The Adventures and Woes of Rath's Aurora Learning Experience

[Hawkeye]

Inqusitive class Mothership    9.370.100 tons    

waresky, I belive you have lost your title as the most gigantomanic resident around here

[Hawkeye]

Edit2:

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Inqusitive class Mothership    9370100 tons     257755 Crew     1136080.22 BP      TCS 187402  TH 176000  EM 30000
939 km/s    JR 2-25(C)     Armour 100-3959     Shields 1000-300     Sensors 30/30/10/10     Damage Control Rating 5000     PPV 203
Annual Failure Rate: 175595%    IFR: 2438.8%    Maintenance Capacity 4003116 MSP    Max Repair 250000 MSP
Flag Bridge    Magazine 154    Cargo 500000    Colonists 100000    Passengers 2500    Cargo Handling Multiplier 50    Tractor Beam    
Fuel Harvester: 170 modules producing 10200000 litres per annum
Terraformer: 100 module(s) producing 0.1 atm per annum
Maintenance Modules: 500 module(s) capable of supporting ships of 100000 tons

JC9375K Commercial Jump Drive     Max Ship Size 9375000 tons    Distance 25k km     Squadron Size 2
Magneto-plasma Drive E5 (2200)    Power 80    Fuel Use 50%    Signature 80    Armour 0    Exp 5%
Fuel Capacity 500,000,000 Litres    Range 192.1 billion km   (2367 days at full power)
Alpha R300/9 Shields (1000)   Total Fuel Cost  9,000 Litres per day

10cm C2 Visible Light Laser (1)    Range 60,000km     TS: 2000 km/s     Power 3-2     RM 2    ROF 10        3 3 2 1 1 1 0 0 0 0
Quad 10cm C2 Visible Light Laser Turret (10x4)    Range 60,000km     TS: 8000 km/s     Power 12-8     RM 2    ROF 10        3 3 2 1 1 1 0 0 0 0
CIWS-80 (50x4)    Range 1000 km     TS: 8000 km/s     ROF 5       Base 50% To Hit
10cm Railgun V1/C2 (10x4)    Range 10,000km     TS: 2000 km/s     Power 3-2     RM 1    ROF 10        1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
Fire Control S04 64-2000 (1)    Max Range: 128,000 km   TS: 2000 km/s     92 84 77 69 61 53 45 37 30 22
Fire Control S04 16-8000 (1)    Max Range: 32,000 km   TS: 8000 km/s     69 37 6 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
Pebble Bed Reactor Technology PB-1 AR-0 (10)     Total Power Output 30    Armour 0    Exp 5%

Active Search Sensor S72-R60 (1)     GPS 4320     Range 43.2m km    Resolution 60
Active Search Sensor S72-R1 (1)     GPS 72     Range 720k km    Resolution 1
Thermal Sensor TH6-30 (1)     Sensitivity 30     Detect Sig Strength 1000:  30m km
EM Detection Sensor EM6-30 (1)     Sensitivity 30     Detect Sig Strength 1000:  30m km
Gravitational Survey Sensors (10)   10 Survey Points Per Hour
Geological Survey Sensors (10)   10 Survey Points Per Hour

This design is classed as a military vessel for maintenance purposes

Now to some more constructive comments

You have both, terraformer modules _and_ fuel harvester modules, which, IMO is a bad idea. To have the harvester work, your ship has to sit in orbit over a gas giant with sorium for quite some time, usually for years, while for the terraformer to work, your ship has to be parked over a terrestrial body you want to colonize. You can do one or the other, but not both at the same time, so half the time, one of those two will have cost you resources and build time and do nothing at all.

Armor 100 - are you nuts?
As I see it, this is primarily a civillian/support vessel, this looks like a supertanker with 10 times the armor the Yamato or an Iowa carried.

Shields 1000 - same as above. Also, your shield tech (Alpha) sucks. You spend 50.000t on shields, this is more than my largest battleships mass right now

You noticed allready that commercial jump engines don´t work on military vessels.

I suggest, prior to starting to design a ship, just think about what role that ship will have to fullfill. If you want it to harvest fuel, then build a fuel harvester: Put civillian enigines/jump engines, lots of fuel storages and lots of fuel harvester modules on it and not much else.
If you want to build a warship, use military engines/jump engines, armor, shields, sensors and weapons and don´t bother with other, more civillian stuff.

