Author Topic: Deep Space Maintenance  (Read 7138 times)

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Offline Rich.h (OP)

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Deep Space Maintenance
« on: December 04, 2014, 11:37:06 AM »
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?
 

Offline 83athom

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Re: Deep Space Maintenance
« Reply #1 on: December 04, 2014, 11:42:11 AM »
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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Offline Rich.h (OP)

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Re: Deep Space Maintenance
« Reply #2 on: December 04, 2014, 11:54:48 AM »
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.
 

Offline 83athom

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Re: Deep Space Maintenance
« Reply #3 on: December 04, 2014, 12:08:25 PM »
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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Offline Paul M

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Re: Deep Space Maintenance
« Reply #4 on: December 05, 2014, 07:39:47 AM »
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. 
 

Offline 83athom

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Re: Deep Space Maintenance
« Reply #5 on: December 05, 2014, 11:59:55 AM »
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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Offline Vandermeer

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Re: Deep Space Maintenance
« Reply #6 on: December 05, 2014, 01:04:27 PM »
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
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.

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[...]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.)

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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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Offline Vandermeer

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Re: Deep Space Maintenance
« Reply #7 on: December 05, 2014, 02:08:16 PM »
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)


proof of docking (this is a 1.5mt planetary hangar. The destroyer is 20kt size{design can be seen here})

Code: [Select]
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


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)



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:


...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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Offline 83athom

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Re: Deep Space Maintenance
« Reply #8 on: December 05, 2014, 02:21:41 PM »
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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Offline Vandermeer

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Re: Deep Space Maintenance
« Reply #9 on: December 05, 2014, 04:53:52 PM »
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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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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Offline Rich.h (OP)

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Re: Deep Space Maintenance
« Reply #10 on: December 05, 2014, 05:20:56 PM »
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.
 

Offline Vandermeer

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Re: Deep Space Maintenance
« Reply #11 on: December 05, 2014, 07:24:40 PM »
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.

(Here is a link to Theodidactus' thread 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.


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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. ( 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. Anyway, here is the link: http://aurora2.pentarch.org/index.php/topic,6738.0.html )

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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)

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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.

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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Offline Rich.h (OP)

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Re: Deep Space Maintenance
« Reply #12 on: December 05, 2014, 07:35:33 PM »
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?
 

Offline Vandermeer

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Re: Deep Space Maintenance
« Reply #13 on: December 05, 2014, 08:24:08 PM »
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.
« Last Edit: December 05, 2014, 08:42:13 PM by Vandermeer »
playing Aurora as swarm fleet: Zen Nomadic Hive Fantasy
 

Offline Rich.h (OP)

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Re: Deep Space Maintenance
« Reply #14 on: December 06, 2014, 04:02:22 AM »
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.

Quote
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.