Landing on Planets

[Steve Walmsley]

In v5.20, ships of 500 tons or less can no longer use maintenance facilities and must use hangars instead. Parasites already rewind their maintenance clocks while in hangars so this element of maintenance facilities is already handled.

There are also some changes to maintenance modules for v5.20:

1) They are now commercial systems
2) They can carry out overhauls
3) They are size 125 instead of size 25, although their cost remains at 200.

This allows the design of large maintenance ships that can create temporary bases. Don't forget that the maintenance capacity of multiple ships in the same location is cumulative. Here is an example of a ship intended to provide an independent base of operations for a FAC flotilla. It has sufficient maintenance modules for ships of up to 1000 tons, supplies of fuel and maintenance plus a cargo hold to carry the required minerals.

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Wolverine class FAC Tender    39,100 tons     850 Crew     1608 BP      TCS 782  TH 1200  EM 0
1534 km/s     Armour 1-102     Shields 0-0     Sensors 1/1/0/0     Damage Control Rating 1     PPV 0
Maint Capacity 1026 MSP    Max Repair 200 MSP
Cargo 5000    
Maintenance Modules: 5 module(s) capable of supporting ships of 1000 tons

Commercial Magneto-plasma Drive (6)    Power 200    Fuel Use 6%    Signature 200    Armour 0    Exp 1%
Fuel Capacity 500,000 Litres    Range 383.5 billion km   (2893 days at full power)

This design is classed as a Commercial Vessel for maintenance purposesThe ship below is more of a bare bones design, intended to provide or supplement maintenance facilities for an existing colony. It doesn't carry any supplies of its own. Five of these ships operating together would provide sufficient maintenance facilities for ships of up to 10,000 tons.

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Mackenzie class Maintenance Vessel    57,400 tons     1423 Crew     2503 BP      TCS 1148  TH 1000  EM 0
871 km/s     Armour 1-132     Shields 0-0     Sensors 1/1/0/0     Damage Control Rating 1     PPV 0
Maint Capacity 27 MSP    Max Repair 200 MSP
Maintenance Modules: 10 module(s) capable of supporting ships of 2000 tons

Commercial Magneto-plasma Drive (5)    Power 200    Fuel Use 6%    Signature 200    Armour 0    Exp 1%
Fuel Capacity 50,000 Litres    Range 26.1 billion km   (347 days at full power)

This design is classed as a Commercial Vessel for maintenance purposesSteve

[UnLimiTeD]

Nice.
Although that totally f*cks over my Maintenance FAC swarms repairing large ships.
Oh well, good bye repair drones. I demanded that change myself, after all

[dooots]

So do you still need to be in orbit for the modules to work?

[waresky]

Great job Steve.
Interesting and much more "realistic"
i LOVE realism.

Respect for those "love" play without maintenance trouble but for me..a REAL Universe r HARD place.not a Pac-man place.
my 2 cents

For STEVE: countdown to 5.2?

[IanD]

Lets see if I've got this right, you can build fighters on a planet, but they start putting time on their maintenance clocks as soon as they are produced, unless you have a hanger ready for them. So this in effect precludes building spare fighters to replace combat losses, it also means that you will have a delay between building your hanger and being able to fill it. The latter isn't that important as my logistics is never good enough to have the squadron ready at the same time the hanger is ready.

I would perhaps have preferred to have the fighters unable to operate or load ordinance unless they had a hanger, but then how do you get them to a hanger and the coding would probably be a nightmare. So is there any chance of having that cheap planet based astrodrome which can hold fighters with the clock stopped but not rearm/repair/refuel them to store your strategic reserve? Much like the USAF have their aircraft in storage in the desert today.

Regards

[Steve Walmsley]

As fighters can't use maintenance facilities in v5.20, I have added some more intelligence to the location of newly produced fighters. At the moment in v5.14, you just assign a fleet as the destination for the fighters and you need to sort out assignments to motherships manually. In v5.20, for each new fighter produced the program will look for motherships in that destination fleet. If there is a a mothership in the destination fleet that has fewer of that particular type of fighter in its hangar bay than specified in its class strikegroup and it has available space, the new fighter will be assigned to that ship and placed in its hangar bay. This allows you to designate a carrier fleet and let the fighter factories add fighters straight into the hangar bays of the carriers.