[Rathos (OP)]

Strip mine a system, bankrupt several worlds for years, force a quarter million people into permanent life aboard a ship miles long...Yeah.

Your right about the terraformer and fuel harvester, but this ship, once it fuels up the first time and leaves, should never come back home. It should find a gas giant and full up. The terraformers are so if it finds a nearly habitable world it can drop it's load of colony supplies and continue on, getting new supplies when cargo ships catch up with it. It is so big, it should be able to do anything. It has a hundred armor because, I would imagine something so large would be encased in as much as they could possibly manage to put on it, and while they travel they would put more and more. Your right my shield tech sucks...and I've never even used them before either. I wasn't exactly sure if more than one shield stacked, but I figured something so large would need at least basic shields just for an emergency like a hull breach.

The reason I put a commercial jumpdrive on it, is to show what it would look like if it had one. It really should have 3-4 if that is even possible, just in-case one breaks down. The biggest military one is 1.25 million tons though =( I guess for now i'll be forced to build another commercial ship with the jumpedrive and use it to tug it through, but that defeats the entire purpose of the ship. It is supposed to be self sufficient (though It needs more fuel harvesters cause its gonna take a looong time to fill up the tanks) and the gas mileage is bad enough 500 million liters in 6-8 years or so? =O My world only makes 2 million liters a year so far!

The goal was to get a jack-all-trades and make it as big as possible. Making a separate 9 million ton ship for each roll would be a bit more of a problem, although I think your right about the military. I'll probably make two, one that is solely devoted to war, and the other that is solely devoted for everything civilian. The civilian one will still have 100 armor and a bunch of shields and defenses, can't have a multi-system investment going around and getting blown up.

So that leads me two my two biggest complaints, first military jump drives have a max size. I could of kept going and made it bigger, but the jumpdrive size was the ultimate limit on what is possible. Also I hope shipyards don't have a max size. The next complaint is that fighter bays and hangers, they have two set sizes. I'd like to have 50 thousand ton hangars and fit some big ships on my mothership, it is big enough to fit them in. If putting 100 1000 size bays works though I'm not sure, I forgot to try. I assumed it wouldn't I think but now that I think about it, it might work! Probably would be a good idea to have a 100 1000 ton warships on it anycase.

I want to ask, do jumpgates allow ships of any size through? That would let me get around the jumpdrive problem, but I still feel like a mothership should have one...it should have everything.

PS: Putting 50,000t of shields on was just an after thought. It was only a half percent of its entire mass =)

Ok, writing all that after just waking up made my head spin and want to go back to bed. I think I might of repeated myself once or twice, but I think I got across what I was thinking.

Right now I'm using a more efficient survey vessel, I want you to look at it.

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Star Searcher class Deep Space Survey Ship    40000 tons     2637 Crew     8039 BP      TCS 800  TH 2560  EM 180
3200 km/s    JR 3-50     Armour 10-104     Shields 6-300     Sensors 30/30/5/5     Damage Control Rating 1     PPV 0
Annual Failure Rate: 12800%    IFR: 177.8%    Maintenance Capacity 126 MSP    Max Repair 256 MSP

J40000(3-50) Military Jump Drive     Max Ship Size 40000 tons    Distance 50k km     Squadron Size 3
Magneto-plasma Drive E5 (32)    Power 80    Fuel Use 50%    Signature 80    Armour 0    Exp 5%
Fuel Capacity 20,000,000 Litres    Range 1800.0 billion km   (6510 days at full power)
Alpha R300/9 Shields (6)   Total Fuel Cost  54 Litres per day

CIWS-80 (1x4)    Range 1000 km     TS: 8000 km/s     ROF 5       Base 50% To Hit
Pebble Bed Reactor Technology PB-1 AR-0 (1)     Total Power Output 3    Armour 0    Exp 5%
Active Search Sensor S72-R1 (1)     GPS 72     Range 720k km    Resolution 1
Active Search Sensor S72-R60 (1)     GPS 4320     Range 43.2m km    Resolution 60
Active Search Sensor S12-R60 (1)     GPS 720     Range 7.2m km    Resolution 60
Thermal Sensor TH6-30 (1)     Sensitivity 30     Detect Sig Strength 1000:  30m km
EM Detection Sensor EM6-30 (1)     Sensitivity 30     Detect Sig Strength 1000:  30m km
Gravitational Survey Sensors (5)   5 Survey Points Per Hour
Geological Survey Sensors (5)   5 Survey Points Per Hour

