Questions about building forward deployed, Fleet Support.

[Panpiper (OP)]

I want to be able to forward deploy one or more fleets, several jumps from my home system. This will, of course, require that they have maintenance facilities, and no doubt either a colony or recreational facilities where the fleet will be parked. A tiny colony would be easy, but supporting the number of planet-based maintenance facilities required would not. Moreover, I may want to reposition the fleet's deployment. Hence the idea of an orbital Fleet Support Base that contains sufficient maintenance modules and a recreational facility. Perhaps obviously, I would make this a refuelling hub as well. Questions loom large however.

Will the onboard maintenance facilities generate maintenance supply points? Do I need to build Maintenance Storage Bays to hold them? Do they go to waste if the bays get full?

Do I need cargo shuttles onboard? If so, how many?

Will this automatically die if an enemy fleet gets close to it? Is there any point adding CWIS to it, or a wing of FACs to guard it? Its active radar range will not be impressive.

For roleplaying reasons, I am tempted to add an orbital habitat to it, especially as it apparently adds very little to the build cost. Is this an utterly stupid thing to do? Might there be any benefit in doing so?

Will its own recreational facilities give it effectively infinite deployment time?

Is there anything I ought to know that I have omitted to ask?

[brondi00]

I will tell you my understanding.  Others should absolutely correct me where I'm wrong.  Please.

Ship board maintenance modules don't generate MSP as far as I can tell.  I always include maintenance storage bays sufficient for a typical fleet with some extra. 

You need cargo shuttle bay, at least one, to be able to transfer MSP to fleets.

Just as IRL this is a high value target that is a sitting duck.  I do out CIWS on since it is such a tiny fraction of the mass, then why not is my thinking. 

That said it does nothing to protect from massed missile attack or bean attack.  So I also make sure it has a fleet of fighters/FACs or a patrol fleet nearby.  It's an important asset that is really expensive.  A real military would invest resources in keeping it's supply lines safe.  So do I.

Recreational facilities are a commercial system so unless you add military parts then the station is commercial and would have infinite deployment time anyway.  As commercial vessels don't need recreation or accrue crew time.

[nuclearslurpee]

A Maintenance Module will consume onboard MSPs but cannot fabricate its own. You need to fabricate them elsewhere and deliver them to the facility via supply ships (and yes, store them in Maint Bays). I would suggest having shuttles onboard so you can transfer MSPs to ships on station but you don't need a lot.

CIWS will not accomplish very much, the main thing it might do is help defend the large station that is likely to be targeted by attacking forces if your fleet is nearby. The main downside to CIWS is that it will only deter a small missile raiding force, against any larger fleet or even just beam raiders it will not be sufficient to protect the station. The best defense is to keep a fleet either on station or forward deployed on a mission at all times. Any dedicated defenses (FAC, etc.) are essentially immobile forces which is something of a downside although if the base is located in a high-value system they can do double duty. Note that system defenses at that base will take up some maintenance capacity and reduce what you have available to service your actual fleet.

I would not add a Hab module for any reason other than RP. A major issue with doing this is that habitats are quite large in tonnage which will make it difficult to build this out of a shipyard...it is often ideal to have the capability to build a station from a shipyard even if you can build it on the ground, because ground-based factories have many other things to do with their time. Additionally, there is no bonus as a habitat module only serves to provide "free" population for a colony (i.e. negates the colony cost for a portion of population).

Recreational facilities will give infinite deployment time by way of freezing/reducing deployment clocks of ships on station. Because a single recreational facility can handle infinite ships, I would build this as a separate station and just build as many maintenance platforms as needed to go along with it to avoid building excess. For example, you can have one station which is just a recreational facility and a bridge, and then supplement that with X number of maintenance platforms of some fixed size until you have a large enough total maintenance capacity to service a fleet of whatever size you have on station. Early game this probably looks like 5-10 maintenance stations and just the one recreational station.

Make sure you also have fuel and ordnance on hand although these can be ships instead of platforms.

[Jorgen_CAB]

If the base are located at a body then make sure you have troops there and definitely allot of STO to protect your space assets.

Some CIWS on your stations, you will after all not pay any maintenance on them so why not include some of them.

Add some AMM defence stations to add additional protection from missile attacks.

[Panpiper (OP)]

I've spent the last couple of hours in the design window, fiddling with concepts, trying to take to heart what has been said here. Definitely, I went with several smaller hulls instead of concentrating everything. Reconceptualized away from a planet built station. But then because I want the flexibility of being able to redeploy, rather than very slow the micromanagement tedium of tugging everything, I realized that frankly, the easiest and likely smartest thing was to simply put commercial engines on everything and have the whole support 'fleet' mobile from the start.

