Cargo holds and build time

[Peewee (OP)]

As explained in the original thread, I decided that basing construction time on ship size rather than shipyard size would allow players to build large ships in a reasonable time while preventing someone using shipyards designed for supertankers to build fishing boats. This is for both gameplay and realism reasons. To support your argument, perhaps you can point me to a shipyard in the real world that uses the slipways intended for carriers to build huge amounts of patrol boats?

Steve

But that's just my point.
I'm not designing them for building carriers. I'm designing them to mass-produce small ships.

As for an example... How about the Liberty ships made during WWII?
The US built a couple hundred shipyards, and could eventually build a ship in 10 days.

The successful application of mass production to the Liberty Ship building program meant that more ships could be constructed in a smaller amount of space and with unprecedented speed. Ten to twelve months were required in 1917-18 to build an oceangoing ship. Liberty ships, though a third larger, were built in 1943 in as little as 16 days in regular production in one of the most efficient yards.

By the fall of 1942, the production rate of the Liberty Ships had far exceeded the expectations of the Maritime Commission with an average construction period of 70 days. In September, Henry Kaiser’s Portland, Oregon yard set a record by completing the Joseph N. Teal in a mere 10 days. The Liberty ship ROBERT E. PEARY was built in a West Coast shipyard in the world's record time of one week flat. By 1944, the average time to build a ship was 42 days.
...
America's wartime shipbuilding capacity for oceangoing vessels was 2,000 or more annually, provided manpower and materials are available. Some yards building Liberty ships have delivered these 441-foot vessels in 16 days in regular production. The first Liberty ship required 244 days to build. By the end of 1945, the average building time for all Liberty shipyards was under 40 days.

Perhaps you'd prefer to use something other than capacity, but (in my own opinion) shipyards should be capable of improving their production rates.
Another example of mass production of smallish ships by large shipyards:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Venetian_Arsenal - supposedly capable of cranking out a ship every day

[Steve Walmsley]

As explained in the original thread, I decided that basing construction time on ship size rather than shipyard size would allow players to build large ships in a reasonable time while preventing someone using shipyards designed for supertankers to build fishing boats. This is for both gameplay and realism reasons. To support your argument, perhaps you can point me to a shipyard in the real world that uses the slipways intended for carriers to build huge amounts of patrol boats?

But that's just my point.
I'm not designing them for building carriers. I'm designing them to mass-produce small ships.

In that case, they wouldn't be able to build large ships. You can't have it both ways. Each shipyard has a number of slipways and the capacity of those slipways is the max size of the ships. A shipyard with one 50,000 capacity slipway is plainly designed to build large ships. A shipyard with fifty 1000 ton slipways is designed to produce a lot of small ships. Which one are we talking about? You can't have a slipway that is ideal for both building one large ship or lots of little ships, either in Aurora or in the real world.

Perhaps you'd prefer to use something other than capacity, but (in my own opinion) shipyards should be capable of improving their production rates.

That would be the Shipbuilding Rate tech.

Steve

[Steve Walmsley]

More examples of mass production of smallish ships by large shipyards:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Venetian_Arsenal - supposedly capable of cranking out a ship every day

I suggest you read the detail in the article. This Venetian Arsenal was a number of different shipyards clustered together. Not a single slipway that could build all ship sizes equally well. In Aurora, the equivalent of the Venetian Arsenal is all of the shipyard complexes of one planet

Steve

[Peewee (OP)]

As explained in the original thread, I decided that basing construction time on ship size rather than shipyard size would allow players to build large ships in a reasonable time while preventing someone using shipyards designed for supertankers to build fishing boats. This is for both gameplay and realism reasons. To support your argument, perhaps you can point me to a shipyard in the real world that uses the slipways intended for carriers to build huge amounts of patrol boats?

But that's just my point.
I'm not designing them for building carriers. I'm designing them to mass-produce small ships.

