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Posted by: IanD
« on: November 30, 2012, 05:18:55 AM »

Quote from: Steve Walmsley on November 25, 2012, 08:25:32 AM
I have considered allowing ships with some form of personnel shuttles to rewind the shore leave clock by shuttling crew to an in-system population. I think would be the most realistic option. I just having't found a mechanic I like yet. I don't really want to get into tracking crew off the ship so it would have to be done in some form of abstract. Also, you could end up tracking a lot of shuttles, which would slow down the game. The Shuttle Bay component (without tracking actual shuttles) is possible but how do I tie that in with existing boat bays and hangar decks? I also need to consider that larger ships would need a larger shuttle bay.

One option might be to have a small craft with spare berths that could be designated as "Shore Leave Shuttle" in default orders. This shuttle would go to the ship in a system with the greatest need for shore leave, pick up some of the crew and transport them to a nearby colony for perhaps two weeks then return to the ship. On its return, the shore leave time would be rewound by 20 weeks / percentage of crew on shore leave. The shuttle could be carried by the ship, or based at the colony. This wouldn't be too bad for micromanagement as the shuttle(s) would take care of itself. The downside would be a few more ships flying around. There would also have to be a restriction on the % of crew allowed off the ship. Perhaps 10-20%. However, I have to be careful not to get the point where the deployment time for a ship design is no longer an issue. Otherwise I am adding a lot of management for no game play gain.

Steve

Perhaps the easiest mechanism would be to have a new facility designated the Depot/PX. It would be transportable and could include a real or virtual shuttle (built-in boat bay). This facility would have a number of exchange crew who would replace the crew going on leave. They would then form the replacement crew for the next ship who’s crew required shore leave. The facility could even be upgradeable to operate at one systems distance if jump gates or a jump capable shuttle (real or virtual) were in place. It would be up to Steve to decide whether it had to be located on a nearly Earth-like planet or not. After all Scapa Flow could be described as only Earth-like at certain times of the year! :)
Posted by: Hazard
« on: November 29, 2012, 04:54:42 PM »

Another possibility is officially creating the 'Starbase' unit type, with different maintenance rules as the curren ones make no sense for long term basing, and create a 'crew exchange' module that ships around crew from planets with Academies to PDCs and Starbases and back. Only bad thing about it is the number of vessels this will eventually end up involving.
Posted by: Person012345
« on: November 28, 2012, 12:09:06 PM »

Playing my first "real" game since 6.00 (I say real, it's more a training game in which I get used to the design requirements and such), and I have to say I'm liking the new survey team mechanics (even if I have only had one hit so far).
Posted by: bean
« on: November 28, 2012, 11:21:34 AM »

Jorgen:
I suggested something similar a while ago.  Look in "Suggestions for 5.7 and beyond" for an early example, or somewhere in the main suggestion thread for a more recent, cleaned-up one.  (BTW, Steve, can we get a new suggestions thread?  The old one is big and has stuff in it dating back several versions.)
Posted by: Jorgen_CAB
« on: November 28, 2012, 04:16:23 AM »

In my opinion it really seem dangerous to leave ships in the field without sufficient crew and would not be anything a navy would do. You would rather take the ship to a port for some maintenance and crew RnR at the same time. I would rather see some new mechanic for tour duty for crews on ships, thus making the training level of a race much more important. For each training level crew would service longer periods on the ships and thus you keep the high grade of the crew for longer before it starts to degrade because of crew rotations.

I'm not sure how long you expect non officer crew to serve on a ship but anything from 12-36 months would probably be OK. Perhaps tie it in with the training level of a race. A higher training level means that crew service longer tours. You should of course expect that about 20-25% of the crew are career officers so it would only be part of the ship that is replaced.

The only reason that I see for this new module are for large space stations and on isolated planets without a population where you like to build up a naval outpost or maintenance facility. I could see that you could use it to give some shore leave to a large battle group stationed somewhere,  but after 9-18 months ships will start to get maintenance failures anyway so you need to get them back for overhauls anyway. I rarely run my ships past half their maintenance cycles. Most regular ships of my design have maintenance for about 2.5-3.5 years and deployment times of 9-18 months. When a task group hit its limit for deployment I usually withdraw them and start an overhaul. Once the shore leave is done I abandon the overhaul and send them on a new mission, I can usually do this for an extended period of time before the ships need to perform some serious overhaul.

In any way, I don't see how I would bother much by placing a shuttle bay for shore leave on my ships. To be frank I already assumed that almost every ship of at least a few thousand tonnes had some form of small bay for docking personnel on and of. I also imagine that there are hundreds if not thousands of smaller shuttles going about in a system regularly to transfer officials, administrators, officers and the like all the time.
Posted by: Conscript Gary
« on: November 25, 2012, 04:24:48 PM »

I would also suggest tying any automated crew shuttling to the danger level of a system. You'll be a bit less keen to take an unarmed shuttle to a nearby colony when ravenous aliens cut through a colony ship bound to that same planet not three days prior
Posted by: HaliRyan
« on: November 25, 2012, 03:40:14 PM »

I would vote for a simple option personally (though I realize this isn't a democracy). Maybe a specific crew-transport module you could put on a ship, and when that ship is docked in another ship's boat bay it rewinds the crew clock as long there's a suitable population in the system for shore leave? Sort of a compromise between the two extremes.
Posted by: Steve Walmsley
« on: November 25, 2012, 08:25:32 AM »

Quote from: Bremen on November 25, 2012, 02:02:55 AM
I still kind of prefer the idea for just an "indefinite" option when determining deployment time. That way you could have some ships designed for permanent deployment, but you'd probably want to keep deployment times low for ships where performance was an issue, like warships.

