Decision loop and settings

Section titled “Decision loop and settings”

This page connects the decisions that create civilian companies (shipping lines), their ships, their jobs and civilian mining operations. Company expansion uses the company balance, counts of busy ships and dice. Freight uses full-load demand and route searches. Mining establishment uses the race’s annual income and a ranking of mineral bodies. Automated hull templates, component definitions and technology values are loaded data. Arithmetic is decimal unless the text names a whole-number cut or a floating-point calculation. Where a value is cut to a whole number, the fraction is dropped toward zero. Where a value is rounded, an exact half goes to the even neighbour.

Other pages own the steps that carry out these decisions. The wealth page owns receipt and treasury accounting. Movement and logistics owns physical loading, unloading, fuel and route execution. Production owns extraction and the resource accounting of instantly built ships. Colony lifecycle owns demographic support and migration pools. This page connects those steps to the decisions that start them.

The strategic update of each construction cycle refreshes colony state and the race’s annual wealth before it processes civilian shipping and mining. For each standard race, the update first marks the race as able to support civilian shipping. It then clears the mark when the race lacks the baseline Nuclear Radioisotope Engine technology (technology 24604), or when it owns fewer than two populations with a positive surface population (Population in FCT_Population). The mark is a cached eligibility test for construction, not a gate on each cargo delivery. The strategic update then runs the civilian shipping and mining step with the elapsed seconds of the cycle. See game time and state refresh.

Setting or gate Effect in play
Civilian Shipping Lines Active checked (FCT_Game.CivilianShippingLinesActive = 1) Enables build attempts by existing companies and their damage handling, then attempts to found new companies.
Race support mark and at least one shipyard owned by the race Required for an existing company’s build attempt. Repair and transfer still run when either fails. This gate does not check shipyard location, capacity or slipway availability.
Allow Civilian Mines checked (AllowCMC = 1) Enables attempts to found new civilian mining colonies, then expansion. Independent of the shipping switch.
Allow Civilian Harvesters checked (AllowCivilianHarvesters = 1) Allows the random role roll to select a harvester. It does not shut down existing harvesters.
current time - last harvester refresh > one month (2,592,000 seconds) Replaces the standing orders of every civilian harvester with the default sorium destination order. This runs outside both switch blocks.

The Game Information window writes these three switches directly through its Civilian Shipping Lines Active, Allow Civilian Mines and Allow Civilian Harvesters checkboxes, and a new game sets all three to 1. They are separate saved fields of the game, the FCT_Game columns CivilianShippingLinesActive, AllowCMC and AllowCivilianHarvesters. The game rule options page lists them with the other rules. The harvester refresh changes standing orders, not queued move orders.

Job assignment has a different cadence. At the end of an increment, idle freighters are considered only when the increment lasted more than 3600 seconds. Standing orders run only when it lasted more than 60 seconds. Equality does not qualify. A ship can therefore exist without receiving work during short increments. These passes work from snapshots of eligible fleets and current demands, not forecasts of demand when the ship arrives.

Company formation and finance

Section titled “Company formation and finance”

The new-company step considers standard races (not special races) that are not neutral and that either have the Standard starting level or are player controlled. A race needs at least one existing civilian company ship. The step then founds a company when d100000 < 15000 x elapsed seconds / 31536000, with the threshold calculated in double-precision floating point. There is no check for profitability, unmet freight demand, company count or racial treasury affordability. This step does not give a first company to a race with no civilian ships. Game setup and other direct grants found companies separately. New companies appear after the existing companies of this pass were processed, so they do not receive that earlier build attempt.

Founding assigns an ID and a name, the owning race and an empty engine cache. It sets company wealth (WealthBalance in FCT_ShippingLines) to 2000, or 4000 for NPRs, without debiting race wealth. Every receipt adds its amount to WealthBalance and records a history entry. A successful autonomous build subtracts the class cost. Freight and colonist revenue depends on delivered cargo and travelled distance. Installation contracts and harvester overflow have different accounting. Tax rate changes therefore affect future company expansion indirectly through receipts. See delivery accounting and civilian fuel receipts.

The game can calculate an available dividend for a company. It is zero when the summed class cost of the company’s ships is zero. Otherwise it is max(0, min((ship cost + WealthBalance) / 10, WealthBalance - 1000)). It only calculates a value. No game step uses it, and it does not debit company wealth or credit the race. Neither that reserve nor a dividend payment gates autonomous building. The Last Year Income line of the company display sums the receipts of the last 31,536,000 seconds. It is receipt history, not income minus construction spending. See the account notes.

