Noob fighters and morale

[vonduus (OP)]

I built a fighter base (PDC) on an inhospitable planet, and made sure there was plenty of crew berths and engineers, and also some fuel and some maintenance supply. Unfortunately this is not enough to keep my pilots happy, as my current fighters have an expected deployment time of 4 days, so they get homesick pretty fast. They recover if I return them, though (fortunately, Earth is within flying range). 

When I got tired of micro-managing them every so often, I just parked them on Earth. Here they sit, with high morale, but now their systems are beginning to break down, due to maintenance failure. I am told by the game that there is insufficient maintenance supply available, but that is not true, I have 50.000t lying around. So I fly them back to their mother-base, where they only get a maintenance check because I ignore their complaints and refuse to move them out before the maintenance checks are done.

This is sub-optimal. Adding to the problem is that the broken-down sensor didn't get a repair during checkup. Now, I cannot just abandon the base and station my fighters elsewhere, because all other ships and structures capable of housing them are filled up already. And if I leave them at their base, the pilots will just go nuts. So I am doomed to microing them until I get another hangar built somewhere. And hope that there will not be any engine breakdowns.

This leads to a few questions:

1a. Is it at all feasible to have a self-contained fighter base (ie. no micro needed) in uninhabitable surroundings, for example on an asteroid?

1b. If I build an orbital habitat and place it in orbit around my fighter base, would the pilots stop complaining?

2. Can fighters only get maintenance checks inside ground bases and/or mother-ships equipped with hangars or boat bays?

3. Will fighters always break down over time, if not stored in a hangar/boat bay?

4. If a fighter component breaks down due to no maintenance, where do I get it repaired? The shipyard seems not to take them.

5. Can fighters be refitted to new models? How?

Thanks.

[draanyk]

1a.  Is it at all feasible to have a self-contained fighter base (ie.  no micro needed) in uninhabitable surroundings, for example on an asteroid?

1b.  If I build an orbital habitat and place it in orbit around my fighter base, would the pilots stop complaining?

2.  Can fighters only get maintenance checks inside ground bases and/or mother-ships equipped with hangars or boat bays?

3.  Will fighters always break down over time, if not stored in a hangar/boat bay?

The simplest option, as I understand the mechanics of this, would be to put enough infrastructure on the asteroid to support 10,000 people, which makes it count as a shore leave destination, if it's possible.  I haven't tried populating asteroids, it might not be an option with the low gravity.  Another option is to design the fighter base with a very high deployment time, but keep in mind that if you need to haul it to a planet for shore leave after that deployment time, it needs to spend something like 1/3rd of it's deployed time in shore leave to get back to 0 crew months.

Orbital habitats don't help with shore leave.  I found out the hard way after deploying a couple of 400,000 ton jump point defence bases with 1-month deployment times that didn't work.   

As for fighters, you can't base them on a planet, as the maintenance clock runs.  They need to be in a hanger.  The base you deploy them to needs to have enough crew quarters for all of it's crew, plus all of the flight crews for the fighters (check the "Keep excess Q" checkbox on ship design screen to add additional crew quarters), or else I think it complains about overcrowding.

[sublight]

1a: Yes. Options include Orbital habitats or PDC. PDCs never suffer maintenance checks and appear not to suffer moral penalties. The PDC option is cheaper, but won't cause fighters to rewind any deployment time gained when undocked.

4: Fighters repair while inside a hanger.

5: If shipyards can build fighters then they can refit them, if not then fighters can't be refited.


Asteroids:
Asteroids and other objects below the gravity limit can not be collonized using infrastructure.

Orbital Habitats:
Orbital Habitats increase the population capacity of any system body they are stationed at. They have no effect in deep space or at jump points, can be used to allow asteroids or other uninhabitable bodies to support a population. Don't forget to ship colonists to a habitat since they aren't automatically included.

[draanyk]

Shows what I know.  This game has a lot of layers.  Thanks for correcting, sublight! 

[vonduus (OP)]

Thanks for the answers. But I still don't quite understand.

My fighter base is a PDC:

Code: [Select]

Turtle-10 class Planetary Defence Centre    31,200 tons     313 Crew     3929 BP      TCS 624  TH 0  EM 0
Armour 19-88     Sensors 1/160     Damage Control Rating 0     PPV 6
Intended Deployment Time: 120 months    Flight Crew Berths 253   
Hangar Deck Capacity 15000 tons     

10cm Railgun V2/C4 (2x4)    Range 20,000km     TS: 4000 km/s     Power 3-4     RM 2    ROF 5        1 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
PDC Fire Control S00.5 18-4000 H70 (1)    Max Range: 36,000 km   TS: 4000 km/s     72 44 17 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
Gas-Cooled Fast Reactor Technology PB-1 (2)     Total Power Output 9    Armour 0    Exp 5%

Medium Range Sensor MR45-R20 (1)     GPS 2560     Range 45.8m km    Resolution 20
Long Range Sensor MR128-R100 (1)     GPS 16000     Range 128.0m km    Resolution 100


This design is classed as a Planetary Defence Centre and can be pre-fabricated in 13 sections

And I have no problems with the crew of this, they haven't complained, not yet that is.

