Size of Commercial Ships / Civilian Contracts

[SteveAlt (OP)]

It's all pretty interesting and I'm looking forward to seeing what happens.

A couple of thoughts though.

Is there any way at all to at least change the HS size to 100 instead of 50? It really would make my life easier and it wouldn't affect everything else too badly.

As I mentioned, I have been lazy with the programming and the 50 ton per HS assumption would be hard to change. It's just in so many places so that I would be tracking down bugs for quite a while

Are you going to fractionalize factories and allow current sized cargo holds to move them in pieces or just simply up the cargo hold size so the smallest hold will hold a full factory? I think having the ability to make small tramp freighters that couldn't move a whole factory at once would be kind of fun.

Cargo holds will remain exactly as they are now in terms of cost, carrying capacity, etc. They will just be larger. The only thing I will probably change is their capacity for minerals. In that case, even a small freighter with one cargo hold would be able to move 2000 tons of minerals. I won't be fractionalising factories and mines, etc as it would involve a lot of work and the gameplay improvement would be fairly minor.

With the new commercial engine, how about 20 instead of 25 HS for it? I just think the 3x loss of speed and increase in cost really makes it hard to justify colonization on the imperial side of things.

The 25 HS is fairly arbitrary. It was the mass-power ratio that was the important aspect. If i made it 20 HS I would have to drop the power by twenty percent. In any event, the 25 HS commercial engine has 50% of the power of five 5 HS military engines so the speed reduction in terms of the engines is only 50% (to maintain the engine progression). It's the mass-power ratio that will have the additional impact. Besides, they use only one tenth of the fuel of an equivalent power military engine so they have a considerable advantage in that area.

Removing freighter management would be nice though.

I am almost certainly going to do that.

Steve

[ShadoCat]

How does the line of reasoning sound? Obviously more detail is needed but does it have the right feel?

Something else to deal with: jump ships.

There has to be a way of making jump ships that can transport these ships without huge jump drive costs.  Also, building fuel tanks out gets even more cheesy at this point.

Unless we want to limit these ships to jump gate travel, the game needs some sort of civilian jump drive.  The trick is how to you make a jump engine for the cargo ships cheep enough to be competitive without just making a cheap combat jump engine.

One thought, make the commercial jump drive be 5x the hull spaces but cheaper.  The object is to make is so large that any ship carrying it would not be able to defend itself.  It would also mean that the jump ship would not have to have enough fuel tanks to hold the entire empire's fuel reserve (a bit of exaggeration).

Another thought is to lower the minimum armor for commercial ships.  That way the hulls are cheaper and more fragile.

[Brian Neumann]

Another thought is to lower the minimum armor for commercial ships. That way the hulls are cheaper and more fragile.

The problem with making the civilian ships more fragile is when you need to go into a nebula for some reason.  I have come across very good habitable planets in nebula's.  The only drawback was the slow speed of ships getting to the planet (strength 8 nebula).  If I can't put a few levels of armor on my freighters and colonist they would be extremely slow (about 300km/s speed)'

Brian

[SteveAlt (OP)]

Something else to deal with: jump ships.

There has to be a way of making jump ships that can transport these ships without huge jump drive costs.  Also, building fuel tanks out gets even more cheesy at this point.

Unless we want to limit these ships to jump gate travel, the game needs some sort of civilian jump drive.  The trick is how to you make a jump engine for the cargo ships cheep enough to be competitive without just making a cheap combat jump engine.

One thought, make the commercial jump drive be 5x the hull spaces but cheaper.  The object is to make is so large that any ship carrying it would not be able to defend itself.  It would also mean that the jump ship would not have to have enough fuel tanks to hold the entire empire's fuel reserve (a bit of exaggeration).

Another thought is to lower the minimum armor for commercial ships.  That way the hulls are cheaper and more fragile.

I think I am leaning toward the idea that jump gates will be necessary for this type of activity. Jump drives would become something that the military uses for deep space exploration and wars. Within 'civilised' space, the norm would be jump gates. Sort of like Babylon 5. It will still be possible to build smaller colony ships that will work within the existing jump drive limits and by about jump drive efficiency 8, jump drives large enough for freighters would be just about possible. Because of this, as discussed in another thread, building jump gates would become easier. I'll woul probably make the tech cheaper, drastically increase the size of the construction modules but remove the need for jump gate components.

If I was going to create a "civilian" jump drive, the easiest way to make it unattractive for the military but useful for civilians would be to have it disrupt sensors and weapons for several hours rather than about the existing minute or so.

Steve

[jfelten]

I would be happy to see the need for jump gate components to go away.  It is simply a hassle to keep delivering them when and where needed.  

I was going to re-suggest commercial engines but you beat me to that.  As for commercial engine fuel you could techno-babble that the commercial engines use a lower grade fuel based on a less pure variant of sorium which is plentiful but is not represented in the game since it is useless to the military, or something along those lines.  