Ship construction and role choice

Section titled “Ship construction and role choice”

A company’s build attempt returns at once when its balance is below 500 or when the race owns fewer than two colonies with positive surface population. Below 25000 wealth it rolls a d16 and stops if the roll exceeds the build chance.

chance = 1                                                when WealthBalance <= 6000
chance = (WealthBalance - 5000, cut to a whole number) / 1000   when WealthBalance > 6000

A balance of 6000 or less always has chance 1. The cut happens before the division, so the second case keeps thousandths, not whole thousands. At 25000 the roll is skipped. After the roll passes, the role counts are recomputed and the race must have a capital population. The first owned capital found is used. Counts go by the main function of each ship’s class. An active freighter, colony ship or liner is merely one whose fleet has at least one move order. Every ship the company owns adds to its total ship count, including ships of other roles.

Role selection uses this ordered decision list and stops at the first match.

  1. With fewer than 6 ships in total, choose whichever of freighter and colony ship has fewer ships. Equal counts pick one at random with even odds.
  2. When active freighters exceed half the freighters and active colony ships equal exactly half the colony ships, use the same balancing choice. The equality is literal.
  3. When active freighters exceed half the freighters, build a freighter.
  4. When active colony ships exceed half the colony ships, build a colony ship.
  5. When active liners equal the liner count and the race has more than one populated system, build a liner. Zero liners satisfies the equality.
  6. Otherwise roll a d5 repeatedly (a d4 for an NPR). A roll of 1 to 2 gives a freighter, 3 a colony ship, 4 a liner only with more than 1 populated system, and 5 a harvester only when its prerequisites hold. A rejected outcome rerolls.

The populated-system count here uses positive surface population. The harvester prerequisites instead look for a surveyed gas giant or superjovian with a sorium deposit, in a system that contains an owned colony with total population above 10 million. They also need the global harvester permission and race knowledge of technology 25148 (Sorium Harvester). NPRs cannot roll 5. This search at build time does not apply the banned-body exclusion that the later destination choice uses. See technology for how a race gains a technology.

Design attempts run 1 through 3. A freighter or colony ship tries the huge template on attempt 1 only when its existing role count is above 5, the large template on attempt 2 only when it is above 3, then the small template on attempt 3. Liners try the large liner template, then the ordinary liner template. Harvesters try their sole template. With no freighters and no colony ships, the attempts jump directly to attempt 3, which can leave a liner or harvester choice without a design. A class that belongs to this company, uses this template and is not obsolete is reused. Otherwise a new class is generated. The templates are rows of DIM_AutomatedClassDesign, by AutomatedClassID: 104 huge freighter, 2 large freighter, 1 small freighter, 105 huge colony ship, 4 large colony ship, 3 small colony ship, 44 large liner, 41 liner and 6 harvester.

A class is accepted when its cost is below WealthBalance, or when the company has more than 20 ships on attempt 1, or more than 10 ships on attempt 2. A cost equal to the wealth fails the ordinary affordability test. The exceptions can spend into negative wealth. The ship appears instantly at the capital with full fuel and maintenance supplies, the class cost is subtracted, and the company attempts to retire a replaced ship. No normal shipyard task is queued. See production mechanics for the resource behaviour of instant construction.

Design technology and replacement

Section titled “Design technology and replacement”

Each company caches its commercial engine and an engine-count basis, saved as CommEngineID and CommercialEngines in FCT_ShippingLines. When they are absent, class generation builds the engine from the race’s most advanced researched maximum engine size (capped at 100), engine technology, fuel consumption technology and minimum thrust modifier, with thermal technology 26091 (Thermal Reduction, signature 100% normal). The engine-count basis is ceiling((3 + d5) / (engine size / 25)). A template’s engine count is either basis x template EngineNumber or basis - template EngineNumber, raised to one when lower. Harvester module count is 10 + d20. Other payload components come from the automated template. The fuel storage added to the class is engine fuel efficiency x engine component value x engine count x template FuelDuration x 720 / 50000 + harvester module count / 2. A template marked as a tanker also sets the class minimum fuel to one tenth of its fuel capacity. These are generated classes, not fixed universal civilian hull statistics. See ship design and component design for the class and engine rules.

When a race completes a technology of the Engine Technology type, each of its companies clears its cached engine, zeroes the basis and marks all its classes obsolete. Only that technology type has this effect. The research completion sends the notice only for a technology that belongs to no single race, and only when the completion runs its follow-on updates, as normal research completion does. Existing ships remain. The next generated class can use the then-current baseline components. Other research types do not trigger this obsolescence.

