Aurora 4x
VB6 Aurora => VB6 Mechanics => Topic started by: Marski on January 31, 2016, 02:25:08 PM
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The introduction of "Independence" button got me thinking, is Steve going to add political groups in the future?
It would spice up the gameplay a lot if a Tropico-style political gameplay was added, your population is divided between different political views, democrats, socialists, communists, nationalists etc.
Put a dissent modifier into the mix, so that if you colonize a planet with colonists who consists mainly of democrats, but your government and homeworld is wholly communists, the colony would very possibly secede.
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I don't know of any CIWS systems installed on other than naval vessels, but there have been studies of doing so. They have very little impact on operations, as they basically get bolted down and have power and chilled water lines run to them. That's it, along with a mode switch. I do know that some ships which Aurora would classify as civilian are definitely fitted for CIWS, if not with it now. (They're MSC, and currently unarmed, but have the mounting locations fitted and might receive the units in wartime.)
The RFA (British equivalent of the MSC) has Phalanx and other self-defence weapons mounted on ships that (in Aurora terms) would definitely be civilian designs, even in peacetime. Some of them also mount ECM and decoys, and there was also a plan early in the 90s to mount Sea Wolf missiles in a VLS on the Fort Victoria-class Replenishment Oilers.
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I think that it can be agreed that the civilian/naval shipping difference was entirely an arbitrary machination of game mechanics. Yes, you can put military gear onto civilian ships and stuff. As far as I know it never worked particularly well though.
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I think that it can be agreed that the civilian/naval shipping difference was entirely an arbitrary machination of game mechanics. Yes, you can put military gear onto civilian ships and stuff. As far as I know it never worked particularly well though.
It's not totally arbitrary though. The maintenance for engines (and other systems) works pretty close to reality with latest more unreliable power-plants that are pushed to the max are installed on military ships and aircraft while civilian or support ships/planes get slower engines with better fuel economy. And with higher heat comes more need for cooling which again adds more points of failure and breakdowns.
Some real jet engines have a maintenance life in the span of hundreds of hours just, and military guns on for example battleships can only fire a few hundred times before they need to swap out the barrels for overhaul.
It's the same with all mechanical systems pushing for performance.
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Like the new naval railguns (in development), they can fire over 100 nautical miles doing stupid amounts of damage, they break down after a few shots.
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Large Civilian passenger jets do need significant maintenance, however not to the extremes required by an f22.
Taking an older 474 model as an example they require around 1-2 hours of preflight checks for 6-12 hours of daily use, around 2-3000 man hours of routine maintenance a year plus something like 20000 man hours of overhaul every 20-40000 flight hours. Most models have defects requiring mandatory upgrade at certain flight hour milestones, which might add another 20000 manhours million dollar cost by the 60000 hour mark. Many are retired just before overhaul is needed to save money. Perhaps it costs something like 5 manhours of maintenence per flight hour.
In total it costs something like 20000 per flight hour including fuel, crew, maintenance parts etc.
A f22 of course is far more expensive. Around 40 me hours per flight hour, main fence needed every 3 hours of flight time. Pretty close to an older commercial jet really.
Source for 747 operating cost: Airline Maintenance Cost Executive Commentary
An exclusive benchmark analysis (FY2009 data) by IATA’s Maintenance Cost Task Force
https://www.iata.org/whatwedo/workgroups/Documents/MCTF/AMC_ExecComment_FY09.pdf
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It's not totally arbitrary though. The maintenance for engines (and other systems) works pretty close to reality with latest more unreliable power-plants that are pushed to the max are installed on military ships and aircraft while civilian or support ships/planes get slower engines with better fuel economy. And with higher heat comes more need for cooling which again adds more points of failure and breakdowns.
Modern naval powerplants are incredibly reliable, and take less maintenance than you'd think. The big difference is fuel economy. Gas turbines are good for power-to-weight and maintenance, but eat fuel.
Some real jet engines have a maintenance life in the span of hundreds of hours just, and military guns on for example battleships can only fire a few hundred times before they need to swap out the barrels for overhaul.
