Updating Towed Installations

[skoormit]

On a large enough station, so what?
Adding a refuelling system and 1ML tank to a 2.5MT station increases the size and cost by less than 0.1%.
So, sure, by the time you build 999 of these, you could have built one more if you hadn't been so wasteful.
OTOH, if just once it comes in handy to have that fuel available, it was probably worth it.

But by the second one you could have paid for the tanker, which is useful on its own.

Since we both seem happy to whittle away at this exceedingly fine point, I'll follow up on this.

You provide an interesting alternative.
A tanker does provide a lot more flexibility. It can go off and refuel itself if needed, or go refill an empty fleet, or perform an emergency lifepod rescue, among other things.

Let's suppose our station has 500 orbital mining modules (plus the de rigueur bridge and engineering space).

In my Add-Fuel-To-Huge-Stations plan, I add a refueling system and a Fuel Storage - Very Large.
Station weight and cost:  2,541,848 tons; 67,353 BP.

In your Fuel-Tankers-Sold-Separately plan, nothing is added to the station.
Station weight and cost:  2,540,317 tons; 67,326.9 BP.

My extra cost is 26.1BP per station.
My station weighs .06% more. Effectively zero change in tug speed.

Let's say a cheap tanker has a single size-25 engine @30% power, plus a refueling system and a Fuel Storage - Very Large (same as I put on my station).
At Improved Nuclear Pulse tech, the engine costs 11.25 BP. The tanker moves 1492km/s and has a nominal range of 2,871.4Bkm.
It's not a great design for long-range fuel hauling (too much fuel burned vs hauled on long trips) or for military fleet logistics (too slow, too small). But it is cheap, and if our only intended use is to park it near our orbital fleets, it's fine.
Tanker weight and cost:  2,513 tons; 72.7 BP.

You wouldn't quite be able to afford one with the savings from two stations--you'd need ~2.8. But for what I assume was top-of-the-head, back-of-the-napkin guesstimating, you were close enough to be called correct.

There is the cost of the shipyard to consider.
2400 BP is quite a hole to crawl out of.
If you are making this shipyard just to avoid putting fuel tanks on big stations, I'd say it's never going to be worth it.
But the shipyard employs a quarter-million workers. If you have more workers than you have others uses for, this is a boon. You make worker taxes from it.
(If you have a worker shortage, on the other hand, this is a problem. Also, please tell me how you manage to have a worker shortage. I can never create jobs fast enough in my empires.)

At the end of the day, it probably just comes down to playstyle. I like the simplicity of having an emergency fuel tank on my orbital stations. I have enough other tankers moving around my systems that the extra flexibility of parking a cheap tanker with my orbital fleet isn't going to add much value.

[Zincat]

But if you were roleplaying, there would be probably merit in avoiding to put dangerous fuel on such a civilian station 
Actually.... is TN fuel even dangerous?   

Jokes aside, the question in interesting. With the fact that we now need a refueling system for fuel transfer and can build these stations with industry, I believe it does make sense to have at least some fuel capacity and a refueling system on them, unless you're 100% sure that won't be needed. But...

I'm thinking of edge cases here, a warship or a civilian ship might get stranded close by, or your tankers be destroyed.
Since you can no longer transfer fuel between ships normally, having this capability on stations make sense. It can serve as a last ditch alternative in case you need it, and the cost to have this alternative is negligible compared to the cost of the station itself.

This is of course only true with large or very large stations. In case smller stations are used, then yes the added cost could be significant.

... on a side note, I'm actually considering having a "refueling warship" for my next campaign. Basically, a tanker but with enough armor, defenses and speed to travel with the fleet. Maybe not all that great if we only look at efficiency, but for roleplay it does make sense. I never did something like this in vb aurora, it was not needed. But now...

[Ri0Rdian]

...
... on a side note, I'm actually considering having a "refueling warship" for my next campaign. Basically, a tanker but with enough armor, defenses and speed to travel with the fleet. Maybe not all that great if we only look at efficiency, but for roleplay it does make sense. I never did something like this in vb aurora, it was not needed. But now...

It can even be efficient, though only if you can live with another ship class for very similar role.

I sometimes use 2 tanker classes. Smaller and faster one that usually transports fuel from harvesters to colony or between colonies plus works as a fuel rat. And a much bigger and slower one with armour, some CIWS, a lot more fuel capacity to refuel fleet and also has rescue ability for survivors (I hate having extra ship for that). Works like charm.

[SpikeTheHobbitMage]

On a large enough station, so what?
Adding a refuelling system and 1ML tank to a 2.5MT station increases the size and cost by less than 0.1%.
So, sure, by the time you build 999 of these, you could have built one more if you hadn't been so wasteful.
OTOH, if just once it comes in handy to have that fuel available, it was probably worth it.

But by the second one you could have paid for the tanker, which is useful on its own.

Since we both seem happy to whittle away at this exceedingly fine point, I'll follow up on this.

You provide an interesting alternative.
A tanker does provide a lot more flexibility. It can go off and refuel itself if needed, or go refill an empty fleet, or perform an emergency lifepod rescue, among other things.

Let's suppose our station has 500 orbital mining modules (plus the de rigueur bridge and engineering space).

In my Add-Fuel-To-Huge-Stations plan, I add a refueling system and a Fuel Storage - Very Large.
Station weight and cost:  2,541,848 tons; 67,353 BP.

In your Fuel-Tankers-Sold-Separately plan, nothing is added to the station.
Station weight and cost:  2,540,317 tons; 67,326.9 BP.

