Thinking Out Loud

[Nathan_]

In terms of actual fuel I either find my self drowned under it, or having a dire sorium crunch. I do like the logistics expansion though, currently I just dump fuel on the homeworld and have all ships refuel there. Maybe Commercial starports should have a propulsion laser on them that propels commercial shipping with less fuel(or none if travelling between two starports), sort of like mass drivers. I don't find much reason to build starports thanks to cargo handling systems. Also compressed fuel storage seems like a high tech way to alleviate any problems that get brought up, though that has to be found. How will fuel impact fighters? would bringing along tanker fighters/facs be essentially required for strikes? Using fighter tankers causes some wierdness currently, capital ships try to refuel from them, and it makes them cumbersome to use.

Crew quarters looks good. The automation option could also be on weapons like auto-loaders vs manual loaders for rate of fire and such. There is currently no penalty for lost crew, and no way to get new crew short of repair yards though, something could be done there.

[TallTroll]

I'd be really careful about radically increasing the %age of space devoted to non-combat systems. Push it too far, and you'll make expeditionary warfare essentially impossible. You'd end up with 2 schools of design, System Defence (ships for local defence only, spend 98% of their lives tied up alongside port, tiny fuel and maint facilities, only ever go into space to fight an observed enemy) and Expeditionary, with the legs to take the fight to an enemy and patrol, but badly under-armed / armoured for their weight, comparative to current designs.

I also suspect that for Expeditionary designs, you'd be forced to take a very specialised division of labour approach to ship / fleet design, with dedicated sensor platforms, PD platforms, missile / beam platforms etc. Except at pretty high tech levels, ships capable of independent action would become nearly impossible to build. Parasitic weight penalties get big, fast

Increasing fuel consumption of missiles significantly would have pretty dire consequences for that aspect of combat too. For a given size of missile, you would have to give up range, warhead, agility or speed (or a combination), so missiles would either become less capable, or much bigger. In either case, PD would become proportionately much more powerful.

>> Starbase

>> There needs to be some plausible reason why it doesn't work with engines that also maintains internal consistency within the game.

Borrow / adapt the SFB "positional stabilisers" concept. You need one to make the maint component work (and possibly other things too, like allowing faster missile launch rates), and it disables engines, because your position is stabilised

Size 1 AMMs wouldn't suffer much, because they barely carry any fuel anyway. Going from 0.005 to 0.05 MSPs of fuel is nearly insignificant, and leaves you with nearly as good an AMM as you have now, against much worse, or much more expensive ASMs. It would certainly make ASM armour, and 2 stage missiles much more attractive though.

As for crew, what I think you're reaching for is a crew comfort score. In a fighter / FAC with a limited deployment time, crew comfort is a low priority, people can hot bunk and eat off their knees for a few days at a time, with no real adverse effects. For extended survey cruises for example, which may mean being in space for years at a time, crew would need more facilities to keep their edge. Overprovision of crew quarters (representing individual rooms, and private space), dedicated leisure areas, dedicated mess and galleys, hydroponics areas for fresh food, not Navy concentrates every day... This is what keeps survey crews sane and functional.

Run it as a "Crew Comfort Timer", similar to expected maint life. If you exceed it, morale / efficiency drops (presumably expressed as a temporary drop in crew grade). As you add more space for crew comfort, the timer rises, allowing longer deployment times with 100% of nominal crew efficiency. If crew areas get trashed by battle damage, you may have to send a ship home for repair even if its combat capable, because the crew are sleeping in corridors and the engine room, and living off unheated rations

[jseah]

In other words, nuclear powered spacecraft still need a lot of propellant, even though the mass of the actual reactor fuel is minimal in comparison. Nuclear powered spacecraft could use electrical engines such as VASIMR, which are far more fuel efficient, but the thrust is extremely low.

This though, nuclear thermal rockets might not be all that efficient in propellant mass, but in terms of fuel energy, they're very very good. 
Basically, you can refuel your reaction mass from water ice if your engine is built for it.  And ice is around in most places. 

Some sort of design option (processing plant) could allow a tanker to create propellant mass from any large icy body.  A hydrogen option (refuel from any gas giant) might also be possible. 

[Marthnn]

I've also considered some type of very large, expensive "self maintenance" module intended for bases. I just haven't found a plausible mechanic to prevent its use by very large warships.

I'm not a big fan of arbitrary rules . There needs to be some plausible reason why it doesn't work with engines that also maintains internal consistency within the game.

Here are some thoughts I put down before coming to a possible solution. I tend to see the self-maintenance module as a complex system integrated into the whole ship, rails and robotic monitoring/repair. Now I see why Steve haven't done it, it's less simple than it seems.


So, every ship requires maintenance, whether it be a fighter, battleship or death star. Equipment degrades with time and needs replacing or extensive repairs, and this consumes ressources. Currently, it can only be done while in orbit of a colony with maintenance facilities or modules. This in itself is a rather arbitraty mechanic, unless I'm missing something. Maintenance ships with cargo holds and the necessary ressources should be able to work anywhere...

