Shipyard Changes

[ZimRathbone]

A good thing about the code for allowing similar ships is that the percentage of refit cost is a global constant. If playtesting showed that 20% wasn't enough, I could change it to 30% or 40%.  That would allow similar types of ships to be built but not radically different ones.

Steve, is it hard coded in the program, or is it in access?

Coded as a constant, but it could be moved to Access.

Steve

I'd advise moving as many global constants like this as possible to an  params table  - it makes the configuration of your app much easier in the long run (of course its a royal bitch to do to an established app like this)

Mike

[Pete_Keller]

A good thing about the code for allowing similar ships is that the percentage of refit cost is a global constant. If playtesting showed that 20% wasn't enough, I could change it to 30% or 40%.  That would allow similar types of ships to be built but not radically different ones.

Steve, is it hard coded in the program, or is it in access?

Coded as a constant, but it could be moved to Access.

Steve

I'd advise moving as many global constants like this as possible to an  params table  - it makes the configuration of your app much easier in the long run (of course its a royal bitch to do to an established app like this)

Mike

I agree,  most of the constants should be in access.  It is not a royal bitch on an established app.  All you do is early in the program startup cycle, open the database and load the values from access.  Once they are loaded, they are constants to the program.

Pete

[Randy]

Not necessarily. The Russians converted some warship yards to build freighters and it was considered very difficult to change back. A US example is the following statement from Northrop Grumman.

Using the examples it would suggest that the BP cost should still be high, but the mineral cost should be reduced. Maybe 10% minerals, 50% BP?

  just throwing some numbers out. Of course, it might be too mucha of a pain to track this anyways...

[RoguePhoenix]

Hmmm... I was thinking of a lot of things that could be said about this and I started going back over the posts. Besides an attempt to make things more realistic is there a core reason behind adding the slipways to the game? I might have just missed something in the posts but I didn't see anything. I didn't want to make any more comments on it without knowing what you were tying to accomplish with the slipways.

[Steve Walmsley (OP)]

I have reduced the cost of the base shipyard from 3600 BP to 2400 BP (was 4800 in v2.3). This will allow more shipyards for the same cost and provide a little more flexibility.

Steve

[Steve Walmsley (OP)]

Hmmm... I was thinking of a lot of things that could be said about this and I started going back over the posts. Besides an attempt to make things more realistic is there a core reason behind adding the slipways to the game? I might have just missed something in the posts but I didn't see anything. I didn't want to make any more comments on it without knowing what you were tying to accomplish with the slipways.

A few reasons. Reality as you mentioned above is a big factor. I also like the idea of named shipyards producing particular types of ships and I have added the shipyard at which a ship is built to the ship history. Originally I considered a simple retool cost per v2.3 shipyard. Slipways were added because a player may build 2 or more of a certain class at once and it makes it cheaper to retool for multiple slipways. It adds more player decision making as they have to decide how to expand their shipyard capacity and shipyard capacity becomes separate from construction factories, enabling the player to work on shipyard capacity as the same time as other construction tasks. Finally, it adds more realistic constraints on what players can build, some forward planning is needed for shipbuilding and you can no longer just design something and start building it instantly, unless it closely resembles an existing class.

Steve

[Brian Neumann]

How about a way to prefab shipyards and sent them out on freighters.  Have the build command be for a prefab yard no slipways and cost 90% money 100% minerals and 100% bp.  Then when the parts of the yard are at the new site have a build command to assemble a prefab that is 30% money and 10% minerals and 20% bp of the original cost.  Even once built the shipyard would still have to build it's own slipway.  This would allow for setting up a forward defense of a colony in a hurry without allowing a shipyard that is in service to be moved.  Also the total cost comes out higher for all aspects of building the shipyard.  The higher cost reflects having to crate and uncrate the materials and the higher minerals the wastage that always occurs when you are assembling something from a kit.

I would suggest that even if you decide to do this that it wait for v2.5

Brian

[Michael Sandy]

I have noticed a lot of survey designs with their own jump drive lately.  Is that partly a result of having more alien race encounters?

If I ever get the time for Aurora again, I will see about making survey designs where the Geo, Grav, dedicated scouts and jump tenders can all use the same SY.

Might have to slightly over engine the designs a bit to keep the refit cost percentage on target.  Or give them all sensors and/or extra engineering space.

I would see about what other auxiliary ships that shipyard could produce, like a small, fast, troop transport, tanker or collier.

So a race might have 1 Auxiliary shipyard, for size 60 ships (3,000 tons),
1 commercial shipyard, 1 shipyard designed for oversized ships like terraformers, jump gate construction ships, gas miners that gets refit from time to time, and a couple of shipyards for various sized warships.

I can see a lot more mixed design ships for a simple reason:
If a ship class has half lasers, half missiles, a new class with upgraded lasers is much more likely to be within the 20% refit cost than if you had to upgrade the whole ship.

