Author Topic: Deep Space Maintenance  (Read 7133 times)

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Offline Vandermeer

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Re: Deep Space Maintenance
« Reply #15 on: December 06, 2014, 07:53:26 AM »
You forget to make space for flight crew berths. If you don't do this, then additional crew coming with ships will try to bunker in the regular quarters of the station and overflow them, reducing morale.
For this, check the "keep additional crew quarter" or something box in the design window, and then you can just keep adding more. You will have to calculate the appropriate number yourself, which is a bit of stomach judgement. You probably wont fill the entire station with only your most crew demanding craft, so maybe something less than that, and then a bit more to make sure.


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Well after looking into how the recreational facilities work it seems that a straight up deep space station is simply not viable as the crew moral issue will always be a factor. So I have gone the route of a planetary orbiting station.
Hmmm, maybe you have understood something wrong. Recreational facilities do work just fine in deep space.(I tested that in the Theodidactus thread) There are bugs sometimes with the modules (doesn't matter if deep space or above planets), but they can usually be overcome by mixing task groups a different way.
..It is true that a planet or asteroid is more suitable (/efficient), because you can just store everything there without limit. Deep space is totally possible though, and not that hard to do if you keep to the "low MSP consumption" method for stations.
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Offline 83athom

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Re: Deep Space Maintenance
« Reply #16 on: December 06, 2014, 11:42:46 AM »
A few thing (not about any major problems). First of all, is your station checked as both a collier and tanker? If not, set it that way. Second, More AMM unless your going to have weapons platforms nearby, and you forgot missile fire control. Third, since you have both a cargo ship and a tanker, there is nothing stopping you from turning either your tanker into a fuel harvester, or add some to your station and sit it over a gas giant and adding a mining modules to your cargo ship. Fourth, more engineering space and less damage control. I know that engineering space is less efficient for repairs but you need space for general maintenance (AFR) (engineering space effects DCR on a 1size:1effect ratio and damage control on a 3size:10effect ratio). 5k-10k flight crew berths. Add some passive sensors (unless you have dedicated weapons platform).
Oh, and before I forget, this is some help with fuel harvester ordering, you can use it in a number of ways but three stand out most. 1st-Station method; With harvesters on a station you can either use it a a base on its own and have ship refuel from it or ferry the fuel using very efficient engines on a tanker. 2nd-conditional orders; Set the conditional orders to Fuel tanks full - unload 90% at colony, note that it selects the nearest colony and requires you to change the order when it goes (you will get notification and auto-turn stops). 3rd-repeat order; set a repeat order for the harvester to move to *gas giant name* then with the order delay (calculate time in seconds the tanks need to fill) unload 90% fuel at colony.
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Offline Vandermeer

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Re: Deep Space Maintenance
« Reply #17 on: December 06, 2014, 12:43:23 PM »
Second, More AMM unless your going to have weapons platforms nearby, and you forgot missile fire control.
The launcher is only there because it is the cheapest component in his tech arsenal, not because he actually intends to fire. It is a trick to make the station last longer, because whenever something breaks, it will only cost him 5 MSP. Otherwise the ammunition on the station is only for supply to other crafts.

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Third, since you have both a cargo ship and a tanker, there is nothing stopping you from turning either your tanker into a fuel harvester, or add some to your station and sit it over a gas giant and adding a mining modules to your cargo ship.
If someone intends to have a mobile station, or actually wants to place it on a strategically nice gas giant, this is indeed good. Gas giants are actually the places where I would and do place stations (though mine only provide morale and fuel, while maintenance is done at more rare and more distant spots {/ is not needed this much})
However, as far as I understand, Rich intended to place the station above a planet, so this massive extra suite is not really needed. Also, you can always have separate harvesters nearby.(not sure why you would need miners though, unless you again make a place a colony, which is the thing to prevent in the whole idea)

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Fourth, more engineering space and less damage control. I know that engineering space is less efficient for repairs but you need space for general maintenance (AFR) (engineering space effects DCR on a 1size:1effect ratio and damage control on a 3size:10effect ratio).
I think at this point it is open to personal preference as his station already lasts for at least 85 years, and actually more double or triple that (not counting supplying MSP to other craft ofc.). Maybe you are confused because Aurora says 26 years, but this display is wrong. As explained to some extend above, only one component can ever break per 5-day interval, and if this component only costs 5 MSP, like in this case, you get 6000 intervals at minimum (if things break every time, which they don't). In other words 30000 days. You can add more, but again, that is totally a personal preference question here.
And maintenance bays would at this point actually be more effective.

