Medium and Large Freighters possible fix

[Dray Prescot]

I would like to suggest a possible cause and fix to the problem many of you have regarding your civilian economy not building Medium and or Large Freighters:

The civilian economy does not LIKE the designs that you are using for them, and sees no reason to order them. So try changing the designs. I never use the autogenerated designs when I start a new class of Medium and Large Freighters. I always make changes to them before I make them my Active Designs.

So try experimenting with changes to the default design.

I think that I usually decrease the number of Cargo Bays and increase the number of Fuel Cells, from the standard auto new design.

In my games I have no problems with getting Medium and Large Freighters built/ordered by the civilian economy.

[Dray Prescot]

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2804849975

[Dray Prescot]

I tried comparing the designs that I use for my Medium and Large Freighters versus the auto generated designs you get when you use the New design command and select Medium or Large Freighter Hull, and then tell it to auto generate a new design for that Hull.

In my designs that I was using, I had reduced the number of Cargo Bays and increased the number of Fuel Cells, compared to the auto generated designs. I wanted my bigger Freighters to have more range than the auto generated designs. Most Freighters do not carry full cargoes anyway, while longer ranges makes it possible for them to do cargo hauling missions that other ships can not do.

Try it and it may solve your problems.

Since it works for me, and many of you are complaining about problems getting Medium and Large Freighters actually built, try changing the auto generated designs.

It is a simpler possible cause for the problem than resource shortages, and it is easily tested by you.

[Dray Prescot]

I will not know if this helps until you try it and report back on the results. Also try other changes to the auto generated design, than my suggestion.

To me it seems unlikely that a shortage of resources can be causing this problem to happen and Keep happening so that they never get built.

It occurred to me today that maybe the problem is the civilian economy sees no reason to build your designs because they are not any better than your existing Small Freighter designs to the subprogram that orders which designs get built.

Another thing to try, change all of your Small Freighter designs are Obsolete, i.e. NONE of them are Active. So if the program wants to order more freighters it will have to order an ACTIVE Medium or large Freighter design.

This particularly might work, when you are changing to a new better high Tech Hyper engine, Do NOT design a Small Freighter using the new Tech, i.e. make sure AUTO DESIGN IS set to MANUAL for your Freighters. You can NOT change AUTO UPGRADE to Manual for civilian ships, but it IS possible for Auto Design.

Then use the new better Hyper Drive Tech for Medium and Large Freighter designs. This might encourage the use of the Medium and Large designs.

[TheMac]

I found no issue with the AI building and using my custom built anything, as long as I give it range as you suggested, and I make sure to obsolete the current design.

All my ships are manual, though, since I don't find the AI does a very good job of building any ships (leaves white slots empty while putting useless single weapons on a freighter, thus limiting its range in favor of the weapon or an extra engine).