After each successful autonomous build, retirement chooses the oldest owned ship of the same main function whose construction date is strictly earlier than current time - ten years (10 x 31,536,000 seconds). Class obsolescence is not required. If the ship is idle it is scrapped immediately. Otherwise it is flagged for replacement scrapping. The cleanup at the end of movement processing scraps flagged company ships once their fleet has no orders. Only one candidate is selected per build. Ties keep the order in which the game lists them. This path credits no wealth for retirement.

Freighter jobs and reservations

Section titled “Freighter jobs and reservations”

Idle freighters are fleets whose civilian function is Freighter, with zero move orders, belonging to a standard race (not a special race). The pass rebuilds the race’s list of trade partners from its trade treaties and adds the race itself. Players always search installation transfers first. An NPR searches installations only while a race-wide “installation search due” flag is set. The flag clears when that search starts, so a successful installation job leaves it clear, while a freighter that falls through to trade goods sets it again. The installation search refreshes the fleet’s free cargo capacity in tons, tries local sources, then sources in other systems. A successful installation assignment skips trade goods. Otherwise the fleet’s orders are cleared, the capacity is converted to trade good units as capacity / 2500 cut to a whole number (2500 tons per trade good unit), and local then intersystem trade searches run. When the flag makes an NPR freighter skip the installation search, its free cargo capacity is not measured again, and the trade search uses the capacity value an earlier pass left on that fleet. When that value is already a trade good unit count from an earlier trade search, the game divides it by 2500 again, which gives a capacity of 0 unless the earlier count was at least 2500.

Job Source and destination tests and ranking
Specific installations Own colonies only, excluding military-restricted colonies for company fleets. Sources need export requests. The nearest source comes first by travel distance that uses Lagrange points, then the largest request amount x installation cargo points. Once a request is smaller than the full fleet capacity, the remaining smaller requests of that source are skipped. Importers must request the same installation, must not be exporting it, and need cargo-point demand >= fleet capacity. The nearest valid importer wins.
Ordinary trade goods Colonies of treaty partners and of the race itself, excluding restricted colonies. The source’s highest balance must be > the full trade good capacity, and each balance tried must also be > capacity. Nearest source first, then category descending and balance descending. The destination holds a balance for the same good, differs from the source, and has a deficit < -capacity before reservations. The nearest eligible importer wins.
Infrastructure trade goods Export skips designated colonist destinations and colonies whose positive required infrastructure (the colony’s cached maximum infrastructure requirement) exceeds current infrastructure. Importers need a required infrastructure above 0. Import need is required infrastructure - current infrastructure, or 1.25 x required infrastructure - current infrastructure for designated colonist destinations. The need after queued deliveries must cover the full capacity.

Reservation methods differ. An installation assignment immediately subtracts fleet capacity in tons / installation cargo points from both the source and the destination request amounts, without cutting to a whole number. Requests are planning state, not cargo already delivered. Trade balances are not debited at assignment. Instead the planner sums the current free cargo capacity of ships on matching queued load or unload orders and cuts the total to whole trade good units. The planner requires source balance - queued loads >= capacity and destination balance + queued unloads <= -capacity, after the stricter first filters. Infrastructure counts queued unload orders for good 16. Cargo already occupying holds reduces the reservation estimate. The logistics interruption page covers what happens to these reservations when orders are cut short.

If no local importer exists, the freight assignment keeps its pending source request or balance and searches other systems. It adds unload orders only on success, and a failure clears the queued load. The intersystem source search goes breadth first by jump count over explored stabilised connections. It rejects dangerous systems, systems controlled by aliens without a trade treaty, military-restricted systems and restricted links. It returns the first successful job in search order. It does not compare the profit or total travel distance of every possible trip. Within a system, distances use paths through Lagrange points. The intersystem search passes the coordinates of the selected outbound jump point into source ranking.

A secondary cross-system source selector is not identical to local queueing. It ranks trade sources by distance from the system origin (0,0) even though it receives a search origin. Balances that are not commodities can pass its full-load checks. The strict commodity tests of local queueing do not apply to every search. Equal sort keys have no ID or name tie-break and keep the order in which the game lists them.

Trade goods catalogue

Section titled “Trade goods catalogue”

DIM_TradeGoods holds 17 rows with the columns TradeGoodID, Description, PopRequired, Category and RareGood. The game reads every row when it loads its static definition tables and keys each trade good by TradeGoodID. The catalogue is static data that no game table stores. Category holds 0 Commodity, 1 Artifact or 2 Infrastructure. The game checks no value range when it reads the table. A duplicate TradeGoodID shows error 1151 (Function #1151) and ends the trade goods load at that row. Rows read before it stay loaded, and the remaining definition tables still load.

