Additional Commercial Changes and Maintenance Simplification

[Steve Walmsley (OP)]

As a result of the ongoing size changes to commercial vessels for v4.1, I have decided to simplify the overall maintenance situation. At the moment (in v4.0) there are 'freighters', 'non-combatants' and 'warships'. Freighters can use Commercial Freight Facilities to instantly reset their clock while non-combatants can conduct faster overhauls than warships. Already in v4.1, Commercial Freight Facilities have been removed and freighters, which currently includes Cargo Ships, Colony Ships and Jump Gate Construction Ships, do not require maintenance as long as they have at least one engineering spaces.

To make this more straightforward and remove some of the more tedious maintenance requirements that do not have a significant effect on game play I have decided to change the maintenance categories to just two types; Commercial Vessels and Military Vessels. Commercial Vessels will not require maintenance as long as they have at least one engineering spaces and can be built in any type of shipyard. Military Vessels will use the same maintenance system as warships do now and can only be built in military shipyards. In addition, the warship rate of clock rewind during overhaul will be increased from 3x real time to 4x real time and the existing non-combatant rate of overhaul (8x real time) will be removed. As most of the non-combatants will be moving into the Commercial Vessel category, the impact of this will only be felt by unarmed survey ships and military-engined support ships.

At the moment, the v4.0 definition of a 'freighter' is based on having five or more cargo holds or at least two cryo transport modules and not having any of the non-freighter systems. In v4.1 the definition will be simpler. Any ship that uses only tech systems from the Commercial list will be classed as a Commercial Vessel. Any ship that uses one or more Military tech systems will be classed as a Military Vessel

Commercial Tech Systems
Active and passive sensors of 1 HS or less
Armour (including thickness > 1 because a commercial vessel may be intended to  operate within a nebula)
Bridge
Cargo Handling Systems
Cargo Holds
Commercial Engines
Crew Quarters
Cryogenic Transport Modules
Engineering Spaces (only one is necessary but more could be mounted for repairs)
Fuel Storage (even a LOT of fuel storage as engine type will determine the military usefulness of a tanker)
Geological Survey Instruments
Jump Drives
Jump Gate Construction Module
Mining Modules
Salvage Modules
Sorium Harvesters
Terraforming Modules
Tractor Beams

Military Tech Systems
Active sensors larger than 1 HS.
Beam Weapons
Cloak
Damage Control
ECM / ECCM
Fast Attack Engine
Fighter Engine
Fire Controls
Flag Bridge
Gravitational Survey Instruments
Hangar Bays
Magazine
Maintenance Module
Maintenance Storage Bay
Military Engine
Missile Launchers
Passive Sensors larger than 1 HS
Reactors
Shields
Troop Transport Modules

As many important systems are moving into the Commercial Vessel category from the non-combatant category, I have decided to make the significant increase in the size of cargo holds, construction modules and cryogenic transport modules common to all the major commercial modules (such as Terraforming Modules, Sorium Harvesters, etc.). This will effectively restrict many commercial vessels to jump gates while removing maintenance failures and their requirement for overhauls. In other words, the existing restrictions on their deployment are being replaced by different restrictions that involve far less micromanagement. Maintenance concerns will now be confined to warships, deep space exploration vessels and military-oriented support vessels, which is really where the vast majority of such concerns would arise anyway. Below, I will cover each of the major commercial modules in detail

Fuel Harvesters
Each mine, automated mine or fuel refinery requires 5 cargo holds to transport while presumably disassembled, which is 500 HS. a Sorium Harvester performs the same functions as both so that would require 1000 HS. However, assuming a significant reduction in the mining requirement to deal with just Sorium and assuming conversion of gaseous Sorium to fuel is much easier than mined Sorium, I am going to use 100 HS for the harvester module (currently 10 HS). As I am always going to extend the 'no maintenance' provision to Fuel Harvesters, I will increase their cost from 40 to 60

Below is a comparison between old and new fuel harvester designs from the Commonwealth campaign. The cost of the modules has increased but the maintenance requirement has been reduced massively. However, as with the other large commercial vessels, this is going to need a jump gate so that reduces its flexibility.