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Add some passive sensors (unless you have dedicated weapons platform).
Please, you really should have read the station concept tutorial first. Any passive sensor stronger than 5 would raise the minimum increment costs, and thus cut down the maximum maintenance time by a lot. This is not a good idea. He could pack a civil (size 1) sensor on a separate craft though, but really, what does that give you.

If you really want sensor coverage of the station's system, then I would recommend two things. Either use planetary tracking stations, which are superior to anything you could possibly screw on a ship, or for individuality have a special built military sensor platform (/ship) without any engines, and reserve some space for that on the station. With two maximum active, and a maximum passive sensor, you can make that at about 20kt, and whenever its overhaul time runs out, you just dock it for a while (sensor blindness during that though, so maybe create more or separate ships for sensors?).

This method also works perfectly if you want to add defenses to the station, except that I would recommend having those permanently docked in a reserved spot in the hangars to save MSP. I do that exactly this way in my Swarm game, where all the huge 100kt and 300kt "battle turrets" of the mothership are stored inside until they are needed.(all other capital ships are built out to tractor those and maintain their original velocity) This way I can have lots of weapons and ammunition, but don't ever have to pay a dime for it. Conservation strategy and retractable weapons are the true penultimate carrier doctrines.
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Offline GreatTuna

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Re: Deep Space Maintenance
« Reply #18 on: December 06, 2014, 03:12:02 PM »
Wait, military ships with habitats are still... buildable?
That was the main reason of why I didn't try it, because I thought that factories can't build them, because they're military.

Anyway, here's design of space maintenance station I just designed:

Code: [Select]
Bulwark class Luxury Liner    2 000 000 tons     18670 Crew     239737.2 BP      TCS 40000  TH 120000  EM 300000
3000 km/s     Armour 15-1414     Shields 10000-300     Sensors 50/40/0/0     Damage Control Rating 481     PPV 500
Maint Life 2.67 Years     MSP 116036    AFR 66528%    IFR 924%    1YR 23212    5YR 348185    Max Repair 60 MSP
Intended Deployment Time: 120 months    Flight Crew Berths 10684   
Hangar Deck Capacity 500000 tons     Magazine 30200    Habitation Capacity 50 000   
Recreational Facilities
Fuel Harvester: 30 modules producing 3000000 litres per annum

ExpAI 120 EP Solid Core AM Drive (1000)    Power 120    Fuel Use 24.25%    Signature 120    Exp 10%
Fuel Capacity 451 750 000 Litres    Range 167.7 billion km   (646 days at full power)
Aelith Xi Weapons Pacifier (2000)   Total Fuel Cost  25 000 Litres per hour  (600 000 per day)

ExpAI Size 5 Missile Launcher (100)    Missile Size 5    Rate of Fire 25
ExpAI Mine Launcher Add-On (5)     Range 7.7m km    Resolution 1

ExpAI Backup Sensor System-4 (1)     GPS 800     Range 32.0m km    Resolution 100
Ratters Thermal Detector S50\Sz1 (1)     Sensitivity 50     Detect Sig Strength 1000:  50m km
Ratters EM Detector S40\Sz1 (1)     Sensitivity 40     Detect Sig Strength 1000:  40m km

ECCM-4 (1)         ECM 40

This design is classed as a Military Vessel for maintenance purposes

It works on the assumption that only one module of the "ship" will break per increment, so I just made it with commercial modules and cheap (so they will use less MSP) military modules.

Pity on me if I'm wrong.
 

Offline Vandermeer

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Re: Deep Space Maintenance
« Reply #19 on: December 06, 2014, 04:06:18 PM »
That carrier works out good, but why the orbital habitat?

It is really a good idea though to have such a military sensor-only/no-engines design, and tow that via tractor behind you. Not only will you have the most powerful sensor to be able to react to threats to the most expensive ships/stations early, but it also distracts fire.
You can test docking the thing while missiles fly at you, and eventually those will just vanish if they targeted the big active sensor here, so it is kind an ecm too. Is somewhat of a hack and exploiting game weakness though, so many will not be happy with this.

