Building by committee

[Theodidactus (OP)]

in light of that...

Hanger modules including fuel for fighters and magazines for fighters (no maintenance necessary)(3)

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hanger class Space Station    49 950 tons     610 Crew     5763.88 BP      TCS 999  TH 0  EM 0
1 km/s     Armour 12-120     Shields 0-0     Sensors 1/1/0/0     Damage Control Rating 0     PPV 0
Maint Life 0 Years     MSP 0    AFR 9990%    IFR 138.7%    1YR 0    5YR 0    Max Repair 12 MSP
Intended Deployment Time: 6 months    Flight Crew Berths 0    
Hangar Deck Capacity 40000 tons     Magazine 180    

Fuel Capacity 250 000 Litres    Range N/A

Neon Rocket (14)  Speed: 50 000 km/s   End: 0.3m    Range: 0.9m km   WH: 10    Size: 3    TH: 250/150/75
Largo-Lanza Antiship Missile (12)  Speed: 50 000 km/s   End: 1.6m    Range: 4.9m km   WH: 14    Size: 3    TH: 183/110/55
Photon Bomb (10)  Speed: 45 000 km/s   End: 2m    Range: 5.4m km   WH: 50    Size: 10    TH: 165/99/49

Missile to hit chances are vs targets moving at 3000 km/s, 5000 km/s and 10,000 km/s

This design is classed as a Military Vessel for maintenance purposes

Habitation modules including luxury passenger modules for alien and human dignitaries and analysts and such (no maintenance necessary)(2)

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Habitation class Space Station    108 850 tons     1110 Crew     3539.2 BP      TCS 2177  TH 0  EM 0
1 km/s     Armour 5-203     Shields 0-0     Sensors 1/1/0/0     Damage Control Rating 1     PPV 0
MSP 20    Max Repair 12 MSP
Intended Deployment Time: 6 months    Spare Berths 1    
Passengers 250    
Recreational Facilities


This design is classed as a Commercial Vessel for maintenance purposes


Storage module that holds fuel, missiles, and supplies (1)

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Fuel class Space Station    15 000 tons     33 Crew     1155.2 BP      TCS 300  TH 0  EM 0
1 km/s     Armour 8-54     Shields 0-0     Sensors 1/1/0/0     Damage Control Rating 0     PPV 0
Maint Life 0 Years     MSP 0    AFR 3000%    IFR 41.7%    1YR 0    5YR 0    Max Repair 12 MSP
Intended Deployment Time: 6 months    Spare Berths 0   
Magazine 816   

Fuel Capacity 10 150 000 Litres    Range N/A

Paladin Antimissile Missile (100)  Speed: 32 000 km/s   End: 2m    Range: 3.9m km   WH: 1    Size: 1    TH: 202/121/60
Cobalt Torpedo (36)  Speed: 50 000 km/s   End: 1.7m    Range: 5.2m km   WH: 20    Size: 6    TH: 250/150/75
Polaris Missile (50)  Speed: 45 000 km/s   End: 36.7m    Range: 99m km   WH: 20    Size: 10    TH: 150/90/45

Missile to hit chances are vs targets moving at 3000 km/s, 5000 km/s and 10,000 km/s

This design is classed as a Military Vessel for maintenance purposes


Fuel capacity is relatively small given the needs of my starfleets but will be constantly refueled by my allies


And a "military module" that houses weapon systems and the nerve center of my armada

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Military Module class Space Station    36 000 tons     1366 Crew     8601.8 BP      TCS 720  TH 0  EM 0
1 km/s     Armour 10-97     Shields 0-0     Sensors 140/40/0/0     Damage Control Rating 146     PPV 225.2
Maint Life 14.77 Years     MSP 18814    AFR 82%    IFR 1.1%    1YR 161    5YR 2420    Max Repair 1400 MSP
Intended Deployment Time: 12 months    Spare Berths 1    
Flag Bridge    Magazine 1832    


