Questions Not Worth Their Own Thread: C# Edition

[Borealis4x]

So for exploration purposes, I'm guessing that a single ship with both survey sensors is would have farther range and endurance than a carrier of similar size using light survey craft, right?

[kilo]

So for exploration purposes, I'm guessing that a single ship with both survey sensors is would have farther range and endurance than a carrier of similar size using light survey craft, right?

I think that carriers are not very useful when it comes to survey parasites. Survey ships need a long deployment time and good fuel efficiency on their own and carriers are generally used for craft, which are bad at either of the two. If you need to restock the survey ships you can either do it at a colony or use a support ship in emergencies.

[Steve Walmsley]

I'm using survey parasites at the moment, although its a BSG campaign so from an RP perspective it seemed the way to go. Here is my current jump-capable FAC-sized survey craft at Ion tech level. The carrier has three each of the geo and grav variants, a 1000-ton tanker and fifteen 300-ton fighters.

Raptor-RC class Gravitational Survey Craft      1,000 tons       23 Crew       162.7 BP       TCS 20    TH 56    EM 0
2801 km/s    JR 1-50      Armour 1-8       Shields 0-0       HTK 7      Sensors 0/0/1/0      DCR 0      PPV 0
Maint Life 2.93 Years     MSP 50    AFR 32%    IFR 0.4%    1YR 9    5YR 129    Max Repair 100 MSP
Captain    Control Rating 1   
Intended Deployment Time: 22 months    Morale Check Required   

Apollo-10B Military Jump Drive     Max Ship Size 1020.0 tons    Distance 50k km     Squadron Size 1

Zeus Drive Systems ZDS-56E Ion Drive (1)    Power 56    Fuel Use 30.75%    Signature 56    Explosion 7%
Fuel Capacity 125,000 Litres    Range 73.2 billion km (302 days at full power)

Artemis-2M Missile Detection Sensor (1)     GPS 3     Range 2.1m km    MCR 192.7k km    Resolution 1
Gravitational Survey Sensors (1)   1 Survey Points Per Hour

[Borealis4x]

So for exploration purposes, I'm guessing that a single ship with both survey sensors is would have farther range and endurance than a carrier of similar size using light survey craft, right?

I think that carriers are not very useful when it comes to survey parasites. Survey ships need a long deployment time and good fuel efficiency on their own and carriers are generally used for craft, which are bad at either of the two. If you need to restock the survey ships you can either do it at a colony or use a support ship in emergencies.

I dunno, I think they're pretty useful when you have a lot of bodies to survey.

Think what I'm gonna do is have a jump-capable exploration mothership with geo sensors and capacity for a ground survey team that will carry 2-4 smaller grav survey vessels. The mothership will stick to only surveying the larger bodies and plopping down ground survey teams as needed while the light craft do the grav survey sights of which there tend to be a lot.

[Droll]

So for exploration purposes, I'm guessing that a single ship with both survey sensors is would have farther range and endurance than a carrier of similar size using light survey craft, right?

I think that carriers are not very useful when it comes to survey parasites. Survey ships need a long deployment time and good fuel efficiency on their own and carriers are generally used for craft, which are bad at either of the two. If you need to restock the survey ships you can either do it at a colony or use a support ship in emergencies.

I dunno, I think they're pretty useful when you have a lot of bodies to survey.

Think what I'm gonna do is have a jump-capable exploration mothership with geo sensors and capacity for a ground survey team that will carry 2-4 smaller grav survey vessels. The mothership will stick to only surveying the larger bodies and plopping down ground survey teams as needed while the light craft do the grav survey sights of which there tend to be a lot.

Main problem is micro, I used survey carriers in VB6 as it was quite easy through the old naval org window to launch all the surveyors and have them fan out to their survey locations. They would even return to the carrier automatically once done. Maybe I've missed something but I haven't been able to automate survey parasites to that degree in C#.

[nuclearslurpee]

I tend to think that for dedicated survey work, the traditional GEV/GSV are more efficient. They are also much easier to automate with the current set of standing orders, not a trivial consideration for large empires.

The trouble with carriers is that they are never as efficient for a single task as dedicated ships in terms of pure tonnage or cost, because the need to carry your parasites in a carrier tends to add a lot of overhead. Even for a pretty minimal carrier, you usually will need at least a ton in non-hangar bay components (engines, fuel, jump drives, C&C, armor, sensors, ...) per ton of hangar capacity, on top of the fact that your parasites are going to be roughly 50% mission payload and 50% propulsion section. Add to this that parasites tend to demand more fuel due to inefficiency of smaller engines which can be another concern.