But the fighter crews definitely suffer morale penalties. I am beginning to suspect it is a bug, some sort of unintended consequence of the relatively new morale rules.

Anyway, the problem base is placed on a planet, so the best option is probably to place some infrastructure there. And design an orbital habitat for the asteroids I plan to weaponize.

[Conscript Gary]

Hm. What's the shore leave counter on the PDC when the fighters start complaining?
PDCs ignore morale loss but their counter will happily tick on for eternity, and the fighter pilots might be looking at that number.
In which case that's a pretty crippling bug, since the shore leave clock on a PDC never goes down, even with a population

[sloanjh]

I am beginning to suspect it is a bug, some sort of unintended consequence of the relatively new morale rules.

That would be my guess.  I vote for an entry in the official bugs thread.

John

[vonduus (OP)]

Conscript Gary, the crew clock on the PDC shows 22.72, so there should be plenty of time left.

Fighters seem to be delicate little monsters in this game, very powerful and very, very helpless without a mother-ship. But if my carrier can venture deep into empty space without its fighter pilots getting upset, then a PDC on a frozen world should be able to keep them happy the same way. So I will post something in the bugs section.

I got answers for most of my questions, now all I need to know is how to repair a fighter with broken components. Right now said fighter is getting an overhaul at the maintenance facilities on earth, so perhaps this will fix it.

[Jorgen_CAB]

Something that I learned is that a hangar will only stop the clock for crew of a fighter while on a carrier in space, I suppose it works the same in a PDC with no population available at the same place.

You have to design your fighters deployment time with their total deployment in the field in mind, not just one single mission. I would advice you to build a special PDC fighter with a much longer deployment time than 4 days, say up to a month or at least 30 days or so. They will eventually need to get shore leave depending on how often you use them. In your case they might use up all their deployment time just to get to the new PDC or something, or?

If you build a ground fighter base in a populated area you probably don't even need any flight crew berths at all since they will always get shore leave anyhow.

As far as I know you can't overhaul a fighter at a maintenance facility. You need a hangar, when inside it reduces the maintenance clock on the fighter. If the fighter is in the hangar you can repair a damaged component from the damage screen on the ship page like any other ship using damage control. It will use the carrier/PDC supplies.

[vonduus (OP)]

As far as I know you can't overhaul a fighter at a maintenance facility. You need a hangar, when inside it reduces the maintenance clock on the fighter. If the fighter is in the hangar you can repair a damaged component from the damage screen on the ship page like any other ship using damage control. It will use the carrier/PDC supplies.

Thanks Jorgen_CAB, now I know all there is to know about fighters At least enough to get on with this game.

In the meantime I have placed some infrastructure on the planet, so now the crews aren't homesick anymore, they get maintenance, and I will try to repair them according to your instructions right away.

And yes, I thought of designing a special fighter for long-time deployment in inhospitable areas, but it would be slooow, and speed is what gives fighters their edge, imo. I believe it perhaps would be better with a fast attack craft, then. But I will probably design such a fighter next time I want to place a fighter squadron somewhere far away from other people, to experiment further with this issue.

Btw, I reported it as a bug in the bug section.

[vonduus (OP)]

Ok, now I have a population with nightclubs and plenty of maintenance supply (and a lot of unrest, so my garrison troops are very busy). Morale is now 100%, but the fighters still don't get a repair. I tried to repair them from the damage control tab, but to no avail.

After a few days I get a message saying there is no spare parts, and that my fighters are unable to continue with emergency damage control due to insufficient maintenance supplies.

I looked in the Fighters menu, and they are all assigned to this very PDC as their mothership, and they are all docked.

In the PDC there is a hangar, and there is a maintenance storage bay, which for some reason does not show up on the specification sheet: on the ship design display it says MSP is 0. I unlocked the design in SM mode to see if there really was a maintenance storage bay in the design, and there is, but I cannot put any supply into it. If I go to the miscellaneous tab in the individual ship window it says MSP 0, and I cannot fill it up from this screen. And I cannot fill it up with my tender from the orders menu either. It is as if it wasn't there.

There is plenty of maintenance supplies on the planet.

I thought perhaps there was not enough engineers, but for some reason, when building PDCs it is not allowed to use engineering bays, so this cannot be the problem.