Landing on Planets

[Kurt (OP)]

I’ve been thinking about something lately, and I believe that it is an “undefined” area that should probably be defined.  This is sort of like how shipyards used to be, where we all referred to them as “orbital” but in reality the rules were treating them as if they were on the ground.  As a result of that conversation, Steve changed the way shipyards are handled in Aurora, truly making them “orbital”.  

My thinking in this area began with fighters.  One of my races is considering fighters as an answer to its short-term defense problems, and so I’ve been looking at the various basing schemes, and I’ve been thinking about how I would describe those basing schemes in a story setting.  The various possibilities are basing them on a ship or base in hangers, or at a remote base on a PDC, or at an inhabited planet.  This last possibility got me to thinking about what was really happening when the fighters were based at a planet.  Were they hanging in orbit all of the time?  That seemed unlikely.  Therefore they had to be on the ground, somewhere.  Because they were being maintained by the colony’s maintenance facilities, it was reasonable to assume that the fighters were actually physically located at the maintenance facilities, which would logically include large landing fields or spaceports and maintenance bays for the units being maintained there.  Of course, if the fighters are on the ground, then it is logical to assume that all of the ships that are being maintained at the planet are on the ground as well.  

This final conclusion is clear from the way the orders are set up.  If a ship is “At” the planet, then it can be maintained by the maintenance facilities, if it is in an orbit, even an orbit of five kilometers, then it cannot be maintained by the planet’s maintenance facilities, therefore “at” the planet means “on” the planet’s surface, and the maintenance facilities have no ability to affect anything that is not on the planet’s surface.  Again, it is reasonable to assume that the maintenance facilities include landing fields and that this is where the ships are actually physically located.  

Currently, this entire area is a big blindspot that is undefined.  Ships are “at” a planet, but not really “on” a planet.  I think that this needs to be defined.  After all, if the ships are “on” a planet, then this has several significant implications:

1.   If a ship is on a planet, then it is vulnerable to capture or damage/destruction by ground units.  This is particularly important in relation to ships undergoing overhaul, as they cannot lift off and get away as ground units approach their space ports.  
2.   Ships on a planet should be treated like PDC’s, as they have to deal with atmospheric effects.  They should not be able to use beam weapons if the atmosphere is thick enough, and could not be targeted by beam weapons.  Equally, they should be subject to damage by orbital bombardment, perhaps if their sheltering maintenance facilities are damaged.  

There are additional implications.  Currently, ships merely zoom up to a planet and are there in essentially zero time.  One second they aren’t there, the next they are.  I have considered explaining this by postulating the existence of transporters, which would allow a ship to unload from orbit without having to land, but as I argued above it is clearly implied by the way things currently work that ships are landing.  Now, it is certainly possible that you could hand-waive away problems of passing through the atmosphere at appreciable percentages of the speed of light without destroying the ship, as they are after all built out of semi-magical trans-newtonian materials, but anything even remotely near them on the surface would be utterly destroyed and, it seems to me, there would be massive atmospheric disturbances.  

This could be resolved by requiring any ship or unit landing on a planet to first reduce its speed to 1 kps, which is still 3,600 kilometers per hour, which is very fast in the atmosphere.    If a unit had to stop at say…one hundred kilometers up, then proceed at 1 kps for the rest of the way, it would take one hundred seconds to land, which is more reasonable than zero seconds.  In normal operations this wouldn’t make much of a difference, but in combat where ships are on the ground or transports are trying to land troops, then it would be different.  That time would matter, particularly if the ships became valid targets for enemy ground units during this time.  

Hmmm….I’ve got to think about this more.  

Kurt3

[welchbloke]

I’ve been thinking about something lately, and I believe that it is an “undefined” area that should probably be defined.  This is sort of like how shipyards used to be, where we all referred to them as “orbital” but in reality the rules were treating them as if they were on the ground.  As a result of that conversation, Steve changed the way shipyards are handled in Aurora, truly making them “orbital”.  

My thinking in this area began with fighters.  One of my races is considering fighters as an answer to its short-term defense problems, and so I’ve been looking at the various basing schemes, and I’ve been thinking about how I would describe those basing schemes in a story setting.  The various possibilities are basing them on a ship or base in hangers, or at a remote base on a PDC, or at an inhabited planet.  This last possibility got me to thinking about what was really happening when the fighters were based at a planet.  Were they hanging in orbit all of the time?  That seemed unlikely.  Therefore they had to be on the ground, somewhere.  Because they were being maintained by the colony’s maintenance facilities, it was reasonable to assume that the fighters were actually physically located at the maintenance facilities, which would logically include large landing fields or spaceports and maintenance bays for the units being maintained there.  Of course, if the fighters are on the ground, then it is logical to assume that all of the ships that are being maintained at the planet are on the ground as well.  