[Kurt]

I have noticed a lot of survey designs with their own jump drive lately.  Is that partly a result of having more alien race encounters?

If I ever get the time for Aurora again, I will see about making survey designs where the Geo, Grav, dedicated scouts and jump tenders can all use the same SY.

Might have to slightly over engine the designs a bit to keep the refit cost percentage on target.  Or give them all sensors and/or extra engineering space.

I would see about what other auxiliary ships that shipyard could produce, like a small, fast, troop transport, tanker or collier.

So a race might have 1 Auxiliary shipyard, for size 60 ships (3,000 tons),
1 commercial shipyard, 1 shipyard designed for oversized ships like terraformers, jump gate construction ships, gas miners that gets refit from time to time, and a couple of shipyards for various sized warships.

I can see a lot more mixed design ships for a simple reason:
If a ship class has half lasers, half missiles, a new class with upgraded lasers is much more likely to be within the 20% refit cost than if you had to upgrade the whole ship.

Mostly, for me, having survey ships with their own jump drives is primarily for efficiency and secondarily for safety if some alien badguy is found.  I have found that mixed groups of grav and geo survey ships are hard to coordinate, and generally end up with one or the other wasting a lot of time waiting around.  

What I have generally ended up with is either having every ship in a survey group have a jump drive, and generally working alone, or have a jump-capable survey ship with several smaller dedicated non-jump-capable survey ships of the same type along as well.  So a squadron might look like the following:
1xJump Ship (Geo-Surv) (8,000 tons)
2xGeo-Surv Ship (4,000 tons)
1xEscort (5,000 tons)

This brings us to a sticky problem.  I like to leave a ship on the warp point, to guard the back door, so to speak.  However, if that ship doesn't have a jump drive, it is a sitting duck if the squadron jump ship is destroyed further in-system.  Creating a dedicated non-survey jumpship that just sits around on the warp point just seems wasteful to me, though.  Having a back door guard with no jump-drive of its own is fairly useless, though.  

What I've generally ended up with is having single ship exploration groups, so that no other ships are lost if the squadron jump-ship is lost, as the single ship of the squadron fills all roles, or a multi-ship squadron containing at least two jump ships for safety's sake.  The second option gets expensive, though.

Kurt

[Erik L]

I have noticed a lot of survey designs with their own jump drive lately.  Is that partly a result of having more alien race encounters?

If I ever get the time for Aurora again, I will see about making survey designs where the Geo, Grav, dedicated scouts and jump tenders can all use the same SY.

Might have to slightly over engine the designs a bit to keep the refit cost percentage on target.  Or give them all sensors and/or extra engineering space.

I would see about what other auxiliary ships that shipyard could produce, like a small, fast, troop transport, tanker or collier.

So a race might have 1 Auxiliary shipyard, for size 60 ships (3,000 tons),
1 commercial shipyard, 1 shipyard designed for oversized ships like terraformers, jump gate construction ships, gas miners that gets refit from time to time, and a couple of shipyards for various sized warships.

I can see a lot more mixed design ships for a simple reason:
If a ship class has half lasers, half missiles, a new class with upgraded lasers is much more likely to be within the 20% refit cost than if you had to upgrade the whole ship.

For a couple of the same reasons Kurt mentions. Mixed groups tend to have a lot of wasted time. And a dedicated jump tender just sits there not providing much of anything (though I suppose you could have a tender/tanker).

I usually run a survey squadron with 5 ships. No weapons/scanners/defenses. They survey the system and move on to the next.

I usually end up with my specialized designs (survey ships, freighters, harvesters, colonizers) having a jump drive. The warships will have one or more assault tenders (max squadron size/distance). The warships don't mount the drive for size/speed/more offense/defense in that spot.

Of course, if the tender is blown the war fleet is hosed.

[Kurt]

For a couple of the same reasons Kurt mentions. Mixed groups tend to have a lot of wasted time. And a dedicated jump tender just sits there not providing much of anything (though I suppose you could have a tender/tanker).

I usually run a survey squadron with 5 ships. No weapons/scanners/defenses. They survey the system and move on to the next.

I usually end up with my specialized designs (survey ships, freighters, harvesters, colonizers) having a jump drive. The warships will have one or more assault tenders (max squadron size/distance). The warships don't mount the drive for size/speed/more offense/defense in that spot.

Of course, if the tender is blown the war fleet is hosed.

Risky, having unarmed survey groups with no defenses or even sensors.  I usually at least give my survey units decent passive scanners, so they might have a chance to see something coming and get out quick.  

