Matrix Games Forums

Hi all,

For sure this has been answered before, but I can't find...

When I constrict a mining or gas station, without any fuel, the station begin to produce the resources it has been constructed for.

The question is, how if resources extractors need energy to work?

If they work without fuel/energy... which is the penalty over production capacity. Le me say, if standard production capacity is 100, what will be without energy?

Thanks
Arturo

Yes, I noticed that too.
The mining stations work when you have no energy, as do the habitation modules and the warp drives (albeit at reduced capacity).

So ultimately your mining stations do not NEED fuel or energy, but you will get freighters stopping by on a regular basis to top up the fuel tanks. The stations will burn the fuel for energy, and when it is gone more freighters will come with more fuel. This is a waste of time for the freighters.
I recommend you put energy collectors on the mining stations so they collect enough energy to meet their static energy needs. That way they will never burn fuel and the freighters are free to do more important work.

Energy collectors are important on mining stations, as RemoteLeg mentioned. But fulfilling the static needs of your station is only good when not under attack. That is when the reactors need lots of power to operate shields and weapons. This is when having enough fuel is also important and having a steady freighter supply. Of course, a gas mining station with Hydrogen and Caslon is ideal and self supporting.

As a general rule, energy collectors are far more efficient. You can build a mining station with only 1 fuel tank if you utilize energy collectors, which means far, far less demand on your limited caslon or hydrogen stocks.

Now I wouldn't leave them completely without fuel, since if they are attacked they'll need extra energy to keep any guns you put on them firing and recharge the shields.

Basically it comes down to balancing your needs for efficiency (and thus cost reduction) versus the stations having the ability to defend themselves. On extreme difficulty level, the latter is far more important as you won't really have a large navy due to costs.

Thank you for your kind answers.

However, I ould like to know which is the percentage of production difference between having or not fuel in the station. Anybody know?

Thanks
Arturo

Not sure what you mean by production difference? Once you cap off a station's stores, and it's using solar panels - it has no more draw on fuel stores unless it gets into combat (and survives).

No fuel stores = can't really have much by way of weapons (which will actually fire).

but if it has 10K units of fuel storage, then it'll require an initial 10K units of casium or hyddrogen or whatever.

Sorry for my bad english, but not really what I am asking for.

Let me put an example, the same way speed is reduced because of lack of fuel, what it is production reduction speed in mining stations due to lack of fuel. Something like: if you have fuel it will produce 100% x percentage of resource per time unit and without fuel and energy it will be reduce to XX % x percentage of resource per unit of time.

Arturo

I have never checked, but I would assume it is 0% production without energy. If not, it I would report it as a bug.

Hi Bingeling,

No, it is not 0%, because a mining station without fuel and energy produce resources.

BR
Arturo

I have tested this thoroughly and can state that a mining station with no fuel and energy extracts resources at the same rate as a station with full fuel and energy.
I agree this should not happen, but there it is.

It shouldn't be zero, but it DEFINITELY shouldn't be producing materials at the same rate.

I don't think it should be mining anything.

With no energy the Habitation and Life Support has no power so the crew should be dead.
... even with the crew in stasis they can't work the equipment.
... and what's powering the stasis?

You could argue that the mining equipment is fully automated, but if that's the case why do we need any Life Support at all?

Nope. It makes no sense. [:-]

From a realism standpoint, yes, the station should be dead and useless until "repaired."

From a "we're playing a game and the AI isn't perfect about keeping things stocked up" standpoint it makes sense to treat stations and such as you would ships without fuel; i.e., considerably worse at doing their main thing, but capable enough that you don't have to scrap something if it dares run out of fuel.

Basically, you don't want to completely screw the player over if their gas mining station runs out of fuel in the Pre-Warp stage before collectors are researched.

Fair enough. I agree it makes sense from a gaming point of view.
Any battle that destroyed your reactor would kill the crew unless you could get energy to it fast enough. That would make defensive bases and space ports much more fragile if you could kill one just by damaging its reactor/fuel cells.

Personally, I think it should just stop mining until it gets more fuel.