Why won't my private passenger ships retrofit?

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Rumpelstiltskin
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Why won't my private passenger ships retrofit?

Post by Rumpelstiltskin »

I followed Timotheus' guide to start my first game of DW:U (meaning I control everything manually), and eventually realized that my new colonies were hardly growing at all, despite receiving suitable shipments of strategic and luxury resources years earlier.

I realized I probably needed my passenger ships to have hyperdrives and more passenger compartments to allow my newer distant colonies to grow faster. I manually upgraded my passenger ship design to an appropriate Mk2 variant, saved it, then selected all of my private passenger ships in the Ships and Bases menu and ordered them to retrofit to the new design.

Normally, when I do this with bases or other types of private ships, they'll either begin retrofitting immediately, or (as with freighters) they'll queue the retrofit and do it once they've accomplished their current tasks.

The passenger ships did nothing at all. They didn't add anything to their queue, but instead continued to list "Transport Migrants" as their only current task. I tried selecting them individually and ordering them with right-click, but because they're private ships, all I can do is give them away as gifts.

I Googled around a bit, didn't discover much, then decided to wait to see if they'd eventually retrofit. An entire war occurred based on two mutual defense pacts, I subjugated another empire, and much later I finally remembered to check up on my passenger ships.

None of them had retrofit. Two new passenger ships using the updated design had been built by the AI, but the original 12 were still transporting migrants.

At this point, I may resort to scrapping them or giving them away in order to force the private sector to build more, but I'd really like to know what's going on.
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Shogouki
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RE: Why won't my private passenger ships retrofit?

Post by Shogouki »

Are your passenger ships set to automatically retrofit in the design screen?
Rumpelstiltskin
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RE: Why won't my private passenger ships retrofit?

Post by Rumpelstiltskin »

ORIGINAL: Shogouki

Are your passenger ships set to automatically retrofit in the design screen?

I've finished that game (ended up scrapping the obsolete ones after all, worked great), so I loaded up an old save from just after that first war and subjugation I mentioned.

Yes, they are set to automatically retrofit, both the original design and the upgraded design. I can't change that in the drop-down, even when manually upgrading the design. I can select manual retrofit when beginning a totally new private ship design from scratch, though.

My freighters are also set to automatically retrofit, and they still immediately accepted and queued my command to retrofit, much earlier in that game.

I take it from your question you think that having it set on automatic will prevent manual upgrade? I suppose you're probably right, although it's odd because just now I went to the game options, turned on ship design and building automation, made sure both designs were set to automatic retrofit, waited a while... and the passenger ships still hadn't retrofit. I think the Automation Options are for state ships only, but I wanted to be thorough.

In the future, I'll be very careful to set everything to manual from the first designs at the beginning of the game, although the behavior is inconsistent because, as I've said, I was able to manually order the freighters to retrofit, and they obeyed.
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RE: Why won't my private passenger ships retrofit?

Post by Bingeling »

My memory is hazy, but pay attention to the two upgrade and retrofit settings in the design and design list. I believe one of them should say whether the AI should retrofit away from it (automatic upgrade?) and the other is about what happens if you tell a fleet to retrofit (if off the ship won't retrofit in this case).

Even if both are set "correctly" the AI is always free to decide when or if to retrofit. The AI buy, retrofit and retire civilian ships as it see fit. Maybe, deep in the AI methods, the civilian ship AI is poor, does not have much valuable work, and can't afford to retrofit, or something. Or it could be a bug...
Rumpelstiltskin
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RE: Why won't my private passenger ships retrofit?

Post by Rumpelstiltskin »

ORIGINAL: Bingeling

My memory is hazy, but pay attention to the two upgrade and retrofit settings in the design and design list. I believe one of them should say whether the AI should retrofit away from it (automatic upgrade?) and the other is about what happens if you tell a fleet to retrofit (if off the ship won't retrofit in this case).

