Replacement for the Supply Conditional qol

[skoormit]

It's all down to the engine cost.

My 4.4kt surveyor has a size-20 engine (22.7% of ship size) at 50% power.
I think your Horizon ship has a size-160 engine (50% of ship size) at 75% power.

Engine cost increases with the square of the power multiplier.

So, at equivalent tech levels and ship sizes, your engine design choices (size and power) gets you a ship that is 3.3 times as fast as my engine design choices, and your engine is nearly five times the cost of mine.

Speed is expensive, which makes the long-term cost to maintain high-power engines rather significant.

...the trend of the posts here are favouring stacking up MSP and maint life

To be clear, I'm not suggesting adding maintenance storage.
For ships with long deployment times and very long expected lifespans, it is far better to add engineering sections to reduce the long-term cost of maintenance.
My 4.4kt surveyor is 6.7% engineering spaces by size, and has no maintenance storage.
That gives it a 10.75 year maintenance life (more than twice the intended deployment time), and MSP capacity greater than 9x the max repair cost.

[Tikigod (OP)]

Maint Life 4.15 Years     MSP 5,332    AFR 73%    IFR 1.0%    1YR 495    5YR 7,424    Max Repair 1280 MSP

Right there, in black and white, is the reason the 20% MSP order "doesn't work" for you. Your max repair of 1280 is 24% of your total MSP. Therefore, your ship will not come back to resupply before it hits the possibility of bring unable to maintain itself. I recommend you add "sanity check max repair vs MSP" to your mental checklist when designing a ship.

For longer use survey ships I do, as mentioned the entire point of the design you pointed out was just to survey 2 systems away from a certain colony as it was growing significantly and had become a vital resource hub that I realised I hadn't explored around and wanted to know what's there, after it was done the entire design was retired and scrapped for reusing components/resources later (Which is why I was hesitant to initially paste it as I kinda expected the purpose would get overlooked for general design critique).

A example of my typical longer term ships would be the Voyager X class below the Horizon in the same post.

Maint Life 4.15 Years     MSP 5,332    AFR 73%    IFR 1.0%    1YR 495    5YR 7,424    Max Repair 1280 MSP

Right there, in black and white, is the reason the 20% MSP order "doesn't work" for you. Your max repair of 1280 is 24% of your total MSP. Therefore, your ship will not come back to resupply before it hits the possibility of bring unable to maintain itself. I recommend you add "sanity check max repair vs MSP" to your mental checklist when designing a ship.

I agree.. there is no reason to build a survey ship with engines that expensive, that makes zero sense to me. It has very strange deployment versus maintenance and general range capabilities.

You would need to put allot more engineering sections on this ship to make it a decent survey ship and it is way to expensive for that job in my opinion.

This is something a bit more streamlined for a survey period of about four years. You will never find a ship like that needing to ever get more supplies before the four years are up unless you are really unlucky.

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Discovery class Exploration Ship      9,000 tons       221 Crew       1,048.8 BP       TCS 180    TH 675    EM 0
3750 km/s    JR 3-50      Armour 1-38       Shields 0-0       HTK 57      Sensors 33/33/4/0      DCR 13      PPV 0
Maint Life 7.55 Years     MSP 990    AFR 48%    IFR 0.7%    1YR 31    5YR 459    Max Repair 150 MSP
Commander    Control Rating 1   BRG   
Intended Deployment Time: 48 months    Morale Check Required   

J9000(3-50) Military Jump Drive     Max Ship Size 9000 tons    Distance 50k km     Squadron Size 3

Naval Ion Drive  1500/60 (3)    Power 675.0    Fuel Use 9.66%    Signature 225.00    Explosion 6%
Fuel Capacity 504,000 Litres    Range 104.3 billion km (322 days at full power)

EM Sensor Type-3  Mk-III  (1)     Sensitivity 33.00     Detect Sig Strength 1000:  45.4m km
Thermal Sensor Type-3  Mk-III (1)     Sensitivity 33.00     Detect Sig Strength 1000:  45.4m km
Improved Gravitational Sensors (2)   4 Survey Points Per Hour
You also could skip on the jump drive to streamline them even more, but that require more manual work for the actual ordering of your survey efforts. You also could make bigger engines and go with two instead of three or even reduce the power multiplier somewhat to reduce the amount of fuel it require, but that is smaller stuff and it depends on what you have to work with.

