Refueling/economy problems.

[bartomanboy]

It seems that my civilian ships don't think about distance when my empire needs a resource.
Lets say my empire is in need of caslon, they go get caslon at the planet with the largest storage of caslon, which is often some alien capital planet on the other side of the galaxy.
This happens as well with other resources, and the passenger ships too go very far to get their immigrants.
Is anyone else having this problem, and is there any fix for this?

If there isn't, this is a serious problem that should be fixed. It doesn't seem to difficult to me, cause if you look at the expansion manager, planet distance is held into account. So the distance factor is implemented, but just not for the civilian ships yet.
Thanks in advance.
-Bart

[Data]

Hi Bart and welcome to the forum. Yes, we all complain about this and it was somewhat improved from the early days but still needs a lot of love. That being said, I don't think I've enountered the "they go get caslon at the planet with the largest storage of caslon". iirc they go to the nearest source that has the needed amount.
Check your cargo for each colony, maybe the existing resources (fuel mainly) are already reserved and that makes them unavailable for your ships.

[bartomanboy]

Yeah, I was wrong about the largest storage thing, it was just a thought of mine.
Still, what I find interesting is that I got good gas planets with mining stations all over my empire. Still they seem to prefer caslon from an AI's capital? That's something I don't understand.

[Data]

Do you have a save game to upload to Matrix's ftp site? We can take a look, see if we spot anything that could explain this. Anything else then the poor AI design on this, that is.

[tjhkkr]

There is a button I found about placing colonies and such in other empire systems... perhaps setting that correctly might help. [:)]

[bartomanboy]

I am still learning the game, but I think I found an explanation for it. Always when I find a new empire, and swap territory maps, half of my freighter fleet gets dispatched because there are cheaper sources for raw materials in any of their systems. (Mostly their capital) Bad thing is, they don't have enough fuel to pass the whole journey, or I don't have a free-trade agreement yet, so they won't refuel at the alien's planets.
Luckily, this problem is only temporary, and after making one flight or something, most of the freighters act normal again.
What do you think about this?

P.S. I don't really know how to upload saved games to that ftp server you were talking about, but I don't feel there's a need, as I still have to learn a lot.

[Data]

Sounds wad but a piece of advice which will not help in this case but it's good in general. It's ok to get the maps from them but never give them any maps; the AI is fast to take advantage and colonize you potential worlds and such.
Have fun