Freighter Network

[Suicide Junkie]

Dude, you are way overcomplicating it.

It is a simple scrap profit give 20 turns worth of maintenance, so don't build any freighters more than 20 turns away from the scrap facility.

Where 20 is an arbitrary number depending on how you set it up.

[Will]

Yes, you could set it so there is a large number of turns that you have to still turn a profit. It would still be micromanagement I think. For one, part of the strategy of playing a mod like this would be organizing convoys with armed escort, which would take some time, which would need to be accounted for in the distance. Also, when you think about it, you would be paying maintainence for what is essentially a big cargo hold of a resource. Say each Freighter has a 15000 mineral "cargo" component. Then you're paying maintainence on that -- paying resources you already have, for resources that you "have" but can't use yet -- until it gets back to the scrap facility. Essentially, the longer a Freighter would travel, the more resources that would "magically" disappear from the hold.

[Magnum357]

I think I sort of agree with Will, I look at these Freighters as "Civilan" Freighters which would not require your Empire/Military to maintain them as there repective Corperation/Organization would do that for you.

I'm a little confused though why you would need both a Organice type Spaceyard and an Radioactive type space yard to make this work. Could someone please explain why you need to do this to make the Freighter network work right?

[Will]

The problem, as was noted by douglas and originally overlooked by me, is that if you have a facility that has SY abilities of 0/2000/0, it will construct anything (including warships) with zero cost for minerals and radioactives. Having a Mineral Launch Pad (0/2000/1 construction rate) will ensure that it can only effectively build Mineral Freighters. Same for Radioactive Launch Pad (1/2000/0) building only Radioactive Freighters.

[Magnum357]

Ok, I think I understand what you mean. You have to give each "Lauch Pad" shipyard at least 1 point of either Mineral or Radioactive Construction capability otherwise it will construct at no cost. But why do you need BOTH a Mineral Lauch Pad (constuction cost 0/2000/1) and a Radioactive Constuction Pad (Constuction cost 1/2000/0)? Can't you just get by with a Lauch Pad that has a Constuction capability of 1/2000/1?

[Parasite]

You would still need to pay to build the ship right? even if it has a "0" build amount, it means you can build as much as you want, but I think you would still need to pay for it.

So each turn you would spend 10000 * 10 colonies to produce the next round of frieghters when you scrap them you would get 10000 * 10 * 1.1 back. So you would net 10000 minerals from the ten colonies to spend on other things like warships or building more launchpads.

Also the "1" rads able to be built means that the frieghter engines and movement would need to be modded or adjusted somehow. Possibly the bridge and engines could just cost organics, then it is getting better.

[geoschmo]

What he's doing there is taking advantage of the bug where if you mod a construction queue to have a 0 rate in minerals it will build at an infinite rate in minerals and not deduct the minerals from your totals. So the answer to your question is, no, you don't actually pay to build the ship. At least not minerals. In his suggestion you would pay mainly organics and get back minerlas when you scrap it.

[Puke]

interesting, this sort of fits in with the organics based economics model from my old GritTech mod, and the more recent (and actually complete & published) Grit-Econ mod.

Just working off the numbers that you quoted (sure, they can be lowered) I think thats too much profit. Rather than lowering them much, I think it would be better to actually make the empire pay for the mineral cost of the ship. That way, you would have to produce enough resources (could still have a 1 turn build rate) to make it worth building the freighter in the first place.

Also, it may be good if the launch pad generated resources. That way, you would be incented to place a mineral launch pad on a high mineral planet. you would be incended to place a radioactives launch pad on a high radioactives planet.

[geoschmo]

Puke said:
Also, it may be good if the launch pad generated resources. That way, you would be incented to place a mineral launch pad on a high mineral planet. you would be incended to place a radioactives launch pad on a high radioactives planet.

The idea though, as I understood it, was to disassociate resource production from facilities and make it dependant on a steady stream of merchant traffic flowing around the empire.

[douglas]

Say you have mineral freighters that cost 10000/2000/0 to build and 10 colonies with 0/2000/1 mineral Launch Pads building them. Each colony will produce one such freighter per turn at no minerals cost. Each turn, assuming safe routes and after the first freighters from each world have had time to reach the spaceport, you will gain 10000 * 10 * 1.1 = 110000 minerals from scrapping freighters. Assuming resource costs in general are on about the same scale as stock, that's quite a substantial income, especially coming from just 10 planets.

The overall rate of income is per Launch Pad and can be easily scaled simply by changing the build cost of the freighters. In fact, you don't even need a scrap return above 100% at all, since the build cost is never actually paid anyway. It just needs to be sufficiently higher at a Spaceport than at a Launch Pad that it's almost always worth taking the time to send the freighter to the Spaceport before scrapping it. Also, you could have technologies that increase the effectiveness of your Launch Pad-based mining by giving more expensive freighter hulls or components. The extra cost is never actually paid and does not affect build times, so it only affects the gain from scrapping.