Aurora 4x
VB6 Aurora => VB6 Mechanics => Topic started by: Steve Walmsley on April 15, 2012, 03:18:37 PM
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This has turned out to be a little more complex than I anticipated :)
The following changes will make crew accommodation a much more significant factor in ship design and require the ship designer to consider the amount of time the ship is likely to be deployed in deep space. Ships deployed on long missions without suitable accommodation to keep the crew happy will suffer from low crew morale, which in turn will affect the performance of the ship. Crews forced to work in overcrowded conditions will be equally unhappy.
The basic requirement for crew accommodation is now 1 ton per crewman, or 50 crewman per HS. This is 4x more space than is allowed for a colonist in cryogenic suspension and 1/10th of the space allowed for a passenger in a cruise liner (Luxury Passenger Accommodation). This will suffice for ships who intend to spend no longer than a month away from port. For longer voyages, the ship will need additional living space for the crew. This is based on a per-man requirement but much of the additional space would probably be shared recreational space. As this is a significant increase in crew quarters requirements, I intend to revisit the crew requirements for all modules.
The top left of the Class Window now allows you to enter a Deployment Time in months, which is used as a basis for suitable crew accommodations. This number can be fractional and/or less than 1 but must be greater than zero. The amount of crew accommodations required is equal to the base amount multiplied by the cube root of the deployment time in months. So for a 3 month deployment, the requirement is 1.442 tons per man. For 12 months it is 2.289 tons and for 48 months it is 3.634 tons. For a deployment time of 0.033 months (about a day) the requirement is 0.321 tons per man. The design window will now automatically allocate crew quarters to meet this requirement, using a combination of 1 HS and 0.2 HS systems (I may add a larger one too). You can add more crew quarters than you need to create spare capacity (more on that later) but you can't reduce it below the minimum required.
If the Deployment Time is less than 0.5 months, the required crew is halved. If the Deployment Time is less than 0.1 months, the required crew is reduced by 2/3rd.
The following screenshots show 3, 12 and 48 month options for a ship with a crew of 275. Tons per Man shows the multiplier for the deployment time. Capacity per HS shows hows many crewman will be supported by 1 HS of crew quarters. Accom HS Req is the number of hull spaces required for the crew and Accom HS Avail shows how many have been added to the design. In the case of the 3 month option there are actually 277 berths on the ship so 2 are spare berths. I'll get back to cryo berths later.
(http://www.pentarch.org/steve/Screenshots/Accom3.PNG) (http://www.pentarch.org/steve/Screenshots/Accom12.PNG) (http://www.pentarch.org/steve/Screenshots/Accom48.PNG)
During every 5-day increment, every ship is checked for any problems with crew morale (I'm using morale as a catch-all for unhappiness, tiredness, etc.). The length of the deployment since the "Last Shore Leave" date is checked. If the number of months since the Last Shore Leave is greater than the designed Deployment Time of the ship, then morale will be less than 100%. Crew Morale is set to Ship Deployment Time / Months since Last Shore Leave. For example, if a ship has been out for 15 months and the deployment time of the class is 12 months, morale will fall to 12/15 = 80%.
Nice and simple until you get to carriers :). Many fighters and other small craft will have intended deployment time of only a few days compared to months or years for their parent carrier. Moreover, the crew of those fighters are likely to spend a lot more time on the carrier than on the fighter itself. For added complexity, there is no guarantee that the crew of the fighter have been out in space for the same amount of time as the crew of the carrier.
Under the new rules, the parent carrier now needs to provide accommodations for the crews of any parasite craft. That is provided for by Spare Berths. You will need to add enough extra crew quarters to provide space for the flight crews. If a ship has a hangar, this is shown on the class summary as "Flight Crew Berths" rather than "Spare Berths". A parasite craft tracks its own Last Shore Leave date but while on the carrier it uses the designed Deployment Time of that carrier. So assume a fighter that last had shore leave six months ago is transferred to a carrier that has been out in space for 4 years - a year past its Deployment Time of 36 months. The crew of the carrier is not happy, having been out in space a year longer than they expected. The crew of the fighter is fine. They have only been out in space 6 months and the carrier has nice spacious accommodations.
