Trapper Tim's Guide to CLS 2

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Timsup2nothin
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Post by Timsup2nothin » Mon, 25. Mar 13, 15:38

psyclon wrote:I just tried setting 2 waypoints with only the refuel command - after the ship got to the first SPP and refueled it remained there on standby.
Good to know. Thanks.
Trapper Tim's Guide to CLS 2

On Her Majesty's Secret Service-Dead is Dead, and he is DEAD

Not a DiD, so I guess it's a DiDn't, the story of my first try at AP
Part One, in progress

HEY! AP!! That's new!!!

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Kirlack
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Post by Kirlack » Mon, 25. Mar 13, 15:38

Timsup2nothin wrote:As to idle pilots. Yes, it could be hostiles in the sector they are in or in the destination sector. The only thing I can recall that causes idle other than that is if they don't get paid. No money in the station account is a particularly nasty one because I've seen them stay idle even after money appears in the account. They frequently have to be manually restarted.
Well, it's definitely not a problem with the station account, that's pushing 4.4 million ;) I'm guessing my two guys who point blank refused to get back to work had picked up some hostiles in their collection sector. I did some temporary re-rigging of their waypoints just in case, but they still wouldn't launch until the Pirates had vacated The Hole.

Timsup2nothin
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Post by Timsup2nothin » Mon, 25. Mar 13, 15:53

Kirlack wrote:
Timsup2nothin wrote:As to idle pilots. Yes, it could be hostiles in the sector they are in or in the destination sector. The only thing I can recall that causes idle other than that is if they don't get paid. No money in the station account is a particularly nasty one because I've seen them stay idle even after money appears in the account. They frequently have to be manually restarted.
Well, it's definitely not a problem with the station account, that's pushing 4.4 million ;) I'm guessing my two guys who point blank refused to get back to work had picked up some hostiles in their collection sector. I did some temporary re-rigging of their waypoints just in case, but they still wouldn't launch until the Pirates had vacated The Hole.
Yeah, they definitely don't like pirates.

Which reminds me of a little known use for CLS...Kha'ak scanning.

Put CLS on a ship, and give it a 'fly to station' waypoint in a sector you are wondering about where your assets give you a pretty good view of the sector. If he won't go there is a very good chance that Kha'ak clusters are lurking outside the central area. If he sets off, stop him and try another sector.
Trapper Tim's Guide to CLS 2

On Her Majesty's Secret Service-Dead is Dead, and he is DEAD

Not a DiD, so I guess it's a DiDn't, the story of my first try at AP
Part One, in progress

HEY! AP!! That's new!!!

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Post by Fluff » Mon, 25. Mar 13, 16:07

psyclon wrote:Here's another question - let's take the simplest possible job - load e-cells from point A, unload at point B up to X amount. After reaching point B the ship unloads up to X amount and returns to A with any remaining e-cells in the cargo bay. How do i tell it to stay at point B until it's out of e-cells and then go back to point A?
I think you can accomplish this by setting the deliver tolerance (or whatever it's called; it's in the supply settings) to 100%. Then it's just a question of which station you want it to idle at. If you want it to idle at A, you're good to go with those waypoints. If you want it to idle at B, give it a 'fly to station' waypoint before the 'unload'.

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Post by terryokc2 » Mon, 25. Mar 13, 17:03

Timsup2nothin wrote:
Kirlack wrote:
Timsup2nothin wrote:As to idle pilots. Yes, it could be hostiles in the sector they are in or in the destination sector. The only thing I can recall that causes idle other than that is if they don't get paid. No money in the station account is a particularly nasty one because I've seen them stay idle even after money appears in the account. They frequently have to be manually restarted.
Well, it's definitely not a problem with the station account, that's pushing 4.4 million ;) I'm guessing my two guys who point blank refused to get back to work had picked up some hostiles in their collection sector. I did some temporary re-rigging of their waypoints just in case, but they still wouldn't launch until the Pirates had vacated The Hole.
Yeah, they definitely don't like pirates.

Which reminds me of a little known use for CLS...Kha'ak scanning.

Put CLS on a ship, and give it a 'fly to station' waypoint in a sector you are wondering about where your assets give you a pretty good view of the sector. If he won't go there is a very good chance that Kha'ak clusters are lurking outside the central area. If he sets off, stop him and try another sector.
Quickie question on this, but...wouldn't said CLS pilot need to be Forwarding Agent or Logistician in order for this to be true? I thought that I read they won't check the radio network until this point. No?