I've thought about this for a while and I can propose a couple of other options for maintenance facilities.  Option 1 is some kind of space elevator arrangement where the ships dock to a geostationary facility and receive repairs 'on orbit'.  Option 2 could be orbital maintenance facilites; essentially, there is some kind of 'space dock' that a ship docks to and is overhauled within. Option 3 would be small low orbital vessels carrying teams of engineers/engineering robots to the ship to perform maintenance/repairs.   I think that most races would actually have a mix of orbital and planetary maintencfe facilites that are used together.  Perhaps maintenance for fighters/FACs is performed on the ground whilst the larger ships are maintained on orbit.

Landing on planets creates its own issues for ship design as they now have to be able to withstand the local gravity field on the ground rather than the micro-gravity environment of orbit.  That might result in more mass required for internal bracing than current designs use.  

This final conclusion is clear from the way the orders are set up.  If a ship is “At” the planet, then it can be maintained by the maintenance facilities, if it is in an orbit, even an orbit of five kilometers, then it cannot be maintained by the planet’s maintenance facilities, therefore “at” the planet means “on” the planet’s surface, and the maintenance facilities have no ability to affect anything that is not on the planet’s surface.  Again, it is reasonable to assume that the maintenance facilities include landing fields and that this is where the ships are actually physically located.  

Currently, this entire area is a big blindspot that is undefined.  Ships are “at” a planet, but not really “on” a planet.  I think that this needs to be defined.  After all, if the ships are “on” a planet, then this has several significant implications:

1.   If a ship is on a planet, then it is vulnerable to capture or damage/destruction by ground units.  This is particularly important in relation to ships undergoing overhaul, as they cannot lift off and get away as ground units approach their space ports.  
2.   Ships on a planet should be treated like PDC’s, as they have to deal with atmospheric effects.  They should not be able to use beam weapons if the atmosphere is thick enough, and could not be targeted by beam weapons.  Equally, they should be subject to damage by orbital bombardment, perhaps if their sheltering maintenance facilities are damaged.  

There are additional implications.  Currently, ships merely zoom up to a planet and are there in essentially zero time.  One second they aren’t there, the next they are.  I have considered explaining this by postulating the existence of transporters, which would allow a ship to unload from orbit without having to land, but as I argued above it is clearly implied by the way things currently work that ships are landing.  Now, it is certainly possible that you could hand-waive away problems of passing through the atmosphere at appreciable percentages of the speed of light without destroying the ship, as they are after all built out of semi-magical trans-newtonian materials, but anything even remotely near them on the surface would be utterly destroyed and, it seems to me, there would be massive atmospheric disturbances.  

This could be resolved by requiring any ship or unit landing on a planet to first reduce its speed to 1 kps, which is still 3,600 kilometers per hour, which is very fast in the atmosphere.    If a unit had to stop at say…one hundred kilometers up, then proceed at 1 kps for the rest of the way, it would take one hundred seconds to land, which is more reasonable than zero seconds.  In normal operations this wouldn’t make much of a difference, but in combat where ships are on the ground or transports are trying to land troops, then it would be different.  That time would matter, particularly if the ships became valid targets for enemy ground units during this time.  

Hmmm….I’ve got to think about this more.  

Kurt3

I agree that is ships are considered to be on planets then there should be a time penalty associated with landing/taking off and how ground units and orbital bombardments interact with them would require some thought.

[waresky]

"Landeable" planets open a can of worm..and a some others tactical and mapping way of playing..

Same as "Fading Sun" situation,who Steve know as well.

Probable another whole field are "ESPLORING" the world..

Obviously an "ENTIRE" world become himself anothe game inside a game.

Am loving exxploring more than combat.Thrilling me up.

think who r a simple exploring a newly discovered world..amazing:)

Obviously here another topic: SHIPS..but..Mappable World..are simple awesome mini-game inside a bigger.

[Beersatron]

"Landeable" planets open a can of worm..and a some others tactical and mapping way of playing..

