Aurora 4x
VB6 Aurora => Bureau of Ship Design => Topic started by: Theodidactus on July 17, 2014, 12:31:11 PM
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I had a lot of fun a few years ago when I tasked myself to construct a suitably epic "megaproject" and build a nearly self sufficient science vessel which would lead to a lot of RP fun. The trouble was, real life interfered before I could actually use it much. I had considered redoing that but where's the fun in doing the same thing over and over again. Plus, it doesn't really suit the atmosphere of this campaign.
Instead, I need something else to occupy my time, and because I have no clue how to build it, I will need your help.
This is prompted by a real, in-game need, but makes for a good RP scenario as well.
It's 2147 and the past 5 years have lead to explosive growth of the military/industrial complex in terran space. The human species seems (mostly) united behind a common mutual defense alliance called the Concordance of Worlds. The agreement is simple: each colony develops in relative isolation, but the Concordance maintains an absolute monopoly on space based weaponry, and doesn't interfere with the colonies in any way. unfortunate circumstances (http://aurora2.pentarch.org/index.php/topic,7248.0.html) lead to the destruction of the fleet's command ship about 5 years ago, and prompted significant military reforms. The concordance has grown in power and has assumed responsibility for policing all space within 20 Light years of Groombridge 34, a star system that sits nearly equidistant between the centers of the three dominant space empires in this area of the galaxy.
I would like this system to be the new center of my campaign, though it is actually quite far from terran space. (probably 1 month from earth). I would like to support my most powerful battlefleet out of this system, as well as maintain stores of fuel, supplies, and ammunition.
Here's the problem: there's no planets in Groombridge, at least, none that are in the center of the system.
So, I need to build a starbase which will function as the military command headquarters of my might space armada. I would also like to do it with minimal cheating, though i am ruling that some might be allowed. This station will police the space of the commune of Achird, a wealthy and powerful trader race that has a completely ineffective space military. I've saved their chitinous butts on numerous occasions and I figure they'll be more than happy to contribute some minerals and construction points to this project.
The concordant has decreed that the project must be complete by 2155. Specifications forthcoming.
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specs:
- The station itself must be a permanent or semi-permanent fixed structure or group of structures that need only minimal replacing and upkeep
- the station cannot have an anchor given its geography
- It needs to have hanger space for 100,000 tons of starship. We would like to field a missile cruiser (25,000 tons) 2 destroyer escorts (combined 30,000 tons), a battlecruiser (25,000 tons) and a ranger (15,000 tons) as well as about 5,000 tons of dedicated fightercraft.
- It needs to carry at least 10,000,000 gallons of fuel (I think the commune of Achird is going to pick up the fuel costs and this tank will always be magically full)
- It needs to have magazine storage enough to reload the ships it stores and possibly any operating carriers in the region, so, 1,000 missile size points of munitions
- It needs to have a size-30 thermal sensor and a size-30 active scanner, which will enable it to see virtually every ship in the center of the system
- It needs to have some defensive system of its own, I believe I could easily fit 9-12 large-bore double-barreled laser turrets on this monstrosity.
- It needs to have space for a luxury passenger module, and a flag bridge.
As I understand it, the best way to build this thing would be a modular design of some kind. The largest military construction facilities i have can build 50,000 ton modules, civilian ones can go up to 125,000. So, I believe the modules would be:
- 3 40,000 ton hanger modules, each with 10,000 tons of support stuff, including most likely the turrets, their fire controls, power plants, and magazines
- 2 120,000 ton civilian recreation modules, as I understand it, you need two. Might be enough room for luxury modules as well
- 1 large tanker module, which might also carry a bunch of supplies, probably 80,000 tons
- a "command" module with a flag bridge, sensors, and possibly an antimissile system, might be significantly smaller than the hanger modules
- several very long range tugs.
Is this design even feasible? Will it fall apart in 2 years? should i just rewind the clocks every 2 years and say the commune of achird is servicing it? Has anyone built a starbase this big before in a "real game"...how did you maintain it?
I understand maintenance modules can't be used to upkeep the station itself as they themselves would require maintenance.
