Aurora 4x
New Players => The Academy => Topic started by: Rich.h on December 04, 2014, 11:37:06 AM
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I am wondering what the mechanics for the maintenance bay component are, a hanger bay simply resets the clock and such of any vessel docked. But what exactly does the maintenance bay do? Also if a maintenance facility normally needs some minerals then what does a maintenance bay require?
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The maintenance bay stores extra maintenance without reducing failure rate, but it stores a lot more than the engineering section and is useful for carriers and maintenance yards (space stations with maintenance modules). The maintenance facility does not need materials, it need maintenance supplies which are build by construction factories automatically (just enough for one year of maintaining all ships in orbit) without affecting your construction queue.
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So does the maintenance module use msp that are stored in the ships maintenance storage bays or just from the general pool of msp? If I were to say design a ship that has a 5000 ton limit for maintenance, but fill it with lots of engineering spaces then would it still be able to serve in the full role to resupply ships that are docked? This would obviously allow me to create something like a pseudo space station that would never suffer from an AFR as the components are commercial.
If the above is correct then I assume I would need to make resupply runs from a planet that has a stock of maintenance supplies back to the station when it begins to run low?
Do the maintenance modules provide any other services or are they simply supplying ships with parts that the ship crews then use to carry out on board repairs in the same manner as a deep space battle encounter (from their own msp pool).
Finally since it is somewhat related, do hangers on ships provide a repair function to ships that are docked to them? If so where to the supplies or minerals come from for the repairs.
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Yes you do need to make supply runs, or you can make a colony one the planet it is orbiting with just a few auto-mines and a few factories. Yes it still would fill that role. It uses from its own supplies. It is simply a maintenance facility in orbit essentially (but much more versatile as it can be mobile). Hangars do repair ship components faster with MSP instead of materials that a shipyard does, but cannot repair the armor (needs to be at a shipyard). http://aurorawiki.pentarch.org/index.php?title=Ship_Maintenance http://aurorawiki.pentarch.org/index.php?title=Maintenance_Facility
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Maintenance bays are storage spaces for maintenance supplies. They don't do anything on their own. Ships in a taskforce with one will use their own msp's until they are exhausted and then either you need to use a command to resupply that ship from your resupply vessels with the maintenance bay or they draw on the bay. I don't know if the latter happens automatically as I have never encountered that situation.
Maintenance supplies are not made automatically by your construction factories. They must be put into the queue and produced (at least in 6.1 this is true).
I'm not sure about your 5000 tonne ship question because I'm not quite sure what you want to do exactly. To stop the clock increasing on a ship you have to put it in a hanger or else have it near something with sufficient tonnage in maintenance modules to support that ship. But reading other threads it appears this doesn't work properly, as someones "floating casinos" were a flop.
My resupply ships have a maintenance bay along with extra fuel and missiles. You have to remember that to repair battle damage you need maintenance parts, and twice as many as the component needs normally. So if repairs would cost you 25 msp, damage control will cost you 50 msp. So you will go through msp very quickly if you suffer damage in combat.
Hangers allow your carriers to repair the ships/fighters in the hanger itself. I don't have the technology so I am unsure of the details but my understanding is the msp for the repairs comes from the carrier. Also they can't repair armour as stated.
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Ships in a taskforce with one will use their own msp's until they are exhausted and then either you need to use a command to resupply that ship from your resupply vessels with the maintenance bay or they draw on the bay. I don't know if the latter happens automatically as I have never encountered that situation.
It does not happen automatically, it is an order that has to ordered in either the standard order method (click on location and balance MSP) or with the button on the bottom of the order window to do it instantly.
Maintenance supplies are not made automatically by your construction factories. They must be put into the queue and produced (at least in 6.1 this is true).
At least in 6.43 it happens automatically, as I currently have a 35k surplus and I never once put in a queue for Maintenance supplies.
I'm not sure about your 5000 tonne ship question because I'm not quite sure what you want to do exactly. To stop the clock increasing on a ship you have to put it in a hanger or else have it near something with sufficient tonnage in maintenance modules to support that ship. But reading other threads it appears this doesn't work properly, as someones "floating casinos" were a flop.
I believe he is asking if a dockyard with enough maintenance module to support at 5000 ton ship will support it, the answer is (kind of) yes. It can overhaul, stop the clock (the time since last maintenance facility), and prevent malfunctions on ships under 5000 tons (with the cost of msp from the maintenance yard), but bigger ships maintenance clocks will still go up but they can resupply their MSP (I believe this was the actual question) from it with the balance MSP or resupply from commands.
Hangers allow your carriers to repair the ships/fighters in the hanger itself. I don't have the technology so I am unsure of the details but my understanding is the msp for the repairs comes from the carrier. Also they can't repair armour as stated.
Correct, they essentially "mothball" the ship/fighter in them so they do not use any msp (from itself or the carrier) so it essentially becomes "free from tax" (tax being in Maintenance supply) unless its being repaired.
@Rich.h, next time (as a general rule to save time for answering questions) number your specific questions so we can answer them with speed and they can be seen easily.
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Hangars do repair ship components faster with MSP instead of materials that a shipyard does, but cannot repair the armor (needs to be at a shipyard). http://aurorawiki.pentarch.org/index.php?title=Ship_Maintenance http://aurorawiki.pentarch.org/index.php?title=Maintenance_Facility (http://aurorawiki.pentarch.org/index.php?title=Ship_Maintenance http://aurorawiki.pentarch.org/index.php?title=Maintenance_Facility)
That information is wrong though. Hangars do indeed everything, including repairing armor. Newest version game: Just recently my bombers got slightly damaged by strength 6 and 1 missiles, but then got their armor fixed at the cost of 4 MSP per box.
I'm not sure about your 5000 tonne ship question because I'm not quite sure what you want to do exactly. To stop the clock increasing on a ship you have to put it in a hanger or else have it near something with sufficient tonnage in maintenance modules to support that ship. But reading other threads it appears this doesn't work properly, as someones "floating casinos" were a flop.
