Aurora 4x
VB6 Aurora => Aurora Suggestions => Topic started by: letsdance on August 28, 2014, 07:08:17 AM
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i love the option to have different engines with different efficiencies. but some things could improve alot. as it is, there are many possibilities, but you don't need more than few of them.
1. when i use a HS 50 engine instead of 2 HS 25 engines i need 33 % less fuel. that's cool. but when i use a HS 2 engine instead of 2 HS 1 engines, i save only 1 % fuel. that's negligible. i'd never use a HS 2 engine, i just design a HS 1 one and be more flexible. the efficiency increase should be similar to have efficiency considerations also for small engines.
2. on the other hand, the saved fuel from HS 25 to 50 is so much, that it rarely makes sense to build a HS 25 engine, and certainly even less anything inbetween.
even if i don't need a HS 50 engine, i'll just take it instead of the HS 25 and have a faster ship that needs less fuel. because for ships with 2,500 tons and more, the ship becomes FASTER and needs LESS fuel if i use one HS 50 engine instead of one HS 25 engine. the ship will be a bit more expensive to build and a bit larger. but that's rarely an issue compared to the advantages. the larger engine does needs more fuel per hour of course, but since it's faster you need less total fuel to travel the same distance (in less time!).
3. it's also sad that engines are capped at HS 50. it usually makes no sense to build large ships (as long as they have a HS 50 engine) that need many engines, because you can as well make a bunch of small ships without losing anything. some components are cheaper if you build them larger, but that doesn't outweigh the inreased flexibility of multiple smaller ships. smaller ships are also better from a tactical point of view.
i would like to see huge commercial ships, bulky and slow, but efficient. part of this could come from "logistic times", but in many cases the most important factor is fuel usage. we have less powerful engines that need less fuel, which make "slow and efficient", but they don't make "large".
having said all that, here's my suggestions:
1. to make decisions more interesting, increase the efficiency differences between small engine sizes. if the 1-50 range should be kept, a root function like efficiency = root(HS-1) x 7 would do nicely. this results in values like (rounded)
HS / fuel used in %
50 / -50
35 / -42
25 / -35
15 / -30
10 / -20
5 / -15
2 / -7
1 / -0
that's a small change and there's a bit more reason to use different sized engines. i also think from HS 25 to 50 it's sufficient to have only every 5th HS as option (25, 30, 35, 40, 45, 50). i can't imagine anyone would ever build a HS 47 engine.
i'd like that alot better, but this does not solve the problem, that a HS 50 engine will be faster and needs less fuel than a HS 25 engine beginning with a certain ship size (in this case a bit higher, like 5000 tons). nor does it give a reason to build large ships.
2. for that, the calculation for fuel usage needs to be different. where "E" is the efficiency (currently HS / 100), the used calculation is:
fuel usage(HS) = fuel usage x (1 - E)
a calculation for a larger range of possible HS would have to look like:
fuel usage (HS) = fuel usage / (1 + E)
this calculation could be open-ended, but it also needs a root function to scale nicely. if i use E = root(HS-1) x 7 (like above), values then look like this
HS / fuel used in %
1 / 0
2 / -3
3 / -5
5 / -8
10 / -13
15 / -17
20 / -20
25 / -22
35 / -26
50 / -30
75 / -35
100 / -39
125 / -42
150 / -44
200 / -48
250 / -51
300 / -53
400 / -57
500 / -60
750 / -65
1000 / -68
1500 / -73
2000 / -75
now if you build a huge engine, it can make a big difference and you'll probably still use the ship a few engine techs later. note that for this, the build cost should scale with sze, but the research cost for the engine designs should scale with the saved fuel, not with size.
there is another problem, which is that for bigger ships it's often better (faster, less fuel needed, cheaper to research and build) to use multiple lower power engines instead of one higher power engine. the only solution (besides completely changing the system) i find for this is to restrict all ships to one engine each. currently that's not possible because of the maximum engine size. with my suggestion it would be possible.
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IMO the engine / fuel efficiency needs to be consistent not only down to size 1 engines, but also all the way down to 0.1 MSP engines ( 0.005 HS engines ).
I also think very small ship ship engines of 1HS need to have alot more difference then 3% less consumtion for double the size.
It should be a big difference in efficiency for fighter engines of 50 ton, FAC engines of 250 ton and a destroyer / escort engine of 500 ton.
I would define the "Normal" engine where fuel consumtion is neither higher nor lower as HS 10 ( 500 ton ) instead.
Then it is easier to make smaller engines consume considerably higher amounts or even several times more for a 1HS fighter engine if we want more detail here.
It would also be nice to have more detail on fighter sized engines, for example a 1.6 HS engine (80 ton) might be required to design the fighter you want. ( but on the other hand we don't need a size 49.6 engine since the difference between 49 and 50 is much smaller ).
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i agree, but if the differences from size are even more significant than my suggestions, it leads to large engines needing almost no fuel at all, or small engines needing needing too much. in my final suggestion, the difference from 25 to 50 is only 8%, compared to that it's not optimal, but ok to have 3% from 1 to 2. if we want more differences between smaller engine sizes, it would be better to do it by build or research cost.
engine power to speed is a linear in aurora. a root function would be more like real life and therefore feel more "right". but that would be a fundamental change, i can't image it will ever happen. and i don't think it has to, we have to accept that transnewtonian laws are different :D
making HS 10 the default size, and adding a penalty for smaller engines is dangerous / require more effort, because the program code probably expects to find a negative modifier. and it's not really different, it would just change the overall fuel needed by the "base value" (13% in my list).
engine power vs fuel consumption is another topic. i like the idea of weak efficient engines, but already the x0.25 power engines need so little fuel (once you can build them) that i don't ever see myself using a x0.2 or less. maybe this tech line should be removed and available from the beginning as option.
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is there a way to stop the forum from adding a blank after every dot when i save my posts?
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is there a way to stop the forum from adding a blank after every dot when i save my posts?
Yes. You should see that phenomena disappear from now on.
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is there a way to stop the forum from adding a blank after every dot when i save my posts?
Yes. You should see that phenomena disappear from now on.
Sorry for hijacking this thread, but: Will the blank be gone for everyone or just for letsdance?
On topic:
I haven't done the math yet, but anything that'll stop ridiculous research costs for large components while at the same time making both miniaturization and scale effects viable will get my vote!
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Yes. You should see that phenomena disappear from now on.
Sorry for hijacking this thread, but: Will the blank be gone for everyone or just for letsdance?
It is an anti-spam measure that goes away automatically after 10 posts. So neither of you should be affected by it any more.
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At the moment you design an engine and then cruise the Galaxy at top speed rarely ever reducing it, since there is no incentive. I would like to see all drives have an economical cruising speed (a sweet spot) and a top speed. This would mean you could engage top speed when going into combat but otherwise enjoy a greater range if slower progress. This would only apply to military vessels as all commercial engines should be designed to run at their fastest economic speed as a matter of course.
Regards
Ian
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the big advantage of my suggestion is, that i'm just playing with numbers. implementing it is probably database entries that can be done very quickly.
all suggestions, that change how engines work, need code changes that are alot more effort (and need more considerations to avoid unexpected troubles).
besides this, your suggestion could be interesting if well implemented. but the basic version reduces the impact of my decision when designing a ship (engine decisions don't matter as much if i can operate at fuel saving speed anyways), which is bad.
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besides this, your suggestion could be interesting if well implemented. but the basic version reduces the impact of my decision when designing a ship (engine decisions don't matter as much if i can operate at fuel saving speed anyways), which is bad.
I don't think that is the case at all, since to maintain balance the overall fuel consumption constant would need to be raised to counteract if all military engines can cruise significantly more efficiently a majority of their time.
Thus even if a military engine consumes say 3x more fuel in "max speed combat mode" it would need to consume perhaps 80% of the fuel it does today at efficient cruise speed ( assuming roughly 10% of the time will be spent in "combat" or maxspeed ).
Otherwise the total fuel consumption before and after is drastically changed which no one have suggested!
It would obviously have a balancing impact on crafts that spent 100% of their time in combat/max-speed, but that is IMO a desired effect. IMO fighters and FAC are far to fuel efficient today and with to little difference from bigger engines/ship.
For example currently a fighter/FAC at magneto plasma level despite using maximum power modifier will get 34 hours flight time from 40% HS spent on engine and just 10% of HS spent on fuel. ( Real world fighters have closer to 30-50% mass as fuel and just a few hours flight time, F35 for example have the opposite situation with 8% engine and 37% internal fuel ).
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the current solution forces me to consider fuel usage for ship designs also for travelling, and find a balance. yours doesn't.
with your suggestion i'd just use the most powerful engines in every ship, and they will still travel fuel-efficient. if i put the most powerful engines on every ship under the current rules, i'd have serious fuel supply problems.
maximum range is also not a real issue if i can always trade speed for fuel consumption.
the only way i can see your wish to work, is if i can put 2 different engines in my ships and then choose which one is used. this way you can have different travel speed. it requires some planning for ship design, because taking extra engines is probably a significant change. in reality it would mean that fuel usage for powerful engines doesn't matter alot, because you won't use it alot.
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with your suggestion i'd just use the most powerful engines in every ship, and they will still travel fuel-efficient.
In that case you didn't understand the suggestion at all.
The intent was that an engine that today consume 10 times as much fuel at max speed will also consume 10 times more fuel at "efficient cruise speed", compared to a more efficient engine design.
While cruise speed is more efficient then max speed, both are still using the same base consumption values modified by a multiplier, So that part of the game that is working fine and is not really touched.
The point I was trying to make in my previous post is that if you only make warship engines more efficient when travelling but keep maximum consumption the same, then sure fuel will be less of an issue but that is not a good solution. A better solution is to strike a balance and arrive at a similar total fuel consumption that you have now, by mostly making max speed more expensive ( a minority of a warships time ), but also making cruising speed a little cheaper ( a majority of warships time ).
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A better solution is to strike a balance and arrive at a similar total fuel consumption that you have now, by mostly making max speed more expensive ( a minority of a warships time ), but also making cruising speed a little cheaper ( a majority of warships time ).
lets do some calculations. how much of total travelling time do you expect warships at full speed?
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lets do some calculations. how much of total travelling time do you expect warships at full speed?
That is ofcourse individual, but for me personally the amount of travel that will be "time critical" is perhaps 10% of total averaged across all warship tonnage (not counting survey ships). But I guess it would also depend on how large the difference is between max and efficient ( both in terms of speed and consumption ).
My earlier very basic calculations/estimations:
Thus even if a military engine consumes say 3x more fuel in "max speed combat mode" it would need to consume perhaps 80% of the fuel it does today at efficient cruise speed ( assuming roughly 10% of the time will be spent in "combat" or maxspeed ).