Same as "Fading Sun" situation,who Steve know as well.

Probable another whole field are "ESPLORING" the world..

Obviously an "ENTIRE" world become himself anothe game inside a game.

Am loving exxploring more than combat.Thrilling me up.

think who r a simple exploring a newly discovered world..amazing:)

Obviously here another topic: SHIPS..but..Mappable World..are simple awesome mini-game inside a bigger.

And, of course, this opens up a more detailed Ground Combat aspect .... isn't that right Waresky?

[UnLimiTeD]

Well, then whats with OWP?
Are they constantly on the ground?
And what with maintenance modules on ships (WHY are they MILITARY?), do ships need to land for them?
Then shouldn't the landing speed be effected by the atmosphere thickness (if it's above one you can't land! HAH! god thats stupid....)?

Maybe, with the average abstraction, we should look at the technobabble.
If ships bend the space time around them, they would also just bend the air around them, and as such, just transfer a vacuum to the surface, without heat, and when landing, it pops open and sucks everything around in like a vacuum bomb.
Possibly "loading air" when entering the atmosphere might help there

Overhauls are certainly on Ground, ok.
And, if maintenance is done on the surface, then why are shipyards in orbit, can't I just build all parts down there (ok, I can) and then transfer them up to be put together by small shuttles instead of a huge yard in which the whole ship can fit?

[Caplin]

From my admittedly limited experience, I'm fine with the idea of ships being more or less handled as they are.
Granted, some clarification as to what exactly that means might be in order, but I think in my case there comes a point past which microscopic detail starts to become a bit silly.
Just my two cents.

[sloanjh]

The way I've always thought of it, the ships are in LPO (Low Planet Orbit ) and there are a bunch of untracked shuttles that bring maintenance supplies etc to the ship.

I've not liked the way this works for fighters (and possibly GB), however, as it feels like there should be a cost for "basing facilities".  Oddly enough timing-wise, this thought just occured to me again last week as I was reading the latest Honor Harrington, where Weber talks about needing depot ships or prefab ground bases (IIRC) in order to support system-defence LAC squadrons.

And while reading this thread, I began to think that there should still be some sort of orbital maintenance dock, even if the shuttles were bringing supplies/workers up from the planet.  At which point it occured to me that ships are maintained by "maintenance facilities" on the planet, which are bought in increments of 200 tons... sounds an awful lot like slipway capacity in SY, doesn't it?

The final part of the mix (from my point of view) was that there was way too much micromanagement when we had to bind overhauls to dock capacity, so I don't want to change the current infrastructure/scheduling requirements for maintenance.

So my proposal:

1)  Maintenance facilities are VERY similar to SY - there's an orbital component that shows up on sensors and can be attacked, and an untracked ground component (with shuttles) that builds components.

2)  Planets are no longer considered to have any hangar space (for the purposes of reloading box launchers).  Hanger space associated with a planet must be explicitly built, either in a PDC, or in an OWP.

3)  Ships in orbit (and gaining the benefit of maintenance facilities) really are in orbit.  Ships (including fighters and GB) in a hanger are considered to be in the platform (ship/OWP/PDC) which contains the hanger.  POSSIBLE EXTENSION: Ships in an overhaul state are considered docked at the maintenance facility, and are damaged according to the SY rules if the maintenance facility is attacked.

I think this clears up the ambiguity, while making a minimal change to game mechanics.  

John

[waresky]

"Landeable" planets open a can of worm..and a some others tactical and mapping way of playing..

Same as "Fading Sun" situation,who Steve know as well.

Probable another whole field are "ESPLORING" the world..

Obviously an "ENTIRE" world become himself anothe game inside a game.

Am loving exxploring more than combat.Thrilling me up.

think who r a simple exploring a newly discovered world..amazing:)

Obviously here another topic: SHIPS..but..Mappable World..are simple awesome mini-game inside a bigger.

And, of course, this opens up a more detailed Ground Combat aspect .... isn't that right Waresky?

:S
BEEEEEER!! damned u have found my trick.-.--shhhhhhhhhhh..dont ear from Steve..ehehhe

olk seriously: fading sun are bit hard to manage WITH all whole Aurora strategical situation.

so am think a more easy hexagon map situations.a mereley reppresentation of Army on planets..or..a more interesting Esplorations planetary map for survey and mineral and implant effort (hope r understandable:DD)

TRAVELLER and MEGATRAVELLER rules:

Streamlined vs Unstreamlined in ships design.

am fear for Steve r a bit hard coding this two mechanics.

good work:)

[ZimRathbone]

I'm with John on this one - I've always considered that ships DONT land, and usually have untracked short range utility craft for ferrying stuff up and down to a planetary surface.  