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Jovian-old class Fuel Harvester Base    10000 tons     812 Crew     1006.6 BP      TCS 200  
1 km/s     Armour 1-41     Shields 0-0     Sensors 1/1/0/0     Damage Control Rating 10    
Annual Failure Rate: 80%    IFR: 1.1%    Maintenance 1629 MSP    Max Repair 40 MSP
Fuel Harvester: 16 modules producing 512000 litres per annum
Fuel Capacity 700,000 Litres    Range N/A

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Jovian class Fuel Harvester Base    82050 tons     877 Crew     1348 BP      TCS 1641  
1 km/s     Armour 1-168     Shields 0-0     Sensors 1/1/0/0     Damage Control Rating 1    
Maintenance Capacity 10 MSP    Max Repair 60 MSP
Fuel Harvester: 16 modules producing 512000 litres per annum
Fuel Capacity 700,000 Litres    Range N/A
This design is classed as a commercial vessel for maintenance purposesMining Modules
The size of this module is increased from 25 HS to 250 HS (half the size of the transport requirement for an automated mine) and the cost increased from 200 BP to 250 BP. Taking into consideration the armour required to enclose the hull, this makes the module slightly more expensive than an automated mine. However, mounted on a ship it has the increased flexibility of being mobile, which in its intended role of moving regularly between asteroids with small amounts of high accessibility minerals, makes it more useful than an automated mine that relies on freighter support. It can also be built in shipyards while automated mines have to be built by construction factories. Depending on the industrial situation this may make it more attractive if the available construction factories have higher priorities. Here is an example mining vessel using the new module

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Extractor class Asteroid Miner    70000 tons     658 Crew     1726.2 BP      TCS 1400  TH 1000  EM 0
714 km/s     Armour 1-151     Shields 0-0     Sensors 1/1/0/0     Damage Control Rating 1     PPV 0
Maintenance Capacity 15 MSP    Max Repair 250 MSP
Asteroid Miner: 5 module(s) producing 80 tons per mineral per annum

Commercial MPD (5)    Power 200    Efficiency 0.06    Signature 200    Armour 0    Exp 15%
Fuel Capacity 50,000 Litres    Range 21.4 billion km   (347 days at full power)Terraforming Module
This module is increased in size from 50 HS to 500 HS, making it still only one-fifth the size of the transport requirements for the Terraforming Installation (which might make it still a little too small). Cost is increased from 400 to 500 BP to compensate for the removal of the maintenance requirement. This is still less than the 600 BP cost of the Terraforming Installation. although the necessity of armour, etc. will add some cost, and the Terraforming Module does not have any manning requirement. A decision between the Terraforming Module and the Terraforming Installation will likely depend on the availability of shipyards and construction factories. A comparison of the old and new Commonwealth Terraformers is shown below, plus a third design that incorporates an extra terraforming module and drops the per module cost from 712 BP to 670 BP.

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Genesis-old class Terraformer    7000 tons     616 Crew     1077.8 BP      TCS 140  TH 160  EM 0
1142 km/s     Armour 1-32     Shields 0-0     Sensors 1/1/0/0     Damage Control Rating 9     PPV 0
Annual Failure Rate: 43%    IFR: 0.6%    Maintenance Capacity 866 MSP    Max Repair 400 MSP
Terraformer: 2 module(s) producing 0.004 atm per annum

E90 Nuclear Pulse Engine (4)    Power 40    Efficiency 0.90    Signature 40    Armour 0    Exp 5%
Fuel Capacity 100,000 Litres    Range 28.6 billion km   (289 days at full power)

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Genesis class Terraformer    61250 tons     636 Crew     1423.4 BP      TCS 1225  TH 800  EM 0
653 km/s     Armour 1-138     Shields 0-0     Sensors 1/1/0/0     Damage Control Rating 1     PPV 0
Maintenance Capacity 15 MSP    Max Repair 500 MSP
Terraformer: 2 module(s) producing 0.004 atm per annum

