Having finished my initial mining experiment, I went to shut down my POS. One of the first things I did was remove all but about 12 hours worth of fuel. Why? Because fuel is valuable and it also takes up a lot of space. It needs it's own cargo trip if you have a lot of fuel left. I also offlined the Silo and Moon Harvesting Array. I removed everything from the Silo and unanchored the Silo and Moon Harvesting array. Once unanchored, I could scoop them back to the cargo bay. This was all pretty easy. Unfortunately, at this point, someone had set up a gate camp on my route and I could not proceed with the shutdown process. I decided to wait until after down time. However, for whatever reason, the server didn't come back up in the usual timely manner and I had to go to work. By the time I was online again, my Control Tower was out of fuel. Well, almost out of fuel. It was offline but still had 1 fuel block in the fuel bay. Here's where the first bit of useful info is -- it appears the fuel is removed in hourly increments. A small station uses 10 fuel blocks per hour. If you put 5 fuel blocks in it, that doesn't give it an extra half hour.
What do I care if the station is offline, right? I'm just taking it down. Well, here's the thing: You can't unanchor a tower that has other Facility Complexes anchored off of it. And I still had a couple of shield hardeners anchored off of it. And you can't unanchor the other Facility Complexes unless the tower is online. Doh!
So off I went for more fuel, just a couple of hours worth. I went back to the station, put the fuel in, and onlined it again. I could then unanchor the shield hardeners. With the other stuff unanchored, I then offlined the tower and attempted to unanchor it. But you can't unanchor it unless it is empty. I still had a bunch of Strontium Clathrates in it. They aren't of much value, but they do take up a lot of cargo space. Guess I'll just jettison it, right? Wrong again. There is no option to jettison directly from the control tower. You have to move it into a ship cargo bay first. Well, at that time, there was another gate camp blocking my route again, so I didn't have a hauler with me. I figured I would just start the unanchor and then go switch out ships (Note: this is risky, because if you unanchor and leave the tower, someone else can easily scoop it! But I was willing to risk it at the time). I didn't have cargo room to remove and jettison the Strontium Clathrates easily. Doh again!
Later I came back with a bigger hauler, pulled out the Strontium Clathrates, jettisoned them, and then I could unanchor the tower. Unanchoring the small tower takes 15 minutes. After that, I loaded up the tower and a shield hardener and was on my way. I left behind 1 unanchored shield hardener and 1 ECM battery, because frankly, they weren't worth going back for. You're welcome, whoever finds and takes them. :-)
Takeaways:
- Control tower fuel should be added/removed in hourly increments.
- Towers and facility complexes must be empty before they can be unanchored.
- Towers cannot be unanchored while other facility complexes are still anchored.
- Facility complexes cannot be unanchored while the tower is offline.
- If the Control Tower is already out of fuel, take some fuel with you when you head out to it -- just an hour or two worth should be enough.
- Offline and empty facility complexes.
- Unanchor facility complexes and remove them. For facility complexes outside the shield, you may want to move them inside the shield if you won't be immediately removing them from the system.
- If you have a lot of fuel left, and the tower plus fuel won't fit in your hauler, remove most but not all of the fuel first.
- Offline the Control Tower. Remove the remaining fuel and Strontium Clathrates. Just jettison them from your ship cargo bay after taking them out of the Control Tower if you don't care to keep them.
- Unanchor and remove the Control Tower.
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