Actually, it works like a charm, fully and without restrain. Ships get their components repaired in planetary as well as mobile carrier docks, and size doesn't matter for that. That which fits into the hangar, will get all the attention promised. The repairs happen automatically, and you will again have to pay these at some time demanding 5% of building cost in maintenance for your fleet anymore. It is all for free now.
Of course, you will have to build those hangars, and that has costs for itself. ..But this is a one time investment, and (for planetary docks) also quite a lot cheaper than ships because of the low complexity. Just make sure you got the Vendarite. I could make a calculation, but for now I'd like to just assure that this investment pays of in a mere couple years.
[...]Also they can't repair armour as stated.
Has no one ever tried this? :P
I promote the theory that most people rather sacrifice their fighters before repairing them, so this stayed arcane knowledge. ;)
I play so much with carriers of all sizes, planetary, orbital, traditional fighter-carrier, and up to huge mobile cruiser or battleship docks, which sport megatons of internal storage... . It works like a charm, and totally replaces all other maintenance needs. (I only ever have the facilities for comfort and RP anymore, though usually not for the largest sizes. My current game will spawn a 1.1mt heavy cruiser soon, which will only be supported by planetary hangars, since I really can't be bothered with raising 5500 maintenance facilities for this offshoot alone.)
At least in 6.43 it happens automatically, as I currently have a 35k surplus and I never once put in a queue for Maintenance supplies.
Are you sure those don't come from your game's starting supply of 50k? I have never observed this, and had in my current side game 3 sessions of 100k supplies to be built already, because there was not enough around. To this date my supply still only counts 250k of those, and I have 3000 construction factories.
I will watch this, but I doubt it will be enough in any case, even if this happens.
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I took the time to deliver some proof to the hangar operation, because I foresee a lot of resentment coming for the idea. (this happened one time already when I started discussing elsewhere why nearly everybody is using relatively small ships, when optimal component sizes of 2.5kt automatically suggest ships of at least 20kt minimum to be optimal, and more often being better, unless you are out for stealth.{which is a valid reason} Then however, despite rebuttals, new people would come into the discussion and comment the same disproven "larger means more expensive/ long building time" argument, which is just not true, and actually works the exact opposite way -> 10-sized ship = faster and cheaper than 10x1-sized ship.)
So before this can magnet irrationality from somewhere again, here a little stress test of my docked destroyer and another craft:
artificial damage (Do not wonder, I landed another hit of 50 later that is not shown in the picture)
(http://abload.de/img/unbenanntq8af9.jpg)
proof of docking (this is a 1.5mt planetary hangar. The destroyer is 20kt size{design can be seen here (http://aurora2.pentarch.org/index.php/topic,7606.0.html)})
(http://abload.de/img/unbenannt2v4ywi.jpg)
Atlantis Base class Planetary Hangar 2,000,000 tons 23405 Crew 218579 BP TCS 40000 TH 0 EM 0
Armour 32-1414 Sensors 1/0 Damage Control Rating 0 PPV 0
Intended Deployment Time: 3 months Flight Crew Berths 36057
Hangar Deck Capacity 1500000 tons
Fuel Capacity 166,710,000 Litres Range N/A
CIWS-200x8 (100x8) Range 1000 km TS: 20000 km/s ROF 5 Base 50% To Hit
costs
(http://abload.de/img/unbenannt4c5uyj.jpg)
caught in the act ...of repairing
(repairing was too fast, hence the second stronger hit. I didn't want it to look like a potential bug by displaying 0, like with the diver you see below)
(http://abload.de/img/unbenannt3spb5f.jpg)
For some time I didn't actually know how planetary hangars would handle repairing, because they cannot have maintenance supplies themselves.(no engineering, and no maintenance bay available) But evidently crafts just use their own supply and repair armor and whatnot no problem, making overhauls obsolete if available, as this is clearly cheaper.
In the thread linked above you can find a cruiser design of 300kt, which costs this much:
(http://abload.de/img/unbenannt5ckkyg.jpg)
...1/20th per year of that is about 2kt+ of minerals for upkeep, and the hangar here can hold 5 of those designs, so it saves around 10k per year once built until the end of time, as it doesn't really ever need a refit. (actually it would be a bit more than 10k, because I only store 4 crafts of that size, and then fill the rest with their more expensive per ton parasite crafts, survey drones and the destroyer escorts)
That makes it 22 years until the costs of the planetary hangar are in by pure summed mineral mass, but you could consider it be more like 30 years, since it will take away from your colony's expansion to build something that huge (you could however also build smaller ones first and eliminate that pretty much. {I had a beginner hangar for my first ships, and now fighters with only 150kt capacity})
-> I build my hangars as large as the biggest design that I plan usually, but here I also added another ~350kt on top, because I want them to be able to hold a cruiser+heavy cruiser at once, since I plan to spread those bases around the galaxy as my "no maintenance" maintenance HQs, which will be eternal harbors in the void for garrison or refit purposes, extending my ships range to infinity. ...I need this, since I only have my home world planned as my only ever inhabited colony.
Anyway, I think this calculation is still not really fair though, as the dominating bulk of the docks resource costs are duranium and vendarite. Duranium you usually have too much, because this stuff is everywhere with great acc., and vendarite mostly keeps piling up in every game, because you only need it rarely in tiny bites for weapons, but then mainly for carriers... which is exactly the purpose that it is going to here, so no real loss.(still have and had huge surpluses of that stuff in this game, but also have my home planet to be a good natural site for this)
You save however resources in nearly all regions with the ships docked, most importantly in the engine relevant gallicite area. Saving gallicite maintenance can be a blessing, because that is the real "gold" of the mid and late game, being immensely rare even if you don't use thermal reduction at all, or tend to jump over entire refit TLs here and there. (..I am not getting warm with Gas Core AM)
..That means that if you see your empire having too much duranium and too much vendarite at once, but lacking in other areas, then it is always a winning purchase to build some of these, as it helps reducing those problems. And even with too little duranium and vendarite, it might help out even with that if you plan for the long run.
