Is "Find Build Tasks" just for my Faction?

[Scoob]

Hey all,

I'm trying to revamp a "dead" area of sectors. Friendly factions have numerous Station builds they've started, but the area is cut-off from supply lines. I've established a presence in the area, and can provide basic building materials for stations, so I've been supplying the Build sites. However, there are no Builder ships in the area, so the build does no commence. Now I have Builder ships in the area, but I cannot deploy them to an allies Station, I do have the "Find Build Tasks" behaviour settings though. So, I set one of my Builders to this, while right next to an allies build site, though it seems to be simply flying around.

So, as per the topic title, is the "Find Build Tasks" behaviour ONLY for my faction? If so, how can I assist my ally? I thought of SELLING a Builder while it's near a build site, but I think they decommission any ships sold to them, and not use them. Shame. My only other option is to clear multiple Xenon sectors that have cut-off this area of space. I'd hoped other Factions could depend on my support, as I use them to get established in the early-game.

Note: I've used a mod to make the Xenon SUPER aggressive and powerful in my game - far far larger ship quotas - so the universe is literally burning. It's great. Myself, ZYA (with significant support from me) BOR and TER are currently the only substantial surviving Factions. Argon Prime is long gone, as are ALL ARG ship building facilities. So, they rely on me. I do have a Shipyard, but it's exclusively for my use... perhaps I'll build one for them, that'd be cool...

[flywlyx]

With every new version, the same question gets asked, but no answers are ever provided. I suggest bringing it up again when 8.0 is released and seeing what happens.

[RubyRezal]

Many versions ago I built a fleet of about 5 builders and sent them off to find work. I rarely saw credit transfers for stations they built. It was more to give them something to do between building my stations.

They'll spend ages wandering around looking for work and I'd assume they only get selected when all other faction builders are occupied or dead.
More often than not my wandering builders just got blown up by a passing Xenon destroyer when the Xenon finally overran that playthrough.

I would assume your global orders will limit where it can go and who it can build for. If you set your default for all ships to only trade with you then that will prevent it from finding any jobs for other factions.

[Alan Phipps]

Threads such as here and here seem to indicate a gameplay consistency issue with this command. The first link has a dev bug-tracker number.

[RubyRezal]

Now that I think about it, I may have been playing with a mod that rewrote the AI so my prior comment may not be accurate for an unmodded game.

[Scoob]

I've never actually tried this command before, so I was totally unaware of any history surrounding it. It didn't seem to work how I wanted it to. Perhaps it would have automatically found my Build locations, but it won't do those of allies. I built them a Shipyard in the end

[LameFox]

Even after making that thread, I've still never seen it do anything. I can only assume it's non-functional for players. Maybe we aren't even meant to have access to it, like how there are default behaviours for piracy.

[Scoob]

Even after making that thread, I've still never seen it do anything. I can only assume it's non-functional for players. Maybe we aren't even meant to have access to it, like how there are default behaviours for piracy.

So it won't even find our own Build sites? I must admit, I usually directly assign a Builder before I exit the build screen. However, I did wonder if it were possible to set multiple Builders to this behaviour and have them attach themselves as needed. Would be quite nice if it worked that way.

It might be coincidental, however, after many hours of no activity, I set one of my build ships to "Find Build Tasks", which did nothing as I mentioned. However, shortly afterwards, TWO BOR Builders arrived and attached to those ARG build sites. Perhaps they were already en-route, but the timing seemed suspicious.

[LameFox]

So it won't even find our own Build sites?

Not that I noticed. It had a tendency to wander off, though—maybe if it was also forced to stay in the area?

Although in that case I can't imagine it would have any advantage at all over manual assignment.

[Scoob]

Not that I noticed. It had a tendency to wander off, though—maybe if it was also forced to stay in the area?

Although in that case I can't imagine it would have any advantage at all over manual assignment.

Thanks. It's funny, while I was watching, mine pootled around for a bit, seemingly rather aimless. Then, it set a vector and engaged its travel drive with purpose... or so it seemed. It then stopped and pottered again for a bit.

As I'm late-game, I tend to keep several inactive Builders parked in various locations. Then I can readily snag one for a build if needed. If the behaviour did work, then that might work quite nicely at this late game stage, but it's not really saving me much effort. Also, I'd worry where they'd wander. No, I think I'd assign them manually regardless.

[Duncaroos]

I have never seen it work. I would have expected the builder to auto assign itself to build stations (depending on its set blacklists/trade rules

[jlehtone]

So it won't even find our own Build sites?

Not that I noticed. It had a tendency to wander off, though—maybe if it was also forced to stay in the area?

That makes the thread title possibly misleading:

Is "Find Build Tasks" just for my Faction?

Asked that way implies that the person asking knows that "Find Build Tasks" makes Builder beeline to player's buildsites. Probably not so.


AFAIK, the "Find Build Tasks" is just badly named "Roam randomly around the Galaxy".