Cannot understand hydrogen tanks - anyone clarify?

[Tallonius]

I have a large grid ship that carries a fighter and a miner. I loaded the large ship with ice to fill her up with hydrogen and got it up to c. 75. I separately filled up the two small ships to 100. When I landed them on the carrier, both had their hydrogen drained to zero. Lots of swearing, then realised I had the hydro tanks on the big ship on 'stockpile' so turned tanks and stockpiling off, and repeated. Seemed to work, but out in space my hydro engines suddenly stopped working, despite still having c. 75 reading on the gauge. Everything seemed ok, but no power - so turned tanks on (though not stockpiling) and power was restored. But it drained both of the small ships to zero again!! I just don't understand how these work. Does anyone know of a simple explanation or can tell me what it is that I'm doing wrong?

[Dan2D3D]

Hi, looks like you have a lot of Hydro thrusters that drain your Hydrogen fast.

How much Hydro thrusters, Hydro tanks and O2/H2 Gens there are on the ships ?

You may publish the save on the Workshop and share the item link here so all can load to help you find the cause with solution that will avoid a lot of questions.

+ I am better in-game to find the working solutions ;)

____

How to publish a world save :

1 - Select your save.

2 - Click the "Publish" button on the left.

3 - Choose a proper Tag, check Steam upload and click the OK button.

4 - Your world will be uploaded to Steam Workshop.

5 - Paste the Workshop item link here.

[Bahamut]

I think the what you may be missing is turning the small ship's hydrogen tanks to 'stockpile on'. This will keep them from being used by your large ship/each other and will also refill from the large grid when you connect them together.

Just need to remember to turn them off of stockpile after you disconnect so you have power/thrust on the small ships.

[Bobucles]

Hydrogen thrusters are hungry boys, and storage tanks don't store that much fuel. Running out in a few minutes is... normal. Be careful of your supply.

There are no grid settings for "carrier/drone" that try to recharge your ship from a master source, while still allowing that storage to be used. Use stockpile to force fuel into storage, and disable stockpile to fly the ship.

[Ronin Planetary Industries]

IF you turn on and off you power with the "Y" key, it will turn on and off EVERY source of power, including hydrogen engines. Never use this function. It's terrible. Group your batteries separately. Group your reactors and hydrogen engines separately as well. Use a tool bar to turn them on and off. This is probably why your hydrogen is disappearing.


If your hydrogen tank is "ON" it can be filled or drained.

If your hydrogen tank is "OFF" it cannot be filled. It cannot be drained.

If your hydrogen tank is "ON" and set to "STOCKPILE" it will drain all hydrogen tanks it can access until it is full (including docked ships). Hydrogen will NOT flow from this tank. It cannot be drained.

Hydrogen Engines have a small reserve of hydrogen. It cannot be drained.

Hydrogen engines consume a lot of hydrogen if they are running at full blast.

This will happen if you're trying to charge batteries from hydrogen engines. If you run hydrogen engines and batteries at the same time, you end up draining a lot of hydrogen... so it's best to run only hydrogen engines and not batteries along with them. Hydrogen engines are best when you have a minimum of equipment running. If you're trying to run a bunch of O2/H2 generators, refineries, etc. then you will have to have a huge reserve of hydrogen or a LOT of ice and enough O2/H2 generators to keep up with the task.

When docking a ship, it's best to turn off all hydrogen thrusters AND either turn off the hydrogen tank or set it to stockpile.

[Tallonius]

Thanks Dan2D3D - here's that link to the save: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2943699077

[Tallonius]

Thank you all for that info.

Bahamut & Bobucles - if I keep the small ships on 'stockpile' I'll have to turn stockpile off in order to to take off (or I'll have no power) and the main ship will immediately start taking the hydrogen - no?

RPI - that helps to understand them somewhat. But what I need is the ability for my small ships - miners and fighters - to be able to come and go without me being in fear that the big ship will just suck up all their fuel if I mess-up a procedure. If there is no proper solution - ie I'm not doing something wrong - then maybe I have to use a big carrier ship with just battery powered Ion thrusters, carrying smaller ships just using hydrogen.

[Bahamut]

Originally posted by Tallonius:

Thank you all for that info.

Bahamut & Bobucles - if I keep the small ships on 'stockpile' I'll have to turn stockpile off in order to to take off (or I'll have no power) and the main ship will immediately start taking the hydrogen - no?

Only if you keep them attached to the large ship. Depending on your power sources for your small ships, you can safely disconnect from the large ship, THEN switch stockpile off and you will be fine.