Since cryogenic transport of people is still in the science fiction realm you can do pretty much whatever you like with it.  Perhaps all the water is techno-magically removed (say it is necessary to avoid ice crystal damage) so each colonist only weighs a few Kg during shipment and is reconstituted on delivery from local sources.  Freeze dried colonists.

For that matter, one could easily expect that a "non Newtonian" technology would make volume more important than mass.  

Are not the super freighters/tankers a relatively recent development in wet navy history?  The BB Yamato didn't displace that much less than the Queen Mary for example.  I don't think that aspect translates well in to the space navy realm.

[Hawkeye]

I would be happy to see the need for jump gate components to go away.  It is simply a hassle to keep delivering them when and where needed.  

<Snip>

Are not the super freighters/tankers a relatively recent development in wet navy history?  The BB Yamato didn't displace that much less than the Queen Mary for example.  I don't think that aspect translates well in to the space navy realm.

I´m with you on this.
Of course, I am also more a WW2 guy, where BBs and CVs where much larger than your average commercial vessels (Back then, a tanker of 10.000t was a giant, while regular BBs massed 35.000 to 50.000t (leaving Yamato and Musashi aside) and CVs were around 25.000t. Those men of war dwarfed anything commercial, except for a few luxury liners. Even the famous liberty ships massed only some 14.000t (yes, I googled this )

Also, making jumpgates mandatory takes away a choice. No more choosing between building them and opening a system to alien attack but also easing movement of fleets, military and merchant alike, or using jump engines exclusively, playing it more safe, but dealing with the additional hassle that comes with this approach.

Of course, I can live with it, just wanted to show my thoughts


Hawkeye, Germany

[Steve Walmsley]

I´m with you on this.
Of course, I am also more a WW2 guy, where BBs and CVs where much larger than your average commercial vessels (Back then, a tanker of 10.000t was a giant, while regular BBs massed 35.000 to 50.000t (leaving Yamato and Musashi aside) and CVs were around 25.000t. Those men of war dwarfed anything commercial, except for a few luxury liners. Even the famous liberty ships massed only some 14.000t (yes, I googled this )

Also, making jumpgates mandatory takes away a choice. No more choosing between building them and opening a system to alien attack but also easing movement of fleets, military and merchant alike, or using jump engines exclusively, playing it more safe, but dealing with the additional hassle that comes with this approach.

Of course, I can live with it, just wanted to show my thoughts

The original reason for increasing the size of freighters, etc was not to create a modern balance but to more realistically reflect the transport requirements of colonists and factories. The similarity to modern warship / freighters comparisons is a coincidence, although I prefer the idea of large commercial shipping. Bear in mind that even in WW2, 14,000 ton liberty ships and 10,000 ton freighters were usually escorted by 2000 ton destroyers and were larger than many cruisers. Yes, the capital ships were larger than the freighters but that can happen in Aurora too as tech levels rise. If I wanted to maintain parity between smaller warships and freighters I would have to up the size of all warship systems, which would be a huge undertaking. Besides, in WW2 they were not sending thousands of colonists and entire industrial infrastructures across huge distance. If you consider troopships as colonist equivalents then both Queen Mary and Queen Elizabeth were larger than the Yamato. Several other ocean liners serving as troop ships were larger than battleships. Even US attack transports such as the Harris, Dickman and Bayfield classes which carried  less than 2000 troops and were of 16,000 - 21,000 tons. Compare that to colony ships with similar displacements in Aurora now carrying 50,000 colonists - in v4.0, they were only 4000 tons!

With regard to jump gates, that is an inevitable result of the changes to commercial shipping. If I make jump drives large enough for to be used economically for freighters then they become almost de rigeur for much smaller warships. It is a paradigm shift in Aurora, which makes the distinction between military and commercial activites much more apparent but the more I think about it, the happier I am. Jump gates (which are much easier to build in v4.1) become the sign of 'civilised' space whereas the vast expanse outside the jump gate network becomes the province of explorers and warships. Maintaining a commercial empire within the network is straightforward with limited micromanagement required while operating outside is where players will need to spend more effort.

With regard to alien invasion, I think the suggestion of destroyable jump gates may be a possibility but they would have to be pretty difficult to destroy.

Steve

[Steve Walmsley]

By the way I should point out that you can still create jump ships large enough for the new freighter sizes, as an alternative to jump gates. It is just a lot more expensive. If the Commonwealth built a jump drive large enough for their 35,000 ton freighters it would be as follows:

Code: [Select]

Large Jump Drive
Max Ship Size: 720 (36000 tons)     Max Squadron Size: 3     Max Dist: 50
Jump Engine Size: 90 HS    Efficiency: 8    Jump Engine HTK: 18
Cost: 2025    Crew: 450
Materials Required: 405x Duranium  1620x Sorium
Development Cost for Project: 20250RPExpensive but by no means completely unaffordable

Steve

[Doug Olchefske]

As an example, the container ship Emma Maersk at 170,000 tons is larger than any warship ever built and is only $145 million. Compare that to a new 8000 ton Type 45 Destroyer with a price tag of about $1.5 billion. The container ship is twenty times larger and costs ten times less, or about 200x less on a per ton basis. Ignoring size, the cost ratio for freighters vs warships in Aurora is not quite as drastic but still noticeable. The sizes though are comparable and in most cases the warships are larger, which doesn't reflect either the current situation or a likely future scenario. In order to create larger commercial ships without requiring massive shipyard investment while retaining realistic limits on warship construction, I can't see any alternative except for two different types of shipyard

Steve

Keep in mind that you're comparing two different measurements. Warships are rated as displacement tons while commercial ships usually are GRT. There's a big enough difference between them that the two shouldn't really be compared. As for the cost, freighters are mostly steel and engines. Warships cost about the same for those portions. It's all the expensive stuff jammed into the warship (and the lack of volume production) that raises the cost so much.

