Question on ship and design type behaviour

[EvilTom84]

Right, I've been playing this for a while and I get the basic of the game. I'm doing quite well and I've read the wikis and manuals but I have some questions about ship and base type and the behaviours.

I'm going to assume that all ships are automated for the sake of this thread but I don't know how they all operate or their AI behaves. I know you can put them in a fleet and how that works, so i'm ok with that. It's just individual ship behaviour. Please amend as necessary.

Escort - Guards planets and escorts ships around
Frigate - Patrols bases and planets, sometimes escorts ships
Destroy - Patrol bases and planets
Cruiser - Patrol bases
Capital Ship - ?
Carrier - ?

Explorer - explore
Colony - colonise... etc


Now I have a question about AI bases too as I want to build multirole stations, but something isn't working right. I've wanted to build a single base at a gas planet to mine and research, but run into issues. I don't know what to categorise it as. I tried mining, and noticed I didn't get the research bonus even with a lab on it. I tried a research base with extractors on and no-one turned up to get the goods. In the end I had to settle for both. I think I tried a Starbase in the past, but again no-one turned up for the goods (although of course as a fuel station it just mined it anyway and horded it for the military).

Starport - receives location bonuses (aka resort or research), receives and gives out freight, does not receive passengers for resort bases.
Starbase - receives location bonuses, does not trade freight (ie: does not sell mined goods). does not receive passengers. Does not automatically receive stock of goods for
Research stations - receives location bonuses, no passengers or trade
Mining Station - No location bonuses (for research), does not receive passengers, does trade stuff out.
Resort Base - receives passengers, gets location bonus (for resort), does not trade anything out ie: mining extractors won't sell their wares or be collected.

etc etc. Please shed some light on this.

Also one final question. Is it possible to reserve goods/cargo? Sometimes I want atleast a stash of fuel at a depot, but want to sell the excess. Is this possible? I know it's possible to build a starbase and no-one turns up, but you can mine the goods and then build a mining station anyway separately.

[Bingeling]

I am not much of an abuser of game mechanics, but...

For the AI ships, they should all be treated the same. So a capital ship will do what the escort does, but the AI should try to put more powerful classes on more valuable objects. So an escort may be put to escort freighters, while a capital ship patrols a colony.

For freighters to pick up stuff, you need a commerce center. I think I have tried this in the past and whether a star base has commerce center or not will decide if freighters come to visit. I do not know if there are limits to putting research labs on mines, etc.

As for the final question, no you can not reserve things manually.

[EvilTom84]

Cheers... that's good to know about the AI. I thought that capital ships might not escort ships anymore. I don't use the ai that much, but I just wanted to know some finer details on it. Especially as I'm about to start a larger game, I don't want to micromanage as much.

On the base thing... I'll have a look whether I had a commerce centre on board and double check. It might be that I forgot it on the research bases which also have extractors on them.

I wonder if putting labs on a mining station doesn't work as they are private bases and not state bases. I know the other differences like private bases are funded by the private sector. I thought it might be because of the base 'class' but now i'm thinking it' s a state/private thing.

[Spidey]

Labs on mining stations absolutely work in terms of raising your research potential. I don't think they'll get location bonuses but they will provide maintenance-free labs that will be used for the purpose of calculating your actual research output. This obviously means quite a bit more early game than it does late game, though.

[EvilTom84]

That's why I thought... it's handy to have them paid for. Especially if you just bung one of each of your labs on your core mining stations. It'll build up won't it? Fun.

I believe you are correct in saying they won't get location bonus though. What other stations do? Starbases? Starports? Or is it just the research stations?