A maintenance ship in orbit around a colony can't maintain itself, since every module is 5000 tons yet can only support 200 tons. A fleet of 25 of those could maintain themselves, since support capacity is pooled. Luckily, maintenance ships are commercial and don't need maintenance at all.

A self maintenance module is different altogether.

It could work in a similar way to jump engines. Suppose the module is of size 5000 tons, and can support a ship of size 10,000 tons. That leaves only 50% of the ship total size to put useful stuff (like cargo holds for maintenance ressources, engines and fuel tanks, crew quarters, armor, weapon systems, sensors, anything else...). This design will either be half as fast as other similar ships, or way under-armed. It might become useful for huge slow ships. The module can even have a minimum size of 100,000 tons, discouraging its use in common warships.

[xeryon]

Self maintenance module may also require regular delivery of raw materials to provide it's maintenance to itself.  Essentially an integrated cargo hold with a minimum amount to function and a smallish maximum quantity.  The need to be supplied with materials on a regular basis could work as a deterrent to being abused.

[Charlie Beeler]

Frankly Steve I'd leave both of these areas in Standard Aurora alone for now,  they are really trivial compared to areas that would really have a greater impact on play.

Tactical Intelligence:

We touched on some of this a couple of years ago.  Currently the tables hold a lot of data under the headings of TI.  The area that could use work is how it is displayed to the user.  A next step could be the ability to build player directed protocol interfaces for automated responses to events.  At the player level this should probably be restricted to tactical responses.

NPR variation

Once player level protocols function the NPR AI could be changed to run from similar protocols.  The NPR protocols can be be driven from racial characteristics as a starting point.  A possible expansion would be commander characteristics as well.

Electronic Warfare

ECM should degrade tactical intelligence gathering.  It should also be attenuated to range.

Add in that missile/ECM interaction should degrade hit probability as well as lock-on range.  Actually beams should also have range attenuation as well.


These are just some areas that would have greater impact on the game for the level of effort.  Yes, tactical intel and NPR AI changes will increase the CPU cycles needed to process a turn/cycle.  I still run Aurora on an old single core P4 machine and am more than willing to accept the level of CPU hit for the overall game play gains.

[sloanjh]

Two thoughts:

I like this idea.

I thought you might - especially when I used the a-word ("arbitrary") about the 1000 ton design break

John

[Moonshadow101]

If you put it in orbit of one of the moons, you could create a maintenance base on that moon use the existing maintenance modules. I've also considered some type of very large, expensive "self maintenance" module intended for bases. I just haven't found a plausible mechanic to prevent its use by very large warships.

Steve

Would that be such a terrible thing? I can't speak for the realism of it, but it seems to me that massive, relatively self-sustaining ships have a decent amount of sci-fi backing. What's wrong with a 2 million ton superdreadnaut having it's own maintenance? It would take a century to build up the spaceyard and half of one to actually build the thing in any case, so it'd be more of a dwarf-fortress-style megaproject than an actual military trump card.

Have I missed something, or is the objection purely philosophical?

[ardem]

I think space stations or ships without engines could come under a different category, when coming with maintenance and crew grading.

They are made to stay in space at a particular spot for long time (if not permanently), what we should be looking at is overhauling ships (repair ships)

That are made for the specific purpose with repairing in space, it takes a long time 5x a salvage operation and uses twice the maintenance needs.

These ships modules and cargo holds are large to carry the desired materials to overhaul ships and space stations. This new module would improve the ability to overhaul space defence platforms as well that have no engines.

I like the idea for crew degrade that are away from colony planets, however I think spacestations or large ships should have recreation facilities to counteract this issue. Or you need to be able to swap crews without swapping ships. Static vessels are designed to not be towed around the galaxy, you need to support them yes but with mobile assets else there would be no reason to build a static assets.

Like the idea with engine designs, but fuel changes will just through the balance of aurora out of wack.

[Rastaman]

Idea: A more voluminous form of engineering module, it doesn't take 50 tons but maybe 500 tons. It has the same effect as the smaller one as regards supplies and maintenance life, but due to its larger volume it provides maintenance access space for the other components. This means: Old components can be exchanged for new ones in the field. Replacing components that make up a relatively large part of the bases/ship's maintenance requirements like large sensors or large weapons systems would decrease the ship's maintenance clock accordingly.

Replacing these modules can be done with a maintenance capacity sufficient for their tonnage, ie a 2500 ton active sensor needs maintenance modules with a capacity of at least that. Removing, installing and, overhauling components takes time according to their size and complexity. They also take up cargo or maintenance modules on the maintenance ship.

There could be a "hull clock": the hull can only be repaired by a complete overhaul in a dry dock, with very large or distributed components like armor, tanks, magazines, life support, cargo bridges etc. The life of the hull can be measured in decades, but when it fails there is a hull and armor breach with components destruction, loss of life or maybe even total destruction. Like a weapons hit, this hull failure can damage e.g. the reactor causing it blow up and so on. Weapons hits themselves, even when not breaching defenses, might trigger a hull failure if the clock is high.