Oh and I always require that planets that are protected by GB/Fighters have sufficient hangars (in PDC or OWP or the like) for at least 25% of capacity (on the theory that it matches the overhaul ratio) - and frequently more like 50% (depending on how I'm playing a particular race.)

[symon]

I've always been a fan of the concept that 'atmospheric capability' is something that has to be built into a spaceship, and that the larger the ship, the more it should generally cost.

Edit: I've also felt that it should be something you can't refit in or out either.

[Kurt (OP)]

The way I've always thought of it, the ships are in LPO (Low Planet Orbit ) and there are a bunch of untracked shuttles that bring maintenance supplies etc to the ship.John

This is the way I've always hand-waived this issue away, however, I really don't like the idea of untracked and invulnerable shuttles existing "behind the scenes".  Worse, these are shuttles that can apparently make round trips in less than five seconds because some things, like resetting box launchers, refueling, and replenishing ammo can be completed in that amount of time.  Really, if you are going to hand-waive this stuff away, it would require Star Trek style transporters.  

I've not liked the way this works for fighters (and possibly GB), however, as it feels like there should be a cost for "basing facilities".  Oddly enough timing-wise, this thought just occured to me again last week as I was reading the latest Honor Harrington, where Weber talks about needing depot ships or prefab ground bases (IIRC) in order to support system-defence LAC squadrons.

And while reading this thread, I began to think that there should still be some sort of orbital maintenance dock, even if the shuttles were bringing supplies/workers up from the planet.  At which point it occured to me that ships are maintained by "maintenance facilities" on the planet, which are bought in increments of 200 tons... sounds an awful lot like slipway capacity in SY, doesn't it?

The final part of the mix (from my point of view) was that there was way too much micromanagement when we had to bind overhauls to dock capacity, so I don't want to change the current infrastructure/scheduling requirements for maintenance.

The fighter issue was where the undefined nature of this got to me.  I agree though that I don't want to change the overhauls back to shipyards.  

So my proposal:

1)  Maintenance facilities are VERY similar to SY - there's an orbital component that shows up on sensors and can be attacked, and an untracked ground component (with shuttles) that builds components.

2)  Planets are no longer considered to have any hangar space (for the purposes of reloading box launchers).  Hanger space associated with a planet must be explicitly built, either in a PDC, or in an OWP.

3)  Ships in orbit (and gaining the benefit of maintenance facilities) really are in orbit.  Ships (including fighters and GB) in a hanger are considered to be in the platform (ship/OWP/PDC) which contains the hanger.  POSSIBLE EXTENSION: Ships in an overhaul state are considered docked at the maintenance facility, and are damaged according to the SY rules if the maintenance facility is attacked.

I think this clears up the ambiguity, while making a minimal change to game mechanics.  

John

1.  I don't have a problem with creating an orbital component to maintenance facilities, but Steve is the one that is going to have to do the work.  

2.  I like this.  This would affect fighters, which could no long "base" at maintenance facilities but instead would require purpose built hangers, and ships/gunboats with box launchers, which would require either hanger space, or "docking" with orbital maintenance faciltieis (from #1 above).

3.  I like this too.  Now the question is, does Steve agree, and which can he implement most easily?  

Kurt

[Steve Walmsley]

So my proposal:

1)  Maintenance facilities are VERY similar to SY - there's an orbital component that shows up on sensors and can be attacked, and an untracked ground component (with shuttles) that builds components.

2)  Planets are no longer considered to have any hangar space (for the purposes of reloading box launchers).  Hanger space associated with a planet must be explicitly built, either in a PDC, or in an OWP.

3)  Ships in orbit (and gaining the benefit of maintenance facilities) really are in orbit.  Ships (including fighters and GB) in a hanger are considered to be in the platform (ship/OWP/PDC) which contains the hanger.  POSSIBLE EXTENSION: Ships in an overhaul state are considered docked at the maintenance facility, and are damaged according to the SY rules if the maintenance facility is attacked.

I think this clears up the ambiguity, while making a minimal change to game mechanics.  

1.  I don't have a problem with creating an orbital component to maintenance facilities, but Steve is the one that is going to have to do the work.  

