Questions from a newbie

[blaa]

Is it possible to retrofit a relic ship?
I found one with sweet 800 fire power when my current designs give me ~70, but it has no warp drive.
I selected the ship´s design template, chose manually update and added a warp drive, however, the retrofit button is greyed out.
I guess it´s because the ship has tech I didn´t research yet?! Any way to force a warp drive on that thing?

[Bingeling]

You should be able to retrofit it, but only to your own design. That is, with the tech you got available. So it is no point in doing that.

If it is in your home system, I suggest you retire it for tech. Also, I find it odd that it is 800 fire power, as the non-warp ship in a pre-warp start is quite a bit less powerful than that. And any other ship found should have warp drive.

[blaa]

Well I play with Osito´s Research Unleashed 2.2, maybe because of that? It has Nuclear Missiles on board.
I wonder if that mod also influences pirate numbers... I play on a huge map with I think 400 stars and 7 AI empires. So far I encountered 22
pirate factions [X(] Well it doesn´t get boring that´s for sure. It´s like being harassed by a constant stream of zerglings [:D] Destroyed 349 ships, lost 4 [8|]

[Shogouki]

It´s like being harassed by a constant stream of zerglings [:D] Destroyed 349 ships, lost 4 [8|]

If you haven't encountered a legendary pirate faction yet you may be in for a surprise. [:D]

[blaa]

How do I know they are legendary?
Well one of them has 45k military with ~300 ships when I have 6k with 40 ships. Don´t tell me it gets worse [:D]

[blaa]

Ok guys two things I can´t wrap my head around:

1a:

I thought I pretty much understood refueling, however this one I do not get:

I want 5 escorts to refuel. They have a fuel capacity of 1000 and are in my home sector.
My home sector also has 2 gas mining stations with Caslon, which my engines use as fuel(I checked!).
If I look at the inventory of the gas mining stations both have around 16 000 Caslon in their inventory.
When I order my escorts to refuel via fleet screen they want to go to a colony that is 4 sectors away. [:@]
Why? My other fleets don´t refuel atm so it´s not reserved for them either.


1b:
Also I am flabbergasted [8|] that with a revenue of 625k and 2 gas mining stations that mine fuel in it´s vicinity my home planet does not manage to have a good supply of a resource as basic as fuel.
I have to rely on pirate smuggling missions? Why? I have several open trade agreements and mutual defense pacts and I can´t even trade for enough fuel?

2:

I have turned automation off, however I automate all ships/fleets that I want for defense duty via ship screen since they do a better job than I could manually
with so much going on.
It´s perfect... besides one "tiny" detail I noticed: My hangars allow for 6 fighters. However when my ships get built they have 3 fighters as they spawn.
If I build 2 hangars on a ship it spawns with only 6 fighters... out of 12! And the AI does nothing about it, either. I would have to manually select every ship and order it to build more fighters.
Is this maybe a mod issue? I do use Research Unleashed... can anybody confirm this is not a vanilla issue? Or am I missing something else here?

Thanks[&o]

[Retreat1970]

3 fighters as they spawn

3 fighters 3 bombers = 6. Have to research fighters and bombers.
The RU mod doesn't change bay capacity I don't think.

[Shogouki]

1a: How many docking bays do your gas mining stations have? Also is any of that caslon that they have reserved?

1b: Do you have any allies that use your stations for refueling? I've noticed that in my games where I have alliances or military refueling rights given to others they very often use my stations to refuel large fleets. One thing that I have used for making nice refueling points for my fleets is a large nebula based star base with lots of docking ports, gas extractors, and cargo space so that my large fleets can all dock there and refuel.

2: Do you have equally advanced bombers and fighters at the moment?

[blaa]

1a: I build my gas stations with 50 docking bays and I think 4 extractors. How do I know if the Caslon is reserved?

1b: Hmm yes there were quite a few exploration ships hanging around one of the gas stations. I guess there is no way to stop that short of ending the alliances?
I wish the game was more in-depth in those areas, I´d really like to stop anybody from using my fuel and stop fuel exports.

2: I focused on fighters, I didn´t even research bombers. I will if it stops the ships from spawning with half empty hangars.
Though it would be better if they always used their capacity with the available ships. I prefer rushing fighter research to splitting it between fighters and bombers.

[Retreat1970]

I focused on fighters, I didn´t even research bombers. I will if it stops the ships from spawning with half empty hangars.
Though it would be better if they always used their capacity with the available ships. I prefer rushing fighter research to splitting it between fighters and bombers.

I didn't explain myself clearly. Half of a hanger bay capacity is always fighters. The other half always bombers. You will never have all fighters or all bombers. It's always half and half.

[RemoteLeg]

How do I know if the Caslon is reserved?

Go to the information screen for your gas mining station.
Look in the tab that shows what resources are present at the station (the "Cargo" tab).
There are two columns for figures - the one on the left is the total amount and the one on the right is the reserved amount.

[Aeson]

Half of a hanger bay capacity is always fighters. The other half always bombers. You will never have all fighters or all bombers. It's always half and half.

That isn't entirely true. You can manually build fighters and bombers at whatever ratio you want, as long as your ships can support that ratio. It's a bit of a pain to manually set the fighter compositions, especially if you have multiple large carriers, and automated loss replacement shifts the balance back towards the default 50-50 split over time anyways so it's not really worth doing, at least not in my opinion, but it can be done.

[Shogouki]

Yeah, not sure why there isn't a policy option for fighter bay loadouts.

[Shark7]

The 50/50 split is hard-coded as best I can tell.

However, you can mod the number of fighters each bay holds (I've actually done so and it works). The bays will still split 50/50 on fighter/bomber composition.