Timsup2nothin
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Post by Timsup2nothin » Mon, 25. Mar 13, 17:56

Fluff wrote:
psyclon wrote:Here's another question - let's take the simplest possible job - load e-cells from point A, unload at point B up to X amount. After reaching point B the ship unloads up to X amount and returns to A with any remaining e-cells in the cargo bay. How do i tell it to stay at point B until it's out of e-cells and then go back to point A?
I think you can accomplish this by setting the deliver tolerance (or whatever it's called; it's in the supply settings) to 100%. Then it's just a question of which station you want it to idle at. If you want it to idle at A, you're good to go with those waypoints. If you want it to idle at B, give it a 'fly to station' waypoint before the 'unload'.
To do what Fluff wants you set the 'Minimum delivery amount for collecting' to 100%. That way the ship will not return to the loading point until it is completely empty. I would use 90 or 95% though because the ship's shields and/or jump fuel might interfere with the full 100%, I'm not sure on that. Something else to experiment with.
Trapper Tim's Guide to CLS 2

On Her Majesty's Secret Service-Dead is Dead, and he is DEAD

Not a DiD, so I guess it's a DiDn't, the story of my first try at AP
Part One, in progress

HEY! AP!! That's new!!!

Fluff
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Post by Fluff » Mon, 25. Mar 13, 18:03

Timsup2nothin wrote:To do what Fluff wants you set the 'Minimum delivery amount for collecting' to 100%. That way the ship will not return to the loading point until it is completely empty. I would use 90 or 95% though because the ship's shields and/or jump fuel might interfere with the full 100%, I'm not sure on that. Something else to experiment with.
Yeah, I've messed with this. It depends on how much cargo the pilot is expecting to unload. If you set the cargo amount manually, it's not a problem. If you reserve jump fuel and have the shields on the ship before using the "maximum cargo space" option when creating the waypoint, I'm pretty sure it will take those into consideration. There's only a problem when setting up the pilot before loading on shields or reserving jump fuel; the waypoint will want more cargo than it can hold.

Timsup2nothin
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Post by Timsup2nothin » Mon, 25. Mar 13, 18:13

Fluff wrote:
Timsup2nothin wrote:To do what Fluff wants you set the 'Minimum delivery amount for collecting' to 100%. That way the ship will not return to the loading point until it is completely empty. I would use 90 or 95% though because the ship's shields and/or jump fuel might interfere with the full 100%, I'm not sure on that. Something else to experiment with.
Yeah, I've messed with this. It depends on how much cargo the pilot is expecting to unload. If you set the cargo amount manually, it's not a problem. If you reserve jump fuel and have the shields on the ship before using the "maximum cargo space" option when creating the waypoint, I'm pretty sure it will take those into consideration. There's only a problem when setting up the pilot before loading on shields or reserving jump fuel; the waypoint will want more cargo than it can hold.
Fluff, your other option is an 'overflow tank'. Dock a big hulk ship with a single waypoint to unload to your station. Change your delivering ship's unload waypoint to an unload max cargo, then add an unload max cargo to the overflow tank right after. The overflow tank will feed the second load into the station while the transport goes to refill. Of course the overflow tank would eventually fill up too, but you can draw from it with a freighter that sells the overage without worrying that it will short your station.
Trapper Tim's Guide to CLS 2

On Her Majesty's Secret Service-Dead is Dead, and he is DEAD

Not a DiD, so I guess it's a DiDn't, the story of my first try at AP
Part One, in progress

HEY! AP!! That's new!!!

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psyclon
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Post by psyclon » Tue, 26. Mar 13, 01:28

Timsup2nothin wrote:set the 'Minimum delivery amount for collecting' to 100%.
If i set this, the ship stays at point B and unloads its cargo until point A has enough resources to meet the requirement of the waypoint (in this case - 8000 e-cells). If point A already has the necessary resources upon arrival at point B, the ship does not wait at all and returns with any freight, which has not been unloaded due to the "up to" condition.

Timsup2nothin
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Post by Timsup2nothin » Tue, 26. Mar 13, 01:45

psyclon wrote:
Timsup2nothin wrote:set the 'Minimum delivery amount for collecting' to 100%.
If i set this, the ship stays at point B and unloads its cargo until point A has enough resources to meet the requirement of the waypoint (in this case - 8000 e-cells). If point A already has the necessary resources upon arrival at point B, the ship does not wait at all and returns with any freight, which has not been unloaded due to the "up to" condition.
Hmmmm. That doesn't work, which puts us back at the overflow tank solution.
Trapper Tim's Guide to CLS 2

On Her Majesty's Secret Service-Dead is Dead, and he is DEAD

Not a DiD, so I guess it's a DiDn't, the story of my first try at AP
Part One, in progress

HEY! AP!! That's new!!!

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Morkonan
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Post by Morkonan » Tue, 26. Mar 13, 02:42

Nicely done guide!

