Changing freighter routes to new worlds

[EricLarsen]

One thing I'm curious about is how to change freighter routes to new worlds. The first game I played I watched as the Frashkins took over a dozen star systems off line from collecting resources and sending them to their home planet. There was no war or anything since it was the only power around. After a few years one planet became the hub of all those "unhooked" resource planets that had freighter routes to the homeworld earlier on. It was a deliberate good move by the AI to switch freighter routes to a colony world because that colony world was closer to all of those star systems. I was real envious. Then a random event gave it to me because I was playing really bad.

Now I've read (and reread parts) the whole manual and played around again in a test game and I can't see how to cancel freighter routes. Considering how colony worlds can change hands so easily through random events it makes one skittish to want to build them for fear of losing them too easily. But seeing how they can make more efficient use of freighter routes it's hard to not want to build them. But how do you get the freighter routes to change? Do you put it on automatic for having the program handle the freighters and if you create a colony world capable of supporting frieghters it will just happen? What I saw was a whole set of planets have their freighter routes terminated at the same time, not just the eventual colony world. It took a while for the frieghter routes to reestablish and it was like simultaneous, instant frieghter spider web.

So Andrew how do I do what I saw the Frashkin AI do?

Eric Larsen

[Andrew Ewanchyna]

Random events are rare. I wouldn't worry about losing a world to one and you could always turn Random Events off. You really need to build new colonies to do well in the game.

When a new world comes your way, then all your current resource systems that are closer to this new world will be reassigned. It's automatic. Same goes when you build a frieghter route. Even though you build it at Sol, it may go to your other world if that world is closer to the resource system. The freighter routes become part of a world's wealth, think of it like building up the terrain around a city in Civilization. If you want to limit the # of freighter routes to a world, then just build more worlds in strategic places.

[EricLarsen]

Originally posted by Andrew Ewanchyna
When a new world comes your way, then all your current resource systems that are closer to this new world will be reassigned. It's automatic. Same goes when you build a frieghter route. Even though you build it at Sol, it may go to your other world if that world is closer to the resource system. The freighter routes become part of a world's wealth, think of it like building up the terrain around a city in Civilization. If you want to limit the # of freighter routes to a world, then just build more worlds in strategic places.

Andrew,
Thanks for the quick and informative reply. I was going nuts trying to figure out how to stop freighter routes manually. After seeing the AI Frashkin do the frieghter reroute I thought that was slick and how do I do it. I take it that when you grow a colony to a world capable of handling freighter routes the program then terminates the routes to the original homeworld hub and then reassigns them to the new world hub.

Do the same old freighters just switch homeport or do new frieghters get built? One thing I've been wondering about is how to upgrade freighters. I know that getting into new ages and new drives helps speed them up but that's only half of the job as size matters too.

I wish I could "upgrade" freighters during the game by building newer, bigger ones to replace smaller ones. About the only way now that I see is to hope some mean aliens come and blow up the little freighters so you can build newer, bigger ones.

Eric Larsen

[Andrew Ewanchyna]

Yes the same old freighters just switch home ports. You don't need to worry about destroying freighters to upgrade them as upgrades are automatic. When you research Type-2 Freighters, then all you Type-1 Freighters become Type-2.

[EricLarsen]

Originally posted by Andrew Ewanchyna
Yes the same old freighters just switch home ports. You don't need to worry about destroying freighters to upgrade them as upgrades are automatic. When you research Type-2 Freighters, then all you Type-1 Freighters become Type-2.

Andrew,
I'm glad I was fretting over nothing and that the game automatically upgrades freighters. I was kind of worried that I needed to research all the frieghter types first before getting frieghter routes started. Now I think I'll let the program handle my frieghters automatically, though it still looks like it's best to manually catch the stars as they come out of turmoil.
Eric Larsen

[Digital Age]

Originally posted by EricLarsen
Now I think I'll let the program handle my frieghters automatically, though it still looks like it's best to manually catch the stars as they come out of turmoil.
Eric Larsen

You can still manually build routes even with the AI building routine routes automatically.

Careful about auto-building routes, however. If you are good/lucky enough to strip a large number of planets of artifacts early on the auto-build can get you into trouble as your tech development keeps dropping into "On hold" while the routes get built. It's really a drag to have twenty some odd planets in your network but still be puttering around in the atomic age with less than 10 techs.

Is there a way suspend auto-build while the game is in session until you get that vitally needed tech finished? If so, I've not been able to figure out how.

D.

[Andrew Ewanchyna]

Yes, just go to the Game Options menu and you'll see some things you can adjust.

[EricLarsen]

Originally posted by Digital Age
Careful about auto-building routes, however. If you are good/lucky enough to strip a large number of planets of artifacts early on the auto-build can get you into trouble as your tech development keeps dropping into "On hold" while the routes get built. It's really a drag to have twenty some odd planets in your network but still be puttering around in the atomic age with less than 10 techs.

D.

Digital Age,
I just discovered the joys of colonizing. When you're stuck with one world, and lots of freighter routes opening up and if you've got the freighter automation on then you will have some problems getting research in because your world is always so busy building frighters. I also like to manually build up my world so that I control when production is happening. So far I've always gotten ahead of the AI's in research and in reaching new ages, even before I discovered the joys of colonization. I had built up 3 worlds when I only had about 15 systems and that worked very well early on as I didn't lose much to freighter inefficiency and I always could keep research working while I built stuff somewhere else. I even made my other two colony worlds heavy on production so my sol system could spend more time on research, and then on security.
Eric Larsen