The calculations I used is the following 0.1*3.0 + 0.9*0.8 = 1.02
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Thus even if a military engine consumes say 3x more fuel in "max speed combat mode" it would need to consume perhaps 80% of the fuel it does today at efficient cruise speed ( assuming roughly 10% of the time will be spent in "combat" or maxspeed ).
i don't see how the fuel consumption is a real change if total fuel used is the same, and the fuel used for 90 % of the time is only different by 20 %. how much more speed do i get for almost 4x fuel usage? 4 times as much? or only 75 % like the current scaling for engines?
but that means warships are slower to move around and alot faster in combat than now. which has a much bigger impact on gameplay than all fuel usage considerations. it would require to redo many aspects of combat mechanics. that's a bad idea. it can only be done in a way that keeps combat speed the same as now (difficult to predict). which means the main impact of your suggestion is that warships travel slower when it doesn't matter?
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but that means warships are slower to move around and alot faster in combat than now. which has a much bigger impact on gameplay than all fuel usage considerations.
No it doesn't at all. Warship speeds in combat doesn't have to change at all since that was not part of the equation.
Warship combat speed can be identical to today and only adjust cruising speed downward.
How much slower? Somewhere 50-67% is probably reasonable ( similar to civilian speeds anyways ).
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total fuel usage..... same
warship speed when it matters..... same
warship speed when it does not matter..... lower
the only other aspect is, that you need more total fuel if you use combat speed more often. but even if someone plays so inefficient that he has double the times at warspeed compared to your standard, he only needs 20 % more total fuel (0.2*3.0 + 0.8*0.8 = 1.22). likewise, if someone plays efficient to half his warspeed time, he saves 10 % fuel. that's not enough to make a real difference.
i don't see how this adds something interesting to the game. it may satisfy our feel for what's "right", but from a gaming point of view it's not doing much, if anything at all?
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No it doesn't at all. Warship speeds in combat doesn't have to change at all since that was not part of the equation.
Warship combat speed can be identical to today and only adjust cruising speed downward.
How much slower? Somewhere 50-67% is probably reasonable ( similar to civilian speeds anyways ).
Combat speed will get faster. If fuel use for travel is decreased, I will use higher power modifiers, to get higher combat speed. This means all weapons will get less accurate overall, and fighters will get less useful, as they implement what you suggest in a two-stage setup.
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Combat speed will get faster.
i also think so, but his suggestion is to balance it in a way that combat speed does not get faster.
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How do you want to do that? Fuel is almost entirely used during travel, not combat. 10% seems way to high, most battles are over in a few hours, compared to months of fuel aboard most of my constructions, plus refueling. Fuel usage is the only thing that forces you to not go too high with the power modifier, so to keep the modifier the same, fuel efficiency at a lower marching speed would have to be the same than it is currently at top speed, resulting in overall lower traveling speeds.
If fuel usage decreases, speed will increase, and this discussion distracts from the much better suggestion to make engine efficiency nonlinear with size, which has a valid point, that there is little point currently in picking a 2HS engine over 2 1HS engines.
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How do you want to do that? Fuel is almost entirely used during travel, not combat. 10% seems way to high, most battles are over in a few hours, compared to months of fuel aboard most of my constructions
Depends on role and numbers were only as an example. You can make the difference even bigger so that ships in maximum speed consume say 10 times more fuel, and assume 5% time in combat and then it would look like this:
0.05*10.0 + 0.95*0.53 = 1.00 ( so roughly half fuel consumption at cruising speed ).
FACs, Fighters and system defense forces would probably use max speed closer to 100% of their time for as fast interceptions as possible, ( and only if they totally wipe out the enemy cruise back slow ) so I think they would balance out the use of bigger long range warfleets.
Most my ships don't spend much time patrolling since that is a waste of fuel, they are sitting stationary at a body or outpost.
But I agree with your concern that it is hard to balance with variables that rests primary on playstyle.
Another perhaps even bigger unknown for balancing is if the player is using "inexperienced crew" or not, since that requires all new ships to spend months if not years in training expending fuel in cruise speed mode resulting in much smaller percentage of time in combat.
the much better suggestion to make engine efficiency nonlinear with size, which has a valid point, that there is little point currently in picking a 2HS engine over 2 1HS engines.
Nothing is stopping you from suggesting your own formula or numbers that is more balanced. But as I wrote I don't see how letsdance formula/suggestion of changing the fuel saving from 1% to 3% would impact the choice of a HS 1 or 2 engine a whole lot.
I have been playing around a bit with a formula and think something like this would work good and feel balanced for engine size:
Formula: sqrt(10/HS)
HS Consumption
1,0 316%
1,2 289%
1,4 267%
1,6 250%
1,8 236%
2,0 224%
2,2 213%
2,4 204%
2,6 196%
2,8 189%
3,0 183%
3,5 169%
4,0 158%
4,5 149%
5,0 141%
5,5 135%
6,0 129%
7,0 120%
8,0 112%
9,0 105%
10,0 100%
11,0 95%
12,0 91%
13,0 88%
14,0 85%
15,0 82%
16,0 79%
17,0 77%
18,0 75%
19,0 73%
20,0 71%
22,0 67%
24,0 65%
26,0 62%
28,0 60%
30,0 58%
32,0 56%
34,0 54%
36,0 53%
38,0 51%
40,0 50%
45,0 47%
50,0 45%
55,0 43%
60,0 41%
65,0 39%
70,0 38%
75,0 37%
80,0 35%
85,0 34%
90,0 33%
95,0 32%
100,0 32%
Edit: I also like the idea to remove detail from the bigger engines ( who needs HS47 engines indeed?) and add it to smaller where it matters, or add more even bigger engines to strech the scale further, so both those have gone into my example above
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I don't see how letsdance formula/suggestion of changing the fuel saving from 1% to 3% would impact the choice of a HS 1 or 2 engine a whole lot.
my suggestion has 0 % at HS 1. and i never claimed that it makes a big difference for HS 1 or 2, my focus was on larger engines. but it's very simple and quick to do, and even for small engines an improvement over the current system. and it used a formula resulting in a negative modifyer (like the current system), which may be easier to implement than a table.
your suggested saves list has a consistent scaling over all sizes (which is good) but it makes larger engines much too efficient. we already have the problem, that it's better (more speed and less fuel used) to use a HS 50 instead of a HS 25 engine, even if this increases the total size of your ship by 50 %. with your list this would be the same (for all sizes). you're using about 30 % fuel saved for double engine size. i think it should be a maximum of 20% (which is about the value in my list), less (15%?) would probably be even better. if you redo your list with 15 % fuel saved for doubling size i would prefer that over my own suggestion.
there is another problem, which is that it's often better (faster, less fuel needed, cheaper to research and build) to use multiple lower power engines instead of one higher power engine. the only solution (besides completely changing the system) i find for this is to restrict all ships to one engine each. currently that's not possible because of the maximum engine size. with my suggestion it would be possible. adding this to the initial post.
come to think of it, this could be mitigated by reducing the impact of lower power on fuel usage (especially from x1 to x0.5 the fuel needed goes down too much). which would be a good change in my oppinion and maybe also make those higher techs useful.
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we already have the problem, that it's better (more speed and less fuel used) to use a HS 50 instead of a HS 25 engine, even if this increases the total size of your ship by 50 %.
Why is this a problem?
If you spent twice as much minerals, time and industry to build a twice as large engine it is supposed to be better. That the way it supposed to work both in reality and in the game IMHO.
Especially for most civilian ships where engine cost is a vast majority of the entire ship cost.
there is another problem, which is that it's often better (faster, less fuel needed, cheaper to research and build) to use multiple lower power engines instead of one higher power engine. the only solution (besides completely changing the system) i find for this is to restrict all ships to one engine each. currently that's not possible because of the maximum engine size. with my suggestion it would be possible. adding this to the initial post.
Forcing everyone to design one engine per ship would be very very bad. Amount of engines is one of the many wonderful design choices that players have in Aurora ( redundancy, repairability and less risk of crippling explosions of many engines, versus fuel economy of fewer bigger ones ).
It also seems you are contradicting yourself, first the problem is that one big engine is better, then your claiming that it's often better with multiple lower power engines. Which is it??
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I think that a much better solution is the addition of capability to have multiple engine types per ship.
Your cruiser runs on its high efficiency 2400km\s engine group most of the time, but when combat begins, you turn on a second, high-thrust engine group that adds another XYZkm\s to its' top speed while drinking fuel.
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It also seems you are contradicting yourself, first the problem is that one big engine is better, then your claiming that it's often better with multiple lower power engines. Which is it??
lower power does not mean smaller engine. i was referring to the x power multiplier. this only matters for ships that are large enough to use multiple HS 50 engines (5.000+ tons, which includes pretty much all commercial ships). maybe it would be better if i started a new thread for this.
we already have the problem, that it's better (more speed and less fuel used) to use a HS 50 instead of a HS 25 engine, even if this increases the total size of your ship by 50 %.
If you spent twice as much minerals, time and industry to build a twice as large engine it is supposed to be better. That the way it supposed to work both in reality and in the game IMHO.
in reality, more speed = more fuel used. in aurora in this case, its more speed = less fuel used. that's a problem in my oppinion, because it's not a real decision. it's something that you should always do. especially for commercial ships, higher costs do not matter if the ship travels equally faster - which is the case usually, while using less fuel.
a good game forces you to take hard decisions. engine design in aurora has so much potential, but currently - unless you're somehow size restricted (fighters, missiles) - the optimum ship design always consists of 50-66 % engine. it's boring.
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the optimum ship design always consists of 50-66 % engine. it's boring.
Except that that ship is far more likely to explode due to engine damage, as well as being much more expensive and larger than a ship with 25% engines. This is a rather extreme example, with boosted engines. (http://aurora2.pentarch.org/index.php/topic,5989.0.html) Almost none of my ships, except fighters, have more than 40% engines at the most.
I don't have an opinion one way or the other on efficiency, but wanted to point this out.
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a good game forces you to take hard decisions. engine design in aurora has so much potential, but currently - unless you're somehow size restricted (fighters, missiles) - the optimum ship design always consists of 50-66 % engine. it's boring.
Personally I never use 50-66% Engines on anything except survey ships that needs efficiency to last for years. All my warships use a much higher power and less tonnage engines to have more mission tonnage and not wastefull range, it's a player choice not something that is "optimum"...
To compensate I use alot of forward bases and fuel dumps where civilian efficient designs can deliver fuel.
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Except that that ship is far more likely to explode due to engine damage, as well as being much more expensive and larger than a ship with 25% engines.
the point is, that more engines are NOT more expensive. they are actually cheaper. i just started a new thread for that issue with some examples. read it, and then try to redesign your ships in a way that they use more engines with lower power and same build cost. your ships will be faster and need less fuel. fuel is also a resource.
