Being an old sci fi fan I would miss the PDCs. The free maintenance can be adjusted to the population of the planet. a 100,000 ton
PDC is no larger than a little more than 2 Iowa class battleships.
Less, actually. The Iowas were 45,000 tons 'treaty', but treaty displacement is a joke. Fully loaded, more like 57,000 tons.
A population of sufficient quantity should have no problem maintaining
one. There are hundreds of 100,000 plus ton ships out in the real world now. Replacing the PDCs with a new mix of just ground units
is not the same as having El Scorpio PDC (for those who remember 'Sleeping Planet).
There are no 100,000 ton warships. The biggest (US carriers) top out around 90,000 tons. And civilian ships don't have the same drivers as PDCs.
Steve, could this idea be used with ships as well. It has been mentioned before that training up a ships crew and then losing that experience level when the ship is scrapped makes the turnover of ships and fighters to be painful. When scrapping ships, could a second crew pool be maintained (representing the cadre from the scrapped ships) that new ships and fighters can pull crew from first, before using untrained naval crew coming from the general pool.
Something along these lines would be really nice. I don't like the current system, where your best ships are almost always your oldest, nobody retires, and people being sent back to the pool are diluted to pool level. Here's my suggestion (reposted) on a more realistic system:
First, the crew pool tracks people and points separately. The academy has a level that it pumps people in at. For example, it may add 100 people and 20000 points in a given week. These are added to the pool values. When a ship is commissioned, it takes the correct number of people and points, based on the pool averages. Adjusting the academy training level only affects the inflow, not what's already in the pool. Also, people should leave the pool. Maybe 5% a year, of average points. In wartime, you can check a box which temporarily slows the loss rate, but eventually (5 to 10 years later) it comes back to normal, or even goes higher. After you uncheck it, the war timer counts backwards until it reaches 0, so people don't just toggle it on and off when they get to the point of diminishing returns.
Second, rotate people on ships. To make it easy, whenever a ship gets shore leave, a certain number of people rotate back into the pool, based on how long it's been out. Maybe 10% per year. They're replaced with normal people from the pool. This is to avoid the "ICBM station with an enormous crew rating" problem.
Third, allow picked crews, and unpicked crews. These have maybe 150% and 50% of normal points, respectively, taking the appropriate number of people and points from the pool, and getting those values when the crew rotates. This is to allow you to have a good crew on your fancy new battleship, and give your second-line PDCs the dregs.
Fourth, conscript-crewed ships should not feed into the pool. Because of the nature of the crews (and to avoid flooding the pool with untrained people), the people who leave the ship at the end of their tour are just lost.