Post by: Steve Walmsley on October 02, 2007, 02:46:42 PM
4) Ships in orbit of a maintenance facility will pay maintenance of 15% per year. However, ships that have less than a year on their maintenance clocks will only pay 5%, as it is a lot easier to keep them in shape.
These changes mean that maintenance and spare replacement takes place in the background and all you have to think about is letting your ships spend some time in orbit of a maintenance facility every now and then. They also mean that every time your ships are at a planet with maintenance facilities, even for a few days, the local engineers will automatically do some work on your ships. It may be worth establishing a colony dedicated to maintenance facilities in the same way as colonies dedicated to research, because you could then use a planetary governor primarily for his high logistics bonus.
Steve
Post by: Erik L on October 02, 2007, 03:18:05 PM
Maybe instead of months to replace them, just a couple 5 day increments.
Possibly, have a cap on the number of spares replaced in a 5 day increment, so if a large number of ships needing spares dock, not all get replenished immediately.
Post by: Steve Walmsley on October 02, 2007, 04:53:23 PM
Quote from: "Erik Luken"
Maintenance spares have always been defined as "tangible goods" correct?
Maybe instead of months to replace them, just a couple 5 day increments.
Possibly, have a cap on the number of spares replaced in a 5 day increment, so if a large number of ships needing spares dock, not all get replenished immediately.
They aren't really tangible goods. They are a way to simulate a general stock of spare parts for that ship that gets used up as systems fail plus the general priority of maintenance during ship design and the ability of the ship to fix problems. You couldn't carry extra spares in a cargo hold for example. Changing from an overhaul costing 40% of ship build cost and many months in a shipyard to a quick stop at the local maintenance bay would have a significant effect on balance.
The current overhaul represents more than just restocking the parts as it completely resets the clock, simulating a general overhaul of every system on the ship. This will be partly handled by the rewind of the maintenance clock but no one would use the rewind much if lost spares could all be replaced in a few days. In reality, ships spend quite a lot of time in dock, getting resupplied and maintained. Aurora is now working on an assumption of 25% of time in port, which is probably low compared to reality. Based on this assumption, the spare replacement needs to have similar timescales to the rewinding of the maintenance clock.
This change is to reduce micromanagement, make it easier to pull a ship away from maintenance if required, simulate the minor maintenance that always takes place when a ship is in port and give me some more options on the potential changes to shipyards. I don't want to remove the need for maintenance or make it a quick fix
Steve
Post by: Kurt on October 02, 2007, 06:30:11 PM
Quote from: "Steve Walmsley"
<snip>
These changes mean that maintenance and spare replacement takes place in the background and all you have to think about is letting your ships spend some time in orbit of a maintenance facility every now and then. They also mean that every time your ships are at a planet with maintenance facilities, even for a few days, the local engineers will automatically do some work on your ships. It may be worth establishing a colony dedicated to maintenance facilities in the same way as colonies dedicated to research, because you could then use a planetary governor primarily for his high logistics bonus.
Steve
I am ambivalent. On the one hand, I like the idea of less for the player to worry about. Lower player overhead=more enjoyment, at least to a certain extent.
On the other hand, I really like the idea of ships being unavailable due to maintenance and overhaul issues. In Starfire all navies can muster 100% of their fleet for combat (albeit not necessarily at the same place) all of the time, unless ships are in the yards for refit to new tech. In reality I don't think any navy has ever been able to muster anything close to 100% of its strength for anything, due to maintenance and overhauls.
I understand where you are trying to go, I just think you are moving away from reality. <G>
Kurt
Post by: jmelzer on October 02, 2007, 08:10:42 PM
Quote from: "Steve Walmsley"
I am planning to make the following changes to Maintenance and overhauls in v2.3. So if anyone has any issues with this change, now is the time to shout and scream
-- details snipped --
Steve, will this change also apply to freighters? (I hope not!)