All my warships use a much higher power and less tonnage engines to have more mission tonnage and not wastefull range, it's a player choice not something that is "optimum"...
you don't use more engines instead of mission tonnage. you use them additionally - or you reduce mission tonnage per ship, which makes them cheaper, and build more ships instead, until you have spent the same amount of resources. you don't use the cheaper engines primarily for range, but for speed. range is just a bonus.
i'm undecided concerning the topic of engine explosion. but i would prefer to take all of this to the other thread here:
http://aurora2.pentarch.org/index.php/topic,7472.0.html
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You need to add the fact that bigger engines require more engineering sections (much more) and more crew in percentage to smaller engines, this is especially true on overcharged engines.
So bigger engines is a higher risk and more expensive in material, supply, yard space, crew, wealth, maintenance etc... so it is not just clear cut better. You need to trade something for something else. Fuel is also important of course... I always try to go with two or three engine designs
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I have a saying: "Sounds good in theory and works like spit in practice." That defines this topic.
Mission space is not infinite, as serveral people have said. Getting a shipyard that will build a ship is a limiting factor of your ship designs. It determines the exact maximum hull space you have for the ship you wish to build. Within that space you need to fit in everything you need for your mission.
The NCN has warships and auxillaries built on the same hull. The warships use more powerful engines, while the auxillaries use more lower powered engines. That allows them to be only slightly slower but to burn significantly less fuel, and that is critical for a tanker as it means more fuel bunkerage for the ships of the group. But they are slower because you can't squeeze in their mission package with sufficient engines to make them both more fuel efficient and faster.
The BIC vessels have speeds ranging from 333 km/s to 560 km/s and use 50 or 25 HS engines depending on how many of which I can fit where. But first and formost their mission package has to be accomadated in the hull. I can't arbitrarily add engines to bring the speed up because there is no room available. I switched over from 2 25 HS engines to a single 50 HS engine to get more fuel efficiency since the BIC colonization groups were the single largest fuel drain I had...and pushing their range up to 24 billion km was a major milestone as that is 2 round trips Earth-Faewald. That is an in-game significant factor that can't be factored in without knowing the context.
I use comercial engines on some survey ships which fundamentally end up being a small mission module on a fuel tank/engine spar. Their speed is good because the ship is small and power from the comercial engine is large. Clearly I could get more power (speed) by using my auxillary engines and use five of them but I can't get that fuel efficiency and for a grav survey ship fuel efficiency is the most critical element as they have to cruise for a long time while surveying.
In the game you inevitably will have a fuel crisis and more so from a conventional start. But even in that the NCN never fitted their military ships with less than 100% drives. Velocity in combat is too critical. But too much space for engines leaves too little for mission components. Smaller military ships are NOT more efficient then larger ones. 3 Terriers would get trounced by 2 Wounded Knees or a single Tribal. I would tend to bet on the 3 Londons versus 2 Lake class though as the Londons are optimized for anti-ship work while the Lake is designed for group point defence. The BIC Heavy Lift groups are faster that then typical Colossus/Bauxite groups as well. The Heavy Lift groups carry more, carry it further and carry it faster. But how many engines and hence the speed of the civillian ship is detemine entirely by the space left over after it has its necessary load facilities installed.
Space on a ship is too critical to fool around with, unless you are talking abstractly. In concrete terms you always have to make choices and doubling hull volume devoted to engine space isn't something worth even considering. If you can afford the fuel bill it is worth exploring what you consider a safe spot between enhanced performance, increased cost, increased fuel use, and increased risk of explosion in combat. Engines do explode in combat and can cause a considerable amount of interior damage when they do. Leaving aside maintenance...which is also a critical component to both battle repairs and also overall operational budget.
You have to design the ship around its mission and everything factors into that design process. So no there is no magic formula to determine that all ships will use one type of engine, and so many of them. Min-maxing does not work in reality. It only works in games when you are dealing with a vastly simplified combat system, against a known enemy, who is constrained to do the same stupid thing all the time. In a real fluid combat situation there is no one "best" solution to every situation. You optimize yourself into a corner otherwise. For missiles, in particular, counter missiles there exists a basic formula that gives you a starting point but that is again because they have a straight forward task. Ship design is not straight forward as it depends on too many parameters to do simplistic optimizations, which inevitably are only valid when you fulfill the underlying assumptions (and those assumptions are rarely stated).
Min-maxing, and more critically simplistic min-maxing is a straight, hedge lined path to firey damnation.
And yes I need to update my AAR...in game it is 2298 now...gah...
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i don't quite understand why so many people focus so much on mission tonnage per ship. if you are size restricted (eg spaceyard size) you can reduce mission tonnage and build more ships instead. ships will be cheaper and therefore build faster. you get the same mission tonnage over the same period of time. the points of time when ships are finished will be different of course, but that's actually another advantage of using less tonnage per ship because you have the first ships sooner.
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i don't quite understand why so many people focus so much on mission tonnage per ship. if you are size restricted (eg spaceyard size) you can reduce mission tonnage and build more ships instead.
Now you can't. Building more ships means they wont be finished until many years later when they are obsolete and already worthless.
If I normally build 3x3 Cruisers with 60% mission tonnage and you suggest to replace it with a design that has 20% mission tonnage I need to build 3x9 Cruisers and that would add say 6-9 years before all of them are ready for service.
And it's equally hard to add slipways that it is to expand size on shipyards, so the restriction is on shipyard space is the total amount including all slipways.
you get the same mission tonnage over the same period of time
That's not true, please show me an example of a ship with 20% mission tonnage and same total tonnage is 3 times faster to build then a design with 60% mission tonnage!
To illustrate the point I tested two very basic designs:
1.) 60% launchers, 25% engines (8 of them) of max power mod (6300ton and 6100km/s). 2.21 years buildtime and 1001 BPs. ( 0.88 years maintlife )
2.) 20% launchers, 63.5% engines (5 of them) of low power mod (6300ton and 6100km/s). 1.42 years buildtime and 640 BPs. ( 0.42 years maintlife )
Building a series of 3 ships of design 1 will take my empire 6.63 years and cost me 3003 wealth and minerals.
Building a series of 9 ships of design 2 will take my empire 12.78 years and cost me 5760 wealth and minerals.
So almost double build-time and total cost to get the same mission tonnage using your "optimal" strategy in practice.
Notice also that this is "best case" scenario with minimal amount of generic components shared between the ships except what the default ship start with (1x bridge/fuel/eng). If we add more generic components shared between the ships like sensors, FC, armor and so on their difference in buildtime per ship will become even smaller.
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i don't quite understand why so many people focus so much on mission tonnage per ship. if you are size restricted (eg spaceyard size) you can reduce mission tonnage and build more ships instead. ships will be cheaper and therefore build faster. you get the same mission tonnage over the same period of time. the points of time when ships are finished will be different of course, but that's actually another advantage of using less tonnage per ship because you have the first ships sooner.
If you change a 20k warship with 15k mission tonnage and 5k engine (25%) to 50% you get a 30k ship, you additionally need 1.5 engineering spaces, as maintenance spaces work proportional to total tonnage, you need approx. 30% more armor to cover the engines, this additional armor is costly and provides far less protection than if it would be invested in thicker armor.
If you would build 3 20k ships instead of two, you would need 50% more armor and engineering. Armor is only worth what it is protecting. The same goes for shielding on multiple ships, split on 3 ships instead of 2 you only get 2/3 of the protection.
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Another thing to note is that if you make the engines bigger with the same power setting you actually will need more engineering mass in proportion than before to get the same maintenance window on your ship, this also translate to more crew and more crew compartments. So if you make the engine 50% bigger and want the same mission package and speed the ship will be more than 50% bigger and thereby actually slower if you don't compensate with yet bigger engines.
This is also why I make my bigger ships slower than my smaller ships, their economy is that they get a bigger mission package and less engines that also has less power per mass. The effect is a dynamic fleet with different speeds but bigger ships and very fuel efficient and can easier upgrade their engines with new technology and have a heavier mission package than smaller more specialized ships.
This is more a general rule in my fleet and it will work of you build your doctrines around ships with different speeds.
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i don't quite understand why so many people focus so much on mission tonnage per ship. if you are size restricted (eg spaceyard size) you can reduce mission tonnage and build more ships instead. ships will be cheaper and therefore build faster. you get the same mission tonnage over the same period of time. the points of time when ships are finished will be different of course, but that's actually another advantage of using less tonnage per ship because you have the first ships sooner.
I think it would be better if you presented two designs where this tactic is applied and we can discuss it from there. Becasue I'm not sure I fully understand exactly how you envision this to be superior, and as I said before I don't think it will be a the one that fit all solutions.
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Now you can't. Building more ships means they wont be finished until many years later when they are obsolete and already worthless.
not if they are faster to build, which was my point.
2.) 20% launchers, 63.5% engines
63 % is too much. it should be 50 % max (maybe 40 or 45 % would be better in your case). which would give you 33 % (or more) launchers - that's a big difference! try it and post the complete designs (like i did below) with all values, not just speeds.
I think it would be better if you presented two designs where this tactic is applied and we can discuss it from there. Becasue I'm not sure I fully understand exactly how you envision this to be superior, and as I said before I don't think it will be a the one that fit all solutions.
good idea! and yes, it doesn't fit all solutions. but the point is, the cheaper engines with less fuel usage and research cost should never (or rarely) be equal or in every regard better to something more expensive.
since people complained when i used higher tech examples and slow engines, i created 2 engines for testing. these are HS 50, their research cost was 2,250 (A)and 6,000 (B). the result is quite interesting...
missile1 class Cruiser 10,000 tons 208 Crew 1358 BP TCS 200 TH 1200 EM 0
6000 km/s Armour 3-41 Shields 0-0 Sensors 1/1/0/0 Damage Control Rating 7 PPV 24
Maint Life 2.01 Years MSP 594 AFR 114% IFR 1.6% 1YR 196 5YR 2936 Max Repair 225 MSP
Intended Deployment Time: 12 months Spare Berths 1
Magazine 549
600 EP Magneto-plasma Drive - x 0.75 - FE 0.12 (2) Power 600 Fuel Use 12.18% Signature 600 Exp 7%
Fuel Capacity 500,000 Litres Range 73.9 billion km (142 days at full power)
Size 6 Missile Launcher RoF 30s (4) Missile Size 6 Rate of Fire 30
Missile Fire Control FC552-R16 (1) Range 553.0m km Resolution 16
missile2 class Cruiser 10,000 tons 209 Crew 1658 BP TCS 200 TH 1200 EM 0
6000 km/s Armour 3-41 Shields 0-0 Sensors 1/1/0/0 Damage Control Rating 7 PPV 24
Maint Life 1.95 Years MSP 725 AFR 114% IFR 1.6% 1YR 250 5YR 3749 Max Repair 600 MSP
Intended Deployment Time: 12 months Spare Berths 0
Magazine 549
1200 EP Magneto-plasma Drive - x1.5 - FE 0.69 (1) Power 1200 Fuel Use 68.89% Signature 1200 Exp 15%
Fuel Capacity 3,000,000 Litres Range 78.4 billion km (151 days at full power)
Size 6 Missile Launcher RoF 30s (4) Missile Size 6 Rate of Fire 30
Missile Fire Control FC552-R16 (1) Range 553.0m km Resolution 16
war tonnage is actually the same on both designs, because all the advantage of B's smaller engine is eaten up by the larger fuel tank required to achieve the same range. you pay 22 % more for nothing. obviously, if we reduce range it gets better.
