Weapon Reliability

[MarcAFK]

That's a hell of a lot of munitions though, the iowa only fired something like 2000 rounds during WWII and 4500 during Korea.

[bean]

1500 FER while a big improvement still means they would have to switch out the barrel after 1500 AP rounds fired at full charge, or if they fired it constantly for 12.5 hours.

Yes, but we (I'm a volunteer on the USS Iowa) only carried a total of 1,220 rounds.  So we could burn through 11 magazines of full-charge AP before having to replace the barrels.  Not a big deal.

While not directly comparable I doubt many civilian applications would consider switching something out after 12 hours use "fairly reliable". 

Depends on how much they use it.  You can't fire for 12 hours because of lots of other things like ammo supply, not just barrel wear.

So exactly like western powers? Also thanks for that link.

Not really.  The west usually comes much closer to maximum potential than the Russians do.  And you're welcome.

That's a hell of a lot of munitions though, the iowa only fired something like 2000 rounds during WWII and 4500 during Korea.

And somewhere over 10,000 during the reactivation in the 80s.  I think the reduction in barrel wear had something to do with that. 

[Iranon]

One thing I find strange is that being classed as a military vessel will cause otherwise reliable components to blow up.
That commercial behemoth can see hard use for a century... but replace the size-1 navigation sensor with something twice as big, and something will go wrong within days and the ship won't last a year.

[swarm_sadist]

Source:https://fas.org/man/dod-101/sys/ship/weaps/mk-7.htm
During Operation DESERT STORM battleships USS WISCONSIN and USS MISSOURI fired more than 1.000 rounds of 16" ammunition in support of ground operations. USS MISSOURI alone fired more than one million pounds of ordnance.

One million pounds of ordinance is about 370-520 rounds (HC 1900 lbs, AP 2700 lbs, APC 1.25 tons). Each turret only carried about 100-200 rounds (that number changes depending on the source). The point is moot because no civilian ship would mount a 16" gun. They are more likely to use 3" to 5" guns. which have a much better barrel life and won't destroy the ship with it's recoil.

One thing I find strange is that being classed as a military vessel will cause otherwise reliable components to blow up.
That commercial behemoth can see hard use for a century... but replace the size-1 navigation sensor with something twice as big, and something will go wrong within days and the ship won't last a year.

It's a difficult situation to solve. If you track every military item for maintenance separately then you end up getting too many maintenance lives to track. You can also have the odd situation where a size 25 engine is fine for eternity, but a size 24 will break down several months later. Or the oddity that MSP can be used to repair (IE Rebuild) completely destroyed components, but you can't weld some metal over that armour breach letting atmosphere out.

[bean]

One million pounds of ordinance is about 370-520 rounds (HC 1900 lbs, AP 2700 lbs, APC 1.25 tons). Each turret only carried about 100-200 rounds (that number changes depending on the source). The point is moot because no civilian ship would mount a 16" gun. They are more likely to use 3" to 5" guns. which have a much better barrel life and won't destroy the ship with it's recoil.

There's no APC round.  I'm pretty sure most of the rounds fired in ODS were HC, although do bear in mind that Missouri fired several Tomahawks, too.
And 5" is about the limit of weapon that can be slapped down on a deck and used without elaborate support facilities. 

[swarm_sadist]

There's no APC round.

Armour Piercing, Capped (APC)

[bean]

Armour Piercing, Capped (APC)

I know what the acronym means.  My point is that there was only one AP shell, the 2700 lb Mk 8, which did have a cap.  There was no distinction between AP and APC, and the AP round is generally referred to as AP, not APC.  You listed three separate rounds, when there were only two.  (Well, there were a couple different 1900 lb rounds with different loads.)

[QuakeIV]

Semantics aside, I don't think designing those guns as a civilian system would make them particularly more reliable.  I mean there are contractors that use weapons, as far as I know they have to do just as much maintenance on them as everyone else.

[Erik L]

If anything, civilian mounted weapons should require more maintenance because the crew isn't as used to maintaining, or access to supplies, or the like.

[alex_brunius]

Semantics aside, I don't think designing those guns as a civilian system would make them particularly more reliable.  I mean there are contractors that use weapons, as far as I know they have to do just as much maintenance on them as everyone else.

If anything, civilian mounted weapons should require more maintenance because the crew isn't as used to maintaining, or access to supplies, or the like.

It depends if the "weapon" was designed to be used for civilian applications or not.

