Best way to make a resupply ship?

[thorfrog]

What the best way to make a resupply ship early on in the game? I've been playing with solar panels and supplies.

[TaeraRepublic]

Early? dont know about early, but i remember making a ressuply ship which had one (!) ressuply storage, but 15-20 solar panels.


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Emperor Klis't of the Taera Republic.
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[Nitram Draw]

Depends on how far away from a resupply base you will be. The cheapest is to use an LC with max engines, bridge, life support, quarters and fill up the rest of the space with supply components. It will hold a few thousand supply points.
Solar panels are great for an attacking fleet but if you have a repair bay available a resupply pod is even better. Use it every turn and it will be repaired. You can add thousands of points per turn this way. You just have to remove the supply ship from the fleet to use it and the recombine it into the fleet to have the supply distributed at the end of the turn.

[Trachmyr]

The best way is with a little modification to the componets.txt file...

Find Supply Storage I, II & III and add this ability to those componets:

Ability 2 Type := Cargo Storage
Ability 2 Descr :=
Ability 2 Val 1 := 0
Ability 2 Val 2 := 0

(Don't forget to change the number of abilities to 2)

This will allow supply storage to count towards the 50% cargo restriction on transports... thus allowing "Tanker Ships"

It may also be useful to at least double the number of supplies that they hold, so they can atleast equal engines in capacity per ton, or cut tonnage/tonnage structure/costs in half.


As for solar collectors, I only put them on small scout type craft, not on tankers. The reason is that you have to have A LOT of collectors to resupply a fleet! It's better just having a couple of tankers that run supplies from your planets to the frontier/front-line.


P.S. I also usually add a repair bay to my larger tankers, so they can refuel/refit my main attack fleet... equip them with a cloak/stealth armor to keep them safe just on the otherside of the warp point.


[This message has been edited by Trachmyr (edited 16 April 2001).]

[rdouglass]

I have to differ with Trachmyr. I do use Solar Collectors in fleets and on tankers. I don't do the "cargo mod" for supply modules, but I've found that 1 Sol Collector on each ship (the space IMO is worth it) and 2 cruisers with a mix of SC's and Supply Modules (working in the tanker mode) works great. I can go a LONG way without being too low on supplys. and the occasional trinary system fills your tanks real fast...

Besides, Solar Harnessing is a cheap and effective research early on in low tech games...I really like the Sails...

[Puke]

yeah, the solar tech is good to get into early, you will need the sails later anyway, and they can even be a cost savings over some engines. i cant usually afford to put one SC per ship until i have LCs, but its really easy to field dedicated SC ships with each small fleet.