Is a New Design Parameter required for Maintenance Supplies?

[IanD (OP)]

While the design Tab gives us the Maintenance Life We could do with a new one - Combat Maintenance Life, ie the length of time a ship could engage in combat before it would run out of maintenance supplies.

Don't know if this would be difficult to code or not but I for one would find it very useful.

[Father Tim]

How do you propose this would be calculated?  MSP aboard divided by average cost of repair?  This would give a value with 'number of internal hits' as a unit.  How does that relate to combat time?

[SpikeTheHobbitMage]

How do you propose this would be calculated?  MSP aboard divided by average cost of repair?  This would give a value with 'number of internal hits' as a unit.  How does that relate to combat time?

MSP/cost of repair * firing rate * failure rate = combat time.  IE how long can you fire all of your guns before you die of MSP exhaustion.

[Kelewan]

How do you propose this would be calculated?  MSP aboard divided by average cost of repair?  This would give a value with 'number of internal hits' as a unit.  How does that relate to combat time?

I suspect IanD is refering to the Weapon Failure

Weapon Failure

At the point when any weapon (energy-based or missile launcher) fires, there is a 1% chance the weapon will suffer a failure. If sufficient maintenance supplies are available, the weapon will be instantly repaired and will fire normally. If maintenance supplies are not available, the weapon will be damaged and unable to fire.

This is partially to simulate the stress of combat on weapon systems, but also as a balance to other rule changes.

So MSP aboard divided sum off average MSP usage for each weapon based on  (ROF*  x 1% x Repair Cost)

ROF* "Rate of Fire" as Number of shots per second and not "ROF" as used in the game aka reload time
http://aurora2.pentarch.org/index.php?topic=10638.msg132042#msg132042

PS.: SpikeTheHobbitMage was faster in replying

[IanD (OP)]

How do you propose this would be calculated?  MSP aboard divided by average cost of repair?  This would give a value with 'number of internal hits' as a unit.  How does that relate to combat time?

MSP/cost of repair * firing rate * failure rate = combat time.  IE how long can you fire all of your guns before you die of MSP exhaustion.

Yes this was exactly what I was thinking of having been "caught short" during my first ground combat, I only took 150,000 tons to take on approximately 30,000 tons of enemy forces. It turned into an extremely bloody affair when orbital support ran out.

[smoelf]

Since you are likely to experience 'normal' maintenance failures and possibly take damage that requires MSP to repair, perhaps the formula shouldn't use the full amount, but only a certain fraction of the ship's MSP to account for that? Maybe half or two-thirds?

[Alsadius]

Since you are likely to experience 'normal' maintenance failures and possibly take damage that requires MSP to repair, perhaps the formula shouldn't use the full amount, but only a certain fraction of the ship's MSP to account for that? Maybe half or two-thirds?

I see where you're going, but I disagree. You'll never find a number that covers all situations. I'd have it use 100% the same way maintenance life does, and let players manage it.

[smoelf]

I see where you're going, but I disagree. You'll never find a number that covers all situations. I'd have it use 100% the same way maintenance life does, and let players manage it.

That's probably the right way to go about it, since there's a high chance we won't be able to agree on the specific number 
A better solution might be to allow for us to set that factor ourselves. It could be a percentage figure in the miscellaneous tab of class design. It should be fairly easy to put a variable there and take into account when doing the calculation. That way we could also adjust it for different ships.

[Droll]

I see where you're going, but I disagree. You'll never find a number that covers all situations. I'd have it use 100% the same way maintenance life does, and let players manage it.

That's probably the right way to go about it, since there's a high chance we won't be able to agree on the specific number 
A better solution might be to allow for us to set that factor ourselves. It could be a percentage figure in the miscellaneous tab of class design. It should be fairly easy to put a variable there and take into account when doing the calculation. That way we could also adjust it for different ships.

Also consider that when in combat you don't actually care about the overall maintenance life of a ship. Thanks to supply ships you should always be entering initial combat at approx 100% MSP. So just use all the MSP to compute the expected combat time with all weapons firing at they max ROF.

What I actually want to see more than that is for the game to tell you the maximum repair cost of each weapon so that I know how much MSP goes poof when the weapon decides to fart- and maybe have a new tech that reduces MSP repair cost of weapons due to malfunction and have it as an extra design option that makes the weapon more expensive but more reliable.