we've just seen that better fuel usage techs are in favor to the more powerful engines. this suggests that it becomes even worse in later tech levels.
so lets use a design from my current game instead, shall we? missile A is a design that i'm using right now. both drives used are internal confinement fusion drives and have HS 50.
missile A class Cruiser 10,000 tons 199 Crew 1083.4 BP TCS 200 TH 960 EM 0
4800 km/s Armour 2-41 Shields 0-0 Sensors 1/1/0/0 Damage Control Rating 10 PPV 30
Maint Life 4.07 Years MSP 677 AFR 80% IFR 1.1% 1YR 66 5YR 983 Max Repair 192 MSP
Intended Deployment Time: 24 months Spare Berths 0
Magazine 630
Comm Drive 0480 EP - FE 0.006 (2) Power 480 Fuel Use 0.62% Signature 480 Exp 3%
Fuel Capacity 50,000 Litres Range 145.2 billion km (350 days at full power)
Size 6 Missile Launcher RoF 30s (5) Missile Size 6 Rate of Fire 30
Missile Fire Control FC552-R16 (1) Range 553.0m km Resolution 16
missile B class Cruiser 10,000 tons 271 Crew 1743.4 BP TCS 200 TH 960 EM 0
4800 km/s Armour 2-41 Shields 0-0 Sensors 1/1/0/0 Damage Control Rating 10 PPV 48
Maint Life 3.73 Years MSP 1090 AFR 80% IFR 1.1% 1YR 122 5YR 1833 Max Repair 288 MSP
Intended Deployment Time: 24 months Spare Berths 1
Magazine 1023
Mil Drive 0960 EP - FE 0.035 (1) Power 960 Fuel Use 3.49% Signature 960 Exp 6%
Fuel Capacity 250,000 Litres Range 128.9 billion km (310 days at full power)
Size 6 Missile Launcher RoF 30s (8) Missile Size 6 Rate of Fire 30
Missile Fire Control FC552-R16 (2) Range 553.0m km Resolution 16
missile B has 60% more missile launchers. it has 100% more fire controls and 60% more missile storage. the rest is about the same. well, except that it needs almost 6 times as much fuel. design B build costs are 64 % higher than design A.
all in all, design B is just 60 % "more". 60 % more weapons, 62 % more missiles and 61 % higher costs which also means 60 % longer build time. ship range is 10 % less. it has one advantage, which is one fire control per 4 launchers instead of one per 5 launchers (i couldn't give it 1.6 fire controls...). but it needs about 3 times as much fuel to move one launcher around, the engine was more expensive to research and you have no backup if you lose one engine. it also has a shorter maint life, but that's probably due to the better fc coverage so lets ignore this.
instead of building 10 missile B you could as well build 16 missile A. if you increase armor to 5, design B build cost are only 54 % higher. so you would have a 5 % cost advantage here. but i usually don't put armor on missile ships. if armor is reduced to 1, design B is in compare even more expensive by 2 %. if you use shields it doesn't matter. if you want a faster ship, both engines are higher power, but missile B loses more war tonnage to increased fuel tank requirements.
also note that 10k is the optimum tonnage in favor of the stronger engine. if the ship is smaller, you build one larger engine with lower power and get additional fuel savings from engine size.
at last i'll repeat it:
the cheaper engines with less fuel usage and research cost should never (or at least rarely) be equal or in every regard better to something more expensive.
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Ok, I see what you are getting at and this is also why I often use lower power settings on my bigger ships, it makes the engines much cheaper, less costly to research and cost less supplies thus less maintenance facilities, space for fuel and all that stuff.
I must say though that the designs are sort of strange, the range on the are not realistic and some of them can't take a hit in the engine without having to be dragged back to a shipyard by a tug. I really don't think such designs are realistic to use on a main combat ship, on a small FAC or corvette with very small deployment time, yes.
It is a waste of resources to add power settings to ships you wish to use as normal ships for the same reasons, higher multiplier should only be used for short ranged craft with very limited ranges such as FAC and fighters who can benefit from it much more.
Here are two more reasonable example why I think you must sacrifice something to gain something else...
Iowa (A) class Cruiser 10,000 tons 267 Crew 1454 BP TCS 200 TH 720 EM 0
3600 km/s Armour 5-41 Shields 0-0 Sensors 1/1/0/0 Damage Control Rating 5 PPV 53.46
Maint Life 2.52 Years MSP 500 AFR 145% IFR 2% 1YR 110 5YR 1646 Max Repair 120 MSP
Intended Deployment Time: 9 months Flight Crew Berths 26
Hangar Deck Capacity 1000 tons Magazine 150
240 EP (HS20) Ion Drive (3) Power 240 Fuel Use 48% Signature 240 Exp 10%
Fuel Capacity 400,000 Litres Range 15.0 billion km (48 days at full power)
Twin 15cm C3 Ultraviolet Laser Turret (6x2) Range 0km TS: 6000 km/s Power 12-6 RM 4 ROF 10 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
Gas-Cooled Fast Reactor Technology PB-1 (8) Total Power Output 36 Armour 0 Exp 5%
This design is classed as a Military Vessel for maintenance purposes
Iowa (B) class Cruiser 10,750 tons 258 Crew 1348.75 BP TCS 215 TH 702 EM 0
3265 km/s Armour 5-43 Shields 0-0 Sensors 1/1/0/0 Damage Control Rating 4 PPV 53.46
Maint Life 2.53 Years MSP 372 AFR 194% IFR 2.7% 1YR 81 5YR 1212 Max Repair 63 MSP
Intended Deployment Time: 9 months Flight Crew Berths 35
Hangar Deck Capacity 1000 tons Magazine 150
117 EP (HS13) Ion Drive (6) Power 117 Fuel Use 25.43% Signature 117 Exp 7%
Fuel Capacity 230,000 Litres Range 15.1 billion km (53 days at full power)
Twin 15cm C3 Ultraviolet Laser Turret (6x2) Range 0km TS: 6000 km/s Power 12-6 RM 4 ROF 10 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
Gas-Cooled Fast Reactor Technology PB-1 (8) Total Power Output 36 Armour 0 Exp 5%
This design is classed as a Military Vessel for maintenance purposesIgnore the fact there are no sensors of FC on these ships, that is inconsequential... ;)
Here you can clearly see that you need to sacrifice speed to gain some advantage in fuel economy and a slightly cheaper ship. One good point though is that cruiser B is safer in combat and is much easier (cheaper) to refit the engines on later.
So in essence you will need to sacrifice something to gain something else. I don't think your examples was very good since they had way too much fuel built into the ship, there are no way you need all that fuel in a ship, that is why you use tankers.
If you turn up the power on the engines enough you will get a better and more distorted result since they require so much more fuel. So if you crank up the power of the engines you will end up sacrificing range and will need to rely more on tanker or the ship being stationed closer to any potential threat. Higher powered engine are probably only economically defensible if you have huge reserves of fuel, but that industry will cost as well so I don't think it is economically viable in the end, not in a multi national AI less campaign any way.
I have recognized these issues before and it is also why I gladly sacrifice some speed in my monster ships for less fuel usage and cheaper engines so I can refit and upgrade them in a more reasonable pace.
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Here is the same ship using a x1.25 power ration on the engines...
Iowa (C) class Cruiser 9,700 tons 264 Crew 1475 BP TCS 194 TH 720 EM 0
3711 km/s Armour 5-40 Shields 0-0 Sensors 1/1/0/0 Damage Control Rating 5 PPV 53.46
Maint Life 2.49 Years MSP 475 AFR 150% IFR 2.1% 1YR 106 5YR 1589 Max Repair 120 MSP
Intended Deployment Time: 9 months Flight Crew Berths 29
Hangar Deck Capacity 1000 tons Magazine 150
240 EP (HS16) Ion Drive (3) Power 240 Fuel Use 88.04% Signature 240 Exp 12%
Fuel Capacity 750,000 Litres Range 15.8 billion km (49 days at full power)
Twin 15cm C3 Ultraviolet Laser Turret (6x2) Range 0km TS: 6000 km/s Power 12-6 RM 4 ROF 10 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
Gas-Cooled Fast Reactor Technology PB-1 (8) Total Power Output 36 Armour 0 Exp 5%
This design is classed as a Military Vessel for maintenance purposes
It clearly shows it is viable to build that type of ship at those ranges if you can manage the extra drain in fuel.
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since people complained when i used higher tech examples and slow engines, i created 2 engines for testing. these are HS 50, their research cost was 2,250 (A)and 6,000 (B). the result is quite interesting...
Uhm seriously? The only thing this examples shows is that your ship design will be smegty of you devote 30% of the total tonnage to fuel ( more then engine even ). Not really groundbreaking news for anyone still in the thread I think...
Cut it to 5% instead ( 25 days ) and it will start to look more like a real warship with a speed advantage at 8000km/s. To catch it your other design will need to get rid of 2500 ton ( 4 size 6 launchers are 1200 ton and magazines about 1800 ton so over 2/3:eds of it's offensive capacity needs to go to make it work )...
so lets use a design from my current game instead, shall we?
Are you seriously using military designs with Fuel Use 0.62% and 4800km/s max speeds at internal confinement fusion engine levels? ???
If all you need them to do is carry a bunch of missiles to within range any engine will work of-course, but why not use colliers and tankers to haul missiles and fuel across your empire instead like any normal military would?
The actual launch platform only needs range to make the last system and back to safety.
If you want to use your 4800km/s ship against any real opponent you would be in serious troubles since their ships could outrun yours with ease even if using 1-2 engine techs below you, so once your out of munitions it's game over.
And since your slow ships would have no chance to evade any attacks made even by such primitive opponents, well...
My current designs are 5000km/s with Ion engines!
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To be fair... using any sort of ship with techs higher than Ion engines and missile weapons as the main weapon are probably not viable since most of your strike force should have transitioned to fighters by now so you can attack from such great distance the enemy don't even know where your main force is.
At a certain point pure missile ships become a liability for most fleet operations until you discover advance cloaking systems and ships again become a great source of missile warfare.
