Hangars in C# Aurora

[Jorgen_CAB]

Fighters and sensor scouts generally last longer even when outdated are my experiences. Once they are too old you just scrap them and get some of the resources back and build new fighters in their place. It actually is cheaper in the long run than upgrading ships which certainly is not free either.

Whilst true I've found from experience that it is also a pretty large logistical effort to take new fighters and have the fleet training completed. You generally need additional ships away from your combat carriers to do this which ups the overheads.

Combat ships can also be upgraded incrementally with new sensors and fire controls and engines and not suffer the need for retraining and for missile ships I've found they can remain pretty effective just by swapping out the newest batch of missiles.

I think with the maintenance changes this has already equalised the system a lot.

Finally on the launch delay piece, when you are talking about days of flight time for the fighters to engage a hostile then even a few hours of time to launch really makes no difference. This only really becomes and issue for something like a warp point assault or defence where I agree that a delay would be a good mechanic to have in. I've always thought this could be done by having both a hanger component and a ship launcher component as ive also been bugged by the idea that my carrier can on one hand deal with 100 fighters and then just empty those out and doc a 5000 ton ship instead.

Fleet training and training of fighters will not need huge carriers... you can now just station them in a base with the fleet training. Allot easier than before. So that should not really be a super big issue.

If launching and recovering fighters make no difference then time to rearm them make no difference either... it does quite allot in combat conditions.

[Jorgen_CAB]

Another important thing I have commented a few times as well is free maintenance on parasites. Given how cheap hangars is and how expensive parasites can be the maintenance are nearly free in comparison. Without having to pay maintenance it might even be more useful to build hangar stations to place all your ships in C#, you now pay supplies for everything so it is a one time investment to build the hangar station. You can lower the supply cost considerably this way, the higher the tech level the more you will save cost in the long run.

It is already entirely possible to build massive PDC hangars and put your entire fleet into them to avoid having to pay maintenance on them. Some players have done so and it works - except for carriers with parasites on them as those will vanish when you put the carrier(s) into a hangar. But you can circumvent that by having separate PDC Hangar for fighters. It's just exploiting the system and not really any different from playing without maintenance at all. In that sense C# is not introducing new issues, just carrying forward an existing one.

I've found from experience that it is also a pretty large logistical effort to take new fighters and have the fleet training completed. You generally need additional ships away from your combat carriers to do this which ups the overheads.

Combat ships can also be upgraded incrementally with new sensors and fire controls and engines and not suffer the need for retraining and for missile ships I've found they can remain pretty effective just by swapping out the newest batch of missiles.

Yes, exactly that. While I agree that carrier+parasite combo is very powerful, it is also micro-intensive despite extensive use of Naval Organization tab (and the improvements to that coming in C#) and not quite as omnipotent as SevenOfCarina makes them out to be in his initial post.

Don't get me wrong, these changes - or something similar - would be great to have. I just don't agree that the system as a whole is so broken that these changes are critically warranted as soon as possible.

I think this was actually what I said... you could do that in VB Aurora, not that I ever abused that but you could. It just will be even easier now when everything cost supplies instead of a specific resource. If you had too many hangars you might run out of Vendarite eventually... although PDC did not cost maintenance at all. We will not have PDC in C# but we will have ground fighter bases and I don't know if they will cost maintenance?

I never thought fighters or small crafts was especially micro intensive and I install hangars on pretty much all capital ships.

[Awazruk]

I'm uncertain if Steve has already encountered this problem, or if this is something that has already been discussed, but hangars, in their present iteration, are massively overpowered.   

Hangars eliminate maintenance requirements for parasites, allow for easy and rapid transfer of ordnance, fuel, and supplies, and launch and retrieve craft instantaneously.    They're cheap, and absurdly efficient at what they do, with a tiny mass penalty.    (Seriously, 100t of extra space is somehow enough for maintenance gantries, fabricators, crew spaces, ship-to-parasite transfer systems, and maneuvering clearance for a 1000t parasite?) And that isn't even going into the inherent superiority of parasite ships that can sacrifice endurance for performance.   

