How to set up supply lines

[thorfrog]

I've been playing this game for the longest time but I didn't realize you could set up supply lines to ships. How do some players do this? I'd like to create a supply ship that picks up fighters from planet A and drops them off to carrier B. Then it goes back to planet A to do it all over again. Is this possible?

[Alneyan]

You would order your ship to go to load fighters (Load Cargo, Fighters) at planet A and drop them (Drop Cargo, Fighters) to the sector where carrier B is. Carrier B will pick up the fighters, and all the other ships/bases/planets with cargo storage will take the remaining fighters if Carrier B doesn't have enough space. In case you are afraid there won't be enough storage space at sector B, you can order your ship to launch all fighters before going back to planet A.

Once you have a working line, you can click on Repeat Orders, and your ship will follow its orders until further notice. However, do give an order of "Load Cargo" before moving your ship away, if it happens to be over planet A. Otherwise, you will have a problem when repeating orders. And if you aren't playing 1.91, make sure your ship has some storage space left before picking up the fighters; otherwise, it may cause a bug resulting in the cancellation of all orders.

[thorfrog]

So guess what I could do is have my fighters automatically mass at planet A. Then the supply ship/Escort carrier would transport them to sector B. This sector might be a planet/starbase/carrier that the ship will drop these off at. They will then filter to the carrier first and then everything else. What happens to excess? Would it dissapear?

[bearclaw]

I do this exact proceedure in nearly all my games. Especially when I'm focusing on using fighters as my main weapons. What I end up with is each system has a dedicated small transport (I usually rename that transport to match the system). I then have it circle and load fighters from all the planets in that system building fighters and drops them off at the largest planet in the system. I also make sure that planet has a resupply base.

Then, I have inter-system transports (mediums) that are also dedicated to specific systems (and rename them to match). All they do is load at the main planet and drop off at the next system's main planet.

Next, I try to locate a planet with 2 moons and make that a Staging Point for whatever frontier it is closest to. That planet/moons will have shipyards/training facilites/cargo facilites. That is where I build my carrier, or at least have auto-goto to there. That is where all my carriers get retrofitted (if needed), trained and loaded. Once set up I end up with a constant stream of fighters arriving faster than I can build carriers for, in a large empire.

Now that 1.91 is avaliable, this relay system is even more effective. If a transport can't drop fighters because the planet is full, it continues on it's way until the next transport can come along to empty it. Takes some setting up but once done, I don't have to worry about it.