A military flamethrower and a civilian incinerator may have the same end function ( produce a flame from fuel ), but with civilian crew trained to operate a civilian incinerator designed to be used around the clock will have alot better reliability and less maintenance needs per operating hour then a military flamethrower designed to be possible to operate only a few seconds bursts with no more fuel then 30 seconds total firing before needing refueling.


There are not really any direct civilian comparison for battleship guns though ( that I know of ). But if there was an application for civilian use where you need to accelerate a 1ton+ projectile to high speeds another solution then using explosives and a 20m barrel would probably be designed. The magnetic trains or high speed trains come pretty close to a civilian applications designed for accelerating heavy stuff to high speeds with minimal wear and tear. Or the hyperloop maybe that is being designed?

In Aurora 4x lore the civilian use of railguns is obviously the mass driver, and it operates without maintenance needs.



I guess what I am trying to get at is that in the end it's the requirements and budget that decides maintenance and wear and tear of the designed solution. You can make very reliable weapons as well, but normally it's much cheaper and easier / better performance not to do it since they don't need to be used as often as civilian systems. And as already pointed out weapons tend to either run out of ammo, or run out of stuff to shoot at way before reliability being an issue.

One thing I find strange is that being classed as a military vessel will cause otherwise reliable components to blow up.
That commercial behemoth can see hard use for a century... but replace the size-1 navigation sensor with something twice as big, and something will go wrong within days and the ship won't last a year.

Yeah the system kind of relies on you not making silly / stupid designs like that, but design around it and for example make a small sensor military scout/fighter/corvette to escort the commercial behemoths if you absolutely want it to have access to a size-2 sensor nearby.

[Mor]

If anything, civilian mounted weapons should require more maintenance because the crew isn't as used to maintaining, or access to supplies, or the like.

A lot can be said in favor of professional military crews, but in my experience using less supplies wouldn't be one of them. Depending on the budget, you either starving and hoarding, or floating and extremely wasteful.

[Erik L]

A lot can be said in favor of professional military crews, but in my experience using less supplies wouldn't be one of them. Depending on the budget, you either starving and hoarding, or floating and extremely wasteful.

Not using, but access to. I'd expect the military ship to have an easier time to gain access to milspec components as opposed to Joe Trader.

[bean]

If anything, civilian mounted weapons should require more maintenance because the crew isn't as used to maintaining, or access to supplies, or the like.

Well, during WWII, most weapons mounted on US merchant ships were under control of the Naval Armed Guard. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Navy_Armed_Guard
The Guard only had command over the weapons, and were active naval personnel.  I don't recall hearing of any particular maintenance problems.

One thing I find strange is that being classed as a military vessel will cause otherwise reliable components to blow up.
That commercial behemoth can see hard use for a century... but replace the size-1 navigation sensor with something twice as big, and something will go wrong within days and the ship won't last a year.

This is an unfortunate limitation of Aurora.  Either a ship is entirely civilian, or it isn't.  It's probably something which would be next to impossible to deal with from a programming standpoint.

It depends if the "weapon" was designed to be used for civilian applications or not.

A military flamethrower and a civilian incinerator may have the same end function ( produce a flame from fuel ), but with civilian crew trained to operate a civilian incinerator designed to be used around the clock will have alot better reliability and less maintenance needs per operating hour then a military flamethrower designed to be possible to operate only a few seconds bursts with no more fuel then 30 seconds total firing before needing refueling.

That's an...interesting choice of analogy.  I'm not sure you've gotten at the root purpose very well.  A gas stove does the same thing, too.  Also, using an incinerator as a weapon is pretty much impossible.

There are not really any direct civilian comparison for battleship guns though ( that I know of ). But if there was an application for civilian use where you need to accelerate a 1ton+ projectile to high speeds another solution then using explosives and a 20m barrel would probably be designed.

The only thing that comes to mind is space launch, but that's a terrible analogy for many, many reasons.   

The magnetic trains or high speed trains come pretty close to a civilian applications designed for accelerating heavy stuff to high speeds with minimal wear and tear. Or the hyperloop maybe that is being designed?

Let's see.  The high-speed train record is 603 km/h according to Wiki.  The Iowa's guns had a muzzle velocity of 2869 km/h.  That's a big difference, and there are other, much bigger ones.  (And the hyperloop is pretty much pure nonsense.  I'm not sure what Musk was thinking.)