That design you pasted is very much what I'd consider a early-game Sol and adjacent system only design. Speed, range and even tonnage size pretty much suited just for initial poking around Sol and not really practical for anything else. The reason for the larger engines in the prospect design was purely about speed and fuel efficiency for tonnage so it could quickly map out neighbouring systems.

With the Voyager X the engine size chosen is pretty much what I'd consider absolute minimum and comes down to fuel efficiency for the distances being covered whilst still providing what I'd consider a bare minimum speed to get anything meaningful done in its deployment time given the area it is going to need to cover. It won't just be poking around 1 or 2 systems from a refuel point, it's needing to cover multiple systems back and forth as I expand my map... to give some illustration:




Refuel options are Sol, Lankashiir and a orbitial fuel hub in Achillea (Though Achillea has since become a battle zone so not the best option). Whilst I could adapt something similar to your 9k design to make something larger that could cover distances realistically required, doing so and cutting down on max repair by requiring significantly smaller engines that consume much more fuel for lower output making the ship unfit for practical role purposes.

A surveyor that has a deployment time of 10 years but spends the half that time just moving systems giving the scope isn't really what I'd consider practical. So that leaves me with larger engines on the surveyors, though further messing around with the Voyager X concept has led to something a little more viable:

Voyager X class Survey Ship      16,000 tons       346 Crew       2,285.8 BP       TCS 320    TH 2,000    EM 0
6250 km/s    JR 3-50      Armour 1-56       Shields 0-0       HTK 101      Sensors 40/40/3/3      DCR 32      PPV 0
Maint Life 14.74 Years     MSP 20,057    AFR 64%    IFR 0.9%    1YR 173    5YR 2,592    Max Repair 800.0000 MSP
Captain    Control Rating 1   BRG   
Intended Deployment Time: 120 months    Morale Check Required   

J16200(3-50) Military Jump Drive     Max Ship Size 16200 tons    Distance 50k km     Squadron Size 3

2000EP M-MCF 5k 0.072L (1)    Power 2000.0    Fuel Use 7.24%    Signature 2000.00    Explosion 8%
Fuel Capacity 3,257,000 Litres    Range 506 billion km (937 days at full power)

TMS18 1k(50.3M) 113T (1)     Sensitivity 40.50     Detect Sig Strength 1000:  50.3m km
EMS18 1k(50.3M) 113T (1)     Sensitivity 40.50     Detect Sig Strength 1000:  50.3m km
Advanced Gravitational Sensors (1)   3 Survey Points Per Hour
Advanced Geological Sensors (1)   3 Survey Points Per Hour

This design is classed as a Military Vessel for maintenance purposes


Speed kept to similar levels but slight drop in ship range. EMS dropped to range similar to Thermal. Max repair cut down slightly and added just over 3 years to maint life along with doubling stored MSP with a trade off of 11% higher AFR which is a reasonably trade off in my mind.... just.

Pretty much what I'd consider to be a bare minimum survey design for the purposes intended but the significant jump in stored MSP should now mean the existing conditionals can finally serve their purpose long before the ship hits any kind of danger point.

[QuakeIV]

In my experience, as ships get close to the end of their maint life, failure rate kindof skyrockets and last 60% or so of MSP tends to get consumed extremely rapidly.

I think something based on percent of average maint life used up (as shown in the ship designer) would be a lot more effective just in general.  Resupply and overhaul once you hit that point.

[Tikigod (OP)]

In my experience, as ships get close to the end of their maint life, failure rate kindof skyrockets and last 60% or so of MSP tends to get consumed extremely rapidly.

I think something based on percent of average maint life used up (as shown in the ship designer) would be a lot more effective just in general.  Resupply and overhaul once you hit that point.

That would actually be a really neat way to approach a resupply conditional, really like it.

[Jorgen_CAB]

That design you pasted is very much what I'd consider a early-game Sol and adjacent system only design. Speed, range and even tonnage size pretty much suited just for initial poking around Sol and not really practical for anything else. The reason for the larger engines in the prospect design was purely about speed and fuel efficiency for tonnage so it could quickly map out neighbouring systems.