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psyclon
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Post by psyclon » Tue, 26. Mar 13, 07:36

Timsup2nothin wrote:Hmmmm. That doesn't work, which puts us back at the overflow tank solution.
My initial idea about all this was to have the ship stay longer at the second station, in order to not drain the first station too much, because there are other ships also loading cells from it. But then i thought about it - will there be any difference if the ship made, let's say, 1 loading per hour with an empty cargo bay or 2 loadings per hour with almost half the cargo bay full. In both cases it would load roughly the same amount of e-cells per hour, unless my assumption is totally wrong, so all this might be for nothing.

And another thing. My energy transporters refuse to "refuel" at the station, where they drop the e-cells. I don't know if that's because the e-cells are considered a "resource" and not a "product". Instead i'm using a command to load the exact amount needed for the jump, i.e. 90 e-cells, and it's working fine.

------------------------------------------------

Edit: After some testing i think i figured it out - the key is in the "minimum amount for delivery" command. It might not be clear (as it certainly was not clear to me), but this is how it functions: if you have set a ship to deliver e-cells to a station up to 100,000 units and then set "minimum amount for delivery" to 50%, after loading the e-cells the ship will wait for the amount at the other station to drop below 50,000 (as 50,000 is 50% of 100,000). If you set the supply condition to 100% the ship will wait at the first station until the second station is completely empty. So if i want my Mistral SF to unload all the 15,000 units of e-cells, i should use 15% - he will set off for the second station as soon as it drops below 85,000 units and there will be enough space to unload the entire cargo bay.

Again, if this was clear to everyone but me, i apologize for the useless explanations. :)

Timsup2nothin
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Post by Timsup2nothin » Tue, 26. Mar 13, 15:38

psyclon wrote:
Timsup2nothin wrote:Hmmmm. That doesn't work, which puts us back at the overflow tank solution.
My initial idea about all this was to have the ship stay longer at the second station, in order to not drain the first station too much, because there are other ships also loading cells from it. But then i thought about it - will there be any difference if the ship made, let's say, 1 loading per hour with an empty cargo bay or 2 loadings per hour with almost half the cargo bay full. In both cases it would load roughly the same amount of e-cells per hour, unless my assumption is totally wrong, so all this might be for nothing.

And another thing. My energy transporters refuse to "refuel" at the station, where they drop the e-cells. I don't know if that's because the e-cells are considered a "resource" and not a "product". Instead i'm using a command to load the exact amount needed for the jump, i.e. 90 e-cells, and it's working fine.

------------------------------------------------

Edit: After some testing i think i figured it out - the key is in the "minimum amount for delivery" command. It might not be clear (as it certainly was not clear to me), but this is how it functions: if you have set a ship to deliver e-cells to a station up to 100,000 units and then set "minimum amount for delivery" to 50%, after loading the e-cells the ship will wait for the amount at the other station to drop below 50,000 (as 50,000 is 50% of 100,000). If you set the supply condition to 100% the ship will wait at the first station until the second station is completely empty. So if i want my Mistral SF to unload all the 15,000 units of e-cells, i should use 15% - he will set off for the second station as soon as it drops below 85,000 units and there will be enough space to unload the entire cargo bay.

Again, if this was clear to everyone but me, i apologize for the useless explanations. :)
Excellent work. I don't use those functions much myself and wouldn't have been able to explain them.

To clarify on your initial concern though...ultimately the delivery freighter is going to deliver cells as fast as the receiving station uses them. It may deliver a whole load at once or a half load twice as often or some other way, but the consumption rate of the destination factory will determine the load on the supplying factory.

On refueling...the CLS won't take resources for fuel, so you have a much better plan with loading at the source for both jumps. If you needed to refuel at a drop off point for some reason (say you are setting up an ore supplier and e-cells are a resource at both ends of the journey) you would want to use a fuel tank. Set up a small CLS ship to load e-cells, which it will do even if they are a resource, then set that ship as a refueling waypoint for your freighters right after they unload.
Trapper Tim's Guide to CLS 2

On Her Majesty's Secret Service-Dead is Dead, and he is DEAD

Not a DiD, so I guess it's a DiDn't, the story of my first try at AP
Part One, in progress

HEY! AP!! That's new!!!

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psyclon
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Post by psyclon » Tue, 26. Mar 13, 17:33

The thing is, in the case of energy transporters there is no need to refuel at the source, because he is loading e-cells anyway. And i cannot tell it to refuel at the other station, because as you said the CLS won't take resources for fuel. So instead of wondering how to set the ship to drop off X - 100 energy cells, i find it much easier to command it first to unload everything and then to load back 100 cells for the return jump.

It took me a while, but i managed to set all my freighters to take off when they know that they will be able to unload a full cargo bay. I prefer it this way , i don't mind them being on standby at the source for a while - in real life i'd much rather fool around for an hour and then deliver a ton of bricks, instead of delivering 700 kg, coming back with 300 kg to get some more, and so on :D

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Post by Timsup2nothin » Tue, 26. Mar 13, 18:09

psyclon wrote:The thing is, in the case of energy transporters there is no need to refuel at the source, because he is loading e-cells anyway. And i cannot tell it to refuel at the other station, because as you said the CLS won't take resources for fuel. So instead of wondering how to set the ship to drop off X - 100 energy cells, i find it much easier to command it first to unload everything and then to load back 100 cells for the return jump.

