Replacement for the Supply Conditional qol

[Tikigod (OP)]

Just a little thought, but the current 10/20% supply point conditionals seem pretty ineffectual for almost all practical uses and will typically miss the majority of situations it was designed for. So rather than fixed % conditionals how about scrapping them and having a "If supply points < max repair potential" conditional take their place?

[Dutchling]

This will work for ships with a short expected maintenance life, but a ship with a planned maintenance life of 10 years or so will definitely explode way before it can get home if you give it that order.

[Tikigod (OP)]

This will work for ships with a short expected maintenance life, but a ship with a planned maintenance life of 10 years or so will definitely explode way before it can get home if you give it that order.

How so?

Maintenance life has little to do with it, as it's simply a conditional that checks current supply points to the component that will cost the most to repair and if the supply points are less than that cost, triggers the conditional.

At the moment, the existing % value approach more consistently delivers what you outlined as ships will continue to follow existing orders as they slowly fall apart unable to do repairs to components that break as they keep telling themselves "Everything's fine, we're over 20% supplies" and by the time something smaller breaks that CAN be repaired to push it under 20% supplies, the engines, jump engines and all sorts are all already dead.

[Dutchling]

The bigger a ship and the higher its deployment time, the smaller a fraction of the total amount of MSP the Max Repair will become.

for smaller ships I can definitely see the issue you described though. Adding "or less than Max Repair" to both the current MSP conditions would solve that in a better way I think.

[Tikigod (OP)]

The bigger a ship and the higher its deployment time, the smaller a fraction of the total amount of MSP the Max Repair will become.

for smaller ships I can definitely see the issue you described though. Adding "or less than Max Repair" to both the current MSP conditions would solve that in a better way I think.

I get the theory of it, it's just from practical experience in Aurora even designing decade deployment time survey ships with 10.5-11 years maintenance life the 20% supply conditional always seems to fall short of triggering before the ship is unable to repair the largest component present (usually the engine or jumpdrive) and by the time anything smaller does break to trigger the 20% conditional, the ships already for all intents and purposes, dead.

Though I can perhaps see that if someone was to intentionally over engineer ships to have exaggerated maintenance life well beyond the scope of already high deployment lifes, then there may eventually be a point where the existing supply point % conditionals finally serve their purpose. As beyond that their only real use is for small combat ships with high AFR that have MSP so low they will likely drop below 20% at their first failure.

[skoormit]

As beyond that their only real use is for small combat ships with high AFR that have MSP so low they will likely drop below 20% at their first failure.

I don't find this to be true.
My current survey ships have 933 MSP and a max repair of 100.
I don't use these conditional orders, but if I did, the "MSP < 10%" condition would work well. It would let me start the voyage home before the ship would be at risk of becoming stranded by an engine failure.

[Tikigod (OP)]

As beyond that their only real use is for small combat ships with high AFR that have MSP so low they will likely drop below 20% at their first failure.

I don't find this to be true.
My current survey ships have 933 MSP and a max repair of 100.
I don't use these conditional orders, but if I did, the "MSP < 10%" condition would work well. It would let me start the voyage home before the ship would be at risk of becoming stranded by an engine failure.

Give it a actual try and see how it goes over a extended period of time.

[skoormit]

As beyond that their only real use is for small combat ships with high AFR that have MSP so low they will likely drop below 20% at their first failure.

I don't find this to be true.
My current survey ships have 933 MSP and a max repair of 100.
I don't use these conditional orders, but if I did, the "MSP < 10%" condition would work well. It would let me start the voyage home before the ship would be at risk of becoming stranded by an engine failure.

Give it a actual try and see how it goes over a extended period of time.

Why don't you instead explain your reasoning, rather than asking me to do an extended playtest of your theory?

[Tikigod (OP)]

As beyond that their only real use is for small combat ships with high AFR that have MSP so low they will likely drop below 20% at their first failure.

I don't find this to be true.
My current survey ships have 933 MSP and a max repair of 100.
I don't use these conditional orders, but if I did, the "MSP < 10%" condition would work well. It would let me start the voyage home before the ship would be at risk of becoming stranded by an engine failure.