Twin Skykeeper Laser Turret (8x2)    Range 192 000km     TS: 20000 km/s     Power 20-10     RM 6    ROF 10        10 10 10 10 10 10 8 7 6 5
Anjo Antimissile Weapons System (3x6)    Range 1000 km     TS: 16000 km/s     ROF 5       Base 50% To Hit
Concordance Council Fast Fire Control Deck (2)    Max Range: 192 000 km   TS: 16000 km/s     95 90 84 79 74 69 64 58 53 48
Tokamak Fusion Reactor (2)     Total Power Output 80    Armour 0    Exp 5%

Patel-Brusilov Polaris Launcher (20)    Missile Size 10    Rate of Fire 300
Concordance Council Missile Launch Center (1)     Range 101.2m km    Resolution 30
Polaris Missile (180)  Speed: 45 000 km/s   End: 36.7m    Range: 99m km   WH: 20    Size: 10    TH: 150/90/45

GRID Tactical Scanner (1)     GPS 84     Range 9.2m km    Resolution 1
Overlord Systemwide Scanner (1)     GPS 140000     Range 1 540.0m km    Resolution 100
Dragão Thermal Sensing Suite (1)     Sensitivity 140     Detect Sig Strength 1000:  140m km
Parekh Electromagnetic Sensor Suite (1)     Sensitivity 40     Detect Sig Strength 1000:  40m km

Missile to hit chances are vs targets moving at 3000 km/s, 5000 km/s and 10,000 km/s

This design is classed as a Military Vessel for maintenance purposes


[Vandermeer]

So now that you are down to only one module needing maintenance, and this module being small enough to fit into one of your hangars....

You may decide whether this breaks the gamy barrier, but if not you got yourself a truly self sufficient station if you add this extra hangar for in between repairs.(on top of that free of cost - except for some lousy amounts of MSP here and there) This is essentially what I am doing now in my newest game, except that my main hangar can fly and thus still has a maintenance life.(then again, I didn't think it was completely suppressible, so now I will have to rethink probably if I want to once again tow it with massive civil engine instead)

[Wolfius]

You might want to add some MSP storage to your hangar modules, so they can actually repair stuff.

[Haji]

Seems to be a moot idea: the maintenance modules necessary to support a 40,000 ton hanger are about 500,000 tons. Prohibitively large.

Just to clarify, maintenance modules work in concert, same as facilities. So instead of one 500 000T space station you can have four stations, each supporting vessels up to 10 000T working in concert.

Deployment time is still an issue, but it's not that expensive to design ships with century-long deployment times.

Or you can just ignore it. Morale is important when fighting, but aside from that there's nothing stopping you with having a base 100 years past the intended deployment time. I'm pretty sure you could role-play a reason why it works, like having a colony ship periodically visit the complex to provide a crew rotation.

Interesting information from Haji there for the hangars. I had already tested this and thought it didn't work, but now I have to check again, for I must have made some mistake somewhere.(..I assume I accidentally placed ciws on board)

As I said in my original post I only made the module, but I have never deployed it, nor run the game with it. It's possible that despite having 'infinite' maintenance life it won't work. However I have created another module with one very small (size 0.1) power planet and forty one engineering spaces and I've got maintenance life of 24 years. And there is no reason to actually overhaul it after that period - you can still run the hangar perfectly fine by simply providing additional maintenance supplies from your colonies. So you could use the module for 50-75 years easily.

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Battlecruiser Support Module class Maintenance Base    48 550 tons     676 Crew     5337 BP      TCS 971  TH 0  EM 0
1 km/s     Armour 4-118     Shields 0-0     Sensors 1/1/0/0     Damage Control Rating 41     PPV 0
Maint Life 24.25 Years     MSP 2817    AFR 459%    IFR 6.4%    1YR 9    5YR 138    Max Repair 12 MSP
Intended Deployment Time: 240 months    Flight Crew Berths 0   
Hangar Deck Capacity 25000 tons     Magazine 3300   

Fuel Capacity 5 000 000 Litres    Range N/A

Stellarator Fusion Reactor Technology PB-1 (1)     Total Power Output 0.6    Armour 0    Exp 5%
This design is classed as a Military Vessel for maintenance purposes

in light of that...

