Cargo Capacity

[feelotraveller]

Cargo capacity varies according to the following.

1) Colonies have unlimited storage. Any base built above a colony shares its storage.

2) For ships storage capacity is straight forward. Resource units equal to the cargo capacity may be carried. For example if you have standard cargo bays (without the upgrade) you can carry 500 units of resources per cargo bay, regardless of what resources they are.

3) For bases the situation is a little more complex.

The nominal* maximum cargo of a base is given by:

4 x [(number of cargo bays) x (cargo bay capacity)] - 500

So, for example, with the 20 cargo bays of the standard designs and the same technology as above (standard cargo bays, not upgraded) the max cargo is (4 x 20 x 500) - 500, or 39500.

* 'nominal' since in practice this can actually be exceeded slightly


There are a couple of other considerations if you wish to calculate how much of a given resource a (mining) base will hold.

Firstly, the amount of a resource stored at a base turns out to have a 'nominal' cap of 30000.

Secondly, the maximum cargo capacity (39 500 in our example above) is divided by the number of resources mined to give the nominal amount of storage dedicated to each resource. So with 2 resources the nominal cap for a base with 39500 maximum cargo capacity (as above) 19750 is allocated to each resource.


[It is slighly more complex in practice. Resources for retrofitting, fuel, or whatever are counted against the maximum storage capacity, but not for the division for allocating space to each resource.

The base compares the amount of the resource already in storage against the 'allocated' space. If that figure is already reached (or maximum storage capacity of the base as a whole has been reached) then none of that resource is mined for the six day period. However if the allocated figure is higher then a six day mining increment is added. This can take the amount stored, of the resource or of the base as a whole, over the allocated space or nominal maximum limit, respectively.

The extra still counts against the remaining potential storage, meaning that the last resource to reach its limit will likely end up with less stored. In our above example let us assume that on a base that mines Steel and Gold and has a standard amount of retrofitting supplies in storage that Steel reaches its allocated maximum first but actually ends up with 19780 stored (say by the last mining increment adding 40 to 19740). The remaining storage for Gold will be reduced to 19170 {=39500-(19780+550)} since there will be 550 space taken by retrofitting supplies other than Gold and Steel. If there was a further 400 Caslon aboard for refueling the space remaining for Gold would reduce to 18770.]

[Tcby]

Thank you very much. Good to see you posting again after what seemed like a few months prior to universe. Could be my imagination though [:)]

[feelotraveller]

Thanks Tchy. Yes I disappeared for a while but am happy to be back. [:)]

[Icemania]

Nice work. More Guide to Guides material!

[feelotraveller]

Added a line about colony storage.

I think 'unlimited' technically means really really big before it rolls over (like 2 billion or something). If anybody actually manages to get this to happen I'd love to hear about it. [:)]

[feelotraveller]

Okay, updated after some close in-game observation. Original results were skewed since using the game editor causes some weird things to happen with mining bases.

Thanks to Airpower for finding the 30000 cap. Hopefully my outlining of the mechanic explains your (and any potential) data... I did not see any strangeness for low capacity bases, but practically I had little data for these since my game soon got beyond them even though it was a pre-warp max tech cost start (although increased storage was my second tech). I also have no data from max tech storage size...

If this does not equate with anyone's in-game experience I'd love hear about it since it means I've still got work to do.

[Cubano]

FYI, the new 1.9.5.8 beta patch has increased the capacity for ports and bases to 120000

[NephilimNexus]

This information is also worth considering when designing Space Ports. For an Empire player you can get away with minimal cargo space on space ports, since they will always be over planets (which have limitless cargo). So your cargo space is really just a "transfer area" that only needs to be as large as one or two freighters.

Pirates, on the other hand, rarely have the luxury of a planet under their Space Ports so they need to maximize their cargo space as much as possible since it's all they've got.

[USSAmerica]

ORIGINAL: Cubano

FYI, the new 1.9.5.8 beta patch has increased the capacity for ports and bases to 120000

Sorry for the Necro Thread, but since this one is linked in the Guide of Guides.... [:D]

Is this increased capacity of 120,000 the cap for each individual resource, or total? If I have a mine over a planet with 2 resources can I hit 120k total or for each resource, given enough storage components?

Edit: Nevermind, I found confirmation in the release notes for 1.9.5.8. 120k per resource. [8D]