Large ships in PDC's

[SteelChicken (OP)]

Ah, construction costs.   Of course.  I don't think about those as much as I do with on going-maintenance to ship minerals out to worlds that don't have any but still want protection.

To me 14 years is not a long time in game time.  Ill put colonies of people anywhere I can easily terraform and many of those systems don't have a lot of minerals.  Id rather ship in more minerals *once* to build some PDC's drop off some fighters and then forget about it.

[MarcAFK]

Maintenance for ships seems to be a tenth the cost, looking at my gauss ships and carriers the cost of hanger space to fit them is around 20 times the upkeep cost of the ships, so that's a 5% savings of the vendarite cost each year, everything else is saved entirely.

[Jorgen_CAB]

I don't want to trample on anyone's toes but intentionally using Hangar Bays to store ships on a large scale should probably be viewed as an exploit. It makes no sense what so ever to think that ships in a hangar would need less maintenance than a ship outside of a hangar, especially in space where you have virtually no degradation of material. A mothballed ship in space that is exposed to the complete vacuum of space should cost no maintenance at all.

The only way I use PDC hangars like this is when I Role Play the fact that ships can be mothballed but then I use SM to create these PDC just so ships can be stored in them without costing that empire any maintenance. But such ships will require time to get starting again, at least a couple of weeks if not months, depends on ship size and complexity. Crew need to be retrained and fitted to the ship etc... I also usually deduce about 10-15% of the ships total construction cost from the empires wealth treasury as a cost to get the ship up and running again.

Although lately I have been using moons to store (mothball) ships and require wealth to be spent but no resources. I just SM the resources but require the wealth expenditure which is a cost to operate the facilities to take care of the administrative and maintenance of the facilities that holds the ships. This is much easier and to some extent more realistic in storing ships that are no longer in use. I also don't have to bather about adding a cost to activating them since I sort of consider that cost already paid for simplicity, I only add time to get the ships active again.

In my opinion there are no point in even trying to game the game mechanics too much... there just are too many holes in the mechanics which translates onto some rather unrealistic/unfair results in the end.

It is pretty obvious that PDC hangars will earn you quite allot of resources in the end, you will earn a net positive result after about 20 years and if you have some good high yield Vendarite mining worlds this will be a very effective strategy from a game mechanics perspective. Do whatever you feel is the most fun for you...

[MarcAFK]

I only see it as an exploit if you place your new ships into a hanger as soon as they hit 100% training, merely to save resources. However as far as mothballing older obsolete ships it's hardly an exploit, if you keep a ship hangered for 10 years you can bet it's not going to be up to scratch compared to the rest of the fleet, refitting it would be a costly exercise and justifiably so.

[Jorgen_CAB]

What I was trying to point out is that if you want to use PDC hangars for a simulation "mothballing" ships you might as well just SM those hangars in and mothball the ships, no real need to "exploit" the game mechanics. Which I have done many times. You just can't use these special PDC for anything else, that is why he have the SM ability in the first place...

In my "opinion" a ship that have no crew and which are "stored" in the vacuum of space would never cost any maintenance anyway. It should on the other hand not acquire experience or rather reset to the default once activated, but that is hard to simulate.

I just meant that there are easier way of simulating it than actually building these hangars for the mere fact that hangars provide free maintenance which are pretty unrealistic to begin with.

Why not introduce a way to actually mothball ships in which they have no crew and loose all experience and fleet training but cost no maintenance. You would then be able to activate the ship and after a certain time you can start using the ship again for a small cost in resources and wealth, very small cost. I would welcome such as change which would make hangar PDC useful for what they should be useful for which is for actually active ships.

Introduce a simple mechanics where ships in hangars consume a small portion if that ships supplies every five day cycle. There should be no such thing as free maintenance inside a hangar. The AI might perhaps ignore this for simplicity.

[SteelChicken (OP)]

I don't want to trample on anyone's toes but intentionally using Hangar Bays to store ships on a large scale should probably be viewed as an exploit. It makes no sense what so ever to think that ships in a hangar would need less maintenance than a ship outside of a hangar, especially in space where you have virtually no degradation of material. A mothballed ship in space that is exposed to the complete vacuum of space should cost no maintenance at all.

Yeah, except for the fact there is no mothball functionality in the game.  I like the way SE4 did it.   

In my opinion there are no point in even trying to game the game mechanics too much... there just are too many holes in the mechanics which translates onto some rather unrealistic/unfair results in the end.