In that case, they wouldn't be able to build large ships. You can't have it both ways. Each shipyard has a number of slipways and the capacity of those slipways is the max size of the ships. A shipyard with one 50,000 capacity slipway is plainly designed to build large ships. A shipyard with fifty 1000 ton slipways is designed to produce a lot of small ships. Which one are we talking about? You can't have a slipway that is ideal for both building one large ship or lots of little ships, either in Aurora or in the real world.

But you could convert one to the other in the real world. It would probably cost more than building a new one, or be terribly inefficient, but you could still do it.
Isn't that what retooling is for? Optimizing a given shipyard for building a specific class of ship? If I had the space to build a billion ton ship, but needed to change things around to crank out small ships instead, I'd build small parts, then assemble those into components, then stick them on the ship. Most, if not all of those small parts/components could be made at the same time, because well, there's plenty of room to put in different workstations.

If I had a small slipway instead (the bare minimum space required to assemble a ship), I'd have to make each part and stick them on individually, and I wouldn't be able to re-tool it for a larger class without also expanding it first.

That would be the Shipbuilding Rate tech.

But that's a one-off deal that didn't help the 7-year-ship problem much.
Perhaps if it were a repeating tech like 'expand civ econ'...

EDIT: I just noticed the rank picture - I object to displaying any flag but flag0316.jpg as a personal identifier.  
Re-edit: I suppose I should mention that it's 3:00 AM here and neither of our arguments are making much sense to me anymore.

[Steve Walmsley]

What you don't seem to be able to accept is that each slipway is a fixed building slip with a maximum capacity. Retooling means setting up to build a different type of ship, not completely rebuilding the shipyard to convert that one large slipway into a lot of little slipways. For example, all ten Nimitz-class aircraft carriers were constructed in Newport News, Virginia, in the largest dry dock in the western hemisphere, dry dock 12, now 662 metres (2,172 ft) in length after a recent expansion. In Aurora terms this is one shipyard with a single 100,000 capacity slipway. Now what do you think the chances are that Newport News Shipbuilding are going to use this slipway to build a horde of cutters for the Coastguard?

But that's a one-off deal that didn't help the 7-year-ship problem much. Perhaps if it were a repeating tech like 'expand civ econ'...

There are 12 levels to the tech, ranging from 400 BP per year to 8000 BP per year.

We are going to have to agree to disagree because I am obviously not going to change your mind and I have bugs to fix.

Steve

[Bear]

Perhaps this is me being noobish and mistaken, but you could have those large sensors build by your planetary construction facilities and then the shipyards are merely installing the super expensive electronics onto what may otherwise be a typical ship.  I think that's how it works now, or at least that seems like the way it logically should.

On that note, I think it would be neat if you could earmark a portion of your planetary construction capacity for "shipyard assist," and they will then set about producing the most expensive ship components for ships currently under construction.

[Hawkeye]

Perhaps this is me being noobish and mistaken, but you could have those large sensors build by your planetary construction facilities and then the shipyards are merely installing the super expensive electronics onto what may otherwise be a typical ship.  I think that's how it works now, or at least that seems like the way it logically should.

On that note, I think it would be neat if you could earmark a portion of your planetary construction capacity for "shipyard assist," and they will then set about producing the most expensive ship components for ships currently under construction.

In a way, you can allready.
On the economics screen, industry tab, you can select "ship components" and start prefabricating parts for your ships, that your shipyards will use when building ships (and thus speed up construction). I usually build enignes in large numbers because, for one, most ships use quite a few of them and two, tech advances not as fast as with other stuff, and I´d hate being stuck with a lot of outdated parts, that I can scrap for only 30% return

[The Shadow]

On the economics screen, industry tab, you can select "ship components" and start prefabricating parts for your ships, that your shipyards will use when building ships (and thus speed up construction). I usually build enignes in large numbers because, for one, most ships use quite a few of them and two, tech advances not as fast as with other stuff, and I´d hate being stuck with a lot of outdated parts, that I can scrap for only 30% return

I keep finding out new things about this game.  Do the shipyards automatically use the built parts, or do you have to tell them somehow?