Carriers are really about strategic advantages and flexibility, though. A properly-designed survey mothership can remain on-mission functionally indefinitely, only requiring occasional resupply missions to top up on fuel, MSP, and sensor buoys if you use those. Further, a survey carrier can in a pinch be retasked to second-line combat or security missions just by swapping out the survey parasites for a wing of fighters, which is not a capability any dedicated ship type can give you.

Main problem is micro, I used survey carriers in VB6 as it was quite easy through the old naval org window to launch all the surveyors and have them fan out to their survey locations. They would even return to the carrier automatically once done. Maybe I've missed something but I haven't been able to automate survey parasites to that degree in C#.

Seconded. There is also the bug where survey ships designated as formation escorts will return to their mothership when following survey standing orders.

[Borealis4x]

So for exploration purposes, I'm guessing that a single ship with both survey sensors is would have farther range and endurance than a carrier of similar size using light survey craft, right?

I think that carriers are not very useful when it comes to survey parasites. Survey ships need a long deployment time and good fuel efficiency on their own and carriers are generally used for craft, which are bad at either of the two. If you need to restock the survey ships you can either do it at a colony or use a support ship in emergencies.

I dunno, I think they're pretty useful when you have a lot of bodies to survey.

Think what I'm gonna do is have a jump-capable exploration mothership with geo sensors and capacity for a ground survey team that will carry 2-4 smaller grav survey vessels. The mothership will stick to only surveying the larger bodies and plopping down ground survey teams as needed while the light craft do the grav survey sights of which there tend to be a lot.

Main problem is micro, I used survey carriers in VB6 as it was quite easy through the old naval org window to launch all the surveyors and have them fan out to their survey locations. They would even return to the carrier automatically once done. Maybe I've missed something but I haven't been able to automate survey parasites to that degree in C#.

Its a bit annoying, but its probably a good thing it makes you pay attention to your expeditions rather than setting them and forgetting them until they run into a missile.

I just really like the feeling of having an exploration mothership with a bunch of amenities sending out smaller, independent survey teams on dedicated ships to scout out a new solar system.

I just wish you could put the detached craft into a proper hierarchy with the mothership so they benefit from the officers onboard it. Its really strange how the ideal officer to lead an exploration mission are Fighter Operations spec'd instead of Survey since th mothership itself doesn't have an survey sensors on it. Makes O6 level jobs for my Survey Officer Corps scarce when they should have some of the most prestigious jobs available...

[nuclearslurpee]

I just wish you could put the detached craft into a proper hierarchy with the mothership so they benefit from the officers onboard it. Its really strange how the ideal officer to lead an exploration mission are Fighter Operations spec'd instead of Survey since th mothership itself doesn't have an survey sensors on it. Makes O6 level jobs for my Survey Officer Corps scarce when they should have some of the most prestigious jobs available...

IMO this is another argument in favor of reworking Flag Bridges to function like portable Naval HQs with single-system radius of control, instead of the current implementation which is just +Reaction for a single fleet.

[Borealis4x]

I just wish you could put the detached craft into a proper hierarchy with the mothership so they benefit from the officers onboard it. Its really strange how the ideal officer to lead an exploration mission are Fighter Operations spec'd instead of Survey since th mothership itself doesn't have an survey sensors on it. Makes O6 level jobs for my Survey Officer Corps scarce when they should have some of the most prestigious jobs available...

IMO this is another argument in favor of reworking Flag Bridges to function like portable Naval HQs with single-system radius of control, instead of the current implementation which is just +Reaction for a single fleet.

Yeah, I think by default flag bridges should at least be able to confer bonuses to ships in the local system provided they fall under their hierarchy.

Anyways, I see the term 'parasite' thrown around a lot. Is that just any ship that docks with a larger ship in a hangar or is it something different?

[Garfunkel]

Anyways, I see the term 'parasite' thrown around a lot. Is that just any ship that docks with a larger ship in a hangar?

Yes, exactly that.

[Droll]

I just wish you could put the detached craft into a proper hierarchy with the mothership so they benefit from the officers onboard it. Its really strange how the ideal officer to lead an exploration mission are Fighter Operations spec'd instead of Survey since th mothership itself doesn't have an survey sensors on it. Makes O6 level jobs for my Survey Officer Corps scarce when they should have some of the most prestigious jobs available...

IMO this is another argument in favor of reworking Flag Bridges to function like portable Naval HQs with single-system radius of control, instead of the current implementation which is just +Reaction for a single fleet.