It is pretty obvious that PDC hangars will earn you quite allot of resources in the end, you will earn a net positive result after about 20 years and if you have some good high yield Vendarite mining worlds this will be a very effective strategy from a game mechanics perspective. Do whatever you feel is the most fun for you...

Its not about gaming the system for me as much as reducing the micromanagement.  I don't mind have to pay the mineral cost, I do mind having to go through a bunch of not-fun tasks to load up and ship the minerals to where they need to be.  Once your empire grows beyond a half dozen colonies it just becomes more about micromanagement than anything else. 

[Jorgen_CAB]

Resource management is not such a huge problem if you use the inbuilt tools for automating your freighters carrying minerals. I usually build special mineral craft with a single 5000t cargo module. I can then use these ships to set up rather advanced and self controlled mineral distribution net throughout the entire empire. I rarely deem minerals to take that much of my time to manage and is completely automated.

It would be nice with a Mothballing feature and if ships in hangars would cost a small amount of supplies as a maintenance fee equivalent. That are my personal taste as things stand.

[TT]

Jorgen_CAB - It would be nice with a Mothballing feature and if ships in hangars would cost a small amount of supplies as a maintenance fee equivalent.    That are my personal taste as things stand.  

I totally agree.  I think that if ships have dedicated hangers that can make repairs, and cost a certain amount of maintenance supplies for hangar storage, then that would be the best of all worlds.    I don't think it would increase micro to any extent and it would allow those of us that like to imagine a giant bustling hangar PDC servicing their fleet the chance to imagine it.  I also think that maintenance supplies (rather than raw materials) would better reflect the kind of infrastructure necessary to support a fleet.     I'm not an expert on current naval maintenance, but I'd bet that most navies do not necessarily produce the supplies, spare parts, etc.    necessary for a modern fleet at each maintenance station.     I'm sure they mostly ship those in to their bases and the naval assets draw from a pool.  

[Prince of Space]

It makes no sense what so ever to think that ships in a hangar would need less maintenance than a ship outside of a hangar, especially in space where you have virtually no degradation of material. A mothballed ship in space that is exposed to the complete vacuum of space should cost no maintenance at all.

I'm not sure I agree here. The vacuum of space isn't a friendly environment. Micrometeoroid impacts, stellar radiation, thermal expansion and contraction of materials, all of these things should impact the condition of a ship, and my impression was that these were abtracted out as part of the maintenance costs. By comparison, I'm imagining that a hangared ship just needs a working HVAC system and some Turtle Wax to keep from rusting away. That's a nonzero cost, sure, but it seems like it would be much cheaper.

For comparison, does anyone know what the in-hangar maintenance costs are for real life airplanes in real life carriers? Or maybe what the operating costs are for Jerry Seinfeld's 47-Porsche garage? And how are we supposed to interpret the impact of make-believe transnewtonian elements on these costs?

[Jorgen_CAB]

I'm not sure I agree here. The vacuum of space isn't a friendly environment. Micrometeoroid impacts, stellar radiation, thermal expansion and contraction of materials, all of these things should impact the condition of a ship, and my impression was that these were abtracted out as part of the maintenance costs. By comparison, I'm imagining that a hangared ship just needs a working HVAC system and some Turtle Wax to keep from rusting away. That's a nonzero cost, sure, but it seems like it would be much cheaper.

For comparison, does anyone know what the in-hangar maintenance costs are for real life airplanes in real life carriers? Or maybe what the operating costs are for Jerry Seinfeld's 47-Porsche garage? And how are we supposed to interpret the impact of make-believe transnewtonian elements on these costs?

I'm pretty sure science are on my side of the fence if we talk about preservation and conservation of things in space.

If you add gravity and an atmosphere you have much more impact on everything.

We do have machines in space today that serviced for several decades without much problem. These things you mentioned would be near zero problem with a Duranium hull in comparison with a ship in service where you have people onbaord doing drills and ships would routinely take short voyages to test all their systems and things like that. That is what I imagine an active ship would undergo at a maintenance facility.

To me it is pretty clear that you could store a ship pretty much indefinitely in space completely intact. The chance of something large enough to hit the ship and do any significant damage should be close to zero in any given year.

I might agree that the closer you have something to a planetoid or sun the greater the chance of something happening because its gravity and/or energy output will impact more. But far enough from a planet and/or sun the risks will drop dramatically.

You could still require mothballed ships to be at a maintenance facility but cost significantly less maintenance say 1/5 of the regular cost or something like that. Mothballing are probably mostly useful after major wars when you had severe expansion of a fleet and no longer need such a large standing fleet but you might not want to scrap them.