So in short conclusion: Hangars > Maintenance Facility. More power to the canning industry. Docks rulez. Etc.etc. ;)
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That information is wrong though. Hangars do indeed everything, including repairing armor. Newest version game: Just recently my bombers got slightly damaged by strength 6 and 1 missiles, but then got their armor fixed at the cost of 4 MSP per box.
Has no one ever tried this? :P
I promote the theory that most people rather sacrifice their fighters before repairing them, so this stayed arcane knowledge. ;) I play so much with carriers of all sizes, planetary, orbital, traditional fighter-carrier, and up to huge mobile cruiser or battleship docks, which sport megatons of internal storage... . It works like a charm, and totally replaces all other maintenance needs. I only ever have the facilities for comfort and RP anymore, though usually not for the largest sizes. Are you sure those don't come from your game's starting supply of 50k? I have never observed this, and had in my current side game 3 sessions of 100k supplies to be built already, because there was not enough around. To this date my supply still only counts 250k of those, and I have 3000 construction factories.
I will watch this, but I doubt it will be enough in any case, even if this happens.
So I can build repair yards without needing a shipyard with population. Now my military star-base can be complete mwahahahahaa. And I am sure they are not the staring supplies as each of my battleships/carriers carry around 16k supplies, and I have a total of 3 of them at the moment, and my OWPs have 20k each and I have 4 (as well as a few missile bank add-ons that have a few-k supplies each). So I don't think I would still have 35k from the 50k start when I've used almost 200k just filling built ships alone.
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So I can build repair yards without needing a shipyard with population. Now my military star-base can be complete mwahahahahaa.
Exactly. :) It is so obviously practical that I again wonder why this hasn't spread much yet.
I theorized about this before, but I believe that Steve has some powerful brainwashing machine somewhere, which only very few seem to be immune against. Otherwise all this consensus between Aurora gamers just couldn't be, as someone is bound to stumble across this at some point, or at least differ in style from another a bit.
You know, every great 'original' idea you think you have, you can just type into google and realize that a couple thousand still did it before you. Am I supposed to believe that no one has ever figured out planetary hangars? I should believe that no one knows that hangars repair, or that huge ships often make better combatants?
There is something shady going on my friend, something of lovecraftian dimensions I presume. Be on your guard.
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(http://www.greensmilies.com/smile/smiley_emoticons_winkgrin.gif)
And I am sure they are not the staring supplies as each of my battleships/carriers carry around 16k supplies, and I have a total of 3 of them at the moment, and my OWPs have 20k each and I have 4 (as well as a few missile bank add-ons that have a few-k supplies each). So I don't think I would still have 35k from the 50k start when I've used almost 200k just filling built ships alone.
Ships' costs however include a full bay of maintenance automatically, or do you mean you completely bankrupted each of your ships some times? No, I think you mean this, so that probably means that the military ships you have built so far only ever consumed 15k of maintenance in your game time. More if that with the natural production is real. I cannot test it right now, but a simple 5 day increment turn while watching the maintenance storage would easily solve this question. If you or someone are not doing it, I will report the result on next occasion as I am curious myself.(that would be a nice function)
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Ok thanks for the replies folks I think I may have an idea to get my space dock to work and would love to hear thoughts on any major issues.
So first up I would have a ship with a hanger space of 100k tons, this ship would also have a large amount of maintenance bay parts and so store a huge amount of msp, this should mean two things for me. I can dock ships of 100k tons or less to this base and they will be able to have every possible ship part inside and out repaired while docked, in addition they will also have their maintenance clock reset. All of this would be done using just msp from the base storage and so cost me only the price of msp construction at a colony elsewhere that then needs shipping in whenever the base supplies run low. For arguments sake we will say this base is 1mt in size
Secondly I have another base with enough maintenance modules so that it is capable of supporting ships up to 1mt in size, it would also have recreational facilities, large amounts of fuel storage and a modest amount of msp by way of a few engineering sections. This means the maintenance clock of any ship 1mt in size or less will be frozen when at the same location, and this will use msp from the supply pool of this base?
By keeping these two in the same task group I can just shift msp around to where ever they are needed at any time. The same will be true for fuel meaning any ship/fleet docking at this complex will only be missing two things for unlimited space flight. Firstly will be ammunition if I happen to use missiles, this can easily be solved by adding magazines to the first hanger base. Secondly will be crew morale, this can be fixed by having these two bases positioned at a planet with an empty colony so that the recreational facilities function.
In theory I should only need to supply three possible things to this base. Fuel, ammunition, and maintenance supplies, which can all be shipped in via freighters. Provided I always have a stock of these things then the second base should be able to support the first base indefinitely, while the first base will do the same for visiting ships.
Anyone spot some black hole in my scheme? I do obviously realise that simply establishing colonies and such could be cheaper/faster/etc but I like the idea of 2,500,000 tons of spinning metal all alone in the night.
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A few errors, and some comments one by one.
So first up I would have a ship with a hanger space of 100k tons, this ship would also have a large amount of maintenance bay parts and so store a huge amount of msp, this should mean two things for me. I can dock ships of 100k tons or less to this base and they will be able to have every possible ship part inside and out repaired while docked, in addition they will also have their maintenance clock reset. All of this would be done using just msp from the base storage and so cost me only the price of msp construction at a colony elsewhere that then needs shipping in whenever the base supplies run low. For arguments sake we will say this base is 1mt in size
You have two options when building maintenance yard after the hangar method, which are planetary PDC and ship based "carriers" (/can be orbital docks or starbases, but that is just fantasy naming, as they are all ships in Auroras functionality).
The thing with building PDC hangars is that those designs are like civil ones and never fail, so you can keep them around forever without raising any costs.
If you decide to have a ship with hangar space like you said above, then you need to understand this ship will also itself be in need of maintenance. This can be okay if you really cut them out to have supply for the decades by making them mostly out of engineering spaces. You just fly or tug them back to some colony then where it can be overhauled, or even better, you have a planetary hangar for this hangar somewhere, so you can fix hangars in hangars.(http://www.greensmilies.com/smile/smiley_emoticons_wp-razz.gif)
(Here is a link to Theodidactus' thread (http://aurora2.pentarch.org/index.php/topic,7355.0.html) where he seeked out a method to maintain a base in empty systems. I proposed him later there with building such a maintenance hangar somewhere and tugging some modules back for routine inspection at some points.)
