Damaged Vessels

[Jarhead0331 (OP)]

Its fairly early on in my 1.9.2 campaign. I've designed a Geo Survey Vessel and constructed 2 of them. The class has a 24 month intended deployment time with a 1.92 year maintenance life and 79 MSP. They are equipped with 2 Nuclear Thermal Engines.

They were cruising along surveying my local solar system with standing orders to refuel at earth at 50% and resupply at 20%. Suddenly, they both went into the red on the Naval Org screen and started moving at a glacial 1 km/s.  Looking at the repair report, one has an MSP of 35% and the other is at 39%. One has "Int Dmg" of 76% and the other has 21%. Damage Control is showing both engines damaged on one and both engines and both Geo Survey Sensors damaged on the other.

First question is...what the hell happened? I don't see anything in the event log. Second question is what can I do to assist them in the early TN game?  I have cleared their standing orders and given them movement orders to return to Earth to refuel and resupply. Will this repair them too? Also, at 1 km/s, its going to take forever. What are my options?

Thanks.

[Ektor]

You're making some erroneus assumptions here.

When you look at maintenance life, what you really need to look is the other values such as IFR and maximum repair. Maintenance life is just an estimate. What can happen is that your most expensive component fails several times and then you're left without MSP. That component is usually the engine, ergo why your ships are moving at 1km/s.

Steve made a thread about the exact calculations, you should look for it, but basically, you IFR is the given chance that a part will fail at any given 5 day increment. This can be lowered by adding more engineering spaces proportional to the full size of the ship, with larger ships also being more failure prone. IIRC, the ship then runs the damage allocation probabilities and choses a part to break. Given engines are often the largest component on a ship, they also are the most likely to fail.

Instead of just looking at maintenance life, which can be deceptive because the IFR is a percentage, you should look at the maximum repair and make your total msp a couple times higher than it. So if say, your maximum repair is 50 MSP, realistically, your ship will have a very high chance of becoming stranded. I put at least double the amount of the maximum repair in any ship I make.

[CowboyRonin]

It sounds like a series of maintenance failures - those aren't interrupts, but they should still show in the log.   If you have ships with Cargo Shuttle Bays and lots of maintenance supplies, you can designate those ships as "Supply Ships" and have them rendezvous with your cripples and transfer supplies, then use Damage Control to repair the components themselves.   Either that, or if you have ships with ship-to-ship tractor beams (like  you would use to tow a space station), you could tractor them in.   If you do that, you need to get them to a shipyard that can fit them (it does not have to be set to build their class, they just have to fit, and have open slips), and then you can select Repair from the Shipyard Task dropdown (normally, this is Construct, but it can also be Refit), and you can choose the class of your damaged ships, and then select the name.   The ship name in red indicates one or more damaged components.   

Hope this helps

[Jarhead0331 (OP)]

Thanks...I don’t have any of that tech yet. Might be better off just building new survey ships...

So, was this just bad luck and I had a bunch of failures in the engines? It seems statistically unlikely that both ships would have both engines fail right at around the same time...

[Ektor]

So, was this just bad luck and I had a bunch of failures in the engines? It seems statistically unlikely that both ships would have both engines fail right at around the same time...

Pretty much. Just as an example, the geosurveyors I've built in my latest game have a 52% chance that the engines will fail if something breaks. With chances like that it's very much possible that both had engine failures.

[Jarhead0331 (OP)]

I’ll check my IFR. Until you mentioned it, I didn’t even know to look out for it.

I guess it all makes sense. Space travel isn’t whiffle ball...it’s a serious business!

[Garfunkel]

There are components that cannot break since they do not require maintenance. Crew quarters, cargo holds, bridge - basically most of the commercial components. That limits what can break on a ship when it fails the IFR roll.

Now, a geological survey ship is usually a simple, barebones design - especially the first generation for Sol. A lot of the time players don't even give them any other sensors. So there might only be two possible failure points on the ship: the geological survey sensor(s) and the engine(s). As Ektor said, engines tend to be big so the odds are that they hog most of the space on the maintenance failure table. It's the same reason why the huge passive sensor on your stealth scout is the first one to go.

I hope that helps in understanding why it seems that certain modules ALWAYS break.

And yeah, damaged components need to fixed by damage control OR by shipyard repair, an overhaul is not enough.

[Pedroig]

There are components that cannot break since they do not require maintenance. Crew quarters, cargo holds, bridge - basically most of the commercial components. That limits what can break on a ship when it fails the IFR roll.

Now, a geological survey ship is usually a simple, barebones design - especially the first generation for Sol. A lot of the time players don't even give them any other sensors. So there might only be two possible failure points on the ship: the geological survey sensor(s) and the engine(s). As Ektor said, engines tend to be big so the odds are that they hog most of the space on the maintenance failure table. It's the same reason why the huge passive sensor on your stealth scout is the first one to go.

I hope that helps in understanding why it seems that certain modules ALWAYS break.

And yeah, damaged components need to fixed by damage control OR by shipyard repair, an overhaul is not enough.

Any pointers to where a list of what requires repairs/can suffer failures and what cannot?  And why does armour increase AFR/IFR?

[lipton]

Any pointers to where a list of what requires repairs/can suffer failures and what cannot?  And why does armour increase AFR/IFR?

AFR/IFR is depending on total tonnage/eng.  space tonnage.  So more armour means more size means more Failure, if you don't add more engineer spaces.

There are components that cannot break since they do not require maintenance.  Crew quarters, cargo holds, bridge - basically most of the commercial components.  That limits what can break on a ship when it fails the IFR roll.

When I remember right, in one of my 1. 7 Games a Crew Quarter of one survey ship suffers a failure.  So I think on a military ship every System can fail.  But I could remember it wrong. 

[Garfunkel]

Unless it was changed without me noticing, there are only two ways for Crew Quarters to get destroyed: direct combat damage or overloaded life-support. If you pick up life pods or prisoners and don't have emergency cryo chambers for them, it is possible for a vicious circle to start.

[lipton]

Unless it was changed without me noticing, there are only two ways for Crew Quarters to get destroyed: direct combat damage or overloaded life-support.  If you pick up life pods or prisoners and don't have emergency cryo chambers for them, it is possible for a vicious circle to start.

I tested it with a simple geo survey ship, send towards waypoint near Earth and just wait for 3 years.  No Crew Overcrowding or Combat.  (V 1. 9. 2)
Small Crew Quarter Failure.

[Jarhead0331 (OP)]

It didn't take long for both ships to explode. The critical failures occurred before I could complete research on tractor beam technology. Now I guess I'll research salvage technology...lol Although, I must say that I like having the wreck locations marked on my map. It is a reminder of the cost of our early exploration efforts.

I did upgrade the design with additional maintenance storage so the service life is now close to 6 years.

[Garfunkel]

Thanks for testing that, good to know!

[kyonkundenwa]

Engineering spaces can also get maintenance failures in C#. I don't know if crew quarters and engineering spaces failures are intended or not as I don't recall seeing it in the change list.

[Father Tim]

There is no "Maintenance Failure Chart" -- it's the same DAC (damage allocation chart) as combat.  The only things that can't break due to maintenance failure are the things that are not on the DAC -- mostly just armour.