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Posted by: Steve Walmsley
« on: November 04, 2007, 05:26:13 AM »

Quote from: "Father Tim"
I would prefer to see magazines removed from that list, as I consider colliers to be 'non-combatants'.  You might want to add Troop Transport Bays though. On the other hand, I expect my 'amphibs' to spend 90% of their time in parking orbit when their not actually invading worlds, so I at least will have ample time to unwind their clocks whatever rate they use.  With all the changes to maintenance I've forgotten if there is still a 'mothballed' status.  If there is, I'd probably use that for my 'amphibs' between planetary assualts.

The point about magazines is reasonable. A collier needs only magazines and a warship would also need missile launchers, which are picked up separately.

With regard to troop transports, I tend to use them to for moving troops around the Empire as well as for assaults. However, for some reason I hadn't included shields on the list of 'warship' systems. That is now corrected so any troop transport designed to land troops under fire will be picked up by that rule as a warship.

Steve
Posted by: Father Tim
« on: November 03, 2007, 11:08:22 PM »

I would prefer to see magazines removed from that list, as I consider colliers to be 'non-combatants'.  You might want to add Troop Transport Bays though. On the other hand, I expect my 'amphibs' to spend 90% of their time in parking orbit when their not actually invading worlds, so I at least will have ample time to unwind their clocks whatever rate they use.  With all the changes to maintenance I've forgotten if there is still a 'mothballed' status.  If there is, I'd probably use that for my 'amphibs' between planetary assualts.
Posted by: Steve Walmsley
« on: November 03, 2007, 03:35:59 PM »

Quote from: "sloanjh"
I like the current ratio, at least for warships (those with weapons?).  I keep going back to the deployment ratios for US carriers - 1/3 time deployed, 1/3 in maintenance (clock unwinding) and 1/3 working up (training).  This translates into 1 year in maintenance for every 1-2 deployed, so a 1 to 4 ratio actually seems somewhat low.

You might think about doubling the rate for non-combatants (not a freighter, but no weapons?), however - they should be more like freighters (which I suspect require much less maintainence time).

That's a good idea. I was making the warship overhauls less strenuous to make the non-combatant overhauls more reasonable. I have now split non-freighters into warships and non-combatants. Warships are any ship with weapons, magazines, hangars, reactors, fire control, ECM/ECCM, any individual non-survey sensors greater than 1 HS or parasite hangars. I have also changed the freighter definition so it will also allow any non-survey sensors types, including active, up to 1 HS each.

Warships now rewind at 3x (slightly slower than v2.3) and non-combatants rewind at 8x (twice as fast as v2.3)

On the class summary screen, a qualifying design includes "This design is classed as a non-combatant for maintenance purposes" at the end of the summary.

Steve
Posted by: sloanjh
« on: November 03, 2007, 01:06:43 PM »

Quote from: "Steve Walmsley"
Quote from: "Randy"
Playing around with ver 2.3, I think you need to at least double the basic rate of clock rewinding under a major overhaul - or else put a cap on it.

I have some fuel harvesters that came back after 4 years collecting fuel. Now they need to wait a year to get the clock rewound before sending them out again. This just feels so wrong...
I would be interested to hear other opinions on this. I haven't found it a problem to have ships unavailable for 20% of the time (less for planets with a governor with a high logistics bonus). I have found similar situations to the one you describe, such as survey ships coming back after a 4 or 5 year mission and then recovering for a year. The same for terraformers. I think that probably reflects reality in terms of the time ships spend in dock rather than on deployment.

Steve


I like the current ratio, at least for warships (those with weapons?).  I keep going back to the deployment ratios for US carriers - 1/3 time deployed, 1/3 in maintenance (clock unwinding) and 1/3 working up (training).  This translates into 1 year in maintenance for every 1-2 deployed, so a 1 to 4 ratio actually seems somewhat low.

You might think about doubling the rate for non-combatants (not a freighter, but no weapons?), however - they should be more like freighters (which I suspect require much less maintainence time).

John

John
Posted by: Steve Walmsley
« on: November 03, 2007, 08:45:56 AM »

Quote from: "Randy"
Playing around with ver 2.3, I think you need to at least double the basic rate of clock rewinding under a major overhaul - or else put a cap on it.

I have some fuel harvesters that came back after 4 years collecting fuel. Now they need to wait a year to get the clock rewound before sending them out again. This just feels so wrong...