If you have to fire a missile inside the enemy active scanning envelope you are intentionally putting yourself in a precarious situation, that is why ships in my campaigns mostly have divergent speeds, because different ships have different needs.
Most military engagement are mostly about finding the enemy main force. The one who attack first usually have a serious advantage, that is why invading another factions space is so hard with ground based tracking stations being very powerful to detect enemy presence. Also, most big capital ships in my campaigns sacrifice speed for some additional long range beam weapons, so you don't just walk up to them and talk about it. ;)
I also like to mix it up, some factions rely more on speed and evasion manoeuvres than others, it sort of make it more interesting from a RP perspective.
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Here you can clearly see that you need to sacrifice speed to gain some advantage in fuel economy and a slightly cheaper ship.
i don't actually. if you have so small engines on your faster design, you should increase engine size instead of number, like this:
117 EP (HS13) Ion Drive (6) Power 117 Fuel Use 25.43% Signature 117 Exp 7%
use 3 of these instead: 265.2 EP (HS 26) Ion Drive (3) Power 265.2 Fuel Use 29.6 % Signature 265.2 Exp 7%
Iowa (B) will be about same build cost and speed at lower fuel cost.
The only thing this examples shows is that your ship design will be smegty
i would like to discuss it based on your design. but since you refuse to do so, i assume you already had a look at it and saw that i'm right :D
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It is not feasible to build one specific engine for each and every ship you have. In my campaigns there usually are only a couple of engines. Smaller engines have allot of strategic value outside of being more fuel hungry such as lower maintenance cost, that is they require less engineering spaces per mass than a larger engine and can fit onto more ship hulls. I hope you also realize you don't have an infinite number of research points and at some point you have to ask yourself if researching a new engine technology are more important than developing new engine types. I also understand that it highly depend in what environment that you play. If you don't have any real competition for dominance you don't have to care and can spend RP at hearts content. But when you are hard pressed for dominance and sending that colonizer just a few days earlier means everything you can't be so picky about engine size on your ships. Sometimes it is better with a destroyer now than a destroyer when the war is already over... ;)
The Iowa A and C was just example ships, whether you decide to make the engines bigger and fewer are just a decision on whether you can afford the research and are willing to pay extra for more maintenance facilities on your ships for some extra lower fuel cost. The ships will actually be somewhat more expensive, just with a tiny bit though.
I would never have a ship with only one engine, more engines adds some safety and lower maintenance costs. I feel comfortable with two or three engines though. Most ships will have between two and five engines, it all depends on the availability of engine types and research facilities available to do the research for them.
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yes, but you could just research the less powerful engine instead of the more powerful one. that saves you research points. i don't know how many different sized ship designs you're using before getting any engine tech advances. i usually don't have many.
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I do research less powerful engines on larger ships and more powerful engines on smaller ships, that is a general theme for the most part. And I do try to fit as few engines on ships as I possible can, but never less than two unless it is a FAC or Fighter. Using six engines in my example was perhaps not the best way to get my own principles across though and I would probably have used three larger engines on such a ship. ;)
Iowa (B2) class Cruiser 10,750 tons 264 Crew 1335.75 BP TCS 215 TH 702 EM 0
3265 km/s Armour 5-43 Shields 0-0 Sensors 1/1/0/0 Damage Control Rating 5 PPV 53.46
Maint Life 2.53 Years MSP 447 AFR 160% IFR 2.2% 1YR 97 5YR 1457 Max Repair 87.75 MSP
Intended Deployment Time: 9 months Flight Crew Berths 29
Hangar Deck Capacity 1000 tons Magazine 150
234 EP (26HS) Ion Drive (3) Power 234 Fuel Use 21.63% Signature 234 Exp 7%
Fuel Capacity 200,000 Litres Range 15.5 billion km (54 days at full power)
Twin 15cm C3 Ultraviolet Laser Turret (6x2) Range 0km TS: 6000 km/s Power 12-6 RM 4 ROF 10 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
Gas-Cooled Fast Reactor Technology PB-1 (7) Total Power Output 31.5 Armour 0 Exp 5%
This design is classed as a Military Vessel for maintenance purposesThe increase in engineering space is pretty much equal to the reduce in space for fuel so the cost end up the same as if you used six engines but total fuel usage drop somewhat.
As I proved with the designs I showed you, using the less powerful engine will produce a cheaper ship with lower speed and fuel usage while a higher power engine produce a slightly more expensive ship that use up more fuel but also is faster. Those ships that don't need to be super fast get cheaper engines since it also saves me research and fuel.
In general I use *0.75 to 1.25 for standard ship engines. Higher engine power are only made for smaller ships such as corvettes, gunboats etc...
I also believe we play very different games, most of my games revolve around 6+ factions that start in Sol with no AI guiding them... that makes each faction having to compete furiously from the start in all respect. It also means that researching new engine types are mainly fitted to stuff like missiles, fighters and smaller ships first, often larger ships are only refitted every second generation of engines because it is such huge investment to do so, that means the navies can easily have at least three generation of engines on their fleets at any one time.
You can't ever wait and upgrade all the ships all the time, there are neither time nor resources to do so... That is also what I mean, there are many constraint for how and what you build. In a heavy RP environment you can also be restricted by political policies on what you can or can't build or research. But these are of course beyond what is optimization in a mathematical perspective.
Are you in shortage or have an abundance of Gallacite, this is of course important on your overall engine design philosophy.
But the conclusion is that if you build an engine with less power you will save research time, fuel and get safer engines but sacrifice in total speed on your ships. More fuel hungry ships means you will have to invest more into your fuel producing capacity which also cost money and resources out of your total budget, so such strategies will produce overhead in other areas not directly related to the ships, these factors can be hard to calculate and say for sure how really expensive those ships are.
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i would like to discuss it based on your design. but since you refuse to do so, i assume you already had a look at it and saw that i'm right :D
I did post pretty much complete designs with all relevant statics already but you mostly dismissed them for containing "just speeds"...
But sure here are no less then 3 complete designs for you to look at. The design requirements was a minimum of 8 billion km range ( since the jump point furthest out is 4b km away ) and 10% ( 4 layers ) armor.
No matter how I tried I cannot get your strategy to work for my combat designs at all.
(A) Is the one I use in my current game.
(B) First attempt at redesign just adding more engines retaining mission tonnage ( ended a total failure being slightly slower despite 2000 ton heavier 50.4% engines and less Maint Life, and actually more expensive then the first )
(C) Second attempt at redesign using bigger more fuel efficient engines instead trying to retain total tonnage ( didn't end well either since 600 ton of weapons and 100 ton of reactor had to be cut, or half of the secondary armament )
Orion (A) class Destroyer 5 000 tons 175 Crew 962 BP TCS 100 TH 504 EM 0
5040 km/s Armour 4-26 Shields 0-0 Sensors 1/1/0/0 Damage Control Rating 2 PPV 30
Maint Life 2.7 Years MSP 240 AFR 100% IFR 1.4% 1YR 47 5YR 706 Max Repair 96 MSP
Intended Deployment Time: 12 months Spare Berths 1
Arai Heavy Industries 168 EP Ion Drive (3) Power 168 Fuel Use 125.23% Signature 168 Exp 14%
Fuel Capacity 350 000 Litres Range 10.1 billion km (23 days at full power)
Yoshinobu Space & Security 15cm Railgun V4/C3 (2x4) Range 120 000km TS: 5040 km/s Power 9-3 RM 4 ROF 15 3 3 3 3 2 2 1 1 1 1
Yoshinobu Space & Security 10cm Railgun V4/C3 (6x4) Range 40 000km TS: 5040 km/s Power 3-3 RM 4 ROF 5 1 1 1 1 0 0 0 0 0 0
Futabatei Space & Security Fire Control S00.6 32-5000 (1) Max Range: 64 000 km TS: 5000 km/s 84 69 53 37 22 6 0 0 0 0
Futabatei Space & Security Fire Control S02.5 128-5000 (1) Max Range: 256 000 km TS: 5000 km/s 96 92 88 84 80 77 73 69 65 61
Shobo Engineering Gas-Cooled Fast Reactor Technology PB-1 (3) Total Power Output 27 Armour 0 Exp 5%
Fumihiko Limited Active Search Sensor MR2-R1 (1) GPS 32 Range 2.6m km MCR 279k km Resolution 1
This design is classed as a Military Vessel for maintenance purposes
Orion (B) class Destroyer 6 950 tons 189 Crew 966.8 BP TCS 139 TH 672 EM 0
4834 km/s Armour 4-32 Shields 0-0 Sensors 1/1/0/0 Damage Control Rating 2 PPV 30
Maint Life 1.86 Years MSP 174 AFR 193% IFR 2.7% 1YR 64 5YR 958 Max Repair 96 MSP
Intended Deployment Time: 12 months Spare Berths 1
Arai Heavy Industries 96 EP Ion Drive (7) Power 96 Fuel Use 30.91% Signature 96 Exp 8%
Fuel Capacity 120 000 Litres Range 10.1 billion km (24 days at full power)
Yoshinobu Space & Security 15cm Railgun V4/C3 (2x4) Range 120 000km TS: 4834 km/s Power 9-3 RM 4 ROF 15 3 3 3 3 2 2 1 1 1 1
Yoshinobu Space & Security 10cm Railgun V4/C3 (6x4) Range 40 000km TS: 4834 km/s Power 3-3 RM 4 ROF 5 1 1 1 1 0 0 0 0 0 0
Futabatei Space & Security Fire Control S00.6 32-5000 (1) Max Range: 64 000 km TS: 5000 km/s 84 69 53 37 22 6 0 0 0 0
Futabatei Space & Security Fire Control S02.5 128-5000 (1) Max Range: 256 000 km TS: 5000 km/s 96 92 88 84 80 77 73 69 65 61
Shobo Engineering Gas-Cooled Fast Reactor Technology PB-1 (3) Total Power Output 27 Armour 0 Exp 5%
Fumihiko Limited Active Search Sensor MR2-R1 (1) GPS 32 Range 2.6m km MCR 279k km Resolution 1
This design is classed as a Military Vessel for maintenance purposes
Orion (C) class Destroyer 5 100 tons 144 Crew 772.75 BP TCS 102 TH 510 EM 0
5000 km/s Armour 4-26 Shields 0-0 Sensors 1/1/0/0 Damage Control Rating 2 PPV 21
Maint Life 1.79 Years MSP 189 AFR 104% IFR 1.4% 1YR 73 5YR 1098 Max Repair 108.375 MSP
Intended Deployment Time: 12 months Spare Berths 0
Arai Heavy Industries 255 EP Ion Drive (2) Power 255 Fuel Use 24.98% Signature 255 Exp 8%
Fuel Capacity 70 000 Litres Range 9.9 billion km (22 days at full power)
Yoshinobu Space & Security 15cm Railgun V4/C3 (2x4) Range 120 000km TS: 5000 km/s Power 9-3 RM 4 ROF 15 3 3 3 3 2 2 1 1 1 1
Yoshinobu Space & Security 10cm Railgun V4/C3 (3x4) Range 40 000km TS: 5000 km/s Power 3-3 RM 4 ROF 5 1 1 1 1 0 0 0 0 0 0
Futabatei Space & Security Fire Control S00.6 32-5000 (1) Max Range: 64 000 km TS: 5000 km/s 84 69 53 37 22 6 0 0 0 0
Futabatei Space & Security Fire Control S02.5 128-5000 (1) Max Range: 256 000 km TS: 5000 km/s 96 92 88 84 80 77 73 69 65 61
Shobo Engineering Gas-Cooled Fast Reactor Technology PB-1 (2) Total Power Output 18 Armour 0 Exp 5%
Fumihiko Limited Active Search Sensor MR2-R1 (1) GPS 32 Range 2.6m km MCR 279k km Resolution 1
This design is classed as a Military Vessel for maintenance purposes
Second redesign (C) I guess is a bit closer to something usable since it was a bit cheaper at 773BP which is 80% the price of the original design, but on the other hand it only carries 70% the gun tonnage so it is going to end up more expensive to bring the same amount of guns anyway. If the original design only had two engines it could also be a bit more cheaper ( due to high fuel eff = lower power mod ) and save a few % on fuel giving it an even bigger advantage.