Post by: sloanjh on October 03, 2007, 12:22:54 AM
Quote from: "Kurt"
Quote from: "Steve Walmsley"
<snip>
These changes mean that maintenance and spare replacement takes place in the background and all you have to think about is letting your ships spend some time in orbit of a maintenance facility every now and then. They also mean that every time your ships are at a planet with maintenance facilities, even for a few days, the local engineers will automatically do some work on your ships. It may be worth establishing a colony dedicated to maintenance facilities in the same way as colonies dedicated to research, because you could then use a planetary governor primarily for his high logistics bonus.
Steve
I am ambivalent. On the one hand, I like the idea of less for the player to worry about. Lower player overhead=more enjoyment, at least to a certain extent.
On the other hand, I really like the idea of ships being unavailable due to maintenance and overhaul issues. In Starfire all navies can muster 100% of their fleet for combat (albeit not necessarily at the same place) all of the time, unless ships are in the yards for refit to new tech. In reality I don't think any navy has ever been able to muster anything close to 100% of its strength for anything, due to maintenance and overhauls.
I understand where you are trying to go, I just think you are moving away from reality. <G>
Kurt
I'm with the second half of Kurt - i.e. the shouting and screaming part :-) but you don't have to keep track of every freighter in the game. Especially now that the fleet training requirements mean that warships will be deployed a lot more often (aha!! is part of the reason for this proposal that you're looking for a reason to build MF?)
How about this for a compromise: MF performs refits (rather than SY) - each MF has a simultaneous refit capacity that's e.g. 5x it's max tonnage. This could be broken up among more than 5 ships (if they were small), but no ship larger that the max tonnage could be refit. A SY could also be retooled to perform refits with no tonnage limit. Randy's suggestion that the cost depend on SY costs (rather than ship) makes this easier, but I would have the build points come from the shipyard rather than from construction factories (part of the initial SY cost is retooling ability, if you want technobabble).
I'm not sure about the relative cost of MF and SY right now - one thing you might want to do is make MF refit capacity cheap relative to SY.
+++++++++++++++++++++++++
Another possibility might be to modify your idea to so that the clock only rewinds when a ship is in a "refit" readiness state, which it takes significant time to get out of if an emergency deployment is necessary - "minor refit" might take 1-2 weeks, while "major refit" might take 4-8 and unwind the clock more quickly. This would preserve the essense of the unavailability management issue, while allowing you to decouple MF and SY
+++++++++++++++++++++++++
John
Post by: Steve Walmsley on October 03, 2007, 04:44:38 AM
Quote from: "jmelzer"
Quote from: "Steve Walmsley"I am planning to make the following changes to Maintenance and overhauls in v2.3. So if anyone has any issues with this change, now is the time to shout and screamSteve, will this change also apply to freighters? (I hope not!)
-- details snipped --
Freighters remain as they are.
Steve
Post by: Steve Walmsley on October 03, 2007, 04:48:28 AM
Quote from: "Kurt"
I am ambivalent. On the one hand, I like the idea of less for the player to worry about. Lower player overhead=more enjoyment, at least to a certain extent.
On the other hand, I really like the idea of ships being unavailable due to maintenance and overhaul issues. In Starfire all navies can muster 100% of their fleet for combat (albeit not necessarily at the same place) all of the time, unless ships are in the yards for refit to new tech. In reality I don't think any navy has ever been able to muster anything close to 100% of its strength for anything, due to maintenance and overhauls.
I understand where you are trying to go, I just think you are moving away from reality. <G>
That's very interesting. I like the overhaul shipyards tasks but I had got an impression they weren't that popular, which is why I was proposing the simpler system
This isn't a particular large change in code terms (it took me a couple of hours last night) so it can be easily undone if there is general support for the existing system. A third option is to keep the new system but use John's proposal below to create an overhaul state for ships. I'll go into more detail in my reply to his post.
Steve
Post by: Steve Walmsley on October 03, 2007, 05:21:01 AM
Quote from: "sloanjh"
I'm with the second half of Kurt - i.e. the shouting and screaming part :-) but you don't have to keep track of every freighter in the game. Especially now that the fleet training requirements mean that warships will be deployed a lot more often (aha!! is part of the reason for this proposal that you're looking for a reason to build MF?)Sort of the other way around. The new training requirements are going to mean warships spend more time in overhaul so I was looking for a way to reduce that burden on players a little. As I mentioned in my last reply to Kurt I am personally happy with the overhaul tasks because I enjoy the logistics side of the game but I was concerned many players saw them as too much micromanagement. In reality ships probably spend a third of their time training, a third in dock and a third on station. I am trying to create this type of situation but reduce the dock time a little (to 25%) for gameplay purposes. I am still happy to go back to the original system if that is the general view among players.