I would be interested to hear other opinions on this. I haven't found it a problem to have ships unavailable for 20% of the time (less for planets with a governor with a high logistics bonus). I have found similar situations to the one you describe, such as survey ships coming back after a 4 or 5 year mission and then recovering for a year. The same for terraformers. I think that probably reflects reality in terms of the time ships spend in dock rather than on deployment.

Steve
Posted by: Randy
« on: October 21, 2007, 10:25:33 PM »

Playing around with ver 2.3, I think you need to at least double the basic rate of clock rewinding under a major overhaul - or else put a cap on it.

I have some fuel harvesters that came back after 4 years collecting fuel. Now they need to wait a year to get the clock rewound before sending them out again. This just feels so wrong...
Posted by: Erik L
« on: October 13, 2007, 08:53:15 AM »

Quote from: "Steve Walmsley"
Quote from: "Erik Luken"
Should this ship -
Code: [Select]
Ark class Colony Ship    12000 tons     955 Crew     2112 BP      TCS 240  TH 250  EM 0
1041 km/s    JR 3-50     Armour 1     Shields 0-0     Sensors 1/0/0/0/0     Damage Control 0-0     PPV 0
Colonists 50000    Cargo Handling Multiplier 50    Replacement Parts 5    

KDY J240 Jump Drive     Max Ship Size 12000 tons    Distance 50k km     Squadron Size 3
MandalMotors NTE Drive (10)    Power 25    Efficiency 0.80    Signature 25    Armour 0    Exp 5%
Fuel Capacity 1,000,000 Litres    Range 449.7 billion km   (5000 days at full power)

This design is classed as a freighter for maintenance purposes
take 3+ years for an overhaul?
First I should point out that it is a freighter so if you give it a freighter maintenance check order it will be overhauled instantly. Assuming it wasn't a freighter then it would only take 3 years for major overhaul if it had twelve years on the maintenance clock and the planetary governor had no logistics bonus.

Ah! (light bulb goes on). Because it is a freighter the maintenance facilities will ignore it so trying to give this unit a normal major overhaul would take forever.

Steve


I should have specified, it was a minor overhaul.
Posted by: Pete_Keller
« on: October 13, 2007, 08:32:01 AM »

Quote from: "Steve Walmsley"
Ah! (light bulb goes on).

Like This?   :idea:


Quote
Because it is a freighter the maintenance facilities will ignore it so trying to give this unit a normal major overhaul would take forever.

Steve


There should be a way to get a maintenance facility to overhaul a freighter,  if I have a colony several month travel from the homeworld with the maintenance facilities, it would be nice to be able to send it in for maintenance without having to go back to the homeworld.

Pete
Posted by: Steve Walmsley
« on: October 13, 2007, 07:48:22 AM »

Quote from: "Erik Luken"
Should this ship -
Code: [Select]
Ark class Colony Ship    12000 tons     955 Crew     2112 BP      TCS 240  TH 250  EM 0
1041 km/s    JR 3-50     Armour 1     Shields 0-0     Sensors 1/0/0/0/0     Damage Control 0-0     PPV 0
Colonists 50000    Cargo Handling Multiplier 50    Replacement Parts 5    

KDY J240 Jump Drive     Max Ship Size 12000 tons    Distance 50k km     Squadron Size 3
MandalMotors NTE Drive (10)    Power 25    Efficiency 0.80    Signature 25    Armour 0    Exp 5%
Fuel Capacity 1,000,000 Litres    Range 449.7 billion km   (5000 days at full power)

This design is classed as a freighter for maintenance purposes
take 3+ years for an overhaul?

First I should point out that it is a freighter so if you give it a freighter maintenance check order it will be overhauled instantly. Assuming it wasn't a freighter then it would only take 3 years for major overhaul if it had twelve years on the maintenance clock and the planetary governor had no logistics bonus.

Ah! (light bulb goes on). Because it is a freighter the maintenance facilities will ignore it so trying to give this unit a normal major overhaul would take forever.