What constitute early game or not will depend on the individual game... as I run with a conventional 10-15% tech advancement and about 5% survey speed such ships are stock and trade for me. I might have some with more range or simply some forward refuelling stations to extend the range.

I can repeatedly send such ships of to system about 3-6 jump from nearest maintenance position. By the time that my campaigns are up to Ion engine age I have established several colonies and are exploring space a long way from Earth.

You still need to cut down on the cost of the engines as that is the problem why you can't use the 20% MSP limit that well. You also want to spend more on engineering rather than save fuel on big engines. I also would as others explained use lower powered engines... I regularly use 55% for military engines if I put jump drives on the survey vessel or just use commercial engines at 50% if I use jump tenders. This will keep the engine cost down considerably.

[Jorgen_CAB]

In my experience, as ships get close to the end of their maint life, failure rate kindof skyrockets and last 60% or so of MSP tends to get consumed extremely rapidly.

I think something based on percent of average maint life used up (as shown in the ship designer) would be a lot more effective just in general.  Resupply and overhaul once you hit that point.

We are going to get the ability to set conditional for deployment time in 1.12... if we design our ships accordingly we know that ships will head back for overhaul after a certain set time. This should solve most of these issues in my opinion in combination with a refuel or resupply conditional depending on your design.

[Tikigod (OP)]

You still need to cut down on the cost of the engines as that is the problem why you can't use the 20% MSP limit that well. You also want to spend more on engineering rather than save fuel on big engines. I also would as others explained use lower powered engines... I regularly use 55% for military engines if I put jump drives on the survey vessel or just use commercial engines at 50% if I use jump tenders. This will keep the engine cost down considerably.

Having fielded the Voyager X design, it's working fine. Engine power as low as you and others are pushing toward as mentioned would bring designs down to what I consider well below practical speeds for performing the job in any sensible time frame as I want my survey ships able to survey multiple systems in a deployment lifetime not just 1 or 2 with most of the time spent plodding between points.

With the new balance approach of engineering components and maintenance storage rather than just sheer engineering modules I am finding my survey ships are able to get where they need and map out systems in a good time frame and also return home to resupply using the conditional without any room for problem situations that means they're pretty much self sufficient now except when closing in on deployment time thresholds.

Can't speak for how viable it would work for small survey designs like the 9k ton example you posted, but can certainly verify that for slightly larger designs like the Voyager X design having 800 max repair from engines is perfectly reasonable when you take into account the ship is carrying 25 times that amount of MSP with a AFR around the mid 50%'s and 60%'s depending on the specifics of the design.

[Jorgen_CAB]

You still need to cut down on the cost of the engines as that is the problem why you can't use the 20% MSP limit that well. You also want to spend more on engineering rather than save fuel on big engines. I also would as others explained use lower powered engines... I regularly use 55% for military engines if I put jump drives on the survey vessel or just use commercial engines at 50% if I use jump tenders. This will keep the engine cost down considerably.

Having fielded the Voyager X design, it's working fine. Engine power as low as you and others are pushing toward as mentioned would bring designs down to what I consider well below practical speeds for performing the job in any sensible time frame as I want my survey ships able to survey multiple systems in a deployment lifetime not just 1 or 2 with most of the time spent plodding between points.

With the new balance approach of engineering components and maintenance storage rather than just sheer engineering modules I am finding my survey ships are able to get where they need and map out systems in a good time frame and also return home to resupply using the conditional without any room for problem situations that means they're pretty much self sufficient now except when closing in on deployment time thresholds.

Can't speak for how viable it would work for small survey designs like the 9k ton example you posted, but can certainly verify that for slightly larger designs like the Voyager X design having 800 max repair from engines is perfectly reasonable when you take into account the ship is carrying 25 times that amount of MSP with a AFR around the mid 50%'s and 60%'s depending on the specifics of the design.

I have no doubt the survey ship you use works very well. But, long term, the big ship you posted will cost way more and do less than several slightly less fast ships, smaller and cheaper. Surveying is not about speed alone it is also about the quantity of ships you can send out and what they cost you over time. If I can afford to send out two or three times as many surveyors using 2/3 of the speed and needing less maintenance over time that is going to cover even more space in less time. If you also play with 5% survey speed as I do then speed on the ships is not as important either as a craft can very well spend weeks and months to survey some worlds, only asteroids will take a day or two to survey, so that is a factor to. But even on 100% survey then ship speed is not everything.