Those tend to be Russian engines. Better metallurgy means that western engines have lives not too dissimilar from civilian engines.
And wear on battleship guns is tremendously variable. I don't have my references on hand at the moment, but I do recall that the short-life winner were the guns of the Vittorio Veneto class, which only lasted 150 rounds. The last battleships (Iowas) had an additive in their powder when recommissioned in the 80s which cut barrel wear so much that they started to have to worry about fatigue instead of wear.
Like the new naval railguns (in development), they can fire over 100 nautical miles doing stupid amounts of damage, they break down after a few shots.
That's one of the main reasons they haven't entered service yet.
Large Civilian passenger jets do need significant maintenance, however not to the extremes required by an f22.
Taking an older 474 model as an example they require around 1-2 hours of preflight checks for 6-12 hours of daily use, around 2-3000 man hours of routine maintenance a year plus something like 20000 man hours of overhaul every 20-40000 flight hours.
Which older 747 are you using for that? I can't find the exact numbers in the linked document, but this is an area where the manufacturers continue to work hard to bring down costs and time.
Most models have defects requiring mandatory upgrade at certain flight hour milestones, which might add another 20000 manhours million dollar cost by the 60000 hour mark.
Try 'all models'. Nobody has built an airliner which doesn't acquire cracks in annoying places, and it happens a lot more than you think. I'm not sure that AD compliance and the like take as much as a D-check over that amount of time. A lot of them happen during C and D checks, which saves time.
Perhaps it costs something like 5 manhours of maintenence per flight hour.
In total it costs something like 20000 per flight hour including fuel, crew, maintenance parts etc.
That seems slightly high. I'm turning up numbers that are more like half that, although this topic is obviously complex enough that you could argue it either way.
A f22 of course is far more expensive. Around 40 me hours per flight hour, main fence needed every 3 hours of flight time. Pretty close to an older commercial jet really.
40 man hours per flight hour? That's the sort of thing you'd see on the F-14. Those numbers date back to 2008 or so, and I suspect they're framed to get as many hours in as possible. The program requirement was 12 direct hours per flight hour, and I think that's maybe twice the value of the Super Hornet.
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The record when it comes to wear and tear has to be the Paris gun. It could fire 65 shells before the barrel needed replacement and each shell had to used be in a numbered order getting progressively bigger due to the added barrel wear caused by the last shell ;D
( Krupp WW1 gun with 130km range )
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The record when it comes to wear and tear has to be the Paris gun. It could fire 65 shells before the barrel needed replacement and each shell had to used be in a numbered order getting progressively bigger due to the added barrel wear caused by the last shell ;D
( Krupp WW1 gun with 130km range )
Ah, but I was only discussing battleship guns (and the guns of dreadnought battleships at that). There have been guns with worse wear characteristics, but they generally didn't enter service, because of the logistical headaches.
(Actually, the 15" gun on the Vittorio Venetos were exceptionally powerful weapons, and I've read speculation that the reason the Italians built them that way was because they planned to operate close to home. It's relatively easy to change barrels at your main base. It's harder to do so at a coral atoll in the Central Pacific.)
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Those tend to be Russian engines. Better metallurgy means that western engines have lives not too dissimilar from civilian engines.
And wear on battleship guns is tremendously variable. I don't have my references on hand at the moment, but I do recall that the short-life winner were the guns of the Vittorio Veneto class, which only lasted 150 rounds. The last battleships (Iowas) had an additive in their powder when recommissioned in the 80s which cut barrel wear so much that they started to have to worry about fatigue instead of wear.
Russian metallurgy is, in general, equal to western metallurgy in most regards. At least when it is at its best. Russian design philosophy is kinda different though, emphasising ease of repair over does not break.
And do you have a link for that iowa thing? I have a hard time believing that an additive is going to help with the pressure or metal grinding from the shell leaving the barrel. Or do you mean something that lessens the corrosive effect of the powder?