There is no way around this, as hangars are otherwise military components.
A needed tip for that though: Be very cautious to have some cheap fallible components on this ship too (for example a size 1 thermal sensor), and do not use any expensive parts (like larger sensors, or high powered engines). Despite rendering a design military, hangars cannot ever get maintenance failures themselves, so a ship entirely consisting of hangars will cause error windows and impede your game. You need a component in there that can actually fail to prevent this, and if you did it right, the component is cheap, and your maintenance life can become...very...veerrryy long. This is because on any 5-day interval only one component per ship can fail at any time, so even if it starts to do that every 5 days, it might still last for nearly forever.(especially if you refill with freighters) Note that Aurora doesn't consider this, so the display on that is actually hugely underestimating the life time in those cases. You will have to calculate per hand (minimum time = MSP_max / most expensive component cost *5 days)
If you follow the link in my signature, you can find a 10mt carrier which nominally only has a couple decades of maintenance life, but since the most expensive part that can fail is still pretty cheap, and a year only has 73 increments, you can easily calculate that this maintenance will last for at least more than a hundred years even if it should fail every time, which it doesn't of course.(practical experience shows that even after more than 80 years without overhaul it still only fails once per 3-4 increments, and often not the most expensive component, so it is more like 500 years or so :P)
So this is actually an alternate method to get pretty much independent mobile carrier ships(/bases), but it is also more bothersome, since you will from then on never quite get rid of those maintenance failure messages in your log. For my game there it is okay, because this and two others are my only long flying military ships anyway, but in my other side game I really don't want this kind of log spam, so I stick to PDC hangars.
Secondly I have another base with enough maintenance modules so that it is capable of supporting ships up to 1mt in size, it would also have recreational facilities, large amounts of fuel storage and a modest amount of msp by way of a few engineering sections. This means the maintenance clock of any ship 1mt in size or less will be frozen when at the same location, and this will use msp from the supply pool of this base?
That is sadly false. Maintenance Modules work exactly like maintenance facilities, so they use minerals instead of MSP. You would need to supply 1/20th of the military hangar's building costs every year in minerals (but nothing of that inside it), and it can only ever be maintained if they stop over a body (planet/asteroid/comet), and only after you dropped said minerals on the ground.
It is quite tedious to do it this way, but I happened to do exactly that two times already.(http://www.greensmilies.com/smile/smiley_emoticons_unknownauthor_bigsmoke.gif) ( it seems conceited to refer to my designs so often, but as lamented above, I am quite literally the only one in Aurora history who has ever cared it seems, and thus the only expert on the matter around. ...Yupp, sounded pretty conceited. (http://www.greensmilies.com/smile/smiley_emoticons_seb_zunge.gif) Anyway, here is the link: http://aurora2.pentarch.org/index.php/topic,6738.0.html (http://aurora2.pentarch.org/index.php/topic,6738.0.html) )
By keeping these two in the same task group I can just shift msp around to where ever they are needed at any time. The same will be true for fuel meaning any ship/fleet docking at this complex will only be missing two things for unlimited space flight. Firstly will be ammunition if I happen to use missiles, this can easily be solved by adding magazines to the first hanger base. Secondly will be crew morale, this can be fixed by having these two bases positioned at a planet with an empty colony so that the recreational facilities function.
As a little ship operation tip coming from practical experience: When docking a ship on those stations, use the refuel, resupply and rearm commands first, and wait until they are done before ordering the actual docking. 1st reason is because since your repair comes from a ship's inner supply, you would want that filled, and 2nd reason is that I had problems where ships would dock before actually doing the refill orders I gave them before, so do them separately to work out.
And yes, you can add eternally working, safe magazines to any ship by docking a 'magazine'-ship in the hangars. :) Quite the nice hack, but is of course less place efficient + you cannot actually fire from those I believe. (..but I never came to actually strain to out to limit the "colliers" option, so maybe this really works)
Anyone spot some black hole in my scheme? I do obviously realise that simply establishing colonies and such could be cheaper/faster/etc but I like the idea of 2,500,000 tons of spinning metal all alone in the night.
Yeah, finally someone. Well, athom too I guess, though I haven't seen evidence yet.(http://www.greensmilies.com/smile/smiley_emoticons_crazy01.gif)
To the colonies: By pure mechanics they are busy work and offer nothing that an automated base cannot do too, except wealth, but that you can normally have in your home system's colonies to any extend desirable, without having so much of the PDC defense demand pressure. I have fallen back to use it for RP issues only anymore, since the bastards grew into multi-billions everywhere in a game, and just kept demanding without giving anything I needed in return.
I quite like colonizing via habitats though, because those populations don't grow and work very efficiently. Great to spread some labs on fortunate spots, or RP inspired starbases around. :)
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Thank you for those pointers, seems like the minerals and how maintenance modules work there are the key problem. But the point you make about hangers and failures is interesting, Perhaps then if I simply made one huge base with things that do not fail apart from one purpose designed cheap system and a mountain of msp. If it was stationed over an empty colony and had recreational facilities on board then it should fix all the problems provide I made routine fuel/ammo/supply runs?
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Yupp, that will work perfectly. You just have to be prepared that your log will from then on never get rid of the maintenance failure messages of your starbase. You could filter those, but the timer still stops, and of course it will filter all the ships of actual interest too.
Also be warned that hangar designs with cost efficiency tend to sometimes throw error windows at you at 5-day increments, no matter if you put on other fallible components. Those errors are non game-breaking though, and can simply be clicked away, but they can be bothersome to some people. I think this happens because Aurora bugs for those designs and sometimes actually tries to fail a hangar, but then can't, since whenever this happens it is one of those intervals where nothing gets broken.