I know it will be a while before you actually build and deploy this stuff (probably several weeks if not more) but please post the results when you do. I'm curious as to whether or not this will work out.

[Vandermeer]

As I said in my original post I only made the module, but I have never deployed it, nor run the game with it. It's possible that despite having 'infinite' maintenance life it won't work. However I have created another module with one very small (size 0.1) power planet and forty one engineering spaces and I've got maintenance life of 24 years. And there is no reason to actually overhaul it after that period - you can still run the hangar perfectly fine by simply providing additional maintenance supplies from your colonies. So you could use the module for 50-75 years easily.

That is not long enough for the time scales I plan ahead. I am currently at a point in my game where it will be easy to test this infinite deployment thing out, so maybe I will later post some laboratory evidence.

[Theodidactus (OP)]

I plan to continue playing this game until at least september, that's probably 20 more years...but if I want to come back to it someday 

I'm hoping to become substantially busier with real life stuff soon. we'll see

[Wolfius]

Or you can just ignore it. Morale is important when fighting, but aside from that there's nothing stopping you with having a base 100 years past the intended deployment time. I'm pretty sure you could role-play a reason why it works, like having a colony ship periodically visit the complex to provide a crew rotation.

When people put weapons on something they usually want them to be effective in a fight.   

[Haji]

When people put weapons on something they usually want them to be effective in a fight.   

I was thinking about the hangar modules themselves.

[Vandermeer]

..., so maybe I will later post some laboratory evidence.

Ok, I have now tested a ~12kt ammunition container until maintenance clock 3 and have to say that there is definitely some error spawn. Occasionally I got 6 consecutive windows of error 3021 (ApplyMaintenanceFailure) after an interval. Those are not breaking and can just be clicked away while the ship appears to function properly, but you will have to decide if you want to bear with that. I suppose it is also 6 errors per ship with those parameters, so if you do that a lot you might eventually get an interruption upon nearly every interval, or just increasingly more windows, which might become too much at some point.

I have not yet tested it with hangars, but I suppose it will be the same. It is probably just the maintenance function looking for a module to destroy and then not finding any. My guess it that there is some sort of check upon the 5-day interval failure rate, and if that turns out positive, the function selects a module at random. Steve might not have foreseen that you could get a military ship (so maintenance calculation is applied) without any breakable components, so the error is possible. Or he made the hangar and ammunition storage invincible later on and did not reckon with such followups.

[Theodidactus (OP)]

seems to me the fix is simply to add one tiny breakable component and a few engineering bays. My hangers will probably run a CIWS

[Haji]

Minimum size (0.1) thermal/EM sensors produces the longest estimated maintenance life. Using CIWS instead results in the estimated life span being five times shorter.

[Vandermeer]

seems to me the fix is simply to add one tiny breakable component and a few engineering bays. My hangers will probably run a CIWS

..But then its not truly infinite, and you will have to add engineering on top of the ciws.

