Civilian missile transport, and hangars

[Rich.h]

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

I was under the impression that already with ships in a hanger they suffer zero changes to the maint clock anyway?

[MarcAFK]

I was under the impression that already with ships in a hanger they suffer zero changes to the maint clock anyway?

We're discussing the possibility of adding civilian hangers, they need to be balanced so the most prominent idea is allowing the maintenance clock to still tick for military vessels inside.

[Erik L]

I'd vote for a reduced rate of maintenance clock time. Say 1/10th or so.

[Steve Walmsley]

I've been playing around with commercial hangars. At the moment I have a system that is identical to the military hangar in terms of cost, capacity and crew but is 50% larger and has 1 HTK instead of 4. Using this system and the commercial magazine I attempted to replicate the capability of the US Kennedy class carrier show below. While the commercial ship is larger and slower and will probably explode if you sneeze on it, it replicates the major KPIs of the Kennedy (Hangar Size, Magazine Size, Fuel Capacity), costs 400 BP less, requires no maintenance and can be built far more easily (48,000 ton commercial yard vs 24,000 naval yard).

So everything else being equal, the civilian hangar is probably too useful :)

There needs to be some penalty and I think it will have to be a lack of maintenance. Even in this case, the commercial hangar would provide a 'dry dock' capability for repairing ships in forward areas, be able to transport smaller commercial ships and act as a ferry for military ships (probably to save fuel). Also you could add a few maintenance modules and create a commercial FAC carrier that does provide maintenance for the FACs in the hangar.

**************************************************************************************************

Kennedy class Carrier    24,000 tons     402 Crew     2879.8 BP      TCS 480  TH 1920  EM 0
4000 km/s     Armour 2-74     Shields 0-0     Sensors 1/1/0/0     Damage Control Rating 13     PPV 0
Maint Life 2.07 Years     MSP 975    AFR 354%    IFR 4.9%    1YR 305    5YR 4576    Max Repair 120 MSP
Intended Deployment Time: 12 months    Flight Crew Berths 67   
Hangar Deck Capacity 8000 tons     Magazine 960   

Pratt & Whitney F240 Ion Drive (8)    Power 240    Fuel Use 64%    Signature 240    Exp 10%
Fuel Capacity 1,600,000 Litres    Range 18.8 billion km   (54 days at full power)

Adelson-Vasko SPS-1 Active Search Sensor - MSR8413 (1)     GPS 11520     Range 84.1m km    Resolution 120
RGM-1 Sabre (192)  Speed: 22,700 km/s   End: 94.7m    Range: 129m km   WH: 9    Size: 5    TH: 75/45/22

**************************************************************************************************

Chatham class Auxiliary Carrier    47,450 tons     434 Crew     2356 BP      TCS 949  TH 3000  EM 0
3161 km/s     Armour 2-116     Shields 0-0     Sensors 1/6/0/0     Damage Control Rating 1     PPV 0
MSP 31    Max Repair 75 MSP
Intended Deployment Time: 3 months    Flight Crew Berths 86   
Hangar Deck Capacity 8000 tons     Magazine 1000   

Rolls-Royce Commercial Ion Drive (10)    Power 300    Fuel Use 6.19%    Signature 300    Exp 5%
Fuel Capacity 1,500,000 Litres    Range 91.9 billion km   (336 days at full power)

Navigation Sensor (1)     GPS 1920     Range 10.5m km    Resolution 120
EM Detection Sensor (1)     Sensitivity 6     Detect Sig Strength 1000:  6m km

**************************************************************************************************

[sloanjh]

There needs to be some penalty and I think it will have to be a lack of maintenance.

I'm still liking the idea of a severe "launch disruption" penalty (similar to the jump penalty) for commercial hangers.  I still don't think that's a big enough penalty though, since when launching e.g. an FAC or fighter strike an extra 10 minutes of delay for the strike is probably not a big deal (unless you just jumped).  Even better would be an actual launch delay, so fighters/fac could be caught in their hangers, but that's probably a lot more difficult to code up.  Another thought might be a "launch tube" component (that could have a tech tree) - similar to catapults on a modern carrier.  They could have a reload time associated with them (similar to a missile launcher) and be a military system.  That way you could put a huge penalty on a commercial hanger - the launch penalty might be e.g. 1 hour.  The downside of this is that I wouldn't want to have to micro-manage launching a strike of 20 FAC four at a time (on a ship with four launch tubes); I'd want a button/command/order that launched the whole squadron and gradually filled up the resulting TG.

None of the above are intended to replace your "no maintenance" idea above; just additional ideas.  OTOH, if they're severe enough, you might be able to use Erik's idea of "10% maintenance".

John

[iceball3]

I figure a feature that renders ships "mothballed", that is, unusable, with no maintenance upkeep, but to do so and as well to undo it would be a construction (or fighter factory, or shipyard) project that uses no minerals but takes deal of time depending on the cost of the ship, and would permit it to be loaded into commercial hangars? Might have been suggested before, but it seems especially relevant to the concept of civilian hangars.

[Mor]

Civilian Hangar Module Standard storage for transport of warships by civilians. Size 20 module (1000t) able to store 500t of ship (as hangar space already stacks). Research-able after completing the Hangar Deck tech. Un-upgradable. Follows same rules when hit as existing hangars.