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Russian metallurgy is, in general, equal to western metallurgy in most regards. At least when it is at its best. Russian design philosophy is kinda different though, emphasising ease of repair over does not break.
Yes, but the Russians are rarely at their best when doing such things. It's not that they couldn't physically do it, it's more that they can't afford to.
And do you have a link for that iowa thing? I have a hard time believing that an additive is going to help with the pressure or metal grinding from the shell leaving the barrel. Or do you mean something that lessens the corrosive effect of the powder?
Certainly.
From http://www.navweaps.com/Weapons/WNUS_16-50_mk7.htm (http://www.navweaps.com/Weapons/WNUS_16-50_mk7.htm)
When first introduced into service during World War II, the barrel life was 290 ESR, the lower of the two values given above. At that time, Smokeless Powder Diphenylamine (SPD) was the standard propellant. HC rounds at 2,690 fps (820 mps) were 0.43 ESR and at 1,900 fps (579 mps) were 0.03 ESR. The Target rounds at 1,800 fps (549 mps) were 0.08 ESR. Following World War II, a cooler-burning formulation of SPD was adopted and this prolonged barrel life to about the second value given above [350 ESR]. In the 1967 and 1980s deployments, the use of "Swedish Additive" (titanium dioxide and wax) greatly reduced barrel wear. It has been estimated that four AP shells fired using this additive approximated the wear of a single AP shell fired without the additive (0.26 ESR) and that HC rounds fired with the additive caused even less wear (0.11 ESR). Later developments during the 1980s deployment led to putting a polyurethane jacket over the powder bags, which reduced the wear still further. This jacket is simply a sheet of foam with a fabric border around the ends that is tied to the powder bag. When the jacket burns during firing, a protective layer forms over the surface of the liner which greatly reduces gaseous erosion. This wear reduction program was so successful that liner life can no longer be rated in terms of ESR, as it is no longer the limiting factor. Instead, the liner life is now rated in terms of Fatigue Equivalent Rounds (FER), which is the mechanical fatigue life expressed in terms of the number of mechanical cycles. The 16"/50 (40.6 cm) Mark 7 is now rated at having a liner life of 1,500 FER.
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From http://www.navweaps.com/Weapons/WNUS_16-50_mk7.htm (http://www.navweaps.com/Weapons/WNUS_16-50_mk7.htm)
1500 FER while a big improvement still means they would have to switch out the barrel after 1500 AP rounds fired at full charge, or if they fired it constantly for 12.5 hours.
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That seems fairly reliable to me.
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That seems fairly reliable to me.
While not directly comparable I doubt many civilian applications would consider switching something out after 12 hours use "fairly reliable". ;)
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Yes, but the Russians are rarely at their best when doing such things. It's not that they couldn't physically do it, it's more that they can't afford to.
Certainly.
From http://www.navweaps.com/Weapons/WNUS_16-50_mk7.htm (http://www.navweaps.com/Weapons/WNUS_16-50_mk7.htm)
So exactly like western powers? Also thanks for that link.
And I think we should make a new topic if we want to continue since this is going offtopic at the speed of light.
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That's a hell of a lot of munitions though, the iowa only fired something like 2000 rounds during WWII and 4500 during Korea.
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1500 FER while a big improvement still means they would have to switch out the barrel after 1500 AP rounds fired at full charge, or if they fired it constantly for 12.5 hours.
Yes, but we (I'm a volunteer on the USS Iowa) only carried a total of 1,220 rounds. So we could burn through 11 magazines of full-charge AP before having to replace the barrels. Not a big deal.
While not directly comparable I doubt many civilian applications would consider switching something out after 12 hours use "fairly reliable". ;)
Depends on how much they use it. You can't fire for 12 hours because of lots of other things like ammo supply, not just barrel wear.
So exactly like western powers? Also thanks for that link.
Not really. The west usually comes much closer to maximum potential than the Russians do. And you're welcome.
That's a hell of a lot of munitions though, the iowa only fired something like 2000 rounds during WWII and 4500 during Korea.