Of course, my current approach, with the Jovians, isn't the best.  Their 1st Survey Group, before it got hosed by a precursor, was a Vanguard Class Jump/Geo-Survey ship, a Cortez Class Geo-Survey Ship, and a Tribal Class DDE.  The shortcomings in this configuration are numerous, as the recent hosing illustrated.  The Vanguard was the first ship to detect the precursor, and if it had been destroyed the other two ships would have been stranded.  The only fact that saved the Vanguard was that they had better sensors than the precursor and detected them first, which allowed them to retreat and bring up the other ships.  The DDE doesn't really have anti-ship capability, as it only has three 10 cm lasers, which raises the question of why it was there at all.   The explanation for that was that the Jovians couldn't spare a larger ship, but felt that they had to have a warship along.  

I've been doing a lot of thinking about this subject lately, because of the experience of the 1st Group getting 2/3's destroyed.  While their deployment strategy was faulty, the reality was that against a precursor, there was little the Jovians could do.  This is kind of an interesting situation, I think.  

One of the possible alternatives I came up with is to have all survey ships equipped with jump drives and deploy them independently, on solo missions.  That way, if they are lost, no other ships are lost with them or stranded because they don't have their own jump drives.  Of course, that also raises the issue of loss of knowledge.  If a grav-survey ship goes out and explores a system (system 1A), discovers, say, two warp points, probes both, moves into one of the systems (system 1B) and surveys it and then begins a survey in one of the systems discovered beyond the second system (system 1C), and then is destroyed, that is a lot of information lost and the homeworld will have no way of knowing where to look.  Worse, given the fact that missions often last for several years, the homeworld would have no way of knowing anything was wrong until long after it was too late to do anything about it.  

Kurt

[Erik L]

True having no sensors is risky. But I usually treat the Survey operations as a civilian effort, and sensors means 1 less geo/grav survey instrument (or more).

Of course, that lasts until the first group gets eaten

[Kurt]

True having no sensors is risky. But I usually treat the Survey operations as a civilian effort, and sensors means 1 less geo/grav survey instrument (or more).

Of course, that lasts until the first group gets eaten

I see what you are saying, and efficiency wise it makes sense.  I just can't see bold explorers, going where no man has gone before, going without any sensors.  Poor sensors, maybe, but from a role-playing viewpoint I have a hard time justifying no sensors.  

At any rate, like you said, that will last until the first exploration group gets eaten.  Which is exactly what is happening with my Jovians.  Now that they lost a survey group, they are re-evaluating their entire strategy.  

Kurt

[MWadwell]

One of the possible alternatives I came up with is to have all survey ships equipped with jump drives and deploy them independently, on solo missions.  That way, if they are lost, no other ships are lost with them or stranded because they don't have their own jump drives.  Of course, that also raises the issue of loss of knowledge.  If a grav-survey ship goes out and explores a system (system 1A), discovers, say, two warp points, probes both, moves into one of the systems (system 1B) and surveys it and then begins a survey in one of the systems discovered beyond the second system (system 1C), and then is destroyed, that is a lot of information lost and the homeworld will have no way of knowing where to look.  Worse, given the fact that missions often last for several years, the homeworld would have no way of knowing anything was wrong until long after it was too late to do anything about it.  

Kurt

Well, as to the knowledge situation, what would be a possible solution, would be to leave "bread crumbs" - i.e. powered down satellites (in a known location) that would respond to a signal from a searching ship. The satellite would have the results of the survey, enabling the searcher to retrieve the survey data, and duplicate the path of the lost survey ship.

Of course, this doesn't get around the fact that you still don't know that the ship is lost in the first place......

[Michael Sandy]

Yes, survey ships without jump drives are often idle.

On the other hand, if you put jump drives on them then you have jump drives +engines to push them that are idle for far longer.

My theory would be to have a survey fleet composed of:
2-4 grav survey ships
2-4 geo survey ships
2-3 tenders
1-2 dedicated scout

The survey ships would have either 2 survey sensors and a size 5 sensor package, or 2 survey sensors, a size 2 sensor package, and an extra engineering system.

My theory would be that for civilian ships, the only safety is in speed and sensors.

Escort warship designs would not be expected to keep up with the survey fleet.  There would naturally be some delays in getting them in position, but they would be more to bottle up warp points behind the survey fleet.  They could show the flag with the survey fleet, if necessary.  For example, there might be a race that would only negotiate with another race if they had a warship present.  After all, civilian ships would not be expected to have officers empowered to negotiate.

I would be sure to have at least one troop transport that could be escorted by the survey jump tenders, and at least one bombardment capable ship that could be escorted by them as well.

My plan would be to then have _lots_ of jump tenders.  There is a slight problem that the jump tenders themselves would lack serious sensors.  But I would rather have a jump tender and a dedicated scout than to have a jump tender with its own sensors, even if it costs a bit less.

If I discovered at any time that I was losing significant survey time, I would just build more jump tenders.