It took me a while, but i managed to set all my freighters to take off when they know that they will be able to unload a full cargo bay. I prefer it this way , i don't mind them being on standby at the source for a while - in real life i'd much rather fool around for an hour and then deliver a ton of bricks, instead of delivering 700 kg, coming back with 300 kg to get some more, and so on :D
I agree wholeheartedly with the dropping the full load.

My experience with energy transporters is that if I don't give them a separate refueling order they will end up eventually flying around with a cargo of e-cells and not recognize they could use them as jump fuel. On the other hand as long as I give them the refueling waypoint when they are empty they recognize those cells are jump fuel and they will not unload or sell them even if I use 'max cargospace' for the waypoints.

I actually make a 'basic list' save in data storage for whatever station is my project of the moment. It has a 'refuel' stop at the station's fuel tank (yes, installing a fuel tank is usually the first thing I do when I build a station) and has all the settings done (pay from station account, use jump drive, etc). I load it into any freighter I add to the system before I start putting in the specific waypoints.
Trapper Tim's Guide to CLS 2

On Her Majesty's Secret Service-Dead is Dead, and he is DEAD

Not a DiD, so I guess it's a DiDn't, the story of my first try at AP
Part One, in progress

HEY! AP!! That's new!!!

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Alareth
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Post by Alareth » Sat, 27. Apr 13, 23:58

You know what I find to be a glaring omission from CLS?

A stop command in the waypoints.

I have a TS that is a dedicated errand boy. I don't need him running continuously, just every so often to grab some miscellaneous whatsit so I don't have to go hunting for it myself.

The way I use him would greatly benefit from a built in command where I could tell him to do a single loop of the waypoint list then stop, or do it three times then stop.

Timsup2nothin
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Post by Timsup2nothin » Sun, 28. Apr 13, 02:07

Alareth wrote:You know what I find to be a glaring omission from CLS?

A stop command in the waypoints.

I have a TS that is a dedicated errand boy. I don't need him running continuously, just every so often to grab some miscellaneous whatsit so I don't have to go hunting for it myself.

The way I use him would greatly benefit from a built in command where I could tell him to do a single loop of the waypoint list then stop, or do it three times then stop.
Under supply conditions there is a 'stop work at base' setting. Just turn that on. You can only make them stop if you set their homebase as a waypoint, and they will stop after just the one loop, but it can be done.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Alternatively, you can use 'buy up to' waypoints and end with a 'fly to' command. Say you want him to hang around your complex with ten 25MJ shields at the ready for you to use.

Give him as many 'buy' waypoints as you can find, a price you think is reasonable, and an 'up to' of 10. Then a 'fly to' command for your complex. If he has ten units on board he will skip all the buy waypoints and just sit there. If you take some of the shields off he will go buy more as soon as they reach the price, then come back and sit on standby again.
Trapper Tim's Guide to CLS 2

On Her Majesty's Secret Service-Dead is Dead, and he is DEAD

Not a DiD, so I guess it's a DiDn't, the story of my first try at AP
Part One, in progress

HEY! AP!! That's new!!!

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Tohron
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Post by Tohron » Sun, 28. Apr 13, 05:31

Alareth wrote:You know what I find to be a glaring omission from CLS?

A stop command in the waypoints.

I have a TS that is a dedicated errand boy. I don't need him running continuously, just every so often to grab some miscellaneous whatsit so I don't have to go hunting for it myself.

The way I use him would greatly benefit from a built in command where I could tell him to do a single loop of the waypoint list then stop, or do it three times then stop.
Another option is to just give them the "jump & fly to station" command when you want them to stop, and reissue "start external commodity logistics" once you want them to start again - they'll remember the waypoints.

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Post by DrBullwinkle » Sun, 28. Apr 13, 06:13

Would the "Wait for request signal" Supply Condition help?

Timsup2nothin
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Post by Timsup2nothin » Sun, 28. Apr 13, 06:46

DrBullwinkle wrote:Would the "Wait for request signal" Supply Condition help?
I've never used that, but according to the docs it only applies to ship waypoints where the CLS is unloading to a TL. Truth be told I suspect the reason I've never used it is because I have no idea what 'telling the pilot if the target needs his products' means.
Trapper Tim's Guide to CLS 2

On Her Majesty's Secret Service-Dead is Dead, and he is DEAD

Not a DiD, so I guess it's a DiDn't, the story of my first try at AP
Part One, in progress

HEY! AP!! That's new!!!

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