ISRU module

[VoiD]

How exactly does it work?

Do I have to land on an actual settlement?
Then all of the fuel is restored for free?

Do stations over planets work for that?

[ExavierMacbeth]

Resupply Options:
- Dock with a friendly space station that has Resupply Module or Space Dock
- Use ISRU, Land at a location, Refuel for free
- Use Scoop (Much later tech), Drop to interface orbit of gas giant, Refuel for free

Catches:
- Docking of course requires you to build & maintain an extra station. Something you probobly have if its near earth anyway.
- ISRU has an extra limit that you must have the Fuel & Thrust to be able to land and launch in the first place... Nervas & Ion Drives don't generate enough thrust to launch from Luna for example.
- Haven't personally played with the Scoop yet, mostly because I ended up unlocking it before anyone bothered to research Mission to Jupiter lol

[VoiD]

Thanks, I'll give it a try, still using adv pulse for local patrols but even going from moon to earth is costing me several thousands of water on refueling.

Just don't know if that's a useful upgrade or not since armor doesn't do anything and most ships are single use and disposable, even the bigger ones, they all die from a single shot anyway

[ExavierMacbeth]

Originally posted by VoiD:

Thanks, I'll give it a try, still using adv pulse for local patrols but even going from moon to earth is costing me several thousands of water on refueling.

Just don't know if that's a useful upgrade or not since armor doesn't do anything and most ships are single use and disposable, even the bigger ones, they all die from a single shot anyway

If your running Earth-Moon "patrols" using Adv Pulsar then you are probably wasting alot of resources. Might be better to build a short ranged combat ship & a local Orbital Space Dock to build them at.

Mine is a basic station with space dock, defense, & power. Then I keep 2-3 escorts/monitor class ships there that are build around changing orbits fast (for local intercepts) and carrying a mix of Small Missiles & Nuclear torpedos with lots of magazine modules.

Basically when combat starts I dump about 60+ rattler missiles into space in a cloud, wait until they get half way there, then start dropping the nuclear torpedos while the ship itself runs away... Either the Rattler Swarm kills the target or the nuclear torpedo sneaks through while the PD weapons shoot the missile cloud. Survival of the launching ship is optional because once its missile bays are dry its of little use. So far I usually kill the lighter aliens without taking any losses but even when I do lose I often end in a mutual kill :P

EDIT: ISRU, dispite being early in the tree is designed more for interplanetary craft that can stop at asteroids. I don't think Adv Pulsar has enough thrust to lift from the moon unless you have a very light ship.

[VoiD]

But those were supposed to be the short ranged combat ships.

I was reading about how it's impossible to keep a ship around earth itself as agents keep stealing them all and you can't do much about it so I have to park them between earth and luna, and ya, those are some extremely expensive trips.

Could use the potato drives that don't let ships move in combat, but I don't know if they even have enough thrust to get away from earth if they try to fight something in orbit.

[ExavierMacbeth]

Well what specifically are you using the ships against? And what faction?

Honestly I moved most of my operations away from earth orbit as soon as I could. I keep a disposable shipyard there that no one has bothered touch but otherwise all my stuff stays near Moon & Ceres (I claimed all of Ceres for the water & then fortified it). I am up to year 2038 and besides the 1 alien ship I needed to kill for my faction objectives, I haven't really seen much point in throwing them at the enemy yet. The Aliens replace the smaller ships too easily & it just makes them send more after you directly (like assassinating too many of their agents).

[VoiD]

Originally posted by ExavierMacbeth:

Well what specifically are you using the ships against? And what faction?

Honestly I moved most of my operations away from earth orbit as soon as I could. I keep a disposable shipyard there that no one has bothered touch but otherwise all my stuff stays near Moon & Ceres (I claimed all of Ceres for the water & then fortified it). I am up to year 2038 and besides the 1 alien ship I needed to kill for my faction objectives, I haven't really seen much point in throwing them at the enemy yet. The Aliens replace the smaller ships too easily & it just makes them send more after you directly (like assassinating too many of their agents).