Right now, carriers can uprate their capabilities by simply replacing their parasites, which is fast, cheap, and doesn't require yard time, unlike the time-consuming and expensive process that is upgrading full ships.    Carriers thus have a much longer service life than other ships, which are useless once outdated.    Parasites are hard to detect because of their small size, and can afford to be much faster; they can often outrange and outrun their opponents.    And thanks to the increased susceptibility of box launchers that render them unviable for use in larger ships, they can outgun them too, and the sensor nerf means there simply isn't enough time to throw out enough AMMs to counter a box-launcher salvo.   

It's ridiculous.    Carrier-parasite is clearly the most optimum solution for anything, and it shouldn't be.    I'm proposing a few rather simple changes to bring hangars and parasites back in line with the rest of the game.    Effectively, hangars should be designable components with background techs, like magazines, with their costs and crew requirements correspondingly affected.   

First : For their volume, hangars are entirely too efficient.    It's unreasonable to expect that 100t of clearance is enough to manoeuvre a 1000t parasite, or to inspect, service, or repair it.    I'm proposing a new line of techs, termed 'Hangar Overhead' that governs how much overhead a hangar needs to support a certain volume of parasites, starting from 100% overhead at TL0 and maxing out at 20% overhead.   
i.   e.    Hangar Size = Hangar Capacity * [100 + Hangar Overhead]/100
So a 1000t capacity hangar with 50% overhead will be a 1500t component, while with the 40% overhead tech, it'll be a 1400t component.    Civilian hangars will be cheaper but have twice the overhead volume of military hangars.   

Second: Launching and retrieving parasites from hangars should not be instantaneous.    Larger hangars will have a lower relative surface area compared to smaller hangars, so they should take longer to launch all their parasites.    Larger ships should also have less space to manoeuvre, and take longer to launch.    Another line of techs, similar to missile launch rate, will govern this factor.   
For the sake of consistency, let us assume that this follows missile launch rate.   
Launch/Retrieval Time = SQRT[Parasite Size in HS]*(Hangar Handling Modifier)*150sec/(Parasite Launch Rate)
Hangar Handling Modifier = SQRT[Hangar Size in HS]
The parasite launch rate tech line is identical to the missile launch rate tech line.   
There could also be a tech that prevented parasites from being recovered while in motion till it was researched, similar to the Underway Replenishment tech line.   

Third : Hangars should never completely remove maintenance requirements, and should also not be able to fully repair parasites.    It makes no sense and has no basis in the real world.    Even the most modern aircraft carriers could never maintain their airwing at peak operating conditions for an arbitrary amount of time, and could never properly patch-up a battle-damaged aircraft.    There will invariably be some component or the other for which a spare is not on hand, or which cannot be repaired on site.    What hangars should do is extend the maintenance life of parasites, modified by the size of the hangar itself.    A new line of techs governs this, termed Hangar Maintenance Modifier, starting at 25% and ending at 5%, and MSP is drawn from ship stocks to maintain parasites.   
Hangar Failure Rate = (Parasite Failure Rate)*(Hangar Maintenance Modifier)/(SQRT[(Hangar Size in HS)/10]
What this means is that parasites in hangars have their maintenance clock tick at a slower rate than normal, and consume MSP at this lower rate : this signifies that the hangar fabricators and maintenance facilities can service most of the parasite's systems, but some systems (i.   e.    precision instruments, critical machinery, etc.   ) cannot be manufactured on board and are consumables.    Larger hangars are also better at extending parasite life, but dedicated maintenance facilities should be needed to properly maintain or repair ships.   

In effect these proposed changes now provide adequate incentive to actually upgrade or replace carriers.    Early game carriers will, like missile and beam ships, be crude, bulky, and pretty terrible at what they do.    As technology improves, carriers will be able to hold more fighters, launch them faster, and keep them in peak condition for longer.    It also provides an interesting dynamic between larger hangars that take longer to be emptied but can maintain parasites better and smaller hangars that have faster response times but aren't that good at maintaining stuff.    It's also now possible to 'ambush' a carrier before it can finish deploying its complement.   