When a fighter is out in space (and may or may not have been launched from a carrier), it tracks both the "Months since Last Shore Leave" and "Months since Last Launch". If the last launch was later than last shore leave (which may not always be the case) then that is used for purposes of its current trip. For example, the crew of a fighter has been in space overall for four years but only on its current mission for several hours. During the morale check, it compares the last launch date against the accommodations actually on board the fighter, which will be far less generous than those on the carrier.
However, it is possible that the morale for (Months since Last Launch / Fighter Deployment Time) would result in a higher morale than (Months since Last Shore Leave/ Carrier Deployment Time). As the crew would still be suffering from the effects of being out in space so long on board the carrier, their morale can never be higher than it was when they launched. I know that sounds a little complicated. In summary, what you need to bear in mind is that when you launch a fighter, you need to worry about the length of its deployment from the carrier. That will have an effect on the morale of its crew based on the time since launch and the accommodation on the fighter. However, if the crew was unhappy when they launched, they aren't going to get any happier during the mission.
To improve morale, a ship needs to spend time on orbit of a planet with at a population of at least 10,000. This should be enough to provide bars, nightclubs, brothels, art galleries, etc.. Note that maintenance facilities are not required. You just need people. While in orbit, the Last Shore Leave date will increase at the rate of 10x actual time. Once the Last Shore Leave date moves closer to the present day than the Deployment Time of the crew's ship, their morale will be back to 100%. Of course, if you can get the Last Shore Leave back to the present, the crew is ready for another long mission. Otherwise, it is more of a break during the existing mission. It's worth noting that the small colonies you set up to support the naval forces on the front lines may one day grow into something much larger as civilian traffic moves into the area.
In addition to long deployment times, the crews will lose morale due to overcrowding. Each 5-day, the total number of crew on the ship, plus the crew of any parasite craft, plus any survivors you have picked up plus any survivors on the parasites, is compared to the number of available berths. If there are more personnel than berths then morale will fall. Crew Morale is multiplied by (Berths / TotalPersonnel). So overcrowding and staying out too long are a really bad combination.
The above ends the current situation where a FAC can pickup a couple of thousand survivors. To enable ships to pick up survivors without causing massive overcrowding, I have added a couple of new systems. The "Cryogenic Transport - Emergency" and "Cryogenic Transport - Small". They are 1 HS and 5 HS respectively with capacities of 200 and 1000. While they can be used as normal colonist tranportation, their intended function is to allow ships to carry small cryogenic facilities to allow them to pick up survivors without causing overcrowding or compromising their life support systems. The 1 HS version might be a standard fitting on a cruiser and the larger might be used by "hospital ships". When a ship is transporting survivors, the number of available cryogenic berths is deducted from the number of survivors before considering total personnel numbers in the overcrowding calculation. Any survivors on parasites with available cryogenic facilities will also be excluded from total personnel.
Low morale affects both crew training and fleet training. Whenever a check is required that involves either rating, it is first multiplied by the morale percentage. This means that a ship with low morale will be slow to respond to orders and will not function well in combat. I'll provide a few more details on this in a future post as this post is mainly about how we get to low morale rather than the effects.
As well as the morale effects of overcrowding, it is possible the ship's life support systems may be overloaded. Even though some ships will have extensive crew accommodations, most of that will be recreational facilities. The life support element of those systems is based on the expected crew numbers plus a 20% safety margin. If overcrowding exceeds 20%, there is a chance that life support systems may start to fail. During each 5-day in which Total Personnel/Berths is greater than 1.2 (i.e. more than 20% overcrowded), each crew quarters system is checked for failure. If failures occur they will be automatically fixed by the ship's onboard maintenance supplies until those run out.