You also can't compare the technology of the ship I presented with yours as they are not even in the same ballpark technologically. In general I tend to still use jump tenders for survey ships at this tech level as jump engines that takes up 1/6 of the ship are not very efficient for survey ships. Also, the engines was not really optimised for performance either. The ship I posted was just a rough example of how it could look at this tech level.

The absolutely most efficient way to survey is through jump tenders with survey ships with no jump engines but that do require more manual work from the player, I usually do both to be honest... more or less.

So... in general it is the amount of resources  you spend on surveying that matters, you will always be able to build the ships you need to get the job done. The question is what it cost you in the end.

[db48x]

Having fielded the Voyager X design, it's working fine. Engine power as low as you and others are pushing toward as mentioned would bring designs down to what I consider well below practical speeds for performing the job in any sensible time frame as I want my survey ships able to survey multiple systems in a deployment lifetime not just 1 or 2 with most of the time spent plodding between points.

My ships are 3000 tons, only go 2440km/s, and only get 122.7bkm out of their 277,000 liters of fuel. I do wish that they were faster, but I have managed to explore pretty far already.

Plus, they're only 600BP.

I started with a design that had both geo and grav sensors, but I upgraded to two designs with two geo or two grav sensors each. Individually they're less flexible, but since there's still only a primary and secondary standing order it means that I end up messing with them less.

In a way, these almost suffer the same problem you started with: the max repair is really high, so I can't guarantee that they can always make repairs. On the other hand, that max repair is for the sensors, which are redundant. If one has to be repaired they will end up fetching MSP early, but they don't have to go all the way to Earth for that. If one breaks and they can't make repairs, I still don't have to send them home right away; they can usually wait a year or two more. They'll just survey a little slower until then.

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Angmar IX geo class Survey Cruiser, Geo      3,000 tons       80 Crew       583.4 BP       TCS 60    TH 146    EM 0
2440 km/s    JR 1-50      Armour 1-18       Shields 0-0       HTK 21      Sensors 8/8/0/4      DCR 2      PPV 1.5
Maint Life 6.02 Years     MSP 273    AFR 32%    IFR 0.4%    1YR 13    5YR 194    Max Repair 150 MSP
Magazine 85   
Commander    Control Rating 2   BRG   SCI   
Intended Deployment Time: 60 months    Morale Check Required   

Norberg-Holmgren Interstellar J3000(1-50) Military Jump Drive     Max Ship Size 3000 tons    Distance 50k km     Squadron Size 1

Blakely Drive Systems S15.25-EP146 Magneto-plasma Drive (1)    Power 146.4    Fuel Use 13.55%    Signature 146.4    Explosion 6%
Fuel Capacity 277,000 Litres    Range 122.7 billion km (581 days at full power)

Size 5 Missile Launcher (30.0%/100×) (1)     Missile Size: 5    Rate of Fire 6710
Shives Electronics FC11-R100 Missile Fire Control (1)     Range 11.7m km    Resolution 100
Diffie-Butzer Agamemnon Active Sensor Drone (18)    Speed: 6,000 km/s    End: 5.6d     Range: 2,887m km    WH: 0    Size: 2.5    TH: 20/12/6
Diffie-Butzer Agamemnon Long-Range Active Sensor Drone (8)    Speed: 6,000 km/s    End: 25d     Range: 12,944m km    WH: 0    Size: 5    TH: 20/12/6

Reinert Electronics TH1-8 Thermal Sensor (1)     Sensitivity 8     Detect Sig Strength 1000:  22.4m km
Reinert Electronics EM1-8 EM Sensor (1)     Sensitivity 8     Detect Sig Strength 1000:  22.4m km
Improved Geological Sensors (2)   4 Survey Points Per Hour

Missile to hit chances are vs targets moving at 3000 km/s, 5000 km/s and 10,000 km/s

This design is classed as a Military Vessel for maintenance purposes

[Tikigod (OP)]

Having fielded the Voyager X design, it's working fine. Engine power as low as you and others are pushing toward as mentioned would bring designs down to what I consider well below practical speeds for performing the job in any sensible time frame as I want my survey ships able to survey multiple systems in a deployment lifetime not just 1 or 2 with most of the time spent plodding between points.