For the bigger ships that are used more for power projection like big Carriers yes, something closer to (C) design would probably be used, even if 45-50% engine is excessive, I would probably still devote 30-40% tonnage to engines and make the ship slower instead. But I also use my biggest Carriers like a kind of forward base carrying loads of extra fuel and munition for other ships, so it kind of already proves my point that your approach is more suitable for civilian or "non combat" ships :)
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As I proved with the designs I showed you, using the less powerful engine will produce a cheaper ship with lower speed and fuel usage while a higher power engine produce a slightly more expensive ship that use up more fuel but also is faster.
why didn't you use the engine i suggested? it would not be slower.
(A) Is the one I use in my current game.
thx =)
this one is tricky because of armor and because your design seems to be already about 35 % engines (including armor required for the engine tonnage). you can only improve it on a smaller scale.
it seems you used this engine x3:
Engine Power: 168 Fuel Use Per Hour: 210.39 Litres
Fuel Consumption per Engine Power Hour: 1.252 Litres
Engine Size: 10 HS Engine HTK: 5
Thermal Signature: 168 Exp Chance: 14
Cost: 84 Crew: 14
Materials Required: 84x Gallicite
Military Engine
Development Cost for Project: 840RP
i suggest trying this one x4:
Engine Power: 135 Fuel Use Per Hour: 128.76 Litres
Fuel Consumption per Engine Power Hour: 0.954 Litres
Engine Size: 9 HS Engine HTK: 4
Thermal Signature: 135 Exp Chance: 12
Cost: 67.5 Crew: 11
Materials Required: 67.5x Gallicite
Military Engine
Development Cost for Project: 675RP
it created a similar testdesign, and the result was a ship that is very slightly more expensive (911 instead of 900) but faster (5090 instead of 5040), cheaper to research and less fuel needed. can you try it and post the result?
i didn't test it but i it should also work with 9x of the same engine power modifier with HS 4 instead of 4x HS 9. this way you have more safety and even less research costs. (that consideration is also again more in topic concerning engine efficiency vs size - there should be a higher difference from HS 4 to 9).
if we stayed in this thread (engine efficiency vs size) there is no real improvement (without significant tradeoffs) possible for your design by increasing engine size. the reason is that (1) the ship barely has the minimum size for such possible improvements and it already has 35 % engines.
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why didn't you use the engine i suggested? it would not be slower.
Ok here it is...
Iowa (B3) class Cruiser 10,850 tons 274 Crew 1433.13 BP TCS 217 TH 796 EM 0
3668 km/s Armour 5-43 Shields 0-0 Sensors 1/1/0/0 Damage Control Rating 6 PPV 53.46
Maint Life 2.53 Years MSP 495 AFR 156% IFR 2.2% 1YR 108 5YR 1613 Max Repair 112.71 MSP
Intended Deployment Time: 9 months Flight Crew Berths 26
Hangar Deck Capacity 1000 tons Magazine 150
265.2 EP (HS26) Ion Drive (3) Power 265.2 Fuel Use 29.57% Signature 265.2 Exp 8%
Fuel Capacity 270,000 Litres Range 15.1 billion km (47 days at full power)
Twin 15cm C3 Ultraviolet Laser Turret (6x2) Range 0km TS: 6000 km/s Power 12-6 RM 4 ROF 10 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
Gas-Cooled Fast Reactor Technology PB-1 (7) Total Power Output 31.5 Armour 0 Exp 5%
This design is classed as a Military Vessel for maintenance purposes
In my opinion it does not matters much, this ships is more expensive, but slightly faster (+68km/s) than Iowa (A) class of ships, it is better in fuel economy though. The biggest problem with either of the Iowa(B) class though is that they are oversized (+700-850t), that is a huge problem. We can't just redo our entire infrastructure just to accommodate the B version, it would certainly be voted down as too expensive in congress. ;)
So, we are still in the same spot... Iowa (B2) is about 35% more fuel efficient, 7% cheaper and 100t smaller then Iowa (B3)... while it is 11% slower... both ships are not legal for production though because they can't satisfy the two criteria of mission tonnage or total tonnage. If you redid the engines so the ship met both of these criteria they would become cheaper but much slower... like this...
Iowa (B3) class Cruiser 9,950 tons 255 Crew 1341.605 BP TCS 199 TH 643 EM 0
3231 km/s Armour 5-41 Shields 0-0 Sensors 1/1/0/0 Damage Control Rating 5 PPV 53.46
Maint Life 2.65 Years MSP 442 AFR 150% IFR 2.1% 1YR 90 5YR 1343 Max Repair 91.035 MSP
Intended Deployment Time: 9 months Flight Crew Berths 28
Hangar Deck Capacity 1000 tons Magazine 150
214.2 EP (HS21) Ion Drive (3) Power 214.2 Fuel Use 31.57% Signature 214.2 Exp 8%
Fuel Capacity 270,000 Litres Range 15.5 billion km (55 days at full power)
Twin 15cm C3 Ultraviolet Laser Turret (6x2) Range 0km TS: 6000 km/s Power 12-6 RM 4 ROF 10 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
Gas-Cooled Fast Reactor Technology PB-1 (7) Total Power Output 31.5 Armour 0 Exp 5%
This design is classed as a Military Vessel for maintenance purposes
This was pretty much as close as I could do it, there are another 50t or so you could add, but that does not matter much in the end.
The end result is that you can never just make the ship bigger and get the same speed but better fuel economy without allow for the other ship to add more engine to increase it speed at the same size. You may not compare apples with pares, that is a no no. If you must compare, all thing must be equal except one, in this case the engines must be the same size as must all the mission based tonnage. If you reduce the mission tonnage in favour of engines you must compare the same number of total ship tonnage over several ships that contain the exact same mission tonnage. The problem with different number of ships is that you introduce the problem with requirement of different numbers of slipways, this is equally bad as comparing different sizes.
In any way you twist and turn you will need to sacrifice something to gain something else.
I put no value in if you choose speed, fuel economy, or future upgrade possibilities/costs as a priority, all criteria has to be made from a strategic versus economic point of view. whichever path you choose must lead to a healthy empire for you.. ;)
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this one is tricky because of armor and because your design seems to be already about 35 % engines (including armor required for the engine tonnage).
Why would you include the armor in the engine tonnage? If we have the same final size armor will be identical regardless of what we put inside the ship.
The engine is 30% and you suggested 50% always was the optimal.
i suggest trying this one x4:
4 x 9HS engines leads to 1800 ton engines out of 5000 = 36% engines, so closer to what I think is optimal already ( 30% ) then what you initially claimed to be optimal (50%).
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In my opinion it does not matters much, this ships is more expensive
no it's not. it's cheaper. Iowa (A) was 1454 BP while Iowa (B3) is 1433.13 BP. Iowa (B3) is cheaper, faster and needs less fuel and research points.
The end result is that you can never just make the ship bigger and get the same speed but better fuel economy
we just did exactly that!
The problem with different number of ships is that you introduce the problem with requirement of different numbers of slipways, this is equally bad as comparing different sizes.
yes but it's only a problem for a 1:1 compare like we're doing here. in reality you just build as many ships as you have slipways, or build as many slipways as you want to build ships later (besides, cheaper designs will build faster, and again faster if they are larger).
looking at it the other way round, if you did your design using more efficient engines in first place, you wouldn't be able to make a 1:1 transition to higher power engines that fit your shipyards as well. but this is not about specific games or designs, it's just to show that you can make your ships faster and cheaper while needing less RPs and fuel in return for a small size increase.
once people start to accept this as a fact, maybe we can actually discuss it :D or maybe someone convinces me that i'm wrong and we can close the topic =)
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Why would you include the armor in the engine tonnage?
cause large engine = more armor and smaller engine = less armor. this has to be part of the calculation. i count the engine size by adding or removing it and looking at the stats (that also includes crew and engineering spaces). the basic topic is increasing engine size for overall benefits in general. i assume the benefits of this is capped at 50 % engines, but i see no difference if i'm wrong and that cap is actually 45 or 55 %.
4 x 9HS engines leads to 1800 ton engines out of 5000 = 36% engines
higher if you include the overhead in the % calculations. you're also ignoring that it increases the total ship size as well, changing percentages. maybe it could be improved further. i chose this because it was the first one i found that showed a clear advantage in every regard. that's sufficient to proof my point, isn't it?
so closer to what I think is optimal already ( 30% )
earlier this thread you talked about 25 %.1.) 60% launchers, 25% engines (8 of them)
and the design we discussed now had 35 %. but that's nitpicking, isn't it? if my suggested engines improve the ship the way i predicted, it doesn't really matter. unless you want to discuss if the optimum engine space is not 50 % but 45 %, but that would require you to agree with my basic assumption in first place.
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no it's not. it's cheaper. Iowa (A) was 1454 BP while Iowa (B3) is 1433.13 BP. Iowa (B3) is cheaper, faster and needs less fuel and research points.
we just did exactly that!
Yes but it's only a problem for a 1:1 compare like we're doing here. in reality you just build as many ships as you have slipways, or build as many slipways as you want to build ships later (besides, cheaper designs will build faster, and again faster if they are larger).
looking at it the other way round, if you did your design using more efficient engines in first place, you wouldn't be able to make a 1:1 transition to higher power engines that fit your shipyards as well. but this is not about specific games or designs, it's just to show that you can make your ships faster and cheaper while needing less RPs and fuel in return for a small size increase.
once people start to accept this as a fact, maybe we can actually discuss it :D or maybe someone convinces me that i'm wrong and we can close the topic =)
You don't seem to understand what I'm saying or we are just talking in circles, I do think I understand perfectly well what you mean... it's just that you don't seem to have any rules for limitations.