The percentage chance of failure for each crew quarters is equal to: ((Total Personnel/Berths)-1) x 10
For example, if a ship has 40% overcrowding, the chance of failure for each crew quarters is (1.4 - 1) * 10 = 4%. While that doesn't seem very high, if there are a lot of crew quarters on the ship, one or two may fail. Once maintenance supplies run out, even small failures will result in even more overcrowding and the effect may snowball.
If a ship has no life support remaining, either due to battle damage or maintenance failures, emergency systems will keep the crew alive for one week. After that point, the crew will be forced to abandon ship. I'll cover reclaiming the ship (Have you restored life support yet, Rodney?) and what happens to colonists, troops, etc in a future post in this thread (as I haven't decided yet :)).
I will include an option to turn off crew morale / life support overload checks in the same way as turning off overhauls but I think leaving it on adds an interesting extra dimension to the game.
Steve
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Woah. Awesome.
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Excellent. I chuckled at the mention of brothels for shore leave on a planet of 10,000 people. I live near a town of 12,000 and I am pretty sure there are no brothels being advertised by the tourism board.
One thing I would like to have considered, which you may or may not have already addressed is the effect of abandoning survivors. I have had situations where going back to save them would have meant complete loss of a fleet and I opted to leave them out there in an effort to save the rest of the ships. It seems to me this should have a massively demoralizing effect on the crew of your fleet.
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three questions
1. if a ship looses life support but still has cryo births will the excess crew use them? (the ship suffering from reduced efficency of cource)
2. if the ship has rescued suvivors in cryo births and looses crew below optimum levels will some of these be awakened to replace those lost? is so how long will this take?
3. will you be able to allocate crew to cryobirths and have them rotate with active crew to allow longer deployments? (crew work in shifts)
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Wow! What a change! Is this going to be included in NA too? Is there a way to replace a crew say if i send them a ship with enough personel in cryo?
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One thing I would like to have considered, which you may or may not have already addressed is the effect of abandoning survivors. I have had situations where going back to save them would have meant complete loss of a fleet and I opted to leave them out there in an effort to save the rest of the ships. It seems to me this should have a massively demoralizing effect on the crew of your fleet.
Something like when a life pod runs out of endurance, all ships of the same empire in the same system suffer a morale hit, possibly with a modifier for how many occur at the same time.
Overall, this sounds awesome. Just another layer of goodness on an already Baikal-deep game. :D
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(Have you restored life support yet, Rodney?)
Hahahahahahaha. Awesome.
Nice changes. I love the idea of designing "Hospital Ships".
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Excellent. I chuckled at the mention of brothels for shore leave on a planet of 10,000 people. I live near a town of 12,000 and I am pretty sure there are no brothels being advertised by the tourism board.
I was more curious how many sailors (or crewers or espatiers or whatever) would actually partake of an art gallery. One of those things was definitely not like the others. :P
While I'm positively giddy about this, I feel it's worth asking whether or not you plan to have an opt-out option for folks who might find this too micromanagement intensive, ala maintenance.
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While I'm positively giddy about this, I feel it's worth asking whether or not you plan to have an opt-out option for folks who might find this too micromanagement intensive, ala maintenance.
Read the last line of Steve's post ;)
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Will it be possible to transfer survivors that have been picked up between ships in a fleet?
Just to check I'm reading this right, if for example, you had a fighter with a deployment time of 1 day, then as long as it never exceeds that time on any single deployment from the carrier, it's morale will remain fine until the carrier suffers from being out too long, correct?
Also how will the new rules on deployment times effect PDC's? As they can't move will you need to do crew rotatations, via a passenger ship? If so how will crew training levels be preserved? Similarly we would want to be able to do crew rotations for commercial base vessels without engines such as terraformers/asteroid miners/fuel refiners/etc.
