Gather / Beam up cargo

Using the "Gather ...." (a.k.a. "beam up.....") missions, ships can beam up supplies or minerals from planets. This can be done from own, allied, unowned and even enemy planets. To gather something from an allied or enemy planet a ship has to match the planet's friendly code, even if both players have set an alliance with eachother.

These missions are mainly to allow trade between the races. If you know the friendly code of an ally's planet you can unload a mineral to the planet and at the same time beam up another mineral: cargodropping is handled right before beaming up resources.

This process is not to be confused with transferring things from your own planets to your own ships, which is handled during the client-side of a turn and is checked at the very beginning of the hostrun.

The gather mission ofcourse also works on own planets, this is however not very smart. During the client-side part of the turn you can load all the cargo you want. See also the next point:

Gathering happens in order of ship ID, even when one of the gathering ships is belongs to the owner of the planet. If for example Lizard ship #5 and Fed ship #60 try to gather Tritanium from a Fed planet, the Lizard ship will gather first (if it's friendly code matches the planet's friendly code ofcourse)

To gather cargo a ship does not need to have fuel onboard. In the case of enemy planets the ship's friendly code must ofcourse match the planet's friendly code.