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modular design seems necessary given that it will need constant upkeep, as I don't think I can feasibly have a module last longer than 5 years. The easiest solution seems to be to move a ton of maintenance facilities to the closest possible planet, along with some civilian tugs, and periodically overhaul modules once every 5-7 years or so. The closest planet is a Kruger 60 colony controlled by an allied alien race...they may be a little angry at me commandeering their south pole in the service of this cause, but I don't think it will start a war.
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Considering you want to have 100 000T of boat bays and your largest military yard has 50 000T capacity then yes, you have no choice but to build modular 'station'.
The closest planet is a Kruger 60 colony controlled by an allied alien race...they may be a little angry at me commandeering their south pole in the service of this cause, but I don't think it will start a war.
I don't really know that much about how NPR reacts, but I'm pretty sure that making colony on a planet they already own will begin to deteriorate relations, possibly quite fast and lead to war (eventually). A good enough diplomatic team may (or may not) offset that.
Also I have a question: is there any asteroid near the A component or is it completely barren? Because it's feasible to make a full scale, self sufficient base on an asteroid that would support your fleet.
Now to the main problem. Unless you have a nearby body, you won't be able to make permanent or semi-permanent base. Worse, as far as I can remember there is no SM option to just rewind the clock (I may be wrong about that). So your base will be forced to have an overhaul every so often. In addition I'm not sure the recreation module is working, so intended deployment time will be an issue as well.
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Recreation module needs body with colony to work.
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Recreation module needs body with colony to work.
Does the colony need a population? Or can you get by with habitation modules?
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Does the colony need a population? Or can you get by with habitation modules?
I believe that empty colony is enough. Then ship with recreational module should work.
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well if I need a body then this is a real problem, because Groombridge A is completely deserted. There are of course many bodies that are orbiting groombridge B, but recall that this system requires months to fly through.
It's a crying shame if this will really require some body, because this location is about the most flavorful I've seen in Aurora, almost exactly equidistant between my empire, my allies empire, and my enemy's empire, and along the busiest freighter lane in space.
Ah well, I'm sure a suitable asteroid can be found in some nearby system...
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You CAN build a station that maintains itself. Maintenance modules are civilian, so you can just cram as many maintenance modules as you need to maintain the military segments of the station in the civilian sections. Since the civilian sections never need maintenance, you don't have to worry about the fact that the maintenance modules can't repair themselves.
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well yes and no, the problem is morale, since recreation modules require a body to operate, which i was not aware of.
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Actually if my memory serves it's the maintenance modules that require a body for sure. I seem to remember that recreational module does operate in deep space, but sometimes it's not working at all - buggy in other words.
There is a good news (kinda). I was trying to build a carrier module for one of your battlecruisers and turns out it has maintenance life of 0.0 years. It took me a while to figure it out - while magazines and boat bays/hangars are military they do not break. In short, you can have a military installation with infinite life span. As such you could make bases/large hangars for your ships and you could just put them anywhere in deep space and they would not require maintenance. However, I did not try it, so having infinite maintenance life on a military object may lead to bugs/errors. Also other modules (like the one with sensors) will need overhaul. Here's an example of what I'm talking about:
Battlecruiser Support Module class Maintenance Base 48 550 tons 675 Crew 5334 BP TCS 971 TH 0 EM 0
1 km/s Armour 4-118 Shields 0-0 Sensors 1/1/0/0 Damage Control Rating 41 PPV 0
Maint Life 0 Years MSP 2815 AFR 459% IFR 6.4% 1YR 0 5YR 0 Max Repair 12 MSP
Intended Deployment Time: 240 months Flight Crew Berths 0
Hangar Deck Capacity 25000 tons Magazine 3300
Fuel Capacity 5 000 000 Litres Range N/A
This design is classed as a Military Vessel for maintenance purposes
It has magazine space to re-arm your vessel (even if it's armed with box launchers) and fuel storage. It should be noted that I personally consider this something of an exploit and it should probably be reported as a bug.