Even if both are set "correctly" the AI is always free to decide when or if to retrofit. The AI buy, retrofit and retire civilian ships as it see fit. Maybe, deep in the AI methods, the civilian ship AI is poor, does not have much valuable work, and can't afford to retrofit, or something. Or it could be a bug...

I think it might be a bit buggy, yeah, perhaps something to do with the "Transport Migrants" action specifically.

I don't mind the AI having control over the private sector, but when I've got two or three colonies in different star systems and an entire role category of non-FTL private sector ships refuse to upgrade either at my manual command or on their own (and additionally are crawling through deep space on thrusters only), that's a huge problem. Scrapping worked wonders! It cost the private sector a bit more, but then I didn't have to wait for the passenger ships to chug back to a starbase.

It seems to me that the AI keeps SOME old-design private sector ships. I still have some freighters using obsolete designs, for example. This might be for flavor and/or cost savings, and I hope that the the non-FTL guys are sticking to a single system....
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USSAmerica
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RE: Why won't my private passenger ships retrofit?

Post by USSAmerica »

If your initial Passenger Ship designs didn't have FLT drives, it's very possible that they were on their way to another star system with their migrants on board. They may never have been able to arrive at a shipyard to upgrade for the remainder of your game. Take a look at your old save and see where they are located and where they are heading.
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Rumpelstiltskin
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RE: Why won't my private passenger ships retrofit?

Post by Rumpelstiltskin »

ORIGINAL: USSAmerica

If your initial Passenger Ship designs didn't have FLT drives, it's very possible that they were on their way to another star system with their migrants on board. They may never have been able to arrive at a shipyard to upgrade for the remainder of your game. Take a look at your old save and see where they are located and where they are heading.

I checked that yesterday, and indeed, many of them were unfortunately in deep space, no doubt doomed by my inexperience to remain useless for the rest of the game. However, some (presumably recently created) were still in my home system, and they exhibited the same refusal to accept a queued retrofit command.

Passenger ships aren't covered in detail in Timotheus' guide, but the "we're missing a critical private design" pop-up appeared early on and suggested it was vital I create a passenger ship design; still being very new to the game, I created it before having FTL tech and without paying close attention to the Design pane automation settings.

I'm much more experienced now compared to when I began, since I've finished that entire game, although I rushed through it and ignored some finer details. Today I've mostly just been reading the Galactopedia or, when it lacks detail, using a search engine to fill in the gaps.

Thank you all for the advice. I've been playing 4X since the days of MoO/2, SMAC, the early Civs, and all that jazz, plus many (so, so many) that didn't quite live up to the MoO legacy. A few were pretty good (GalCivII for example), but Distant Worlds is the first space 4X to release this century that feels worthy of the MoO mantle in its way, despite some of its flaws. It's been on my Steam wishlist for years now, and I'm very glad I decided to get it (from GOG, since their sale brought it back to my attention).

It's a shame the DW community is so dispersed, but you can only play even great games for but so long before your attention moves elsewhere. That being said, every now and then when the topic of comparing 4X games comes up on some Steam or Internet forum, occasionally DW is mentioned, and always as being superior to the more recent/flashier games like Stellaris and Endless Space 2.
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Retreat1970
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RE: Why won't my private passenger ships retrofit?

Post by Retreat1970 »

I don't think I have ever worried about passenger ships ever. That part of the game is out of my control so I never worry about it. I haven't played in so long maybe I'm wrong.
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OzoneGrif_slith
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RE: Why won't my private passenger ships retrofit?

Post by OzoneGrif_slith »

Passenger ships are free population and money, they are pretty important.
It's not really out of your control since you can trigger immigration with low taxes, high development, and ruins.
It's actually the most peaceful way to steal other Empire's population.
Rumpelstiltskin
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RE: Why won't my private passenger ships retrofit?