///Edit: Oh, of course, you had the habitat there to be able to build it in factories. I prefer building up shipyards for those for RP reasons, but yeah, I did build some fortress modules in the past this way too. It is a lot slower though than shipyards (if you already have an acceptable sized one that is). I could even build 150 megaton modules in just 3-6 months each.
« Last Edit: December 06, 2014, 04:31:37 PM by Vandermeer »
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Offline JacenHan

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Re: Deep Space Maintenance
« Reply #20 on: December 06, 2014, 04:29:04 PM »
The orbital habitat is so that he build it using factories, and not have to spend as much time and resources expanding a shipyard. It also means he can build it as fast or as slow as he wants by allocating more or less construction power to building it.
 

Offline Vandermeer

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Re: Deep Space Maintenance
« Reply #21 on: December 06, 2014, 04:38:28 PM »
The orbital habitat is so that he build it using factories, and not have to spend as much time and resources expanding a shipyard. It also means he can build it as fast or as slow as he wants by allocating more or less construction power to building it.
Yeah, realized it too. Constructing this way is slower though, even at full capacity. It is of course superior early in the game, when duranium and neutronium are still rare, and building shipyards takes time, and you don't have enough people too.


///edit:
I cannot test it right now, but a simple 5 day increment turn while watching the maintenance storage would easily solve this question. If you or someone are not doing it, I will report the result on next occasion as I am curious myself.(that would be a nice function)
I could now confirm that construction factories do indeed not produce maintenance automatically. I watched my stockpile and progressed it two intervals, but nothing changed. Newest version too, so this is not in.
Btw. it was not really right to say that the MSP of a new ship are in the construction costs, because then you would see very uneven numbers for gallicite for example, which you don't. Actually, you get the full bay for free, kind of of. One could consider the full storage to be part of the engineering section costs though, if that sounds better.
« Last Edit: December 06, 2014, 07:00:17 PM by Vandermeer »
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Offline Rich.h (OP)

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Re: Deep Space Maintenance
« Reply #22 on: December 07, 2014, 05:00:06 AM »
I did of course totally forget the extra crew quarters for ships docked, as so threw on enough space for a couple of thousand or so flight berths to remedy the issue. Part of the reason for the orbital habitat was to avoid having to have a huge shipyard, but also for an rp reason. No doubt it is the opposite of the rp reason someone uses shipyards for these. I tend to think of this as something like a cross between the B5 station and a trek stardock. This means that it makes more sense to me for it to have parts made in factories that are then assembled on site (things like hull panels etc), then crews to build the interior. Sadly Aurora only provides two ways of doing this, either use a colony with pop and factories, or use construction brigades. Both those options would take a very very long time and so mean the thing would be obsolete before it saw a full year in service, or worse the empire would of expanded beyond the boarders by that point. Instead I look at the factory construction time & towing time as being representative of the parts being built and assembled on site.

I do like that military design with engines though, I will guess it is the engines which are the part which can break for 60msp? Am I right to guess then that shields are a member of the group of components that never break like hangers? If so or not does anyone has a full list of things that simply do not break, I can see this method (or exploit depending on your viewpoint) allowing for some very interesting designs I had not thought possible before.
 

Offline GreatTuna

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Re: Deep Space Maintenance
« Reply #23 on: December 07, 2014, 07:03:05 AM »
Yes, it's engines that break for 60msp.
Shields do break too, but they cost 20msp.

Full list?
Magazines
Hangars
Crew quarters, fuel storages, bridge, maint storage bays, cryo transports, cargo holds, gate building modules, luxury passenger accommodation modules, and armor never break.

Everything else is stated to be influenced by maintenance checks unless proven otherwise.
(I just slapped every component one by one and watched the "Max Repair" field really, so this data is unreliable.)
 