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Well there is original info on recreational module from Steve: http://aurora2.pentarch.org/index.php/topic,4835.30.html (next to last entry).
can tour bases or anchorages to provide
I believe that means that it needs colony to work. Same as Asteroid Miner or Maintenance Module.
It is unfortunate because I would be very happy to be able to construct self sufficient space stations.
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Seems to be a moot idea: the maintenance modules necessary to support a 40,000 ton hanger are about 500,000 tons. Prohibitively large.
There are no viable bodies within groombridge or its neighboring systems, save 1 asteroid that might work within the home system of my ally, and I don't think they'd take kindly to a foreign military base. Looks like we're going with the "stupifyingly large command ship" option.
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There is a good news (kinda). I was trying to build a carrier module for one of your battlecruisers and turns out it has maintenance life of 0.0 years. It took me a while to figure it out - while magazines and boat bays/hangars are military they do not break. In short, you can have a military installation with infinite life span. As such you could make bases/large hangars for your ships and you could just put them anywhere in deep space and they would not require maintenance. However, I did not try it, so having infinite maintenance life on a military object may lead to bugs/errors. Also other modules (like the one with sensors) will need overhaul.
That's the solution, then.
Build one hangar module with nothing that can break due to maintaince failure, that has a hangar large enough to accept any of the other military modules. IIRC you can then stick the other military modules into it to overhaul them as needed.
Deployment time is still an issue, but it's not that expensive to design ships with century-long deployment times.
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Recreation module needs body with colony to work.
well yes and no, the problem is morale, since recreation modules require a body to operate, which i was not aware of.
"A" body is true. They definitely do not need a colony, as I have seen them operate at jump points when my jump gate builder (with recreation module) was busy and I got message from his returning escort that they had enough shore leave. Seen this on many many occasions since then, as every of my freighters is big and has such a thing. Anyway, you will have a jump point in the system, so this will work for you. Probably even the sun is enough, if anything needed is some sort of reference point.
///Nevermind, I just tested it with waypoints in void space in 6.4, and yes, it works perfectly. My fighters gained clock, but no morale loss. Now celebrate! (http://www.greensmilies.com/smile/smiley_emoticons_party.gif)
Actually if my memory serves it's the maintenance modules that require a body for sure. I seem to remember that recreational module does operate in deep space, but sometimes it's not working at all - buggy in other words.
Yupp, sometimes they just don't work for no reason. I once had a recreation capable terraforming module above a planet, and it would still get increase in crew stress. However, when I also dragged a sole-purpose fuel module there into the same task group, it suddenly worked... . Same happened to fuel harvester bases, which needed to have such a fuel module around to work with crew morale (the fuel module didn't have such a thing itself btw.). For some reason I guess there is sometimes a giver-receiver necessity before anything starts. ..Yet, in my newest game I basically built the same terraforming module from above again, but this time it worked just fine hovering over uninhabited worlds... .
Seems to be a moot idea: the maintenance modules necessary to support a 40,000 ton hanger are about 500,000 tons. Prohibitively large.
*1,000,000 tons
The factor is 25 for that a 5000 ton module supports 200 tons of military. ..And that is just the maintenance module, so some extras on top of that.
Interesting information from Haji there for the hangars. I had already tested this and thought it didn't work, but now I have to check again, for I must have made some mistake somewhere.(..I assume I accidentally placed ciws on board)
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in light of that...