TradeGoodID Description PopRequired (million people) Category RareGood
1 Precious Metals 5 0 Commodity 0
2 Spices 10 0 Commodity 0
3 Luxury Food 10 0 Commodity 0
4 Entertainment Products 10 0 Commodity 0
5 Wines 10 0 Commodity 0
6 Furs 10 0 Commodity 0
7 Consumer Electronics 5 0 Commodity 0
8 Civilian Transport 5 0 Commodity 0
9 Textiles 3 0 Commodity 0
10 Chemicals 5 0 Commodity 0
11 Machinery 3 0 Commodity 0
12 Pharmaceuticals 5 0 Commodity 0
13 Plastics 5 0 Commodity 0
14 Construction Materials 3 0 Commodity 0
15 5 1 Artifact 0
16 Infrastructure 0.01 2 Infrastructure 0
17 Recreational Drugs 10 0 Commodity 0

The game reads TradeGoodID and Category as whole numbers, PopRequired as a decimal and Description as text. The freight thresholds and queued-order reservations that apply to these balances are in freighter jobs and reservations. The throughput expression and the delivery revenue are in trade goods and transport opportunities, and the physical load and unload rules are in movement trade goods. This section states what each catalogue column changes.

How each column is read

Section titled “How each column is read”
  • TradeGoodID keys the catalogue, each population’s trade balances and each ship’s trade good cargo. A trade good move order stores it as its destination item (DestinationItemID). Two IDs have fixed roles in the rules. Ruin recovery of alien artefacts adds to trade good 15, and the infrastructure importer test counts queued unload orders for trade good 16.
  • Description is display text that no rule compares. The colony trade goods list and the transported items tree sort their rows by it and print it. The move order text, the fleet cargo summary, the ship cargo list, the cargo loss report, the explosion cargo report, the shuttle failure event and the company wealth history print it.
  • PopRequired is in millions of people, the unit of total population. The trade balance step creates a balance for a good only when total population > PopRequired and the population holds no balance for that good yet. It updates an existing balance only under the same strict test. A population that falls to or below the threshold keeps its balance at the last value, and nothing removes it. The freight planners and the load and unload steps do not read PopRequired, so a frozen balance still counts as a source or an importer.
  • Category selects the starting production rate, the annual update rule, the list view rule, the freighter source order, the importer test and the unload result. The subsections below give each use.
  • RareGood is read as true or false when the catalogue loads and stored with the trade good. Nothing else in the game reads it, and all 17 rows hold 0.

Balance creation and update by category

Section titled “Balance creation and update by category”

The trade balance step runs during each population production cycle, after maintenance supply production, with the elapsed years of the cycle. Each run first walks every catalogue entry in the order in which the game lists them and creates the missing balances that pass the PopRequired test, with TradeBalance and LastTradeBalance at 0. It then updates every existing balance that passes the same test, copying TradeBalance into LastTradeBalance first. Let B = total population x (wealth modifier / 100) x 0.5 x required manufacturing fraction, the annual throughput of one good. The factor 0.5 is the annual trade goods throughput factor. Total population is in millions. The wealth modifier is the colony’s wealth creation modifier, the product of the political status WealthMod, the race WealthCreationRate, the radiation production modifier, the governor’s wealth creation bonus, the sector governor’s wealth creation bonus at one quarter strength (1 + (bonus - 1) / 4), and stability while the colony has unrest. The required manufacturing fraction is the share of the population left for manufacturing after the required agriculture and environmental workers and the required service industry workers, or 0 when none is left.

Category Starting ProductionRate Update per run Limit after the update
Commodity 0 A d4 of 1 to 3 gives (d11 - 1) / 10, from 0 to 1 in steps of 0.1. A d4 of 4 gives d4 + 1, from 2 to 5. Adds ProductionRate x B x elapsed years and subtracts B x elapsed years. At a rate above 1 the balance is capped at (ProductionRate - 1) x B. At a rate below 1 it is floored at -(1 - ProductionRate) x B. Each rate applies only its own limit, and a rate of exactly 1 applies neither.
Artifact 1 0 On a body without a ruin, subtracts B x elapsed years. On a ruin body, no change. Capped above at B. There is no lower limit.
Infrastructure 2 2 Adds 2 x B x elapsed years. When the infrastructure shortfall is positive, the whole balance becomes Infrastructure installations and the balance resets to 0. Capped at 2 x B.

Each commodity balance has a 30/44 chance of a rate below 1, a 3/44 chance of exactly 1 and an 11/44 chance of a rate from 2 to 5. Most commodity balances at a colony therefore trend to a deficit. At a rate of exactly 1, production equals consumption, so a delivered amount stays in the balance with no cap. The infrastructure shortfall is required infrastructure - current infrastructure, with the 1.25 target multiplier for a colonist destination, and the conversion is not limited to the shortfall. The production page describes that conversion as installation output.

