Economic shutdown

[thiosk2]

I grew tired of conquering galaxies with the economic might of the humans or the pleasure palaces of the securans. The answer of course was the boskrans (sp?).

The war machine churned. Two amazing cruisers found orbiting nearby stars formed the sharp arrow of the fleet.

Pirates were annoying, and struck our gas refineries, we fought at first, then sued for peace. And then the economy stopped. Nothing happened. Replacement refineries sat around with constructors buzzing for years. 72 ships waiting in queue. Suddenly, years later after falling behind in the arms race, pop! Ships started going, but those refineries just weren't finishing.

Was this a weird bug, or what? I could understand economic factors freezing ship production, like if you run out of steel of all things, but not constructors simply not doing anything. I started over.

What gives?

[Sirian]

I would suggest your construction ships ran out of resources when constructing your refineries (gas mining stations?) This can happen when you have a material (resource) shortfall, I think the construction ship is then waiting for a freighter to resupply it and that freighter may not come.

In this case you can select the construction ship, order it to move away from the mine and then "repair" the mine. I am sure it will then go to the nearest space port to pick up some material first.

Try to avoid resource shotfalls at all costs. It will stall your empire in the early years enough to fall behind your competitors. Usually in the first years, I have a steel crisis and then a carbon fibre crisis. Stell is quite common and all you have to do is wait or build some more mines) Carbon fibre may be hard to find and I am playing a game at the moment where I had 1 single planet with carbon fibre at first. This planet had to supply all my ship building desires so it took some time. Later I got a second and now I am going across the galaxy to aquire a few more carbon sources.

On the other hand, it is fun to be pressed for resources. Makes the game enjoyable.

Regards, Sirian

[thiosk2]

Must have been that. I didn't think mining bases even actually consumed resources, but I suppose that must be why the ship goes home every new job.

I did set one to repair, and he didn't move either. I colonized too aggressively and didn't get up enough mines before crashing inventory with 20 explorers and 40 ships.

[Sirian]

When colonizing the civilian sector will order around 10 freighters per colony. These ship will be built using your resources, too. When determining numbers I would say 1 source of every resource is enough with the exception of steel and carbon fibre. 4-5 steel seem to be enough at start but I never get enough carbon since it is rather rare.

[Arcatus]

In the resource manager you'll have a list of strategic resources - at the start of the game your first priority should be to get at least one of each though colonization or mining.

Avoid conflict until you have those resources.

Once you run out it can be a mayor pain to get running again - some fancy ship designs might help, but only for a while.

[Star_Eraser]

Try austerity! Put only what's needed in your stations/ships! :p Pretty sure there is a place called Europe in the Sol system that can advise you more about that

[thiosk2]

Ha! In my redo I forgot to mine silicon, and burned right out.

Not as hard of a lockup when I realized the problem, but annoying just the same.