I've also noticed (having salvaged a number of wrecks) that I end up in the Class Design screen with parts with a (D) in front of them.  Are these parts from the wrecks?  If so, doesn't that mean that if I design a class with them, that I can only build so many ships of that class?

[UnLimiTeD]

They should use them rather automatically.
Helps a lot when you really quickly need s certain ship, as devoting all your industrial capacity to building those parts can produce the ship in days.
I think the components need to be finished before the ship is laid down, though.

[Hawkeye]

I've also noticed (having salvaged a number of wrecks) that I end up in the Class Design screen with parts with a (D) in front of them.  Are these parts from the wrecks?  If so, doesn't that mean that if I design a class with them, that I can only build so many ships of that class?

Correct on both

[Steve Walmsley]

On the economics screen, industry tab, you can select "ship components" and start prefabricating parts for your ships, that your shipyards will use when building ships (and thus speed up construction). I usually build engines in large numbers because, for one, most ships use quite a few of them and two, tech advances not as fast as with other stuff, and I´d hate being stuck with a lot of outdated parts, that I can scrap for only 30% return

I keep finding out new things about this game.  Do the shipyards automatically use the built parts, or do you have to tell them somehow?

They will use them automatically. This is a good way to reduce the build times of large, expensive ships. For example, if need terraformers quickly, build the terraforming modules using planetary industry so the shipyards don't have to build that portion of the ship.

I've also noticed (having salvaged a number of wrecks) that I end up in the Class Design screen with parts with a (D) in front of them.  Are these parts from the wrecks?  If so, doesn't that mean that if I design a class with them, that I can only build so many ships of that class?

(D) indicates a component that you have available but can't build yourself. This is usually from salvage, scrapping or ruins. You can design classes using this component but can only build ships of that design as long as you have the components in your stockpile. For example, if you found six advanced gravitational sensors, you could design ships using those components but once the six components had been used by your shipyards, you couldn't build any more ships of that design until you found more of the component. A big decision you may have to make when you find advanced components is whether to incorporate them in your ships or disaasmble them for potential tech knowledge.

If you find your list of components in class design is being cluttered by (D) components you can either hide them all using the 'Own Tech Only' checkbox or hide them individually by using the Obso Comp button (which sets a component as obsolete).

Steve

[The Shadow]

(D) indicates a component that you have available but can't build yourself. This is usually from salvage, scrapping or ruins.

Huh.  While I *have* seen things like that, I've also seen items marked with (D) that duplicate things I already have.  (Sensors, mostly.)

[Brian Neumann]

I used to have problems with components salvaged when they matched my own designs.  If I designed a ship using my own tech design the program would ignore the salvaged components.  This would only happen if the system needed to be designed.  If for example I had a bunch of cryo transport modules and salvaged them there is no difference.  My work around was to dissasemble the offending salvage components and then use the sm function to create a matching number of my components.  

Hope this helps
Brian

[Steve Walmsley]

(D) indicates a component that you have available but can't build yourself. This is usually from salvage, scrapping or ruins.

Huh.  While I *have* seen things like that, I've also seen items marked with (D) that duplicate things I already have.  (Sensors, mostly.)

It's because they are components designed by an alien empire that happen to have the same name or the same stats as one of your components. They are still identified separately in the database so they show up as different components. Perhaps what I need to do is check existing components for matches when you salvage alien components and convert them at that point.

Steve

[sloanjh]

They are still identified separately in the database so they show up as different components. Perhaps what I need to do is check existing components for matches when you salvage alien components and convert them at that point.

And/or change the display code to post-pend the empire name for any tech that doesn't belong to the displaying race.  For example if I (the Terran Empire) salvaged a bunch of cryo modules from the Troglo Hierarchy, then they'd show up as

Cryo Module (Troglo Hierarchy)

or

Cryo Module (Troglo)

depending on if empire names are saved in one part (Troglo Hierarchy) or two parts (Troglo and Hiearchy).

John