Stationary Jump Point Defence

[Jorgen_CAB]

In general, is it possible to decrease MSP usage of a ship below what it would usually cost when parked in orbit?
Hangars are probably an option but they cost maintenance themselves, too.

The thing is, hangars are much cheaper than the ships that fit inside them, especially after you are a few levels deep into weapons tech.
So long as the carrier cost is mostly hangars, the MSP cost of the carrier should be much less than the MSP cost of the ships it carries.

This is something I have pointed out to Steve before as I think ships should have to be maintained even inside a hangar, carriers already are a powerful tool. It does not need to make maintenance cheaper too.

I mean, the up-front cost is not trivial.
For every 10kt of hangared ships, you have to pay 1000 BP for the hangars, plus pay for the engines, etc, to move the hangars around.
It saves MSP over time, but you don't get that for free. It does require an investment.

I know... the yardspace is probably less of a problem in general to be honest. The cost is also in general not that great as it uses Vendarite that is only used in fighter factories, hangars and Gauss cannons. There is some for Cargo Shuttles but that is a pretty small cost. Vendarite is not a resource you tend to be overly short on as there is rather little demand for it.

[Droll]

In general, is it possible to decrease MSP usage of a ship below what it would usually cost when parked in orbit?
Hangars are probably an option but they cost maintenance themselves, too.

The thing is, hangars are much cheaper than the ships that fit inside them, especially after you are a few levels deep into weapons tech.
So long as the carrier cost is mostly hangars, the MSP cost of the carrier should be much less than the MSP cost of the ships it carries.

This is something I have pointed out to Steve before as I think ships should have to be maintained even inside a hangar, carriers already are a powerful tool. It does not need to make maintenance cheaper too.

I mean, the up-front cost is not trivial.
For every 10kt of hangared ships, you have to pay 1000 BP for the hangars, plus pay for the engines, etc, to move the hangars around.
It saves MSP over time, but you don't get that for free. It does require an investment.

I know... the yardspace is probably less of a problem in general to be honest. The cost is also in general not that great as it uses Vendarite that is only used in fighter factories, hangars and Gauss cannons. There is some for Cargo Shuttles but that is a pretty small cost. Vendarite is not a resource you tend to be overly short on as there is rather little demand for it.

You forget that all your ground forces rely on vendarite to exist so in GC heavy games this could be a problem.

[Jorgen_CAB]

You forget that all your ground forces rely on vendarite to exist so in GC heavy games this could be a problem.

You are right... ground unit also uses Vendarite... I guess that the cost of building ground units really never impacted my economy that much so far.

Ground units can put some strain on the Vendarite situation depending on circumstances. A unit of 5000t of say medium vehicle tanks would cost you about 400 Vendarite while 5000t of regular infantry is 100 Vendarite, I don't think tech levels will make the cost higher or lower either so ground forces become less of a cost in terms of resources as your technology in mining gets more advanced, for ships this relationship is more linear except for hangar technology.

I hope that we in the the future get some sort of carrier love in terms of designing carriers and carrier operations. We now have very intricate systems for loading and firing of ordnance and handling of MSP and fuel yet parasite handling remain very abstracted and to be honest rather basic and not that realistic. But that is something for the future perhaps. If Steve ever create a campaign centred around heavy carrier warfare we might see some development in this area as that is how Steve tend to focus on mechanics. 

[Ri0Rdian]

I do not think you would want to protect every JP at all times, it would get expensive very fast. What I do however, is have 2 stations ready to be towed where needed. While my play is very unorthodox (no military ships till needed) I rely upon such stations to save my ass until I can pump out enough ships to go on the offensive.
And Plasma Carronade works excellent in such situations, huge damage, cheap to research + jump shock makes short work of even superior enemy. About the size of destroyer in my fleet (20kt) it packs quite a punch and is not too expensive.

[serger]

Usually I have several JP monitors (close range beam warships of medium size with max-forced engines, very small fuel tanks and several years of deployment time - that's how I define JP monitor hull type). I tow them to critical JPs with fleet tugs. They are quite expencive due to forced engines, but it's a cost for being able to intercept and destroy any plausible foe, jumped out of JP; after initial fleet training tour I sometimes place them at orbital hangars to reduce maint.cost, if there are no critical JPs yet.