Long-deployment ships don't feel overpowered for their main non-gamey use at the moment, so that suggestion isn't without its problems.
Excessive engineering, hangars for everything, offloading engines to commercial tugboats, a few others that escape me at the moment...
there are multiple ways to decrease the maintenance burden and increased number of civilian components will add some more. At the moment, they fall under "interesting option, probably not for general use" rather than "favoured over conventional ships".
Do we really want to cripple them all "because you're supposed to play the game in a specific way, dammit!" ?
Did I ever claim the clock mechanic changed?
Fomerly, the value of maintenance facilities was to keep the clock down, MSPs themselves were cheap. The value of MSPs has increased greatly, and ships consume most of their MSP towards the end of their maintenance life, so now it's a terrible idea to actually use your full maintenance life.
At best, we're now incentivised to have our maintenance life be multiple times our deployment time. At worst, we're incentivised to ignore/break/play around the entire maintenance system because maintaining things became a lot more expensive.
The goal may well be to reduce micro and add realism... but that will only happen if players stick to old habits even though they're now horrifically inefficient.
MSP are the same cost as before. Maintenance works the same way as before (except you can now have maintenance facilities in deep space). Ships use about 25% more MSP for maintenance and overhauls, plus they need to load their MSP at launch in the same way as fuel. However, unlike in v7.2, they can use their onboard MSP for maintenance if the naval base at which they are stationed runs out of supplies. None of these factors is influencing how I build my warships in my current campaign.
So far in my current campaign I have found that maintenance is more important than before and I am more aware of it, but that managing it is much easier. For a couple of nations I have built fighter-size maintenance vessels that can shuttle MSP around bases (because SY were tied up and couldn't build supply ships). Tankers are becoming replenishment ships with both fuel and supplies. Forward bases are easier because you only have to worry about shipping in maintenance facilities and supplies. Ensuring MSP for the future is much more important. I am finding that maintenance facilities should be building MSP by default (treat them like fuel refineries) and occasionally supported by construction factories if a lot of ships are being overhauled at once.
With maintenance logistics becoming much important and with more options in terms of commercial support, I have started building more specialised support ships. Here are two classes currently under construction by the Commonwealth, one to support survey ships and one to support warships, plus one of the fighter-sized ships I mentioned.
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Amethyst class Survey Support 36,000 tons 172 Crew 1346 BP TCS 720 TH 1440 EM 0
2000 km/s JR 2-25(C) Armour 2-97 Shields 0-0 Sensors 1/11/0/0 Damage Control Rating 1 PPV 0
MSP 5023 Max Repair 37 MSP
Intended Deployment Time: 3 months Spare Berths 1
Magazine 200 Cryogenic Berths 400
JC36K Commercial Jump Drive Max Ship Size 36000 tons Distance 25k km Squadron Size 2
Rolls Royce HE-240 Commercial Magneto-plasma Drive (6) Power 240 Fuel Use 1.48% Signature 240 Exp 3%
Fuel Capacity 8,250,000 Litres Range 2787.2 billion km (16129 days at full power)
CIWS-160 (2x6) Range 1000 km TS: 16000 km/s ROF 5 Base 50% To Hit
Ryan Techsystems RTN-25 Navigation Sensor (1) GPS 2520 Range 25.3m km Resolution 120
EM-11 Passive Detection Sensor (1) Sensitivity 11 Detect Sig Strength 1000: 11m km
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Reliant class Replenishment Ship 37,200 tons 256 Crew 2007 BP TCS 744 TH 2400 EM 0
3225 km/s Armour 1-99 Shields 0-0 Sensors 1/8/0/0 Damage Control Rating 1 PPV 0
MSP 6034 Max Repair 100 MSP
Intended Deployment Time: 3 months Spare Berths 0
Magazine 1600
Rolls Royce Commercial Magneto-plasma Drive (6) Power 400 Fuel Use 5.3% Signature 400 Exp 5%
Fuel Capacity 10,000,000 Litres Range 912.7 billion km (3275 days at full power)
Perseus Anti-ship Missile (400) Speed: 32,000 km/s End: 65.3m Range: 125.3m km WH: 6 Size: 4 TH: 106/64/32
Navigation Sensor (1) GPS 1920 Range 10.5m km Resolution 120
EM-8 Passive Detection Sensor (1) Sensitivity 8 Detect Sig Strength 1000: 8m km
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Phoebe class Maintenance Vessel 435 tons 4 Crew 48 BP TCS 8.7 TH 32 EM 0
3678 km/s Armour 1-5 Shields 0-0 Sensors 1/1/0/0 Damage Control Rating 0 PPV 0
Maint Life 17.48 Years MSP 1000 AFR 87% IFR 1.2% 1YR 6 5YR 93 Max Repair 10 MSP
Intended Deployment Time: 3 months Spare Berths 2
Shuttle Engine (2) Power 16 Fuel Use 59.4% Signature 16 Exp 10%
Fuel Capacity 50,000 Litres Range 34.8 billion km (109 days at full power)
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