And somewhere over 10,000 during the reactivation in the 80s. I think the reduction in barrel wear had something to do with that.
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One thing I find strange is that being classed as a military vessel will cause otherwise reliable components to blow up.
That commercial behemoth can see hard use for a century... but replace the size-1 navigation sensor with something twice as big, and something will go wrong within days and the ship won't last a year.
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Source:https://fas.org/man/dod-101/sys/ship/weaps/mk-7.htm
During Operation DESERT STORM battleships USS WISCONSIN and USS MISSOURI fired more than 1.000 rounds of 16" ammunition in support of ground operations. USS MISSOURI alone fired more than one million pounds of ordnance.
One million pounds of ordinance is about 370-520 rounds (HC 1900 lbs, AP 2700 lbs, APC 1.25 tons). Each turret only carried about 100-200 rounds (that number changes depending on the source). The point is moot because no civilian ship would mount a 16" gun. They are more likely to use 3" to 5" guns. which have a much better barrel life and won't destroy the ship with it's recoil.
One thing I find strange is that being classed as a military vessel will cause otherwise reliable components to blow up.
That commercial behemoth can see hard use for a century... but replace the size-1 navigation sensor with something twice as big, and something will go wrong within days and the ship won't last a year.
It's a difficult situation to solve. If you track every military item for maintenance separately then you end up getting too many maintenance lives to track. You can also have the odd situation where a size 25 engine is fine for eternity, but a size 24 will break down several months later. Or the oddity that MSP can be used to repair (IE Rebuild) completely destroyed components, but you can't weld some metal over that armour breach letting atmosphere out.
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One million pounds of ordinance is about 370-520 rounds (HC 1900 lbs, AP 2700 lbs, APC 1.25 tons). Each turret only carried about 100-200 rounds (that number changes depending on the source). The point is moot because no civilian ship would mount a 16" gun. They are more likely to use 3" to 5" guns. which have a much better barrel life and won't destroy the ship with it's recoil.
There's no APC round. I'm pretty sure most of the rounds fired in ODS were HC, although do bear in mind that Missouri fired several Tomahawks, too.
And 5" is about the limit of weapon that can be slapped down on a deck and used without elaborate support facilities.
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There's no APC round.
Armour Piercing, Capped (APC)
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Armour Piercing, Capped (APC)
I know what the acronym means. My point is that there was only one AP shell, the 2700 lb Mk 8, which did have a cap. There was no distinction between AP and APC, and the AP round is generally referred to as AP, not APC. You listed three separate rounds, when there were only two. (Well, there were a couple different 1900 lb rounds with different loads.)
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Semantics aside, I don't think designing those guns as a civilian system would make them particularly more reliable. I mean there are contractors that use weapons, as far as I know they have to do just as much maintenance on them as everyone else.
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If anything, civilian mounted weapons should require more maintenance because the crew isn't as used to maintaining, or access to supplies, or the like.
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Semantics aside, I don't think designing those guns as a civilian system would make them particularly more reliable. I mean there are contractors that use weapons, as far as I know they have to do just as much maintenance on them as everyone else.
If anything, civilian mounted weapons should require more maintenance because the crew isn't as used to maintaining, or access to supplies, or the like.
It depends if the "weapon" was designed to be used for civilian applications or not.
A military flamethrower and a civilian incinerator may have the same end function ( produce a flame from fuel ), but with civilian crew trained to operate a civilian incinerator designed to be used around the clock will have alot better reliability and less maintenance needs per operating hour then a military flamethrower designed to be possible to operate only a few seconds bursts with no more fuel then 30 seconds total firing before needing refueling.
There are not really any direct civilian comparison for battleship guns though ( that I know of ). But if there was an application for civilian use where you need to accelerate a 1ton+ projectile to high speeds another solution then using explosives and a 20m barrel would probably be designed. The magnetic trains or high speed trains come pretty close to a civilian applications designed for accelerating heavy stuff to high speeds with minimal wear and tear. Or the hyperloop maybe that is being designed?