My ships are 3000 tons, only go 2440km/s, and only get 122.7bkm out of their 277,000 liters of fuel. I do wish that they were faster, but I have managed to explore pretty far already.

Plus, they're only 600BP.

I started with a design that had both geo and grav sensors, but I upgraded to two designs with two geo or two grav sensors each. Individually they're less flexible, but since there's still only a primary and secondary standing order it means that I end up messing with them less.

In a way, these almost suffer the same problem you started with: the max repair is really high, so I can't guarantee that they can always make repairs. On the other hand, that max repair is for the sensors, which are redundant. If one has to be repaired they will end up fetching MSP early, but they don't have to go all the way to Earth for that. If one breaks and they can't make repairs, I still don't have to send them home right away; they can usually wait a year or two more. They'll just survey a little slower until then.

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Angmar IX geo class Survey Cruiser, Geo      3,000 tons       80 Crew       583.4 BP       TCS 60    TH 146    EM 0
2440 km/s    JR 1-50      Armour 1-18       Shields 0-0       HTK 21      Sensors 8/8/0/4      DCR 2      PPV 1.5
Maint Life 6.02 Years     MSP 273    AFR 32%    IFR 0.4%    1YR 13    5YR 194    Max Repair 150 MSP
Magazine 85   
Commander    Control Rating 2   BRG   SCI   
Intended Deployment Time: 60 months    Morale Check Required   

Norberg-Holmgren Interstellar J3000(1-50) Military Jump Drive     Max Ship Size 3000 tons    Distance 50k km     Squadron Size 1

Blakely Drive Systems S15.25-EP146 Magneto-plasma Drive (1)    Power 146.4    Fuel Use 13.55%    Signature 146.4    Explosion 6%
Fuel Capacity 277,000 Litres    Range 122.7 billion km (581 days at full power)

Size 5 Missile Launcher (30.0%/100×) (1)     Missile Size: 5    Rate of Fire 6710
Shives Electronics FC11-R100 Missile Fire Control (1)     Range 11.7m km    Resolution 100
Diffie-Butzer Agamemnon Active Sensor Drone (18)    Speed: 6,000 km/s    End: 5.6d     Range: 2,887m km    WH: 0    Size: 2.5    TH: 20/12/6
Diffie-Butzer Agamemnon Long-Range Active Sensor Drone (8)    Speed: 6,000 km/s    End: 25d     Range: 12,944m km    WH: 0    Size: 5    TH: 20/12/6

Reinert Electronics TH1-8 Thermal Sensor (1)     Sensitivity 8     Detect Sig Strength 1000:  22.4m km
Reinert Electronics EM1-8 EM Sensor (1)     Sensitivity 8     Detect Sig Strength 1000:  22.4m km
Improved Geological Sensors (2)   4 Survey Points Per Hour

Missile to hit chances are vs targets moving at 3000 km/s, 5000 km/s and 10,000 km/s

This design is classed as a Military Vessel for maintenance purposes

Damn, that's one expansive map.

I'd personally never have the patience to have 2440km/s survey ships though it certainly seems to come down to role philosophy preferences.

I tried dedicated geo and grav survey designs in the past and found it caused much more micromanagement as I was having to cycle the ships around manually much more frequently given my preference for less than a half dozen faster ships at default survey rate in operation which tend to have even a large system fully geo'ed in the span of a few weeks tops, so having them automatically able to switch to fully grav surveying the same system helps reduce the micro.

Really like the inclusion of the buoys on the survey ships rather than sensor components, currently using a dedicated speedy buoy deployment ship but might try the buoys included in the surveys.


Personally BP of the ship doesn't matter so much to me, as most of my ships are being built ahead of time by colony construction yards rather than the shipyard. So even with much larger cost ship designs the shipyard is churning them out in around 5-6 months at the higher end with that time including the colony component construction.

[db48x]

I'd personally never have the patience to have 2440km/s survey ships though it certainly seems to come down to role philosophy preferences.

