Civilian missile transport, and hangars

[sublight]

I'm not a fan of launch delays. Missiles set a precedent for instant launch with slow reload so a launch delay would just add extra micromanagement of timing launch time vs jump time. Adding loading delays for parasite recovery, missile transfers, collier/population reloads etc while welcome would do nothing for balancing jump assaults with civilian hangers.

My preference is option #3. That would both add a small check against transit abuse while simultaneously legitimizing the use of a civilian jump-shells as a new gate assault tactic. Maybe reuse the Squadron Jump delay on military hanger launches and the Standard Transit Jump delay on civilian hanger launches? Bonus points if jump shock and launch shock stack when applicable.


Speaking of hanger craft and hangers is there any chance deployment time and moral checks could occur on the same time intervals as damage control repair checks? As of 6.43 I think this only updated on the construction cycles which made for odd moral behavior when using fighters with short and ultra short 0.5 and 0.1 month intended deployments.

[Vortex421]

I seem to recall that commercial freighters have been used for fighter squadron transport/deployment in several science-fiction novels - the most notable example I can think of happened in the Star Wars universe... either the Heir to the Empire trilogy by Zahn or one/several of the X-Wing books.  I also think that Honor Harrington carried the feat off at least once, though right now I can't place the book that it was done in - maybe when she was handling Q-ships?

[MarcAFK]

3 sounds good, as sublight said the standard jump sensor blindness / delay would be fine.

[chrislocke2000]

3 sounds good to me as well. I always thought this should be the case for fighters deployed straight after jumping.

[Bremen]

In fact, why not just have them not affect maintenance status at all (doesn't prevent failures or the clock ticking). As you mention, this would still allow the transport of civilian ships as they don't need maintenance but would mean fighters and FACs would not be practicable. However, civilian hangars would still be able to carry out repairs and any military ships within the hangar could still be maintained by maintenance facilities in the same location. This allows you to create a base with both maintenance facilities and civilian hangars that could maintain, overhaul and repair military ships in deep space, or repair ships that can fix military vessels in deep space, even if their clock keeps ticking.

I was envisioning civilian hangars as being used for logistics, sort of like civilian magazines basically bringing fighters to stock PDCs or to replace combat losses. I know I usually don't put any engineering spaces on my fighters at all, giving them a maintenance life measured in days, so it would be very problematic to do that if they didn't effect maintenance status in any way. I know you mentioned still being able to perform repairs but it would quickly get prohibitively expensive to ship fighters anywhere in a civilian hangar (not to mention if you were building the fighters into the civilian hangar before shipping, since IIRC maintenance facilities at a colony wont prevents fighters from accruing maintenance clock).

That's why I suggested the compromise of no maintenance failures but still maintenance clock. That way if you just fly them to the front and transfer them to a carrier, the carrier hangar can quickly rewind their clock, but if you try to launch them into combat from a civilian hangar they'll probably all quickly explode.

[MarcAFK]

That's a good idea.

[Prince of Space]

The more this discussion of commercial hangars goes on, the more I feel like we're overthinking it. If the point is to move war materiel around without relying on military carriers, then alex's original idea of using prefab PDCs as a model seems simplest.

Add an option to flag the fighter upon construction as a flatpack IKEA fighter, and allow any fighter with that flag to be transported as cargo on a commercial freighter. Allow an order to transfer a flatpack fighter to a carrier (if there's sufficient space in the carrier), and let the hangar crew pull off the shrink wrap and do the final assembly.

No worries about commercial hangars and jump assaults, no new unitasker commercial carrier designs, and further differentiation gamewise between full sized warships and fighters. Is there really any other functionality we're looking to work in with this suggested feature?

In fact, why not just have them not affect maintenance status at all (doesn't prevent failures or the clock ticking). As you mention, this would still allow the transport of civilian ships as they don't need maintenance but would mean fighters and FACs would not be practicable. However, civilian hangars would still be able to carry out repairs and any military ships within the hangar could still be maintained by maintenance facilities in the same location. This allows you to create a base with both maintenance facilities and civilian hangars that could maintain, overhaul and repair military ships in deep space, or repair ships that can fix military vessels in deep space, even if their clock keeps ticking.

I'm not really seeing how this is either different or better than having a commercial deep space maintenance base supporting one or more military carriers. It just combines them into one hull. Even if it were an option, why would a player choose it?

[chrislocke2000]

I think with fighter training and the expectation that you may want to redeploy fighters as your empire moves the idea of a flat pack fighter, whilst good, is going to be very hard to implement.