I have not figured out on what size that happens, but the 500kt bases with 100kt hangar in the star swarm thread already had that, while some 500-700kt designs and a whooping 2.2mt ship with 300+kt hangar space in my other games didn't. That suggests that size is not the causative issue here, so it comes down to either a too high hangar percentage maybe, or Aurora possibly trying to consume more MSP (to fulfill its prediction) by finding a larger component to destroy, which don't exist, ...or something in that direction? Just thinking, hangar percentage definitely isn't it, because I made docks for the fortresses, which worked fine despite having somewhat 60 or 70 percent hangar... . Hmm, I only ever saw the error with the two military designs from the star swarm thread, so other strong theory: Maybe it is about too high engineering percentage, because that is a thing where those particular designs excelled.(>20%) I don't know why that would cause issues, but that is the only thing that those two designs had in common.
So maybe better not overstretch those limits like I did there and you might likely be fine (500 years is really not needed in an empire with working home world). If your starbase isn't mobile, you can just keep most of the maintenance on the planet under it after all.(no need for maintenance bays altogether, and fewer engineering needed)
If you do this I would like to see the design once you got it, and a report if you had any errors.
///Edit: Removed annoying gif.
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Well after looking into how the recreational facilities work it seems that a straight up deep space station is simply not viable as the crew moral issue will always be a factor. So I have gone the route of a planetary orbiting station. However I can't think of many sci-fi shows where a deep space station ever is truly autonomous without a planet nearby, even in DS9 the crew were always heading off to a planet when they had time off, at best it seems a station can give you some small entertainment factor but never real r&r sky time.
I wanted something that was more like a trek stardock that fully engulfs ships rather than docking to ports, as such went for hangers that will be able to dock my largest ships for at least the next couple of full technology level designs I may build, along with ammunition supplies large enough to fully replenish future designs also, the same was true for fuel and msp. I held back though on going massive on these factors as it would only give me headaches, I would be left with a monstrosity that would take decades to both build and tow to position, ending up obsolete before it even saw a years full service. As I have to use a planet for the colony part of the recreational aspect I figured I would simply use the colony storage for the extra fuel/ammunition/msp and consider them part of the station anyway. After all this game often forces us to fudge a few things here and there and this is purely an RP standpoint design so the exploit factor holds no problem for me.
Babylon class Space Station 1,046,900 tons 14375 Crew 73140.0001 BP TCS 20938 TH 0 EM 0
1 km/s Armour 1-918 Shields 0-0 Sensors 1/1/0/0 Damage Control Rating 1000 PPV 0.75
Maint Life 26.19 Years MSP 93666 AFR 8767% IFR 121.8% 1YR 263 5YR 3945 Max Repair 15 MSP
Intended Deployment Time: 3 months Flight Crew Berths 1
Hangar Deck Capacity 500000 tons Magazine 8145 Habitation Capacity 50,000 Passengers 1250
Recreational Facilities
Fuel Capacity 50,000,000 Litres Range N/A
Mcguyer & Briano Size 5 Box Launcher (1) Missile Size 5 Hangar Reload 37.5 minutes MF Reload 6.2 hours
Size 5 Anti-ship Missile S30 - W16 - R14 (400) Speed: 30,700 km/s End: 7.9m Range: 14.5m km WH: 16 Size: 5 TH: 225/135/67
Size 12 Anti-ship Missile (400) Speed: 19,200 km/s End: 60.8m Range: 70.1m km WH: 25 Size: 12 TH: 140/84/42
Size 1 Anti-missile Missile (1000) Speed: 76,800 km/s End: 5.1m Range: 23.6m km WH: 1 Size: 1 TH: 1024/614/307
Missile to hit chances are vs targets moving at 3000 km/s, 5000 km/s and 10,000 km/s
This design is classed as a Military Vessel for maintenance purposes
So I just used my cheapest component as the AFR influence for this design, this happened to be a box launcher and means my maximum failure cost each cycle will be 15msp, if I never do anything with this station and it fails every single 5 day cycle I should still get around 85 years life if my math isn't totally off. I intend to devote 100kt of the hanger to two 50kt designs that will be a part of the complex. One will be a freighter for shipping in ammunition & msp when required. The other will be a 50kt tanker to bring in fuel. I have considered using a fuel harvester instead but I am a little confused on the conditional orders. I cannot seem to spot a conditional that allows me to pick a specific colony where the harvester unloads to, this could cause issues if I begin to colonise that system in future as I think the conditional simply picks the nearest colony to the harvesting location.
There are extras on this design that are for RP reasons but I also used the orbital habitat as it allows me to build one of these quite fast at a colony compared to a shipyard. Overall I think I am happy with this method depending on how many errors may crop up (I have tried to keep certain parts below 10% of the total). In addition it works out far smaller than my previous thought of using a secondary commercial design with maintenance modules, this means when or if I do need larger hangers or more ammunition storage I will still be able to use a station less than 5mt in size.
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You forget to make space for flight crew berths. If you don't do this, then additional crew coming with ships will try to bunker in the regular quarters of the station and overflow them, reducing morale.
For this, check the "keep additional crew quarter" or something box in the design window, and then you can just keep adding more. You will have to calculate the appropriate number yourself, which is a bit of stomach judgement. You probably wont fill the entire station with only your most crew demanding craft, so maybe something less than that, and then a bit more to make sure.
Well after looking into how the recreational facilities work it seems that a straight up deep space station is simply not viable as the crew moral issue will always be a factor. So I have gone the route of a planetary orbiting station.
Hmmm, maybe you have understood something wrong. Recreational facilities do work just fine in deep space.(I tested that in the Theodidactus thread) There are bugs sometimes with the modules (doesn't matter if deep space or above planets), but they can usually be overcome by mixing task groups a different way.
..It is true that a planet or asteroid is more suitable (/efficient), because you can just store everything there without limit. Deep space is totally possible though, and not that hard to do if you keep to the "low MSP consumption" method for stations.
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A few thing (not about any major problems). First of all, is your station checked as both a collier and tanker? If not, set it that way. Second, More AMM unless your going to have weapons platforms nearby, and you forgot missile fire control. Third, since you have both a cargo ship and a tanker, there is nothing stopping you from turning either your tanker into a fuel harvester, or add some to your station and sit it over a gas giant and adding a mining modules to your cargo ship. Fourth, more engineering space and less damage control. I know that engineering space is less efficient for repairs but you need space for general maintenance (AFR) (engineering space effects DCR on a 1size:1effect ratio and damage control on a 3size:10effect ratio). 5k-10k flight crew berths. Add some passive sensors (unless you have dedicated weapons platform).
