Costs to Overhaul

[Theokrat (OP)]

Hi everyone,

what are the costs of overhauling ships? Is there a drawback in doing so more frequently?

[Garfunkel]

Depends on the modules on the ship. Small amounts of minerals, little money. It is best to overhaul as often as possible to avoid consumption of maintenance supplies. Preventative care is cheaper than repairing, after all.

[sloanjh]

IIRC, it goes like some multiple of the standard maintenance run rate (which you can see by looking at the minerals tab on the population (F2) screen.  Since overhaul unwinds the clock at 4x(?) rate (might be 5x), it would be natural for Steve to have chosen that as the minerals run rate multiplier too.

John

[Marthnn]

...  Since overhaul unwinds the clock at 4x(?) rate (might be 5x), ...

Overhaul rewinds the maintenance clock at 3x the unwinding rate, meaning 4 months in overhaul reduces the maintenance clock by 1 year. So a ship needs to spend 1/4th its time in overhaul (if it is away the rest of the time). As for the cost, I don't know but it's quite low.

[ollobrains]

U can also turn maintence off on the start game selection if u wish to avoid this part of game as it stands at the moment

[sloanjh]

Overhaul rewinds the maintenance clock at 3x the unwinding rate, meaning 4 months in overhaul reduces the maintenance clock by 1 year. So a ship needs to spend 1/4th its time in overhaul (if it is away the rest of the time). As for the cost, I don't know but it's quite low.

That's what it was - the clock is unwinding at 4x, while time marches on at 1x, for an overall unwind rate of 3x.  (It makes sense - really it does ).

Just noticed OP asked if there's a downside to overhauling more frequently.  The only one that I can think of would be that once the parts are scattered across the deck, it takes a fixed amount of time to get out of the overhaul state IIRC.  OTOH, if you overhaul frequently enough you'll usually be laid up for less than the "abort" time.  And since the breakage rate increases as the time-on-clock goes up, there's a strong advantage to overhauling every time you come back from a mission (as Garfunkel alluded to).  I just am in the habit of giving refuel/overhaul orders when returning to port - I think most people do the same.

The exception to the above is if you are in the middle of a war and have warships for which you can't afford the downtime, of course.  Eventually it will catch up to you, though.

John

[Nathan_]

Either the mineral cost, or a pressing need for said ships are the only two reasons not to overhaul a ship. And a ship at a world capable of overhauling is constantly maintained, at its present maintenance clock, in any event if you do need the ships to be ready for action.

[Theokrat (OP)]

Thank you everyone for the helpful comments. I had stumbled upon this old post by Steve: http://aurora2.pentarch.org/index.php/topic,468.0.html

Which seemed out of date, but it made me realize I had not understood the mechanics behind overhauling, in particular if there was a fixed cost to initiate an overhaul of something like 40% it would have been more beneficial to wait quite a while between overhauls.

Good to know that I can continue to send fleets into overhaul whenever possible :-)

[xeryon]

The major/minor overhaul is an obsolete feature.  After reading that you should pretty much disregard 100% of that thread as I don't think any of it is incorporated into the current version of Aurora being distributed.

[Garfunkel]

And since the breakage rate increases as the time-on-clock goes up, there's a strong advantage to overhauling every time you come back from a mission (as Garfunkel alluded to).  I just am in the habit of giving refuel/overhaul orders when returning to port - I think most people do the same.

The exception to the above is if you are in the middle of a war and have warships for which you can't afford the downtime, of course.  Eventually it will catch up to you, though.

John

Yeah, I do the exact same thing. Every time a fleet returns from TF training to refuel at Earth, they get overhauled at the same time. Survey group returns to Earth, same thing. And so on.

Though even with short overhaul periods, it's best to have at least 2 Fleets - so that while one is in overhaul, the other can respond to any emerging crisis.

[ZimRathbone]

I tend to have four major fleets (if possible) (the names here are descriptive of the roles - in game names are often quite different)

Home Fleet - Strategic reserve & guarding the capital.

Expeditionary Fleet - visiting the Aliens and instructing them in the finer points of civilization and Fusion Cooking.

Transit Fleet  - usually either on the way out to relieve the Expeditionary Fleet with newer/refitted ships, or on the way back with ships to be refitted/repaired, or in the home system being refitted/repaired.  Frequently this becomes a Maneuvering Reserve.

Training Fleet - as it says, pretty much constantly in the home system on training maneuvers, also provides an Emergency Reserve in case I need to send Homefleet out to respond to some outsystem issue.

Fleets tend to transition through the first three types, Training tends to be a permanent fixture, with the individual ships rotating in when first built (or after a very big repair or refit that drops the training level) and rotate out again once they reach 100% (or sometimes earlier if I really need the capability NOW)

[sloanjh]

Interesting - this is very similar to where I end up (with the possibility of multiple expeditionary/transit fleets).  You could also view it as the way that the USN manages their fleets - 1/3 forward deployed (expeditionary), 1/3 in refit (transit), and 1/3 working up (training +home).  I suspect the mechanics of refit force pretty much everyone into this mode, which can be viewed as a success of the aurora maintenance model, since it was intended to force players to be more "realistic" in their deployment pattterns.

John