In Aurora 4x lore the civilian use of railguns is obviously the mass driver, and it operates without maintenance needs.
I guess what I am trying to get at is that in the end it's the requirements and budget that decides maintenance and wear and tear of the designed solution. You can make very reliable weapons as well, but normally it's much cheaper and easier / better performance not to do it since they don't need to be used as often as civilian systems. And as already pointed out weapons tend to either run out of ammo, or run out of stuff to shoot at way before reliability being an issue.
One thing I find strange is that being classed as a military vessel will cause otherwise reliable components to blow up.
That commercial behemoth can see hard use for a century... but replace the size-1 navigation sensor with something twice as big, and something will go wrong within days and the ship won't last a year.
Yeah the system kind of relies on you not making silly / stupid designs like that, but design around it and for example make a small sensor military scout/fighter/corvette to escort the commercial behemoths if you absolutely want it to have access to a size-2 sensor nearby.
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If anything, civilian mounted weapons should require more maintenance because the crew isn't as used to maintaining, or access to supplies, or the like.
A lot can be said in favor of professional military crews, but in my experience using less supplies wouldn't be one of them. Depending on the budget, you either starving and hoarding, or floating and extremely wasteful.
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A lot can be said in favor of professional military crews, but in my experience using less supplies wouldn't be one of them. Depending on the budget, you either starving and hoarding, or floating and extremely wasteful.
Not using, but access to. I'd expect the military ship to have an easier time to gain access to milspec components as opposed to Joe Trader.
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If anything, civilian mounted weapons should require more maintenance because the crew isn't as used to maintaining, or access to supplies, or the like.
Well, during WWII, most weapons mounted on US merchant ships were under control of the Naval Armed Guard. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Navy_Armed_Guard (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Navy_Armed_Guard)
The Guard only had command over the weapons, and were active naval personnel. I don't recall hearing of any particular maintenance problems.
One thing I find strange is that being classed as a military vessel will cause otherwise reliable components to blow up.
That commercial behemoth can see hard use for a century... but replace the size-1 navigation sensor with something twice as big, and something will go wrong within days and the ship won't last a year.
This is an unfortunate limitation of Aurora. Either a ship is entirely civilian, or it isn't. It's probably something which would be next to impossible to deal with from a programming standpoint.
It depends if the "weapon" was designed to be used for civilian applications or not.
A military flamethrower and a civilian incinerator may have the same end function ( produce a flame from fuel ), but with civilian crew trained to operate a civilian incinerator designed to be used around the clock will have alot better reliability and less maintenance needs per operating hour then a military flamethrower designed to be possible to operate only a few seconds bursts with no more fuel then 30 seconds total firing before needing refueling.
That's an...interesting choice of analogy. I'm not sure you've gotten at the root purpose very well. A gas stove does the same thing, too. Also, using an incinerator as a weapon is pretty much impossible.
There are not really any direct civilian comparison for battleship guns though ( that I know of ). But if there was an application for civilian use where you need to accelerate a 1ton+ projectile to high speeds another solution then using explosives and a 20m barrel would probably be designed.
The only thing that comes to mind is space launch, but that's a terrible analogy for many, many reasons.
The magnetic trains or high speed trains come pretty close to a civilian applications designed for accelerating heavy stuff to high speeds with minimal wear and tear. Or the hyperloop maybe that is being designed?
Let's see. The high-speed train record is 603 km/h according to Wiki. The Iowa's guns had a muzzle velocity of 2869 km/h. That's a big difference, and there are other, much bigger ones. (And the hyperloop is pretty much pure nonsense. I'm not sure what Musk was thinking.)
I guess what I am trying to get at is that in the end it's the requirements and budget that decides maintenance and wear and tear of the designed solution. You can make very reliable weapons as well, but normally it's much cheaper and easier / better performance not to do it since they don't need to be used as often as civilian systems. And as already pointed out weapons tend to either run out of ammo, or run out of stuff to shoot at way before reliability being an issue.
