TI Fleet Manager/Reserve

This page is part of the TI Fleet Manager mod.

The reserve lets you mothball fleets you do not need right now. A mothballed fleet costs only a tenth of its upkeep and mission control, and it is safe as long as its station stands. Bringing it back into service takes months and costs a fee.

Operations

TI Fleet Manager adds six fleet operations. They appear as icons on the vanilla operations bar of a fleet and take effect immediately; their names and descriptions are shown in the operation info panel. Operations that cannot be used right now are shown faded.

Operation	Who / where	Conditions
Enter Reserve	Your own fleets that are not in reserve	Docked at one of your own stations, idle (no transfer, no running operation), not in or waiting for combat, at least one ship.
Reactivate	Your mothballed fleet	Not already reactivating, and you can pay the fee. The description ends with Cost / duration.
Cancel Reactivation	Your fleet while it is reactivating	The fee is not refunded; the fleet stays mothballed.
Assist Reactivation	Your fleet with working Repair Bays	One of your own idle mothballed fleets is at the same dock or orbit. Not for allies. The description shows the estimated duration.
Board Mothballed Fleet	Your fleet with marines aboard	An exposed mothballed fleet of another faction (not an ally) at the same dock or orbit; your fleet is not in combat or transfer.
Destroy Mothballed Fleet	Any fleet	Same as boarding, but no marines needed. The ships are destroyed; nothing is salvaged.

Effects of mothballing

• All propellant and ammunition are taken out and stored. The exact amounts are remembered and given back on reactivation. No out-of-ammunition warnings appear.
• Money upkeep drops to 10 % (other ship income is not affected).
• Mission control drops to 10 %, rounded up.
• The fleet's assault value shows 1.
• The fleet row in the Hierarchy tab and the panel title show [RESERVE]; divisions held in it show the tag too.

What a mothballed fleet cannot do

• It cannot move.
• Nothing can be merged into it or out of it, in either direction, and it is never offered as a merge target.
• It cannot receive commissioned ships or recalled units; divisions that belong to it show no Recall.

What a mothballed fleet can still do

• While idle, its operations bar only offers Reactivate, Split and Scuttle; while reactivating, only Cancel Reactivation and Scuttle.
• Split (vanilla, or Detach in the hierarchy panel) creates a second mothballed fleet that takes its share of the stored supplies with it. It is not possible during reactivation.
• Scuttle works at any time. A fee that is already paid is not refunded.
• Refit: a refitted ship comes out of the yard active, as its own fleet. Its division shows [AWAY] (without Recall while the home fleet is mothballed); the other ships stay mothballed.

Protection and exposure

As long as the fleet's station stands and still belongs to you, the mothballed fleet:

• is kept out of every battle at that station or orbit,
• cannot be destroyed,
• is not thrown out of the dock.

When the station is destroyed or captured, the fleet is exposed and shows [RESERVE - EXPOSED]. It can now be pulled into battles - with empty tanks and magazines it can neither fight nor flee - and enemies can board or destroy it. If you take the station back, the protection returns.

Reactivation

Fee: 3 × the fleet's full monthly money upkeep (not the reduced reserve upkeep), paid when the work starts. It is listed as Fleet reactivation in your finances.

Duration: 0.02 days per ton of the fleet's total dry mass, divided by a divisor, at least 7 days and at most the cap:

Situation	Divisor	Cap
At your own intact station with shipyard modules	sum of the yard tiers (Space Dock 1, Shipyard 2, Spaceworks 3)	304 days (10 months)
Assisted by a fleet with Repair Bays	the larger of yard tier sum and number of working Repair Bays	365 days (12 months)
No shipyard, or the station is lost	1	730 days (24 months)

Example: six cruisers with about 36,000 t dry mass at a station with a Shipyard and a Spaceworks (divisor 2 + 3 = 5): 36,000 × 0.02 ÷ 5 = 144 days. At a station with only a Space Dock the same fleet would need 720 days and is capped at 304.

While the work runs, the tag counts down as [REACTIVATING nd]. When it is done, propellant and ammunition are restored to exactly the stored amounts (weapons fitted during the reserve keep what the refit gave them), and full upkeep and mission control apply again.

Assisting with Repair Bays

Assist Reactivation puts a fleet's Repair Bays to work on your mothballed fleet at the same place. This is the only way to make real progress once the station is gone.

• The helping fleet is locked for the whole duration, like after a battle ("not available until …"), and is released early if the work finishes or is cancelled.
• If the helper is destroyed, leaves or loses its Repair Bays, the work continues at the unassisted rate for the remaining share.

Boarding and destroying

• Board Mothballed Fleet: the captured hulls become a new fleet of yours. They stay mothballed without a station, so they are exposed and fall under the 24-month cap. A fleet with Repair Bays can speed up their reactivation with Assist Reactivation.
• Destroy Mothballed Fleet: the ships are destroyed at their moorings.
• Both are only possible against an exposed reserve.

The AI and the reserve

• AI factions never mothball their own fleets.
• An idle AI fleet that is at the same place as an exposed reserve of a faction it is at war with boards it (if it has marines) or destroys it, choosing the most valuable target. This is checked once a day.
• There are no raids in peacetime.

Save games

The whole reserve state - stored supplies, countdowns, helper locks - is kept in the save. Before you remove the mod, reactivate every mothballed fleet; otherwise the ships stay at 0 propellant and 0 ammunition.

See also

• Fleets - vanilla fleet operations
• Habs - stations and shipyard modules
• TI Fleet Manager/Fleet Panel and Hierarchy Tab