The aliens so far, nobody else made anything, I kept all the factions from the EU, Russia, US, kept doing coups on the medium sized nations and broke the control from the Initiative from having both China and India so now HF got india instead.

Also took nearly all bases on mars, so none of the factions seem to have enough resources to do much of anything.

Except those damn aliens and their 5 ship fleets orbiting earth all the time, just saw a mothership for the first time a few minutes ago.

I was trying to get them off earth to build some research stations, guess that won't be working.

Edit: Probably going to research the splitting of america too, just keeping the exec and legislature branches from the AI is costing too much, almost 60 admin just for that

[michalbs87]

They shoul add Asteroid Mining Ship module technology after isru and orbital forge for base of operation for such ships. It would be interesting option to use mining ships.

[wei270]

if you have the ISRU module or the can you use that to steal alien resources by docking in their station?

[Ericus1]

That's not how the ISRU works. It refuels from unimproved ground hab sites assuming the potential outputs of the mining site there precisely match the propellant type used by your drive. If they don't by, say, lacking fissiles when your proppelant uses water and fissiles, you get nothing. And it takes a very long time to refuel, it's not instantaneous.

The two factors combine tend to make it a worthless module.

[CaptainSpacetime]

Originally posted by VoiD:

Thanks, I'll give it a try, still using adv pulse for local patrols but even going from moon to earth is costing me several thousands of water on refueling.

Just don't know if that's a useful upgrade or not since armor doesn't do anything and most ships are single use and disposable, even the bigger ones, they all die from a single shot anyway

Armor is useful it's just your have to have a good enough drive to actually handle the weight.

From the wiki:

"Armor plating on the ship will absorb incoming weapons fire, preventing damage to internal components. Each point of armor will absorb 20 Megajoules of energy at a single location on the hull before vaporizing. "

Getting shot at by lasers, armor up. Getting shot at by missiles/kinetics, use PD.

[gimmethegepgun]

This thread is over 2 years old.

[wei270]

we have necrophilia

[Vigor]

weird because I just came to the forum to find out how to use IRSU and saw this thread.

If you have a station on an appropriate site it doesn't work. It still takes the resources from your stockpile despite saying a ship with IRSU will refuel for free.

If I landed on the one open site on mars shouldn't I expect to get bombarded as there are no surface defenses if there is no base? It does have the right resources but not in sufficient quantity that any faction wants it lol.

I just built 2 ships, 1 an IRSU and the other a tanker figuring I could spare myself some of the intense fuel bills.

Ericus

That's not how the ISRU works. It refuels from unimproved ground hab sites assuming the potential outputs of the mining site there precisely match the propellant type used by your drive. If they don't by, say, lacking fissiles when your proppelant uses water and fissiles, you get nothing. And it takes a very long time to refuel, it's not instantaneous.

The two factors combine tend to make it a worthless module.

If that is how it works it sounds pretty worthless... 3 hours after I land I bet some other human faction is bombarding the ship. I suppose I could kill them all. I kindof rather leave them so aliens will come to kill them then I can kill the aliens for salvage.

[Vigor]

I take it back. It works, it just doesn't work well.

It doesn't actually fill the ship in 3 months. I'm not sure how much it does fill yet because it didn't occur to me to write down the fuel level before. I assumed it would fill to full.

-The tanker (no IRSU) has 15 of 181 kps. I'm not sure it got any but it didn't get much.
-The IRSU ship has 11.8 of 52.9 kps. Again I don't know what it had before but it must not have gotten much either.
-The amount you get could depend on the planet/site

You can resupply with IRSU for free at a base, just not a base with a shipyard or... again IDK, maybe I got some discount for having the IRSU but the base topped it off.

I'll keep playing with it a little to see if I can figure out exactly how it works or how to make it work better.

Does anyone know how remass scoop works? It says gas giants but Venus has a decent atmosphere would that work? It sounds like something that wouldn't work very well. Jupiter has a lot of gravity, getting close to the atmosphere sounds dangerous.

[gimmethegepgun]

Originally posted by Vigor:

It says gas giants but Venus has a decent atmosphere would that work?

Not in game. Might be doable in reality but don't know if it has the stuff you'd want near the top of the atmosphere.