Give it a actual try and see how it goes over a extended period of time.

Why don't you instead explain your reasoning, rather than asking me to do an extended playtest of your theory?

Not a theory, it's based on using the conditionals since VB straight through the entirety of C# (After Steve realised he forgot to code the behaviour and added them back in).

My suggestion to try it and see how it goes is because you're stipulating something works fine without issue whilst at the same time stating you do not use the behaviour. If you don't want to try it to see if your assumption is accurate that's fine.

But leaves things in a situation where I've tried various situations and always found the conditional to rarer trigger, whilst you haven't used the conditionals but state it would work fine and not cause failure situations if you ever were to do so, which isn't really conductive for discussing the subject from actual experiences with the behaviour.

[Jorgen_CAB]

I find the supply conditional order to be very inefficient at all to use for survey vessels as it is always more resource efficient to design the ship so they never need (or pretty much never) to go back because of supply issues at all.

I design the survey ship for a certain deployment and make sure the maintenance is about 50% above that... so a 4 year deployment gets a 6 year maintenance window. Using MSP for failure are way more expensive in the long run for ships that run 24/7 that investing in the engineering sections to reduce the use of MSP of failures.

If I used the 20% supply conditional that would work for me too as by the time that happens a survey ship will have enough MSP to get back home with no problem.

In my opinion a conditional that triggers of the MSP is below the max repair can be very dangerous (depending on the component with max repair) as you want the ship to head back before that point, otherwise you definitely can risk ending up stranded.

I would also like to know some example ships where the 10/20% rule don't work with. Some relatively short ranged ships I could see this being a problem with... but not on survey ships that generally have like 5-10 years maintenance cycles. Almost all such ship it is the Survey sensor that is expensive and the engines are never the problem. Could there be a problem sometimes, sure... but then again I never run my survey ships out of MSP before they head home for shore leave and overhauls.

I thin the order work just fine and could perhaps need some additional thresholds such as 10/20/30% perhaps.

[skoormit]

But leaves things in a situation where I've tried various situations and always found the conditional to rarer trigger, whilst you haven't used the conditionals but state it would work fine and not cause failure situations if you ever were to do so, which isn't really conductive for discussing the subject from actual experiences with the behaviour.

Those are fair points.

I don't use those conditionals for the same reasons that Jorgen_CAB listed.
My survey ships are over-engineered so that they cost less MSP in the long run.
Maintenance life of 11+ years, deployment time of 4 years.
And I return them for overhaul at or around the 4 year mark.
This means I have to put a lot of MSP on them (relatively) when they are built, but they rarely have any breakdowns in the field (AFR of 26%).

But if I wanted to keep them in the field longer to reduce time lost in transit, at the cost of using more MSP year over year, then I would much rather use the 20% MSP trigger than a trigger that waits until MSP is less than max repair cost. By the time MSP gets that low, the AFR is very high, and there is too much of a chance of running out of MSP on the return trip and being stranded.

[Tikigod (OP)]

I would also like to know some example ships where the 10/20% rule don't work with. Some relatively short ranged ships I could see this being a problem with... but not on survey ships that generally have like 5-10 years maintenance cycles. Almost all such ship it is the Survey sensor that is expensive and the engines are never the problem. Could there be a problem sometimes, sure... but then again I never run my survey ships out of MSP before they head home for shore leave and overhauls.

How many sensors are you putting on your ships? And at what stage of the game? As typically by mid-game I am using single Advanced geo/grav sensors on my survey ships which have a repair cost in the hundred or so tops, whilst the larger military Magnetic Confinement Drives or similar tech level engines the survey ships are using cost a thousand MSP each to repair. Doesn't help that the game seems to weigh maintenance failure rolls to favour rolling against the more expensive/complex component to simulate them being more prone to failure, though perhaps if a survey ship has a half dozen grav and geo sensors the engine might get rolled significantly less when dishing out failures.

It's only really real early game when I am still using Nuclear or Ion grade engine tech that the engines are relatively low maintenance cost similar to that of the sensors.

