Order Questions

[vape]

Hi Davin

Great game, playing solo now. Working out my Economic chain.

I have a question with the Unload (and load) order, 

UNLOAD [Ship ID] [Quantity] [Item] [Quantity] [Item]

What happens if [Ship ID] is a flagship for the fleet, can it load/unload all the cargo bays in the fleet?

So I have 3 freighters

FX  1001, 1002, 1003 consist /;;10/20-1

1002, 1003 joined to 1001

Can put it as one order -

UNLOAD 1001 27 PV

or do I have to put it as 3 separate orders

UNLOAD 1001 10 PV
UNLOAD 1002 10 PV
UNLOAD 1003 7 PV

I need to put this unload order to change it from a SHUTTLE order to a DEVELOP and its currently in a Production system.

Thanks

vape

[Davin]

Yes, indeed!  LOAD and UNLOAD work on fleets.  Unload, of course, can only unload what is already there. But if you load a fleet, it will fill up each ship to capacity before moving on to the next one, so you can't use it to put only 10 PI each in a fleet of 30-bay cargo ships.

[Davin]

BTW, if you get to the point where you have a large attack fleet that uses lots of missiles then you'll probably want to carry plenty of reloads with you, and that usually means a whole flock of individual cargo ships in your fleet that you'd load at once with a single command.  Reloading the warships' missile bays after combat from this group supply is also a fleet-based order.

[vape]

Hmm My develops failed. Did I get them in the wrong order? Should have been join then Unload then Develop?

 9.  Develop  1028  72-39 ***
     Insufficient cargo bays to carry required PI.
10.  Develop  1033  78-23 ***
     Insufficient cargo bays to carry required PI.
11.  Develop  1030  79-21 ***
     Insufficient cargo bays to carry required PI.
12.  Develop  1036  74-25 ***
     Insufficient cargo bays to carry required PI.
13.  Develop  1074  76-28 ***
     Insufficient cargo bays to carry required PI.
14.  Develop  1077  97-43 ***
     Insufficient cargo bays to carry required PI.
18.  Join  1036  1072 Ok
19.  Join  1028  1073 Ok
20.  Join  1074  1075 Ok
21.  Join  1074  1076 Ok
22.  Join  1077  1078 Ok
23.  Join  1077  1079 Ok
24.  Join  1080  1081 Ok
25.  Join  1032  1034 Ok
26.  Join  1037  1053 Ok
27.  Join  1039  1052 Ok
28.  Join  1068  1038 Ok
40.  Unload  1036  20  PV Ok
41.  Unload  1028  20  PV Ok
42.  Unload  1033  20  PV Ok
43.  Unload  1030  20  PV Ok
44.  Unload  1038  4  PV

Those freighter groups have 30 cargo spaces.

1028 FX Freighter /;;10/20-1 2S Shuttle 91-34
Also in fleet: #1043, #1073
Shuttle route: 91-34, 72-39

[Davin]

Correct -- Join, then Unload, then Develop.  All these operations prior to actually moving the ships are done in the order they are encountered.  So first you make sure they're treated as a unit, then make sure they're empty, then load the PI necessary to carry out the Develop orders.

If you'd like more detail about the order in which things happen in a turn, check out my article on turn sequence on p18 of S&D issue #14 (or the copy on my web site).

[vape]

Does the Assistant - sort actions sort the orders in the correct order? If I run that before submitting would I be safe?

[Davin]

Actually, it does.  If you really need to do something weird that doesn't make very much sense (e.g. load something, then unload it, then load something different), then fix the ordering to be what you need after you use the sorting facility.  But I've never seen the auto-sort get things out of order for any typical play that I've run across.

[Davin]

Hi there!  How's your game going?

I thought I'd offer up a little advice...  Making lots of production centers increases your productivity, but strategically it also (a) makes your empire harder to defend, and (b) makes it harder to build large warfleets.

You've apparently downloaded GTac, too.  Have you had a chance to play with much of it yet?

[vape]

Yeah I downloaded GTac.

I mainly use it for validating/sorting orders and designing ships.

I looked at the maps etc, but found a spreadsheet with exact distances between PCs/Home more useful economically. In a war scenario that may be different.

Thanks for the tip.

I'm considering either downgrading some of my production systems back to colonies after I go tech 2, yeah it produces more *raw* PI, but not much usable PI unless I want to spend all the little bits on research, and employing a more hub and spoke system.

Is there any issues keeping fleets in deep space in between two production systems/home systems so they are both within 1 turn movement?

[Davin]

I'm glad you're finding GTac of some use!  Have you tried double-clicking on a star on the map?  It shows you a lot of information about the star, including exact distances to everywhere else.  It also shows a history of everything that's ever happened at that location, a list of ships located there, and another list of ships that can reach there in one turn (based on the speed of each ship).  On either list of ships, you can right-click a ship and issue it an order directly from the map.

Of course, an overview of where all your ships and stars are located in visual 2-D is handy, especially when you're managing war fleets, and you can customize the map to look however you want and show whatever you want to see on it (including the ability to "program" conditions).  (Don't forget to save customizations that you want to re-use -- they'll update automatically every turn.)

There's also an Empire Status Report that gives you lots of summary information, like how much PI you've got coming into each location or a list of all your shuttle routes and whether there are any problems with them or not (missing or undersized ships, cross-linked routes, etc.) -- very handy for optimizing your income.

While you're entering orders, you'd probably like to bring up a Cash Flow report next to your order entry list.  As you type in your orders it dynamically shows you how much PI you've got left to spend at each production center, so you don't run out of PI unexpectedly.