You can go for two different shipyards which is probably more accurate historically, or you could flag the non military technologies and have them built at a faster rate. The first would likely be easier for you.

[Steve Walmsley]

Keep in mind that you're comparing two different measurements. Warships are rated as displacement tons while commercial ships usually are GRT. There's a big enough difference between them that the two shouldn't really be compared. As for the cost, freighters are mostly steel and engines. Warships cost about the same for those portions. It's all the expensive stuff jammed into the warship (and the lack of volume production) that raises the cost so much.

That's a very good point. I actually hadn't registered the difference. I was familiar with displacement tons, which is the weight of water displaced by the ship, but I didn't realise that Gross Register Tonnage was based on volume. According to Wiki, each 100 cubic feet of volume is equal to one GRT. If that volume was filled with water it would actually mass 2.8 tons. I assume that means that when full their displacement could be considerably more than their GRT depending on the density of their cargo. I know Traveller bases spacecraft design on volume but, because I wanted a realistic power-mass ratio, I decided to base mine on mass. However, for simplicity I decided not to cater for changes in that mass. I agree that warships should be far more expensive on a per HS basis.

You can go for two different shipyards which is probably more accurate historically, or you could flag the non military technologies and have them built at a faster rate. The first would likely be easier for you.

Yes, I have decided to go for two different shipyard types.

Steve

[Doug Olchefske]

That's a very good point. I actually hadn't registered the difference. I was familiar with displacement tons, which is the weight of water displaced by the ship, but I didn't realise that Gross Register Tonnage was based on volume. According to Wiki, each 100 cubic feet of volume is equal to one GRT. If that volume was filled with water it would actually mass 2.8 tons. I assume that means that when full their displacement could be considerably more than their GRT depending on the density of their cargo. I know Traveller bases spacecraft design on volume but, because I wanted a realistic power-mass ratio, I decided to base mine on mass. However, for simplicity I decided not to cater for changes in that mass. I agree that warships should be far more expensive on a per HS basis.

Steve

It gets worse than that. You can enclose some of the decking and boom, your GRT just went up. Royal Caribbean ordered a ship in 2006 (Oasis class). It's about 20 meters longer than a Nimitz class carrier and about the same beam at the waterline but 3 meters less draft. It will be 220,000 GRT, but will displace only 100,000 vs. 97,000 for Nimitz.

On the other hand, Tirpitz had a deadweight displacement of 50,000 but a GRT of 28,000.

Since the weight of the stuff your moving in freighters is somewhat nebulous, you should feel free to stuff about as much as you want into one.

/Pedant

[jfelten]

By the way I should point out that you can still create jump ships large enough for the new freighter sizes, as an alternative to jump gates. It is just a lot more expensive. If the Commonwealth built a jump drive large enough for their 35,000 ton freighters it would be as follows:

Code: [Select]

Large Jump Drive
Max Ship Size: 720 (36000 tons)     Max Squadron Size: 3     Max Dist: 50
Jump Engine Size: 90 HS    Efficiency: 8    Jump Engine HTK: 18
Cost: 2025    Crew: 450
Materials Required: 405x Duranium  1620x Sorium
Development Cost for Project: 20250RPExpensive but by no means completely unaffordable

Steve

20,250 is a lot research points for young empires, so they would have to make a hard decision if they wanted this.

[Randy]

If I was going to create a "civilian" jump drive, the easiest way to make it unattractive for the military but useful for civilians would be to have it disrupt sensors and weapons for several hours rather than about the existing minute or so.

You could also make them spectacularly visible - ie emit EM/thermal energy visible across the system...

 

[Steve Walmsley]

If I was going to create a "civilian" jump drive, the easiest way to make it unattractive for the military but useful for civilians would be to have it disrupt sensors and weapons for several hours rather than about the existing minute or so.

You could also make them spectacularly visible - ie emit EM/thermal energy visible across the system...

That's a good idea too.

Steve

[simon]

Somewhere in the midst of the forum I remember you saying you liked what Weber did in the Honorverse before the pods arrived. One aspect that also i liked was vessel tonnage, if you draw a graph of naval vessel tonnage in history you get a pretty step gradient which could be extended into the aurora time-line, backing this is the fact that in aurora the distance scale is much greater than the planetary distances, I fear it may be too late to change such a basic parameter of the game but i believe it can smooth out inconsistencies within the game.