Quote
How about this for a compromise: MF performs refits (rather than SY) - each MF has a simultaneous refit capacity that's e.g. 5x it's max tonnage. This could be broken up among more than 5 ships (if they were small), but no ship larger that the max tonnage could be refit. A SY could also be retooled to perform refits with no tonnage limit. Randy's suggestion that the cost depend on SY costs (rather than ship) makes this easier, but I would have the build points come from the shipyard rather than from construction factories (part of the initial SY cost is retooling ability, if you want technobabble).I think I prefer to keep refits in shipyards, as they involve the building of new ship systems rather than maintaining existing systems. If I introduce the new retooling system for shipyards, refits would be done in yards set up to build the refitted class.
Quote
I'm not sure about the relative cost of MF and SY right now - one thing you might want to do is make MF refit capacity cheap relative to SY.MF are very cheap at the moment because an SY can only work on one ship at once where MF can service many at the same time.
Quote
Another possibility might be to modify your idea to so that the clock only rewinds when a ship is in a "refit" readiness state, which it takes significant time to get out of if an emergency deployment is necessary - "minor refit" might take 1-2 weeks, while "major refit" might take 4-8 and unwind the clock more quickly. This would preserve the essense of the unavailability management issue, while allowing you to decouple MF and SY
I really like this idea. It would move maintenance from SY to MF, keep the idea that ships are unavailable when in overhaul or maintenance but also add the realistic option that you can drag a ship out of maintenance in an emergency; it just takes a while. It's probably a little less micromanagement than the original system too because it could be made an order rather than a shipyard task. This could be also expanded into a larger readiness states paradigm at some point.
Thinking out loud for a moment....
The minor overhaul above (I am assuming you mean overhaul rather than refit), could be the replenishment of spares only without any rewinding of the clock and it would take a week to clear the decks and leave port. Its similar to the existing minor overhaul but you wouldn't have to wait until spares were very low to make it worthwhile. An example would be HMS Conqueror when the Falklands War kicked off.
Quote from "Sink the Belgrano"
"Conquerer was scheduled for a 5 week Assisted Maintenance Period, where the boat's engineers would work with the shore-based engineering staff on a far-reaching programme of repairs and inspections." Her crew was on mostly on leave. The chief engineer was the senior officer on board and suddenly got a phone call telling him to 'Store for War'. It took several days to get the necessary supplies on board, round up the crew, etc, although it was done far more quickly than would have been possible in peacetime.
The major overhaul state would also include rewinding the clock and it would take four weeks to get out of this state. This would be more of a situation where sub-systems might be in pieces on the deck and had to be reassembled. However, not as bad as a refit where the ship itself might be in pieces.
As I mentioned above, another good point with this idea is that ships could be either flagged as being in an overhaul state, using the Ship window, or they could be given an order using the Fleet window as part of normal operations. They could also be given an order to break off maintenance and a delay would show on the screen (like loading cargo)
Example:
Move to St Ekatarina jump point
Refuel at St Ekatarina
Major Overhaul at St Ekatarina.
A minor overhaul would become an option whenever you might be spending more than a few days in port, especially if you are likely to get more than seven days warning of intruders. A major overhaul is a bigger decision because if anyone shows up nearby, you are probably stuffed, which is realistic
John and Kurt (or anyone else who wants to comment), would you prefer something along these lines or the original system? If we go back to the original system, I would simply allow yards to be retooled to perform overhauls
Steve
Post by: Þórgrímr on October 03, 2007, 08:19:01 AM
Cheers,
Post by: Steve Walmsley on October 03, 2007, 11:18:34 AM
Quote from: "??rgr?mr"
I know my opinion does not count for much around here, but I like the way you have it described in the last part of your post Steve, with the orders and all. I may even be tempted to turn maintenance back on and give it a try.