I probably looked at the wrong figure for the price of the Iowa A versus B3 but it does not change anything, Iowa B3 is still larger and you must allow model A to have same tonnage too or take the size as a difference. The price does not matter alone, it is what you sacrifice. In the comparison between Iowa A and B3 for example you have a huge gap of 850t, that can be filled with more stuff for a slightly higher price, an extra 100BP or so is not a huge price to pay for a ship that are lets say 4-500km/s extra speed if that is what you want, that will take Iowa A in the same size as Iowa B3. So you will trade higher production value and fuel usage for more speed. You can't seriously say that each time you increase the size of Iowa A you can do the same with Iowa B3 ad infinitum do you?
You don't have infinite number of yard space, slipways or maintenance facilities to produce or maintain your ships.
If you have a large empire and standard maintenance facilities in certain places at 10.000t you can't just keep bloating that number, it is not realistic to do so. You must set a few criteria that can't be broken... it is IMPOSSIBLE to compare otherwise.
Can you please stipulate the constraints for these designs and I will be happy to oblige with a comparison in designs and what the benefit and drawback for each one are?
In my opinion the ships you compare MUST have the same size and number slipways otherwise you throw the whole concept of a fair comparison out the window because you just assume that the underlying infrastructure you need to build things can be expanded into infinity.
I will also add that the example I gave was just examples to show that there are differences between them, it does not matter that one is more expensive, faster, slower, more or less fuel efficient, larger or smaller. As long as on example is not better in all areas there is a trade of. No single example so far has had that except for your designs where you used way too much fuel in which I agree that low powered engines are better, they should be for long range ships.
The only thing that you really proved (in my opinion) is that there is a line between weight of fuel to the power setting of the engine in terms of economy of building the ship giving all else is equal. In other words there are always an optimum way to construct your engines if you want your ship to go relatively far.
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One more thing on a difference that may or may not matter to you. A bigger ship have bigger TCS and higher Thermal output than a ship that is smaller with the same speed. This is also something you must consider as a drawback of a larger ship versus a smaller ship. While larger ships in general can have deeper armour for less weight which I think is a bonus in favour of larger ships, especially in beam combat.
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As long as on example is not better in all areas there is a trade of.
yes, there is! and in my oppinion, the tradeoff for faster, cheaper, cheaper to research and more fuel efficient designs should be more than a small increase in size. so far, everyone (including you) argued that you cannot achieve these improvements for this tradeoff, using lower power engines. so instead of discussing the topic, i was busy proofing that it's possible at all.
i don't think a 1,000 shipyard capacity (like in your example) increase is a sufficient tradeoff for the named benefits. in reality you won't see it that way anyways, because usually you design your ship to fit into your spaceyard and not the other way round. but spaceyard size is plannable and not that expensive. you'll have your ships sooner (because larger and cheaper) and you also need less minerals, fuel refineries and tankers.
all this is actually off-topic here, because this thread was about better efficiency vs size scaling. i started the issue we're discussing now here http://aurora2.pentarch.org/index.php/topic,7472.0.html (http://aurora2.pentarch.org/index.php/topic,7472.0.html). my main problem is, that lower power engines should make a ship slower. i suggested (in the other thread) to keep engine costs the same for all power levels. that way, if you stack lower power engines your ship at least becomes more expensive instead of cheaper. it would also make high power engines more attractive for large ships. another suggestion was to reduce the impact of engine power on fuel consumption.
A bigger ship have bigger TCS and higher Thermal output than a ship that is smaller with the same speed.
yes but that's a small effect, in your Iowa example it's 10 %. for the TCS, if your enemy is using a lower resolution sensor than your ship size (and only then!) he will spot you from 20 % farer away.
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Yes... you can argue, if you feel like it, there is not enough difference for the benefit and I personally design my ships with slower cheaper engines for the reason you just gave.
But if you feel that speed IS more important than a small increase in cost and fuel efficiency that is as valid a choice as any other, that is the ONLY thing I'm trying to explain. You are trying to convince me and other that this choice is non existent where there actually IS a choice.
If you add 1000 ton to your shipyard or not does not matter, because ALL designs you compare with must be allowed to use that full size, it does not matter if it is 10.000 or 100.000t we are talking about. That is why you can't compare this...
Speed: 4000
Cost: 1000
Fuel efficiency: 1
Size: 10000
Everything else: 1
With this...
Speed: 4000
Cost: 1000
Fuel efficiency: 0.8
Size: 11000
Everything else: 1
Becasue then the first design could be...
Speed: 4300
Cost: 1100
Fuel Efficiency: 1
Size: 11000
Everything else: 1
If you value the cost and fuel efficiency over the speed that is your decision to do so, one which I happen to mostly agree with is the better choice in most cases. But, it is not the only choice, a higher speed can mean allot at times, it can mean that you win instead of loosing a fight. Sometimes speed alone can be the single factor for winning an engagement, mission tonnage does not mean squat. That can happen.
If we can agree on this I have no issue discussing if say +400km/s extra speed is worth an extra +10% production cost and -20% fuel efficiency or whatever it might be. Just as long as we agree you can't compare two ships of different size as if they were equal.
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Just as long as we agree you can't compare two ships of different size as if they were equal.
sure, i never denied that. i just think the disadvantages of larger size is too low compared to the benefits. but it's probably better to take this to the other thread http://aurora2.pentarch.org/index.php/topic,7472.0.html
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sure, i never denied that. i just think the disadvantages of larger size is too low compared to the benefits. but it's probably better to take this to the other thread http://aurora2.pentarch.org/index.php/topic,7472.0.html
OK, I will debate it there then... ;)
In the spirit to be on topic in this thread I think that Alex suggestion in this post had pretty good merits
http://aurora2.pentarch.org/index.php/topic,7448.msg75697.html#msg75697 (http://aurora2.pentarch.org/index.php/topic,7448.msg75697.html#msg75697)
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Moved post to other thread.
Edit:
And to continue on my on topic suggestion linked:
What would happen if missile engines would also use the values using the same fuel consumption vs size formula I suggested?
( fuel consumption factor = SQRT(10/HS) )
We know that 1MSP = 1/20HS, so the Missile engine formula would look like this:
( Missile fuel consumption factor = SQRT(200/MSP) )
MSP Fuelconsumption
0.10 44.72
0.20 31.62
0.30 25.82
0.40 22.36
0.50 20.00
0.60 18.26
0.70 16.90
0.80 15.81
0.90 14.91
1.00 14.14
1.10 13.48
1.20 12.91
1.30 12.40
1.40 11.95
1.50 11.55
1.60 11.18
1.70 10.85
1.80 10.54
1.90 10.26
2.00 10.00
2.10 9.76
2.20 9.53
2.30 9.33
2.40 9.13
2.50 8.94
2.60 8.77
2.70 8.61
2.80 8.45
2.90 8.30
3.00 8.16
3.10 8.03
3.20 7.91
3.30 7.78
3.40 7.67
3.50 7.56
3.60 7.45
3.70 7.35
3.80 7.25
3.90 7.16
4.00 7.07
4.10 6.98
4.20 6.90
4.30 6.82
4.40 6.74
4.50 6.67
4.60 6.59
4.70 6.52
4.80 6.45
4.90 6.39
5.00 6.32
The result would be missile engines that are ranging from 3.07 times ( 0.1MSP ) less fuel efficient to 6.32 times ( 5 MSP ) less fuel efficient
Considering how little importance fuel and fuel efficiency has for missiles today ( few designs even have as much as 5 or 10% fuel ) I think such a development could be quite interesting, since fuel would then be an even more important factor to consider and balance in the missile design even earlier before you have the max power mod researched.
And it could make beam weapons more interesting since even if they are still badly out-ranged it would not be quite as bad, and since there is a higher chance to encounter slower more fuel efficient missiles.
Another gain is that it would allow making missile engines all the way up to 20 MSP (1HS) and have a perfectly smooth transition to small fighter engines at 1HS.
Some potential problems might be re-balance of detection sensors and MFCs needed.
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any suggestion that reduces missile range has my vote =)
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And to continue on my on topic suggestion linked:
What would happen if missile engines would also use the values using the same fuel consumption vs size formula I suggested?
( fuel consumption factor = SQRT(10/HS) )
Let me make sure I understand this suggestion: You're suggesting that the fuel efficiency of an engine grow like the sqrt of the size of the engine, correct? So an engine 4x as big would only require 2x the fuel to go the same distance in the same size ship?
If so, I think this is a great idea for multiple reasons:
1) One of the things Steve wanted to accomplish in the original Aurora was to bias ship design away from the swarms of small ships found in Starfire and towards single, big ships. Although this has been somewhat successful, the fact that almost everything in a ship design scales linearly with size means that the isn't a strong selection pressure towards big ships. This suggestion would add selection pressure for big ships - doubling the ship size would mean that the fuel tankage would only go up by a factor of sqrt(2)x (rather than 2x), leaving the remaining volume for payload.
2) Ditto for specialist designs (small single-role ships) vs. general designs (larger multi-role ships).
3) Cutting missile ranges significantly would probably swing the balance towards beam combatants, which is probably a good thing.
The amount of pressure applied could be adjusted by adjusting overall fuel efficiency - the bigger a percentage of the ship tankage required, the more pressure for big ships there would be.
I think this is worth a suggestion in the official thread, if you haven't made one already.
John
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Let me make sure I understand this suggestion: You're suggesting that the fuel efficiency of an engine grow like the sqrt of the size of the engine, correct?
Yes, and also moving the 1.0 modifier to a bit higher size engines (10HS), to allow more fuel guzzling smaller engines for fighters and FACs and make engine size in that range actually a choice instead of just lets go with as many 1HS engines as I need.
The current formulas in use are:
Missile Engines: Fuel Modifier = (Engine Size in MSP / 5) ^ (-0.683)
Ship Engines: Fuel Modifier = 1 - (Engine Size in HS/100)
So the main improvement is just as you say moving from a linear scale for ship engines to an exponential one more similar to what is used in missiles. Another desirable thing is that such a formula would allow even bigger engines of 100+ HS without reaching zero fuel consumption.
Note: My formula can be expressed in a more similar way as well:
Missile Engines: Fuel Modifier = (Engine Size in MSP / 200) ^ (-0.5)
Ship Engines: Fuel Modifier = (Engine Size in HS / 10) ^ (-0.5)
It's of course possible to play around with the exponent in the formula too to get higher or lower impact of engine size on fuel efficiency.
For example using 0.4 instead lowers size impact and gives a HS 50 engine 52% consumption instead.