I guess what I am trying to get at is that in the end it's the requirements and budget that decides maintenance and wear and tear of the designed solution. You can make very reliable weapons as well, but normally it's much cheaper and easier / better performance not to do it since they don't need to be used as often as civilian systems. And as already pointed out weapons tend to either run out of ammo, or run out of stuff to shoot at way before reliability being an issue.

I think you're conflating two different concepts here, service life and reliability.  The two are not the same thing, nor is reliability exactly the same as 'low maintenance'.  For instance, battleship guns had a very finite service life.  Exactly how this compared to civilian applications is sort of irrelevant.  For any machine, service life of components is going to be determined by how expensive (in terms of time, money, and labor) they are to replace, versus the expense of making them last longer, which may be in terms besides money.  For instance, to continue our analogy, making a longer-lasting gun involved sacrificing a bit of performance.
I'd define reliability as something like 'the ability to perform when needed and avoid unexpected downtime'.  Battleship guns were not as reliable as you'd think, actually.  The British had particular problems, but read an account of any battleship action and you'll see references to salvos missed because of mechanical problems. 
Then you have maintenance requirements.  This is how much work is needed to keep the system going, which includes both fixing things that have broken and doing preventative maintenance to keep things from breaking in the first place.  This is an area where civilian ships have a distinct edge over military ships today.  A lot of the stuff on a warship needs regular work to keep it going, even though it's not 'unreliable' per se.  In Aurora terms, a ship with 10 engineering spaces and an AFR of 10% (made-up numbers) is reasonably reliable because of all the engineers from those spaces are doing preventive work, not because stuff is getting fixed faster.  A ship with the same systems, 1 engineering space, and a bunch of MSP bays is going to be less reliable (well, stuff will break more, even though it will be instantly repaired). 

[bean]

All of this gives me an idea for a way to potentially make this system more realistic without making Steve tear his hair out.  At the moment, it's assumed that any ship with only civilian systems has no maintenance problems with 1 engineering space, even if it's 200,000 tons, and any ship with any military systems has maintenance problems, even if it's only a size-2 sensor, and this affects everything on the ship.
What if we changed the rules a bit?  Instead of the current test, give a two-pronged test of military status.  First, all ships get a computed AFR, and a ship cannot be civilian if the AFR is over a certain value.  I don't know exactly what this value should be, as I don't have Aurora open, but as a rule of thumb, it's a value that can be done with a typical 5-cargo bay cargo ship and 1 engineering space.  Larger ships will need more engineering spaces to count as civilian. 
Second, the ship can't be more than, say, 5% military systems by size.  This should make it pretty much impossible to build an efficient warship and have it count as 'civilian', while still allowing you to mount a bit of self-defense armament on your fleet tenders.
Another thing that might be helpful would be to drop the 25-HS limit on civilian engines while maintaining the power multiplier regulations.

[linkxsc]

All of this gives me an idea for a way to potentially make this system more realistic without making Steve tear his hair out.  At the moment, it's assumed that any ship with only civilian systems has no maintenance problems with 1 engineering space, even if it's 200,000 tons, and any ship with any military systems has maintenance problems, even if it's only a size-2 sensor, and this affects everything on the ship.
What if we changed the rules a bit?  Instead of the current test, give a two-pronged test of military status.  First, all ships get a computed AFR, and a ship cannot be civilian if the AFR is over a certain value.  I don't know exactly what this value should be, as I don't have Aurora open, but as a rule of thumb, it's a value that can be done with a typical 5-cargo bay cargo ship and 1 engineering space.  Larger ships will need more engineering spaces to count as civilian. 
Second, the ship can't be more than, say, 5% military systems by size.  This should make it pretty much impossible to build an efficient warship and have it count as 'civilian', while still allowing you to mount a bit of self-defense armament on your fleet tenders.
Another thing that might be helpful would be to drop the 25-HS limit on civilian engines while maintaining the power multiplier regulations.

Might be a bit of an interesting change. Afterall, I really don't understand why 250kt freighters get whiny over 100t being devoted to a size 2 sensor.
5% might be a little high though. As lets face it, despite a 250kt "freighter" being termed a "freighter" I really don't see why it should be able to pack, 12kt worth of box launchers, and still termed civilian. Thats a pretty high powered freighter.
Though, as it is a "commercial" ship. With the exception os specifically trained crews, perhaps they could just get a "poorly trained" penalty to combat with the exception of CIWS (as those are fully self controlled)