I figure everything else takes time too.

I tried dedicated geo and grav survey designs in the past and found it caused much more micromanagement as I was having to cycle the ships around manually much more frequently given my preference for less than a half dozen faster ships at default survey rate in operation which tend to have even a large system fully geo'ed in the span of a few weeks tops, so having them automatically able to switch to fully grav surveying the same system helps reduce the micro.

Ah, that's actually the micro I decided to avoid. I have the geo ships set to survey nearest five bodies and move to nearest system requiring geo survey, so when they finish one system they automatically move on to another. Same with the grav ships, when they finish one system they move to another.

All I have to do is occasionally tell them to go through an unexplored jump point, which I usually do right after they finish an overhaul, or when they complain of boredom.

Really like the inclusion of the buoys on the survey ships rather than sensor components, currently using a dedicated speedy buoy deployment ship but might try the buoys included in the surveys.

It saves so many ships from an untimely death. I think the next revision will have a slightly smaller magazine though; most ships have only ever used two or three sensor missiles per 5-year mission, so having 18 short-range and 8 long-range missiles is a bit much.

Personally BP of the ship doesn't matter so much to me, as most of my ships are being built ahead of time by colony construction yards rather than the shipyard. So even with much larger cost ship designs the shipyard is churning them out in around 5-6 months at the higher end with that time including the colony component construction.

That's something I've not been doing this game. Currently my main construction facilities on Earth are building terraforming and fuel harvesting stations. And more construction facilities.

[Jorgen_CAB]

Personally BP of the ship doesn't matter so much to me, as most of my ships are being built ahead of time by colony construction yards rather than the shipyard. So even with much larger cost ship designs the shipyard is churning them out in around 5-6 months at the higher end with that time including the colony component construction.

To be honest I don't really understand this logic at all... now, I do agree that you might not always build things optimally because of role-play... I think most people do that because that is one of the most fun parts of this game and I do that all the time. But saying that you don't care about cost does not make sense from a logistical or efficiency perspective at all. The thing here is that if you build cheaper and smaller ships you could probably build two or three times more ships with both less resources and population. That is resources you could spend elsewhere while being able to survey equally if not even better in total.

Someone who build say 4 survey crafts that have the combined cost of 2/3 of your one 16kt survey craft with roughly the same capabilities except half the speed but lower maintenance needs thus spending much less MSP over time would be much more economical and efficient

Now I do see some very good advantages with your design such as being able to avoid potential aggressive enemies when they meet them and from a role-play perspective I think that makes very good sense. This is also why my survey efforts tend to change due to circumstances as I wander into more and more aliens species and eventually meet something very aggressive. Using probes for both geo survey of important planets or scanning for potential threats makes sense after a while so using some mission space for more sensors and probes makes allot of sense after a while.

One strategy I often employ in my exploration ships are probes, both for detecting potential threats but also to launch geo survey probes against potentially interesting terrestrial planets and moons before a dedicated survey can be sent to new systems.

[Tikigod (OP)]

Personally BP of the ship doesn't matter so much to me, as most of my ships are being built ahead of time by colony construction yards rather than the shipyard. So even with much larger cost ship designs the shipyard is churning them out in around 5-6 months at the higher end with that time including the colony component construction.

To be honest I don't really understand this logic at all... now, I do agree that you might not always build things optimally because of role-play... I think most people do that because that is one of the most fun parts of this game and I do that all the time. But saying that you don't care about cost does not make sense from a logistical or efficiency perspective at all. The thing here is that if you build cheaper and smaller ships you could probably build two or three times more ships with both less resources and population. That is resources you could spend elsewhere while being able to survey equally if not even better in total.

Someone who build say 4 survey crafts that have the combined cost of 2/3 of your one 16kt survey craft with roughly the same capabilities except half the speed but lower maintenance needs thus spending much less MSP over time would be much more economical and efficient

It mostly comes down to the fact that while economically less efficient, the loss of efficiency isn't really ever to the point where it has any actual meaning to my empires economy. If something has no real significant implication to it and at the same time better tailors itself to a approach someone prefers...... why not do it?