My extra cost is 26.1BP per station.
My station weighs .06% more. Effectively zero change in tug speed.

Let's say a cheap tanker has a single size-25 engine @30% power, plus a refueling system and a Fuel Storage - Very Large (same as I put on my station).
At Improved Nuclear Pulse tech, the engine costs 11.25 BP. The tanker moves 1492km/s and has a nominal range of 2,871.4Bkm.
It's not a great design for long-range fuel hauling (too much fuel burned vs hauled on long trips) or for military fleet logistics (too slow, too small). But it is cheap, and if our only intended use is to park it near our orbital fleets, it's fine.
Tanker weight and cost:  2,513 tons; 72.7 BP.

You wouldn't quite be able to afford one with the savings from two stations--you'd need ~2.8. But for what I assume was top-of-the-head, back-of-the-napkin guesstimating, you were close enough to be called correct.

There is the cost of the shipyard to consider.
2400 BP is quite a hole to crawl out of.
If you are making this shipyard just to avoid putting fuel tanks on big stations, I'd say it's never going to be worth it.
But the shipyard employs a quarter-million workers. If you have more workers than you have others uses for, this is a boon. You make worker taxes from it.
(If you have a worker shortage, on the other hand, this is a problem. Also, please tell me how you manage to have a worker shortage. I can never create jobs fast enough in my empires.)

At the end of the day, it probably just comes down to playstyle. I like the simplicity of having an emergency fuel tank on my orbital stations. I have enough other tankers moving around my systems that the extra flexibility of parking a cheap tanker with my orbital fleet isn't going to add much value.

If we whittle it fine enough, do you think we could kill EndbringersSpoilers with it?

This argument assumes that we a) use a custom tanker design for this and b) use a dedicated tanker for the orbital fleet.
counter-a) You have a shipyard for your existing tanker fleet.  There is no need for a custom design.
counter-b) Unless your tug is constantly on long haul duty, in which case it could be argued* that it is under-tanked, then occasionally pulling an idle tanker from your existing fleet should not be onerous as you need some spare tanker capacity anyway to deal with peak demands.

*A ready counter argument is that having support tankers work in shifts for very long hauls may be more efficient than having sufficient tankage on the tug and it allows the tug to remain in the field without needing to return for fuel.

But if you were roleplaying, there would be probably merit in avoiding to put dangerous fuel on such a civilian station 
Actually.... is TN fuel even dangerous?   

Jokes aside, the question in interesting. With the fact that we now need a refueling system for fuel transfer and can build these stations with industry, I believe it does make sense to have at least some fuel capacity and a refueling system on them, unless you're 100% sure that won't be needed. But...

I'm thinking of edge cases here, a warship or a civilian ship might get stranded close by, or your tankers be destroyed.
Since you can no longer transfer fuel between ships normally, having this capability on stations make sense. It can serve as a last ditch alternative in case you need it, and the cost to have this alternative is negligible compared to the cost of the station itself.

This is of course only true with large or very large stations. In case smller stations are used, then yes the added cost could be significant.

... on a side note, I'm actually considering having a "refueling warship" for my next campaign. Basically, a tanker but with enough armor, defenses and speed to travel with the fleet. Maybe not all that great if we only look at efficiency, but for roleplay it does make sense. I never did something like this in vb aurora, it was not needed. But now...

In my experience if you've lost all of your tankers and tugs to enemy action then refuelling is the least of your problems.

A station can only move at 1 km/s, so unless the stranded ship is very close by it would probably be faster to build a new tanker or tug.

If you want refuelling capability on a body then it is simpler to drop a refuelling facility on it and truck some fuel over.  If you used TN start then you even get one for free.

It wasn't required in VB but combat tankers weren't exactly unheard of either.

...
... on a side note, I'm actually considering having a "refueling warship" for my next campaign. Basically, a tanker but with enough armor, defenses and speed to travel with the fleet. Maybe not all that great if we only look at efficiency, but for roleplay it does make sense. I never did something like this in vb aurora, it was not needed. But now...

It can even be efficient, though only if you can live with another ship class for very similar role.

I sometimes use 2 tanker classes. Smaller and faster one that usually transports fuel from harvesters to colony or between colonies plus works as a fuel rat. And a much bigger and slower one with armour, some CIWS, a lot more fuel capacity to refuel fleet and also has rescue ability for survivors (I hate having extra ship for that). Works like charm.

I used to use four tanker classes:
a) Big, max efficiency tanker for fuel harvesters.
b) Big, fast jump tanker for battle fleet support.
c) Small (3kt), jump tankers for survey fleet support.  (No longer viable because military jump drives don't work with commercial engines any more.)
d) Small (500t) fast tactical tankers for FAC/fighter support.  (No longer viable due to fuel system tonnage.)

I miss my smol tankers. 

[Rince Wind]

But if you were roleplaying, there would be probably merit in avoiding to put dangerous fuel on such a civilian station 
Actually.... is TN fuel even dangerous?   

It isn't. The engines on the other hand...

[Borealis4x]

It doesn't make sense to me that you can build stations from factories but cant modify or scrap them from said factories. I build million-ton terraforming stations, I'm certainly never going to have a million ton yard anytime soon.

Same for fighters; why can you build them using fighter factories but need whole yards to scrap or repair just one?

This is the kind of thing that SM mode is for.

Want to refit your big station?
Drag it back to a factory location, build the new components, delete the old ship, and SM-add the new one.

Well, I did end up doing that just without jumping through all those hoops...

But its still not cheating, right?

But seriously, I think that stations, fighters, and ground units (expecially ground units) should all be able to refit and repair from their designated factories.