It counts as much as everyone else, especially in this case as I know you have had problems with maintenance in the past.
Steve
Post by: sloanjh on October 03, 2007, 09:52:16 PM
Quote from: "Steve Walmsley"
John and Kurt (or anyone else who wants to comment), would you prefer something along these lines or the original system? If we go back to the original system, I would simply allow yards to be retooled to perform overhauls
I agree with you - I think I like it a lot. As you say, it captures most of the major abstractions that should be captured. Having it managed through orders is good too. It also eliminates the pesky effect of having your yard capacity soaked up by overhauls.
Question - would the overhaul states have different mineral consumption rates? Or is this what you mean by "readiness states" paridigm?
Another Question - where does "repair" fit into this scheme? Is it still a SY task? Can a ship be dragged out of "repair" on 1-4 week notice? (One of the things I don't like about SF is ships being completely helpless and frozen when in SY for repairs, even if it's minor damage that's being worked on. One would think such ships could sortie if they had a week's notice.)
Another thing I like - there's no incentive to give crews "shore leave", especially since refueling is instantaneous. The "minor overhaul" state is motivation for the ship to spend a few weeks in port before the next cruise.
BTW - I think you're right that the carriers I was visiting were in "major overhaul" mode, i.e. sub-systems in pieces on the deck.
BTW2 - I also visited a carrier in SLEP when I was in grad school on the east coast - Kitty Hawk was in the Philadelphia Navy Yard (which I guess dates me somewhat
). Don't remember much about the visit, other than seeing a bunch of mothballed WWII CA (or maybe they were CL) near the front gate.John
Post by: Steve Walmsley on October 05, 2007, 07:17:30 AM
I'll post a complete ruleset to the Rules section at some point but the changes to my original post are as follows:
Overhauls do not take place automatically, you have to give the task group an order for Minor Overhaul or Major Overhaul. This will only appear in the orders list for a population with maintenance facilities. A minor overhaul will gradually replace spares as per my original mail but I have changed the max time to three months instead of six months. A major overhaul will replace spares and also rewind the clock. The rewind will be at four times speed plus any logistics bonus.
Minor overhauls will automatically end when a ship is at full spares. Major overhauls will end automatically when the ship is at full spares and there is no time on its maintenance clock. You will get an event messages in both cases.
Overhauls can be abandoned by giving a task group an Abandon Minor Overhaul or Abandon Major Overhaul order. Cutting short a minor overhaul requires seven days and cutting short a major overhaul requires thirty days. While this abandon order is in effect, a clock will count down for the fleet on the system map in the same way as a load cargo type order. You can give a fleet additional orders but they won't execute until the abandon order is completed. If you have a Task Group in which different ships are undergoing major and minor overhauls, an Abandon Minor Overhaul order will only cut short the minor overhauls. The major overhauls will continue. If you give an order to Abandon Major Overhaul then all overhauls will be abandoned. While the abandon clock is counting down, work will continue, spares will continue to be replaced and the maintenance clock (for major overhauls) will continue to wind down.
A task group cannot move while any ship within it is involved in an overhaul. The only orders such a task group will follow are abandon orders and an order to change from minor to major overhaul. However, you can transfer ships in and out of such a task group so you could detach ships that have finished their overhauls
These changes should make overhauls more flexible and user-friendly while retaining the idea that ships are unavailable while being overhauled. It removes them from shipyards and adds the option to abandon an overhaul if necessary. It also allows overhauls to be carried out when convenient rather than having to wait until a ship is falling apart because of the costs involved. Partial overhauls are economically viable because there is no overall cost, just a cost for the actual time spent carrying out maintanance.
The maintenance costs are:
5% per year for ships in orbit of maintenance facilities (which keeps their maintenance clock frozen)
10% per year for ships in a state of minor overhaul
20% per year for ships in a state of major overhaul
Steve
Post by: Steve Walmsley on October 05, 2007, 07:29:13 AM
Quote from: "sloanjh"
Question - would the overhaul states have different mineral consumption rates? Or is this what you mean by "readiness states" paridigm?Different overhaul states would have different amount of wealth/mineral consumption. I have included them in the above post.
