Matrix Games Forums

After dozens of hours of testing and gathering data from around 1900 starbases, I'd like to present my findings on cargo space. The collected data is in the attached file, for your amusement.

Use the below data to choose the cargo hold size for your mining star bases (mineral, luxury, and gas all use the same values). I would recommend the "5 resources per planet size", since 5 is the max I've ever seen in game on one planet.

1 resource per planet: 7775 cargo (Optimal size for a 1-gas refueling base)
2 resources per planet: 15300 cargo (optimal size for a 2-gas refueling base)
3 resources per planet: 22825 cargo
4 resources per planet: 30350 cargo
5 resources per planet: 37875 cargo (this is the value I would use)
6 resources per planet: 45400 cargo (overkill in regular gameplay)
7 resources per planet: 52925 cargo (overkill in regular gameplay)
8 resources per planet: 60450 cargo (overkill in regular gameplay)

The formula the game uses to calculate a star base's actual cargo hold size is (Cargospace * 4) - 1000. The observed values don't match this perfectly - especially at low cargo hold sizes, but the larger data supports it.

The below chart displays the observed in-game max cargo values (blue dots), and the calculated trendline from this data (red line).



Bottom line:
If you want cheaper star bases that will still never hit capacity 99% of the time, go with 30350 cargo.

If you want to be 100% covered, go with 37875 cargo.

For a single-gas refueling base (hydrogen OR caslon), use 7775 cargo.

For a two-gas refueling base (hydrogen AND caslon), use 15300 cargo.

Putting more than 37875 cargo space on a base is a waste, due to the 30100 per-resource storage cap tm.asp?m=3651245.

Feelotraveler has another post on cargo with some additional information here: tm.asp?m=3650778.

Thanks... Great work

The graph is not reflected the steepness .. a 4 as gradient.
It seems than there is a as storagecapicity
So you can store 4 fuel energy units in one carco space unit with a 30100 max fuel units


30100/4 =7525

• massive cargo bay cost: 7525/1000 ( = 7,525) x 3840 = 28.896 it takes 7,525 x 8 = 60,2 size
• standard cargo bay cost : 7525/ 650 (= 11,57) x 240 = 2778 ... = 92,56 size
• small cargo bay cost : 7525/ 360 (=20,90) x 60 = 1254 ... = 167,2 size

you need 7,5 x massive cargo bays to store 7525 cargo units filled each with 4 fuel units cost you 28.896
you need 11,57 x standard cargo bays ........................................................................ cost you 2778
you need 20,0 x small cargo bays ................................................................................ cost you 1254


It is the "optimized cargo storage" in the research tree what shows 1000 as capacity and the "advanced cargo storage" what shows 800 as capacity
So you dealing first with the "advanced cargo storage" as massive cargo bay , but before that you can use the standard cargo bay
The standard cargo bays ( 2x research) can be found under enhanced research

Airpower what were your testing conditions? e.g. Map size, difficulty, race, base design, and whatever else might be relevant. [:)]

I ask because my limited testing repeatedly gave me (4xcargo space)-500, (or 625 depending on how gases get treated, does the editor mess things up?). For example I ran quite a few tests with 5xsmallcargobays = 1750, and kept getting totals in excess of 6500 when mining stopped. I must have had 20 or 30 cases without a single one less than 6500. And yet your observed cargo values show all your figures of just below 5500.

The only thing I can think of was that I was testing with 1.9.5.4... but that should not have made any difference. Will repeat (briefly) tomorrow once I update to rule that out.

Anybody else want to have a look?

Hey Feelo, yeah I was pretty surprised to find that the 4x-1000 formula fit the collected data. After reading your post, I thought for sure I'd come to the same formula you did!

Here's what's going on. At very low cargo sizes, the observed cargo values get... weird. Especially for a size 350 hold. At size 350, the values fluctuate wildly. I even got different values depending on the resource richness of the planet that was being mined.

I manually built every one of the 1850 mining stations in this study. I didn't use any editor-placed ones. When I used editor-placed stations, the max cargo values were consistently higher than what I saw from my manually-built stations. Moreover, I built every station while playing at 4x real time speed, with the game unpaused. I found that when multiple stations were all completed at the exact same second, each of those stations would sometimes reach an identical maximum cargo value. This was especially true of editor-placed stations at larger cargo hold sizes. Building in real-time was the only way to ensure the results weren't influenced by this phenomenon. I have no explanation for why this is the case... it appears random, but I suspect the game only checks each base for maximum cargo storage once a month, leading to seemingly random variations.

Here's my data for Cargo Hold 350 bases. The Y axis is resource richness (in percentage) of the planet being extracted, and the X axis represents each of the 10 stations I built on those planets.

The expected median value using the 4x-1000 formula is 400
The expected median value using the 4x-500 formula is 900 This weirdness from mining from low-richness planets went away after cargo hold sizes got bigger. Even still, at every cargo hold size, I tested on at least a 10%, 20%, 30%, 40%, and 50% richness planet, to ensure the collected data was representative of actual in-game situations and wasn't tainted by this trend.

Here is the graph with the 4x-500 formula. The slope is right, but it was higher than the observed values for every tested cargo hold size.

Oh, and the reason I tested almost 2000 bases is because the weirdness from the low cargo hold sizes led me to believe there was an exponential component to the calculation. I was WAY disappointed to find out my precious theory was wrong. [:)]

Ah, ok.

I had an inkling that the editor might be screwing with the results - either that or the non-editor game is. [:D] (nearly) All my testing was done with the editor, as a time convenience.

How did you stop freighters from collecting cargo in your tests? [Edit] Presumably you obsoleted all freighter designs?

Yup! I destroyed all freighters and obsoleted the design.

All of the stations were Star Bases without commerce centers though, so the freighters couldn't take the stuff anyways.