This design is classed as a military vessel for maintenance purposes
You'll notice that my jump-drives are super efficient, that is because I gave myself the top of the line efficiency for them so I could see the maximum size jump engines (I also instanted the jump drive research since I don't think my labs had a chance to research it in less than a few hundred years (and I wanted to start bulding and survey then!). So far one of these managed to survey 16 systems before needing to refuel. The reason it has no maintenance is because I'm playing with it turned off for this round. Probably a bit cheap, but after having to start over and over I decided to give myself a little cookie in-return. I also put 0% chance for NPRs and 0 NPR starting empires, because they drive me nuts every time. I'm hoping once I've explored enough I'll eventually either make another empire of my own and have them at war, or make a NPR somewhere suitably far enough away and let them build up. I'm not sure if making a new system with SM and then putting a NPR in it would simulate the same thing as a original NPR.

Not having them at the start though has sped the game speed up considerbly. I never managed to survey more than 4-5 systems before and now I've gotten to 19 =) Resource levels have been terrible so far though. Portland and Detroit where the only systems that had a much over a million in everything. They also where .3-.6 which is better than the .1 everywhere else. (Though I haven't put together geo teams to go look, and I don't have a troop ship.)



Alright I'm going to go wake up now.

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[row:3ffldw0w][/row:3ffldw0w]

That is what I think of when I think of the size of scale between this and a 50 thousand ton warship.

[sloanjh]

commercial jump-drives won't work on a military ship! Grrr. Increase the maximum size of military jump-drives!

My understanding is that this is not quite correct.  My understanding is that a ship with military jump drives (which is less restrictive than "a military ship") may not transit through a wormhole created by a commercial jump drive, even if it's under tow from a commercial-drive ship.  So for example I can put an active sensor (a military system) on a commercial jump-freighter design (without changing the engines).  This turns it into a military design which must be built in a naval SY and whose maintenance clock grows, but said ship can still transit without replacing the jump engines with non-commercial.

John

[sloanjh]

Strip mine a system, bankrupt several worlds for years, force a quarter million people into permanent life aboard a ship miles long...Yeah.

So it sounds like what you're saying is that for the big honking ship you're playing a game of "let's pretend we had infinite resources" and making outrageous designs.  That's ok (in fact a lot of us have done the same experiments where we max out on instant tech and see how good a destroyer we can design), but a lot of the "fun" (and intent) of Aurora is to force trade-offs in ship and empire design in a universe with scarse resources.  And a lot of us (myself included) are going to use a ruler of "what if that ship ran into an alien race of similar tech level" to evaluate them.  That's what I was saying about role playing - if I were trying to design a fleet to accomplish your stated mission (take off through a WP and never come back), I'd probably do it with a whole bunch of smaller, specialized ships; the only reason to make such a huge ship is some role playing reason.  For a lot of us, the real fun comes after you've designed this thing, when you have it collide with an empire with a completely different role-played philosophy.  For example, I would have it encounter an alien "bug" (hostile) race with a similar tech level but a fleet that's been efficiently designed but only has resources for 1% the build cost of the thing and see who won (kind of like running a game of Ogre in space).  Which leads to the efficient designs question....

Right now I'm using a more efficient survey vessel, I want you to look at it.

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Star Searcher class Deep Space Survey Ship    40000 tons     2637 Crew     8039 BP      TCS 800  TH 2560  EM 180
3200 km/s    JR 3-50     Armour 10-104     Shields 6-300     Sensors 30/30/5/5     Damage Control Rating 1     PPV 0
Annual Failure Rate: 12800%    IFR: 177.8%    Maintenance Capacity 126 MSP    Max Repair 256 MSP

J40000(3-50) Military Jump Drive     Max Ship Size 40000 tons    Distance 50k km     Squadron Size 3
Magneto-plasma Drive E5 (32)    Power 80    Fuel Use 50%    Signature 80    Armour 0    Exp 5%
Fuel Capacity 20,000,000 Litres    Range 1800.0 billion km   (6510 days at full power)
Alpha R300/9 Shields (6)   Total Fuel Cost  54 Litres per day

