What targets do you shoot for designing tugs?

Player Questions
21

My empire’s tug design. Not optimized, I know, but it does the job, towing my Orbital Mining Platforms where I need them. Sometimes I also use them to rescue a ship that has run out of fuel.

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Teuku Umar class Tug 14,683 tons 145 Crew 526.9 BP TCS 294 TH 1,050 EM 0
3575 km/s Armour 1-53 Shields 0-0 HTK 41 Sensors 0/0/0/0 DCR 1-0 PPV 0
MSP 522 Max Repair 100 MSP
Tractor Beam
Lieutenant Commander Control Rating 1 BRG
Intended Deployment Time: 6 months

Mahmad Aero Engines Commercial Nuclear Gas-Core Engine EP350.0 (3) Power 1050 Fuel Use 3.34% Signature 350 Exp 5%
Fuel Capacity 600,000 Litres Range 220.1 billion km (712 days at full power)
Refuelling Capability: 20,000 litres per hour Complete Refuel 30 hours

This design is classed as a Commercial Vessel for maintenance purposes
This design is classed as a Tug for auto-assignment purposes

22

Yeah it’s easy to fall into the trap of designing massive stations that then require gigantic tugs to move them at anything remotely reasonable speeds. Personally I build fleets of ten tugs that can move ten stations in one go so that I can have large number of relatively small stations. Obviously it requires a bit more micro but it is less of strain to shipyards and factory production plus it gives more command opportunities for my officers, especially in early game where those slots are really needed.

2 Likes
23

Yep, I build smaller too.

Take 10 small orbital miner stations vs 1 large station with total of same number of mining components. In the time it takes to build and then tow the large station you can have built and already towed the 10 small stations into place and been getting minerals. Even with the 10th station finishing building after the single large one, as you are only towing 10% of the mass on that final run.

If you build the small stations into their own fleet, then wait until 2 are in that fleet, you can then have a single tugs orders on a repeat loop, as long as you can build another station before the tug takes the last one out of the build fleet. Which is easy to do with a delay order in place.

24

When I do bother with orbital mining, I usually build 3 orbital mining classes:

  1. the minimal one - 1 mining module, Lieutenant CO, to be built in masses, easy to tow, useful to train mining specialist officers;
  2. the working horse - something like 250 to 500 Kt, Lieutenant-Commander CO;
  3. the “flag-stations” - the max sound size for the current state of shipbuilding, huge stations with sensors and CIWS, and Auxiliary Bridges to let it make Commander CO, which is the point - these are to use optimally the max bonuses of the best mining specialists, keep them in decent ranks to prevent early retirements and make possible to jump at flotilla CO command ranks later without making too many different and/or empty commands.

The same with terraformer stations.

25

Further disagree!

I create a “Miscellaneous Component” prototype of the intended size and then add it to the Tug design.

1 Like
26

I normally standardize on towed modules of just over 100k tons. That allows four cargo modules, so you can carry for installations. It’s a useful amount of cargo in one run. It also balances the demand for captains with decent logistics bonus.

If I’m moving a bunch of the same station to one location permanently, like fuel harvesters or orbital habitats, I sometimes move 100k ton stations to the location but use SM mode to replace 10 of them with a single 1M ton version, to represent assembling them in orbit, for RP purposes.

Note that 100k ton cargo modules is way too big for regularly scheduled mineral or fuel movement, or distributing xeno or geo survey troops. I build dedicated ships for those purposes, with super efficient engines for mineral/fuel haulers, and max speed commercial engines for survey troop transports. They tend to be small ships so the cost to retool and time to build is low.

27

Two cons to this approach vs using larger stations:

  1. Smaller stations have a higher percentage of overhead cost. You get more bang for your buck from larger stations.
  2. Having lots of smaller stations means you need more commanders, which reduces the average commander bonus.
28

You don’t have to do this.
As long as a shipyard has a current build task targeting that fleet, tugging the last ship out of the fleet will not cause the fleet to be deleted.

Use sm mode to add a shipyard, tool it to some trivial class, reduce the size to 1t, and add however many slipways you like.
Give that yard a build task targeting each fleet you wish to preserve, and then pause those build tasks.

1 Like
29

Here’s my current tug design (for reference, in this game I am at magneto-plasma engine tech):

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Atlas Mk3 class Tug 127,315 tons 662 Crew 1,778.4 BP TCS 2,546 TH 9,200 EM 0
3613 km/s Armour 1-225 Shields 0-0 HTK 258 Sensors 11/0/0/0 DCR 4-0 PPV 0
MSP 5,034 Max Repair 100 MSP
Cargo Shuttle Multiplier 1 Tractor Beam
Septimus Control Rating 1 BRG
Intended Deployment Time: 3 months CDE 40%

Engine-C7.5-5000t-0400p (23) Power 9200 Fuel Use 0.49% Signature 400 Exp 2%
Fuel Capacity 5,000,000 Litres Range 1,430.6 billion km (4583 days at full power)
Refuelling Capability: 80,000 litres per hour Complete Refuel 62 hours

TH-Mk11-0050t (1) Sensitivity 11 Detect 1000: 26.2m km

This design is classed as a Commercial Vessel for maintenance purposes
This design is classed as a Tug for auto-assignment purposes

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When it’s towing a 100k ton cargo pod (or a troop module, etc) it moves at 2019 km/s and has a range 799.5 billion km. That’s an excessive range for a cargo ship, but by carrying 5M litres of fuel it can also serve as a refueling tanker for one or two ships without needing to tow an “expeditionary pod” (which contains both fuel, MSP, and ordinance if applicable to the mission). Ditto on the reason for putting 5k MSP on board when it doesn’t need nearly that much, and for including a single shuttle bay. Now it can be both a refueler and supply ship in a pinch.

Notice that it only slows down from 3613 km/s to 2019 km/s when towing 100k tons. That’s because I’m using low boost engines (25% nominal), which are much larger but linearly cheaper and much, much more fuel efficient. I put on a bunch of them to make up for the lower power per tonnage of engine. This makes it so the tug doesn’t slow down as much when tugging.

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30

O’h nice, must have only noticed on fleets with no tasks lined up in the past so always kept making sure not to tug it empty.

31
  1. The extra build cost is not much more doing 10 in stead of 1 I have found.
  2. It also means you have jobs spaces for commanders so they don’t simply retire.

Bonus, you can tow stations faster from gas giants to the inner most moon for greater STO coverage should enemies be coming from the the opposite side to the moons that have STOs (Damn knife ears)

1 Like
32

It meets my personal definition of “much more.”

With 1 the overhead is ~34.5% of the cost of the modules.
With 10 the overhead is ~11.1%.
With 50 the overhead is ~7.2%.

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