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What about survivors in general? Will they be accounted for until they are returned to a populated colony, and affect the life support while they are on the ship? Also, alien survivors, how will they be treated?
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Now I want a large mobile repair yard module so I can have a large, diverse fleet train. :P
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Hot damn.
It's awesome.
Your awesome!
It's getting better and better.
I suppose civilians will be abstracted as just switching out crews the instant they hit a populated planet of your race?
And I love the additional options, Hospital ships and stuff.
Though having backup cryo berths to allow longer rotations is an interesting option as well.
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It'd be nice to have an option to change the crew: morale instantly go back up to 100%, but we loose any training that ship may have. Useful if you have a ship that spent years in space but is needed immediately to fight off those aliens.
Will the officer influence the morale of his ship?
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Similarly we would want to be able to do crew rotations for commercial base vessels without engines such as terraformers/asteroid miners/fuel refiners/etc.
A orbital habitat should help with that its anyway damn big so a cryo-unit for 10k people will be no big issue.
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Or have some form of transport ship to rotate crew out with...for bases/ warp point def and such to avoid a crew penalty.
Also it would be nice if leaders did affect crew morale too.
Alot of great changes, this next installment may be more of a 6.0 via a 5.7...lol
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Have to say that this is looking great. Previously I've waiting until I've exhausted a current campaign before installing the new version but in this case I think I will be dropping it like a hot brick.
Tracking morale opens up a host of further possibilities for consideration. Much as you have with ground units at the moment you could allow for a morale rating to move above 100%:
- Quality of officers on ship
- Presence of central command and control in a system.
This could then be adversely affected by current events:
- Duration of tour / over crowding etc as already covered
- Loss of officers on ship
- Loss of the bridge (could have a new secondary bridge component)
- Loss of ships in TG / system
- Other casualties on board
As a result, well trained and experienced crews will be able to take a certain level of problems without it affecting their performance whilst less well trained / lead crews will more rapidly lose effectiveness.
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For commercial ships and bases maybe a more arbitrary solution could be used. Create a new planet based structure called something like commercial support facility. This structure represents facilities for the rotation of crew, transport shuttles etc and is rated at number of crew supported. You build multiple ones of these to support you commercial vessels. As long as they are adequate then no need to check for morale issues etc. These could work on a sector by sector basis for testing sufficiency.
In order to differentiate between freighters etc and those towed stations you could have a check box in vessel design that sets that vessel to rely on the commercial facilities, this option would not however be available for non commercial ships and might not be available to ships with engines included in the design.
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A orbital habitat should help with that its anyway damn big so a cryo-unit for 10k people will be no big issue.
The OH is a good solution in the case of terraformers and asteroid miners, but it won't work 'as it' for the sorium harvesters (impossible to set a gas giant as a colony, so the OH will not be taken into account).
You can still put the OH in orbit of one of the moon of the gas giant and rotate the harvesting ships sometime.
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What about a large recreational facility 5K tons or bigger in size that reduces the rate of morale loss eg 5K module reduces it by 10% (for recreation ships as part of the fleet train or civilian ships) to 25K which reduces by 95% (for gas giant refinerys/other stations) with verations inbetween that can be researched?
fleets using these have to have the ships in the fleet for them to opperate and they cause a increace in order action time (simulates transfer from rec ships to combat units)
(figures are arbertary and may or may not be used (just like the sugestion itself really ;D ))
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Just make it like maintenance - crew morale is not affecting Commercial designs. That way almost all the problems go away.
Awesome changes, can't wait for 5.70 to come out!
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Personally I would up the shore leave minimum to 50,000 or 100,000... thats about what you need for a modern town with decent nightlife in my experience. ++Just as importantly, that's a very orbitally habitable number. ^_^
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As an offshoot, Orbitals with proper crew rec areas shouldn't suffer from deployment morale issues. The staff is enough quantity itself to support myriad recreational activities without needing shore leave. The orbital itself would be a shore leave destination for ship crew.