CIWS-80 (1x4)    Range 1000 km     TS: 8000 km/s     ROF 5       Base 50% To Hit
Pebble Bed Reactor Technology PB-1 AR-0 (1)     Total Power Output 3    Armour 0    Exp 5%
Active Search Sensor S72-R1 (1)     GPS 72     Range 720k km    Resolution 1
Active Search Sensor S72-R60 (1)     GPS 4320     Range 43.2m km    Resolution 60
Active Search Sensor S12-R60 (1)     GPS 720     Range 7.2m km    Resolution 60
Thermal Sensor TH6-30 (1)     Sensitivity 30     Detect Sig Strength 1000:  30m km
EM Detection Sensor EM6-30 (1)     Sensitivity 30     Detect Sig Strength 1000:  30m km
Gravitational Survey Sensors (5)   5 Survey Points Per Hour
Geological Survey Sensors (5)   5 Survey Points Per Hour

This design is classed as a military vessel for maintenance purposes

The biggest point here is that it still seems like you're trying to do a multi-role ship, and I think it's fair to say that the Aurora mechanics just don't like that design philosophy.  There are expert players who have working multi-role designs, but even they only stick a ship with 2-3 roles, IIRC.  I see the following roles in this ship:

1)  Scout: looks for other ships with the sensor suite, especially active sensors
2)  Probe Ship: Look for alien populations in a newly discovered system using the passive sensors (often combined in a single design with "Scout")
3)  Geo Survey
4)  Warp Survey
5)  Jump Ship
6)  Mega-tanker (you've got 20 years worth of fuel on it)
7)  Hardened: Able to operate in the middle of a battle.

In contrast, here's my current (conventional start) geosurvey design:

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Beagle II class Geological Survey Vessel    950 tons     92 Crew     204.8 BP      TCS 19  TH 40  EM 0
4210 km/s     Armour 1-8     Shields 0-0     Sensors 1/1/0/1     Damage Control Rating 1     PPV 0
Annual Failure Rate: 7%    IFR: 0.1%    Maintenance Capacity 135 MSP    Max Repair 100 MSP

Nuclear Pulse Engine E8 T50 (2)    Power 40    Fuel Use 80%    Signature 20    Armour 0    Exp 5%
Fuel Capacity 70,000 Litres    Range 165.8 billion km   (455 days at full power)

Geological Survey Sensors (1)   1 Survey Points Per Hour

This design is classed as a military vessel for maintenance purposes

It's a conventional start, so I don't have warp survey yet, but the design will be the same, with a grav survey sensor swapped for the geo-survey.  Similarly, my probe ship has one each of size-3 thermal and EM sensors.

I can build 40 of these for the cost of your single ship, and it only takes 3-4 of mine to survey a system in the same amount of time it takes yours (mine is faster, plus it's more efficient to have multiple ships with one sensor each than to have one ship with multiple sensors - it has to do with travel time in the system).  A more subtler point is that my ship is a lot more survivable than yours as well - it's got a much smaller signature, so the bad guys are unlikely to find it if it stumbles into a hostile system.  And even if I do loose it, it's not a big investment.

In other words, I can build a task group of these little corvettes that has the same capabilities as your monster (and yes, this is still a monster, it's just not an ogre :-)

Fuel:  As I pointed out, you've got 20 years worth on board.  If nothing else, that's going to suck your homeworld dry.

CIWS:  If this ship ends up in a situation where it's going to be shot at, it's probably dead anyway.  Adding passive defenses (like armor/CIWS) is throwing good money after bad.  The one caveat to this is if it probes a picketed WP - then it has a chance of running for the WP and jumping back out.  In a previous game, I designed some heavily armored (20, I think) jump ships whose only job was to do the initial probe jump into a defended system - it might make sense to throw a couple of CIWS on such a ship.  But that's a special-use design, not a general survey ship.

You'll notice that my jump-drives are super efficient, that is because I gave myself the top of the line efficiency for them so I could see the maximum size jump engines (I also instanted the jump drive research since I don't think my labs had a chance to research it in less than a few hundred years (and I wanted to start bulding and survey then!). So far one of these managed to survey 16 systems before needing to refuel. The reason it has no maintenance is because I'm playing with it turned off for this round. Probably a bit cheap, but after having to start over and over I decided to give myself a little cookie in-return. I also put 0% chance for NPRs and 0 NPR starting empires, because they drive me nuts every time. I'm hoping once I've explored enough I'll eventually either make another empire of my own and have them at war, or make a NPR somewhere suitably far enough away and let them build up. I'm not sure if making a new system with SM and then putting a NPR in it would simulate the same thing as a original NPR.