Quote
Another Question - where does "repair" fit into this scheme? Is it still a SY task? Can a ship be dragged out of "repair" on 1-4 week notice? (One of the things I don't like about SF is ships being completely helpless and frozen when in SY for repairs, even if it's minor damage that's being worked on. One would think such ships could sortie if they had a week's notice.)
Repairs currently take place in a shipyard and it is an all-or nothing proposition like SF. If I add the retooling discussed in the shipyard thread, then a shipyard would have to be retooled as a repair yard. A third option is to introduce repair facilities in the same way as maintenance facilities.
With regard to pulling out of repairs in an emergency, I can see several options. One is to leave things as they are, in which case you stay in repair until completed. A second would be for the repairs to be carried out one system at a time. Aurora would create a repair list for a ship and then the player could adjust priorities. If we decided to go for repair facillities, then we could change to a system where repair orders were sub-system based not ship-based. For example, fix the jump drive on the Agamemnon, then fix the lasers and reactors on the Menelaus before going back to fix the sensors on the Agamemnon. A list of repair tasks of this nature would be established for a planet with repair facilities. You couldn't pull out while a sub-system was being repaired but you could abandon the rest of the work and go into battle with some unrepaired systems. A third option would be an overall repair task, as we have now, that you could abandon in the same way as overhauls. Aurora would randomly allocate the repairs accumulated to that point to fix random damaged systems.
Steve
Post by: Randy on October 05, 2007, 10:28:08 AM
And is there a way to get the clock reset faster than at 1/4 time elapsed?
IE I have ship with lots of spares. It goes out for 2 years, comes back does a minor overhaul to reload spares, goes out for another two years.
Now it needs to spend a year in major overhaul...
Seems kinda drastic. But it may be what you are aiming for.
The side effect then is that you basically need to add more ships to your fleet to maintain a given number of them active at any one time. Which in itself is okay, but runs counter to the rest of the Aurora philosophy of minimizing the size of fleets...
Post by: Steve Walmsley on October 07, 2007, 09:28:51 AM
Quote from: "Randy"
While ships are in either overhaul state, do their maint clocks stop?They stop if a ship is in orbit of a maintenance facility or undergoing a minor overhaul. They rewind during a major overhaul.
Quote
And is there a way to get the clock reset faster than at 1/4 time elapsed?It will be boosted by the logistics bonus of the planetray governor. So a 30% bonus = rewind at 5.2x
Quote
IE I have ship with lots of spares. It goes out for 2 years, comes back does a minor overhaul to reload spares, goes out for another two years. Now it needs to spend a year in major overhaul. Seems kinda drastic. But it may be what you are aiming for.That is correct as things stand now. I might adjust it based on playetesting in v2.3 but that is probably better than reality in terms of how long ships are in port compared to deployed. The big difference I have found over the current system is that you can put ships in for overhauls whenever it is convenient. You no longer have to wait for free shipyards and you don't have to wait until the ship is falling apart because of the old fixed cost approach.
Quote
The side effect then is that you basically need to add more ships to your fleet to maintain a given number of them active at any one time. Which in itself is okay, but runs counter to the rest of the Aurora philosophy of minimizing the size of fleets...
In many cases, warships will be in orbit of fleet bases anyway so they won't need to spend time in overhaul because their clocks won't move and their spares won't diminish. A ship will be spending about 25% of its actual deployed time in overhaul under this system, which isn't a lot more than before. You will therefore need say 25% more ships than you think you will require at any given time, although you can pull ships out of overhaul in an emergency.
A typical warship might spend two years sat in orbit with nothing to do and no change to clock or spares. Then it goes out on a one year mission, returns and spends three months on a major overhaul. In this type of scenario, which I expect will be common, the ship is spending three months in overhaul over a period of 39 months. Ships like survey ships or terraformers will probably be the ones spending the highest percentage of their time in overhaul because they are often constantly on deployments. It therefore seems reasonable that they will be the ones most often in yard hands.
