ship gather point?

[Dogboy]

If you click on the wrench symbol (queue list) and select a planet, you can pull up "queue settings". If you scroll down, there is a "queue move to" button, but it doesn't seem to do anything. Is there a way to send ships to selected locations when they're built?

[Captain Kwok]

Set waypoints by selecting a sector and hitting CTRL+# (# = 1-9) and that will set a marker where you can send ships via the queue settings function.

[Dogboy]

Wow. That will really reduce micromanagement!

Thanks,DB

[Fyron]

One can also order ships and fleets to move to such waypoints by hitting the corresponding number key. I find it much more useful to cycle through new ships and send them to waypoints manually, than using the automatic queue moveto. I can be far more flexible with a set of waypoints to move new ships to, depending on how current fronts are faring, than just a rigid queue setting.

[Dogboy]

Thanks. Yes, one thing I discovered is that the way points mean colony ships leave without colonists. Is there a way to name each waypoint ("assault point", "military academy", etc.)?

[BlueTemplar]

That's one of many good reasons for not having "Automatic Colonization Population" set to 0.

[Dogboy]

Hmm...not sure I follow that. I looked in the empire settings and did not see that as an option. Is this a way to auto load colonizers when they're built?

[Fyron]

Its a mod setting, in Data\Settings.txt. It basically creates free population on every newly colonized world. At one point, this population was always the native type for your empire. This screwed up colonization of different-atmosphere planets with aliens, since it would add a few million oxygen breathers to methane worlds where you had loaded methane breathers on your colony ship. This is primarily why some mods, such as BM, set the value to 0. There was talk of a fix, where it would instead add pop of the type on the colonizer (if there was any), but I don't recall if it made it into a patch or not.

[Dogboy]

Ah, ok. Thanks!

[BlueTemplar]

The AI (if activated) will scrap the problematic population on the next turn, right?

Wouldn't a simpler fix be to only add population when there was none on the cololizer to start with?

[Captain Kwok]

There was a fix for the auto-colonization amount some time ago. The auto-colonization amount is only used now if there is no other population on the colonizer. Since that change, the Balance Mod has 1M as the auto-colonization amount.

[Dogboy]

Odd! I am playing SE5 v1.74 with Balance Mod v1.14b and my colonizers all come up empty. Does that mean I can just send empty colonizers out and they will colonize with 1M of my colonists?

[Captain Kwok]

If you give your colonizer the colonize order when it's in orbit of a planet, it will attempt to automatically pick up population from the planet prior to moving to its target. It sounds like you might be using the move order and then the colonize order afterwards. In that case, your ship's won't pick up any population, but the auto-colonization amount will kick in.

[Dogboy]

Wow! So, if I have a shipyard set to automatically send built colonizers on to a way point, I don't have to worry about loading colonists: I can just let them accumulate at the way point, and then issue the colonization order, and they'll have a few colonists?? I guess this avoids the newbie error of moving and then colonizing. Cool!

[Fyron]

Erm... only if that waypoint is over a planet with plenty of population to spare.

[Dogboy]

Sorry -- I'm confused. I thought the point that CK was making is that if I just issue a move order (as would be the case for shipyards set to send all ships to a waypoint), they will have a default of 1M colonists available should they then be ordered to colonize a planet without actually picking up any colonists. Have I misunderstood you, CK?

[Fyron]

I think I picked up on "a few" as meaning, loaded with population, as opposed to the single pop that comes out of nowhere on a new colony. Yes, if you set up a waypoint somewhere and do not load any pop, you will get 1M on new colonies. This is not very efficient, and thus not the best way to go about it (compared to actually loading a few dozen millions on each ship), but it will work.

[Dogboy]

Thank you, Fyron, for the clarification.

[capnq]

Captain Kwok said: If you give your colonizer the colonize order when it's in orbit of a planet, it will attempt to automatically pick up population from the planet prior to moving to its target.

It will attempt to pick up population whether it's orbiting a planet or not, even if it's already fully loaded. The Colonize order always produces the orders "Load All Populations; Move to <target>; Colonize <target>".

I've never given the Colonize order to an empty colonizer in the same sector as a loaded population transport, but I wouldn't be surprised if it took that population if there was no planet to draw from.

[Slick]

Another method I use is the "Join Fleet" command, which works pretty well in SEV. Establish a fleet, even with just 1 ship at your gather point. Name the fleet appropriately so you can easily idenitify it. Send ships to the gather point with the "Join Fleet" command. When you want to move your gather point, just move the fleet to the new location and ships already enroute will continue to meet up and join the fleet.

Just style, I guess. I like to use waypoints for permanent locations such as homeworld, training planets, big planets for siphoning off population, etc.

2 things to watch out for:
- if you move the fleet a lot and you have slow ships enroute, these ships may get outrun and take a long time to catch up.
- if you send ships from a long distance, they can run low on supplies before they get to the fleet, worsened if you advance the fleet.

The best way to avoid these is to chain orders and ensure that ships load supplies along the way, and make sure that your ships won't run out of supplies. This is not different from sending ships to waypoints.

[Sardia]

For colonies ships, sometimes they strip a planet dry of population, especially if you use the colonize planet command on the list of uncolonized planets.

Will there be a fix for this, so that ships always leave 1M people on the planet? Or am I suppose to keep a sharper eye on things?

[Captain Kwok]

It had been set so that it would leave 1M on the planet, but at some point that got borked.