The Artifact rule has no lower limit. Its deficit grows for as long as it stays above the threshold, which makes it a lasting artefact importer for freighters. While the body keeps its ruin, the balance changes only through ruin recovery, loading and delivery. Recovery creates the balance when it is missing, whatever the population size, and adds the rolled artefact quantity described in ruin loot. Once the ruin is fully exploited, the body no longer has a ruin, and the next update caps the balance at B and starts the decay. The colony then joins the decaying importers.

LastTradeBalance is written before each update, saved and loaded. Nothing else in the game reads it.

Colony trade goods display

Section titled “Colony trade goods display”

The Economics window refreshes the trade goods list of the selected population. The list has the headers Trade Good, Production, Shortfall, Surplus, Required and Available, then a blank row, then one row per balance in Description order. Production is the annual output ProductionRate x B. Shortfall, Surplus, Required and Available print “-” for a value of 0 or less.

Category Shortfall and Surplus Required Available
Infrastructure With a positive infrastructure shortfall, Surplus is output - shortfall when output is larger, otherwise Shortfall is shortfall - output. With no positive shortfall, Surplus is the whole output. The infrastructure shortfall, with the 1.25 colonist destination multiplier. The balance when positive.
Commodity and Artifact A rate above 1 shows (ProductionRate - 1) x B as Surplus. Any other rate shows (1 - ProductionRate) x B as Shortfall. The negated balance when the balance is negative. The balance when positive.

Selecting a row in the list changes nothing. When a ship loads a good, the game reads the colony’s balance for it, or 0 when the colony holds no balance for that good.

Freight planning by category

Section titled “Freight planning by category”

The freight assignment visits a source population’s balances in Category descending order, then balance descending. Infrastructure comes first, then the commodities. A source with balances above the fleet’s capacity in several categories therefore tries infrastructure before artefacts and artefacts before any commodity, whatever the amounts. It moves to the next balance when a higher one fails the queued-load test or finds no destination. Only the Infrastructure category has the source exclusions for a colonist destination and for a colony short of infrastructure.

The destination search sends an Infrastructure balance to the infrastructure importer search, which reads each candidate’s infrastructure need and no trade balance. Commodity and Artifact balances need a destination that already holds a balance for the same TradeGoodID below the negated capacity. The freight assignment queues the load and the unload as move orders to each population, with the TradeGoodID as the destination item.

The secondary source selector uses the same sort, but its tests depend on Category. It stops at the first Commodity balance below capacity. It returns the first Artifact or Infrastructure balance it reaches without a capacity test, except an Infrastructure balance at a colonist destination. A population above 0.01 million people normally holds an Infrastructure balance. For a population that passes the highest-balance filter and is not a colonist destination, the selector therefore returns that Infrastructure balance first. No order or search in play reaches this selector.

A third search builds a partner list from the race’s trade treaties plus the race itself. It accepts any partner population in the game, in any system, with a balance above 10 of any category. It returns the first candidate, or the nearest by in-system travel distance when asked for the nearest. Nothing in the game uses this search.

Loading, unloading and cargo by category

Section titled “Loading, unloading and cargo by category”

Load Trade Goods (136) and Unload Trade Goods (137) set their work time on arrival. When the timer completes inside a sub-pulse, the order runs the fleet load or unload step and completes. The Naval Organization window does not offer these two actions, as move action availability describes.

The fleet load step loads every ship of the fleet with at least one undamaged cargo hold, in the game’s stored ship order. Each ship takes min(free tons / 2500, balance) and debits the balance by that amount, so earlier ships can drain the balance before later ships load. A company ship with no free capacity, no shuttle support, or a zero or negative amount to load clears its fleet’s orders. Loading treats every category alike.

The fleet unload step unloads every ship of the fleet that carries the good. Revenue and tax are computed first, and Category then decides the result. Infrastructure cargo becomes Infrastructure installations. Cargo of the other categories adds to the destination’s balance only when the destination already holds a balance for that TradeGoodID. Otherwise the cargo record is removed and the amount is added nowhere. Nothing removes a balance, and the planners queue unloads only at destinations that hold the balance, so this outcome is dormant in normal play.

After cargo hold damage, a ship compares its carried cargo in tons (2500 tons per trade good unit) with its free tons. The free figure already subtracts the carried cargo and floors at 0. A ship carrying more than half its intact hold capacity loses the fraction (carried - free) / carried of every trade good cargo. A ship whose cargo fills the intact holds loses all of it. The report line multiplies the loss fraction by the already reduced amount, so the printed loss is smaller than the amount removed, and a total loss prints 0. See space combat for how holds are damaged.