Hanger modules including fuel for fighters and magazines for fighters (no maintenance necessary)(3)
hanger class Space Station 49 950 tons 610 Crew 5763.88 BP TCS 999 TH 0 EM 0
1 km/s Armour 12-120 Shields 0-0 Sensors 1/1/0/0 Damage Control Rating 0 PPV 0
Maint Life 0 Years MSP 0 AFR 9990% IFR 138.7% 1YR 0 5YR 0 Max Repair 12 MSP
Intended Deployment Time: 6 months Flight Crew Berths 0
Hangar Deck Capacity 40000 tons Magazine 180
Fuel Capacity 250 000 Litres Range N/A
Neon Rocket (14) Speed: 50 000 km/s End: 0.3m Range: 0.9m km WH: 10 Size: 3 TH: 250/150/75
Largo-Lanza Antiship Missile (12) Speed: 50 000 km/s End: 1.6m Range: 4.9m km WH: 14 Size: 3 TH: 183/110/55
Photon Bomb (10) Speed: 45 000 km/s End: 2m Range: 5.4m km WH: 50 Size: 10 TH: 165/99/49
Missile to hit chances are vs targets moving at 3000 km/s, 5000 km/s and 10,000 km/s
This design is classed as a Military Vessel for maintenance purposes
Habitation modules including luxury passenger modules for alien and human dignitaries and analysts and such (no maintenance necessary)(2)
Habitation class Space Station 108 850 tons 1110 Crew 3539.2 BP TCS 2177 TH 0 EM 0
1 km/s Armour 5-203 Shields 0-0 Sensors 1/1/0/0 Damage Control Rating 1 PPV 0
MSP 20 Max Repair 12 MSP
Intended Deployment Time: 6 months Spare Berths 1
Passengers 250
Recreational Facilities
This design is classed as a Commercial Vessel for maintenance purposes
Storage module that holds fuel, missiles, and supplies (1)
Fuel class Space Station 15 000 tons 33 Crew 1155.2 BP TCS 300 TH 0 EM 0
1 km/s Armour 8-54 Shields 0-0 Sensors 1/1/0/0 Damage Control Rating 0 PPV 0
Maint Life 0 Years MSP 0 AFR 3000% IFR 41.7% 1YR 0 5YR 0 Max Repair 12 MSP
Intended Deployment Time: 6 months Spare Berths 0
Magazine 816
Fuel Capacity 10 150 000 Litres Range N/A
Paladin Antimissile Missile (100) Speed: 32 000 km/s End: 2m Range: 3.9m km WH: 1 Size: 1 TH: 202/121/60
Cobalt Torpedo (36) Speed: 50 000 km/s End: 1.7m Range: 5.2m km WH: 20 Size: 6 TH: 250/150/75
Polaris Missile (50) Speed: 45 000 km/s End: 36.7m Range: 99m km WH: 20 Size: 10 TH: 150/90/45
Missile to hit chances are vs targets moving at 3000 km/s, 5000 km/s and 10,000 km/s
This design is classed as a Military Vessel for maintenance purposes
Fuel capacity is relatively small given the needs of my starfleets but will be constantly refueled by my allies
And a "military module" that houses weapon systems and the nerve center of my armada
Military Module class Space Station 36 000 tons 1366 Crew 8601.8 BP TCS 720 TH 0 EM 0
1 km/s Armour 10-97 Shields 0-0 Sensors 140/40/0/0 Damage Control Rating 146 PPV 225.2
Maint Life 14.77 Years MSP 18814 AFR 82% IFR 1.1% 1YR 161 5YR 2420 Max Repair 1400 MSP
Intended Deployment Time: 12 months Spare Berths 1
Flag Bridge Magazine 1832
Twin Skykeeper Laser Turret (8x2) Range 192 000km TS: 20000 km/s Power 20-10 RM 6 ROF 10 10 10 10 10 10 10 8 7 6 5
Anjo Antimissile Weapons System (3x6) Range 1000 km TS: 16000 km/s ROF 5 Base 50% To Hit
Concordance Council Fast Fire Control Deck (2) Max Range: 192 000 km TS: 16000 km/s 95 90 84 79 74 69 64 58 53 48
Tokamak Fusion Reactor (2) Total Power Output 80 Armour 0 Exp 5%
Patel-Brusilov Polaris Launcher (20) Missile Size 10 Rate of Fire 300
Concordance Council Missile Launch Center (1) Range 101.2m km Resolution 30
Polaris Missile (180) Speed: 45 000 km/s End: 36.7m Range: 99m km WH: 20 Size: 10 TH: 150/90/45
GRID Tactical Scanner (1) GPS 84 Range 9.2m km Resolution 1
Overlord Systemwide Scanner (1) GPS 140000 Range 1 540.0m km Resolution 100
Dragão Thermal Sensing Suite (1) Sensitivity 140 Detect Sig Strength 1000: 140m km
Parekh Electromagnetic Sensor Suite (1) Sensitivity 40 Detect Sig Strength 1000: 40m km
Missile to hit chances are vs targets moving at 3000 km/s, 5000 km/s and 10,000 km/s
This design is classed as a Military Vessel for maintenance purposes
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So now that you are down to only one module needing maintenance, and this module being small enough to fit into one of your hangars.... ;D ;D
You may decide whether this breaks the gamy barrier, but if not you got yourself a truly self sufficient station if you add this extra hangar for in between repairs.(on top of that free of cost - except for some lousy amounts of MSP here and there) This is essentially what I am doing now in my newest game, except that my main hangar can fly and thus still has a maintenance life.(then again, I didn't think it was completely suppressible, so now I will have to rethink probably if I want to once again tow it with massive civil engine instead)
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You might want to add some MSP storage to your hangar modules, so they can actually repair stuff.