Not having them at the start though has sped the game speed up considerbly. I never managed to survey more than 4-5 systems before and now I've gotten to 19 =)

Ok, I see you've turned off maintenance, and given yourself free jump drives.  If I were you, I'd consider playing a "standard" game (without role playing or freebies other than the initial instant-tech points) so you get a feel for the design principles you're planning to break  I would also read the back-threads in Bureau of Ships and Advanced Tactical Academy to see the sorts of things to look for in a design.

John

[Rathos (OP)]

When I said it was efficient, I meant it was efficient for me. Its actually one of the smallest ships I have. I only have one of them exploring right now, that was all I could afford to build. I know the game seems to stress having a specific ship for each role, but that begins to drive me nuts. I tried having a bunch of smaller survey ships, but once I got more than 6 of them It started to kill me, they would run out of fuel in the middle of surveying, even with 30% return to base. They couldn't go more than one or two systems without having to go back. The Star Searcher is great in my view because it:

1. Only has to refuel once every 20 years, like you pointed out. In 20 years I make enough fuel for it (actually I probably make enough for two right now)

2. I found a lot of sorium for making fuel in a nearby system. Washington also has several good gas giants that are literally teeming with it. So fuel probably won't be a problem.

3. I only have to transit it to a system and then it works to clear the entire thing by itself, the only time it needs help is if the system has stuff extremely far away that needs a la-range point.

4. I don't need 12 groups of Starsurvey 001 002 003 004 005 to manage.

5. If someone blows it up it will probably cause empire wide outrage and change the entire viewpoint of my people to something more warlike (Pearl Harbor?) Warlike is more efficient. It has to be.

6. Its big. Its good.


I know giving myself those free jump-drives was pretty cheap, but I think it makes sense. My people don't have any jump-gate or hyper drive technology and won't use any so they are naturally going to be good with jump-drives sense every single ship has to have one. (And I know I don't have to do that but it just seems right to me.)

I haven't generated any NPRs yet, so I'm assuming it will take my jump drive tech into account and compensate the NPR with equivalent tech, even if it is spread out over more areas. In fact the NPR will probably be far ahead of me since it doesn't have any handicaps. I was thinking of making a "tunnel" to a new area and generating the NPR there sometime. That way I could still peacefully explore with my big slow ship in one direction while worrying about defense and protection from the other side. Though I imagine I'll have to be careful about the two areas connecting, so I'll always have to watch my back.

[Hawkeye]

I want to ask, do jumpgates allow ships of any size through? That would let me get around the jumpdrive problem, but I still feel like a mothership should have one...it should have everything.

Yes, jumpgates allow any size of ship to pass.

Right now I'm using a more efficient survey vessel, I want you to look at it.

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Star Searcher class Deep Space Survey Ship    40000 tons     2637 Crew     8039 BP      TCS 800  TH 2560  EM 180
3200 km/s    JR 3-50     Armour 10-104     Shields 6-300     Sensors 30/30/5/5     Damage Control Rating 1     PPV 0
Annual Failure Rate: 12800%    IFR: 177.8%    Maintenance Capacity 126 MSP    Max Repair 256 MSP

J40000(3-50) Military Jump Drive     Max Ship Size 40000 tons    Distance 50k km     Squadron Size 3
Magneto-plasma Drive E5 (32)    Power 80    Fuel Use 50%    Signature 80    Armour 0    Exp 5%
Fuel Capacity 20,000,000 Litres    Range 1800.0 billion km   (6510 days at full power)
Alpha R300/9 Shields (6)   Total Fuel Cost  54 Litres per day

CIWS-80 (1x4)    Range 1000 km     TS: 8000 km/s     ROF 5       Base 50% To Hit
Pebble Bed Reactor Technology PB-1 AR-0 (1)     Total Power Output 3    Armour 0    Exp 5%
Active Search Sensor S72-R1 (1)     GPS 72     Range 720k km    Resolution 1
Active Search Sensor S72-R60 (1)     GPS 4320     Range 43.2m km    Resolution 60
Active Search Sensor S12-R60 (1)     GPS 720     Range 7.2m km    Resolution 60
Thermal Sensor TH6-30 (1)     Sensitivity 30     Detect Sig Strength 1000:  30m km
EM Detection Sensor EM6-30 (1)     Sensitivity 30     Detect Sig Strength 1000:  30m km
Gravitational Survey Sensors (5)   5 Survey Points Per Hour
Geological Survey Sensors (5)   5 Survey Points Per Hour