Steve
Post by: Erik L on October 12, 2007, 02:57:48 PM
Code: [Select]
Ark class Colony Ship 12000 tons 955 Crew 2112 BP TCS 240 TH 250 EM 0
1041 km/s JR 3-50 Armour 1 Shields 0-0 Sensors 1/0/0/0/0 Damage Control 0-0 PPV 0
Colonists 50000 Cargo Handling Multiplier 50 Replacement Parts 5
KDY J240 Jump Drive Max Ship Size 12000 tons Distance 50k km Squadron Size 3
MandalMotors NTE Drive (10) Power 25 Efficiency 0.80 Signature 25 Armour 0 Exp 5%
Fuel Capacity 1,000,000 Litres Range 449.7 billion km (5000 days at full power)
This design is classed as a freighter for maintenance purposes
take 3+ years for an overhaul?
Post by: Steve Walmsley on October 13, 2007, 07:48:22 AM
Quote from: "Erik Luken"
Should this ship -Code: [Select]Ark class Colony Ship 12000 tons 955 Crew 2112 BP TCS 240 TH 250 EM 0take 3+ years for an overhaul?
1041 km/s JR 3-50 Armour 1 Shields 0-0 Sensors 1/0/0/0/0 Damage Control 0-0 PPV 0
Colonists 50000 Cargo Handling Multiplier 50 Replacement Parts 5
KDY J240 Jump Drive Max Ship Size 12000 tons Distance 50k km Squadron Size 3
MandalMotors NTE Drive (10) Power 25 Efficiency 0.80 Signature 25 Armour 0 Exp 5%
Fuel Capacity 1,000,000 Litres Range 449.7 billion km (5000 days at full power)
This design is classed as a freighter for maintenance purposes
First I should point out that it is a freighter so if you give it a freighter maintenance check order it will be overhauled instantly. Assuming it wasn't a freighter then it would only take 3 years for major overhaul if it had twelve years on the maintenance clock and the planetary governor had no logistics bonus.
Ah! (light bulb goes on). Because it is a freighter the maintenance facilities will ignore it so trying to give this unit a normal major overhaul would take forever.
Steve
Post by: Pete_Keller on October 13, 2007, 08:32:01 AM
Quote from: "Steve Walmsley"
Ah! (light bulb goes on).
Like This?
Quote
Because it is a freighter the maintenance facilities will ignore it so trying to give this unit a normal major overhaul would take forever.
Steve
There should be a way to get a maintenance facility to overhaul a freighter, if I have a colony several month travel from the homeworld with the maintenance facilities, it would be nice to be able to send it in for maintenance without having to go back to the homeworld.
Pete
Post by: Erik L on October 13, 2007, 08:53:15 AM
Quote from: "Steve Walmsley"
Quote from: "Erik Luken"Should this ship -First I should point out that it is a freighter so if you give it a freighter maintenance check order it will be overhauled instantly. Assuming it wasn't a freighter then it would only take 3 years for major overhaul if it had twelve years on the maintenance clock and the planetary governor had no logistics bonus.Code: [Select]Ark class Colony Ship 12000 tons 955 Crew 2112 BP TCS 240 TH 250 EM 0take 3+ years for an overhaul?
1041 km/s JR 3-50 Armour 1 Shields 0-0 Sensors 1/0/0/0/0 Damage Control 0-0 PPV 0
Colonists 50000 Cargo Handling Multiplier 50 Replacement Parts 5
KDY J240 Jump Drive Max Ship Size 12000 tons Distance 50k km Squadron Size 3
MandalMotors NTE Drive (10) Power 25 Efficiency 0.80 Signature 25 Armour 0 Exp 5%
Fuel Capacity 1,000,000 Litres Range 449.7 billion km (5000 days at full power)
This design is classed as a freighter for maintenance purposes
Ah! (light bulb goes on). Because it is a freighter the maintenance facilities will ignore it so trying to give this unit a normal major overhaul would take forever.
Steve
I should have specified, it was a minor overhaul.
Post by: Randy on October 21, 2007, 10:25:33 PM
I have some fuel harvesters that came back after 4 years collecting fuel. Now they need to wait a year to get the clock rewound before sending them out again. This just feels so wrong...
