Ground Force Construction Facilities Take Too Much Population

[Joshua Wood]

Unless This is already a planned change with the other ground force construction changes i think this would help with the large cost of STOs

Consider this scenario:

Gallowglas class Weapons Platform      386 tons       19 Crew       30 BP       TCS 8    TH 0    EM 0
1 km/s      Armour 1-4       Shields 0-0       HTK 2      Sensors 0/0/0/0      DCR 0      PPV 3
Maint Life 0 Years     MSP 0    AFR 77%    IFR 1. 1%    1YR 3    5YR 47    Max Repair 9. 1 MSP
Lieutenant Commander    Control Rating 1   
Intended Deployment Time: 3 months    Morale Check Required   


10cm C3 Infrared Laser (1)    Range 30,000km     TS: 1,250 km/s     Power 3-3     RM 10,000 km    ROF 5       
Beam Fire Control R80-TS1250 (1)     Max Range: 80,000 km   TS: 1,250 km/s     27 23 20 16 12 8 4 0 0 0
Gaseous Fission Reactor R3 (1)     Total Power Output 3    Exp 5%

Active Search Sensor AS1-R1 (1)     GPS 1     Range 1. 3m km    MCR 113. 5k km    Resolution 1

This design is classed as a Fighter for production, combat and planetary interaction
This design is classed as a Fighter for auto-assignment purposes

STO 1
Transport Size (tons) 262     Cost 18. 74     Armour 4     Hit Points 12
Annual Maintenance Cost 2. 3     Resupply Cost 0

10cm C3 Infrared Laser
Range 30,000 km      Tracking 1,250 km/s      Damage 3 / 1     Shots 1     Rate of Fire 5
Maximum Fire Control Range 100,000km      Chance to Hit at Max Range 70%
Maximum Sensor Range 1,261,564km      Max Range vs Missile 113,541 km
Non-Combat Class

Duranium  1    Boronide  11. 3    Vendarite  0. 24    Uridium  3    Corundium  3. 1   
Development Cost  306

These are 2 almost identical weapons platforms, one designed as a ship one designed as an STO you would expect these to take a similar amount of time and a similar amount of workers to create would you not?

It turns out they do take a similar amount of time at the same tech level! the ship in the shipyard takes a month and 20 days, while the STO takes 27 days, around 1/2 of the time. 

This makes sense! untill you realise that a 1000ton shipyard takes 250,000 workers and the ground force center takes 1 million. 

I know they are specialized construction facilities but the number is too different in my opinion since this is a best case scenario and building larger weapons platforms up to 1000tons will get better and better worker to production ratio.

I propose making ground force facilities take somewhere between 50% and 25% of the workers they do at the moment to counteract this. 

[Garfunkel]

Hello and welcome to the forum. Please register your account so we do not have to manually approve of each post you make.

The coming 2.2 patch will change how ground forces are constructed. Do check the post by Steve here:
http://aurora2.pentarch.org/index.php?topic=13090.0

[Steve Walmsley]

The shipyard is specialised to build one type of ship and has retooling costs. The ground force construction centre can build anything with no retooling costs. That flexibility comes with other costs.

Also, it would cause some balance issues if building STOs was made a lot easier.

[nuclearslurpee]

It is also important to realize from a roleplay perspective that ground force training facilities are not just for construction but also implicitly handle all of the training for the ground forces. I would imagine that behind the scenes this also includes training new manpower which rotates into existing formations, as in the real world, and likely a considerable amount of staff dedicated to administrative duties. Basically, the population requirement for these facilities models a large part of the considerable tooth-to-tail ratio that isn't explicitly shown in Aurora (LOG/LOG-S units account for only a small part of this ratio).

On the naval side, these functions are split up and shipyards are responsible only for the construction duties, while the academies handle the training of new crew members and naval HQs handle administration (IMO, academies and naval HQs should have a population requirement, but I digress).