Offline Vandermeer

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Re: Deep Space Maintenance
« Reply #24 on: December 07, 2014, 07:21:09 AM »
Part of the reason for the orbital habitat was to avoid having to have a huge shipyard, but also for an rp reason. No doubt it is the opposite of the rp reason someone uses shipyards for these. I tend to think of this as something like a cross between the B5 station and a trek stardock.
The reason why we handle this RP different is because you build a station, where I only build carriers.^^ Even the huge fortresses were actually just immense capital ships, so having shipyards for them makes sense.(even the Star Wars Executor Super-Star Destroyer was built in docks) I only built the habitat parts of it on ground, because I saw the opportunity, but not intentionally.
If I would use military space stations, I guess I would also construct them by population, but I only use PDC for that (or carriers akin to Tuna's), and otherwise civil habitat stations.

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I do like that military design with engines though, I will guess it is the engines which are the part which can break for 60msp? Am I right to guess then that shields are a member of the group of components that never break like hangers?
Anything military breaks, except hangars and magazines, like Tuna said. Those would break too I guess, if it wouldn't cause so much hassle to program what happens to the stored interior in such incident. (I have no idea right now what happens if hangars receive battle damage, or if they might be immune even there. ...Naah, does the craft get destroyed?..)
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Offline Rich.h (OP)

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Re: Deep Space Maintenance
« Reply #25 on: December 18, 2014, 12:42:37 PM »
I think I may have found a solution to the problem, although some may call it a cheat/exploit, I tend to not stray into that line of thinking as we all do things to further our RP story within Aurora. I noticed on another thread someone was asking about how to move PDC's around etc, one of the replies mentioned that you can use the SM box in the task group window to teleport a PDC to another colony. However my first thought was "I wonder if I could select a waypoint, or other stellar body", so I made a new waypoint and bazinga, the SM box shows it as a location (It also shows jump gates/points, general empty planets/asteroids/comets). I tried to use the waypoint and it worked so now I have a PDC floating in space.

Since PDC's do not suffer from maintenance failures they make an ideal stand in for a deep space station, or any other station you could think of. I have run a couple of 30 turns to see what happens and so far it all seems normal, the PDC does suffer from crew morale, however I have seen it said that recreation modules work anywhere. At first my solution was going to be to have a recreation ship that would make visits. But then another idea arrived, why not have a ship as small as possible with nothing but a minimal engine and a recreation module. Then store this ship in spare hanger space in the PDC, I put this to the test and found it works as follows.

1. Design a PDC with hanger space and all the other stuff you could want, depending on if you are just making a space dock or fully fledged battle station.
2. Build the PDC at a colony.
3. Design a ship with just a recreation module, a tiny fuel bay, and the smallest engine to just get it moving past 2km/s (I'm not sure if 1km/s means it is stationary or not).
4. Build this recreational ship at the same place as the station PDC (depending on your shipyards you may find it easier to slap an orbital hab on too and build it with industry).
5. Dock the recreational ship into the station PDC hanger, you never need to touch this ship again.
6. SM move the "station" to either a planetary body, a jump point, or waypoint if desired to be in an empty location.

I found that you will get a morale clock at first, what seemed to happen was the morale clock rose to the point of maximum deployment time. I got a message that both vessels had exceeded their deployment time, the next 30 day turn I advanced (I was working with 30 days for ease of spotting issues) I got a message that both vessels crew had completed shore leave. From here onwards I never saw the morale clock rise, it was as if they were in orbit of a colony with population. I did launch the recreational ship and flew it a short distance away to test morale. Once a couple of months had passed the PDC station again suffered crew morale problems, I then docked the recreation ship and the next 30 day cycle saw another set of shore leave.

Overall I think this has solved my main issues with space stations. Granted I cannot put on something like a sorium harvester and plop it around a gas giant, but a hanger with plenty of space will allow me to have a fuel miner docked. The only thing I would need to do is ship in ammunition and MSP for use on ships being berthed there. This is by no means a cheap way of doing things and probably will take a couple of years at least longer, and cost multiple times more than just having a colony. But the key for me is it does give a real way to have a space station floating in the depths of nothing that can perform all the required tasks.
 

Offline Panpiper

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Re: Deep Space Maintenance
« Reply #26 on: July 12, 2018, 10:08:09 AM »
Sorry for the necro, but this is completely germaine to this topic.  I frequently read old posts that come up in searches so as to learn the game, and in the interest of others doing the same, oft times it really is best to necro a topic.   