Though I have noticed my approach to Aurora is often significantly different to some other long term players especially from the time I used to spend in the discord a while back... for example the use of jump tenders for everyday things seems to often be a habit for many. Along with frequently churning out tankers to support fleets so they don't need to have so much fuel storage and can be kept 'small and cheap'.

Personally outside of very particular military uses and made to order, I don't have any of that underlining logistical infrastructure needing more shipyards and increased active ship output going on.... 100 years into a campaign and I typically still have my empire working off of 3 naval shipyards that mostly are inactive and 4 civilian shipyards.

Non-military fleet wise, it's typically:

1 freighter fleet of 5 large cargo ships that only need to stick to my gate network between colonies.
1 or 2 jump capable tanker fleets of 2 larger ship designs that transport fuel from 1 or 2 main gas giant harvesting bases.
2 or 3 super large terraforming bases that just focus on a single colony at once but can terraform most targets to 0.0 cost except outliners like Venus in a year or two at the absolute most (Built from colony production)
xx number of fuel harvesting bases. Exact number really just depends on gas giant RNG. Typically it's around 2 or 3. (Again built from colony production)
1 single tug fleet consisting of 3 ships, mostly used to keep the terraformers moving where needed.
1 construction ship for stabilisation and lag range point work.
1 Sensor Buoy deployment fleet consisting of a singular small but fast ship that once made typically never needs to be upgraded or replaced unless destroyed.

Once I have those ships built the only resource output drain as far as ships goes comes from potential upgrades to the freighters and/or tankers typically at 20-30 year intervals and from increases in military forces when I encounter hostiles. (Oh and upgrading existing military ships every 40 years or so)

Survey ship output is typically low unless I have a sudden need to do short term mapping with more disposable designs, because as discussed I only have under a half dozen active at any time and they're typically larger designs meant to be sufficient for long periods without any other support, plus I typically stage my exploration pushes into waves every couple of decades, giving me the intervening years to concentrate on maturing colonies that may be established without the risk of generating new NPRs or drawing attention from existing ones.


Without the continuous production of a backbone logistical network, and favouring larger entirely self sufficient designs for non-military roled ships that are produced in smaller numbers, the economic impact to going for more costly designs is pretty much non-existent overall something I typically put down to being because at the same time I also don't have the continuous investment demand from often needing to expand such a logistical network  to keep up with the needs of smaller cheaper ships that require that network to do their role.

[Jorgen_CAB]

Personally BP of the ship doesn't matter so much to me, as most of my ships are being built ahead of time by colony construction yards rather than the shipyard. So even with much larger cost ship designs the shipyard is churning them out in around 5-6 months at the higher end with that time including the colony component construction.

To be honest I don't really understand this logic at all... now, I do agree that you might not always build things optimally because of role-play... I think most people do that because that is one of the most fun parts of this game and I do that all the time. But saying that you don't care about cost does not make sense from a logistical or efficiency perspective at all. The thing here is that if you build cheaper and smaller ships you could probably build two or three times more ships with both less resources and population. That is resources you could spend elsewhere while being able to survey equally if not even better in total.

Someone who build say 4 survey crafts that have the combined cost of 2/3 of your one 16kt survey craft with roughly the same capabilities except half the speed but lower maintenance needs thus spending much less MSP over time would be much more economical and efficient

It mostly comes down to the fact that while economically less efficient, the loss of efficiency isn't really ever to the point where it has any actual meaning to my empires economy. If something has no real significant implication to it and at the same time better tailors itself to a approach someone prefers...... why not do it?

Though I have noticed my approach to Aurora is often significantly different to some other long term players especially from the time I used to spend in the discord a while back... for example the use of jump tenders for everyday things seems to often be a habit for many. Along with frequently churning out tankers to support fleets so they don't need to have so much fuel storage and can be kept 'small and cheap'.

Personally outside of very particular military uses and made to order, I don't have any of that underlining logistical infrastructure needing more shipyards and increased active ship output going on.... 100 years into a campaign and I typically still have my empire working off of 3 naval shipyards that mostly are inactive and 4 civilian shipyards.