Alternately, what about making shore leave function by system rather than requiring a ship to be in orbit? It makes sense to me that you could shuttle crews back from the fuel harvesting station at Jupiter. Or perhaps a "Shuttle Bay" component that counts as civilian but lets a ship conduct shore leave a range, for those PDCs and immobile stations.

You can create bases with deployment times of 10 or 20 years fairly easily, which is heading towards indefinite.

I have considered allowing ships with some form of personnel shuttles to rewind the shore leave clock by shuttling crew to an in-system population. I think would be the most realistic option. I just having't found a mechanic I like yet. I don't really want to get into tracking crew off the ship so it would have to be done in some form of abstract. Also, you could end up tracking a lot of shuttles, which would slow down the game. The Shuttle Bay component (without tracking actual shuttles) is possible but how do I tie that in with existing boat bays and hangar decks? I also need to consider that larger ships would need a larger shuttle bay.

One option might be to have a small craft with spare berths that could be designated as "Shore Leave Shuttle" in default orders. This shuttle would go to the ship in a system with the greatest need for shore leave, pick up some of the crew and transport them to a nearby colony for perhaps two weeks then return to the ship. On its return, the shore leave time would be rewound by 20 weeks / percentage of crew on shore leave. The shuttle could be carried by the ship, or based at the colony. This wouldn't be too bad for micromanagement as the shuttle(s) would take care of itself. The downside would be a few more ships flying around. There would also have to be a restriction on the % of crew allowed off the ship. Perhaps 10-20%. However, I have to be careful not to get the point where the deployment time for a ship design is no longer an issue. Otherwise I am adding a lot of management for no game play gain.

Steve
Posted by: draanyk
« on: November 25, 2012, 07:53:18 AM »

I've noticed that a lot of the threads relating to the new shore leave mechanism seem to be about reducing the micro-management. I'm not certain what the intent was in adding the mechanism, but it seems like it's disrupted some play styles, and impacted other mechanics such as asteroid mining, sorium harvesting, and jump gate defence. Perhaps one way to deal with this is to add a game start-up option similar to the one for jump gates on every wormhole, "Automate shore leave", which removes penalties for not conducting shore leave. In this way, players who want to manage shore leave can do so, and those who don't feel the need don't have to. This should focus the suggestions on how to use the mechanism, instead of how to avoid the mechanism.
Posted by: Bremen
« on: November 25, 2012, 02:02:55 AM »

I still kind of prefer the idea for just an "indefinite" option when determining deployment time. That way you could have some ships designed for permanent deployment, but you'd probably want to keep deployment times low for ships where performance was an issue, like warships.

Alternately, what about making shore leave function by system rather than requiring a ship to be in orbit? It makes sense to me that you could shuttle crews back from the fuel harvesting station at Jupiter. Or perhaps a "Shuttle Bay" component that counts as civilian but lets a ship conduct shore leave a range, for those PDCs and immobile stations.
Posted by: UnLimiTeD
« on: November 20, 2012, 02:54:58 PM »

Really like the basic idea.
Now we just need oversized commercial Hangars and we can create nice space stations. ;)
Yes, i know, they still make no practical sense.
Posted by: OAM47
« on: November 20, 2012, 12:44:59 PM »

Quote from: Steve Walmsley on November 18, 2012, 06:42:04 AM
Yes, I am a little concerned about that. However, this is going to be a very large and slow ship (120,000 tons plus). They are intended to visit bases and PDCs in out of the way places. It is still much cheaper to create a small colony as a base. For units deployed at jump points, they would be very much in harm's way. Interested to hear other opinions.

Steve

Another way to negate it would be that the R&R ships have some kind of supply they have to use to perform their task.  That might be over complicating things though....
Posted by: PTTG
« on: November 20, 2012, 12:31:11 PM »

Gargantuain Whore Ships will now be the backbone of any aggressive force.
Posted by: TheDeadlyShoe
« on: November 19, 2012, 08:32:36 AM »

Quote
Perhaps only crews of 100-200 per 10,000 citizens could benefit? This would have minimal effect on resting at planetary colonies but would require bigger capital ships to be supported by larger/multiple recreation vessels to avoid taking planetary leave.
think of it as a traveling carnival, heh.  that ratio would be a little crazy  when the whole population is dedicated to entertainment and support thereof.
Posted by: Nathan_
« on: November 18, 2012, 11:52:40 AM »

Quote from: Steve Walmsley on November 18, 2012, 06:42:04 AM
Yes, I am a little concerned about that. However, this is going to be a very large and slow ship (120,000 tons plus). They are intended to visit bases and PDCs in out of the way places. It is still much cheaper to create a small colony as a base. For units deployed at jump points, they would be very much in harm's way. Interested to hear other opinions.

Steve

A 50k Hab station with engines and its own colony bays is around 300,000-350,000 tons, and probably costs a similar amount. So this probably doesn't change much.