I am myself very concerned about the maintenance costs of having forward deployed fleets well away from one's homeworld maintenance facilities.  Even the home fleet's maintenance costs are a concern, as they add up.  Meanwhile, having PDC defenses both on the homeworld and on forward deployed bases makes a great deal of sense.  Clearly from reading this thread, the ideal way to handle this is to build a PDC (that due to being a PDC, will have no maintenance costs of its own) with internal hangars big enough to contain the entire military contingent of the war fleet one intends to station there.  Place that PDC on a colony world with at least a minimum of population so ships docked (hangared) there will get their shore leave topped off.  Ideally of course, given the cost of that PDC, it would probably be best if this were a high value world you intend to terraform, etc.  .   

My current plan it would seem would be to have my homeworld construction factories build the PDC as a prefab (at least a three year job for me) and have a decently large freighter fleet ship it to its destination over the course of many round trips.  This would give me a very strong hardpoint (the defense and weaponry on that base are no joke, in case the fleet is away) and allow me to basically have a maintenance cost free fleet.   

My question for any who are more knowledgeable is.  .  .  Would my PDC 'Fleet Hangar Base' have to have crew quarters sufficient to handle the crew of the hangar fleet's ships? Or would those ship's crews continue to be housed in their own ship's quarters?

I surmise that while this will avoid the maintenance clock ticking down, it would not be able to handle ship overhauls.  I could be wrong of course, ships going into hangar might reset the maintenance clock.  (Does it?) I venture to guess that if the forward deployed fleet spends enough time on maneuvers out in the deep, it will probably still have to be brought back to the homeworld's shipyards for overhaul after a time (perhaps with the homeworld stationed fleet replacing it as the forward deployed fleet).

I could always tug a shipyard to the forward base, but I am not sure if the overhaul speed is affected by the size of the shipyards.   And if it is not, if the presence of a tiny shipyard can allow a fleet to go into overhaul, is it adversely affected in any way by 'not' having vast numbers of maintenance facilities sitting at and operating on that colony?
« Last Edit: July 15, 2018, 07:28:32 AM by Panpiper »
 

Offline Garfunkel

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Re: Deep Space Maintenance
« Reply #27 on: July 12, 2018, 10:57:34 AM »
PDC Hangar will not overhaul your ships, it will stop the maintenance clock. You do not need extra crew quarters. Remember that even pre-fabricated PDC parts still need to be put together, and a massive PDC Hangar will require a long time to do so with just a dozen Construction Brigades.
 

Offline Panpiper

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Re: Deep Space Maintenance
« Reply #28 on: July 12, 2018, 02:42:14 PM »
Quote from: Garfunkel link=topic=7623. msg108884#msg108884 date=1531411054
PDC Hangar will not overhaul your ships, it will stop the maintenance clock.  You do not need extra crew quarters.  Remember that even pre-fabricated PDC parts still need to be put together, and a massive PDC Hangar will require a long time to do so with just a dozen Construction Brigades.

Hmm. . .  I had forgotten about needing construction brigades.  Good thing I started training.  It would take my freighter fleet a good long while just to move all the parts to the location.  Do you know if the construction brigades will start assembly while just some of the parts are there? If so, that "long time" would be gainfully spent.  And just what do you mean by "a long time"? The parts construction will take my homeworld over three years to build.  It would probably take that long in addition to move the parts.
 

Offline Rich.h (OP)

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Re: Deep Space Maintenance
« Reply #29 on: July 12, 2018, 05:41:33 PM »
I would say that unless you are really stuck for workers then using construction brigades for making PDC hangers is not very efficient. If you consider that you will always need the construction capacity at a production world for the PDC sections. You then need to have a well established military training section to build the brigades, and a dedicated large troop transport to ship them without having too many trips.

You will always need a sizable force of freighters to ship the PDC parts anyway, so these are pointless to factor in. But if you simply construct a few more freighters and ship out some infrastructure, then you can get a small population going probably quicker than you can get construction brigades both trained and shipped out. Then just ship out construction factories to do the assembly and you now have a hanger, and a production ability for future use.

However throwing all of the above out of the window, I would say that if you have a colony so small that construction brigades are your only building option, then perhaps the location doesn't yet warrant the investment needed to create a PDC hanger. I tend to consider them a planet/low orbit set of facilities (spaceports and the like) that provide a means for shore leaves and such. You may find it is cheaper resource wise to just send out a large transport ship loaded with supplies.