If your small ships also need the hydrogen for power (running off of an h2 engine), then you will need to switch stockpile on the small ships and disconnect.

One thing that you want to be wary of:
If you have your tanks set up in groups, if these groups are NAMED THE SAME, then you will be toggling states for all the tanks when the ships are all hooked together. This is why you want to separate the names of groups with either the name of the ship or some other moniker, so any hotbar commands will only affect those blocks that you want.

[bossbill1]

Only other thing to do is don't connect the small grid ships to the connector. Basically only connect them for refuling, at all other times have them locked to the main ship with either a landing gear or mag plate.

[Dantheotherone]

Originally posted by Tallonius:

Thank you all for that info.

Bahamut & Bobucles - if I keep the small ships on 'stockpile' I'll have to turn stockpile off in order to to take off (or I'll have no power) and the main ship will immediately start taking the hydrogen - no?

RPI - that helps to understand them somewhat. But what I need is the ability for my small ships - miners and fighters - to be able to come and go without me being in fear that the big ship will just suck up all their fuel if I mess-up a procedure. If there is no proper solution - ie I'm not doing something wrong - then maybe I have to use a big carrier ship with just battery powered Ion thrusters, carrying smaller ships just using hydrogen.

What I do is put a timer in the small ship and have these commands in it.
1. Switch lock (on the ship connector)
2. Stockpile - On/Off
3. Batteries - Recharge On/Off
4, Thrusters -On/Off
5. Gyros - On/Off
This way your ship's fuel tanks will be full and the batteries charged and the mother ship won't leach fuel from it.
[Make sure the small ships groups are specific to that ship.]


Set the timer on the hot bar to trigger whenever you want to dock or undock. One button to press to dock or undock.

[Dan2D3D]

Testing done so far = All seemed working well on default settings.

Testing details :

1 - I removed the small ships and noticed the Mothership as a good 30 minutes of Hydrogen.

2 - Refilled all Hydro tanks on the small Fighter and set its Hydro tanls on auto-refill.

3 - Connected the small Fighter on the Mothership.

4 - Noticed the Mothership will use Hydrogen on all Hydro tanks when flying, so it uses the Mothership and small Fighter Hydro tanks to make its thrusters work.

5 - Lost the mining ship in space so I've used the God mode to copy/paste back on the Mothership.

6 - Noticed the mining ship does not have Gyroscpes and no Hydrogen so I had to move the Mothership on its connector to lock it.

7 - Both small ships were not draining the Mothership tanks and same the other way around so the Mothership was not draining the small ships.

+
Note
I fixed all broken blocks and added a large antenna on the Mothership before testing.

Conclusions, so far :

1 -> The Mothership drain the small ship Hydrogen only when flying so when using its thrusters.
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2943732161

2 -> Noticed the mining ship uses PBs Scripts and may have fixed the problem since I deteled and pasted a copy of it ?? ... More testing needed to be sure ...
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2943732431

[Dan2D3D]

Oh! I forgot one detail :

There was no ice in the O2/H2 Gens and I did not tested by adding ice on the Mothership so all tanks were not refilling from O2/H2 Gens during that test.

[Dan2D3D]

I will add :

Create a copy to do some engineer testing using the God modes in Alt+F10 to enable creative in survival and paste in what you need from the Spawn Items menu Shift+F10

How to create a testing copy :
1 - Select your save.
2 - Click the "Save as" button on the left.
3 - Change the save name to create a copy.
4 - Load the copy to test.

Edit
Sorry, corrections made.

[Dan2D3D]

+

A test you must do would be to turn OFF the Hydro tanks of the small ships when they are connected to see if the Mothership will drain their Hydrogen when flying.

[Dan2D3D]

More testing done = I was not able to reproduce the "drained to zero" on small ship, well it takes time before they go empty that is when the Mothership uses its thrusters only.

Details :

1 - Added ice in all O2/H2 Gens. and also into one conector per ship.

2 - Disconneted, reconnected the small ships and turned Off their thrusters + Gyros.

3 - Went for a trip flying the Mothership and noticed all was working as intended.

4 - Noticed Hydrogen went down on the small ships but not the Mothership because stil having ice in.

5 - Stopped and turned Off the small ship hydro tanks to test more.

Note
There was Gyros on the mining ship, they were just set hidden ;)

Conclusion
The Mothership does not drain the small ship hydrogen when their tanks are turned Off.

[Dan2D3D]

+ Tho I did not tested a 2 way trip planet/space/planet to be sure on the ice+hydrogen needed It's a good setup I'll say !
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2943761635