NC Part 19: February 2051 - April 2052

[Steve Walmsley (OP)]

A quiet period. which is why a lot of time passes without too much commentary.

23rd February 2051
Menelaus enters an unexplored jump point in Tethys and finds an unremarkable system with a G3-V primary and a mixture of rocky planets and gas giants. After naming the system Hebrus, Rear Admiral Ayres orders his fleet to the next unexplored jump point.

30th February 2051
The seven freighters carrying automated mines from Toronto transit into Corinth using the jump gate. Already in Corinth are Epimetheus and the three freighters returning from Plataea. As the empty freighters can make it to Earth without escort, Epimetheus breaks off to rendezvous with the freighters from Toronto in order to escort them to Plataea.

2nd March 2051
Menelaus transits a second unexplored jump point in Tethys and arrives in the previously explored Pallas system. Pallas already connects to Anax, the system prior to Tethys on this jump chain, so the three systems form a triangle of links.

5th March 2051
Menelaus enters the third unexplored jump point in Tethys and arrives in Salamis, another previously explored system but this time adjacent to Thebes. The Salamis jump chain is now quite complex as it has significant number of inter-connections. As Hebrus, the only new system connecting to Tethys, is now just three jumps from Thebes, the First Gravitational Survey Squadron moves into the system to begin a new survey.

13th March 2051
Two Artemis II colony ships complete their overhauls.

3rd April 2051
Two new Artemis II colony ships are constructed, taking our total number of colony ships to nine with a combined capacity of 450,000 colonists.

4th April 2051
The Corinth

[Michael Sandy]

Question:  Do ships use supplies while being refitted?

[MWadwell]

Although Thebes now has ninety-eight manned mines and seventy-two automated mines, it

[MWadwell]

23rd October 2051
The Mycenae

[Steve Walmsley (OP)]

Although Thebes now has ninety-eight manned mines and seventy-two automated mines, it

[Steve Walmsley (OP)]

Question:  Do ships use supplies while being refitted?

Not any more. After 0.3 (I think), ships don't use supplies while in the shipyard.

Steve

[Michael Sandy]

If refitting ships do not consume supply, then plopping a ship in a shipyard and then not giving it the resources to refit would allow a ship to be put in a mothball-like state without actually having a reactivation cost.

The disadvantage would be in tying up a shipyard doing so.

I am not sure if this is a good or bad thing to allow.

[Steve Walmsley (OP)]

If refitting ships do not consume supply, then plopping a ship in a shipyard and then not giving it the resources to refit would allow a ship to be put in a mothball-like state without actually having a reactivation cost.

The disadvantage would be in tying up a shipyard doing so.

I am not sure if this is a good or bad thing to allow.

Not sure either but I have been doing it

Steve

[Michael Sandy]

The Commonwealth needs to do several things:
1)  Recall the Grav survey fleet, take off their supply, and mothball them.
Send out the Dionysus out to find and recall them.
2)  Mothball ships drawing lots of supply.  Definitely mothball the Kresta.
3)  Scrap ships.  Possibly the Dracon, because of its obsolete weapons, the geosurvey ships.  New geosurvey ships with better drives and advanced sensors.  Scrap the grav survey ships that do not have advanced grav sensors.

The Commonwealth is actually in pretty good shape.   With the Survey Fleet mothballed, Duranium supplies should keep up with supply, as ships with >25% maintenance get mothballed.

Put the warships into unfunded refit, that will allow them to be available on relatively short notice without the full overhaul cost.  It ties up a shipyard, but that can be cleared by replacing the warship engines with the new MP Drive engines.

4)  Station the Fast Colony Jump Cruiser at the Thebes/Mycenae warp point and leave it on Standby until the convoy arrives.  Or leave the Dracon of the Thebes patrol there.
5)  The Plataea squadron should load up with Duranium and Mercassium first, and only then load up the other minerals.  Once they get back to Earth, the Commonwealth should have only 1 Atlas and the Thebes squadron Dracon as active Jump Cruisers.  And that Atlas is needed to get Duranium from Plataea or Acheron.

[Michael Sandy]

After researching 10% and new engines, the next obvious research project is Improved Mining 4.  That would be going from 16 to 20 tons per year per mine.

So within 3 years, with many new manned mines on Thebes and serious reduction of the active fleet, the Duranium situation will be _much_ better.

With a Jump Cruiser stationed at the Mycenae-Thebes warp point, the Commonwealth would have almost instant communication with its colony and convoys could proceed at their own speed.  This would allow the slow upgrading of ship speed with the new engines.  That means more economic growth for a certain amount of supplies + overhaul costs.