Post by: Steve Walmsley on November 03, 2007, 08:45:56 AM
Quote from: "Randy"
Playing around with ver 2.3, I think you need to at least double the basic rate of clock rewinding under a major overhaul - or else put a cap on it.
I have some fuel harvesters that came back after 4 years collecting fuel. Now they need to wait a year to get the clock rewound before sending them out again. This just feels so wrong...
I would be interested to hear other opinions on this. I haven't found it a problem to have ships unavailable for 20% of the time (less for planets with a governor with a high logistics bonus). I have found similar situations to the one you describe, such as survey ships coming back after a 4 or 5 year mission and then recovering for a year. The same for terraformers. I think that probably reflects reality in terms of the time ships spend in dock rather than on deployment.
Steve
Post by: sloanjh on November 03, 2007, 01:06:43 PM
Quote from: "Steve Walmsley"
Quote from: "Randy"Playing around with ver 2.3, I think you need to at least double the basic rate of clock rewinding under a major overhaul - or else put a cap on it.I would be interested to hear other opinions on this. I haven't found it a problem to have ships unavailable for 20% of the time (less for planets with a governor with a high logistics bonus). I have found similar situations to the one you describe, such as survey ships coming back after a 4 or 5 year mission and then recovering for a year. The same for terraformers. I think that probably reflects reality in terms of the time ships spend in dock rather than on deployment.
I have some fuel harvesters that came back after 4 years collecting fuel. Now they need to wait a year to get the clock rewound before sending them out again. This just feels so wrong...
Steve
I like the current ratio, at least for warships (those with weapons?). I keep going back to the deployment ratios for US carriers - 1/3 time deployed, 1/3 in maintenance (clock unwinding) and 1/3 working up (training). This translates into 1 year in maintenance for every 1-2 deployed, so a 1 to 4 ratio actually seems somewhat low.
You might think about doubling the rate for non-combatants (not a freighter, but no weapons?), however - they should be more like freighters (which I suspect require much less maintainence time).
John
John
Post by: Steve Walmsley on November 03, 2007, 03:35:59 PM
Quote from: "sloanjh"
I like the current ratio, at least for warships (those with weapons?). I keep going back to the deployment ratios for US carriers - 1/3 time deployed, 1/3 in maintenance (clock unwinding) and 1/3 working up (training). This translates into 1 year in maintenance for every 1-2 deployed, so a 1 to 4 ratio actually seems somewhat low.
You might think about doubling the rate for non-combatants (not a freighter, but no weapons?), however - they should be more like freighters (which I suspect require much less maintainence time).
That's a good idea. I was making the warship overhauls less strenuous to make the non-combatant overhauls more reasonable. I have now split non-freighters into warships and non-combatants. Warships are any ship with weapons, magazines, hangars, reactors, fire control, ECM/ECCM, any individual non-survey sensors greater than 1 HS or parasite hangars. I have also changed the freighter definition so it will also allow any non-survey sensors types, including active, up to 1 HS each.
Warships now rewind at 3x (slightly slower than v2.3) and non-combatants rewind at 8x (twice as fast as v2.3)
On the class summary screen, a qualifying design includes "This design is classed as a non-combatant for maintenance purposes" at the end of the summary.
Steve
Post by: Father Tim on November 03, 2007, 11:08:22 PM
Post by: Steve Walmsley on November 04, 2007, 05:26:13 AM
Quote from: "Father Tim"
I would prefer to see magazines removed from that list, as I consider colliers to be 'non-combatants'. You might want to add Troop Transport Bays though. On the other hand, I expect my 'amphibs' to spend 90% of their time in parking orbit when their not actually invading worlds, so I at least will have ample time to unwind their clocks whatever rate they use. With all the changes to maintenance I've forgotten if there is still a 'mothballed' status. If there is, I'd probably use that for my 'amphibs' between planetary assualts.
The point about magazines is reasonable. A collier needs only magazines and a warship would also need missile launchers, which are picked up separately.
With regard to troop transports, I tend to use them to for moving troops around the Empire as well as for assaults. However, for some reason I hadn't included shields on the list of 'warship' systems. That is now corrected so any troop transport designed to land troops under fire will be picked up by that rule as a warship.
Steve