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Seems to be a moot idea: the maintenance modules necessary to support a 40,000 ton hanger are about 500,000 tons. Prohibitively large.
Just to clarify, maintenance modules work in concert, same as facilities. So instead of one 500 000T space station you can have four stations, each supporting vessels up to 10 000T working in concert.
Deployment time is still an issue, but it's not that expensive to design ships with century-long deployment times.
Or you can just ignore it. Morale is important when fighting, but aside from that there's nothing stopping you with having a base 100 years past the intended deployment time. I'm pretty sure you could role-play a reason why it works, like having a colony ship periodically visit the complex to provide a crew rotation.
Interesting information from Haji there for the hangars. I had already tested this and thought it didn't work, but now I have to check again, for I must have made some mistake somewhere.(..I assume I accidentally placed ciws on board)
As I said in my original post I only made the module, but I have never deployed it, nor run the game with it. It's possible that despite having 'infinite' maintenance life it won't work. However I have created another module with one very small (size 0.1) power planet and forty one engineering spaces and I've got maintenance life of 24 years. And there is no reason to actually overhaul it after that period - you can still run the hangar perfectly fine by simply providing additional maintenance supplies from your colonies. So you could use the module for 50-75 years easily.
Battlecruiser Support Module class Maintenance Base 48 550 tons 676 Crew 5337 BP TCS 971 TH 0 EM 0
1 km/s Armour 4-118 Shields 0-0 Sensors 1/1/0/0 Damage Control Rating 41 PPV 0
Maint Life 24.25 Years MSP 2817 AFR 459% IFR 6.4% 1YR 9 5YR 138 Max Repair 12 MSP
Intended Deployment Time: 240 months Flight Crew Berths 0
Hangar Deck Capacity 25000 tons Magazine 3300
Fuel Capacity 5 000 000 Litres Range N/A
Stellarator Fusion Reactor Technology PB-1 (1) Total Power Output 0.6 Armour 0 Exp 5%
This design is classed as a Military Vessel for maintenance purposes
in light of that...
I know it will be a while before you actually build and deploy this stuff (probably several weeks if not more) but please post the results when you do. I'm curious as to whether or not this will work out.
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As I said in my original post I only made the module, but I have never deployed it, nor run the game with it. It's possible that despite having 'infinite' maintenance life it won't work. However I have created another module with one very small (size 0.1) power planet and forty one engineering spaces and I've got maintenance life of 24 years. And there is no reason to actually overhaul it after that period - you can still run the hangar perfectly fine by simply providing additional maintenance supplies from your colonies. So you could use the module for 50-75 years easily.
That is not long enough for the time scales I plan ahead. :P I am currently at a point in my game where it will be easy to test this infinite deployment thing out, so maybe I will later post some laboratory evidence.
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I plan to continue playing this game until at least september, that's probably 20 more years...but if I want to come back to it someday ;D
I'm hoping to become substantially busier with real life stuff soon. we'll see
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Or you can just ignore it. Morale is important when fighting, but aside from that there's nothing stopping you with having a base 100 years past the intended deployment time. I'm pretty sure you could role-play a reason why it works, like having a colony ship periodically visit the complex to provide a crew rotation.