Is 24 cargo shuttles on fleet supply ships overkill if they are trying to move 200K of MSP rapidly? Or is that still too few?

[nuclearslurpee]

Is 24 cargo shuttles on fleet supply ships overkill if they are trying to move 200K of MSP rapidly? Or is that still too few?

MSP transfer based on Steve's rules posts takes place at (10 * number_of_shuttles * shuttle_tech) MSP per hour, so 24 bog-standard conventional shuttles will transfer 240 MSP per hour. At that rate it will take nearly 1k hours to transfer all of that MSP to a station. However, it is a station so is not going anywhere in a hurry, so this is probably acceptable.

However it might make more sense to use several smaller ships to resupply several smaller stations simultaneously, and to check how many MSP you actually need onboard each station. Say for sake of argument each maintenance station can support 50k tons of fleet (size 250k tons per station plus some extra, which is fairly large but reasonable for the sake of argument). This is 1k HS of fleet, and while it depends a lot on tech I find that as a broad estimate you can guess that the BP of a ship is 10 times the size in HS - thus total 10k BP being maintained. A ship consumes 1/4 of its BP cost in MSP per year while being maintained, so your 50k capacity station requires roughly 2,500 MSP per year. You really don't need a capacity of 200k MSP on such a station, even 25k will in theory keep it working for 10 years (in reality somewhat less if you must repair battle damage at the station). A supply ship with just 5 conventional shuttles can fully resupply this station in about three weeks which is plenty fast for how rarely you will need to do this.

I would suggest that a better way to design your supply ships is to look at what you want to accomplish from a fleet auxiliary perspective. That is, any supply ship that you use to directly support a fleet in the field will probably be adequate to resupply your stations as well. In that case, a 5-shuttle supply ship can resupply a ship with 1k MSP capacity in about 20 hours, and an auxiliary fleet with a small group of these can probably replenish a medium-size fleet (presumably to conduct post-battle repairs) of say several cruisers and a destroyer screen in about a week. Of course this depends on how small or large you build your fleet but this is only a general example.

It's worth pointing out that each supply ship can only replenish one other ship at a time no matter how many cargo shuttles it has. In theory this shouldn't matter too much if you have the same total MSP and shuttles distributed among 2 or 20 ships, but in practice you may prefer one or the other.

[Rich.h]

Here is a mark1 base I used for the purpose you stated in the op.

Scipio class Maintenance Base      556 597 tons       3 300 Crew       19 863.1 BP       TCS 11 132    TH 0    EM 0
1 km/s      No Armour       Shields 0-0     HTK 877      Sensors 0/0/0/0      DCR 1      PPV 0
MSP 200 022    Max Repair 2400 MSP
Cargo Shuttle Multiplier 40   
Captain    Control Rating 2   BRG   ENG   
Intended Deployment Time: 480 months   
Recreational Facilities
Maintenance Modules: 40 module(s) capable of supporting ships of 200 000 tons
Refuelling Hub - Capable of refuelling multiple ships simultaneously

Fuel Capacity 100 000 000 Litres    Range N/A

This design is classed as a Commercial Vessel for maintenance purposes
This design is classed as a Space Station for construction purposes

A couple of points about it, firstly there is no armour as this is a station (I needed it to be able to be constructed via industry). I also didn't put anything like shields or CIWS etc onboard, my opinion in this design is that it is pointless. With a design that has zero armour it would rely totally on the ability to keep an enemy at range, and also be 100% effective against missiles, if anything got through then you need massive shielding to make up for the paper thin shell. In addition this was meant to be a supply and support station, not a battle piece. If my fleet can't stop the enemy getting across the system and this station has to engage in battle, then I have bigger problems to worry about than a stations defences.

I have a few of these dotted about the boarders and each is served by a resupply vessel set on cycling moves.

Assab class Tanker      24 846 tons       216 Crew       1 396.3 BP       TCS 497    TH 3 750    EM 0
7546 km/s      Armour 1-75       Shields 0-0       HTK 41      Sensors 0/0/0/0      DCR 1      PPV 0
MSP 26 035    Max Repair 937.5 MSP
Cargo Shuttle Multiplier 5   
Lieutenant Commander    Control Rating 1   BRG   
Intended Deployment Time: 3 months   

Zheng Thrust Commercial Fusion Drive Class 9 (1)    Power 3750    Fuel Use 0.97%    Signature 3750    Explosion 5%
Fuel Capacity 5 000 000 Litres    Range 3 740.9 billion km (5737 days at full power)
Refuelling Capability: 250 000 litres per hour     Complete Refuel 20 hours

This design is classed as a Commercial Vessel for maintenance purposes

As others have stated above the MSP are created back on a production world, so providing I have a supply of minerals for production and a supply of fuel. Then this design can keep 200kt of military ships stationed anywhere indefinitely.