Saved balances and cargo

Section titled “Saved balances and cargo”
Table Trade good columns Load behaviour
None for the catalogue The 17 rows reload from DIM_TradeGoods with the other static definitions. A changed DIM row changes every saved game that loads after it.
FCT_PopTradeBalance PopulationID, TradeGoodID, GameID, ProductionRate, TradeBalance, LastTradeBalance A row whose TradeGoodID is not in the catalogue or whose population is missing is skipped. ProductionRate survives, so a colony keeps its rolled rates.
FCT_ShipCargo with CargoTypeID 7 CargoID holds the TradeGoodID, with Amount and StartingPop (0 when there is no starting population). A row with an unknown CargoID is skipped. A missing starting population leaves the cargo with no starting population.
FCT_ShippingWealthData TradeGood holds the TradeGoodID. An unknown ID leaves the record with no trade good, and the record is still added.

Migration liners and harvesters

Section titled “Migration liners and harvesters”

New civilian fleets receive default standing orders by role. Colony ships get LD: Colonists at priority 1, which loads from a designated source, and UL: Colonists at priority 2. Liners get LD: Passengers, then UL: Passengers. Harvesters get MV: Sorium GG 10m Pop (DIM_StandingOrders, OrderID 30). The row is marked NPROnly = 1, so the player’s list of standing orders does not offer it, yet every civilian harvester receives it. It moves the ship to a sorium gas giant in a sufficiently populated system. Freighters have no defaults here because their separate assignment pass supplies jobs. Standing orders run in ascending priority and stop once an order exists. A colonist load order runs only while the fleet has free colonist capacity. A partly filled transport with remaining capacity can therefore seek another source before it considers unloading, and a full ship proceeds to its unload standing order. See civilian standing orders.

Colonist sources must be in the system being searched, be designated as a source of colonists, have Imperial Population political status, and be unrestricted for company fleets. Player company ships also require available emigrants after queued loads >= full fleet passenger capacity / 1000000, which compares the capacity in people with emigrants in millions. NPR and government fleets skip this pool test. The selector chooses the nearest source by travel distance through Lagrange points. Liners instead seek an unrestricted colony with surface population above 10 million. They do not require a source designation or Imperial status in that search. Passenger cargo uses the same Load Colonists action.

Unload candidates match the primary embarked species and the destination system, exclude comets and colonies restricted for company fleets, and need immigration room strictly greater than the embarked people in millions. Colony ships require a colony designated as a destination of colonists. The first search excludes colonies already targeted by unload orders of the same race. The fallback allows them. Liners need positive surface population rather than a destination designation. Colony unloading first tries the current system. Passenger unloading goes through the intersystem search.

Immigration room is the smaller of the body’s remaining capacity for the species (capacity minus all surface population on the body) and the population that the colony’s infrastructure can still support, minus the colonists embarked on fleets with queued unload orders there. Player company shipping gets zero room at colonisation pressure (ColonizationPressure) >= 10. Emigrant availability subtracts the full colonist capacity of company fleets with queued loads, whereas immigration room reserves the colonists actually carried. These rules can explain idle ships despite a visible source or destination designation. The cross-system source search is weaker than the final local selector. It accepts a system containing an unrestricted designated source without checking Imperial status or its emigrant pool. A ship can travel there and then fail to find a locally eligible source. The general standing-order route search is breadth first, with unstabilised jump points allowed according to the fleet’s capability. Danger and alien filters depend on the fleet’s avoidance flags, while company system and link restrictions always apply.

Physical unloading has its own shuttle and species rules and does not universally enforce the support limits of the colonist destination choice. A refresh of the population summary in the interface can alter cached pressure and support without advancing time. See colony migration and cached state, interface refresh and migration transactions.

Harvester standing orders choose the surveyed sorium gas giant or superjovian with the highest sorium accessibility, excluding banned bodies. With the minimum population requirement of 10, the selector sums the owned colonies in the system that each meet total population >= 10, and requires that sum to be >= 10. Many smaller colonies do not qualify together. This differs from the strict > 10 of the build prerequisite. The selector does not rank by distance, deposit quantity or current harvester crowding. Local search comes before the intersystem fallback. A successful local choice queues the move and clears the fleet’s standing orders. The monthly refresh reinstates the default. Harvesting and overflow sales are separate from the destination decision. See fuel receipts.