Or 0.6 raises size impact and gives a HS 50 engine 38% consumption.
( I mostly put 0.5 or SQRT there for a simple and elegant formula ::) )
But I feel the "natural" origin or 1.0 modifier of the formula is well defined at 10HS = 500 ton engines.
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For example using 0.4 instead lowers size impact and gives a HS 50 engine 52% consumption instead.
Or 0.6 raises size impact and gives a HS 50 engine 38% consumption.
0.3 might work. we already have the problem that larger engines are too efficient, 0.4 is about the same as the current implementation for HS 50 and 25. with 0.3 it scales faster than i suggested, but it slows down very quickly. after HS 200 there is very little return. my suggestion in the first post has a better scaling for bigger engines (but worse for very small ones). i used Fuel Modifier (HS) = 1 / (1 + root(HS-1) x 7)
i tried tinkering with your formula to get a better scaling for larger engines, but it doesn't seem to work. your curve is too much focused on small engine sizes.
i'd really like to have more reasons for building larger ships. that would also speed up the game :D though lately i wonder if it would be best to simply remove the size advantage of commercial designs (reduce all commercial components except engines to 1/10th size) and make them the same as military ships. that would solve the problem and make more sense, too.
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0.3 might work. we already have the problem that larger engines are too efficient, 0.4 is about the same as the current implementation for HS 50 and 25. with 0.3 it scales faster than i suggested, but it slows down very quickly. after HS 200 there is very little return.
Nah, it "slows down" at exactly the same speed throughout the entire formula since each time you double the engine size you get the same gain in efficiency.
my suggestion in the first post has a better scaling for bigger engines (but worse for very small ones). i used Fuel Modifier (HS) = 1 / (1 + root(HS-1) x 7)
i'd really like to have more reasons for building larger ships. that would also speed up the game :D
More fuel efficient large engines then today would give you more reasons to build large ships... ::)
Less fuel efficient ones using say 0.3 exponent would give you less reasons to build larger ships with 50 HS engines that consume 61% fuel ( you would need to go up to 100 HS engines to get 50% fuel consumption ).
i tried tinkering with your formula to get a better scaling for larger engines, but it doesn't seem to work. your curve is too much focused on small engine sizes.
The curve is not "focused" anywhere, as I wrote it gives the same gains each time you double engine size throughout the entire curve from 0.1 MSP engines to huge 50 HS engines :)
The result is that if you reduce the impact of size on efficiency for big engines you also impact small engines to be more efficient. So for example 0.3 exponent actually would make most missile engines more fuel efficient then today.
I think it is doable, fair and good for consistency to apply the same rule regardless of engine sizes. Another cool effect of this is that you can in theory allow fighter sized 2HS ( 40MSP ) missile engines ( for example for a big cross system bus to deliver large sensor bouys ). Or the other way around a missile engine sized engine of 4 MSP ( 0.2 HS ) could be used in very small fighters if you want to.
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One thing that also has to be considered would be how a higher power settings on engines also would need to be reconsidered in terms of cost.
If the cost on an engine scales linear with the power increase while you easily can offset the fuel efficiency by making the engine larger will make big ships by definition faster than smaller ships as well as much cheaper in terms of range.
I really think that engine cost should scale much the same way on the upside for power increase as it does on the down scale. That would prevent you from making super fast long range large ships.
Depending on how the physics of the engine work, larger ships should perhaps rather be slower than smaller ships. If engines can be considered using more conventional thrust then larger mass means heavier strain on the hull than on a less massive ship. This means that even if it were possible for a large ship to theoretically have the same thrust its not possible because material fatigue is greater on a more massive hull. Now... we do not have to say that ship use thrust in the normal sense, they can use folding space for example which seem more in line with how ships actually move in Aurora.
In any way, I would really like to avoid bigger ships having a huge advantage in being both fast and with good range... as much as possible. I would hate to see 10.000 ton fighters with 6b km range.
One answer could perhaps be that the larger you make the engine the less power multiplier is possible and in the extreme you end up below 1x. So when you research lower multiplier you get to build bigger and bigger engines and when you research high multiplier you can build smaller and smaller engines.
For example if you have *0.1 power multiplier researched you can now build an engine at size 100 that has that multiplier, but its not possible to increase if further on this engine. If you have a *0.5 power multiplier researched you can build a size 50 engine with a *0.5 multiplier (or lower when that is available). So a size 1-10 engine would have a possible *1 power setting or lower, while engines smaller than 1 is the only ones where you can increase it.
There could also be a limit on how many engines you may fit on any one ship (say 10). Which directly also limit the size of the ships you can potentially build and what speed they will have.
In any way my suggestion is not really thought through and very controversial and different and would need some huge balancing.
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In any way, I would really like to avoid bigger ships having a huge advantage in being both fast and with good range... as much as possible. I would hate to see 10.000 ton fighters with 6b km range.
Isn't that the case currently too though?
A larger ship with 50HS engine will have twice the range at same speed as a fighter.
But there are lots of reasons not to pursuit it, for example you can't build in FTR factories, you can't equip with FTR beam FCs, it will be spotted from far far away due to it's size, can't be repaired in carrier hangars, the engine research cost is prohibitive and the list goes on.
Overall I'm not very worried that fighters would suddenly suck because they are made to consume 1.5 - 3.0 times more fuel since many current FTR designs get away with 10 ton ( 0.2HS ) fuel tanks ( that would need to be replaced with 20-30 ton fuel tanks or maximum 4% of 500 ton weight ).
Range of fighters is often enough as long as it's high enough to get off 2-3 strikes before any enemy can close distance and you don't really need many billions of km or days of range for that.
If it should be a problem I would prefer mechanics that make bigger ships easier to hit to balance it, but I guess restricting large engines to a bit lower power mods could make sense seeing how it's already the case with smaller missile engines getting 2x the maximum amount.
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I could see a sliding scale of how you can set the power modifier on engines so let's say it starts with maximum 0.5 at 100HS size and goes to 6x for the smallest missiles.
I do understand it is prohibitive to build large extremely fast big ships for all the reason you gave. But if fuel efficiency is increased alot each time you double the size you don't have to get far up in size to start mitigate the fuel usage of high powered engines. I think that even 2-3000t ships could potentially become very good "fighters", especially with cloaking devices later on.
I still would like to see some mechanic that make really big ships more prohibitive to have good speed on. Mainly from a realistic point of view, unless of course if there are no real motion involved with propulsion.
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Nah, it "slows down" at exactly the same speed throughout the entire formula
that depends on your point of view (if i look at every 10 HS increment it does not slow down at the same speed). but - like i said - it does not slow down the same speed as my suggestion. altough it actually should, since we both used a root function... i'm looking again, using excel this time =) still can't explain it. still like my scaling better, but i can't explain it. just a feeling.
looking at the numbers from an abstract point of view, i like your curve better with -0.3 as the exponent. that produces nice results also for larger engines. -0.5 makes really large ships too fuel efficient. at -0.4 you need only 16 % fuel for HS 1,000 engines (typical freighter increased to 500,000 tons storage), that's too low in my oppinion.
The curve is not "focused" anywhere
you focused it around HS 10, that was actually your declared intention :D but yes, from a mathematical point of view, that's not relevant.
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Since civilian shipping lines already are shipping stuff for zero fuel why is it so bad if we can save a few extra percent fuel on our own mega freighter designs?
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civilian shipping lines cost money and they are slow. if they are overpowered compared to freighters, that is another topic, but it should not be solved my unbalancing freighters.
anyways, the longer i think about it, i think the best solution would be to remove commercial shipyards. it's not realistic anyways and it would be sufficient to scale engines up to 100, which makes it much easier to produce good results for warships. but that should be another thread.
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anyways, the longer i think about it, i think the best solution would be to remove commercial shipyards. it's not realistic anyways and it would be sufficient to scale engines up to 100, which makes it much easier to produce good results for warships. but that should be another thread.
I think the model with shipyards is quite realistic. Looking at real examples during WW2 USA built 1000+ of the 20000 ton Liberty freight ships, but only a few dozen military ships the same size. If you go down to 2000 ton military ships though like subs and destroyers these were possible to crank out in many hundreds...
Or for today compare the cost and shipyard needs of super tanker/container shipping to military ships of same size ( super carriers ).
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I would agree that there are big differences in building a military ship and a civilian ship. You can't just expect more "simple" yards to build more complex ships just because they have the size to do so. In reality there are many things other than the size of the dry-dock that decides what you can and can't build.
There are no reason to think it would be much of a difference in a space dockyard if that is the logic you want mimic.
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Looking at real examples during WW2 USA built 1000+ of the 20000 ton Liberty freight ships, but only a few dozen military ships the same size.
maybe they had more shipyards working on the freight ships... but this is about size, not about the time or resources needed needed. did USA build "civilian" ships 10 times the size of their battleships in "civilian" shipyards 10 times the size? time is tied to build resource costs in Aurora. civilian ships could be cheaper, which makes them faster to build, even if they are built in the same shipyard.
i'm not saying warships should have the same build cost or time than freighters. but they are not 10 times smaller, and the same ship does not need a 10 times more expensive shipyard just because it's engines cross the magic x0.5 power line, or because i add a military sensor. the shipyard that builds a big warship should be equally able to build a big civilian ship.
also, in reality warships are more reliable (comparing the same component types) and capable of repairs on sea, while commercial ships are built and used cost efficiently. in aurora it's exactly the other way round: while the maintenance system for military ships is good, commercial ships don't have any component failures at all and never need repairs. that could at least be abstracted by some sort of upkeep for commercial ships to simulate maintenance costs.
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I would tent to agree with you in overall. When it comes to shipyard and dry docks it current mechanic is just that a mechanic to differentiate them. In reality it does not really work like it since you can pretty much build both in the same place. Sure, there are a few purely dedicated military shipyards... but many "commercial" shipyards can build both in the real words.
Anyway... I would like for Commercial ships to at least have a wealth cost associated with them to represent the cost to maintain them and a cost you pay your civilian industry to handle. I would also like if Civilian ships was required to at least have as many MSP in storage as the biggest component they need to repair. Sure... ships today can't really fix everything by themselves, but I really think that spaceships exist in a much more inhospitable environment and would require more rigorous security measures to function properly. At least they should not be free once you built them.
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also, in reality warships are more reliable (comparing the same component types) and capable of repairs on sea, while commercial ships are built and used cost efficiently. in aurora it's exactly the other way round: while the maintenance system for military ships is good, commercial ships don't have any component failures at all and never need repairs. that could at least be abstracted by some sort of upkeep for commercial ships to simulate maintenance costs.
generally commercial ships are taken care of by their owners not the government. Also civilian models usually have cheap parts that have breaking points built in for easy repair like just turning a crank, hitting it with a hammer, and adding oil. RP man