Don't really have a example of a longer main life survey ship from my current campaign outside of my initial Sol Only Improved-Nuclear engine design with a 8 year maint life life on a 4 year deployment schedule which was intentionally over-engineered on maintenance to ensure they could map out Sol quickly without any hassle as I was lagging a bit behind my intended schedule. My more recent survey designs in this campaign have had lower maint and deployment life as they were intended purely for short term mapping of neighbouring systems of a border colony, typically where maint life is about 6-12 months over deployment time.

I have surveying on hold at the moment whilst I focus on building up my 3 major populated colonies outside of Sol, once I am back on Aurora this evening I will throw together a typical survey design aimed at long maintenance life I tend to use that frequently finds the existing supply conditionals rarely (if ever) trigger.



Edit: Just as a side note, you mention you tend to add around 50% more maint life to your ships than the intended deployment time. That's sort of what I mean in my earlier post about over engineering designs to try delay hitting point where the conditional wouldn't usually work in the first place to the point that it's pushed so far back that the ship typically is forced for a overhaul that requires manual intervention and can just be told to resupply at the same time. It's certainly a work around for the short comings of the existing conditionals though and one I've used in the past before getting fed up with throwing around a thousand or more tonnage away on my designs just for the sake of bypassing lacking conditionals.

[Tikigod (OP)]

Design of my current shorter 3 year deployment life survey ship that I am using to poke around 2 systems out from my border colony. Have yet to have the 20% conditional trigger and typically unless I babysit them the Jump engine and/or engine will drop whilst the crew insist their supplies are sufficient to continue operation:

Horizon class Survey Ship      16,000 tons       396 Crew       3,047.1 BP       TCS 320    TH 3,200    EM 0
10000 km/s    JR 3-50      Armour 1-56       Shields 0-0       HTK 104      Sensors 234/162/3/3      DCR 28      PPV 0
Maint Life 4.15 Years     MSP 5,332    AFR 73%    IFR 1.0%    1YR 495    5YR 7,424    Max Repair 1280 MSP
Captain    Control Rating 1   BRG   
Intended Deployment Time: 36 months    Morale Check Required   

J16200(3-50) Military Jump Drive     Max Ship Size 16200 tons    Distance 50k km     Squadron Size 3

3200EP M-MCF 8k 0.057L (1)    Power 3200    Fuel Use 5.72%    Signature 3200    Explosion 8%
Fuel Capacity 1,882,000 Litres    Range 369.9 billion km (428 days at full power)

TMS18 1k(120.9M) 650T (1)     Sensitivity 234     Detect Sig Strength 1000:  120.9m km
EMS18 1k(100M) 450T (1)     Sensitivity 162     Detect Sig Strength 1000:  100.6m km
Advanced Gravitational Sensors (1)   3 Survey Points Per Hour
Advanced Geological Sensors (1)   3 Survey Points Per Hour

This design is classed as a Military Vessel for maintenance purposes

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Put together longer 10 year deployment time survey design that loses speed with the intention being largely to cut down max repair to push longer maint life more than anything else, not put it out on the field yet but it's pretty typical of what I'd usually use (except slightly slower, I'd normally have a slightly larger engine and EP output with 2 or so less months of maint life in terms of MSP) and find that the resupply conditional rarely triggers and the ship finds itself with dead engine or jumpdrive and stranded before the 20% conditional has brought it back to resupply.

Voyager X class Survey Ship      16,000 tons       383 Crew       2,548.4 BP       TCS 320    TH 1,998    EM 0
6242 km/s    JR 3-50      Armour 1-56       Shields 0-0       HTK 105      Sensors 40/162/3/3      DCR 39      PPV 0
Maint Life 11.42 Years     MSP 10,282    AFR 53%    IFR 0.7%    1YR 145    5YR 2,170    Max Repair 848.9375 MSP
Captain    Control Rating 1   BRG   
Intended Deployment Time: 120 months    Morale Check Required   

J16200(3-50) Military Jump Drive     Max Ship Size 16200 tons    Distance 50k km     Squadron Size 3

1997EP M-MCF 4.7k 0.087L (1)    Power 1997.5    Fuel Use 8.69%    Signature 1997.50    Explosion 8%
Fuel Capacity 4,040,000 Litres    Range 523 billion km (969 days at full power)