Oh, and before I forget, this is some help with fuel harvester ordering, you can use it in a number of ways but three stand out most. 1st-Station method; With harvesters on a station you can either use it a a base on its own and have ship refuel from it or ferry the fuel using very efficient engines on a tanker. 2nd-conditional orders; Set the conditional orders to Fuel tanks full - unload 90% at colony, note that it selects the nearest colony and requires you to change the order when it goes (you will get notification and auto-turn stops). 3rd-repeat order; set a repeat order for the harvester to move to *gas giant name* then with the order delay (calculate time in seconds the tanks need to fill) unload 90% fuel at colony.
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Second, More AMM unless your going to have weapons platforms nearby, and you forgot missile fire control.
The launcher is only there because it is the cheapest component in his tech arsenal, not because he actually intends to fire. It is a trick to make the station last longer, because whenever something breaks, it will only cost him 5 MSP. Otherwise the ammunition on the station is only for supply to other crafts.
Third, since you have both a cargo ship and a tanker, there is nothing stopping you from turning either your tanker into a fuel harvester, or add some to your station and sit it over a gas giant and adding a mining modules to your cargo ship.
If someone intends to have a mobile station, or actually wants to place it on a strategically nice gas giant, this is indeed good. Gas giants are actually the places where I would and do place stations (though mine only provide morale and fuel, while maintenance is done at more rare and more distant spots {/ is not needed this much})
However, as far as I understand, Rich intended to place the station above a planet, so this massive extra suite is not really needed. Also, you can always have separate harvesters nearby.(not sure why you would need miners though, unless you again make a place a colony, which is the thing to prevent in the whole idea)
Fourth, more engineering space and less damage control. I know that engineering space is less efficient for repairs but you need space for general maintenance (AFR) (engineering space effects DCR on a 1size:1effect ratio and damage control on a 3size:10effect ratio).
I think at this point it is open to personal preference as his station already lasts for at least 85 years, and actually more double or triple that (not counting supplying MSP to other craft ofc.). Maybe you are confused because Aurora says 26 years, but this display is wrong. As explained to some extend above, only one component can ever break per 5-day interval, and if this component only costs 5 MSP, like in this case, you get 6000 intervals at minimum (if things break every time, which they don't). In other words 30000 days. You can add more, but again, that is totally a personal preference question here.
And maintenance bays would at this point actually be more effective.
Add some passive sensors (unless you have dedicated weapons platform).
Please, you really should have read the station concept tutorial first. Any passive sensor stronger than 5 would raise the minimum increment costs, and thus cut down the maximum maintenance time by a lot. This is not a good idea. He could pack a civil (size 1) sensor on a separate craft though, but really, what does that give you.
If you really want sensor coverage of the station's system, then I would recommend two things. Either use planetary tracking stations, which are superior to anything you could possibly screw on a ship, or for individuality have a special built military sensor platform (/ship) without any engines, and reserve some space for that on the station. With two maximum active, and a maximum passive sensor, you can make that at about 20kt, and whenever its overhaul time runs out, you just dock it for a while (sensor blindness during that though, so maybe create more or separate ships for sensors?).
This method also works perfectly if you want to add defenses to the station, except that I would recommend having those permanently docked in a reserved spot in the hangars to save MSP. I do that exactly this way in my Swarm game, where all the huge 100kt and 300kt "battle turrets" of the mothership are stored inside until they are needed.(all other capital ships are built out to tractor those and maintain their original velocity) This way I can have lots of weapons and ammunition, but don't ever have to pay a dime for it. Conservation strategy and retractable weapons are the true penultimate carrier doctrines.
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Wait, military ships with habitats are still... buildable?
That was the main reason of why I didn't try it, because I thought that factories can't build them, because they're military.
Anyway, here's design of space maintenance station I just designed:
Bulwark class Luxury Liner 2 000 000 tons 18670 Crew 239737.2 BP TCS 40000 TH 120000 EM 300000
3000 km/s Armour 15-1414 Shields 10000-300 Sensors 50/40/0/0 Damage Control Rating 481 PPV 500
Maint Life 2.67 Years MSP 116036 AFR 66528% IFR 924% 1YR 23212 5YR 348185 Max Repair 60 MSP
Intended Deployment Time: 120 months Flight Crew Berths 10684
Hangar Deck Capacity 500000 tons Magazine 30200 Habitation Capacity 50 000
Recreational Facilities
Fuel Harvester: 30 modules producing 3000000 litres per annum
ExpAI 120 EP Solid Core AM Drive (1000) Power 120 Fuel Use 24.25% Signature 120 Exp 10%
Fuel Capacity 451 750 000 Litres Range 167.7 billion km (646 days at full power)
Aelith Xi Weapons Pacifier (2000) Total Fuel Cost 25 000 Litres per hour (600 000 per day)
ExpAI Size 5 Missile Launcher (100) Missile Size 5 Rate of Fire 25
ExpAI Mine Launcher Add-On (5) Range 7.7m km Resolution 1
ExpAI Backup Sensor System-4 (1) GPS 800 Range 32.0m km Resolution 100
Ratters Thermal Detector S50\Sz1 (1) Sensitivity 50 Detect Sig Strength 1000: 50m km
Ratters EM Detector S40\Sz1 (1) Sensitivity 40 Detect Sig Strength 1000: 40m km
ECCM-4 (1) ECM 40
This design is classed as a Military Vessel for maintenance purposes
It works on the assumption that only one module of the "ship" will break per increment, so I just made it with commercial modules and cheap (so they will use less MSP) military modules.
Pity on me if I'm wrong.
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That carrier works out good,
but why the orbital habitat?
It is really a good idea though to have such a military sensor-only/no-engines design, and tow that via tractor behind you. Not only will you have the most powerful sensor to be able to react to threats to the most expensive ships/stations early, but it also distracts fire.