When people put weapons on something they usually want them to be effective in a fight. :P
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When people put weapons on something they usually want them to be effective in a fight. :P
I was thinking about the hangar modules themselves.
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..., so maybe I will later post some laboratory evidence.
Ok, I have now tested a ~12kt ammunition container until maintenance clock 3 and have to say that there is definitely some error spawn. Occasionally I got 6 consecutive windows of error 3021 (ApplyMaintenanceFailure) after an interval. Those are not breaking and can just be clicked away while the ship appears to function properly, but you will have to decide if you want to bear with that. I suppose it is also 6 errors per ship with those parameters, so if you do that a lot you might eventually get an interruption upon nearly every interval, or just increasingly more windows, which might become too much at some point.
I have not yet tested it with hangars, but I suppose it will be the same. It is probably just the maintenance function looking for a module to destroy and then not finding any. My guess it that there is some sort of check upon the 5-day interval failure rate, and if that turns out positive, the function selects a module at random. Steve might not have foreseen that you could get a military ship (so maintenance calculation is applied) without any breakable components, so the error is possible. Or he made the hangar and ammunition storage invincible later on and did not reckon with such followups.
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seems to me the fix is simply to add one tiny breakable component and a few engineering bays. My hangers will probably run a CIWS
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Minimum size (0.1) thermal/EM sensors produces the longest estimated maintenance life. Using CIWS instead results in the estimated life span being five times shorter.
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seems to me the fix is simply to add one tiny breakable component and a few engineering bays. My hangers will probably run a CIWS
..But then its not truly infinite, and you will have to add engineering on top of the ciws.
There are a lot of problems with craft that should stay in space forever, but has maintenance life. The only options of limited lifetime without a maintenance base are:
1) Regular Overhaul - But this will eventually take maaanyyy years to do if the hangar was in space for decades. Trust me, I did this, and you are better of scrapping and rebuilding. If it doesn't stay so long however, it will be bothersome to manage by hand all the time.
2) Steady MSP supply - Can keep a cheap module up forever, and also still for cheap cost, but you will have to deal with permanent interrupting maintenance failure messages that destroy auto-turn.
3) Disassembling - After a certain longer life time you just take the thing apart, and maybe build a new one. That is what I currently do to evade the eternal overhaul. For ships that last 20+ years it is actually much cheaper than regular upkeep (which costs [shipcost]/20 per year), as you can also reuse some components. Feels however kind of immersion breaking and the cost in crew, TF-training and such might be a problem.
4) Overhauler Ship - New idea. You could have a huge hangar with reasonable (but not decades) maintenance life being towed around by civil engines(saves fuel and MSP). It could visit your station once in a while and "consume" the or one military component for some time until it looks shiny again. When the work is done it waddles back to the docks somewhere distant where it is cared for, so this would also evade extreme lifetime stress. Much easier to handle than option 1 as you do not have to assign tows individually for every module, then also don't have to check every module when it is finished individually, since all work is centralized in the maintenance ship.
If that is a good idea depends just on how far it really is to the next maintenance capable + fuel base colony. But then what you could also do is leave one such "maintenance hangar" there and build a second one at the distant base. When the old one starts to make too much errors, you fly the other in and the old back for repairs. ...Of course you could do that with all the systems of the station already, heyyy...
5) Second 'Ghost' station - Just build two stations, one real - one spare, and store the double in some big PDC hangar distant of (is always better than maintenance industry anyway). When a part becomes noisy, you exchange it for the doppelgänger (and no one will ever notice). -> Eternal overhaul avoided, and no problem doing it by hand, as in this case you can just save the commands for every module exchange, and the returning part will get ok by itself without you having to watch. It is weird, but has the least micromanagement burden of all + minimum maintenance cost (fewest amounts of MSP in the PDC hangar).
I did something similar with my fuel harvester bases in earlier games, except that I always just exchanged 2 "fuel pods" that the harvesters would fill up.
