short of retiring the ship and starting over again with new ship - which then starts the eroding of the cargo capacity for hydrogen all over again as it fills up with non-hydrogen.

[Bingeling]

I have never tried luxury or normal mining stuff on resupply ships, it could mess up stuff, but I would be surprised if it did.

Resupply ships only mine hydrogen and caslon, and it will try to balance to 50% of each. So if you park a 100% hydrogen ship on a mixed caslon/hydrogen source, you will end up with 50% of each. It gets rid of the extra hydrogen. And if the source also have other gases, they will not be mined.

I believe civilians only refuel on bases with commerce center, although I am not quite sure if mines got them. I know that I in the past have built a star base without commerce center and it acted as a stationary resupply ship, only the military used it. I added commerce center and freighters started picking up stuff there.

I assume that all state ships can use a resupply ship (colony, construction, exploration), but I have not tested this.

[jacozilla]

Oh ok, so long as I keep it deployed, it eventually balances out the H / Cas ration to 50% of each?

Thanks, good to know. So at least that's one problem solved re: being able to fill up with my fuel of choice even if cargo is full of the other stuff.

Any thoughts on why the total gas cargo able to be loaded seems less than the cargo bay capacity? I don't mind it isn't like mining stations where it's super large, but it seems odd I can hold less than what the cargo capacity says given the only example for gases is the reverse (e.g. mining stations).

I'm trying to design resupply ships to basically fill up 2 fleets completely from near empty, and that means like 20k fuel units minimum. At the current 77% ratio I saw with my small test resupply ship, I'd have to design one with ~52k cargo capacity just to get 50% or ~26k hydrogen which then gets reduced ~77% to about 20k of actual stored hydrogen. Which would refill 2 combat fleets of 20 with 500 fuel unit designs.

Logistics of this game is pretty impressive. Just wish I knew the underlying mechanics like this odd behavior more clearly

[Bingeling]

I have never noticed that problem, but I have not paid much attention.

Have a look at freighters and see if you see signs of them picking up full capacity. Or mining ships?

An issue with freighters at least, is that they rarely run full anyways.

[CaptainChiffre]

There has been some reasearch on cargo capacity (and i can't post the link^^)
Go to the "Guide of the Guides MkII" It's a sticky) one of these guides is called "Cargo Capacity" quite obvious isn't it

Although it's Shadows, so not shure if these rules still apply.
And i think he didn't test resupply ship, so i don't know if they follow the same rules as normal freighters.
But they SHOULD get the cargo you gave them. I don't know why yours don't get it.
Maybe a bug or some other factor (is there a race trait thing that lowers cargo?)