Commercial Nuclear Pulse Engine (8)    Power 100    Efficiency 0.09    Signature 100    Armour 0    Exp 15%
Fuel Capacity 100,000 Litres    Range 32.7 billion km   (578 days at full power)

This design is classed as a commercial vessel for maintenance purposes

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Genesis-3 class Terraformer    89000 tons     886 Crew     2012.6 BP      TCS 1780  TH 1000  EM 0
561 km/s     Armour 1-177     Shields 0-0     Sensors 1/1/0/0     Damage Control Rating 1     PPV 0
Maintenance Capacity 14 MSP    Max Repair 500 MSP
Terraformer: 3 module(s) producing 0.006 atm per annum

Commercial Nuclear Pulse Engine (10)    Power 100    Efficiency 0.09    Signature 100    Armour 0    Exp 15%
Fuel Capacity 100,000 Litres    Range 22.4 billion km   (462 days at full power)

This design is classed as a commercial vessel for maintenance purposesSalvage Modules
Salvage modules will increase in size from 50 to 200 HS. Costs will remain the same. Their size increase is far less in percentage terms than the other major commercial modules because their task is to salvage wrecks. Although commercial wrecks will be far larger than before, they would be easier to salvage than warships and warship wrecks will remain the same size. A salvage size of 10,000 tons though still seems a lot more reasonable than 2500 tons. The relatively small size of the module compared to some of the others also allows military-engined salvage ships if required, although these would become Military Vessels, not Commercial Vessels, because of the engine type.

Steve

[mavikfelna]

Tractor beams? I'd say make them commercial as they'd still be useful with commercial engines. But they are more likely to installed on ships with military engines just for speed sake.

And I think Geo modules should be commercial as well, as those functions often get delegated to commercial ships because it's less militarily relevant than Grav surveys.

--Mav

[Steve Walmsley (OP)]

Tractor beams? I'd say make them commercial as they'd still be useful with commercial engines. But they are more likely to installed on ships with military engines just for speed sake.

I forgot to include tractor beams on the list but they are commercial in the database. I can see a use for commercial tugs and military tugs. In the latter case the military engine will make them Military Vessels.

And I think Geo modules should be commercial as well, as those functions often get delegated to commercial ships because it's less militarily relevant than Grav surveys.

The more I think about it, the more I think you are right. Again there could be both types of survey vessel with the engines determining the Commercial or Military category. I have edited the original post to include both.

Steve

[Kurt]

Just off the top of my head, my first response to all of this is that the changes you've made make it much more likely that I'll actually use asteroid mining modules now that the ships that mount them don't accumulate time on their maintenance clocks, and don't have to be overhauled.  As things used to be, it just seemed to be too much trouble to keep an eye on asteroid mining ships, whereas, with these changes I will only have to monitor them to see if they've depleted their resources.  

Kurt

[sloanjh]

Tractor beams? I'd say make them commercial as they'd still be useful with commercial engines. But they are more likely to installed on ships with military engines just for speed sake.

I forgot to include tractor beams on the list but they are commercial in the database. I can see a use for commercial tugs and military tugs. In the latter case the military engine will make them Military Vessels.

I like this decision.  My primary use of Tugs is to haul Terraforming ships around - I design them without engines then tow them to a new planet with tugs.  It's very likely that I'll be building tugs with commercial engines to fill this role; it would be a shame to have them classed as military due to the tractor beam.

A few comments:

1)  I think the zero-commercial maintenance change gives asteroid mining ships a hope of being economically viable.  In the past, I felt the maintenance run rate meant that their mineral "profit" rate was too low to be of use.

2)  I just realized that I won't be needing to drag my terraformers home with tugs to undergo maintainence every couple of years - they'll effectively be permanent orbital installations.  STEVE: if you need technobabble to justify this, one could wave one's hands about untracked civilian shipping delivering maintenance supplies and crew for repairs in place (e.g. offshore drilling rigs)

3)  SY are already an orbital installation - have you thought of incorporating them inside this scheme?  My gut feeling is that this is probably more trouble (both from coding and player-micro-management) than it's worth, especially since you can abstract a mobile SY (i.e. a SY with engines) by hooking it up to a tug.