Mining establishment expansion and depletion

Section titled “Mining establishment expansion and depletion”

Civilian mining colonies are population records with installations, not shipping companies spending company balances. New operations consider standard races that are not neutral and have the Standard or Minor starting level, plus player races whatever their starting level. An attempt requires d50000 < elapsed seconds / 31536000 x AnnualWealth, more than one settled or infrastructure population, and at least one shipyard of the race. The population count accepts owned records with total people > 0 or an Infrastructure installation entry, rather than requiring two inhabited surface colonies. Candidate systems contain an owned colony with total population above 10 million. If that list is empty after the other tests pass, the pass stops for every remaining race, not only for this one. The roll uses annual income (AnnualWealth in FCT_Race), not the current treasury or a company balance, and has no cap here.

The establishment applies these literal rules.

  1. Across the whole game, a body is excluded when any race’s population record on it has total people > 0, an Automated Mine entry, a Civilian Mining Complex or Ex-Civilian Mining Complex entry, or assigned orbital mining output equal to 0. The last test is equality to zero. An ordinary empty colony record with no orbital output can therefore exclude a body. This is not simply a ban on active orbital mines.
  2. In candidate systems, a body must be surveyed and must have an apoapsis below 80 AU, and gas giants and superjovians are excluded. A moon uses its parent planet’s orbital distance, and a body of a companion star must also pass a distance check on that star. The body needs either Duranium or Gallicite amount > 10000 with accessibility >= .7. Excluded bodies and the race’s banned bodies are removed.
  3. All deposits of accessibility >= .5 are scored. Duranium contributes 2 x amount and every other mineral contributes amount. Accessibility above that threshold is not a multiplier. Bodies are sorted descending by score, and ties keep the stored order.
  4. Ranked bodies are visited until a d3 rolls 2. Each failure moves on to the next body, and there is no guaranteed selection. The attempt reports failure only when there are no candidates. When all rolls fail it still reports success.

On success the game gets or creates the colony of the primary species on the body. It adds d3 Civilian Mining Complexes, plus a bonus roll of extra complexes when the request carries a bonus die. The automatic pass described here carries none, but the setup of a newly created NPR runs the same establishment for its starting colonies with a bonus die. It also adds one Deep Space Tracking Station and one Mass Driver. It sets automatic assignment to none, generates a mining company name, sets mineral purchase on for NPRs, and creates a free garrison formation from the Civilian Garrison template for players or the Garrison template for NPRs. It sets no settlers, no infrastructure and no mass driver destination, and debits no company balance. A mining operation therefore does not require a colonist delivery to establish its installation-based production. See company and mining colony names and ground force organisation.

Expansion visits every population with a Civilian Mining Complex entry. For each, threshold = min(400, elapsed seconds of the cycle / 31536000 x race AnnualWealth), and d100000 < threshold adds one complex. There is no roll per complex, no rescore of mineral value, no racial eligibility, shipyard or population test, no balance debit and no explicit site size cap. Newly established sites can expand in the same step. Even at the cap, the strict comparison gives 399 successful whole-number rolls out of 100000.

Mining output and the tax or purchase choice run later in population production. If civilian production is > 0 but the body has no mineral deposits left, the colony loses its Civilian Mining Complex entry, one Deep Space Tracking Station and one Mass Driver. Formations built from the Civilian Garrison template are removed. The population is then deleted only if the normal empty-colony deletion permits it. A leftover deposit entry can postpone this condition. Exhausting only Duranium and Gallicite does not by itself trigger disbanding. NPR formations from the Garrison template do not match the Civilian Garrison removal. Conquest can convert complexes to Ex-Civilian Mining Complexes instead. See mining production, mining accounting and population removal.

Restrictions damage and idle ships

Section titled “Restrictions damage and idle ships”

Military-restricted colony, system and jump point controls can invalidate company routes. When the player sets one of these restrictions, the race finds the affected company fleets, clears their orders and clears their installation, trade good, component and mineral cargo. These cancellations do not clear colonist cargo. The cancellation destroys those cargo collections. It is not a return shipment and pays no compensation. Company fleets that are already idle inside restricted systems attempt to exit to the nearest unrestricted, explored, stabilised adjacent connection, then take part in ordinary standing-order processing.

Company damage handling scans owned ships with armour or component damage. At a body with an owned population and any shipyard attached to one of those populations, it clears both damage records immediately, without capacity, compatibility, duration or wealth checks. Otherwise, if the ship’s effective maximum speed is below 2, the company link is removed from the ship and its fleet, and an event reports that the company transferred the ship to the race’s control. A mobile damaged ship without such a repair location stays civilian, and this step queues no repair voyage. Because construction is attempted before repair, role and activity counts can still include ships transferred later in the same step.