I do however agree that having fighters that typically have a deployment time in days rather than months have this accrue when in a civilian hanger is going to make it difficult to use.

[linkxsc (OP)]

I'd really kinda hate the idea of them losing maintenance when in storage as heres my thought for implimentation.

New maintenance deep space bases. Personally I'd build the thing, then give it a couple civvy hangars, load them up with a few fighters and FACs. Then after they're planted at a jump point, their maintenance can cover some small defense platforms and sensor platforms. Also carriers can return to it to replenish fighters (and missile stores) without having to make the trek all the way back to earth or another colony.

[Steve Walmsley]

I'm not really seeing how this is either different or better than having a commercial deep space maintenance base supporting one or more military carriers. It just combines them into one hull. Even if it were an option, why would a player choose it?

The idea for civilian hangars would be to carry civilian ships, or to act as repair facilities for military ships. A military carrier large enough for repairing other ships would require a very large shipyard to build and a lot of maintenance facilities to support it. Civilian hangars shouldn't replace military ones but have a different role, in line with the concept of deep space facilities able to maintain and repair military ships.

[Steve Walmsley]

I'd really kinda hate the idea of them losing maintenance when in storage as heres my thought for implimentation.

New maintenance deep space bases. Personally I'd build the thing, then give it a couple civvy hangars, load them up with a few fighters and FACs. Then after they're planted at a jump point, their maintenance can cover some small defense platforms and sensor platforms. Also carriers can return to it to replenish fighters (and missile stores) without having to make the trek all the way back to earth or another colony.

If you want fighters or FACs to protect the deep space maintenance base, just build small fighter bases or carriers that can be maintained by the base itself.

[Bremen]

The idea for civilian hangars would be to carry civilian ships, or to act as repair facilities for military ships. A military carrier large enough for repairing other ships would require a very large shipyard to build and a lot of maintenance facilities to support it. Civilian hangars shouldn't replace military ones but have a different role, in line with the concept of deep space facilities able to maintain and repair military ships.

Oh, I see, so you're thinking of civilian hangars for things like mobile drydock ships, big things able to hold a cruiser or something and repair it away from a shipyard. That makes sense, and is something I could see being useful even if I've never personally needed it.

I was more thinking of them for things like shipping fighters around, which having normal maintenance failures wouldn't help with.

[sloanjh]

Oh, I see, so you're thinking of civilian hangars for things like mobile drydock ships, big things able to hold a cruiser or something and repair it away from a shipyard. That makes sense, and is something I could see being useful even if I've never personally needed it.

I was more thinking of them for things like shipping fighters around, which having normal maintenance failures wouldn't help with.

I think Steve mentioned that for that case you'd put a maintenance facility on your "freighter" if you wanted to transport fighters.  If this idea doesn't work thenn I think I agree that the idea of "crated" fighters makes more sense for the desired mechanic (ferrying fighters between systems as cargo).

John

[alex_brunius]

I was more thinking of them for things like shipping fighters around, which having normal maintenance failures wouldn't help with.

Best of-course if you can use it for all roles. So maybe the right way to go about it is to start of with thinking what we can imagine being able to use it for?

I can think of a few ideas (some which have been mentioned, others more wild ):

- Transporting Fighters/FACs to their forward base/Carrier
- Transporting larger (fuelhungry and/or low range) bigger ships to their forward base
- Repairing Military vehicles away from home
- Use as a tug? ( dock ships without engines and haul them around )
- Dismantling or repairing wrecks?! ( if we can put our own military ships inside a mobile hangar for repairs why not also wrecks? )
- Hauling Cargo?! What is conceptually the difference between a freighter and a large hangar?
- Transport ground troops with heavy equipment?!

The more I think about these questions, the more I think it might be a good idea for a unified system for transporting all "bulk freight". Hangars, Cargo Holds and Troop Transports could have overlapping abilities, splitting transporting of everything into men and bulk. Transporting a Ship of 4000 ton and it's 400 man crew requires both a 4000t hangar and 400 Spare Berths, Transporting say a Heavy Ground Unit might be possible with for example a 1000t hangar for it's equipment and 1000 Spare Berths for the men... and so on...

In a pinch you could load up some ground forces inside bigger Capital ships ( overloading their crew capacity a bit ), and you could build combined freighters/troop transports able to fill dual roles.

But sorry, now I've gone way Off-topic again

[MarcAFK]

Perhaps the maintenance clock should be slowed when in a civ hanger? I don't imagine a ship would wear out much during transport.