Post by Rumpelstiltskin »

ORIGINAL: Retreat1970

I don't think I have ever worried about passenger ships ever. That part of the game is out of my control so I never worry about it. I haven't played in so long maybe I'm wrong.

Well, the problem for me was that my colonies were growing very slowly (at least in my opinion), even once they had received their initial resource dump from freighters and traders and were in the green on happiness with 0% tax. I'm talking like 6-8% growth on 40-50m pop, which to me signaled that there must some problem I wasn't aware of, since it would take the rest of the game to get to a tiny fraction of my homeworld's income and research potential that way.

Large-capacity FTL passenger ships to bring excess pop from my developed worlds seemed like the right answer to me, although I don't imagine migration is factored directly into the actual growth % displayed on the colony info panel.

I noticed later that my smaller new colonies were sporting much higher growth rates than they had been a handful of years earlier. I'm not sure if there's a hidden "newness" penalty that wears off over time on top of the other factors, if luxury/strategic resources increase growth slowly over a period of time (rather than shortly after being delivered), or what.

While we're here, can I stack colony modules to deliver double the initial population, and is there anything else I should do to grow new colonies quickly? I already know I can't drop off colonists on worlds I've already colonized, because while one of my colony ships was on its way to colonize a neutral minor civilization (with a fleet of mine jumping in ahead of it for safety's sake), they decided to join me on their own anyway when my advance fleet arrived in the system. I never canceled the actual colonization command, and shortly after, the colony ship tried to colonize there, and I received a message informing me that I can't double-colonize established colonies.
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Shogouki
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RE: Why won't my private passenger ships retrofit?

Post by Shogouki »

I believe you can stack more than one colony module and increase the number of colonists that they carry. I can't be certain though and unfortunately I'm away from my PC and unable to test this for you.

I think part of the reason that your colonies don't initially grow quickly is that it takes time for the necessary resources and colonists immigrating to get there. As soon as I found a colony I assign a smuggling mission for all resources there as I believe they are needed to increase your colonies development level. And the higher the development level the more desirable the colony, I think at least.

Having a station with recreation and medical facilities (might?) also help.

Oh and low tax rates.
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RE: Why won't my private passenger ships retrofit?

Post by Rumpelstiltskin »

ORIGINAL: Shogouki

I believe you can stack more than one colony module and increase the number of colonists that they carry. I can't be certain though and unfortunately I'm away from my PC and unable to test this for you.

That's all right, it's something I can easily test myself when I have time.

ORIGINAL: Shogouki

I think part of the reason that your colonies don't initially grow quickly is that it takes time for the necessary resources and colonists immigrating to get there. As soon as I found a colony I assign a smuggling mission for all resources there as I believe they are needed to increase your colonies development level. And the higher the development level the more desirable the colony, I think at least.

Having a station with recreation and medical facilities (might?) also help.

Oh and low tax rates.

That's an excellent point, although I remembered reading something about not building too many starports (causes private ships to aimlessly transfer stuff that doesn't really need transferring, or something), so I tried to avoid building too many ports. I suppose I could have built non-port stations and probably should in the future.

As for smuggling missions, I tended to have only 50-100k cash on hand and was leery about setting "all" smuggling missions, but I set them anyway on a couple of my later colonies to get them started. I know DW has the odd, if basically logical, trait of giving the state money when civilians upgrade private ships and bases, but I was as frugal with private designs as I was with my state designs and didn't have any extraordinary racial income or government bonuses, so I never had the hundreds of thousands/millions that some people mention having in their games.
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Shogouki
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RE: Why won't my private passenger ships retrofit?

Post by Shogouki »

Yeah you definitely don't want to build lots of space ports. I try and build a space port over each regional capital but no more. I tend to play very defensively so I build a defence station over every colony which also includes recreation and medical facilities.

I also strive to be an economic powerhouse however even before I can accomplish that I've never had money problems with assigning smuggling missions to each of my new colonies.
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Hattori Hanzo
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RE: Why won't my private passenger ships retrofit?

