Aurora 4x

New Players => The Academy => Topic started by: Foolcow on January 27, 2011, 05:47:24 PM

Title: Why exactly are overhauls needed?
Post by: Foolcow on January 27, 2011, 05:47:24 PM
In the fuel situation screen,  I see that the "maintenance clock" is at 0 for many of my ships, but nothing bad seems to be happening.

What is the effect of this?
Title: Re: Why exactly are overhauls needed?
Post by: Erik L on January 27, 2011, 06:17:26 PM
Two things, are you ships in orbit of a planet? Or do you have "Overhauls required" turned off in the game settings?
Title: Re: Why exactly are overhauls needed?
Post by: Foolcow on January 27, 2011, 06:33:40 PM
I do not have the "No overhauls needed" box checked in the game settings.

One of the ships with a 0.0 maintenance clock is not constantly orbiting a planet.  It is a colony ship executing a repeat order to load colonists at Earth and drop them at Mars, and it is doing its job.  It is in orbit only while it is loading/unloading.
Title: Re: Why exactly are overhauls needed?
Post by: UnLimiTeD on January 27, 2011, 07:44:52 PM
The maintenance clock shows you how long a ship has not been properly maintained.
The clock starts at 0, and then increases over time.
The higher it is, the more often your ships suffer from maintenance failures which will have to be fixed using maintenance supplies.
This happens automatically.

There is an exception to this system, and that is Commercial shipping.
A ship that is classed as commercial, and thus built in a commercial yard, isn't build after military standards..yadayada.. doesn't fail.
Your Colony ship is very likely such a commercial design, and is thus fine with a single engineering space and will never break.
Unless shot.

Your military ships have a chance of a maintenance failure every 5 second increment, and their clock will slowly increase, thus increasing the chance for failures.
You can prevent this by keeping them at a Population with maintenance modules sufficient of maintaining the appropriate ship size or more.
Otherwise, regular overhauls, best every two years depending on your ships maintenance capacity, are recommended.
Maintenance supplies don't come from thin air, after all.