This way a base can be maintained by a smaller maint facility or tender than now, with the disadvantage to build and have spares on hand. The incentive for the player to refrain from using this as standard operating procedure for his battle fleets is that

A. engines and other large military components take a lot of time and effort to replace. A normal maint facility and normal overhauling works better and does not need many maint ships following them around.
B. maintenance access space takes up a lot of volume that can be spared on a base, but not on a ship.

It is not an arbitrary mechanic either, space base components need the same maintenance as ships - but because they can devote more volume to it maintenance becomes easier, with the consequence that they can stay in place for longer. Bases could have their own maint and cargo modules with a number of spare components, but they need to be replenished. I don't think many people will put tens of thousands of tons of maint modules cargo spaces on combat ships.

It could work in a similar way to jump engines. Suppose the module is of size 5000 tons, and can support a ship of size 10,000 tons. That leaves only 50% of the ship total size to put useful stuff (like cargo holds for maintenance ressources, engines and fuel tanks, crew quarters, armor, weapon systems, sensors, anything else...). This design will either be half as fast as other similar ships, or way under-armed. It might become useful for huge slow ships. The module can even have a minimum size of 100,000 tons, discouraging its use in common warships.

If you put in 5000 tons of engineering modules on a 10000 ton ship, how long will it be able to maintain itself under current rules? Decades? Maybe all this maintenance discussion is moot...

[Corik]

We are however assuming that it's impossible because of "an arbitrary reason" to attach engines to a Star Base. Why shouldn't be possible for a player to build a huge ship with maintenance capabilities? It would be expensive, it would use up a lot of fuel, it would need an incredible amount of engines (and it would be slow), it would have huge construction times but... If I have the resources, the technology and want to do it...

Yes, I'm sure it's kinda overpowered, but when a smart race manage to destroy that huge monster... you will probably think twice before trying to do it again.

The same thing for shipyards. Why they can only be at a population? What physic law forbids me to put a Star Base in the middle of space, with cargo capacity, manpower, maintenance capabilities and a pair of shipyards to build or repair other ships?

Maybe there are some programming limitations, but otherwise I think there's really nothing against this kind of things. And it would bring a lot of possibilities. Civilian lanes trading between our planets and nearby star bases, managing resources for star bases with shipyards, allowing our fleet to be stationed in a nearby star base for the crew to rest some time...

[MehMuffin]

Yeah, I really like the idea of being able to make a base in deep space, some sort of emergency area, billions of kilometers out from the system primary, with enough resources and ships and frozen population to rebuild my empire if something destroys the whole thing.

[UnLimiTeD]

Options for Space Stations;

A) Special ship type, requiring a habitat, hangar and cargo space, and having drastically raised crew requirements, maybe 3x. (Arbitrary^^)
It would have lower clock build up or some such.

B) New maintenance rules; I'd like it if insufficient maintenance facilities would still decrease clock progression, maybe not by a linear amount; 50% required maintenance would result in decreasing clock progression by 33%;
Then, a new self-Maintenance module would work on the basis that current ships being maintained are sitting at a planet as well;
So a ship self-Maintaining itself (In this case probably indeed linear, see above) wouldn't move. To have a self-maintaining, moving ship, the maintenance modules would require so much size it's hardly worth it.
But having enough maintenance modules on board to decrease clock ticking to +/- 10% while stationary, the ship could sit around for 20 years without much problem while still having a reasonable amount of space left for other equipment.

C) I like the idea of replacing components on ships with a special module; Requirements would not only require the module, but also sufficient hangar space for a small freighter to dock and cargo space to load the new component to be built in.

All those options could theoretically be combined.
Additionally, if you go with the concept of a "station core", with stuff being attached to it, that'd be a reason for arbitrary rules, stuff outside isn't encompassed by the drive field properly, thus limiting movement.
In combat, there'd be a small chance for one of those external components to be damaged before armor is breached.

Crap, this turned out a wall of text.

[Marthnn]

I like the idea of space stations having a distinct category, similar to PDCs. It feels right. Engines forbidden, custom rules like maybe higher crew requirements, the possibility of self-maintaining themselves...

Sure, they're in space and behave the same as spaceships. But we use bases very differently, having to tug them all the time. Their lack of autonomy makes them very special, at least to us.

[MehMuffin]

I like the idea of space stations having a distinct category, similar to PDCs. It feels right. Engines forbidden, custom rules like maybe higher crew requirements, the possibility of self-maintaining themselves...

Sure, they're in space and behave the same as spaceships. But we use bases very differently, having to tug them all the time. Their lack of autonomy makes them very special, at least to us.

I like the idea, too.

Also, I just realized that because of the burst radius of NA nuclear missiles, a single AMM is much more effective, and probably capable of taking out most of a salvo on its own, if it's fast enough.