Balance the Maintenance Facilities Tonnage Tech and the MSP Production Tech

[Iceranger (OP)]

During a discussion in the Discord server, I realized that the two tech lines related to the maintenance facilities are not balanced in the following sense.

Each maintenance facility has a capacity of x tons and can produce y BP worth of MSP per year, where x and y are given by the 'Maintenance Support per Facility: x Tons' tech line and the 'Maintenance Production Rate y MSP' tech line. We also know that each MSP costs 0.25BP, and each ship requires 1/4 of its BP's MSP to maintain annually. Thus, if the ships being maintained have an average 'cost density' above (y/0.25*4) / (x/50) BP/HS, the MSP produced by the facilities will not be enough to maintain the ships. I.e., in this case, you need more maintenance facilities for their production capabilities, rather than the maintenance capacity.

The cost density (BP/HS) values for each 'tier' of the two tech looks like below:


The cost density thresholds look somewhat reasonable for low tech levels but are pretty low for high tech levels.

What is more surprising to me is that the BP/HS threshold goes down as the tech lines progress. This is counter-intuitive as the ship components get more cost-dense as the relevant techs progress. Thus as the tech progresses, the maintenance capacity tech becomes less and less useful, as you need a lot of maintenance facilities to produce the MSP needed anyway.

I suggest the MSP production tech line to be slightly buffed, so the overall cost density threshold increases slowly as the tech progresses, which makes the other line not obsolete after certain tech levels, and reflects the overall cost density increase of the ships when tech level progresses.

Of course in the above calculation, I ignored the production bonuses from governors which buff the MSP production. Meanwhile, I also ignored the MSP needed for overhaul, for the MSP storage on ships, and the ship/station based maintenance modules which maintain ships but do not produce MSP. I think it is reasonable to assume these two cancel each other, if not further debuff the overall MSP production rate.

An additional note, the tech line 'Maintenance Production Rate y MSP' actually produces y BP worth of MSP per year (4y MSP per year), thus the name itself is ambiguous. It is more clear to name it as 'Maintenance Production Rate 4y MSP' or ''Maintenance Production Rate y BP'.

[Malorn]

Hmm...

I do see your point, though perhaps the solution is to reduce the constant use of MSP per year, rather then improve production.

MSP can be a huge drain on the economy, which is not unreasonable, but it can get a bit out of control in some cases.

[Norm49]

A other solution that I thing will be better is having a factory that produce the spare part and the maintenance facility only doing the mechanical work.That ways it is possible to produce the spare part at a main production hub and still having ship being maintain on colonies if you have a supply chain, and also that ways you can make a stock pile of space part to fix ship with damage control during a wars.

[Garfunkel]

That's how it used to be. There's a reason why Steve changed it. I doubt he will go back to the VB6 system.

[xenoscepter]

 - Why not just add a facility that does nothing but build MSP? Possibly have it do so at an increased rate? Then you can de-centralize the whole affair, having MSP producing colonies and ships to move it about to where it is needed. Late tech those Commercial Engines are fast, and definitely NOT thirsty by any sane measure, so I reckon that wouldn't be too bad.

[Ektor]

I'm bumping this thread because I had issues on my current playthrough because of this. I actually underproduced MSP for several years. The calculation for MSP consumption is not that clear, I suggest both techs be joined into a single tech line, or made equal, so let's say, a tech 3 maintenance facility will produce 30 msp per year and maintain the equivalent of 120 BP. Perhaps the Maintenance Facility should be changed to tend per BP rather than per tonnage.

[Malorn]

I think you want more then 1/4 msp to BP maintained, by quite a large margin. Beam weapons eat msp, and failures while in use need to be considered.