Usually I have several JP monitors (close range beam warships of medium size with max-forced engines, very small fuel tanks and several years of deployment time - that's how I define JP monitor hull type). I tow them to critical JPs with fleet tugs. They are quite expencive due to forced engines, but it's a cost for being able to intercept and destroy any plausible foe, jumped out of JP; after initial fleet training tour I sometimes place them at orbital hangars to reduce maint.cost, if there are no critical JPs yet.

You forget that all your ground forces rely on vendarite to exist so in GC heavy games this could be a problem.

You are right... ground unit also uses Vendarite... I guess that the cost of building ground units really never impacted my economy that much so far.

Ground units can put some strain on the Vendarite situation depending on circumstances. A unit of 5000t of say medium vehicle tanks would cost you about 400 Vendarite while 5000t of regular infantry is 100 Vendarite, I don't think tech levels will make the cost higher or lower either so ground forces become less of a cost in terms of resources as your technology in mining gets more advanced, for ships this relationship is more linear except for hangar technology.

I hope that we in the the future get some sort of carrier love in terms of designing carriers and carrier operations. We now have very intricate systems for loading and firing of ordnance and handling of MSP and fuel yet parasite handling remain very abstracted and to be honest rather basic and not that realistic. But that is something for the future perhaps. If Steve ever create a campaign centred around heavy carrier warfare we might see some development in this area as that is how Steve tend to focus on mechanics. 

Quote from: Jorgen_CAB on June 21, 2020, 02:10:59 PM

Quote from: skoormit on June 21, 2020, 01:09:40 PM

Quote from: Seolferwulf on June 21, 2020, 11:49:31 AM

In general, is it possible to decrease MSP usage of a ship below what it would usually cost when parked in orbit?
Hangars are probably an option but they cost maintenance themselves, too.

The thing is, hangars are much cheaper than the ships that fit inside them, especially after you are a few levels deep into weapons tech.
So long as the carrier cost is mostly hangars, the MSP cost of the carrier should be much less than the MSP cost of the ships it carries.

This is something I have pointed out to Steve before as I think ships should have to be maintained even inside a hangar, carriers already are a powerful tool. It does not need to make maintenance cheaper too.

I mean, the up-front cost is not trivial.
For every 10kt of hangared ships, you have to pay 1000 BP for the hangars, plus pay for the engines, etc, to move the hangars around.
It saves MSP over time, but you don't get that for free. It does require an investment.

I know... the yardspace is probably less of a problem in general to be honest. The cost is also in general not that great as it uses Vendarite that is only used in fighter factories, hangars and Gauss cannons. There is some for Cargo Shuttles but that is a pretty small cost. Vendarite is not a resource you tend to be overly short on as there is rather little demand for it.

Quote from: skoormit on June 21, 2020, 01:09:40 PM

Quote from: Seolferwulf on June 21, 2020, 11:49:31 AM

In general, is it possible to decrease MSP usage of a ship below what it would usually cost when parked in orbit?
Hangars are probably an option but they cost maintenance themselves, too.

The thing is, hangars are much cheaper than the ships that fit inside them, especially after you are a few levels deep into weapons tech.
So long as the carrier cost is mostly hangars, the MSP cost of the carrier should be much less than the MSP cost of the ships it carries.

This is something I have pointed out to Steve before as I think ships should have to be maintained even inside a hangar, carriers already are a powerful tool. It does not need to make maintenance cheaper too.

I mean, the up-front cost is not trivial.
For every 10kt of hangared ships, you have to pay 1000 BP for the hangars, plus pay for the engines, etc, to move the hangars around.
It saves MSP over time, but you don't get that for free. It does require an investment.

I did that for my filler missile fighters but I don't think the balance worked out well. The carrier station cost nearly as much per ton of hangar space as the fighters do.

If I was stuffing it with high-end beam ships rather than box launcher fighters it would work better. Or if I'd cut extra features and made it a military-in-name-only dock rather than mounting defenses and AMMs.

In general, is it possible to decrease MSP usage of a ship below what it would usually cost when parked in orbit?
Hangars are probably an option but they cost maintenance themselves, too.

The thing is, hangars are much cheaper than the ships that fit inside them, especially after you are a few levels deep into weapons tech.
So long as the carrier cost is mostly hangars, the MSP cost of the carrier should be much less than the MSP cost of the ships it carries.

Well, I would not use gauss stations to protect jump points. Enemy ships would leave weapon range super quickly anyway.

If you want immobile stations, they would be better off being either missile stations or carrier stations with beam-fighters. Alternatively, you can use mobile beam warships.

Personally, I just dump super long maintenace, super small sensor stations on jump points I want to monitor.. Yes I know I could use buoys, I don't like them though. Only during wartime I sometimes do blockades.

I would certainly suggest large stations anyway. The large usage of command positions might be a problem otherwise, as many already posted.

I was replying to a post in the context of PPV, my use case is as planetary outposts which is why they have a deployment setting of 3 days - not exactly useful for jump point defence.

I think if you want a permanent presence over a jump point do everything you said except crank the deployment to 0.1 and instead tug a no-armour recreation module there. Bonus points if you tug a maintenance facility for the tonnage you want to actually keep there. Even more bonus points if you have a fuel depot and massive magazine. When I encountered my first NPR this is what I did - though I recommend using big boy tugs or make your magazines, fuel depots and maintenance facilities smaller than mine (500kt is hard to tug at speed, rec facility at 100kt is actually not bad).

A border checkpoint might as well double up as a staging post.

I also should point out that you get 1 PPV for every 1HS or 50 tons of weapons you have on any space structure, so smaller Gauss cannons is not better at PPV than any other weapons.

Although true gauss weapons require less in terms of supporting components such as powerplants or FCs. I found that if you are trying to keep to a certain tonnage like 10k that you can fit more gauss as opposed to beamy bois, which leads to bigger PP.