What would be the main purpose of that? creating support ships\bases which can be used to disregard usual military crew\moral\maintenance requirements for profit :/

[83athom]

Trust me, I've been making deep space stations (on planetary bodies because of mechanics) that were far ahead (3-5 jumps usually) of the frontier 'worlds' in order to support a small fleet in case of enemy invasions and whatnot.  And these civilian hangars will be a BIG help when it comes to repair yards. Before, you would either have to create a military design that would be larger than any of your ships, requiring a larger maintenance facility, thus requiring even more materials (in both construction and maintenance). Or, you could tug a large, fragile, tactically useless shipyard that would require a somewhat substantial civilian population on your military 'base' in order to function.

[iceball3]

Trust me, I've been making deep space stations (on planetary bodies because of mechanics) that were far ahead (3-5 jumps usually) of the frontier 'worlds' in order to support a small fleet in case of enemy invasions and whatnot.  And these civilian hangars will be a BIG help when it comes to repair yards. Before, you would either have to create a military design that would be larger than any of your ships, requiring a larger maintenance facility, thus requiring even more materials (in both construction and maintenance). Or, you could tug a large, fragile, tactically useless shipyard that would require a somewhat substantial civilian population on your military 'base' in order to function.

Or you can build a PDC-based hangar on-site, which has no maintenance requirements and can be built arbitrarily large.

[Mor]

@83athom, so right now invasions are a tricky business, you need to maintain forward bases to address various fleet issues. And this "mobile shipyard" will make the games easier and allow your fleet operate in hostile territory like it is your back yard.

[83athom]

@83athom, so right now invasions are a tricky business, you need to maintain forward bases to address various fleet issues. And this "mobile shipyard" will make the games easier and allow your fleet operate in hostile territory like it is your back yard.

That example I gave was from my last long game with real stars, systems were spread out in lines 4-6 long connected by nexus systems with 6+ jump points each (with some 1-2 system deep offshoots here and there). And a lot of those were empty stars  (or only had Super Jovians and asteroids) without a habitable body. The fleet bases were meant to keep things out of my space before they ever reached it (still had small patrol ships for RP and/or invasion from hidden JP stationed at colonies). And how are invasions tricky atm? An enemy empire is pretty regular in trying to bombard my systems by sending waves of ships every few months (no idea how he is building so fast or how many ships he has in reserve). And yes, I know that a 'mobile' shipyard is useful, but it requires a population over what I want to be a strictly military operation as well as the direct materials to repair. On the other hand, hangars need maintenance supplies which can be transported in mass quantities (made even easier with another change or v7.2). And another of the changes make it so you can build msp from any maintenance facilities without the need for factories, so you can build them right from the maintenance yards in orbit. So now the only thing you need for a self sustaining base is materials that can be auto-mined from the system and shot to the base via mass driver (which could still be done with shipyard/factory, but that would require a civilian population).

[alex_brunius]

Trust me, I've been making deep space stations (on planetary bodies because of mechanics)

And a lot of those were empty stars  (or only had Super Jovians and asteroids) without a habitable body.

Now your not being consistent   

[83athom]

Now your not being consistent   

A lot of the systems were empty, meaning they only had the star. Others had a Super Jovian(s) with moons and asteroids. I put the bases on the moons or asteroids.

Or you can build a PDC-based hangar on-site, which has no maintenance requirements and can be built arbitrarily large.

While yes, I prefer the ability for it to be mobile once the lines have moved. For example, say you find a system 3-4 jumps ahead of your base with a perfectly habitable body, you move the base to there, set up the colony there, then move it farther down the line once the colony finished with a patrol group. You don't need to point out the inefficiencies/illogic  of doing this, because I do see it, like why not have them over frontier colonies and there would be too many paths with nexus systems etc. There were reasons for that (most of the nexus systems' JPs either looped back to known space or into another pocket branch with only a few leading to larger lines).

[Mor]

That is exactly it. To operate in deep space you need to design "cruisers", ships less heavily armed but capable of longer deployment time away from supply chains. You need to establish forward bases for resupply and other crew needs (whoring iirc  ), this requires significant logistic investment and hence you need to scouts  and plan a ahead. While you could have carriers that would affect underway repairs for smaller ship elements, smeg could still go wrong and you had to face the choice of whether go back or continue without major capital ship. And eventually you always had to comeback to port.

Now, forget cruisers or carrier fleets, scientific advancement allowed us to create the concept of fleet in box. This magic box is like a carrier, but our lawyers were able to classify it civilian for logistic\tax deduction purpose. Thus it suffer no breakdowns and other silly things. You can even overhaul your fleet while in enemy territory... Overall it seem like a pure convince feature.

[Rich.h]

That is exactly it. To operate in deep space you need to design "cruisers", ships less heavily armed but capable of longer deployment time away from supply chains. You need to establish forward bases for resupply and other crew needs (whoring iirc  ), this requires significant logistic investment and hence you need to scouts  and plan a ahead. While you could have carriers that would affect underway repairs for smaller ship elements, smeg could still go wrong and you had to face the choice of whether go back or continue without major capital ship. And eventually you always had to comeback to port.

Now, forget cruisers or carrier fleets, scientific advancement allowed us to create the concept of fleet in box. This magic box is like a carrier, but our lawyers were able to classify it civilian for logistic\tax deduction purpose. Thus it suffer no breakdowns and other silly things. You can even overhaul your fleet while in enemy territory... Overall it seem like a pure convince feature.

Then surely the best option is simply to not use it? But by not having this concept in place it forces everyone playing the game to endure the micromanagement that the old system entails, this way both parties get to play the game in the way they wish.