Ships in hangars should probably cost about the same amount as ships cost in maintenance resources you just pay the cost in supplies instead.

[Prince of Space]

I think you may have a point, at least in part. There is some precedent within Aurora itself for the gravitationally induced stress of parking a multi-thousand ton space vessel in a planetside hangar. The 500 ton limit for fighter factories and the orbital location of shipyards supports that. However, there would be a big difference between parking a cruiser in a PDC hangar on Earth and parking it in a PDC hangar on Deimos (if the simulation went that far). Really, just being in a PDC wouldn't induce damaging stresses, being near a huge mass would.

Can we say with confidence that TNEs do or should corrode in atmospheres, but don't suffer from being struck by protons traveling at relativistic speeds? This is a bit like debating what the Young's modulus of unicorn horn should be, but we can look for another in-game precedent: research labs and financial centers don't rust away, and they're likely immersed in and filled with atmospheric gases.

Don't forget that shipboard hangars already have their own maintenance costs as part of maintaining the mothership. I figured that as the cost of shielding the parasites from the stress of being in space (and the stress of using their own engines).

Anyway, I'm not opposed to the idea of a more formalized mothballing system, or a nonzero cost for hangared ships. I just expect that the Space Shuttle Discovery will be in better condition sitting in a hangar in Chantilly than it was in low earth orbit.

[Jorgen_CAB]

Yes... my main point was that active ships with active crew should be allot more expensive than inactive ships to maintain. I also don't think it would be practical to store large ships on planets in any respect. I assume there is a reason why they need to be built in space and only smaller ships at 500t or less are built on a planets surface.

In regards to Hangars the maintenance you pay for them are the same maintenance you pay for any other part of the ship (PDC don't pay maintenance anyway only hangars on ships and stations does). I really can't see how that could even begin to cover for maintenance of anything inside the hangar. The hangar itself obviously need maintenance as will the crafts parked in them. You also need to look at the actual cost of hangars in relation to what you put in them... hangars are a very cheap component.
We could probably look at how costly it is to maintain helicopters and airplanes and their hangars and landing decks on today's ships. On any given day about 20-25% of crafts on ships are down for some kind of maintenance and that is not cheap.

In the game there are several ways you can simulate part of these issues. Personally I don't think it is realistic to store large ships for free in PDC hangars. Perhaps you could store them inside large asteroids to shield them from some of the worst that space can potentially threaten them with. But if they are active ships they will need plenty of care and maintenance.

I do understand that micromanagement can be a reason to use this system but you set a large part of the economy out of balance when a larger part of the fleet becomes maintenance free which just feels wrong to me.

However... the nice thing about Aurora is that we can do whatever we like...

[sneer]

My experiance is that if you really plan your ships well and they are not earliest ones you may count on them to be realiable for 1st or 2nd line of use within 30years or close
maybe longer when it is past 2100, and a bit longer if they are missile ships as they are cheapest to upgrade.
In general propulsion tech is most important as in opposite to electronics engines are worst to upgrade due to costs which are prohibitive
Also the longer the game the bigger the ships at least for me
 

[Vandermeer]

All topic in this thread has been discussed in this thread of the past already (including calculations and proof of repair ability): http://aurora2.pentarch.org/index.php/topic,7623.0.html

Obviously, as someone who uses these Hangars all the time, I really cannot see why it would be considered an exploit. The building times for these hangars are quite long, and take away from empire expansion heavily if done too much in the beginning (which is why I would recommend to only focus on a fighter hangar for the time being). Even after construction you will need 10-30 years to make it worth the investment.(depending heavily on what is considered "expense" here, as vendarite for example is used for pretty much nothing else but hangars for example, and would only sit in stockpiles dead otherwise)
If the point is that military ships which aren't "mothballed" should always need maintenance, because the maintenance facilities would normally be those "hangars" and now get overwritten by fake ones or something, ... I would point out that maintenance facilities treat an infinite number of ships, so they are definitely no "harbors/hangars" in that sense, but more of treatment crew stockpiles/housing or however you would explain it. A hangar is an entirely different concept to the maintenance facilities, and since it has advantages as well as disadvantages, I think "exploit" can at most be said only RP wise. ..Though I would not agree even to that because of what I meant before.
Then I agree that in any case some maintenance is to be done on ships, no matter if parked or ready and in action, but this is also true for civil ships in the real world. Civil ships are already free in Aurora, and who says an 'anchored' military ship should still cost more than a working civil one? I think it is realistic that a true resting place can drop military designs to civil maintenance levels. They just start to maintain themselves as part of a recycling chain in a sustainable way.