Post by Hattori Hanzo »

The smuggling resources that the pirates bring to your colonies are always payed by the private sector.

I am absolutely sure of the above statement.

About passenger ships not upgrading you can try to temporary change the ship design to automate and see if the AI design itself a new model of passenger ship and finally upgrade the obsolete ones to the new model.
Rumpelstiltskin
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RE: Why won't my private passenger ships retrofit?

Post by Rumpelstiltskin »

ORIGINAL: Hattori Hanzo

The smuggling resources that the pirates bring to your colonies are always payed by the private sector.

I am absolutely sure of the above statement.

Oh? Well heck, sign me up.

ORIGINAL: Hattori Hanzo

About passenger ships not upgrading you can try to temporary change the ship design to automate and see if the AI design itself a new model of passenger ship and finally upgrade the obsolete ones to the new model.

I did do that (building and design automation checkbox ticked/dropdown selected in game options, designs and retrofitting set to auto), but it didn't seem to make any difference. However, I only waited around but so long to see what would happen, since it was just a test on an old save and I was trying various things.
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RE: Why won't my private passenger ships retrofit?

Post by Aeson »

Oh? Well heck, sign me up.
Be aware that smuggling missions drain money from your private sector into pirate factions' coffers. Rich pirates are strong pirates, and strong pirates are a problem. Furthermore, there has been at least one incident where a player bankrupted their empire's private sector through a too-liberal use of smuggling missions. A bankrupt private sector is a problem; it will not build new ships, upgrade old ones, or replace losses, and it may also scrap existing vessels to try to make ends meet.
Rumpelstiltskin
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RE: Why won't my private passenger ships retrofit?

Post by Rumpelstiltskin »

ORIGINAL: Aeson

Be aware that smuggling missions drain money from your private sector into pirate factions' coffers. Rich pirates are strong pirates, and strong pirates are a problem. Furthermore, there has been at least one incident where a player bankrupted their empire's private sector through a too-liberal use of smuggling missions. A bankrupt private sector is a problem; it will not build new ships, upgrade old ones, or replace losses, and it may also scrap existing vessels to try to make ends meet.

That's really cool, actually.

That reminds me: After thinking it over, I can't quite follow the economic logic of the private sector paying the state for private ships and mining bases and their retrofits. The mining stations are built and owned by the private sector, which means that the resources are rightfully theirs—yet the resources are given away to the state. They have to pay the state for the mining station, and then relinquish all the yield!

That would make sense in a nationalized economy, but then again, in a nationalized economy mineral-harvesting operations wouldn't have to pay the state for the mining station, either. The state would provide the station for them.

Of course it's all abstracted, and the state provides services, facilities, and governance, but it's quite odd.

I guess the real question is: What happens when the state pays credits for its ships? Do those credits vanish from the game, or are they paid to the private sector?
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Hattori Hanzo
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RE: Why won't my private passenger ships retrofit?

Post by Hattori Hanzo »

my smuggling recipe for new colonies is to let them to receive about 30k of resources from smuggling pirates. then I cancel the smuggling mission.

never bankrupted my private sector with the above procedure.

it help greatly the new colonies growth.
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Hattori Hanzo
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RE: Why won't my private passenger ships retrofit?

Post by Hattori Hanzo »

ORIGINAL: Rumpelstiltskin
The mining stations are built and owned by the private sector, which means that the resources are rightfully theirs—yet the resources are given away to the state. They have to pay the state for the mining station, and then relinquish all the yield!

the mining stations are owned by the private sector yes, but are built by the state through his building ships.
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RE: Why won't my private passenger ships retrofit?

Post by Rumpelstiltskin »

ORIGINAL: Hattori Hanzo

the mining stations are owned by the private sector yes, but are built by the state through his building ships.

Yeah, but those construction ships were built entirely with resources harvested by private sector, so we're right back at square one.
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