Non-military fleet wise, it's typically:

1 freighter fleet of 5 large cargo ships that only need to stick to my gate network between colonies.
1 or 2 jump capable tanker fleets of 2 larger ship designs that transport fuel from 1 or 2 main gas giant harvesting bases.
2 or 3 super large terraforming bases that just focus on a single colony at once but can terraform most targets to 0.0 cost except outliners like Venus in a year or two at the absolute most (Built from colony production)
xx number of fuel harvesting bases. Exact number really just depends on gas giant RNG. Typically it's around 2 or 3. (Again built from colony production)
1 single tug fleet consisting of 3 ships, mostly used to keep the terraformers moving where needed.
1 construction ship for stabilisation and lag range point work.
1 Sensor Buoy deployment fleet consisting of a singular small but fast ship that once made typically never needs to be upgraded or replaced unless destroyed.

Once I have those ships built the only resource output drain as far as ships goes comes from potential upgrades to the freighters and/or tankers typically at 20-30 year intervals and from increases in military forces when I encounter hostiles. (Oh and upgrading existing military ships every 40 years or so)

Survey ship output is typically low unless I have a sudden need to do short term mapping with more disposable designs, because as discussed I only have under a half dozen active at any time and they're typically larger designs meant to be sufficient for long periods without any other support, plus I typically stage my exploration pushes into waves every couple of decades, giving me the intervening years to concentrate on maturing colonies that may be established without the risk of generating new NPRs or drawing attention from existing ones.


Without the continuous production of a backbone logistical network, and favouring larger entirely self sufficient designs for non-military roled ships that are produced in smaller numbers, the economic impact to going for more costly designs is pretty much non-existent overall something I typically put down to being because at the same time I also don't have the continuous investment demand from often needing to expand such a logistical network  to keep up with the needs of smaller cheaper ships that require that network to do their role.

I completely agree with your approach and I think most people do this as well, including me... I mean role-play their particular style. I mainly build ships and the logistical side based on role-play rather than optimal efficiency. Mainly because people will have priorities other than optimal material efficiency quite allot and also that political decisions tend to shift in philosophy over time, even short swings in focus now and then too, this is what role-play is all about (in my opinion).

personally I try to actually limit the use of multiple yards as much as possible in favour of using the construction factories for other things, each yard built are basically another lab not built for example which can be significant over time. Especially when you play with very low research multiplier like I normally do. Even if it is more expensive to retool yards it is worth using single yards for multiple ship designs over time to save construction time for other stuff. Many commercial and even military variants will need to be built in very small amounts and rarely need upgrades, such as gate builders for examples.

It is not too hard to still have too many yards and ability to build more ships than you need all the time so some yards or slipways will be paused or not used for considerable time periods. If I'm not at war or I see any potential enemy directly threatening me I don't need to build up a huge fleet so military yards might certainly not be building at full capacity etc...

To get back to the main topic... I believe that the new conditional order that will trigger for deployment should fix most issues with supply for survey crafts. We should design these ships so they very rarely run out of supplies during their normal deployment. Not doing this should be considered a relatively bad design in my opinion. A survey ship should never need to get back for more MSP during its deployment... more fuel is one thing but MSP is not something you want your ships to consume allot of as that is very expensive in comparison with fuel. But in general I think that a survey ship should be able to deploy and never needing to either refuel or restock MSP to be a good design. If any of those two things happen occasionally might be one thing, but routinely run out of supplies is not a good survey design.

[Froggiest1982]

To get back to the main topic... I believe that the new conditional order that will trigger for deployment should fix most issues with supply for survey crafts. We should design these ships so they very rarely run out of supplies during their normal deployment. Not doing this should be considered a relatively bad design in my opinion. A survey ship should never need to get back for more MSP during its deployment... more fuel is one thing but MSP is not something you want your ships to consume allot of as that is very expensive in comparison with fuel. But in general I think that a survey ship should be able to deploy and never needing to either refuel or restock MSP to be a good design. If any of those two things happen occasionally might be one thing, but routinely run out of supplies is not a good survey design.

I agree. At today the main task in exploration for me was when the 20+ exploring and surveying were exceeding their deployment time. Maybe do a good design in the early game is hard but after you have at least 0.7 fc and Ion tech you can have 60 months or more survey ships out without any issue.

This is actually where I disagree, I think this function will actually reward more those who are not designing good survey ships as this will take a lot out of their plate and they may not even realizing there is an issue.