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Currently it's looking like I'm going to field 4 40,000 capacity hangers, 2 recreation modules luxury quarters, a fuel/magazine module, and a military module
I believe it's possible to get the hangers, military module, and fuel/magazine module to 20-30 years of operating capacity, at which time they can be switched out,with the old parts hauled away for scrap. Given that I was in 2140 in February and it's 2147 now, this should be a long enough maintenance life that it won't be such a bother, even if I start playing faster.
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March 4th, 2148: Starbase Knossos begins construction. Shipyards orbiting earth have been retooled to construct the hanger modules:
Knossos Starbase: Hanger Module class Space Station 50 000 tons 915 Crew 5651.08 BP TCS 1000 TH 0 EM 0
1 km/s Armour 5-120 Shields 0-0 Sensors 1/1/0/0 Damage Control Rating 61 PPV 0
Maint Life 50.77 Years MSP 4309 AFR 327% IFR 4.6% 1YR 3 5YR 49 Max Repair 12 MSP
Intended Deployment Time: 6 months Flight Crew Berths 1
Hangar Deck Capacity 40000 tons Magazine 180
Fuel Capacity 200 000 Litres Range N/A
House Norman Navsat Dish (1) Sensitivity 1.4 Detect Sig Strength 1000: 1.4m km
This design is classed as a Military Vessel for maintenance purposes
The new concordance treaty goes into effect on December 10th, 2150. The concordance has until then to develop a means of protecting the Groombridge star system.
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I discovered another problem with this method, though you will be relatively save: Whenever there is a maintenance failure, it will break the tractor link to the civil tug, which probably happens all the time on designs that completely renounce on engineering space while using the 0 maintenance life method. I hoped it would not appear with 0 maintenance, but sadly it is.
Reestablishing the tractor is micromanagement and not too bothersome if it only happens randomly sometimes, but it could become so severe that you literally become immobile when it appears on every 5-day interval.
With your design you will occasionally see it happening depending on the travel time, but it is fine. I made it to around 20+ intervals of freedom from failures with a 'supposed-to-be' 119% failure on 5-day design. It might be a problem to get them back late though when their failure rate has become really high... .
Maybe you will truly need another 'tug-hangar' for their retrieval or repair on spot then.
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I think with 50 years of maintenance life it's alright.
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Do I read right that you want to destroy it in place and then send a new one? Or you don't worry about the life time of the station as a whole, because you don't intend to play this game so long anymore?
Otherwise, maintenance life does not mean anything when it comes to 5-day failure rate. Your ship could just be so big that it will fail every turn anyway, or maybe you just have so small components (!) that a break does not consume so much maintenance, and thus will work for long. IFR is the most critical part to look for, but even if you could keep it lower than 1% (which is impossible on larger ships), it does not matter if you intend to tractor a ship on the end of its life cycle, because then the IFR will likely be over 100% in any case, thus rendering it immobile.
An example: I am currently testing two identical hangar design which have 4% IFR after clock 0.35, and already the tractor link breaks around every 10 5-day increments per model, which makes it really bothersome to fly them around. Just think how those will work after clock 10+...
I think at some size over over 10k or so, the only feasible 'military tug' would be a hangar ship with great range and maintenance life.
..Except for deployment, because there is this free time span before any ship starts making problems. Yet permanent tug without pause, or 'rescue tug' operations become impossible quickly.
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Four hanger modules have been constructed. Two are in place in groombridge.
Knossos Starbase: Hanger Module class Space Station 50000 tons 915 Crew 5651.0801 BP TCS 1000 TH 0 EM 0
1 km/s Armour 5-120 Shields 0-0 Sensors 1/1/0/0 Damage Control 61 PPV 0
Annual Failure Rate: 316% IFR: 4.4% Maintenance Capacity 4309 MSP
Parasite Capacity 40000 tons Magazine 180 Flight Crew Berths 17
Fuel Capacity 200 000 Litres Range 0.0 billion km (0 days at full power)
House Norman Navsat Dish (1) Sensitivity 1.4 Detect Strength 1000: 1.4m km
This design is classed as a military vessel for maintenance purposes
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Dat annual failure rate though.
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hey man when the tiny navsat dish fails, my men can fix it.