Steve

[iamlenb]

Now THAT is an incredible macromanagement change!  Thank you Steve!  So, if I understand correctly, assigning ONE fighter to ONE mothership of a class will then continue to stock that ship class until all carriers are full?

[welchbloke]

As fighters can't use maintenance facilities in v5.20, I have added some more intelligence to the location of newly produced fighters. At the moment in v5.14, you just assign a fleet as the destination for the fighters and you need to sort out assignments to motherships manually. In v5.20, for each new fighter produced the program will look for motherships in that destination fleet. If there is a a mothership in the destination fleet that has fewer of that particular type of fighter in its hangar bay than specified in its class strikegroup and it has available space, the new fighter will be assigned to that ship and placed in its hangar bay. This allows you to designate a carrier fleet and let the fighter factories add fighters straight into the hangar bays of the carriers.

Steve

My races are normally major users of fighters; so all I can say is THANKS!  

[Yonder]

There are also some changes to maintenance modules for v5.20:

1) They are now commercial systems
2) They can carry out overhauls
3) They are size 125 instead of size 25, although their cost remains at 200.

...

Code: [Select]

Wolverine class FAC Tender    39,100 tons     850 Crew     1608 BP      TCS 782  TH 1200  EM 0
1534 km/s     Armour 1-102     Shields 0-0     Sensors 1/1/0/0     Damage Control Rating 1     PPV 0
Maint Capacity 1026 MSP    Max Repair 200 MSP
Cargo 5000    
Maintenance Modules: 5 module(s) capable of supporting ships of 1000 tons

Commercial Magneto-plasma Drive (6)    Power 200    Fuel Use 6%    Signature 200    Armour 0    Exp 1%
Fuel Capacity 500,000 Litres    Range 383.5 billion km   (2893 days at full power)

...

[code]Mackenzie class Maintenance Vessel    57,400 tons     1423 Crew     2503 BP      TCS 1148  TH 1000  EM 0
871 km/s     Armour 1-132     Shields 0-0     Sensors 1/1/0/0     Damage Control Rating 1     PPV 0
Maint Capacity 27 MSP    Max Repair 200 MSP
Maintenance Modules: 10 module(s) capable of supporting ships of 2000 tons

Commercial Magneto-plasma Drive (5)    Power 200    Fuel Use 6%    Signature 200    Armour 0    Exp 1%
Fuel Capacity 50,000 Litres    Range 26.1 billion km   (347 days at full power)

This design is classed as a Commercial Vessel for maintenance purposesSteve

I'm a little confused by these numbers you list for Maintenance modules in conjunction with your given design. If the bays will now be 125 hull spaces then they should be 6250 tons each.

Your first example ship is 39,100 tons with five modules, so 31,250 tons of modules and 7850 mass left for the other components, maybe a bit tight with a cargo hold and five engines, but probably about right.

Your next ship perplexes me though, it is 57,400 tons with 10 modules. That's 62,500 tons of modules! Is there a new "maintenance efficiency" research item, or are those ships from slightly different game versions while you were still playing with balancing changes?

I love research, so I hope it's the former.

[Steve Walmsley]

Now THAT is an incredible macromanagement change!  Thank you Steve!  So, if I understand correctly, assigning ONE fighter to ONE mothership of a class will then continue to stock that ship class until all carriers are full?

If there is a a mothership in the destination fleet that has fewer of the newly produced type of fighter in its hangar bay than specified in its class strikegroup, then the new fighter will be added.

Steve

[Steve Walmsley]

I'm a little confused by these numbers you list for Maintenance modules in conjunction with your given design. If the bays will now be 125 hull spaces then they should be 6250 tons each.

Sorry, they ended up as Size 100, or 5000 tons.

Steve