There are a lot of problems with craft that should stay in space forever, but has maintenance life. The only options of limited lifetime without a maintenance base are:
1) Regular Overhaul - But this will eventually take maaanyyy years to do if the hangar was in space for decades. Trust me, I did this, and you are better of scrapping and rebuilding. If it doesn't stay so long however, it will be bothersome to manage by hand all the time.
2) Steady MSP supply - Can keep a cheap module up forever, and also still for cheap cost, but you will have to deal with permanent interrupting maintenance failure messages that destroy auto-turn.
3) Disassembling - After a certain longer life time you just take the thing apart, and maybe build a new one. That is what I currently do to evade the eternal overhaul. For ships that last 20+ years it is actually much cheaper than regular upkeep (which costs [shipcost]/20 per year), as you can also reuse some components. Feels however kind of immersion breaking and the cost in crew, TF-training and such might be a problem.
4) Overhauler Ship - New idea. You could have a huge hangar with reasonable (but not decades) maintenance life being towed around by civil engines(saves fuel and MSP). It could visit your station once in a while and "consume" the or one military component for some time until it looks shiny again. When the work is done it waddles back to the docks somewhere distant where it is cared for, so this would also evade extreme lifetime stress. Much easier to handle than option 1 as you do not have to assign tows individually for every module, then also don't have to check every module when it is finished individually, since all work is centralized in the maintenance ship.
If that is a good idea depends just on how far it really is to the next maintenance capable + fuel base colony. But then what you could also do is leave one such "maintenance hangar" there and build a second one at the distant base. When the old one starts to make too much errors, you fly the other in and the old back for repairs. ...Of course you could do that with all the systems of the station already, heyyy...
5) Second 'Ghost' station - Just build two stations, one real - one spare, and store the double in some big PDC hangar distant of (is always better than maintenance industry anyway). When a part becomes noisy, you exchange it for the doppelgänger (and no one will ever notice). -> Eternal overhaul avoided, and no problem doing it by hand, as in this case you can just save the commands for every module exchange, and the returning part will get ok by itself without you having to watch. It is weird, but has the least micromanagement burden of all + minimum maintenance cost (fewest amounts of MSP in the PDC hangar).
I did something similar with my fuel harvester bases in earlier games, except that I always just exchanged 2 "fuel pods" that the harvesters would fill up.

[Theodidactus (OP)]

Currently it's looking like I'm going to field 4 40,000 capacity hangers, 2 recreation modules luxury quarters, a fuel/magazine module, and a military module

I believe it's possible to get the hangers, military module, and fuel/magazine module to 20-30 years of operating capacity, at which time they can be switched out,with the old parts hauled away for scrap. Given that I was in 2140 in February and it's 2147 now, this should be a long enough maintenance life that it won't be such a bother, even if I start playing faster.

[Theodidactus (OP)]

March 4th, 2148: Starbase Knossos begins construction. Shipyards orbiting earth have been retooled to construct the hanger modules:

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Knossos Starbase: Hanger Module class Space Station    50 000 tons     915 Crew     5651.08 BP      TCS 1000  TH 0  EM 0
1 km/s     Armour 5-120     Shields 0-0     Sensors 1/1/0/0     Damage Control Rating 61     PPV 0
Maint Life 50.77 Years     MSP 4309    AFR 327%    IFR 4.6%    1YR 3    5YR 49    Max Repair 12 MSP
Intended Deployment Time: 6 months    Flight Crew Berths 1   
Hangar Deck Capacity 40000 tons     Magazine 180   

Fuel Capacity 200 000 Litres    Range N/A

House Norman Navsat Dish (1)     Sensitivity 1.4     Detect Sig Strength 1000:  1.4m km
This design is classed as a Military Vessel for maintenance purposes

The new concordance treaty goes into effect on December 10th, 2150. The concordance has until then to develop a means of protecting the Groombridge star system.

[Vandermeer]

I discovered another problem with this method, though you will be relatively save: Whenever there is a maintenance failure, it will break the tractor link to the civil tug, which probably happens all the time on designs that completely renounce on engineering space while using the 0 maintenance life method. I hoped it would not appear with 0 maintenance, but sadly it is.
Reestablishing the tractor is micromanagement and not too bothersome if it only happens randomly sometimes, but it could become so severe that you literally become immobile when it appears on every 5-day interval.

With your design you will occasionally see it happening depending on the travel time, but it is fine. I made it to around 20+ intervals of freedom from failures with a 'supposed-to-be' 119% failure on 5-day design. It might be a problem to get them back late though when their failure rate has become really high... .

Maybe you will truly need another 'tug-hangar' for their retrieval or repair on spot then.