Steve
Posted by: Erik L
« on: October 12, 2007, 02:57:48 PM »

Should this ship -
Code: [Select]
Ark class Colony Ship    12000 tons     955 Crew     2112 BP      TCS 240  TH 250  EM 0
1041 km/s    JR 3-50     Armour 1     Shields 0-0     Sensors 1/0/0/0/0     Damage Control 0-0     PPV 0
Colonists 50000    Cargo Handling Multiplier 50    Replacement Parts 5    

KDY J240 Jump Drive     Max Ship Size 12000 tons    Distance 50k km     Squadron Size 3
MandalMotors NTE Drive (10)    Power 25    Efficiency 0.80    Signature 25    Armour 0    Exp 5%
Fuel Capacity 1,000,000 Litres    Range 449.7 billion km   (5000 days at full power)

This design is classed as a freighter for maintenance purposes

take 3+ years for an overhaul?
Posted by: Steve Walmsley
« on: October 07, 2007, 09:28:51 AM »

Quote from: "Randy"
While ships are in either overhaul state, do their maint clocks stop?
They stop if a ship is in orbit of a maintenance facility or undergoing a minor overhaul. They rewind during a major overhaul.

Quote
And is there a way to get the clock reset faster than at 1/4 time elapsed?
It will be boosted by the logistics bonus of the planetray governor. So a 30% bonus = rewind at 5.2x

Quote
IE I have ship with lots of spares. It goes out for 2 years, comes back does a minor overhaul to reload spares, goes out for another two years. Now it needs to spend a year in major overhaul. Seems kinda drastic. But it may be what you are aiming for.
That is correct as things stand now. I might adjust it based on playetesting in v2.3 but that is probably better than reality in terms of how long ships are in port compared to deployed. The big difference I have found over the current system is that you can put ships in for overhauls whenever it is convenient. You no longer have to wait for free shipyards and you don't have to wait until the ship is falling apart because of the old fixed cost approach.

Quote
The side effect then is that you basically need to add more ships to your fleet to maintain a given number of them active at any one time. Which in itself is okay, but runs counter to the rest of the Aurora philosophy of minimizing the size of fleets...

In many cases, warships will be in orbit of fleet bases anyway so they won't need to spend time in overhaul because their clocks won't move and their spares won't diminish. A ship will be spending about 25% of its actual deployed time in overhaul under this system, which isn't a lot more than before. You will therefore need say 25% more ships than you think you will require at any given time, although you can pull ships out of overhaul in an emergency.

A typical warship might spend two years sat in orbit with nothing to do and no change to clock or spares. Then it goes out on a one year mission, returns and spends three months on a major overhaul. In this type of scenario, which I expect will be common, the ship is spending three months in overhaul over a period of 39 months. Ships like survey ships or terraformers will probably be the ones spending the highest percentage of their time in overhaul because they are often constantly on deployments. It therefore seems reasonable that they will be the ones most often in yard hands.

Steve
Posted by: Randy
« on: October 05, 2007, 10:28:08 AM »

While ships are in either overhaul state, do their maint clocks stop?

And is there a way to get the clock reset faster than at 1/4 time elapsed?

IE I have ship with lots of spares. It goes out for 2 years, comes back does a minor overhaul to reload spares, goes out for another two years.

Now it needs to spend a year in major overhaul...

Seems kinda drastic. But it may be what you are aiming for.

The side effect then is that you basically need to add more ships to your fleet to maintain a given number of them active at any one time. Which in itself is okay, but runs counter to the rest of the Aurora philosophy of minimizing the size of fleets...
Posted by: Steve Walmsley
« on: October 05, 2007, 07:29:13 AM »

Quote from: "sloanjh"
Question - would the overhaul states have different mineral consumption rates?  Or is this what you mean by "readiness states" paridigm?
Different overhaul states would have different amount of wealth/mineral consumption. I have included them in the above post.

Quote
Another Question - where does "repair" fit into this scheme?  Is it still a SY task?  Can a ship be dragged out of "repair" on 1-4 week notice?  (One of the things I don't like about SF is ships being completely helpless and frozen when in SY for repairs, even if it's minor damage that's being worked on.  One would think such ships could sortie if they had a week's notice.)

Repairs currently take place in a shipyard and it is an all-or nothing proposition like SF. If I add the retooling discussed in the shipyard thread, then a shipyard would have to be retooled as a repair yard. A third option is to introduce repair facilities in the same way as maintenance facilities.