Between the Pieksamaki Republic and the current Plataea mines, the Commonwealth has enough Mercassium production to keep up with Colony ship maintenance.  Especially if the Commonwealth indeed boosts its mining tech in about 3 years.

Refitting the Themistocles II or the Colony ships to the new drives would cost 66 Duranium and 198 Gallicite.  The Gallicite cost is no longer a concern at all.  This will result in nearly a 50% increase in speed.

The economics of the situation are that it would be more efficient to upgrade the Colony Ships first.

[MWadwell]

The Commonwealth needs to do several things:
1)  Recall the Grav survey fleet, take off their supply, and mothball them.
Send out the Dionysus out to find and recall them.

Agreed.

2)  Mothball ships drawing lots of supply.  Definitely mothball the Kresta.

I agree with mothballing a lot of the ships - but why the Kresta in particular? It has the same stats as any other Thermistocles II class FT, and there are other Thermistocles II class FT's out there that need a overhaul (and so are using more maintenance) than the Kresta....

3)  Scrap ships.  Possibly the Dracon, because of its obsolete weapons, the geosurvey ships.  New geosurvey ships with better drives and advanced sensors.  Scrap the grav survey ships that do not have advanced grav sensors.

I'd definitely scrap/mothball the geo and grav survey ships.

I'd also consider mothballing both the large Apollo class missiles cruisers, and the new Aphrodite class jump carrier.

The Commonwealth is actually in pretty good shape.   With the Survey Fleet mothballed, Duranium supplies should keep up with supply, as ships with >25% maintenance get mothballed.

I wouldn't say the Commonwealth is in good shape - more that it isn't in bad shape.

At the moment, with all of the major warships either mothballed or in the shipyards, the miantenance cost is still over 4800 - which is way higher than the annual duranium production of 3600 (and this is ignoring refit costs).

Put the warships into unfunded refit, that will allow them to be available on relatively short notice without the full overhaul cost.  It ties up a shipyard, but that can be cleared by replacing the warship engines with the new MP Drive engines.

Agreed.

4)  Station the Fast Colony Jump Cruiser at the Thebes/Mycenae warp point and leave it on Standby until the convoy arrives.  Or leave the Dracon of the Thebes patrol there.
5)  The Plataea squadron should load up with Duranium and Mercassium first, and only then load up the other minerals.  Once they get back to Earth, the Commonwealth should have only 1 Atlas and the Thebes squadron Dracon as active Jump Cruisers.  And that Atlas is needed to get Duranium from Plataea or Acheron.

To get all of the currently mined minerals back from Plataea, you need an Atlas and 2 Thermistocles II FT's.

If you add to this a jump carrier at the Mycenae/Thebes jump point, a misc. jump carrier for other jobs (such as collecting tribute from the Pieksamaki and trading with the Gitanyow), and other colony ships/freighters to continue colonisation of Thebes, I believe that you'd then find out that you have no more available Duranium for supply points.

In time, with the increasing numbers of mines on Thebes, you would be able to re-start some warships, or some of the mothballed colony ships/freighters - but that would be a few years down the track......

[Michael Sandy]

The grav survey squadron consumes approximately 600 supply.

Over the next three years, the Commonwealth should go to 2 Jump Cruisers.  1 stationed at the Thebes/Corinth warp point.  This will allow ships to travel independantly instead of waiting for a convoy, and therefore allow refitted ships to do the job more efficiently.  It would require a bit of micro-management, getting the fleets to join up for transit and then separate again all the time.

The Commonwealth would use the second Jump Cruiser for all other purposes.  It would therefore alternate in escorting a mission to Plataea and to Acheron.  It would only need about 1 mission per year, so you could have it and a couple warships in Paused Refit for most of the year.  Then they get 1 Ion Engine replaced with a MP Drive, and zip off to collect tribute and then go back into Paused Refit again.

Have the Hermes guard the Corinth-Sol Jump Gate and send the older DDs into mothballs or Paused Refit.

Mothballing the Dionysus and older DDs saves about 350 supply a year.  Another 270 for freighters with 30+% maintenance rates.

Mothball anything with a 25% rate and that saves you a lot.

One option would be to finish the Aphrodite, have it escort the tribute collecting mission to Acheron, along with establishing the tribute collection colony and then sending it back into paused refit.

[Michael Sandy]

Looking over the Asian and Terran Reich positions, I noticed that the Asians had somehow transported over 40 mines 18 billion km.  How in the world did they manage that with fewer freighters than the Commonwealth?

[Michael Sandy]

Ah, my bad.  The 48 mines are on the comet, not the distant colony.  That explains it.