Hi Steve! I would like to make a quick suggestion that I felt does not warrant its own thread. I have noticed that when I equip my survey ships with any weapon but a CIWS, even the most meagre armament, they are classed as a warship.
What I was trying to do was to give them box missile launchers in order to be able to deploy buoys on important planets and jump points but also carry a few missiles for emergency self defense. However I can’t do that without the ship being classed as a warship, with even one missile launcher changing the classification.
What I would like to suggest is to have the “survey ship” classification take primacy over the “warship” classification so that having either Gravitational or Geological Survey Sensors will instantly make the ship a “survey ship” regardless of armament.
Or, at the very least, I would to classify certain missile launcher configurations as civilian; such that a survey ship can deploy buoys or non-explosive missiles (size 0 warhead) without being classed as a warship.
I understand that deploying buoys or carrying armament that could be used offensively is expressly military activity, but survey sensors already automatically classify a ship as military even if its engines are commercial. So a hostile or cautious actor would already see such a vessel as a possible threat.
Thanks for considering!
It's a long-standing Aurora convention that any military systems will class a vessel as military rather than commercial, with all the attendant maintenance concerns. While small sensors are commercial and there are commercial magazines (which are inefficient and dangerous), missile launchers are different. There are no small commercial lasers for example, whereas CIWS has no offensive capability. It would be a contrivance to have launchers that can only fire missiles without warheads and even that is open to abuse. Besides, being able to lay buoys everywhere is definitely a military advantage.
BTW for Aurora purposes, 'Civilian' means a shipping line ship, whereas 'Commercial' means no maintenance required. 'Military' means maintenance required, while 'Warship' is any armed vessel. 'Survey Ship' in this context would normally be used in reference to auto-assignments. People will probably understand anyway (assuming I do understand
), but it will make it clearer what you mean.
Also, I assume you are talking about classifications for maintenance and not classifications for auto-assignment, because survey sensors should override launchers for the latter.