With regard to pulling out of repairs in an emergency, I can see several options. One is to leave things as they are, in which case you stay in repair until completed. A second would be for the repairs to be carried out one system at a time. Aurora would create a repair list for a ship and then the player could adjust priorities. If we decided to go for repair facillities, then we could change to a system where repair orders were sub-system based not ship-based. For example, fix the jump drive on the Agamemnon, then fix the lasers and reactors on the Menelaus before going back to fix the sensors on the Agamemnon. A list of repair tasks of this nature would be established for a planet with repair facilities. You couldn't pull out while a sub-system was being repaired but you could abandon the rest of the work and go into battle with some unrepaired systems. A third option would be an overall repair task, as we have now, that you could abandon in the same way as overhauls. Aurora would randomly allocate the repairs accumulated  to that point to fix random damaged systems.

Steve
Posted by: Steve Walmsley
« on: October 05, 2007, 07:17:30 AM »

I have changed the new overhaul rules to include John's suggestion and made another couple of minor changes.

I'll post a complete ruleset to the Rules section at some point but the changes to my original post are as follows:

Overhauls do not take place automatically, you have to give the task group an order for Minor Overhaul or Major Overhaul. This will only appear in the orders list for a population with maintenance facilities. A minor overhaul will gradually replace spares as per my original mail but I have changed the max time to three months instead of six months. A major overhaul will replace spares and also rewind the clock. The rewind will be at four times speed plus any logistics bonus.

Minor overhauls will automatically end when a ship is at full spares. Major overhauls will end automatically when the ship is at full spares and there is no time on its maintenance clock. You will get an event messages in both cases.

Overhauls can be abandoned by giving a task group an Abandon Minor Overhaul or Abandon Major Overhaul order. Cutting short a minor overhaul requires seven days and cutting short a major overhaul requires thirty days. While this abandon order is in effect, a clock will count down for the fleet on the system map in the same way as a load cargo type order. You can give a fleet additional orders but they won't execute until the abandon order is completed. If you have a Task Group in which different ships are undergoing major and minor overhauls, an Abandon Minor Overhaul order will only cut short the minor overhauls. The major overhauls will continue. If you give an order to Abandon Major Overhaul then all overhauls will be abandoned. While the abandon clock is counting down, work will continue, spares will continue to be replaced and the maintenance clock (for major overhauls) will continue to wind down.

A task group cannot move while any ship within it is involved in an overhaul. The only orders such a task group will follow are abandon orders and an order to change from minor to major overhaul. However, you can transfer ships in and out of such a task group so you could detach ships that have finished their overhauls

These changes should make overhauls more flexible and user-friendly while retaining the idea that ships are unavailable while being overhauled. It removes them from shipyards and adds the option to abandon an overhaul if necessary. It also allows overhauls to be carried out when convenient rather than having to wait until a ship is falling apart because of the costs involved. Partial overhauls are economically viable because there is no overall cost, just a cost for the actual time spent carrying out maintanance.

The maintenance costs are:

5% per year for ships in orbit of maintenance facilities (which keeps their maintenance clock frozen)
10% per year for ships in a state of minor overhaul
20% per year for ships in a state of major overhaul

Steve
Posted by: sloanjh
« on: October 03, 2007, 09:52:16 PM »

Quote from: "Steve Walmsley"
John and Kurt (or anyone else who wants to comment), would you prefer something along these lines or the original system? If we go back to the original system, I would simply allow yards to be retooled to perform overhauls

I agree with you - I think I like it a lot.  As you say, it captures most of the major abstractions that should be captured.  Having it managed through orders is good too.  It also eliminates the pesky effect of having your yard capacity soaked up by overhauls.

Question - would the overhaul states have different mineral consumption rates?  Or is this what you mean by "readiness states" paridigm?

Another Question - where does "repair" fit into this scheme?  Is it still a SY task?  Can a ship be dragged out of "repair" on 1-4 week notice?  (One of the things I don't like about SF is ships being completely helpless and frozen when in SY for repairs, even if it's minor damage that's being worked on.  One would think such ships could sortie if they had a week's notice.)

Another thing I like - there's no incentive to give crews "shore leave", especially since refueling is instantaneous.  The "minor overhaul" state is motivation for the ship to spend a few weeks in port before the next cruise.

BTW - I think you're right that the carriers I was visiting were in "major overhaul" mode, i.e. sub-systems in pieces on the deck.  
BTW2 - I also visited a carrier in SLEP when I was in grad school on the east coast - Kitty Hawk was in the Philadelphia Navy Yard (which I guess dates me somewhat :-) ).  Don't remember much about the visit, other than seeing a bunch of mothballed WWII CA (or maybe they were CL) near the front gate.

John