I think you're conflating two different concepts here, service life and reliability. The two are not the same thing, nor is reliability exactly the same as 'low maintenance'. For instance, battleship guns had a very finite service life. Exactly how this compared to civilian applications is sort of irrelevant. For any machine, service life of components is going to be determined by how expensive (in terms of time, money, and labor) they are to replace, versus the expense of making them last longer, which may be in terms besides money. For instance, to continue our analogy, making a longer-lasting gun involved sacrificing a bit of performance.
I'd define reliability as something like 'the ability to perform when needed and avoid unexpected downtime'. Battleship guns were not as reliable as you'd think, actually. The British had particular problems, but read an account of any battleship action and you'll see references to salvos missed because of mechanical problems.
Then you have maintenance requirements. This is how much work is needed to keep the system going, which includes both fixing things that have broken and doing preventative maintenance to keep things from breaking in the first place. This is an area where civilian ships have a distinct edge over military ships today. A lot of the stuff on a warship needs regular work to keep it going, even though it's not 'unreliable' per se. In Aurora terms, a ship with 10 engineering spaces and an AFR of 10% (made-up numbers) is reasonably reliable because of all the engineers from those spaces are doing preventive work, not because stuff is getting fixed faster. A ship with the same systems, 1 engineering space, and a bunch of MSP bays is going to be less reliable (well, stuff will break more, even though it will be instantly repaired).
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All of this gives me an idea for a way to potentially make this system more realistic without making Steve tear his hair out. At the moment, it's assumed that any ship with only civilian systems has no maintenance problems with 1 engineering space, even if it's 200,000 tons, and any ship with any military systems has maintenance problems, even if it's only a size-2 sensor, and this affects everything on the ship.
What if we changed the rules a bit? Instead of the current test, give a two-pronged test of military status. First, all ships get a computed AFR, and a ship cannot be civilian if the AFR is over a certain value. I don't know exactly what this value should be, as I don't have Aurora open, but as a rule of thumb, it's a value that can be done with a typical 5-cargo bay cargo ship and 1 engineering space. Larger ships will need more engineering spaces to count as civilian.
Second, the ship can't be more than, say, 5% military systems by size. This should make it pretty much impossible to build an efficient warship and have it count as 'civilian', while still allowing you to mount a bit of self-defense armament on your fleet tenders.
Another thing that might be helpful would be to drop the 25-HS limit on civilian engines while maintaining the power multiplier regulations.
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All of this gives me an idea for a way to potentially make this system more realistic without making Steve tear his hair out. At the moment, it's assumed that any ship with only civilian systems has no maintenance problems with 1 engineering space, even if it's 200,000 tons, and any ship with any military systems has maintenance problems, even if it's only a size-2 sensor, and this affects everything on the ship.
What if we changed the rules a bit? Instead of the current test, give a two-pronged test of military status. First, all ships get a computed AFR, and a ship cannot be civilian if the AFR is over a certain value. I don't know exactly what this value should be, as I don't have Aurora open, but as a rule of thumb, it's a value that can be done with a typical 5-cargo bay cargo ship and 1 engineering space. Larger ships will need more engineering spaces to count as civilian.
Second, the ship can't be more than, say, 5% military systems by size. This should make it pretty much impossible to build an efficient warship and have it count as 'civilian', while still allowing you to mount a bit of self-defense armament on your fleet tenders.
Another thing that might be helpful would be to drop the 25-HS limit on civilian engines while maintaining the power multiplier regulations.
Might be a bit of an interesting change. Afterall, I really don't understand why 250kt freighters get whiny over 100t being devoted to a size 2 sensor.
5% might be a little high though. As lets face it, despite a 250kt "freighter" being termed a "freighter" I really don't see why it should be able to pack, 12kt worth of box launchers, and still termed civilian. Thats a pretty high powered freighter.