This design is classed as a military vessel for maintenance purposes

For a survey ship of this size, (I read you have no chance to run into NPRs, but still...) the sensors (both active and passive) are abyssimal.
Upping them to 4 to 8 times the size will increase the ships mass only by a modest margine but enables you to see a whole lot further in exploring a new system (outscouting the enemy is 50% of the victory). EM and TH 120 sensors sould be easily possible, as well as a range 150 to 250 mkm active sensor.
In addition, the res 1 sensor will only make the crew of this ship _aware_, that they are about to be blown to bits by enemy missiles, with no weapon to actually take out the enemy misisles (aside from the CIWS, which allready has its own, integrated sensor). Well, I guess it could give them a few seconds more to scramble to the life pods

Armor: I´m not sure, armoring an unarmed ship that heavily makes a lot of sense (except for, say a fleet scout or a troop transport, which will be surrounded by a bunch of escorts). Either it can run away from a threat, then it will be safe, or it can´t then it will be toast, no matter how much armor you put on (ok, there might be circumstances, where the armor keeps it long enough alife to run away, but I´d consider this a low chance)

General design philosophies I have used re. survey ships:

1. Build as small and cheap as possible. Those are expendable and if one gets blown up, well, sh** happens!
2. Build them big (not as big as yours, but around 10 to 12k) with large passive and active sensors, hopefully outscouting any enemy they encounter, so they can avoid a fight.

[waresky]

Inqusitive class Mothership    9.370.100 tons    

waresky, I belive you have lost your title as the most gigantomanic resident around here

AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH....:

Awesome 9 Millions tons...ehehehhe am loving "this smeg"....ghghghgh ive been missed THIS post:DDDD

[waresky]

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Maintenance Capacity 4003116 MSP    Max Repair 250000 MSP
AHHAHAHAHA...am love again this guy!!!!

4 MILLIONS of spares parts onboard!!!!!

mate mate.. am fear the cost of the spare only r "GALACTIC"

[waresky]

Now more serious.

At first time stumbled into Aurora am enthusiastic and a gigantic-mind posture..but ive fast realize this arent a right way in FIRST Empire time.
Low tech,low resources and low economic cant support this..Millennium Empire State designs..

So am return a few walk back.

Now my "biggest" ships are an Battlecruiser in 30.000 tons.
First am dedicated to raise ENGINES tech more fast i can,second Sensors,Missiles,and Economic effort in general.

Then when resources become huge probably every Empire can build more vicious Warships.
But the mainly r drive BY ALIENS encounters and her Naval Fleets situations.

Obviously..for maintain Peace better prepare to War as better u can.

See ya.

[Rathos (OP)]

Thanks hawk, I'll be sure to redesign the sensors before building the next one. I just used the sensors that the game had already designed for me, instead of making my own. The reactor was uhh, just in case they needed to put some jumper cables on another jump-ship to restart it's engine. Yeaah.

I've designed a multi-purpose system patrol/troop transport/unrest queller/scare the civilians ship.

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Hornet class Patrol Craft    12450 tons     864 Crew     1395.22 BP      TCS 249  TH 800  EM 0
3212 km/s    JR 3-50     Armour 8-47     Shields 0-0     Sensors 30/30/0/0     Damage Control Rating 1     PPV 38
Annual Failure Rate: 1240%    IFR: 17.2%    Maintenance Capacity 70 MSP    Max Repair 72 MSP
Troop Capacity: 1 Battalion    Drop Capacity: 1 Battalion    Magazine 154    

J12500(3-50) Military Jump Drive     Max Ship Size 12500 tons    Distance 50k km     Squadron Size 3
Magneto-plasma Drive E5 (10)    Power 80    Fuel Use 50%    Signature 80    Armour 0    Exp 5%
Fuel Capacity 200,000 Litres    Range 57.8 billion km   (208 days at full power)