You can test docking the thing while missiles fly at you, and eventually those will just vanish if they targeted the big active sensor here, so it is kind an ecm too. Is somewhat of a hack and exploiting game weakness though, so many will not be happy with this.
///Edit: Oh, of course, you had the habitat there to be able to build it in factories. I prefer building up shipyards for those for RP reasons, but yeah, I did build some fortress modules in the past this way too. It is a lot slower though than shipyards (if you already have an acceptable sized one that is). I could even build 150 megaton modules in just 3-6 months each.
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The orbital habitat is so that he build it using factories, and not have to spend as much time and resources expanding a shipyard. It also means he can build it as fast or as slow as he wants by allocating more or less construction power to building it.
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The orbital habitat is so that he build it using factories, and not have to spend as much time and resources expanding a shipyard. It also means he can build it as fast or as slow as he wants by allocating more or less construction power to building it.
Yeah, realized it too. Constructing this way is slower though, even at full capacity. It is of course superior early in the game, when duranium and neutronium are still rare, and building shipyards takes time, and you don't have enough people too.
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I cannot test it right now, but a simple 5 day increment turn while watching the maintenance storage would easily solve this question. If you or someone are not doing it, I will report the result on next occasion as I am curious myself.(that would be a nice function)
I could now confirm that construction factories do indeed not produce maintenance automatically. I watched my stockpile and progressed it two intervals, but nothing changed. Newest version too, so this is not in.
Btw. it was not really right to say that the MSP of a new ship are in the construction costs, because then you would see very uneven numbers for gallicite for example, which you don't. Actually, you get the full bay for free, kind of of. One could consider the full storage to be part of the engineering section costs though, if that sounds better.
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I did of course totally forget the extra crew quarters for ships docked, as so threw on enough space for a couple of thousand or so flight berths to remedy the issue. Part of the reason for the orbital habitat was to avoid having to have a huge shipyard, but also for an rp reason. No doubt it is the opposite of the rp reason someone uses shipyards for these. I tend to think of this as something like a cross between the B5 station and a trek stardock. This means that it makes more sense to me for it to have parts made in factories that are then assembled on site (things like hull panels etc), then crews to build the interior. Sadly Aurora only provides two ways of doing this, either use a colony with pop and factories, or use construction brigades. Both those options would take a very very long time and so mean the thing would be obsolete before it saw a full year in service, or worse the empire would of expanded beyond the boarders by that point. Instead I look at the factory construction time & towing time as being representative of the parts being built and assembled on site.
I do like that military design with engines though, I will guess it is the engines which are the part which can break for 60msp? Am I right to guess then that shields are a member of the group of components that never break like hangers? If so or not does anyone has a full list of things that simply do not break, I can see this method (or exploit depending on your viewpoint) allowing for some very interesting designs I had not thought possible before.
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Yes, it's engines that break for 60msp.
Shields do break too, but they cost 20msp.
Full list?
Magazines
Hangars
Crew quarters, fuel storages, bridge, maint storage bays, cryo transports, cargo holds, gate building modules, luxury passenger accommodation modules, and armor never break.
Everything else is stated to be influenced by maintenance checks unless proven otherwise.
(I just slapped every component one by one and watched the "Max Repair" field really, so this data is unreliable.)
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Part of the reason for the orbital habitat was to avoid having to have a huge shipyard, but also for an rp reason. No doubt it is the opposite of the rp reason someone uses shipyards for these. I tend to think of this as something like a cross between the B5 station and a trek stardock.
The reason why we handle this RP different is because you build a station, where I only build carriers.^^ Even the huge fortresses were actually just immense capital ships, so having shipyards for them makes sense.(even the Star Wars Executor Super-Star Destroyer was built in docks) I only built the habitat parts of it on ground, because I saw the opportunity, but not intentionally.
If I would use military space stations, I guess I would also construct them by population, but I only use PDC for that (or carriers akin to Tuna's), and otherwise civil habitat stations.
I do like that military design with engines though, I will guess it is the engines which are the part which can break for 60msp? Am I right to guess then that shields are a member of the group of components that never break like hangers?
Anything military breaks, except hangars and magazines, like Tuna said. Those would break too I guess, if it wouldn't cause so much hassle to program what happens to the stored interior in such incident. (I have no idea right now what happens if hangars receive battle damage, or if they might be immune even there. ...Naah, does the craft get destroyed?..)
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I think I may have found a solution to the problem, although some may call it a cheat/exploit, I tend to not stray into that line of thinking as we all do things to further our RP story within Aurora. I noticed on another thread someone was asking about how to move PDC's around etc, one of the replies mentioned that you can use the SM box in the task group window to teleport a PDC to another colony. However my first thought was "I wonder if I could select a waypoint, or other stellar body", so I made a new waypoint and bazinga, the SM box shows it as a location (It also shows jump gates/points, general empty planets/asteroids/comets). I tried to use the waypoint and it worked so now I have a PDC floating in space.
Since PDC's do not suffer from maintenance failures they make an ideal stand in for a deep space station, or any other station you could think of. I have run a couple of 30 turns to see what happens and so far it all seems normal, the PDC does suffer from crew morale, however I have seen it said that recreation modules work anywhere. At first my solution was going to be to have a recreation ship that would make visits. But then another idea arrived, why not have a ship as small as possible with nothing but a minimal engine and a recreation module. Then store this ship in spare hanger space in the PDC, I put this to the test and found it works as follows.
1. Design a PDC with hanger space and all the other stuff you could want, depending on if you are just making a space dock or fully fledged battle station.
2. Build the PDC at a colony.
3. Design a ship with just a recreation module, a tiny fuel bay, and the smallest engine to just get it moving past 2km/s (I'm not sure if 1km/s means it is stationary or not).
4. Build this recreational ship at the same place as the station PDC (depending on your shipyards you may find it easier to slap an orbital hab on too and build it with industry).