2.  I like this.  This would affect fighters, which could no long "base" at maintenance facilities but instead would require purpose built hangers, and ships/gunboats with box launchers, which would require either hanger space, or "docking" with orbital maintenance faciltieis (from #1 above).

3.  I like this too.  Now the question is, does Steve agree, and which can he implement most easily?  

I really don't want to get into ships being on planetary surfaces due to the complexities involved with landing/taking off and atmospheric effects. Keeping them in LEO is a lot easier. The idea of maintenance facilities, like shipyards, being in orbit is probably the easiest option. The only downside is that at the moment you can put maintenance modules into PDCs so that would have to end. Perhaps the easiest thing all round is to remove the existing ground-based maintenace facilities entrely, remove the option of PDC-based maintenance modules, extend overhaul ability to ship-based maintenance modules and make maintenance modules a commercial system. This means all maintenance modules are orbital and are built by commercial shipyards, either within bases or ships. It means I can remove code rather than figuring out new code and it also means I don't have to create a new type of object and therefore a new type of contact.

Removing the ability of maintenance facilities to re-arm box launchers is easy enough, although bear in mind you will need some very large hangar bays if you want to be able to re-arm the box launchers of larger ships. The Soviets in my game have 30,000 ton ships with box launchers.

Steve

[Caplin]

Hi,
Just as a matter of clarification, the ground-based facilities you refer to are the ones we build on the industry tab of the economics window?
I rather like their ability to prevent maintenance failures without my having to worry about them currently.
Are you saying I'd have to dedicate a shipyard to producing them now?  
I'm just a bit unclear on the specifics is all.  I appreciate the current lack of micromanagement.
Thanks,
Zack.

[UnLimiTeD]

Now it's getting silly.
If maintenance is done purely by orbital "ships" now, I demand that it can happen without a planet or asteroid, and that ships outside combat can be shut down to never fail.
AND WHY do I have to build ships in huge honky yards, this is space, I demand a shipyard thats just an engine with a half dozen tractor beams and a bridge that holds the husk in space while shuttles bring the prefabbed components to automatically assemble it!

Oh well.

Yes, Zack, those are the ones.
Looks like in the future, we'll have to build them in yards.
However, it will make it easier/a terrible hassle, depending on tactics, to move them over to an other planet, towing is nice, but one by one?
What size are they?

[Beersatron]

Now it's getting silly.
If maintenance is done purely by orbital "ships" now, I demand that it can happen without a planet or asteroid, and that ships outside combat can be shut down to never fail.
AND WHY do I have to build ships in huge honky yards, this is space, I demand a shipyard thats just an engine with a half dozen tractor beams and a bridge that holds the husk in space while shuttles bring the prefabbed components to automatically assemble it!

Oh well.

Yes, Zack, those are the ones.
Looks like in the future, we'll have to build them in yards.
However, it will make it easier/a terrible hassle, depending on tactics, to move them over to an other planet, towing is nice, but one by one?
What size are they?

Maintenance uses minerals, and currently the minerals have to be on a planet that the Maintenance Facilities are either on (Maintenance Facilities created by Construction Factories and maintenance modules in a PDC) or orbiting (maintenance modules in an OWP or ship). If you want maintenance to be done 'in the void' then you will also have to carry the necessary minerals in order to fuel that maintenance.

I think it has been suggested before that why can we not use actual Maintenance Supplies for, well, maintenance - but I can not remember the counter argument.

What about the following?

Maintenance Facilities stay on the ground, when you enter orbit you have the option to 'Start Maintenance' or 'Stand Ready'.

'Start Maintenance' is like allowing R&R, some of the crew head ashore whilst the rest perform the daily chores of getting everything ship-shape from Planetary Stores instead of onboard stores. This isn't overhauling, it is just keeping the clock as-is. when you want to leave orbit you then have to take a time penalty that would be the crew returning.

'Stand Ready' is being in orbit but no R&R and no regular supply of Planetary Stores. The only time penalty would be the normal 'awaiting to acknowledge orders'. The clock continues to run.

Also, and this has been mentioned before I think, there should probably be a loading time delay built into Refuel, Resupply, Reload Ordnance, Drop off Team, Drop off Survivors ... etc

This would be improved apon by the base Cargo Handling level. You wouldn't fit cargo handlers to a warship, but the time delay calculation would take it into consideration.