Quad 10cm C2 Visible Light Laser Turret (1x4)    Range 60,000km     TS: 8000 km/s     Power 12-8     RM 2    ROF 10        3 3 2 1 1 1 0 0 0 0
10cm C2 Visible Light Laser (1)    Range 60,000km     TS: 3212 km/s     Power 3-2     RM 2    ROF 10        3 3 2 1 1 1 0 0 0 0
10cm Railgun V1/C2 (6x4)    Range 10,000km     TS: 3212 km/s     Power 3-2     RM 1    ROF 10        1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
Fire Control S04 64-2000 (1)    Max Range: 128,000 km   TS: 2000 km/s     92 84 77 69 61 53 45 37 30 22
Fire Control S04 16-8000 (1)    Max Range: 32,000 km   TS: 8000 km/s     69 37 6 0 0 0 0 0 0 0

Active Search Sensor S72-R60 (1)     GPS 4320     Range 43.2m km    Resolution 60
Active Search Sensor S72-R1 (1)     GPS 72     Range 720k km    Resolution 1
Thermal Sensor TH6-30 (1)     Sensitivity 30     Detect Sig Strength 1000:  30m km
EM Detection Sensor EM6-30 (1)     Sensitivity 30     Detect Sig Strength 1000:  30m km

This design is classed as a military vessel for maintenance purposes
Again with the crappy ASS and weapons. It is jump capable but it's range is sorely limited. Uses will be for running down civilian shipping that forgot to pay their taxes, dropping marine detachments on inhospitable worlds to improve their demeanor, and sitting in orbit insulting freighter captains.

Again, yes maintenance is non-existent. I'm playing with it off for the current game. When I'm done with this game, we'll see about a new one, but I'm having too much fun with this one to consider starting a new one yet. (This one also seems to have not ran into any bugs or problems yet!! Also its up to 2084 already    )

I have 4 naval shipyards ( 3 slipway ~100k, 3 1 slipway ~64ks ) and 2 commercial ones ( 4 slipway 100k, 1 slipway 79k) so this patrol craft fits into one of the single 64k slots. I only need two of them, one for Sol and one for Austin, my first inhabited colony apart from earth.

I know my ships aren't good from a If I meet a Evil NPR Alien Out There prerspective, but remember my people don't believe in aliens. They think there are only ones. Right now they are right, but once I get 3-4 worlds and some more stuff I plan on making at least one NPR empire to come enlighten them from a Peaceful Anarchy to a High Imperial Monarchy (Oh yes the emperor shall return!)

Edit: Also I would like to say it isn't just my intention of designing a giant 9 million size ship to see how big it would be, I really am going to try to build one. I'm sure I'll update the design many times during my quest. I'm now concerned that such a big ship would be impossible in a maintenance game because it would break down multiple times a day. Does a break down randomly break a single component on the ship? If it did then it wouldn't be so bad since there is more than enough redundancy. The problem would start to be the game pausing every single day to tell you it broke down I would think! Also is there a way to "mothball" a ship to turn off it's maintenance cycle while immobilizing the ship?

I also wanted to ask about civilian shipping. I haven't gotten any civilian ships yet, but I have had several civilian mining bases pop up. I'm happy that they are finally getting to work. None of my contracts I put up have been completed, I think that is because the civilian ships aren't here yet? I do have 4 different shipping lines and I subsided one to 12500 wealth. I have like 2 million wealth now so I might give it more just to see if they just haven't had enough money to buy a ship yet. It might also be because my new colony is 4 jumps away, isn't that the max?

[Hawkeye]

Thanks hawk, I'll be sure to redesign the sensors before building the next one. I just used the sensors that the game had already designed for me, instead of making my own. The reactor was uhh, just in case they needed to put some jumper cables on another jump-ship to restart it's engine. Yeaah.

LOL, nice reasoning

[sloanjh]

I'm now concerned that such a big ship would be impossible in a maintenance game because it would break down multiple times a day. Does a break down randomly break a single component on the ship? If it did then it wouldn't be so bad since there is more than enough redundancy.

That's what your engineers are for  A breakdown breaks a random single component in the ship, and then instantly fixes it by drawing down from your maintenance supplies according to the cost.  Only if you don't have enough spares will the system actually break.  That's what the Max Repair field on the class design is for - it's the worst-case cost of a single breakdown.  The Maintenance Capacity is how many spares you have on board.  So if Maint. Cap. is 10x Max Rep., then you can handle the first 10 breakdowns guaranteed not to have anything actually break.  This is why I said you don't need redundant systems (except for combat-critical systems) - instead you want to use their mass to buy engineering spaces, which both cuts the probability of breakdown and increases maint cap.