An idle ship need not indicate a broken order. Causes include the short increment cadence, no full-load source or matching deficit, existing reservations, a source pool shortfall, insufficient immigration room, no viable stabilised route, bans or restrictions, no sufficiently populated harvester system, the fleet’s ignore standing orders setting (IgnoreStanding), ships under maintenance or in a shipyard, or pending replacement cleanup. A company fleet whose standing orders fail does not log the ordinary player fleet event that reports it is unable to carry out its standing orders. Detailed movement failures such as shuttle support, fuel and cargo state belong to movement and logistics.

Saved state and transient planning

Section titled “Saved state and transient planning”

FCT_ShippingLines stores company identity and race, the line names, ShipNum, WealthBalance, the cached engine ID and the commercial engine basis. Ships, classes and fleets separately keep their company links, class obsolescence, civilian function, standing and move orders, cargo and the replacement scrap flag (SLRetire in FCT_Ship). Population records keep migration settings and pool state, and installations keep mining sites. Loading a game reattaches these links rather than replaying company income or establishment.

Role and activity counts are recalculated, not saved. Trade partners are rebuilt in the freighter pass. Pending source references, the stored capacity figure and the system route tables are planning scratch state. Installation request decrements and queued-order reservations are not proof of a completed delivery. Cached support, annual income and population pressure reflect their refresh path. Company receipt history can be lost on reload when the populations it refers to are absent (notably fuel records with no population), while the saved balance remains. See wealth persistence and object identity and reload.

Worked examples

Section titled “Worked examples”
  1. Build probability and equality. At wealth 6500.75, the chance is 1500.75 cut to 1500, divided by 1000, which gives 1.5, so only a d16 of 1 passes. At 7000, rolls 1 to 2 pass. A class costing exactly 7000 fails ordinary affordability against 7000, but a company with 21 ships can accept an attempt-1 class costing 8000 and finish with wealth -1000.
  2. Literal activity rule. With 4 freighters of which 3 are active, and 2 colony ships of which 1 is active, the balancing rule applies because 1 equals half of 2. Balancing selects a colony ship because its count is smaller. With 2 active colony ships, that equality fails and the earlier freighter-only rule wins, even though both role groups are busy.
  3. Demand sufficient for one job. A 5000-ton freighter carrying 1000-ton installations reserves 5 installations from each request. An export of 5 and an import of 5 qualify. For trade goods with fleet capacity C, a raw export of exactly C fails the strict first test > C, and a raw deficit of exactly -C also fails the strict first test < -C. Full-load reservations can therefore leave visible requests unserved.
  4. Mining ranking is not certainty. Body A has 20000 Duranium at .7 and 5000 Sorium at .6, giving a score of 45000. Body B has 30000 Gallicite at .8, giving 30000. A is tried first. If its d3 is not 2 and B’s is 2, B is founded. If both fail, the attempt still reports success. The probability of some establishment across these two candidates is 1 - (2/3)^2 = 5/9.
  5. Expansion is per site. With annual income 100000 and five elapsed days, the uncapped threshold is 100000 x 5/365, about 1369.86, capped to 400. One site with one complex and another with twenty each get one d100000 roll, and each succeeds only on 1 to 399.
  6. Migration boundary. A colony ship carrying .05 million people needs immigration room greater than .05, so exactly .05 is rejected. A player company source with exactly .05 available after reservations can supply a fleet of 50000 berths, because the source comparison is >=.
  7. Commodity freight from the catalogue. A source colony and an importer each have B = 200 x 1 x 0.5 x 0.4 = 40 per year. The source rolled rate 3, so it produces 120 and consumes 40, and after half a year its balance is 40, below the 80 cap. The importer rolled rate 0.2, so it produces 8 and consumes 40, and after a year its balance sits at the -32 floor. A freighter with 50000 free tons has capacity 50000 / 2500 = 20, cut to a whole number. Assume the source’s Infrastructure balance and its other commodity balances do not exceed 20. The source passes 40 > 20, the importer passes -32 < -20, and the load moves min(20, 40) = 20. Loading leaves the source at 20, and delivery brings the importer to -12. A second freighter of the same size then fails at the source, because 20 > 20 is false.
  8. Artefact deficit with no floor. A 50-million colony on a body without a ruin has B = 10. This assumes (wealth modifier / 100) x required manufacturing fraction = 0.4, as in example 7, so B = 50 x 0.4 x 0.5 = 10. A ruin colony that recovered 120 artefacts holds a balance of 120 that does not decay while the body keeps its ruin. When the ruin colony’s Infrastructure balance does not exceed 20, a freighter of capacity 20 takes 20 artefacts from it, ahead of any commodity there, and delivers them to bring the importer to -10. The importer passes < -20 again once its balance falls below -20, which takes more than one further year.

Concept map

Section titled “Concept map”

Resources

Section titled “Resources”

Related community documentation and developer posts. These may describe a different game version.