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Personally I would up the shore leave minimum to 50,000 or 100,000. . . thats about what you need for a modern town with decent nightlife in my experience. ++Just as importantly, that's a very orbitally habitable number. ^_^
I'd agree - you need larger populations for the anonymity necessary for brothels, illegal drug trade, rows of bars lining the docks waiting for sailors. . . I suppose historically any land leave was welcome once you were stuck on a boat in the ocean for half a year or more, though!
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Just make it like maintenance - crew morale is not affecting Commercial designs. That way almost all the problems go away.
Awesome changes, can't wait for 5.70 to come out!
I REALLY like this idea - I've been worried about the micromanagement that would need to be associated with my small WP picket stations. The "realistic" way to manage it would be to allow crew rotation through the "CFN", but since that's not representable in Aurora mechanics it's easier just to ignore crewing for commercials. NOTE: In order to avoid exploits, you should probably require something like 3 month's worth of berthing space in order for a design to be classified as commercial (and avoid the morale degradations).
John
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I'd kind of like to see an option to automate your ships, removing a need for crew at all so that we could design true automated weapons platforms in addition to the minefields we can already make. Maybe something like double the space requirement or 10x cost on all modules to support their complete automation and self-repair ability?
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Supercomputers could definitely do the job. It would have to have reasonably sized drawbacks though, I think that would mainly be the cost of the exotic components used to build the computer, the size of the coolers needed to keep it running - and by extension the slightly larger thermal signature, and the inability or very low ability to repair damage. This would allow for certain things while discouraging other things. For instance, you could mount guns on a platform to deploy as semi-permanent defense around asteroids being mined, or produce some very low-upkeep freighters. But, at the same time a true combat ship would work better with a traditional crew and large scale projects would need to be almost entirely crewed.
The fun would come in the mixtures, of course. If the computers counted towards crew while not requiring life support, then you could, for instance, put a large passive sensor buoy out in orbit of Pluto, with enough automation to keep itself running but also with one human occupant with supplies to last 10+ years, with the purpose of maintaining small breakdowns that the computer can't fix. Or, on the other side, have computer-assisted manned warships, bolstering their human crew with some computer aid.
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Supercomputers could definitely do the job. It would have to have reasonably sized drawbacks though, I think that would mainly be the cost of the exotic components used to build the computer, the size of the coolers needed to keep it running - and by extension the slightly larger thermal signature, and the inability or very low ability to repair damage. This would allow for certain things while discouraging other things. For instance, you could mount guns on a platform to deploy as semi-permanent defense around asteroids being mined, or produce some very low-upkeep freighters. But, at the same time a true combat ship would work better with a traditional crew and large scale projects would need to be almost entirely crewed.
The fun would come in the mixtures, of course. If the computers counted towards crew while not requiring life support, then you could, for instance, put a large passive sensor buoy out in orbit of Pluto, with enough automation to keep itself running but also with one human occupant with supplies to last 10+ years, with the purpose of maintaining small breakdowns that the computer can't fix. Or, on the other side, have computer-assisted manned warships, bolstering their human crew with some computer aid.
Increase the thermal signature? Over that of keeping a human-habitable volume warm? No way.
Actually, automation is very easy. A ship is fly-by-wire anyway, so remote control is not a big deal. Damage control is a legitimate issue, of course.
Though I really doubt that a single person will be very happy after 10 years alone. Also, the life support system is likely the most failure-prone part.
That said, I definitely support automation, and am also looking forward to 5.7. And this may have been answered above, but what about troops? Or prisoners?
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Instead of Computerized automation I would rather see the introduction of organic technologies that allow for the construction of living parts that would not require maintenance or crew but would require the presence of "brains" organic components that control any living parts of the ship.
