Container Carrier, a Universal Freighter Concept quik n' dirty

[Migi]

"Normal maintenance requirements" means what, exactly? I don't think it means that the clock keeps ticking. I think it means that it can still suffer a maintenance failure if in space, and still costs MSP for upkeep if at a maintenance facility.
When in a military hangar, ships don't need any maintenance and don't have any failures, regardless if they are at a maintenance location or not.

I would assume (but I haven't tested) "Normal maintenance requirements" means that the maintenance clock on military ships will increase as if they are in open space, in addition to maintenance failures happening as normal.

[kenlon]

It turns out this concept does actually work, just not with the container sizes I originally tested. Since I have discovered that you're not limited to ships of 1K tons in a hangar (which is how I thought it always worked), upping the size of the containers makes everything work much better. 

Turns out you're far better off just giving them 3 months of deployment time and having them be civilian, the extra crew requirements are way lower weight/cost than the MSP needed to maintain them. I might redo this with 10K containers, as the larger they are the less wasted mass there is, but it's a tradeoff between carrying capacity and flexibility.

Containers:

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Cargo Container class Cargo Ship      4,632 tons       14 Crew       38.7 BP       TCS 93    TH 0    EM 0
1 km/s      No Armour       Shields 0-0     HTK 1      Sensors 0/0/0/0      DCR 0      PPV 0
MSP 0    AFR 926%    IFR 12.9%    Max Repair 20 MSP
Cargo 4,500   
Capitaine de corvette    Control Rating 1   BRG   
Intended Deployment Time: 3 months   


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Cryo Container class Cargo Ship      4,965 tons       33 Crew       316.3 BP       TCS 99    TH 0    EM 0
1 km/s      No Armour       Shields 0-0     HTK 12      Sensors 0/0/0/0      DCR 0      PPV 0
MSP 0    AFR 992%    IFR 13.8%    Max Repair 100 MSP
Cryogenic Berths 19,200   
Capitaine de corvette    Control Rating 1   BRG   
Intended Deployment Time: 3 months   


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Fuel Container class Cargo Ship      5,000 tons       5 Crew       88.7 BP       TCS 100    TH 0    EM 0
1 km/s      No Armour       Shields 0-0     HTK 8      Sensors 0/0/0/0      DCR 0      PPV 0
MSP 0    AFR 999%    IFR 13.9%    Max Repair 20 MSP
Capitaine de corvette    Control Rating 1   BRG   
Intended Deployment Time: 3 months   

Fuel Capacity 4,874,000 Litres    Range N/A

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Supply Container class Cargo Ship      4,998 tons       44 Crew       324.1 BP       TCS 100    TH 0    EM 0
1 km/s      No Armour       Shields 0-0     HTK 21      Sensors 0/0/0/0      DCR 0      PPV 0
MSP 38,540    AFR 1000%    IFR 13.9%    Max Repair 20 MSP
Capitaine de corvette    Control Rating 1   BRG   
Intended Deployment Time: 3 months   

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Troop Container class Cargo Ship      4,975 tons       41 Crew       137.3 BP       TCS 99    TH 0    EM 0
1 km/s      No Armour       Shields 0-0     HTK 10      Sensors 0/0/0/0      DCR 0      PPV 0
MSP 0    AFR 994%    IFR 13.8%    Max Repair 20 MSP
Troop Capacity 4,800 tons     
Capitaine de corvette    Control Rating 1   BRG   
Intended Deployment Time: 3 months   

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Ordinance Container class Cargo Ship      4,980 tons       45 Crew       234.3 BP       TCS 100    TH 0    EM 0
1 km/s      No Armour       Shields 0-0     HTK 10      Sensors 0/0/0/0      DCR 0      PPV 0
MSP 0    AFR 995%    IFR 13.8%    Max Repair 25 MSP
Magazine 800   
Capitaine de corvette    Control Rating 1   BRG   
Intended Deployment Time: 3 months   
It's not worthwhile as a wholesale replacement for dedicated Cargo/Colony/Tanker ships because you still lose too much lift capacity to the hangar tax. However, having a modular platform that can cover the less common troop transport, collier and supply ship duties, and be swapped over to standard transport duties when those roles aren't needed is invaluable.

