How self-sufficient can a fleet/player be?

[Pagan Nova]

I might be thinking about this game wrong, but I'm looking at building my second ship. My first ship only had two hydroponic gardens, with a sufficient sewage to water setup, and CO2 scrubbing setup, but doesn't seem food stable or able to scrub CO2 well enough for oxygen recycling purposes. Two gardens for 49 crew isn't enough by a lot, I can make more, or I can make a larger ship/station and just put gardens in that and get food occasionally from it, I'm not sure.

Why is designed to NOT be sustainable, and needs to be purchased or harvested? I like self-sufficiency, but I'll accept it if a game isn't designed to allow that..

[Greeba]

I’ve yet to need 49 crew for anything really. I’ve built some large productions ships and a fairly punchy attack boat but my total crew has never really gone over 25-30. Recently I’ve been going smaller and doing everything on the Procyon with less than 10 crew, but that’s with no combat yet.

If you’re going to get hydroponics going then you need lots of water - mining a comet early seems to be the way at the moment. Power is easy now you have solar panels to reduce the need for fuel.

I’ve also had no problem with CO2 scrubbing , if anything the issue is usually tanking off excess oxygen because it all works fine and the O2 builds up.

Can you share a savegame so I can take a peek at your setup?

[Greeba]

To answer another way, in my current playthrough my Procyon has a crew of about ten sustained by one garden, and the stock of food is rising slowly but not massively so I think the balance is about right. If that holds then for a crew of 49 I expect you’d need four or five gardens and enough water to supply them. I’ll check my game tonight in case I’m speaking out of turn.

[Pagan Nova]

I got so many crew on a small ship hoping they'd load and unload ships faster, as I was doing cargo transport missions mostly for the time. Still kinda am. my standard Procyon ship needs worked on because it no longer suits my desires of a main ship

also I actually started using the docking mechanic...nah. i don't care for it, for how I wanted to play and set up my fleets, i'll just buy food and stuff and have the AI dock with me (it's a matter of frequency, it's a fine mechanic, just tiring)

[Greeba]

It’s true that docking is a bit fiddly and not fun to do all the time, this is why players lean toward drones. To improve drone efficiency I use tracks and short robot arms - then the question becomes where this helps, and where stuff is ending up slower because it’s stuck on tracks. This is work in progress / up for grabs. A track unloading system for a few drone bays is definitely worth having. Automation elsewhere is a mixed bag; it’s worth auto loading smelters and fabricators on larger ships, beyond that you may be better off using crew labour to work assembly tables.

In my last couple of plays, I’ve managed to quickly complete all current Stargate phases using 3 smelters, 3 fabricators and 2 tables, and less than 10 crew.
Too much automation, and too many crew, both are currently overrated IMO.

But it depends what you’re doing in the game of course.

[Greeba]

For the docking bay, another trick players like is to use rows of robot arms, then tracks, then more robot arms- that way you can unload huge consignments from docked ships. The downside is that those arms and tracks are in the way of crew loading out, while very good at loading in. I raised a ticket[github.com] requesting more control of goods in/ goods out for docking bay areas to try to improve the planning for this.

[Pagan Nova]

do I just need drones and drone ports on both ships, to move items between them? is that it?

[Greeba]

That’s right; you need drone bays on both ships and drones on the donor ship.

[Greeba]

Have you played the missions highlighted in Orange on the map? One or more of these should teach you about drones. If this isn't clear, this may be good feedback for the devs.

[Pagan Nova]

I was doing the one for the military person, and they had me manually dock. It DID have me loot wreckages with drones, but not ship-to-ship drone transport stuff.

[Greeba]

Right, so it may not be apparent to new players. Interesting.

[Pagan Nova]

a few missions later, they give you a ship. they should stick a drone port on it and a single drone and be like, "transfer some stuff back and forth using that," then, dock and transport crew. im assuming drones dont transfer personnel.

[Greeba]

Correct, crew can only only transfer when docked.

[Mister Vertigo]

As a new player, this is the first time I've heard of using drones to move goods between ships. Am I understanding this correctly?

[Pagan Nova]

Originally posted by Mister Vertigo:

As a new player, this is the first time I've heard of using drones to move goods between ships. Am I understanding this correctly?

it seemed to work. should really be in the tutorial if possible, but eh.

[keylocke]

as long as you build automation + robots well, you don't need too many crew.

iirc, i only got 10 crew, 1 scientist, and 6 gunners.

as long as i don't do too much rescue and passenger missions, i recoup most of my resources just from hunting pirates and mining asteroids.

my main issue is storage. need to visit and trade several times just to unload all the junk i don't need.