At low levels this would lead to hybrid ships that are mostly Human crewed but contain a few organic components
At high levels a race could move to having entirely organic ships that essentially become new species of organisms that serve what ever race created them.
In ether case however whether automation is gained from computerization or from organic technology I feel that it would be most if the only way to gain the technologies required was to capture and dismissible the relevant spoiler ships starswarm for organic technology and percursers which are entirely robotic ships
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So, what happens to crews if you stop at foreign colonies of over 10,000? I'm assuming that hostile NPRs will greet all shore leave with heavy weapons, but friendly and possibly neutral populations may be receptive.
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Updated Crew Requirements
The following is a list of changes to crew requirements for each module. I'll go through the whole thread and answer the questions when I get a little bit more time.
Active Sensors, Beam/Missile Fire Control, EM/Thermal Sensors, Cloak, Jump Drive, Reactor: was Hull Spaces x5, now Hull Spaces x2.
Asteroid Mining Module: was 100, now 50
Cargo Handling Systems: still 10 each
Compact ECM/ECCM: was 10 now 3.
Damage Control: was 25, now 10
ECM/ECCM: was 20, now 6
Engineering: was 10, now 5
Grav/Geo Sensors: was 25, now 10
Hangar Deck: was 25, now 15
Jump Gate Construction module: now 20% of previous. 100 for base module.
Laser, Meson, Microwave, Particle Beam, Plasma Carronade, Railgun: was Hull Spaces x10. Now Hull Spaces x5.
Magazine: was HSx1.5, now HSx0.5, although min 1.
Maintenance Module: was 125, now 50.
Missile Launcher: was Hull Spaces x Size Modifier x10. Now Hull Spaces x Size Modifier x5
Salvage Module: was 200, now 80.
Shields: was 3 per unit, now 1
Small Craft ECM/ECCM, was 4, now 1
Terraforming Module: Was 200, now 100.
Tractor Beam: was 20, now 10
Jump Drive Changes
All jump drive tech efficiencies have increased by 1, so the tech progression now starts at 4. The research costs are effectively halved as the RP cost for efficiency 5 is now the same as it used to be for 4, etc..
Jump Drive Cost was (JumpDriveHS ^ 2) / 4
Jump Drive Cost now (JumpDriveHS ^ 1.8) / 4
This is a bigger change than it looks. For example, a 10,000 ton efficiency 5 jump drive is now 191 BP instead of 400 BP. A 15,000 ton efficiency 5 jump drive is now 397 BP instead of 900 BP.
Steve
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Really looking forward to having more flexibility with Jump Drives.
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Updated Crew Requirements
The following is a list of changes to crew requirements for each module. I'll go through the whole thread and answer the questions when I get a little bit more time.
Active Sensors, Beam/Missile Fire Control, EM/Thermal Sensors, Cloak, Jump Drive, Reactor: was Hull Spaces x5, now Hull Spaces x2.
Asteroid Mining Module: was 100, now 50
Cargo Handling Systems: still 10 each
Compact ECM/ECCM: was 10 now 3.
Damage Control: was 25, now 10
ECM/ECCM: was 20, now 6
Engineering: was 10, now 5
Grav/Geo Sensors: was 25, now 10
Hangar Deck: was 25, now 15
Jump Gate Construction module: now 20% of previous. 100 for base module.
Laser, Meson, Microwave, Particle Beam, Plasma Carronade, Railgun: was Hull Spaces x10. Now Hull Spaces x5.
Magazine: was HSx1.5, now HSx0.5, although min 1.
Maintenance Module: was 125, now 50.
Missile Launcher: was Hull Spaces x Size Modifier x10. Now Hull Spaces x Size Modifier x5
Salvage Module: was 200, now 80.
Shields: was 3 per unit, now 1
Small Craft ECM/ECCM, was 4, now 1
Terraforming Module: Was 200, now 100.
