I have 2 good neighbourly systems ready for mining and need to send my Sol freighters to start their work
my initial jump engine is 6000t max - enough to get the scouts through but now I need to squeeze through 45k ton freighters
is it best to build a specialised jump freighter that can squadron jump other freighters with it
or build a fat scout with a 45k ton jump engine on?
Is there are reason you don’t want to stabilize the jump points? Because that is what I would do so your regular freighters can pass without jump engines.
Only because it immediately neighbours Sol and I didn’t want baddies passing thru at their leisure
Better base it on your freighter design. Your 45k ton hyperjump engine does not need to be faster than the freighters and you won’t have to pay maintenance if its a commercial craft.
Perfectly understandable, I’ve had same dilemma before.
Here’s what you need to do: Design a commercial jump-drive, put it on a station (remember to check the “no armor” checkbox), give it the class of “Jump Tender Station” from the list and you’re good to go to build it at the nearest colony. Drag it to the jump-point and you’re all set. FTL drive or not, your ships can jump through that point now as long as the station is there. Do keep in mind size-restrictions of the FTL drive on the station, so it’s best to put very large FTL drive on it, so that you don’t have to worry about the size of your commercial-type vessels for hundred years or so.
This is genius - does it have a range or does it need to be dropped right on the gate
Right on the gate
I prefer to stabilize the JPs, and put sensor buoys at each of them, especially the ones in the nearby systems.
Every ship of every size can pass them, but I have a costant eye on each of them.
If a jump tender / station is stationed at a jump point, can enemy ships transit, or just friendly ships?
Just your ships
I don’t think civilian ships will pass through a non-stabilized jump point even if there is a jump tender on stataion.
I use jump drive equipped freighters but they are more general purpose auxiliary ships. Give them a tractor beam and the largest civilian drives I can fit at the tech, and they can rescue ships with damaged engines, tow stations etc. Thinking of maybe including a refuel so all my freighters can act as tankers in a pinch but will have to look at the tonnage of the refuel system
Plug for tugs… I use tugs for all my logistics. By towing a fuel pod they can double as tankers, they can tow damaged/captured military ships, etc. Super useful.
#tug-life
I also start games with the trucker life. I give them all emergency cryo for life boat rescue duty. The trailers are space station versions of cargo, colony transport, commercial carriers, fuel harvesting, fuel depot, terraforming, orbital mining ships. That way new engine tech just requires new tug, with the old one retired to the outer systems for old jobs, like shuffling orbital miner fleets from an almost empty asteroid to the next one or a terraforming fleet to new body. Those sort of jobs dont require the fastest speed and when they are not tugging something are still fast enough for rescuing a ship or life pods (friend or foe).
Current game is 72 years in and I am about to build my first carrier with its own engines even though I massively have been using carriers since year 1.
In one game I went for maximum paranoia regarding JPs so I had 4-tiered approach:
Well defended systems near Sol had stabilized JPs so civilian shipping lines could operate in them.
Systems further out that were in the early stages of exploitation were connected through commercial jump stations so that my commercial ships could move in and out of them easily without the hassle of jump engines.
Systems that were explored but not yet fully secured had jump ships escort convoys into them that would establish base(s) and bring in system defenders.
Survey expeditions had jump capable survey carriers that would enter an unknown system and then send out their parasite survey craft (FAC sized if I remember correctly) and military fleets had dedicated jump ships (that doubled up as combat tankers) to enable them to reach out and touch aliens in an inappropriate way. Or extremely appropriate if you swing that way.
Point was that any enemy would have to survey the systems to find where the JPs were and if they penetrated through the frontier system(s), I could just tug away the jump station and they would have to survey the whole system again and try to guess which JP led towards Earth. The systems connected to Sol via stabilized jump points had strong enough defences that any invader should not be able to push through. It was a bit of a hassle to maintain so I haven’t done it to this extreme in my other campaigns especially as the validity of that strategy was never properly tested.
That’s beautiful
Fascinating! Up to now I only use tugs to tow orbital miners into position.
You can build cargo, cryo colonist transport, or troop transport pods as “space stations” using industry instead of shipyards, and then use stuff to tow them around. Then you don’t need as big of a shipyard, either. And you can replace tugs as engine tech improves without needing to rebuilt the cargo portion
Jump point stabilization pods, salvager pods, fuel harvester pods, terraformer pods, orbital miner pods, orbital habitat pods, the possibilities are almost endless.
Indeed.
And that’s just my commercial station hulls. There’s also the engineless surveyors, the military carrier pods, and the defense bases.
I have a Jump Point Stabilization Platform and an Orbital Mining Platform that I tow around with my tugs, but these other types of stationary stations are a whole nother level of coolness.
This game can be frustrating, especially for someone like me, who has only been playing for a couple years, but one of the reasons I keep playing is that there are so many different ways to do things. It really is a sandbox, where your universe can be whatever you want it to be.