4)  With the advent of huge hulls, one could contemplate introducing Space Stations into Aurora - basically just a hull with a ton of life support.  Not sure what you'd do with 'em, other than stick on other modules that provide value - arguably an engineless terraformer or fuel processor is a SS, rather than a ship.  This might also be a motivation to make SY a special type of commercial ship (SS, actually).  Another possibility would be to add "commerce" or "docking facilities" or "cargo transfer" modules, which would go in SY.  Hey - there's an idea: have a "cargo port" module that acts as a cargo handling system for commercial ships that are loading/unloading.  In this model, one would assume that freighters never land.  In order to load/unload cargo, they would either a) have a CHS (which would represent atmospher-capable lighters and their hanger space) or b) be at a planet that had a SS with a Cargo Port system (which would have both cargo holds for temporary storage and lighters for transport to the surface), or c) be at a planet with a SpacePort (ground-based lighters).  How is magazine loading/unloading handled?

5)  You mentioned in another thread that CHS are negligible cost/size due to everything else changing.  Why not make them proportionally bigger as well?  This would go with the idea that they're an abstraction for a significant number of small craft.  You could also have a small CHS with e.g. 1/10 the capacity for handling military-level cargo transfers e.g. missiles from ammo ships.

6)  I would argue that one should be able to transport missiles in an unusable state aboard civilian ships.  This could only happen between planets - you'd need to offload them before they could be loaded into magazines.

John

[sloanjh]

Are commercial ships going to only use conscript crews, and are they going to be available as officer command slots?  The reason I ask is "what good does the crew training rating do for a commercial ship?".

John

[Charles Fox]

What qualifies an engine as "commercial"?

[waresky]

hi guys,srry ive dnt reminder how i can take a Solar System Screens. ty for useful info

[Steve Walmsley (OP)]

Are commercial ships going to only use conscript crews, and are they going to be available as officer command slots?  The reason I ask is "what good does the crew training rating do for a commercial ship?".

You can set conscript status for any ship class at the moment. At the moment there is little use for crew grade on commercial vessels but that may change in the future. Officers are still useful though are they affect terraforming rates, jump gate construction rates, fuel harvesting rates, etc.

Steve

[Steve Walmsley (OP)]

What qualifies an engine as "commercial"?

In v4.1 there are four types of engine design. Military, Commercial, Fast Attack and Fighter. You select the type when you design the engine.

Steve

[Steve Walmsley (OP)]

hi guys,srry ive dnt reminder how i can take a Solar System Screens. ty for useful info

Just use Print Screen on your keyboard then paste into MS Paint. I have found that GIFs are the best file format for a reasonable compromise between size and image quality. My PC has three 24" 1920x1200 monitors so my screenshots are a little large at the moment. It makes playing Aurora a lot of fun though when it seems like you are sat at Mission Control

[attachment=0:1yai0b3h]triplescreen.GIF[/attachment:1yai0b3h]
Steve

[Randy]

Just a hope -

  Will you add an option on the class design form to toggle the display of non-commercial systems to make it easier to avoid using military systems when designing ships?

  (assuming its not already there...)

[waresky]

What qualifies an engine as "commercial"?

In v4.1 there are four types of engine design. Military, Commercial, Fast Attack and Fighter. You select the type when you design the engine.

Steve

A very good difference and make selection real.Raise hand.

[Starkiller]

Hmmm. Military and commercial engines. Are these two types new to version 4.1? If not, how do you tell the difference? I don't want military engines
in my civvie ships.

Eric

[SteveAlt]

Hmmm. Military and commercial engines. Are these two types new to version 4.1? If not, how do you tell the difference? I don't want military engines
in my civvie ships.

Commercial Engines are new for v4.1

Steve