Need for overhauls = Micromanagement overkill?

[Sarganto (OP)]

I am still playing my first game, about 21 years in now. And I noticed that it is simply too much micromanagement to play with the need for overhauls.
I have +10 grav-survey and +10 geo-survey vessels now and a few small battlefleets and I already feel that it is taking way too much of my attention. Not just the fact that you have to send your ships home for overhaul, but the sheer amount of malfunction messages that makes up 30% of my event-log.

I am now thinking about playing with overhauls turned off. I just noticed that you can turn it off at the first screen, even in a running game. What will the effect be? Does the maintenance clock just stop running and there are no more system failures?

How do you play? Do you always play with the need for maintenance or not?

[Thiosk]

I like maintenance.  I think it provides a layer of logistics that just makes sense.   Not that it isn't tiresome at times, and I neurotically keep ships tours short, and all of them well-overhauled.  Long range maintenance bases are a big priority of mine.

For surveyers-- I don't even care about maintenence, but I am not a quick explorer (been burned by bugs, so i explore very judiciously)

[Arwyn]

I think maintenance acts as a good brake of runaway expansion (which is really bad btw). Its also fairly accurate.

Modern military ships are very complex, and take a lot of constant repair, replacement, and maintenance to keep functioning. Starships would be no different.

You can safely run the clock up on most vessels. I routinely run the clock to 6 to 8 years on survey ships with little ill effect. Start pushing double digits, and things get a might bit more risky though.

It can be a chore, but no more that planning fuel and supplies. It also gives you a reason to build out some of those colonies for a purpose.

[Sarganto (OP)]

I think maintenance acts as a good brake of runaway expansion (which is really bad btw). Its also fairly accurate.

Modern military ships are very complex, and take a lot of constant repair, replacement, and maintenance to keep functioning. Starships would be no different.

You can safely run the clock up on most vessels. I routinely run the clock to 6 to 8 years on survey ships with little ill effect. Start pushing double digits, and things get a might bit more risky though.

It can be a chore, but no more that planning fuel and supplies. It also gives you a reason to build out some of those colonies for a purpose.

I get the realism, I just feel it is way too much micromanagement and too much of a chore to handle it. It simply doesn't add fun for me.
A different thing is fuel. I really like managing fuel and missiles. But unlike maintenance, I can automize fuel up to a certain point and don't get spammed with messages.
I also build supply colonies for refueling and storing missiles. But thinking about maintenance as one more tedious think to take care about is simply not fun for me.

[xeryon]

When you design your ships the more engineering you build into them the longer the lifespan each ship will have before needing to be overhauled.  You can design your Geo survey vessels as commercial which will remove breakdowns and the need for overhauling on those ships.  Grav survey ships are military and sadly must be maintained as such.

Ships in orbit of planets with sufficient maintenance facilities will not incur breakdowns and I think they don't even age.  So your defensive fleets will stay current.  Your attack fleets will likely spend much of their time in orbit as well so they shouldn't be much of a problem either.

I like the maintenance aspect, and not just for realism but it forces me to design ships that are well-rounded.  Grav and Geo ships are long duration mission ships which can be a vast distance from home and it's fun to design them accordingly.  I was just updating my geo survey ships last night and envisioning the Enterprise while I did it.  Capable of extremely long duration with enough fuel and maintenance for years of operation and defensive systems with a little bit of offensive firepower for targets of opportunity.

[sublight]

I get the realism, I just feel it is way too much micromanagement and too much of a chore to handle it. It simply doesn't add fun for me.
A different thing is fuel. I really like managing fuel and missiles. But unlike maintenance, I can automize fuel up to a certain point and don't get spammed with messages.
I also build supply colonies for refueling and storing missiles. But thinking about maintenance as one more tedious think to take care about is simply not fun for me.

If the message spam it the big killer, have you considered opting to hide maintenance failures in the event window? The upside is no more maintenance message spam. The downside is the risk that you'll loose track of which ships are running low on maintenance supplies. I frequently use event filtering to block out new officer spam.

[TheDeadlyShoe]

You could just overbuild the engineering spaces on all your ships. xD

[Sarganto (OP)]

I just noticed that setting the check mark at "no overhauls" has no effect on a running game. Or at least it seems like that. Maintenance clock is still running and still having all the failure messages

[Thiosk]

Question:

Why is it so crippling?  Whats the makeup of your empire?

Personally, my first wave of colonies are all mineral based, then I start specializing worlds.  Planets with low accessibilities but nearly every mineral become maintenance bases-- even if that means maintenance ships and automines, with fuel stockpiles.  Every one of my systems has at least one Ship House, with enough maintenance facilities to keep at least system defense boats up to spec.

As such, I never really have run ins with maintenance concerns except for after long training missions.  It takes a MONTH to bring a ship out of overhaul early.  Woah!  As such, I don't like long downtime, so they all get overhauled as a fleet on a return from any sortie (fix the micrometeorite holes, crew shore leave, etc)

[Panopticon]

That is pretty much my tactic too, if they leave their home ports they get overhauled when they come back. Micromanaging is just something you have to get used to in Aurora

[Sotak246]

I don't know if checking the "no Maint" button during the game changes anything, but if checked at the beginning your clocks keep ticking but no failures ever occur.  You can roleplay the need for maint and such or you can just ignore it and build huge ships with little engineering spaces and never worry they might break.

Mark

[Sarganto (OP)]

I don't know if checking the "no Maint" button during the game changes anything, but if checked at the beginning your clocks keep ticking but no failures ever occur.  You can roleplay the need for maint and such or you can just ignore it and build huge ships with little engineering spaces and never worry they might break.

Mark

That you can't change it during a running game, makes me a really sad panda.

Guess I will have to deal with it in this game. I will go the engineering spaces overbuild way and just have large maintenance facilities everywhere.
But it is surely one micromanagement burden I don't necessarily need. It's not like there is no other micromanagement left...

[TheDeadlyShoe]

You can change everything else midgame I don't see why maint would be different.

[Sarganto (OP)]

You can change everything else midgame I don't see why maint would be different.

I tried turning it off in the main screen, but I still got failure messages.

[TheDeadlyShoe]

Did you press Save?