Tractor Beam: was 20, now 10
Steve
Might I suggest that in addition to reducing the base crew per module, the crew for multiple modules be reduced as well? It is unlikely that crew needs scale linearly with multiple copies of the same module. I've posted a breakdown before, but figuring crew as:
Total Crew for Same Modules = Crew / Module * sqrt (Number of Modules)
or some other function more flat than linear would feel more realistic.
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Read the article and point taken, I guess that hard science wasent really covered in my economics degree.
I would be surprised if it was. ;)
I've been thinking about the crewing situation, and have several ideas for changes, either in 5.7, or future versions.
1. Officer auto assignment.
Would it be possible to get the auto-assign to assign officers that don't have crew training ratings or the relevant abilities, after all the officers with relevant abilities are assigned? I tend to try to fill those slots, but in a large games, it's sort of a chore.
2. Crew rotation and pool tracking.
I find the current system to be incredibly simplistic. You have two levels, conscript and pool. Nothing else, and unless I'm mistaken, the crew persists forever. Also, the crew will stay with a ship forever, and then magic people appear on scrapping.
Here's my suggestion. First, the crew pool tracks people and points separately. The academy has a level that it pumps people in at. For example, it may add 100 people and 20000 points in a given week. These are added to the pool values. When a ship is commissioned, it takes the correct number of people and points, based on the pool averages. Adjusting the academy training level only affects the inflow, not what's already in the pool. Also, people should leave the pool. Maybe 5% a year, of average points. There might be a way to stop it, but only in wartime, and I'm not sure how that would work.
Second, rotate people on ships. To make it easy, whenever a ship gets shore leave, a certain number of people rotate back into the pool, based on how long it's been out. Maybe 10% per year. They're replaced with normal people from the pool.
Third, allow picked crews, and maybe unpicked crews. These have maybe 150% and 50% of normal points, respectively, taking the appropriate number of people and points from the pool, and getting those values when the crew rotates.
3. Automation of ships.
Automation has several effects. First, no crew required (obviously). Second, no onboard repair. Thirdly, no captain, and the crew grade is fixed, and set by the level of automation system you use. Fourth, there is a fixed "fleet training rating" that can't be altered, and is also set by the automation system. Fifth, docking with a crewed ship should be able to repair the vessel, and maybe reduce the maintainence clock some. Something like the shore leave system, where you have "time since last tune-up" and "time since last overhaul".
That's all of my thoughts for now, but I might have more later.
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Split out thread-drift posts into an "Organic Technology vs. Computerized Automation" thread in mechanics.
John
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I REALLY like this idea - I've been worried about the micromanagement that would need to be associated with my small WP picket stations. The "realistic" way to manage it would be to allow crew rotation through the "CFN", but since that's not representable in Aurora mechanics it's easier just to ignore crewing for commercials. NOTE: In order to avoid exploits, you should probably require something like 3 month's worth of berthing space in order for a design to be classified as commercial (and avoid the morale degradations).
John
Yes, that's not a bad idea. The other option may be to simply let commercials suffer the consequences. In most cases, they aren't going to suffer due to low morale because they won't use crew grade and fleet training very often anyway. On the rare occasions when they do, they will be noticeably less able than warship crews, which might not be an unreasonable scenario.
EDIT: In fact both may be reasonable. A commercial designation requires at least 3 months berthing space to avoid 'gaming the system' but commercials still suffer the effects because they are unlikely to be of consequence.
Steve
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Also, people should leave the pool. Maybe 5% a year, of average points. There might be a way to stop it, but only in wartime, and I'm not sure how that would work.
--> Opens the door for new longevity/cybertech biology techs that increase pop growth and reduce crew bleed rates.
Third, allow picked crews, and maybe unpicked crews. These have maybe 150% and 50% of normal points, respectively, taking the appropriate number of people and points from the pool, and getting those values when the crew rotates.
