Freighters, Fuel tankers - total ordered moddable?

[AKicebear]

Are we able to mod the ratio of freights/fuel tankers that the private sector build? I see close to a thousand per empire in my current game, most very idle, and was wondering:
a) could I modify this so that less freighters are constructed as empires get larger - in particular because they can rely on much higher density "large" freighters
b) could I modify when the private sector decides to retire excess freighters (if it does this at all currently?!)

What I have in mind is that an empire should probably have 10 freighters per colony, and 1 per mining station, which means my empire would go from around 800 freighters currently to only around 300. I'm not demanding this for the base game, mostly curious if my/AI empire economies would function in this kind of scenario, testing to see how it impacts late game performance, etc.

[Eventure]

a) I'm guessing that increasing the cost of freighters would have the effect of reducing the number of freighters in general. On the other hand, the amount of freight that a freighter can transport would have to be increased.

b) This value is currently probably hardcoded if it exists. At least I didn't find any value in the XML files.

[frankycl]

Are we able to mod the ratio of freights/fuel tankers that the private sector build? (...)

Yes (see below)

a) could I modify this so that less freighters are constructed as empires get larger - in particular because they can rely on much higher density "large" freighters
b) could I modify when the private sector decides to retire excess freighters (if it does this at all currently?!)

Not exactly "modify", but you could influence/limit the numbers, yes (see below)

What I have in mind is that an empire should probably have 10 freighters per colony, and 1 per mining station, (...)

You can't set the exact number per colony, etc. (or at least I don't know, how), but there are several possibilities to influence/limit the construction-/output- numbers of civilian ships in general or of individual ship-types:

1. You can limit the number in general, in setting some policy setting in-game to manual (but don't do anything manually) when you have the number of ships you want (like e.g. freighters or fuel-tankers):

- Under "Advisors and automation" set "Fleet Ship Management" to manual to disable the automated constuction of all ships that could be assigned to a fleet, like e.g. fuel-tankers (+ you can disable retrofitting of those ships/fleets under "Military" (although those ships are civillian, actually).

- you can prioritize state/military ships in construction/docking queues under "Constuction" => less civilian ships will be built/retrofitted (there are two ways to do this here: prioritize (or disable) all ships of those categories in general under with the buttons "Prioritze" or "Normal" / "Automated" or "Manually Controlled" for only military ships at the beginning of this polcy-settings menu - or setting "Military Ship Priority" to a high value / setting the build-ratio to a high value for each ship-class each (some entries below/ at the bottom of this menu)

2. You can limit the construction/retrofitting for each ship-type individually in setting the design-template to obsolete/manual in the design-overview window if you click on "Shipdesigns" in the constuction-panel (last two rows to the right).

3. You can do all of the above (and more) in the policy-files for each race, like e.g.:

- in setting "Bonuspriorities" to "ConstructionSpeedCivilian" to low and ""ConstructionSpeedMilitary" to high values (hint: you can find the list of all possible bonuses in the "RaceList.xsd" (and I think you should generally get your teeth into these official tools from the DEVs if you seriously want to mod something - see here: https://www.matrixgames.com/forums/view ... 9&t=380486. )

- in setting "ConstructionLevels" for military, etc. to higher values (in general or for each ship-class each)

(please note: to keep it balanced you'd need to do this for each of the races/race-policy files similarily !)