I'm also exploring the possibility of using these modular conveyors as jump tenders for merchant fleets. Storing the drive containers at fleet depots and only breaking them out when there's a need to travel outside the network of jump station. There are some definite limitations on this, since at my current tech level I wouldn't be able to use my modular conveyor design to shuttle my megafreighters around, since the ModCon is based on my standard 100K freighter hull and my megafreighters are 500K., but the idea still has merit.

[vorpal+5]

Wait you mean that a jump drive in a ship hosted by another ship make the bigger ship jump-able?

[kenlon]

I dunno yet, going to be trying it out in a test game later, but in theory it should work. Since you can jump vessels with a larger tonnage than the jump engine-bearing ship in C#, it should work. Worst case scenario, you have to launch the container holding the jump drive, tractor it, and then jump through.

[Alsadius]

Yeah, I was going to say that I'd want a container size closer to 30ktons, to allow a useful load (in particular, a standard cargo bay). Maybe have a smaller size that's a neat fraction of that amount, like 20' and 40' containers IRL, but it's nice to have options that get you the ability to haul full installations. You can also pack terraforming ships into that size if you want.

It's probably worse than dedicated ships tbh, but it's certainly interesting.

Actually, there's one thing you can do with them that might be interesting, if you don't mind the micro - have multiple sets of containers loading and unloading, and then have the ship just haul the one that's finished. That way you don't need to wait around a planet to load or unload, you just need to grab the containers into hangar, and that's instant. Especially for short runs, where cargo handling is 90% of your time, that could theoretically be more efficient.

[Froggiest1982]

Wait you mean that a jump drive in a ship hosted by another ship make the bigger ship jump-able?

http://aurora2.pentarch.org/index.php?topic=8495.msg111498#msg111498

As long as the jump drive capability covers the tonnage of the ship you are trying to make the jump.

[skoormit]

Worst case scenario, you have to launch the container holding the jump drive, tractor it, and then jump through.

You don't have to tractor it. A ship without engines can transit a jump point.

[kenlon]

Yeah, I was going to say that I'd want a container size closer to 30ktons, to allow a useful load (in particular, a standard cargo bay). Maybe have a smaller size that's a neat fraction of that amount, like 20' and 40' containers IRL, but it's nice to have options that get you the ability to haul full installations. You can also pack terraforming ships into that size if you want.

Right - I just went to 5K as a proof of concept, mostly, and they fit nicely in my refitted old troop transports. The ideal size for the containers is as large as possible, balanced against your needs as far as flexibility. If you only ever want to be able to carry one thing, then you want to fit your container to be 1x the capacity of your smallest Modular Conveyor, and build larger ones on a multiple of that value. If you want to be able to possibly bring fuel, supply points and missiles in a single ship, then it gets a bit more complicated.

It's probably worse than dedicated ships tbh, but it's certainly interesting.

It is quantifiably worse. Each commercial hangar holds 1K tons and masses 1.6K tons. That means for every 5K of containers you want to carry, you're allocating 8K of displacement. 

[Pedroig]

Except it takes 1/10th the time and cost to build commercial versus military.

[kenlon]

Except it takes 1/10th the time and cost to build commercial versus military.

That's irrelevant to a comparison between a commercial container ship and a commercial ship that dedicates the same space directly to whatever it's designed to haul, so I'm not sure what you're trying to say here.

[mergele]

How do you load/unload these? Can you just give a load/unload command and it uses the docked capacity or do you have to launch the container for loading and (more importantly) then dock them again?

[kenlon]

Since hangar-borne vessels are part of the fleet, you just load/unload them like anything else. See my attached screenshot - I have two Wenchow Modular Conveyors mixed in with my standard freighters, and as you can see, each container is holding .04 of a terraforming installation right now.

[Pedroig]

Except it takes 1/10th the time and cost to build commercial versus military.

That's irrelevant to a comparison between a commercial container ship and a commercial ship that dedicates the same space directly to whatever it's designed to haul, so I'm not sure what you're trying to say here.

Except a commercial container ship can "contain" military components without becoming military, a commercial ship cannot.

[kenlon]

. . . okay, sure, but what does that have to do with anything? Modular Conveyors like this are objectively worse than dedicated ships at performing the role the dedicated ship is built for. But they are still useful, because they give you flexibility.

[Pedroig]

Because many ships spend more time not performing the task they are designed to do and more time in transit.  Thus objectively being more efficient use of materials by having them be "paused" while "docked" in the container ship.