Matrix Games Forums

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.

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.

AKicebear wrote: Mon Jan 02, 2023 7:15 pm Are we able to mod the ratio of freights/fuel tankers that the private sector build? (...)

Yes (see below)

AKicebear wrote: Mon Jan 02, 2023 7:15 pm 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)

AKicebear wrote: Mon Jan 02, 2023 7:15 pm 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 !)