Considering Change to Maintenance Facilities

[ChildServices]

Build points is better than raw tonnage.

[QuakeIV]

Yeah that seems a lot more reasonable, I think that would be better too.

[bean]

I'd go with some combination of both.  Some of the work needed is just a function of how much ship there is to tear protective covers off of, while other bits are going to be set by how much electronic equipment there is to rehab.  That said, the range of possible values needs to be set carefully, so you don't get FACs reactivating in 3 days or battleships that take 3 years. 
Another issue that needs to be dealt with is how a ship that gets pulled out of mothballs and straight into a major refit gets treated.  Do they have to be done separately, or can they be combined?  If they're combined, how does the math work?  Some of the refit will help demothballing, but not all of it.
Also, should pulling ships out of mothballs take shipyard slots?  It wouldn't be unrealistic if that was the case.

[ty55101]

Build points is better than raw tonnage.

Well Build points affects the minerals needed to keep up maintenance on a ship. So this is already taken into account when constructing parts.

[ty55101]

I like this idea, but only if maintenance facilities are slightly cheaper both in BP and personnel, since now I imagine I'll need to build more of them. Maybe military slipways that aren't presently building anything could count towards maintenance limit in a less efficient capacity?

Overall I think this is a great idea, especially if it makes the maintenance facility component for ships more useful.

You don't need to build more since each one will be able to hold tonnage, so you would have to build less at far off bases but more at your capital. So really it all evens out.

And Steve. I would only have each facility worth 1000 tons, nothing more.

[ChildServices]

Well Build points affects the minerals needed to keep up maintenance on a ship. So this is already taken into account when constructing parts.

I have no idea what you think I was replying to.

[MarcAFK]

I had another idea, it takes time to prepare a ship for reduced maintenence, and obviously it takes time to get it prepared for service again, also the ship does still decay somewhat despite the best efforts.
What if there was 2 methods of reducing maintenence the first puts the ship into reserve which to start takes 25% of the ships full overhaul time and costs half of that,the ship also gets overhauled in the process but also at only half the rate. If the ship has 0 years on the clock then the minimum time for this process should be 10% of the ships full maintenence life or something.
While in reserve the ships clock continues at 25% normal rate and still costs 25% normal maintenence. While in reserve ships systems can be damaged and repairs take MSP, but no explosions can occur from damage. (No fuel or ammo on board, reactor is powered down etc).
Reactivation merely overhauls the ship by 25% at normal cost, there should be a minimum 5-10% or something. This mode would allow you to keep a reserve fleet 4 times larger that's easy to use in a short time, but if the ships are sitting for a long time obviously they will take longer to reactivate and cost more too.
The second mode puts a ship into an inactive status which basically means defuelling and abandoning it, it costs no maintenence but decays at 25% normal, damaged systems don't cause explosions and in addition they aren't automatically repaired so after a long time you'll end up with a severely damaged hulk that has to be towed to a shipyard and repaired.
But since inactive ships cost no maintenence you can have a massive yard of them. Reactivation  of hulks is expensive and time consuming but still faster and cheaper than building new ships.

[bean]

I had another idea, it takes time to prepare a ship for reduced maintenence, and obviously it takes time to get it prepared for service again, also the ship does still decay somewhat despite the best efforts.
What if there was 2 methods of reducing maintenence the first puts the ship into reserve which to start takes 25% of the ships full overhaul time and costs half of that,the ship also gets overhauled in the process but also at only half the rate. If the ship has 0 years on the clock then the minimum time for this process should be 10% of the ships full maintenence life or something.
While in reserve the ships clock continues at 25% normal rate and still costs 25% normal maintenence. While in reserve ships systems can be damaged and repairs take MSP, but no explosions can occur from damage. (No fuel or ammo on board, reactor is powered down etc).
Reactivation merely overhauls the ship by 25% at normal cost, there should be a minimum 5-10% or something. This mode would allow you to keep a reserve fleet 4 times larger that's easy to use in a short time, but if the ships are sitting for a long time obviously they will take longer to reactivate and cost more too.
The second mode puts a ship into an inactive status which basically means defuelling and abandoning it, it costs no maintenence but decays at 25% normal, damaged systems don't cause explosions and in addition they aren't automatically repaired so after a long time you'll end up with a severely damaged hulk that has to be towed to a shipyard and repaired.
But since inactive ships cost no maintenence you can have a massive yard of them. Reactivation  of hulks is expensive and time consuming but still faster and cheaper than building new ships.

The first suggestion doesn't result in 25% of normal cost, but 50% if you take them out and overhaul, which is a bit high.  (25% of normal cost in terms of supplies while in orbit and 25% from the overhaul.  The current/proposed math actually means that operating ships and overhauling costs exactly the same as leaving them parked on orbit.)

[MarcAFK]

Then my maths are terrible, but in theory is it a good idea to have a reduced cost option, and a free option where the ship falls apart quickly?

[bean]

Then my maths are terrible, but in theory is it a good idea to have a reduced cost option, and a free option where the ship falls apart quickly?

Sure.  With wet ships, that's not really an option, as they fall apart too fast.  (I work on a museum ship.  We spend a lot of effort on that.)  But in space, there isn't much to cause that sort of damage.

[83athom]

But in space, there isn't much to cause that sort of damage.

Micrometeorites, other debris,the ship constantly having pressure pushing outward, wear on parts, stress from other sources (gravity, magnetic, etc), and a bunch of other stuff.

[bean]

Micrometeorites, other debris,the ship constantly having pressure pushing outward, wear on parts, stress from other sources (gravity, magnetic, etc), and a bunch of other stuff.

Small impacts are not even remotely going to cause a problem.  These ships have armor capable of withstanding nearby nuclear weapons.  Micrometeorites aren't going to do more than scratch the paint. 
Pressurization stress isn't a problem.  It's a constant load, and constant loads within design tolerances are basically negligible from a lifespan point of view for anything.  What kills airplanes is fatigue from cycling.  Ships with 30-ft draft have similar pressure loads on their keel plates, and they don't have any issues at all from this, even when they're 70 years old. 
Wear on parts won't happen because the ship is basically abandoned.  There will be some degradation, but it will be relatively slow compared to what would happen if you parked a ship without maintenance.
The other sources of stress are totally negligible.  Gravity and magnetic effects are of interest to the attitude control people, not to structures, unless you're doing something really wacky.  (This isn't really wacky.)  And I can't think of anything other than radiation which falls into the 'bunch of other stuff', and that's probably a big component to the slow rate I see happening.
Space is not a nice environment, but spacecraft are designed to deal with it passively, as opposed to ships, which generally take quite a bit of work to keep in good shape.  Turning the spacecraft off is only going to reduce the amount of work needed.

[QuakeIV]

It would probably help a lot if you purged the atmosphere out of the ship, so your internal components dont slowly oxidize (and/or have stuff growing in them).

e: fixed terrible grammar

[bean]

It would probably help a lot if you purged the atmosphere out of the ship, so your components internal didn't slowly oxidize (and/or have stuff growing in them).

It depends on how you design the ship.  If you designed everything do deal with extended exposure to vacuum, then that would be the best way of doing preservation.  If you didn't (and doing design for vacuum is not always easy), then just fill the ship with nitrogen.  Or at very least, set the humidity to 0, which helps a lot in preserving things.  (That's one of the main features of naval mothballing.  We still have a lot of the equipment onboard.)

[QuakeIV]

That would probably be better actually, yeah.  Also if you did that, then all the maintenance people would need is a respirator to give them oxygen rather than a full space suit.