TMS18 1k(50.3M) 113T (1)     Sensitivity 40.50     Detect Sig Strength 1000:  50.3m km
EMS18 1k(100M) 450T (1)     Sensitivity 162     Detect Sig Strength 1000:  100.6m km
Advanced Gravitational Sensors (1)   3 Survey Points Per Hour
Advanced Geological Sensors (1)   3 Survey Points Per Hour

This design is classed as a Military Vessel for maintenance purposes




Edit: This discussion has caused me to think more about some long standing design habits I've had since VB and I picked up I am mostly always favouring engineering modules over maintenance storage as the former always seemed more efficient to me in that they reduced the need for frequent MSP consumption over just stacking on more MSP to be consumed more frequently.

Toying around with variations of the Voyager X design above and noticing that in terms of tonnage investment, maintenance storage can push maint life significant more for less tonnage investment which certainly helps me see better why the trend of the posts here are favouring stacking up MSP and maint life and not even touching the conditionals at all and accounts for entirely different experiences with the whole thing and why the 'MSP < Max Repair' conditional certainly wouldn't really help any in that case and if anything would just make it worse. May definitely be a change in approach I adopt as well now, though is still more a bypass for the lacking functionality of the conditionals but certainly one I am likely to adopt as well.

[kenlon]

Maint Life 4.15 Years     MSP 5,332    AFR 73%    IFR 1.0%    1YR 495    5YR 7,424    Max Repair 1280 MSP

Right there, in black and white, is the reason the 20% MSP order "doesn't work" for you. Your max repair of 1280 is 24% of your total MSP. Therefore, your ship will not come back to resupply before it hits the possibility of bring unable to maintain itself. I recommend you add "sanity check max repair vs MSP" to your mental checklist when designing a ship.

[Jorgen_CAB]

Maint Life 4.15 Years     MSP 5,332    AFR 73%    IFR 1.0%    1YR 495    5YR 7,424    Max Repair 1280 MSP

Right there, in black and white, is the reason the 20% MSP order "doesn't work" for you. Your max repair of 1280 is 24% of your total MSP. Therefore, your ship will not come back to resupply before it hits the possibility of bring unable to maintain itself. I recommend you add "sanity check max repair vs MSP" to your mental checklist when designing a ship.

I agree.. there is no reason to build a survey ship with engines that expensive, that makes zero sense to me. It has very strange deployment versus maintenance and general range capabilities.

You would need to put allot more engineering sections on this ship to make it a decent survey ship and it is way to expensive for that job in my opinion.

This is something a bit more streamlined for a survey period of about four years. You will never find a ship like that needing to ever get more supplies before the four years are up unless you are really unlucky.

Code: [Select]

Discovery class Exploration Ship      9,000 tons       221 Crew       1,048.8 BP       TCS 180    TH 675    EM 0
3750 km/s    JR 3-50      Armour 1-38       Shields 0-0       HTK 57      Sensors 33/33/4/0      DCR 13      PPV 0
Maint Life 7.55 Years     MSP 990    AFR 48%    IFR 0.7%    1YR 31    5YR 459    Max Repair 150 MSP
Commander    Control Rating 1   BRG   
Intended Deployment Time: 48 months    Morale Check Required   

J9000(3-50) Military Jump Drive     Max Ship Size 9000 tons    Distance 50k km     Squadron Size 3

Naval Ion Drive  1500/60 (3)    Power 675.0    Fuel Use 9.66%    Signature 225.00    Explosion 6%
Fuel Capacity 504,000 Litres    Range 104.3 billion km (322 days at full power)

EM Sensor Type-3  Mk-III  (1)     Sensitivity 33.00     Detect Sig Strength 1000:  45.4m km
Thermal Sensor Type-3  Mk-III (1)     Sensitivity 33.00     Detect Sig Strength 1000:  45.4m km
Improved Gravitational Sensors (2)   4 Survey Points Per Hour
You also could skip on the jump drive to streamline them even more, but that require more manual work for the actual ordering of your survey efforts. You also could make bigger engines and go with two instead of three or even reduce the power multiplier somewhat to reduce the amount of fuel it require, but that is smaller stuff and it depends on what you have to work with.