5. Dock the recreational ship into the station PDC hanger, you never need to touch this ship again.
6. SM move the "station" to either a planetary body, a jump point, or waypoint if desired to be in an empty location.
I found that you will get a morale clock at first, what seemed to happen was the morale clock rose to the point of maximum deployment time. I got a message that both vessels had exceeded their deployment time, the next 30 day turn I advanced (I was working with 30 days for ease of spotting issues) I got a message that both vessels crew had completed shore leave. From here onwards I never saw the morale clock rise, it was as if they were in orbit of a colony with population. I did launch the recreational ship and flew it a short distance away to test morale. Once a couple of months had passed the PDC station again suffered crew morale problems, I then docked the recreation ship and the next 30 day cycle saw another set of shore leave.
Overall I think this has solved my main issues with space stations. Granted I cannot put on something like a sorium harvester and plop it around a gas giant, but a hanger with plenty of space will allow me to have a fuel miner docked. The only thing I would need to do is ship in ammunition and MSP for use on ships being berthed there. This is by no means a cheap way of doing things and probably will take a couple of years at least longer, and cost multiple times more than just having a colony. But the key for me is it does give a real way to have a space station floating in the depths of nothing that can perform all the required tasks.
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Sorry for the necro, but this is completely germaine to this topic. I frequently read old posts that come up in searches so as to learn the game, and in the interest of others doing the same, oft times it really is best to necro a topic.
I am myself very concerned about the maintenance costs of having forward deployed fleets well away from one's homeworld maintenance facilities. Even the home fleet's maintenance costs are a concern, as they add up. Meanwhile, having PDC defenses both on the homeworld and on forward deployed bases makes a great deal of sense. Clearly from reading this thread, the ideal way to handle this is to build a PDC (that due to being a PDC, will have no maintenance costs of its own) with internal hangars big enough to contain the entire military contingent of the war fleet one intends to station there. Place that PDC on a colony world with at least a minimum of population so ships docked (hangared) there will get their shore leave topped off. Ideally of course, given the cost of that PDC, it would probably be best if this were a high value world you intend to terraform, etc. .
My current plan it would seem would be to have my homeworld construction factories build the PDC as a prefab (at least a three year job for me) and have a decently large freighter fleet ship it to its destination over the course of many round trips. This would give me a very strong hardpoint (the defense and weaponry on that base are no joke, in case the fleet is away) and allow me to basically have a maintenance cost free fleet.
My question for any who are more knowledgeable is. . . Would my PDC 'Fleet Hangar Base' have to have crew quarters sufficient to handle the crew of the hangar fleet's ships? Or would those ship's crews continue to be housed in their own ship's quarters?
I surmise that while this will avoid the maintenance clock ticking down, it would not be able to handle ship overhauls. I could be wrong of course, ships going into hangar might reset the maintenance clock. (Does it?) I venture to guess that if the forward deployed fleet spends enough time on maneuvers out in the deep, it will probably still have to be brought back to the homeworld's shipyards for overhaul after a time (perhaps with the homeworld stationed fleet replacing it as the forward deployed fleet).
I could always tug a shipyard to the forward base, but I am not sure if the overhaul speed is affected by the size of the shipyards. And if it is not, if the presence of a tiny shipyard can allow a fleet to go into overhaul, is it adversely affected in any way by 'not' having vast numbers of maintenance facilities sitting at and operating on that colony?
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PDC Hangar will not overhaul your ships, it will stop the maintenance clock. You do not need extra crew quarters. Remember that even pre-fabricated PDC parts still need to be put together, and a massive PDC Hangar will require a long time to do so with just a dozen Construction Brigades.
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PDC Hangar will not overhaul your ships, it will stop the maintenance clock. You do not need extra crew quarters. Remember that even pre-fabricated PDC parts still need to be put together, and a massive PDC Hangar will require a long time to do so with just a dozen Construction Brigades.
Hmm. . . I had forgotten about needing construction brigades. Good thing I started training. It would take my freighter fleet a good long while just to move all the parts to the location. Do you know if the construction brigades will start assembly while just some of the parts are there? If so, that "long time" would be gainfully spent. And just what do you mean by "a long time"? The parts construction will take my homeworld over three years to build. It would probably take that long in addition to move the parts.
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I would say that unless you are really stuck for workers then using construction brigades for making PDC hangers is not very efficient. If you consider that you will always need the construction capacity at a production world for the PDC sections. You then need to have a well established military training section to build the brigades, and a dedicated large troop transport to ship them without having too many trips.
You will always need a sizable force of freighters to ship the PDC parts anyway, so these are pointless to factor in. But if you simply construct a few more freighters and ship out some infrastructure, then you can get a small population going probably quicker than you can get construction brigades both trained and shipped out. Then just ship out construction factories to do the assembly and you now have a hanger, and a production ability for future use.
However throwing all of the above out of the window, I would say that if you have a colony so small that construction brigades are your only building option, then perhaps the location doesn't yet warrant the investment needed to create a PDC hanger. I tend to consider them a planet/low orbit set of facilities (spaceports and the like) that provide a means for shore leaves and such. You may find it is cheaper resource wise to just send out a large transport ship loaded with supplies.
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Well, you need Construction Brigades to take use of alien ruins. So I usually build about 20 of them or so. But my PDCs are also really small as I rather build a bunch of different PDC classes on each colony, so the construction times are not too long. However, with a PDC Hangar, that's not really an option, meaning that Rich is correct - your only practical option is to use construction factories as otherwise it might take ten years or more.
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Just as a correction to the earlier comment about Engineering section vs Maintanence bay:
Engineering sections don't have a set amount of maintanence, when you get to the more expensive ships they can contain many times the amount in a Maintanence bay.
I'm not sure when the crossover occurs, but I can only confirm this for designs with max tech. And thus crazy costs.
And now I'll leave you to return to the actually useful discussion. ;)
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"with internal hangars big enough to contain the entire military contingent of the war fleet one intends to station there."
That is more than you need. You can comfortably maintain fleet 2.5 times the capacity of the hangar, even 3 times if you are careful about it. Just keep rotating the fleets through the station.
I build a small hangar early, for maintaining my survey fleets and scouts. One of the VERY nice things about hangars instead of maintenance bases is you can always get your ships out of a hangar immediately, instead of cancelling an overhaul.