Storing ships in a hangar

[XenonSurf]

I've read the topics here, and they conclude that saving your ship as a template is by far the better solution than storing in a hangar.

But it happened that I have stored my civ ship at the station of Arvoch warzone. My plan was to store it, go to the shipyard, buy a small Talon, fly to the carrier where military vessels are available so I could buy one.
But after storing my civ ship, if I enter Shipyard, I still have my civ ship (phoenix, plenty of expensive equipment, 1 crew member). If I want to setup a Talon, I get red messages about my remaining equipment, my Hardpoints, my left Assembly.
When entering the shipyard, my logic says I should have no ship at all (because stored).

What's going on? I must miss something.

Thanks
XenonS

[Edited on 4-22-2016 by XenonSurf]

[Vice]

I've read the topics here, and they conclude that saving your ship as a template is by far the better solution than storing in a hangar.

Early on in the game, when you have a limited number of credits to throw around, the template option is generally the better of the two ways to store and later retrieve a ship design.

But it happened that I have stored my civ ship at the station of Arvoch warzone. My plan was to store it, go to the shipyard, buy a small Talon, fly to the carrier where military vessels are available so I could buy one.
But after storing my civ ship, if I enter Shipyard, I still have my civ ship (phoenix, plenty of expensive equipment, 1 crew member). If I want to setup a Talon, I get red messages about my remaining equipment, my Hardpoints, my left Assembly.
When entering the shipyard, my logic says I should have no ship at all (because stored).

What's going on? I must miss something.

To store a ship, you must be wealthy enough to afford duplicating your ship frame before you are allowed to store one. You can then use the current ship as credit toward a new ship design. In Evochron, you are never allowed to be without a ship nor disconnected from one. If you leave one in storage, you must have another one ready to fly. Once you have two ships (one in storage and another ready to fly), then you can swap them around as desired without additional expense beyond regular hangar transaction fees.

So in your example, you correctly duplicated your Phoenix when you stored it in the hangar. You also kept everything you had installed on it and simply parked the empty frame in storage (this is why the storage/duplication cost is so much lower than your complete ship with all of its equipment and weapons). Equipment, weapons, and cargo always stay with the ship you have 'ready to fly' unless you sell/store them manually. At that point, if you want to downgrade your frame to something smaller with less capacity, you need to sort out what to do with the items you can't transfer to the smaller ship. You'd have to do that anyway regardless of whether you had stored a ship or not. Since you've already stored a frame, you might as well unload what you can't load/transfer to the hangar while paying the transaction fee only once. Then buy the small frame you're after and configure it the way you want.

[XenonSurf]

Thanks Vice, I should have figured it out, but I was afraid of losing my savegame - and my ship.
What I did was to store all my equipment in the hangar, after that I had no problems to downgrade to a Talion. Next time I will chose the Template route, because I will save 2x hangar fee, 1 to deposit equipment and 1 to re-collect. But with a template + downgrade in shipyard: what happens with my crew? I suppose they are set to inactive too?

I guess the Store possibility is great if you want to quickly switch ships to respond to combat etc.

Thanks to take your time, I appreciate

XenonS

[Vice]

But with a template + downgrade in shipyard: what happens with my crew? I suppose they are set to inactive too?

Yes, they will stay in an inactive mode until there is an available crew position on the ship you are flying.

[Marvin]

I should have figured it out, but I was afraid of losing my savegame - and my ship.

A safe way of testing an option is to first clone your pilot profile. When you do that, you become the clone and can try out an option without jeopardizing your "real" profile.

[XenonSurf]

@Marvin,
thanks, I did it with the "Select profile and save".

So please correct me if I^m wrong:

Storing a ship in a hangar is the equivalent of duplicating your ship, so you can modify your duplicate and then switch ships as you please.
You just need to have money enough to allow for the duplicate...

[I MUST CHECK THIS...]
When your ship is duplicated, all its equipment also gets duplicated, so you can sell/modify it, this has no effect on the stored ship. Afterwards you can simply switch 'in a rush' ships in the hangar.

Benefit of storing: You keep all your initial equipment
Inconvenience: Must have money for the duplicate, hangar fees

Benefit of using a template: You quickly modify your existing ship, no hangar fees
Inconvenience: You lose your equipment if capacity is different, or you must store it by paying a hangar fee

I hope I've got this right

XenonS


[Edited on 4-23-2016 by XenonSurf]

[PaulB]

One problem of the Template method is that some of the higher-end frames are only available in certain Star systems.
I'd rather manage some hangar storage trips than possible having to travle all over creation trying to find a nearby system that has the Frames I need.

If I know I'm going to be working in certain systems for an extended period of time where I may need (or want) more than the current frame I'm flying then I will go to that systems, store my current ship, go back to where my other ships are stored and swap fo the frame I want - selling the copy - and head back to the new 'system of operations'.
I find this method more tomy satisfaction. On top of that - since I can only play EM - I'm using a Clan tag and have certain systems set up to pay me the 101,000 credits per pay period so thateven with the hangar fees I'm still making money even if I do nothing.
I currently maintain 2 hangars and have 3 ships.
Of course I can't say how that would work out in EL.

[XenonSurf]

I am wrong in my post just above: your equipment is NOT duplicated when you store a ship, what you store is a copy of your ship, but totally empty (as Vice said above already!)

In the hangar, one must do this for not losing equipment, weapons or cargo:
unload all ship content
switch ship
reload ship content

@PaulB,
I have done some experiments, and for getting rare ships, civilian or military, you have to travel to their places anyway, wether you use templates or storages. I find it very tedious to populate my hangars of the central systems with such vessels: for each of them you are go to make a distant travel to the warzones and return... Eventually you will have what you want , but hell...it takes time

XenonS


[Edited on 4-24-2016 by XenonSurf]