This is largely just a skeletal idea with mostly placeholder values, what do you folk think?

Edit : I made a new topic so as to not interrupt the present debate on research methodologies in the suggestions thread.   

I think the idea is great but formula for calculating hangar size is not.    It scales linearly with capacity and you get no benefit from economy of scale.  If you build hangar for just one ship you need all the necessary facilities to maintain it but when it's made for two or three ships you already have most of 'fabricators' and other stuff mostly in place.    Ships don't break constantly they do from time to time so to maintain 4 ships instead o 2 you don't need twice the amount of maintainance facilities.    The formula should take it into account since as we all know 'BIGGER IS ALWAYS BETTER'.    I currently don't have good idea for how the formula should look to implement that but it should be possible.   

[Shuul]

For me current system is totally enough and seems to be fine. There is a lot of additional work to make carriers run to compensate. And we already have a lot of complex systems, I do not want hangars to turn into this micromanagement nightmare that makes me angry while using it.

[Steve Walmsley]

1) The issue with free maintenance in PDC hangars goes away in C# due to the removal of PDCs.

2) While you don't pay maintenance on ships in a hangar, you still have to pay maintenance on the hangar itself. A 1000 ton FAC will probably cost a little over 100 BP and a hangar bay large enough to hold that FAC also costs 100 BP. Then you have to build the rest of the ship that contains the hangar and pay maintenance on that as well. Looking at a few warship designs in my current campaign, the costs are 125-140 per 1000 tons. So, if anything, hangars start to look a little expensive in BP / maintenance terms.

3) I agree that hangars are probably generous in terms of size vs capacity so I probably could look at adjusting that a little.

4) I definitely don't want a system where you have to launch or land parasites a few at a time. That would get tedious really fast and I don't think it adds anything to game play.

[Jorgen_CAB]

1) The issue with free maintenance in PDC hangars goes away in C# due to the removal of PDCs.

2) While you don't pay maintenance on ships in a hangar, you still have to pay maintenance on the hangar itself. A 1000 ton FAC will probably cost a little over 100 BP and a hangar bay large enough to hold that FAC also costs 100 BP. Then you have to build the rest of the ship that contains the hangar and pay maintenance on that as well. Looking at a few warship designs in my current campaign, the costs are 125-140 per 1000 tons. So, if anything, hangars start to look a little expensive in BP / maintenance terms.

3) I agree that hangars are probably generous in terms of size vs capacity so I probably could look at adjusting that a little.

4) I definitely don't want a system where you have to launch or land parasites a few at a time. That would get tedious really fast and I don't think it adds anything to game play.

On point two I usually see about 100-120BP per 500 tons on fighters at around magneto-plasma tech level for an interceptor or missile fighter and around 200-250BP per 500t for a sensor scout. The thing with the hangar cost is that it don't scale maintenance with technology advancement.

On point four I agree that there should not be any additional micromanagement. I would suggest just adding a cool down when they land or tries to launch similar to when you fire a weapon based on crew grade. That would not add any more micromanagement than time to reload box launchers within a hangar.

Maintenance within hangar would not have to be a complex thing either, the parasites would just eat some of the ships supplies over time. I just don't like when things are completely free, hangars are quite good as they are with being a very dynamic and flexible system.

In my opinion it would not have to be complex or add much micromanagement just scale better. I also think it would be fun to design hangars based on my needs in the same way i design missile launchers and magazines etc..

I certainly don't expect anything done at this point, but I would like to see something done to make it fun to design hangars and carriers a bit more. Especially since you rarely need to upgrade carriers aside from their engines.

[Jovus]

One change I'd love to see: hangars don't currently repair destroyed components on parasites. I'd love it if they did, consuming MSP from the mothership in the process, perhaps with a small surcharge for convenience (since you can, for example, repair a component in a hangar that the parasite doesn't carry enough MSP itself to repair).

I might be crazy and this actually does already work and I don't know it.