I did a post on this (why a high breakdown probability on a huge ship isn't a bad thing) some time in the last month or so - you should be able to search for it.  Basically, it says that a ship 10x as big with the same %engineering space will break down 10x as often, but will have 10x the spares and so will go the same length of time before running out of spares.

The problem would start to be the game pausing every single day to tell you it broke down I would think! Also is there a way to "mothball" a ship to turn off it's maintenance cycle while immobilizing the ship?

Not really, but if you look on the summary tab of a population you'll see a maintenance max-ship-size field.  Any ship this mass or less located at the planet will not have its clock increase - instead it will suck minerals from the population (how many can be seen from the mining tab).

I also wanted to ask about civilian shipping. I haven't gotten any civilian ships yet, but I have had several civilian mining bases pop up. I'm happy that they are finally getting to work. None of my contracts I put up have been completed, I think that is because the civilian ships aren't here yet? I do have 4 different shipping lines and I subsided one to 12500 wealth. I have like 2 million wealth now so I might give it more just to see if they just haven't had enough money to buy a ship yet. It might also be because my new colony is 4 jumps away, isn't that the max?

Have you designed reasonably priced cargo and colony ships?  For cargo, it should have 5 holds (carrys 1 factory-sized installation), ~10 (civ) engines, and enough fuel for a ~50-100 billion km range, and a cargo handling system or two.  Be careful not to put military systems on it - it should say it's a commercial design.  For colony, the number of holds can vary, but ripping the holds out of the cargo ship and slapping in an equal number of cryo holds gives a good design (colony ships should have higher engine/hold ratios, which that design will).  Steve says you should make an equivalent design with luxury staterooms replacing cryo.  Civies will only buy the designs you've made.  125K wealth sounds like overkill - the designs I mentioned above are less than 1000 cost.  Basically, you just have to wait for the civies to decide there's a business opportunity there.

One other thought - do you actually have a 2nd colony anywhere with people on it?  That might be the problem - they might be waiting for an offworld population before buying ships....

John

[Rathos (OP)]

Whoops, I meant 12.5k wealth  

I don't have the small basic cargo ship design, mine looks like this:

Code: [Select]

Starhauler class Jump Freighter    65500 tons     956 Crew     2357 BP      TCS 1310  TH 5200  EM 0
3969 km/s    JR 2-25(C)     Armour 1-144     Shields 0-0     Sensors 1/1/0/0     Damage Control Rating 1     PPV 0
Maintenance Capacity 22 MSP    Max Repair 100 MSP
Cargo 25000    Cargo Handling Multiplier 40    

JC65K Commercial Jump Drive     Max Ship Size 65500 tons    Distance 25k km     Squadron Size 2
Magneto-plasma Drive E0.5 (26)    Power 200    Fuel Use 5%    Signature 200    Armour 0    Exp 1%
Fuel Capacity 3,350,000 Litres    Range 1841.0 billion km   (5368 days at full power)

This design is classed as a commercial vessel for maintenance purposes
Its big because of the jump drive and the engines and fuel. I have ten of them so far, and they have managed to do pretty well. Probably too much fuel, but at least they can fuel someone else if they need it. How do you tell the 'cost' of a ship? I know they take 2357 BP, which is about two years to build. Do civilians have to pay for minerals to build the ship?

Edit: I parred it down a bit. I tried to make it small as possible while preserving the jump-capability.

Code: [Select]

Economic class Jump Freighter    36750 tons     266 Crew     692 BP      TCS 735  TH 1400  EM 0
1904 km/s    JR 2-25(C)     Armour 1-98     Shields 0-0     Sensors 1/1/0/0     Damage Control Rating 1     PPV 0
Maintenance Capacity 12 MSP    Max Repair 100 MSP
Cargo 25000    Cargo Handling Multiplier 40    

JC37K Commercial Jump Drive     Max Ship Size 37500 tons    Distance 25k km     Squadron Size 2
Magneto-plasma Drive E0.5 (7)    Power 200    Fuel Use 5%    Signature 200    Armour 0    Exp 1%
Fuel Capacity 250,000 Litres    Range 244.8 billion km   (1488 days at full power)

This design is classed as a commercial vessel for maintenance purposes


[Father Tim]

The cost of a ship in wealth is equal to (and in addition to) it's cos in minerals.  So your freighter requires 2357 megabucks/quatloos/newyen, and a shipping line will spend 2357 'wealth' to buy one.