Though, as it is a "commercial" ship. With the exception os specifically trained crews, perhaps they could just get a "poorly trained" penalty to combat with the exception of CIWS (as those are fully self controlled)
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IMO: The purpose of the commercial designation is to prevent players from going crazy over having to micro freighter maintenance, not to reflect any kind of reality. A ship with military purpose (like a fleet tender) should indeed be subject to military maintenance rules.
it would be nearly impossible to find a balance between pointlessly tiny armaments and a game-breaking maintenance free Commercial Navy.
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IMO: The purpose of the commercial designation is to prevent players from going crazy over having to micro freighter maintenance, not to reflect any kind of reality. A ship with military purpose (like a fleet tender) should indeed be subject to military maintenance rules.
it would be nearly impossible to find a balance between pointlessly tiny armaments and a game-breaking maintenance free Commercial Navy.
Well said.
John
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In starfire a ship is civillian with up to 20% military hardware onboard. The civillian designation reduces maintenance costs and construction costs but at a serious (x2) combat penalty to internal damage. I've never seen it abused frankly BUT clearly the limit has to be lower (2% in aurora).
45,000 tonne freighter could have 900 tonnes of military hardware and still be considered civillian. That is about an armed pinnace worth of weapons. The trouble is a 450,000 tonne freighter could mount the weapons of a DD (9000 tonnes, actually since the DD looses space to fuel, lifesupport and engines it would be a substantial weapons package) and have no maintenance. I'm pretty sure that is one heck of a Q-ship.
I think I tend to go along with the Shoe on this. It is a fine topic for theoretical discussion but I suspect its practical application to the game would be migraine headache inducing.
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Might be a bit of an interesting change. Afterall, I really don't understand why 250kt freighters get whiny over 100t being devoted to a size 2 sensor.
5% might be a little high though. As lets face it, despite a 250kt "freighter" being termed a "freighter" I really don't see why it should be able to pack, 12kt worth of box launchers, and still termed civilian. Thats a pretty high powered freighter.
Though, as it is a "commercial" ship. With the exception os specifically trained crews, perhaps they could just get a "poorly trained" penalty to combat with the exception of CIWS (as those are fully self controlled)
Hmm. I picked 5% out of a hat, with an eye on smaller ships. It might have to be scaled down some on larger ships.
And how expensive is that big commercial ship going to be, anyway? I can't see lack of maintenance offsetting the extra costs of a really big ship.
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i loaded up a random game of mine.
A 9000-ton 1550-bp frigate's missile armament amounted to 2800 tons and cost about 540 bp, including all necessary components for independent operation.
a 127000-ton 1276-bp freighter design from the same game could mount that, upping its tonnage to 130,000 and its cost to 1816 bp. That is a 2.2% armament.
Although the freighter has no armor its huge engine array gives it many times the HTK of the frigate. (Huge engines could do with less HTK, lol.)
You could say go to a 1% armament, a 1300 ton weapons array in this case but then you are looking at pointlessly-small armaments for all but the largest commercial ships. And further complication as you set up Freighter Leader classes that use all their military space for actives.
But a lot of that is besides the point. The problem with maintenance free warships isn't necessarily cost, it's logistics concerns. Maintenance concerns place significant limits on the ability of empires to project power and conduct vital tasks like wormhole blockades. Even the new 7.2 remote maintenance stations require delivery of MSP from an industrial center. In contrast a 'commercial auxiliary' could - paired with a rec center - maintain an indefinite wormhole blockade until the heat death of the universe.
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Why is this now in a separate thread and with my post as the OP?
Oh well, I take it as an indication that someone took an interest in my suggestion about the potential for politics in the gameplay.
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Because, the Forum Deities willed it that way.
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Because, the Forum Deities willed it that way.
Quick, someone sacrifice a goat!
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Quick, someone sacrifice a goat!
I'm on it.
(http://i.imgur.com/28hfr7p.png)
The blood price has been payed.
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Ten thousand survivors? The hell was that thing?
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Ten thousand survivors? The hell was that thing?
Really big goat. I didn't blow it up hard enough.
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Really would like that possibility of planets seceding on their own though, managing the population in tropico was hell of a fun and I wish I could enjoy it in a grand manner such as in Aurora.