3) I agree that hangars are probably generous in terms of size vs capacity so I probably could look at adjusting that a little.

Might I suggest a tech line that reduces hangar overhead? We already have tech for hangar components (boat bay, hangar, small boat bay), so this isn't much of a stretch. Unless you intend to reduce the overall effectiveness of parasite strategies, I might recommend a tech line that starts with a worse overhead penalty than current, but ends up with a better one.

[Bremen]

I certainly don't expect anything done at this point, but I would like to see something done to make it fun to design hangars and carriers a bit more. Especially since you rarely need to upgrade carriers aside from their engines.

If I were looking for an interesting change to hangars, and maybe a buff to compensate for a simultaneous nerf (like increasing the overhead), I think it might be interesting if hangars' mass changed depending on if they were full or empty. Basically meaning carriers would be faster after they launched their parasite craft, in the same way tugs are faster after dropping the tractor beam.

It may not sound like a big change, but I think it could have some interesting effects on carrier design, even allowing for a sort of "battle carrier" that takes advantage of its higher speed after launching.

One change I'd love to see: hangars don't currently repair destroyed components on parasites. I'd love it if they did, consuming MSP from the mothership in the process, perhaps with a small surcharge for convenience (since you can, for example, repair a component in a hangar that the parasite doesn't carry enough MSP itself to repair).

I might be crazy and this actually does already work and I don't know it.

It already works this way.

[Jorgen_CAB]

I certainly don't expect anything done at this point, but I would like to see something done to make it fun to design hangars and carriers a bit more. Especially since you rarely need to upgrade carriers aside from their engines.

If I were looking for an interesting change to hangars, and maybe a buff to compensate for a simultaneous nerf (like increasing the overhead), I think it might be interesting if hangars' mass changed depending on if they were full or empty. Basically meaning carriers would be faster after they launched their parasite craft, in the same way tugs are faster after dropping the tractor beam.

It may not sound like a big change, but I think it could have some interesting effects on carrier design, even allowing for a sort of "battle carrier" that takes advantage of its higher speed after launching.

That would open up a whole can of worms because then you would want the same for cargo ships, missiles magazines, fuel tanks, supply stores etc..

I would personally not be against it, but it would make things more complex and not everyone would like it I presume.

[Father Tim]

4) I definitely don't want a system where you have to launch or land parasites a few at a time. That would get tedious really fast and I don't think it adds anything to game play.

I would want the system to be more like underway refueling, where you only have to issue one order even if the execution takes an extended (or variable) amount of time.  For example, the 'Launch Parasites' order might put 100 tons per hangar bay into space every five seconds, so our hypothetical Battlestar Galactica with two hangar bays could launch two 200-ton Vipers every ten seconds.  Since it carries a total of 72 Vipers, it takes six minutes to launch the full wing (plus any order delay), but only requires one order.

[chrislocke2000]

4) I definitely don't want a system where you have to launch or land parasites a few at a time. That would get tedious really fast and I don't think it adds anything to game play.

I would want the system to be more like underway refueling, where you only have to issue one order even if the execution takes an extended (or variable) amount of time.  For example, the 'Launch Parasites' order might put 100 tons per hangar bay into space every five seconds, so our hypothetical Battlestar Galactica with two hangar bays could launch two 200-ton Vipers every ten seconds.  Since it carries a total of 72 Vipers, it takes six minutes to launch the full wing (plus any order delay), but only requires one order.

Yes that's how I thought such a system could work for delays.

[Xtrem532]

1) The issue with free maintenance in PDC hangars goes away in C# due to the removal of PDCs. 

So where do ground-based fighters go now? I skimmed the changelist, but found nothing.

[Bremen]

1) The issue with free maintenance in PDC hangars goes away in C# due to the removal of PDCs. 

So where do ground-based fighters go now? I skimmed the changelist, but found nothing.

Fighter class ships can now be maintained in the normal way, so you can just leave them in orbit.

[Bartimeus]

So you can't have armored base to put your fighter inside ?

[JustAnotherDude]

You can, but they have to be orbital installations.