I like this. It would be a simple and elegant solution to the weirdness of crew grade. Also, when you scrap an older ship, your highly trained crew would no longer vanish into the void. xD
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--> Opens the door for new longevity/cybertech biology techs that increase pop growth and reduce crew bleed rates.
I see that more as an officer retention thing. But it could work for this, too.
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My thinking of shore leave is quite a bit different from everyone. I think that it isn't unreasonable to have bars nightclubs brothels etc with a very small population. You are limited by the choice of the options available, in reality, not by having a lack options themselves in small towns. I've seen a guy operate out of a small town brewing his own beer from his garage at night, providing the local bar with beer. While by day he is the towns mechanic using his own garage to service the cars. I think its great ingenuity and is likely passed on colonial thinking. In fact it's quite common to see small towns/villages to be built to accommodate holidaying crews & tourists. Here in New Zealand its absolutely vital to our economic survival. Regardless of the effects of the recession. Christchurch has a port and its own port community called Lyttelton which only has a few thousand people in the whole area. Its well known (but not advertised) to have a very high concentration of nightlife of all variety's. Prostitution was decriminalized here at some point during 2000-2005.
So I guess all I'm saying is crew exchange/holidaying should certainly be doable because there are examples of it working all over the globe in remote spots with lesser numbers. I heard a joke once "If you only have 3 people making up a town, 1 will always be the designated town harlot".
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Shouldn't Freighter crews be cycled when reaching a large population?
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Would the simplest solution be that a combination of a commercial spaceport and military academy on a planet, flag that population as valid for crew rotation. Since they already have their own levels a simple rule can be checked to calculate the supported rotation rate.
The commercial spaceport concept can be extended to not only technical installations but also to bars, entertainment and brothels that you see around normal ports as mentioned before.
Military academy presence is outputting personnel anyway and by consuming them as relief crew for harboring ships, that loop is closed as well.
By following this idea it increase the need for serious presence in a system as well instead of just having simple forward bases.
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On military ships, you wouldn't want that, you want your Elite crews to stick on one ship.
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I was against the idea of crew rotation on commercial ships because I felt it added unnecessary complexity and wouldn't follow the maintenance precedent. However, if crew need to be rotated and Steve is willing to change commercial maintenance rules a bit, I wouldn't mind a rare ship exploding for no apparent reason, vaporizing the cargo of whatever I had contracted because the owner decided to pinch a few credits and wait a month longer for the next overhaul.
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On military ships, you wouldn't want that, you want your Elite crews to stick on one ship.
I agree on that and still your elite crew can't be running that ship for 100% of their time.
That's why I was thinking higher spaceport ranking, the faster a crew can be used again or higher military academy ranking the more elite crews you can compose.
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I still like the concept of having more then one officer on a ship: Additional Jr Officers can be assigned based on the modules.
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To improve morale, a ship needs to spend time on orbit of a planet with at a population of at least 10,000. This should be enough to provide bars, nightclubs, brothels, art galleries, etc.. Note that maintenance facilities are not required. You just need people. While in orbit, the Last Shore Leave date will increase at the rate of 10x actual time.
Random thought: An easy way to distinguish planets would be to have the LSL increase scale with the Services % of a colony, simulating the better and more varied facilities available in a larger colony. Alternatively, it could scale inversely with Agricultural %, representing that hostile environments / frontier planets arn't as hospitable.
Another random thought; Ships could have home ports, which have drastically higher LSL recovery, and/or penalties otherwise. Though the more I think about it, the more trouble it sounds for minor benefit.
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+1 for using agriculture as a modifier on shore leave effectiveness.
-1 for home port - the idea here is to encourage you to build colonies further out to support your fleet, not to encourage ships staying around home.
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Homeport doesn't have to be Earth, here in Japan there are quite a few American ships homeported...same thing.
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capturing enemy crews if u get enough of them by the sounds of it can be put on a colony planet that might be quite unsuitable for the base species Could be useful just to farm enemy ships