This could stand to work particularly well with the new squadron mechanics coming in 2.0

[boolybooly]

Can someone explain why ground based geosurvey is taking years?

I made a survey team formation with five medium vehicles with geosurvey in both slots and an infantry powered armor HQ, enough to generate 1 point for 1100 tons.

I found a "good" M4 site on Alpha Centauri A-I  (1400 survey points) and made a colony and plunked two formations down. Image shows them in residence making GEO 1 each total 2.

Why is it after about 5 years the survey has not completed?

I calculate that if the points are generated hourly as one source suggested, it should take a month but if they are generated per construction cycle (5 days) then it would be 9.59 years.

Is it that or is it because I did not assign officers?

Advice please!

[nuclearslurpee]

Can someone explain why ground based geosurvey is taking years?

I made a survey team formation with five medium vehicles with geosurvey in both slots and an infantry powered armor HQ, enough to generate 1 point for 1100 tons.

I found a "good" M4 site on Alpha Centauri A-I  (1400 survey points) and made a colony and plunked two formations down. Image shows them in residence making GEO 1 each total 2.

Why is it after about 5 years the survey has not completed?

I calculate that if the points are generated hourly as one source suggested, it should take a month but if they are generated per construction cycle (5 days) then it would be 9.59 years.

Is it that or is it because I did not assign officers?

Advice please!

The formation is much too small. With only 5x GEO vehicles you will take forever to generate enough survey points (I believe it is per day - see Steve post here - but it may have been changed to be per 5-day cycle and not documented, I'm not sure).

In my current 1.13 campaign I have 25,000-ton GEO formations, and ground surveys often complete in a single 5-day construction cycle, never taking more than a few cycles. This is nice as only a few formations + small transports can easily keep up with my survey fleet.

[boolybooly]

Can someone explain why ground based geosurvey is taking years?

I made a survey team formation with five medium vehicles with geosurvey in both slots and an infantry powered armor HQ, enough to generate 1 point for 1100 tons.

I found a "good" M4 site on Alpha Centauri A-I  (1400 survey points) and made a colony and plunked two formations down. Image shows them in residence making GEO 1 each total 2.

Why is it after about 5 years the survey has not completed?

I calculate that if the points are generated hourly as one source suggested, it should take a month but if they are generated per construction cycle (5 days) then it would be 9.59 years.

Is it that or is it because I did not assign officers?

Advice please!

The formation is much too small. With only 5x GEO vehicles you will take forever to generate enough survey points (I believe it is per day - see Steve post here - but it may have been changed to be per 5-day cycle and not documented, I'm not sure).

In my current 1.13 campaign I have 25,000-ton GEO formations, and ground surveys often complete in a single 5-day construction cycle, never taking more than a few cycles. This is nice as only a few formations + small transports can easily keep up with my survey fleet.

Thanks for your reply, it got me thinking. Something about this does not add up.

I was wrong about my good site, it is of course M3 not M4.

I dug out the drop off date for my GEO formations from the transport history in my backed up saves, my formations unloaded on 22 August 0046 and are still surveying 18 Feb 0050, that makes 3 years 6 months or approx 1272 days.

Your formation is approx 11x bigger than my combined formations generating about 22 points probably? Just focussing on the math, assuming one formation, if yours complete in 5 days and most survey planets are about 400 - 1400 points, that would mean points must be accruing more than once every construction cycle (CC). Alternatively you might be using more than one formation or possibly underestimating completion times which could be in the order of 90 days or three 30 day cycles for a size 400 survey for a 22 point formation if points accrue per CC.

If you allow a month for a big 1400 survey for your formation, mine would take one year, not three and a half. If you do calcs assuming points arrive per CC then yours would actually take 319 days to do a 1400 planet, is that possible and you just didnt notice time flying? Mine would take 3500 days. If yours really do take only a few CC then maybe there is something in the mechanics which penalises small formations or there is something else I have missed which I need to do.

Wish I knew the underlying mechanics. I was comparing them to ship scanners, whereby I assumed that if a scanner generating 2 points can survey a planet in a few days then the same will apply to a ground formation making two points. It would seem not.

Luckily my latest generation of jump tugs has 35kt troop pods so its back to the drawing board, will be needing a new HQ! 

[cdrtwohy]

your formation generates 1 point every day meaning it needs 1400 days to survey or 3 years and 10 months.

AS far as i know multiple survey teams don't stack so you are wasting one of you teams as they do nothing for you